Client Privilege (22 page)

When I hung up, Sylvestro stood. “Thanks,” he said. “Ready?”

There was a Boston police cruiser parked in front of my building with a uniformed cop behind the wheel. Sylvestro and I got into the back. “No lights, no siren,” said Sylvestro to the driver, who grunted in reply.

He steered onto the Expressway, weaving proficiently through the early rush-hour traffic, and then exited onto Storrow Drive, paralleling the frozen Charles. After we crossed the river, we took a right onto Mt. Auburn Street, heading toward Harvard Square. Twenty minutes after we left my apartment building on the waterfront, we pulled up in front of the main entrance to the Mt. Auburn Hospital.

Sylvestro opened the door and got out, then leaned in. “This is it, Mr. Coyne. Come on.”

I slid out of the car. “What’s this all about?” I said. I felt that somehow I had been bamboozled.

“Be patient with me,” he said. “You’ll see. Follow me.”

Sylvestro flashed his shield at the visitors’ desk and then led me to a bank of elevators. We shared the ride with a pair of young interns who were discussing the anatomy of a nurse of their acquaintance.

We got out of the elevator, turned left, and found ourselves in a waiting room. Its only occupant was a bald man with a black mustache. He stood up when he saw us. Sylvestro went to him and they spoke briefly in low voices. Then they came to where I was standing.

“Mr. Coyne, this is Detective Orvitz of the Cambridge police,” said Sylvestro.

Orvitz nodded but did not offer his hand, so I didn’t either.

“She’s awake,” said Orvitz to Sylvestro. “Wanna take him in?”

I looked from one cop to the other. “Just a minute,” I said. “I’m not sure I want anything to do with this.”

Sylvestro put his hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Mr. Coyne. It’ll only take a minute.”

I shrugged. “I came this far.”

He led me down a corridor to a small private room. A figure lay on the bed. It was a woman, judging by the tangled mass of dark hair on the pillow. Her face was turned away from us. The back of her head was bandaged. She was either sleeping or staring out the window at the blank brick wall across the air shaft. She was not attached to any tubes or wires, so I guessed her condition was not considered critical.

“Mrs. Gorwacz,” said Sylvestro softly.

She turned her head slowly. When I saw her face, I whispered, “Jesus!”

Karen Lavoie Gorwacz looked like she had gone ten rounds with Marvin Hagler. Her left eye was the dark, shiny red of an unripe plum and swollen to a narrow slit. A deep gash on her cheek had been crudely stitched. Encrusted scabs of dried blood showed in her nostrils. Her bottom lip was split and puffy.

Sylvestro went to her bedside and touched her hand. “How are you feeling?” he said.

She stared from him to me with her one functional eye but did not answer.

“Karen,” continued Sylvestro kindly, “are you ready to tell us who did this to you?”

She turned her head away from him.

Sylvestro gestured for me to come stand beside him. I did.

He touched her arm. “Karen, please,” he said.

She rotated her head to look at us.

“Do you know this man?”

She stared at me, then gave a tiny nod. The corners of her mouth twitched with the pain of moving her head.

“Is he the one who hit you?”

She looked at me for a long time. I saw tears well up in her good eye. Slowly they spilled out and coursed down her cheek. Her swollen eye was crying too. She reached up to her face with her hand and touched her wet cheeks with her fingertips. Her hand, I noticed, trembled.

Then she shifted her gaze to Sylvestro. Slowly, imperceptibly, she shook her head. Her puffed and cracked lips whispered, “No.”

He nodded. “Okay. Good. Now, tell us who. Please.”

She turned her face away from him.

Sylvestro looked at me and shrugged. “She won’t say. She’s very frightened. We’ve tried to get her to tell us. She gets this wild, panicky look and then she cries.”

I gripped his arm above the elbow. “We’ve got to talk,” I said.

He peered at me for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Come on.”

I started to leave, then went over to the bed. I touched Karen’s shoulder. She looked up at me for a moment, then closed her eyes. “Please,” she said softly.

I squeezed her shoulder gently, then removed my hand. “You must tell these men who did this to you.”

She shook her head without opening her eyes. I hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked out of the room. Sylvestro followed me.

I controlled myself until we were in the waiting room. Then I grabbed a handful of Sylvestro’s brown topcoat. “That was a stupid, unprofessional trick,” I hissed at him. “I don’t believe—”

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s sit down.”

“You sit down. I’m too mad.”

Sylvestro sat and I paced. “You were trying to set me up,” I muttered. “You thought I was the one who beat up that poor woman. You wanted to see how she’d react to seeing me. It was a cheap trick.” I stopped and stared down at him. “Did it occur to you that if she had identified me, it would probably not be admissible in court? Huh? Did you think of that?”

Sylvestro smiled and waved his hand. “Come on, Mr. Coyne. Have a seat.”

I took a deep breath, then sat beside him. Orvitz, two seats away, had been watching us with what looked like amusement.

“You’re right,” said Sylvestro. “If she said you were the one who beat her up, we’d be screwed. Hell, I’d be the main one who got screwed. But listen. If she had identified you, Mr. Coyne, I would have been as surprised as you, believe me.”

“Well, then—”

He held up a hand. “Hear me out. I’ll admit that for a while you were a suspect on the Churchill thing. Problem is, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why you’d kill him. That bothered me. It didn’t particularly bother Finnigan, but it bothered me. I’ve been studying you over the past week, Mr. Coyne. I’ve done some research. You’re a highly respected lawyer. Very ethical, from all I can learn. You’ve been in a number of tight situations, and you’ve handled yourself admirably. You killed a man once. That, too, was admirable, under those circumstances. I have concluded that you didn’t kill Churchill.” He paused. “I have also concluded that you know who did.”

He stopped and stared at me, eyebrows arched.

I shrugged.

He nodded. “I know. You can’t say anything. Look. You went and visited this woman last night. Why? I’d like to know. Nothing wrong with a divorced man visiting a divorced woman. Except she gets beat up. I mean, this Karen, she’s connected to you, and you’re connected to Churchill, so maybe she’s connected to Churchill, too, see? So far, at least, we’ve come up blank. But, okay, I figure one way of seeing it is, it’s the lady, this Karen”—he jerked his head backward in the direction of her hospital room—“who killed Churchill. This Churchill was quite a womanizer. Oldest story in the world, handsome young guy gets it on with a lonely, horny divorcee, then dumps her for something younger and sexier, so she goes to his pad to confront him, ends up pumping a couple thirty-two slugs into him. Oldest story in the world. Except, of course, that doesn’t explain who beat the shit outta her.”

I was shaking my head and smiling.

“Ahh,” grumbled Sylvestro, “it’s a fucked-up case. I can’t get a handle on it. Last night around midnight I got a call from Detective Orvitz here. Said this woman had been brought by ambulance to the hospital. Her son came home and found her half conscious on the living room floor. The boy said a lawyer name of Coyne must have done it, that you were with her when he left. For good measure, Orvitz found your business card on her kitchen table. He knew about the Churchill case from the state cops. Recognized your name.”

“I don’t beat up women,” I said.

He nodded. “No, I don’t suppose you do. Still, you gotta admit you’re a helluva suspect here.”

I nodded.

“Let’s suppose you didn’t do it. She’s okay when you leave. She’s alone. The kid’s off somewhere. I figure someone was waiting outside for you to leave, then went in. Someone she’d let in. Someone she knew, just like Churchill let his killer in. Same guy. Who knew both of them.”

“Karen let me in,” I said. “She didn’t know me.”

Sylvestro shrugged. “I figure this. I figure old Karen in there did have a thing going with Churchill. She’s got a boyfriend somewhere, right? Jealous type. Found out about it. Whacked Churchill, then beat up Karen for good measure.”

I arched my eyebrows. “Gorwacz? Her ex-husband?”

“Maybe,” said Sylvestro. “That’s most logical. We’re working on that one.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Fact is, Mr. Coyne, you were there last night. You could’ve done it. Hell, you could be the jealous lover.”

“Come on.”

“Why not?” Sylvestro smiled. “Finnigan liked it.” He shrugged. “Ah, hell. I didn’t really think it was you. Wouldn’t’ve brought you here this way if I did. Anyway, Orvitz was all for rousting you last night. I persuaded him to let me handle it. So, yeah, it was a cheap, tawdry trick. I wouldn’t have tried it if I thought you did it. What I wanted was, I wanted you to see what we’re dealing with. Because I know damn well you’re protecting somebody. And whoever it is you’re protecting doesn’t just shoot bullets into television news reporters. He also likes to beat the shit out of women. Because I’m convinced—and I’ll bet you are, too—that whoever killed Churchill is also the one who did this to Mrs. Gorwacz. And the poor woman is too scared to tell us who it is.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t say anything.”

“Did you see her face, Mr. Coyne?”

I nodded.

“Did you see the fear in her eyes?”

I sighed heavily. “Yes. I saw it.”

Sylvestro gripped my sleeve. “Then how in the name of God can you refuse to let us bring in this animal?”

“I think you know.”

“Client privilege, right?”

I nodded.

He leaned back and scowled at me. “What if he had killed her? He could have. He came damn close to it. She’s got a minor concussion. They think it’s minor. Two cracked ribs, three busted teeth. Stitches on her cheek, some more in her scalp. Supposing he’d killed that girl? Then what would you say about client privilege?”

“You think this is easy for me?”

He shrugged.

“It’s not,” I said. “Believe me, it’s not easy.” I looked at him for a long minute. “What would I say about protecting my client? I guess I’d say that, like most principles, this one is important enough to preserve even when it doesn’t seem to work. It’s the main ethic of my profession. Without it, nothing works. Sometimes cops arrest the wrong man. He goes to trial. He gets convicted. He goes to prison. Sometimes innocent men are even executed. That doesn’t stop you guys from arresting somebody else. That’s what you do. That’s the ethic of your profession. Arrest people who you think are guilty and then pass them along the line to the next step in the process. The principles are okay. The system just breaks down sometimes.”

“Sure. Law school stuff. Sounds nice in the classroom.” He shook his head back and forth. “You know a murderer and a woman-beater. You could see justice done. It’s your fucking obligation as a lawyer, as an officer of the court. And you refuse.”

“Catching him is your job,” I said. “That’s the system.”

“Yeah,” he said after a minute, “that’s the system, all right. That’s why cops get blamed when crimes go unsolved. The goddam system. Lawyers.”

“Lawyers have their place. So do cops. They’re different places. You know that.”

He shrugged. We sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, he said, “Well, Mr. Coyne, for what it’s worth, I’d respect you a whole helluva lot more if you’d tell us who this monster is.”

“And I,” I said, “I’d respect me a whole helluva lot less.”

He shook his head slowly. “I just figured, once you saw her face…”

“You put it on the line, bringing me here, didn’t you?” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You’re really a softie, aren’t you?”

He looked up at me and smiled sadly. “Ah, fuck it.”

“I can’t do it,” I said quietly.

He sighed. “Well, then. We might as well get out of here.”

The police cruiser was waiting outside the hospital. We drove back to my apartment without talking. The rush-hour traffic was heavy, and it took nearly an hour. Sylvestro stared out the side window the whole way, as if he thought his silence would punish me.

When we arrived in front of my apartment building I opened the door and got out. I leaned back in.

“I got a question,” I said.

He shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“You been following me?”

“Huh?”

“Tailing me. You know…”

He smiled. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“I just thought, if you suspected me of…”

“Shit,” he said. “If we’d been tailing you, we probably would’ve seen who beat the crap out of Karen Lavoie last night, huh?”

I nodded. “Well, good luck,” I said to Sylvestro. “I hope you catch him.”

“Think, Mr. Coyne. Think about that girl’s face.”

“I’m not likely to forget it,” I said.

A
ND INDEED I DIDN’T
forget Karen Lavoie Gorwacz’s bruised and broken face. It looked at me all morning. Those tormented wet eyes accused me of sins I hadn’t committed. Every time I saw Julie, with her clear skin and fine cheekbones and big Irish green eyes, I imagined her the victim of a beating such as Karen had endured. I pictured Gloria with her eyes slitted and her nose twisted and bleeding. I thought of my friend Sylvie Szabo with her delicate Hungarian features smashed, her fine pointed chin crushed, her jaw shattered, her teeth broken.

Pops.

I remembered the time back in New Haven when he had beaten that bully’s face into a bloody pulp, and his sudden rage. But that was different. That was self-righteous rage, the rage generated by a rigid concept of justice. I tried to imagine Pops in a similar manic tower of rage punching in the face of Karen Lavoie, and I failed. It simply didn’t fit the man I knew, my old friend from law school, that genuinely virtuous, if flawed, man, the esteemed judge.

Then I remembered. Pops was in Florida.