Defending Jacob (41 page)

Jacob felt as I did, and we had a fine old time ridiculing Logiudice’s case, reassuring ourselves that every card he laid down was a deuce or a three. Jonathan’s bit about the “absence of evidence” and the dressing-down Logiudice got for alluding to the murder-gene issue particularly delighted us. I do not mean to suggest Jacob was not scared shitless. He was. We all were. Jacob’s anxiety just took the form of beating his chest a little. Mine too. I felt aggressive, all adrenaline and testosterone. I was a fast-idling engine. The nearness of such an enormous catastrophe as a guilty verdict sharpened every sensation.

Laurie was a lot more gloomy. She assumed that in a close case, the jury would feel it was their duty to convict. They would take no chances. Just lock up this boy-monster, protect everyone else’s innocent babes, and be done with it. She also figured the jury would want to see someone swing for the murder of Ben Rifkin. Anything less and justice would not have been done. If the neck in the noose happened to be Jacob’s, they would take it. In all Laurie’s doomsaying, I heard intimations of something darker, but I did not dare challenge her on it. Some feelings it is better not to surface. Some things a mother should never be forced to say about her son, even if she believes them.

So we declared a truce that night. We resolved to stop the endless rehashing of the forensic testimony we had heard that day. No more talk about the nuances of blood spatters and angles of knife entry and all that. Instead we sat on the couch and watched TV in contented silence. When Laurie went upstairs around ten, I had a vague idea that I might follow her. Once, I would have. My libido would have pulled me up the stairs like a Great Dane on a leash. But that was over now. Laurie’s interest in sex had vanished, and I could not imagine going to sleep beside her or going to sleep at all. Anyway, someone needed to turn off the TV and tell Jacob to go to bed when the time came, otherwise the kid would be up until two.

Just after eleven—Jon Stewart was just coming on—Jake said, “He’s here again.”

“Who?”

“The guy with the cigarette.”

I peered through the wood shutters in our living room.

Across the street was the Lincoln Town Car. It was parked, brazenly, right across the street from our house, under a streetlight. The window was open a crack so the driver could flick his cigarette ashes out onto the street.

Jacob said, “Should we call the cops?”

“No. I’ll take care of it myself.”

I went to the coat closet in the front hall and rummaged out a baseball bat that had been there for years, stuck in among the umbrellas and boots where Jacob must have left it after Little League one day. It was aluminum, red, a kid-sized Louisville Slugger.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, Dad.”

“It’s a fantastic idea, trust me.”

I concede, looking back, that this was, in fact, not a fantastic idea. I was not unaware of the harm I could do to the public’s perception of us, even of Jacob. I think I had some vague notion I would throw a scare into Cigarette Man without doing any real harm. More to the point, I felt like I could run through a wall, and I wanted to do
something
finally. I’m not sure how far I meant to take it, honestly. In the event, I never got the chance to find out.

As I reached the sidewalk in front of my own house, an unmarked police cruiser—a black Interceptor—raced up between us. It seemed to come out of nowhere, its wigwags and blue flashers lighting up the street. The cruiser parked at an angle to the front of the Lincoln, blocking it from leaving.

Out popped Paul Duffy, in plain clothes except for a state police windbreaker and a badge clipped to his belt. He looked at me—I think by now I had dropped the bat to my side, at least, though I must have looked ridiculous anyway—and he raised his eyebrows. “Get back in the house, Babe Ruth.”

I did not move. I was so shocked, and my feelings about Duffy were so mixed at this point, that I could not really listen to him anyway.

Duffy ignored me and went to the Lincoln.

The driver’s window opened with an electric hum and the driver asked, “Is there a problem?”

“License and registration, please.”

“What did I do?”

“License and registration, please.”

“I have a right to sit in my car, don’t I?”

“Sir, are you refusing to provide identification?”

“I’m not refusing anything. I just want to know what you’re bothering me for. I’m just sitting here minding my own business on a public street.”

The driver relented, though. He popped his cigarette into his mouth and leaned far over so he could wiggle his wallet out from under his ass. When Duffy took the license and went back to his cruiser, the guy looked at me from under the brim of his scally cap and said, “How ya doin’, pal?”

I did not answer.

“Everything okay with you and your family?”

More staring.

“It’s good to have a family.”

I did not answer again, and the guy went back to smoking his cigarette with theatrical nonchalance.

Duffy came out of the cruiser again and handed the guy his license and registration.

Duffy: “Were you parked here the other night?”

“No, sir. I don’t know anything about that.”

“Why don’t you move on, Mr. O’Leary. Have a good night. Don’t come back here again.”

“It’s a public street, isn’t it?”

“Not for you.”

“All right, Officer.” He leaned way over again and grunted as he wedged his wallet into his back pocket. “Sorry. I move a little slow. Getting old. Happens to everyone, right?” He grinned up at Duffy then at me. “You gentlemen have a nice evening.” He pulled his seat belt across his chest and made a show of clicking it. “Click it or ticket,” he said. “Officer, I’m afraid you’ll have to move your car. You’re blocking me.”

Duffy went to his cruiser and backed it up a few feet.

“G’night, Mr. Barber,” the man said, and he cruised off slowly.

Duffy came up to stand beside me.

I said, “You want to tell me what that was all about?”

“I think we better talk.”

“You want to come in?”

“Look, Andy, I understand if you don’t want to have me around, in the house, whatever. It’s okay. We can just talk here.”

“No. It’s all right. Just come in.”

“I’d rather—”

“I said it’s okay, Duff.”

He frowned. “Is Laurie up?”

“You afraid to face her?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not afraid to face me?”

“I’m not thrilled about it, to be honest.”

“Well, don’t worry. I think she’s asleep.”

“You mind if I take that?”

I handed him the bat.

“Were you really gonna use it?”

“I have the right to remain silent.”

“Probably a good time to do that.”

He tossed the bat into his cruiser and followed me inside.

Laurie stood at the top of the stairs in flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt with her arms crossed. She said nothing.

Duffy said, “Hi, Laurie.”

She turned away, went back to bed.

“Hi, Jacob.”

“Hi,” Jacob said, constrained by manners and habit from expressing any sense of anger or betrayal.

In the kitchen I asked what he had been doing outside our house.

“Your lawyer called me. He said he wasn’t getting any traction in Newton or Cambridge.”

“So he called you? I thought you were in public relations now.”

“Yeah, well, I did this as kind of a personal project.”

I nodded. I don’t know how I felt about Paul Duffy at that moment. I suppose I understood that he did what he had to do in testifying against Jacob. I could not think of him as my enemy. But we would never be friends again either. If my kid wound up in Walpole doing life without parole, it would be Duffy who put him there. We both knew that. Neither of us had the words to address any of this directly, so we ignored it. This is the best thing about men’s friendships: most any awkwardness can be ignored by mutual agreement and, true connection being unimaginable, you can get on with the easier business of parallel living.

“So who is he?”

“His name is James O’Leary. They call him Father O’Leary. Born February 1943, so sixty-four years old.”

“Grandfather O’Leary, more like.”

“He’s no joke. He’s an old gangster. His record goes back fifty years and it reads like a statute book. It’s all there. Weapons, drugs, violence. The feds had him up on a
RICO
charge with a bunch of other guys back in the eighties but he beat it. He used to be a muscle guy, that’s what I was told. A leg-breaker. Now he’s too old for that.”

“So what does he do now?”

“He’s a fixer. Hires himself out, but it’s just small-time stuff. He makes problems go away. Whatever you need, collections, evictions, shutting people up.”

“Father O’Leary. So what’s he got against Jacob?”

“Nothing, I’m sure. The question is who is paying him and for what.”

“And?”

Duffy shrugged. “I have no idea. Must be somebody who’s got a beef with Jacob. That’s a big group at the moment: anybody who knew Ben Rifkin, anybody who’s ticked off about this case—hell, anybody with basic cable.”

“Great. So what do I do if I see him again?”

“Cross the street. Then call me.”

“You’ll send the public relations department?”

“I’ll send the Eighty-Second Airborne if I have to.”

I smiled.

“I still got a few friends,” he assured me.

“Are they going to let you go back to CPAC?”

“Depends. We’ll see if Rasputin lets them when he becomes DA.”

“He still needs one big hook before he runs for DA.”

“Yeah, that’s the other thing: he’s not going to get it.”

“No?”

“No. I’ve been looking into your friend Patz.”

“Because you got crossed on it?”

“That and I remember you asking about Patz and Logiudice and whether there was any connection between them. Why would Logiudice not want to look at him for this murder?”

“And?”

“Well, maybe it’s nothing but there is a connection there. Logiudice had a case with him when he was in the Child Abuse Unit. It was a rape. Logiudice broke it down to indecent A&B and pleaded it out.”

“So?”

“It might be nothing. Maybe the victim was reluctant or could not go through with it for whatever reason, and Logiudice did the right thing. Or maybe he dumped the wrong case, and Patz went off and committed a murder. Not the kind of thing you put on a campaign poster.” He shrugged. “I don’t have access to the DA’s files. That’s as far as I could get without calling attention to what I was doing. Hey, it’s not much, but it’s something.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” he murmured. “It kind of doesn’t matter if it’s true, does it? If you just mention something like that in court, kick up a little dust in people’s eyes, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, Perry Mason.”

“And if Logiudice takes it on the chin, that’s just a bonus, right?”

I smiled. “Yeah.”

“Andy, I am sorry, you know.”

“I know you are.”

“This job sucks sometimes.”

We stood looking at each other a few seconds.

“All right,” he said, “well, I’ll let you get to sleep. Big day tomorrow. You want me to sit out there awhile in case your friend comes back?”

“No. Thanks. We’ll be okay, I think.”

“Okay. So, see you later, I guess.”

Before I got into bed twenty minutes later, I raised the bedroom shade to peek out at the street. The black cruiser was still there, as I knew it would be.

T
rial day six.

Father O’Leary was in the audience at the back of the courtroom when the trial resumed next morning.

Laurie, looking gray and depleted, was at her lonely post in the front row of the gallery.

Logiudice, his confidence buoyed by the performances of a series of professional witnesses, moved with a little strut. It is a peculiarity of trials that, though the witness is ostensibly the star, the lawyer who is asking the questions is the only one in the courtroom who is free to move around as he pleases. Good lawyers tend not to move much, since they want the jurors’ eyes to remain on the witness. But Logiudice could not seem to find a comfortable perch as he flitted from the witness stand to the jury box to the prosecution table and various points in between before finally coming to roost at the lectern. I suspect he was on edge about the day’s slate of civilian witnesses, Jacob’s classmates, determined not to let these amateur witnesses run away with his case the way the last ones had.

On the stand was Derek Yoo. Derek who had eaten in our kitchen a thousand times. Who had lounged on our couch watching football games and scattering Doritos on the carpet. Derek who had jumped around the living room playing GameCube and Wii with Jacob. Derek who had blissfully nodded his head for hours, probably stoned, to the pounding bass beat of his iPod while Jacob did the same beside him—the music so loud we could hear it murmuring in his headphones; it was like hearing their thoughts. Now, seeing this same Derek Yoo on the stand, I would happily have skinned him alive, with his limp brush-proof garage-band hair and sleepy slacker expression, who now threatened to send my son to Walpole forever. For the event, Derek wore a tweed sport coat that hung off his narrow shoulders. His shirt collar was too big. Cinched under his tie, it bunched and twisted, and dangled from his skinny neck like a waiting noose.

“How long have you known the defendant, Derek?”

“Since kindergarten, I guess.”

“You went to elementary school together?”

“Yes.”

“Where was that?”

“Mason-Rice in Newton.”

“And you’ve been friendly ever since?”

“Yes.”

“Best friends?”

“I guess so. Sometimes.”

“You’ve been to each other’s houses?”

“Yeah.”

“Hung out together after school and on weekends?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you been in the same homeroom?”

“Sometimes.”

“When was the last time?”

“Not last year. This year Jake is not in school. I guess he has a tutor. So I guess two years ago.”