Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller (20 page)

"You told me just a few minutes. I start trial this week. If you want privacy, we can go outside."

It had grown a little cooler, down to 85 degrees, moving on toward evening. As he guided her into the parking lot, Warren said, "We can sit in my car. I'll turn on the A/C."

"I don't mind the heat as long as it's dry. I may even miss it when I go."

"You're odd," Warren said.

With Charm facing him, he leaned his buttocks against the hood of Johnnie Faye's cream-colored Mercedes. "So what can I do for you?"

"I think we should start taking steps toward a divorce. I wanted to tell you face-to-face. It just didn't seem right to write a letter or say it on the telephone."

Not trivial at all. Wrong again.

"I've talked to a lawyer. Here in town," she added quickly. "His name's Arthur Franklin. He'll be in touch with you."

Warren nodded grimly. "Don't know him," he muttered.

"It'll be simple," Charm said. "No alimony. We sell the house and split the money down the middle. Unless you want to keep the place and move back in, in which case we get the bank to assess current value and you pay me half. Same with all our investments, such as they are. Is that fair?"

"What about child support?"

"What?"

"Just joking."

"I don't think it's so funny."

"Oh, lighten up, Charm. It's all your idea, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is."

"Suppose?"

"Don't be so lawyerly. This isn't as easy for me as you may think."

"Not for me either," Warren said.

"You're the one who makes jokes. You seem in a pretty good mood."

What was happening with Charm seemed like a dream sequence in a movie, or one of the soap operas he'd watched on the office TV when the phone wasn't ringing and he was in the dumps these past few years. A good mood? The moment he allowed himself to think about the little balcony in San Miguel de Allende, the mood would flee like a burglar.

"Are you going to remarry? Be a stepmother to this guy's three kids?"

She tossed her head, her blond hair flaring into a temporary mane. "I don't want to discuss that, Warren. Give me a break."

So she was in pain too. But over what? Over leaving him or over whatever was going on with her beau from New York?

"I want to tell you a quick joke, Charm. Get your opinion on it. A woman told it to me." He repeated Maria Hahn's riddle as to why women have cunts. "So is that funny," he asked, "or insightful, or just downright sexist? What's your opinion, Charm? Analyze it."

Her mouth had curved up briefly and uncertainly — then she had clicked the bare smile off like a camera shutter. "Is this some sort of a message to me?"

He had no idea what she meant. Did she think he was commenting on her new relationship? Maybe he was. Otherwise, he wondered, why would I have thought of that?

But he said, "I'm asking your opinion. You're an enlightened woman."

"You're getting a little crazy, Warren, did you know that?"

That may have been true.

"Anything else you want to tell me?" he asked.

"I don't think so. Not today. Are you eating well? You look thin."

Old habits of caring died hard, he realized. "I work out," he said. "I've given up serious cooking for the time being, so I may have lost weight."

"How's Oobie?"

"Hip bothers her, but she's frisky."

"I take it that's your client in the Ott case." Charm nodded toward the window of the cottage. "Formidable-looking lady."

With his palms, Warren hoisted himself up to a sitting position on the hood of the car, boots dangling. The metal gave a bit under his weight.

"You always sit on your clients' Mercedes?" Charm asked, curling her lip.

She was implying a certain intimacy. He said nothing, just shrugged with nonchalance.

"Well, I'm sure she won't mind," Charm said. "I can see she's a careless driver."

Again there was an implication. But this time he bit. "What makes you say that, Charm?"

"The bumper. And the fender." Charm's reporter's eye flicked toward the front of the car.

He jumped down lightly from the hood and turned in the direction of her glance, where he saw that the bumper had separated from the grillwork. There was a small dent, with a nickel-sized spot of bright blue paint ground into the cream-colored paint of the fender. You could easily have missed it if you didn't look closely in good light.

He kept staring at it, at first not knowing why. And then, not instantly — more like mud oozing up from a fault in the earth, sluggishly assuming shape, primordial meaning — he remembered where he had first seen that combination of blue and cream. Strange coincidence. He had told Johnnie Faye he was working on another case that would go to trial before hers, but she had waved it aside, asked few questions about it. Clients needed to preserve the illusion that you were concentrated on them alone.

But how many cars in Houston were painted that peculiarly bright shade of blue? And how many collisions could those blue cars have had with other cream-colored cars? The breath almost left Warren's body.

===OO=OOO=OO===

After Charm had gone he walked back inside to where Johnnie Faye waited. I can't deal with this now, he thought. This is for later, when I'm alone. Be careful, and assume nothing. Johnnie Faye was drinking a beer and browsing through a three-month-old copy of the
Law Journal.
Warren apologized for the delay.

"You look upset," Johnnie Faye said.

"I am," he admitted. "But I don't want to talk about it." A canny idea picked at his mind. "I need to work more with you. Are you tired?"

No, she said, she wasn't tired. Her eyes grew bright, as they always did when he focused on her. She treated it like a game, a play where she was the star. "Let's do some more cross-examination," Warren said. "You're on the witness stand, under oath. I'm Bob Altschuler. I'll start off with the murder weapon, but I may skip around to different topics, because that's what he'll do. You ready?"

Johnnie Faye nodded.

"Ms. Boudreau, you shot Dr. Ott with a .22-caliber pistol, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"Did you always carry that .22 in your handbag?"

"Yes, I needed it for protection."

"No," Warren said, "don't justify. Just answer his question firmly and clearly. If you add an explanation it makes you sound defensive. And he can ask the judge to make you stop. Understand?"

She nodded.

"Ms. Boudreau, is that .22 the only pistol you own?"

"No."

He digested that and said carefully, "Describe the other pistol, please."

"It's a .45. I keep it in my desk drawer at the club, under lock and key."

"You're sure it's a .45, not some other caliber?"

She looked at him oddly. "Yes."

Get off it, Warren thought, or she might catch on. "Was the .22 that you carried in your handbag always loaded?"

"Yes."

"Safety in the On position?"

"Yes."

"Did you know it was in your handbag that evening you went with Dr. Ott to the Hacienda restaurant?"

"Well, I knew, but I wasn't thinking about it."

"Just yes or no," Warren cautioned.

She frowned. "Yes."

"Was Dr. Ott aware that you were carrying a gun that evening?"

"I don't know."

"Good," Warren said. "That's the right answer. Matter of fact, Altschuler probably wouldn't ask that, and if he did I'd object. You don't know what Clyde knew or didn't know, and make sure you don't get trapped into speculating. Okay — did you tell Dr. Ott you were carrying the gun that evening?"

"No."

"In the Hacienda restaurant, where you and Dr. Ott dined, you argued, didn't you?"

"He argued."

"Was he abusive to you?"

"Yes."

"And were you abusive to him?"

"No, I just shut up and listened."

"Was Dr. Ott drunk when you both reached his house that night, after dinner?"

"Yes."

"Were you drunk?"

"Yes, but not as drunk as he was."

"You had your Mercedes parked at his house, didn't you?"

"Yes."

He considered what he could ask about the Mercedes.
Is that your only car? Does anyone else drive it? Have you had any accidents with it lately?
No, don't be a fool. Stay away. She was waiting. He could feel her mind ticking.

"So when you got back from the Hacienda to his house, you could have gone home then, right away, in your car, to your apartment, if you wanted to?"

"Well… yes, I suppose so."

"But you didn't, did you?"

"No. Wait," she said to Warren. "Can't I explain why I didn't go home?"

"Not unless he asks you, and he won't. He won't ask any questions that begin with 'why.' And he won't ever ask you, 'How do you account for such-and-such,' because that's also a
why
question. But I'll ask you plenty of that on direct examination, and you can talk as much as you like — so you'll already have explained why you didn't go home right away. Okay, let's keep going. We'll skip forward a bit. Ms. Boudreau, later, after you came downstairs with Dr. Ott, where did you go?"

"Into the hallway, what he called the vestibule."

"The hallway by the front door?"

"Yes."

"Dr. Ott was drunk and abusive and threatening?"

"Yes. All three."

"Were you still drunk?"

"Yes."

"You could have gone directly out the front door, couldn't you?"

"No."

"He blocked your path?"

"Yes."

"You came down the stairs first, and he followed you, but still he managed to block your path out the door?"

"Yes, he caught up with me in the vestibule."

"Well," Warren said, "I didn't ask you that, but it's okay. That's a natural response. Now, Ms. Boudreau, how did you get from the vestibule into the living room?"

"He shoved me in there."

Warren stopped to make some notes.

"All right," he said, "then you picked up the poker to defend yourself and he took it away from you. He cursed at you, threatened to kill you. Where were you standing, Ms. Boudreau?"

"Behind the sofa."

"And you already had your gun leveled at him?"

"No."

"When did you take the gun out of your handbag?"

"When he raised the poker like he was going to hit me with it."

"And he came running at you with the poker over his head?"

"Yes."

"And then you shot him?"

"Yes."

"He was running at you when you shot him?"

"Yes."

"He never hesitated at all? Never stopped?"

"No."

"You aimed at his head and pulled the trigger?"

"No, I didn't aim at all. I was petrified."

"You pulled the trigger three times, didn't you?"

"No, just once."

"But three bullets were fired, isn't that a fact?"

"Yes."

"You cocked the action when you took the gun out of your handbag, didn't you?"

"I don't remember."

"Did you know the sear had been filed down on this gun?"

"I'm still not even sure what a sear is."

"You've practiced with that pistol, haven't you?"

"Once, five years ago, when I bought it. I don't even think I hit the target more than two or three times."

"All right," Warren said, after he had made some more notes. "That's enough for today. How do you feel?"

"Fine," Johnnie Faye said, her eyes sparkling.

"Well, I'm bushed. Let's go through it again sometime next week. I'm starting my other trial on Wednesday, picking a jury. I'll call you."

===OO=OOO=OO===

Through the parted blinds at the window Warren watched the Mercedes bump over the curb, turn up Montrose and vanish in the long shadows of early evening in the direction of the University of St. Thomas.

He dropped into his swivel chair, tilted it back and swung his boots up on the desk. He locked his hands behind his head.

Coincidence. It had to be coincidence.

From his desk he took out the
Quintana
file and the manila envelope with the packet of photographs that the two homicide sergeants had given him. He stared at the photograph of Dan Ho Trunh's blue station wagon, at the cream-colored rip in the metal on the right side just ahead of the rear bumper. That rip, Mrs. Trunh swore, hadn't been there when her husband left the house on the morning of his death.

All right. It could have happened anytime that day. Trunh could have sideswiped any number of cream-colored cars.

But there was one cream-colored car with that shade of blue paint ground into its front left fender. The blue paint was garish, distinctive — probably hand-painted. And the nature of the owner of the cream-colored Mercedes was also distinctive.
"Slopes are no fucking good… If I had my way…
"

He remembered Bob Altschuler casually telling him that unproved tale: "
We think that on the spur of the moment she offed some Korean kid who worked in her club and gave her some back talk when she wouldn't give him a raise. You think I'm kidding? I
know."

It can't be, Warren thought. It made no sense. There was no connection. If Johnnie Faye Boudreau was a murderer in the past, she murdered out of clear motive. Sharon Ott, in order to make Clyde free. Dink, because he knew too much and was dangerous. Ronzini (if he was indeed dead), for the same reason. Clyde Ott, in self-defense — if she was telling the truth. If she's lying, then she had no reason other than ungovernable rage.

If that's what had happened with Clyde, and with whoever had worked in her kitchen, why couldn't it have happened with Dan Ho Trunh?

Because there's no connection. None except the blue spot on the car.

===OO=OOO=OO===

He spent nearly all day Monday in his office, preparing an opening statement for
Quintana,
blocking out the witnesses in his trial notebook and worrying over a theory of defense. The test for such a theory was not legal relevance; it was persuasive relevance. There wasn't much. After the state had presented its case Hector would stand before the jury and tell his story: "I didn't do it." Wonderfully relevant, yet hardly persuasive.