Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (52 page)

‘No. Here’s fine. I’ve only got a minute.’

‘Okay, how can I help you?’

‘Do you know if Sal knew anybody named Singleterry? Joan Singleterry?’

This was the cog that had slipped for Hardy last night. He and Graham had spent hours in the past months surmising about Sal’s early life, the mysterious Singleterry woman, and had come up with nothing. But suddenly, in his open-vessel state at his office, Hardy remembered that Giotti had actually known Sal Russo during those early days, had fished and worked with him, played ball and partied with him.

Hardy was starting to have a feeling that Joan Singleterry might have a bigger role here than he’d understood, and Giotti could be the key to her identity.

Did he imagine it? The judge’s clear gaze seemed to flicker for an instant. But then he was back as he’d been, still catching some breath, thinking about it. Dashing Hardy’s hopes. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘She wasn’t an old girlfriend, before Helen, maybe?’

Giotti pondered some more, shook his head no. ‘I’m sorry. Is it important? What’s this about?’

Keeping it vague, Hardy said it was just a name in discovery that led nowhere. He was starting his defense today and needed everything he could lay his hands on. If this Singleterry woman was a source of the money — something like that — it might lead to another suspect.

He must have betrayed a little of his disappointment. The judge gave him a manly pat on the shoulder. ‘I don’t know if you’re going to need any suspects. I’ve been following the trial pretty closely. It seems to me it’s going pretty well.’

‘It’d go better if I could produce a killer.’

Giotti appreciated the sentiment. ‘Well, that, sure. But you kept the struggle out pretty good, I thought.’

‘I meant to thank you for that. The idea.’

The judge shrugged. ‘I just told the truth. There was no physical proof of any struggle. Since I know your strategy, I’ve got an inside track, but I get the feeling Soma and Drysdale don’t have a clue what you’re up to.’

Hardy allowed himself a small smile. ‘Well, wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?’

Giotti broke a true grin. ‘Hemingway allusions, yet. You’re a well-rounded human being for an attorney, Mr Hardy. When this is all over, if you don’t appeal’ — again, the reminder — ‘we ought to have a drink sometime.’

‘You could probably twist my arm.’

The judge nodded. ‘I might do that.’ A kind of wistful look came over him. ‘I just remembered how I miss Sal. Isn’t that funny?’

‘How is that?’

Perhaps he shouldn’t say. His mouth tightened, his body language briefly saying ‘No, never mind,’ but then that pose broke and he smiled sheepishly. ‘Do you have a lot of good friends, Mr Hardy?’

Hardy shrugged. ‘A few. I’m lucky with that, I suppose.’

‘I used to be too. That’s what they don’t tell you about this job.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, to get it — and don’t get me wrong, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. But to get it you’ve got to — how can I put it? — develop friendships. You make real friends when you’re on the rise, some would say on the make. You give parties, go to them, hobnob. You impress people with your brains — your legal knowledge and learned opinions and quick wit. It’s heady.’

‘I’d imagine it would be.’ Though Hardy had no idea where Giotti was going with this, or why he was divulging these intimacies to him.

‘Then you get appointed.’ Giotti’s expression said a lot about disappointment, the alternate roads not taken. ‘It all ends. You’re cut off. Some of the more cerebral judges, they do fine. Others miss the friendships, but friendships aren’t on the docket. Too much opportunity for conflict of interest, see? And these are the very people who put you here. Suddenly you can’t fraternize anymore, certainly not the same way. You wind up pretty much alone.’

Hardy suddenly understood. ‘Except Sal?’

‘The last one of my old friends. I could go up and just’ — he instinctively looked around for other people, other ears — ‘and just
bullshit
with him. I think it must have been you digging up that Hemingway just now. That was Sal. He knew a lot, he was funny, I could be who I was around him.’

Hardy motioned behind him, toward the federal courthouse. ‘You brethren don’t play a lot of practical jokes on each other in there, huh?’

The judge’s voice rasped. ‘It’s a serious life, Mr Hardy. Don’t let ’em tell you different.‘ Giotti gave himself a last beat of reflection, then put it behind him. He was too busy for any more of this. ’So someday maybe you and I, we’ll go have a drink somewhere. I’ll call you Dismas, how’s that sound?‘

‘I’ll still call you “Your Honor.” ’

Giotti laughed out loud. ‘That’s what I mean,’ he said. ‘That’s just what I mean.’

*
    
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Hardy handed his directed-verdict motion over to Salter in his chambers and sat in exquisite suspense while the judge read over the five pages.

This was a murder case. Discussion of Hardy’s motion would be on the record. So over by the judge’s window, Soma, Drysdale, and Freeman quietly kept up the flow in the mighty stream of law gossip. They’d all previously read Hardy’s motion out in the hall and made informal small talk about it before the judge had them come into his chambers.

The court reporter sat in the chair next to Hardy, ready to catch any precious pearl, should one fall.

Hardy thought he had done a more than competent job on his motion, clearly laying out each factual allegation made by the prosecution, and then demonstrating in turn how they had failed to prove any of them: they hadn’t placed Graham at the apartment, they couldn’t prove a struggle, they couldn’t even get the coroner to state unequivocally that it had been a homicide. There was no temporal connection or relevance to the money or the baseball cards. Alison Li’s testimony was meaningless.

The prosecution had nothing.

By contrast, Judge Salter had a lot. He had a multi-photo-op hot-potato case of the very first order, hand-delivered to his courtroom by his good friend and political crony Dean Powell. He had an indictment by the grand jury that had brought things to this pass. He was privy to the backstage maneuverings of the attorneys, the motions here in his chambers, the lies of the defendant. He also had social relations with Federal Judge Harold Draper, Graham’s old boss — not quite enough to compel him to recuse himself from the case for conflict, although Hardy would make that argument should it come to an appeal.

None of these were matters of law. All of them, taken together, mattered more than the law.

Hardy had no doubt that one day Salter would leave the bench to pursue a political career. He had the bland good looks, the social connections, the inoffensive public personality. He was unfailingly polite, even friendly in an impersonal way.

Now he had finished reading Hardy’s motion and he took off his glasses, squared the pages on his desk, and laid them there. The frown that meant ‘I’m in deep thought’ gave way to the smile that said, ‘We’re friends here.’

‘Gentlemen,’ He motioned the other attorneys over, then gave his attention to Hardy. ‘This is one hell of a well-written motion, Diz. I mean it. You make a very colorable argument.’

Colorable, Hardy thought. Uh-oh. He exchanged a look with Freeman, who shrugged. It was expected, and it was over.

But Salter was observing the niceties. ‘Do you want to add any oral argument?’

‘They’ve failed to prove anything, Judge. Certainly not robbery, which is why we’ve got the specials. There’s no causal relation between the money and the death. There’s no paper showing when Graham got the money or the cards. The boy was taking care of his dad. He loved him.’

Out of the corner of his eyes Hardy could see that Soma was moved to comment, but Drysdale laid a hand on his sleeve, cutting him off before he began.

Salter let a small silence build. It wouldn’t do to reject such a well-written,
colorable
motion out of hand. An important ruling such as this one, although almost foreordained by its very nature, demanded at least some minutes of cogitation.

La politesse.

‘I don’t know, though,’ Salter finally admitted. ‘I’m still very concerned about all the lies.’

‘I think I’ve covered them, Judge. He panicked and then had to backfill.’

‘But why did he panic if he had done nothing?’

‘Homicide coming to his door. He freaked. It happens all the time.’

This was all pablum, totally irrelevant, and everybody knew it. Salter was going to turn him down because Hardy didn’t have enough to
compel
him not to. He didn’t have the murderer. He didn’t have Strout saying it was definitely a suicide. Anything less wouldn’t get it done.

Salter paused again, then drew in a lungful of air and let it out. Another smile among friends. ‘I think we’re going to have to let the jury decide, Diz. I’m going to deny the motion.’

*
    
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‘I want you to visualize something,’ Freeman said. They were waiting for Salter to enter the courtroom. Graham sat between them at their defense table. Behind them the gallery was its usual din before court was called to order, although the noise was so familiar by now that no one noticed it. ‘No, I mean it. Close your eyes.’

‘If I close my eyes I will be asleep when the judge comes in. I guarantee it. I’ve done experiments.’

Graham looked back and forth between them, settled on Hardy. ‘Better what Yoda says do. Otherwise he use Force. You die.’

Part of Hardy was relieved by Graham’s tendency to keep things light. He rolled his eyes, then closed them. ‘See, what did I tell you? I’m asleep.’

‘You’re talking,’ Graham said.

‘In my sleep. Happens all the time.’

‘Diz.’ He heard Freeman’s voice. ‘You’re on a diving board, a high one. You’re going to try a one and a half forward flip. You with me?’

‘I’m there,’ Hardy said.

Freeman kept on. ‘Think the dive through.
Commit
to it. You’re going all the way around and then halfway around again, a long time in the air. All right?’

‘Ready.’

‘
Think it
!’

Hardy forced the image.

‘All right, now jump! Tuck hard, spin, you feel it? Don’t pull out. Don’t pull out.’

Hardy rolled with the dive. It was a long way around, but he held his tuck, entered the water cleanly, opened his eyes. ‘Okay.’

‘You get around?’

‘No splash,’ Hardy said. ‘Cut it like a knife.’

Graham looked from one to the other again. ‘You guys are crazy,’ he said.

But Freeman had a valid point. This morning Hardy would open the case-in-chief for the defense. He would be calling his defense witnesses, and this was where their strategy could not waver. It would seem that they were hanging in the air, spinning, for a good deal of the time.

They weren’t going to try to get the judge to instruct on lesser included offenses; the jury
would have no option
to convict Graham of manslaughter as a compromise. Graham wouldn’t take the stand to appear sympathetic and likable. There was going to be no chance for a couple of years in prison and a life resumed. It was to be murder or nothing — life or freedom.

This was the agonizing crux of it. As it stood now, some members of the jury might still believe that Graham had had no part in his father’s death. After Hardy presented his case-in-chief, however, no one would doubt Graham had done it, an ‘it’ that the law defined as murder: the deliberate taking of a human life. What the defense needed to do was to polarize the jury to convince them that if they did
not
believe Graham had killed his father for money, then they should acquit rather than convict on a lesser offense.

The prosecution had emphasized the financial motive for the killing to bolster their charges of a first-degree murder conviction. Hardy’s gambit was going to make the game winner take all —first or nothing.

This course was fraught with tremendous risk, although they all agreed that it was their best chance for acquittal.

But it would destroy the defense if Hardy forgot even for a moment and began to pull out of the spin before he reached the end. He could not allow himself the luxury of bringing up his possible ‘other dudes.’ He had one and only one story and he had to commit to it now, before he began, or they would lose.

*
    
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Dr Russ Cutler was the young man Hardy had met and questioned for the first time at the Little Shamrock. Back then he’d been unshaven and exhausted, draped in his medical scrubs and his guilt over not having come forward about prescribing the morphine. Now he had finished his residency and gone into private practice. He had also spent a good deal of time rehearsing his proposed testimony with Freeman and Hardy.

In a tan linen suit and maroon tie, well rested and confident, he took the stand and swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but.

‘Dr Cutler, would you please tell the court your relationship to Graham?’

‘We play softball together on the same team. I consider myself his friend. I was his father’s doctor.’

At these last words the white noise in the courtroom went away. Hardy’s voice cut into the silence. ‘Now, Doctor, as Sal Russo’s physician, did you examine him in the last six months before his death?’

‘Yes, I did. Graham told me that he had a sick father, and asked if I would look at him.’

‘And would you tell the jury what you found?’

Cutler was happy to. Hardy thought him the perfect witness for his male-dominated jury. First, he was a guy himself, neither too young nor too old. He was dressed neatly enough for authority, but not much more. With solid features, he wasn’t quite handsome, though he showed a lot of teeth when he smiled. Easy and approachable, that’s what Cutler was.

Even better, Hardy realized. He cut nearly the same figure as Judge Salter, except that he was twenty years younger, and he was sincere.