Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller (18 page)

Warren wished his client had kept her mouth shut until she had seen a lawyer. When he asked her why she hadn't, Johnnie Faye said, "Because that would have made me look like I was hiding something. I wanted those peckerheads to know right away that I was sorry for what I did, but I sure as hell wasn't ashamed."

Warren went to the library of the
Chronicle
and Xeroxed the clips on the murders of Sharon Underhill Ott and David Inkman. Any reference to them was barred from coming up in trial, but the defense team needed to know the background. Altschuler would have done the same thing, and you could never tell in what way it would be important to know what the prosecutor knew.

Late the same afternoon Warren drove out I-10 to meet with the personnel at the Hacienda restaurant.

Both the waiter and the maitre d' remembered Dr. Ott and Johnnie Faye dining there, and the management provided a copy of the bill that showed they had consumed ten frozen margaritas. The waiter remembered an argument at the dinner table. No, he couldn't remember what the lady and gentleman had said. So many people had arguments in restaurants.

Two of the musicians wandered in. Stolid and soft-voiced, they carried guitars in scarred black cases. Yes, they had sung for Johnnie Faye, and she had tipped them. An argument? Who knows? So long ago.

Not too good, but not bad either. Warren put all the names down on a witness list for possible subpoenas.

On a different evening he visited the couple who Johnnie Faye had said heard Clyde threaten to kill her. Dr. and Mrs. Gordon Butterfield, a cosmetic surgeon and his wife, lived on Memorial Drive in a house filled with Swedish Biedermeier and Art Deco furniture. They characterized Johnnie Faye as flashy, amoral. They had been friends of Clyde's, they emphasized. They had said to him, "She's out for your money. Get rid of her before it's too late." Prophetic words.

But they recalled that particular evening a year or so ago — it had been a charity dinner for the homeless, held at the Houston Racquet Club.

Dr. Gordon Butterfield said, "They were arguing, as usual, about the money Clyde spent on his stepchildren. The boy is what I'd call a ne'er-do-well, and the girl is twice-divorced and has several children. They inherited from Sharon, of course, but not quite enough for their needs. Clyde's considerable fortune had come from Sharon, as surely you know. Clyde was a generous man — he had faults, he was human, but he was definitely generous. He subsidized the stepchildren, and the Boudreau woman disapproved. So what happened was, in the midst of this argument, which we tried to halt because, frankly, we were bored with it, the Boudreau woman threw a drink in his face. Ran down over his dinner jacket and soaked his bow tie. Uncalled for, in my opinion. And Clyde said, 'You bitch, I could happily kill you for that.' Which I assure you I didn't take as a genuine threat. It's just the sort of thing you say when you're angry and you've been humiliated in front of friends. Quite innocent in intent."

Lila Butterfield said, "She'd been insulting poor Sharon too. I went to college with poor Sharon."

Warren said, "Do you recall Ms. Boudreau's exact words, Mrs. Butterfield?"

"If my husband says she said what he said she said," Lila Butterfield explained, "then that's exactly what she said. He has an excellent memory for trivia."

"You didn't hear the remark?"

"With half an ear. It was all so vulgar. So inappropriate to a charity dinner. One doesn't necessarily listen."

Warren finished his scotch and left. He said later to Rick, "The woman drank half a bottle of sherry while I was there. We may have to use the husband, but he was Clyde's pal and hates our client, and he's a pompous ass. I asked if Clyde ever beat up on Sharon, and he screeches, 'No way, don't even
suggest
such a thing!' I tried to find out if Clyde ever snorted cocaine in their presence. His wife gasps like I'd asked if he screwed ten-year-olds. Gordon sits up straight in his wing chair and says, 'Clyde was an esteemed member of the medical profession, Mr. Blackburn. That's my answer to you, and it will not vary.' I managed to get the names of the other people who were with them at this charity dinner. Let's find them. Let's cover all the bases."

But when Rick did so, no one else who had been at the table remembered a thing other than that a drink may have been spilled.

Warren had better luck at Hermann Hospital, where he secured a copy of the Emergency Room report on the night of December 22, 1988. PATIENT'S INITIAL COMPLAINT:
suspected fracture, nasal bone. (Some swelling observed in dorsum.) DIAGNOSIS: hairline fracture of left zygo-maticofacial foramen.
TREATMENT:
none.
PRESCRIPTIONS:
Tylenol III.
The young doctor who had treated Johnnie Faye agreed to testify. Yes, she'd told him her boyfriend had hit her. Wasn't shy at all about admitting that. And they usually are, the doctor said.

Rick dropped by the bar at the Grand Hotel, but Cathy Lewis — the cocktail waitress to whom Clyde had supposedly paid the $25,000 for knocking out three of her front teeth — hadn't worked there for eighteen months. No one knew where she had gone. There were six listings for C Lewis in the Harris County telephone books, but the only one named Catherine sounded at least seventy years old. "Call all the hotel bars," Warren told his partner, "and try your people at social security and the DMV. We need her. You find her and she's your witness."

The defense team decided that Warren would do the woodshedding. At their last two meetings Johnnie Faye had directed almost all of her statements to him. Sometimes, when Rick broke in, she cast him a look of irritation bordering on anger. Rick concluded, with an airy wave, "She doesn't like me. That's rare but I've known it to happen. You're the one Scoot picked, you're her blankee to chew on. I'm just a fast-talking Yid. I mean, she's not dumb — she respects my superior intelligence and my knowledge of law, but I get the feeling she doesn't relate to my humor or my nose. So you do the woodshedding. I'll shut up and look biblically wise."

"She's right," Warren said. "You don't like her."

"She's got a great body, but she'd have your nuts in a paper bag if you gave her thirty seconds and a pair of scissors."

"Maybe that's a feeling you project to her."

"Think I'm wrong?"

Warren said, "Right or wrong, she's our client."

===OO=OOO=OO===

Every morning he ran along Braes Bayou with Oobie. Oobie was in the apartment illegally: no pets were allowed. He gave the two handymen each a ten-dollar bill, told them if they heard a dog barking in his apartment during the day it was a tape he played to scare away burglars. On Saturdays he had a maid come in to clean, an enormous black woman from Barbados named Theodosia, which she told him meant God-given. Theodosia sang calypso songs while she vacuumed and scrubbed the accumulating dirt from the oven, and one morning Warren joined with her in duets of "Brown-skinned Gal" and "Day-O," the only such lyrics he knew. He looked forward to Theodosia's visits. He was lonely.

He went to court when it was required, and met with Hector Quintana in the jail visiting room, and with Rick and Johnnie Faye Boudreau in Rick's office or his own, and with potential witnesses. He drew up witness plans and a theory of defense for both cases. One was simple. The other, for
Quintana,
made him clench his teeth and groan. Veering back and forth as he did between the two cases put him on edge, gave him dreams that were nightmarish in their confusion. "You've got a responsibility to try and talk him into taking that offer," Lou Parker had said,
"even if you think he's innocent."
Warren dreamed the words into the mouth of Dwight Bingham, and saw himself, in slow motion, in Bingham's court, pleading Johnnie Faye Boudreau guilty. Afterward Johnnie Faye screamed at him, "How could you do that? You
knew
I was innocent!" He fell at her feet, groveling.

Then he awoke, his pillow damp with sweat. The air-conditioning in the building had broken during the night. He got up, showered in cold water, then turned on the tape deck and listened to a Mozart flute quartet, trying to calm down.

If he was back in his apartment by six o'clock he avoided Channel 26 and watched the local news on one of the networks. He had left a message on Charm's answering machine to tell her where he was, and in the last two weeks she had called twice and so had he. Routine matters: a disputed bill from Blue Cross; by any chance had he taken her manicure kit with him? No, he hadn't. He asked her if he could come by on Saturday morning and get his spare pair of sweats and some Reeboks which he'd left in the dryer. No problem, she would be away for the weekend.

Twice she inquired if he was all right, and each time he said, "I'm fine, Charm. How about you?" The first time she replied, "I'm doing well," and the second time, "I'm doing okay."

But he didn't focus on subtleties. He was giving her the time she needed to do whatever it was she elected to do, and he didn't want details or apologies or arguments. He kept the conversations short. He was heartsore, but that was none of her business now.

And his heart wasn't consistently sore; there were hours when he didn't think of Charm at all. Some June evenings he went to the weight room in the main building at Ravendale, pumped iron and tugged at pulleys, worked up a sweat, then went out to the pool. There was usually a water-volleyball game in progress and a few times he joined in, splashing and yelling. A young black-haired woman on his team told him her name was Mary Beth and she'd just moved here from Michigan, where it was so cold in winter it'd freeze the you-know-whats off a brass monkey. And what was his name? And where was he from? And what did he do? He was polite to her, then he slipped away.

Janice, behind the desk, regularly bared her teeth in an engaging smile whenever he came round to ask if there were any responses to the flyer he'd had printed and stuffed into every mailbox. In her eyes he recognized the veiled beacon of invitation he had hunted for so assiduously in the years when he and his pals traipsed around town to parties or hung out at the Shamrock pool.

Not what he needed, not yet. No entanglements, no hit-and-run. Focus on the Boudreau woman's testimony and suffering Hector Quintana. Get a good heart pump going in the weight room. Take good care of Oobie, because she loves you and depends on you.

One evening he forgot to feed her. The next morning, on the freeway, en route to interview a witness, he remembered. He turned off at a downtown exit and drove all the way back to Ravendale, where her tail wagged with joy. He hugged her fiercely. A dumb and hungry dog was all he had.

Casually, at an easy moment in conversation, by pool-side and in the front office, he said to both Mary Beth and Janice, "I'm separated from my wife. I miss her. Still trying to figure out what-all went wrong." Exactly the same words each time. And he gave both of them an arm's-length smile.

But women seemed to smell his availability, if that's what it was. Courthouse gossip was rife, swift as sound if not light. One morning in Judge Bingham's court when he was setting up a date to hand in his subpoenas in
Boudreau,
Maria Hahn, the court reporter, nudged his elbow.

Maria was in her late thirties, with an illegitimate eight-year-old son, a fact that discouraged most of the bachelor lawyers. Tall and leggy, she had short brown hair in a frizzy permanent wave, bright blue eyes, a neck like a Modigliani portrait. The married lawyers hit on her regularly, but Maria laughed at all of them except for Bob Altschuler. They were supposed to have had an affair, now history. Rumor had it that she ditched him. Altschuler, a married man of forty-five, was still in pain. You could see it in his eyes when he gazed across at Maria behind her steno machine, red-tipped fingers flying.

She was always telling off-color jokes and she giggled a lot with Dwight Bingham, who called a break in court proceedings whenever he thought she was tired. "Break for the beautiful Maria," he would say, and more often than not, Maria, smiling up at the bench, transcribed it into the record. Bingham didn't care.

She asked Warren how he was doing, and he said fine.

"Warren, I belong to this club, called, would you ever believe it, the Towering Texans of Houston. Monday's the legal holiday — there's a big Fourth of July party Sunday night. I don't want to go alone, and I really don't care for any of these giant geeks. Want to come with me?"

"Sounds good," Warren said, after a moment. He liked Maria; she was a cheerful woman. "Exactly how tall are you?"

"Five-foot-eleven. You?"

"Six-one. Maybe shy a quarter inch."

"Well, you can't join the team. Men members have to be six-two. But I'm allowed to bring along a short guy." She squeezed his arm, and a chortling sound issued from her bountiful chest. "Want to hear a real disgusting joke?"

"Do I have any choice?"

"It's a riddle. Why do women have cunts?"

"I can't imagine."

"So that men will talk to them."

Maria howled with laughter like a benevolent witch. Warren rocked back and forth on his heels, thinking it over.

Maria's laughter ebbed. "More truth than poetry, right?"

He wondered if Charm would laugh at that joke.

"Give me your new number," Maria said. "I'll hoot to tell you when and where."

His new number. The words rang with melancholy and promise. Was a new number like a new life?

Wearing shorts and a safari shirt from Banana Republic
, Rick Levine arrived at Warren's cottage office. It was the Saturday afternoon of the long Fourth of July weekend. This time Rick brought Bernadette Loo; she had been sick with the flu and had fallen behind in the transcription of their notes. Today she appeared glum. Just kissed another boyfriend goodbye, she explained. "How come I get mixed up with so many jerks?"

"You keep turning
me
down," Rick said, "and your Chinese God, not to mention Jehovah, is punishing you."

There was no truth to that: Rick was one of the few men Warren knew, other than himself, who was faithful to his wife. "Got no time to fool around" was Rick's explanation. But Warren doubted that too. Rick had his family, his racehorses, his friends, his practice, and was loyal to them all. His wife grumbled, "When he's in trial, he comes home in the evening, I talk to him, he's not even there. Drives me
crazy."
But Warren had noticed that when Rick and Liz were together they laughed often, touched each other, were never cruel. He had envied them that simplicity.