Swindlers (25 page)

A sad, wistful look entered her large oval
eyes. She started to say something, hesitated and looked away, and
then, her mind made up, looked back.

“I’ve never been in love with anyone -” She
stopped, a sudden sparkle in her eyes. “If you don’t count what a
sixteen year old girl once felt.” Then she turned serious again.
“I’ve never been in love with anyone. You knew that, didn’t you? I
could see it in your eyes – when I told you what I had done with
Nelson that first time in his office – that tinge of
disappointment, and maybe even hurt. You didn’t want to think of me
like that – the kid sister of the girl you almost married – a woman
who would use her sex to get what she wanted. You thought I
deserved better than that; you thought I should have found someone
I wanted as much as he wanted me. That never happened to me; I
never wanted anyone that much. I’ve never been in love, Andrew
Morrison,” she said plaintively, “but I think I may be, or could
be, with you.”

I put my arm around her and held her close
and wished I never had to let her go, that I could just hold her
and feel her heart beat next to mine and know that for all the heat
and violence of what we did together there was something more than
that, and that there was at least a chance that it might last.

“Let’s go to bed,” she whispered in the soft,
enchanted voice that made me forget everything except the moment
and what I felt.

We made love with a kind of first time
innocence, gentle, at times awkward, full of hesitant anticipations
and small apologies, a carnal ignorance neither of us had known for
a very long time. A dance of our own invention, it ended as slowly,
and as easily, as it had begun.

“What are we going to do?”

We looked at each other in the night time
darkness. She smiled at me with her eyes.

“What are we going to do?” she asked me
again, her voice become a sweet, sad lament.

“I don’t know. Get through tomorrow; get
through the trial. See what happens then, I guess.”

“Why don’t we just stay here, after the
trial, after it’s all over. I could – if you wanted me to.”

“Yes, I want you to. Would you?”

“Yes, I want to.”

“You have Michael.”

“Yes, I have Michael. Do you mind that – that
I have a child?”

“No, of course not; why would I?”

“Maybe it isn’t a good idea; maybe it
wouldn’t work.”

“It will work if we want it to. Do you want
it to?”

“Yes, but let’s see how we feel – how you
feel – when this is all over. You feel a certain way now, but when
it’s over, when the trial stops, you won’t have the same
responsibility, the same sense of obligation.”

I told her what I had not told her before,
what I had known, deep down, from the beginning; what I had known
from the first moment I saw her.

“I’m in love with you; obligation has nothing
to do with it.”

She pressed her finger against my mouth and
with a fragile smile tried to warn me.

“I’m not what you think I am. I’m not what I
used to be. I wish I were; I wish I were still sixteen. I wish I
could give you all you want, all you need, but I can’t! So don’t be
in love with me, not like that, not so much that you can’t forget
all about me when you find out how wrong I am for you.”

It may have been the only completely honest
thing she ever said to me, but it was too late. I was in love with
her; more in love than I had ever thought I could be. Everything
that was going to happen, everything that was going to happen to
me, all the heartache and tragedy, was written from that.

I did not sleep that night, not because I
could not sleep, but because I did not want to miss a moment of
what it was like to hold her in my arms. And so I held her while
she slept, until morning came and I could not hold her anymore. The
trial was not finished.

CHAPTER Fifteen

Robert Franklin wore a new suit. It had been
bought off the rack at a department store, and it was less than a
perfect fit, but the effort to look his best had itself a favorable
effect on the jury when he stood in front of them, ready to begin
his summation. He began by reminding them of the mistakes he had
made.

“I’ve prosecuted a lot of cases, but this was
the first time in a long time that I was nervous at the start of a
trial.” He looked at them with shared sympathy. “Most of you, I
imagine, felt a little the same way yourselves: all those people
watching, knowing that everything was going to be reported all
around the country, all around the world.” Remembering what he had
done, a modest, rueful smile flashed across his face. “And then,
not two minutes into my opening statement, I couldn’t remember what
I was supposed to say!” The smile grew broader, and more emphatic.
He shook his head at his own misfortune. “Tell you the truth, for a
moment I couldn’t even remember where I was.”

The only jurors who did not smile were the
ones who were nodding their encouragement. They liked him for what
he was doing. As much as any lawyer I had known, and far more than
most, Franklin understood that jurors, like the rest of us, are far
more likely to admire, and to trust, someone honest enough to admit
his own deficiencies. Perhaps it was the lesson of his own handicap
and what he had done to overcome it. America was the land of second
chances.

“I made a fool of myself, I’m afraid; not
only forgot what I wanted to say, but probably said some things I
didn’t mean to say. It was not just the crowd; it was not just the
coverage of the media, all the attention the trial received, that
made me so self-conscious and ill at ease. That might not have
bothered me at all if I had been up against someone else,” he said
as his gaze drifted from the jury box and came to rest on me. “I
have faced other lawyers before, some of them quite good, but none
of them anything like as formidable and well-prepared as Mr.
Morrison, the attorney for the defense.”

He looked at me, sitting just a few feet
away, with what seemed genuine respect. With a brief nod, and a
business-like smile, I acknowledged the gesture as coming from a
respected adversary. The jury noticed, and approved, what it
thought Franklin’s sense of fairness. It was a victory for the
prosecution.

“But this is not a trial about the lawyers,”
said Franklin, turning serious. “This is a trial about whether the
defendant, Danielle St. James, murdered her husband, Nelson St.
James. And on that issue the evidence is entirely on one side:
Danielle St. James is guilty. Let me remind you what I told you at
the beginning; what, despite my own mistakes, the prosecution was
going to prove. I told you that this was not some crime of passion,
an act of violence when an argument got out of hand; I told you
that it was cold-blooded murder carried out for financial gain.

“The defendant came here, to San Francisco,
with her husband, and they argued all the time. They were arguing
when the plane landed, arguing at dinner to the point that she
walked out of the restaurant, arguing when they left on that last
deadly voyage on their yacht.”

Franklin’s eyes moved in a slow, methodical
arc from one end of the jury box to the other. Shoving his left
hand into his pocket, he dipped his forehead as he made a long,
sweeping turn toward the table where Danielle sat next to me. It
drew every eye toward her, serving as reminder that for all the
courtroom fireworks, she was the one on trial and that he at least
did not have the slightest doubt that she was as guilty of murder
as anyone could ever be.

“And I told you that just moments after the
shot was fired that killed Nelson St. James, the defendant,
Danielle St. James, was found with the gun still in her hand, and
that there was blood all over. That’s what I told you. Has it been
proven? Was Nelson St. James shot on his yacht in the middle of the
Pacific? Yes, of course: you heard the testimony – there isn’t any
doubt about it. Was his death caused by a gunshot wound? Yes,
everyone – even including the defense – agrees that was how he
died. Nor does anyone dispute that the gun that killed him was
found in the defendant’s hand or that the gun had the fingerprints
of the defendant all over it.”

With his hands held loosely behind his back,
Franklin began to pace, short, wandering steps, first in one
direction, then another. The lines in his forehead deepened and
spread farther across his brow. He was concentrating, as it seemed,
on some problem of enormous difficulty and importance.

“All of the evidence – all of it! – points to
her. No one else was out there, on the deck of the Blue Zephyr,
when it happened. Her gun was the murder weapon – Yes, I know that
it was purchased under her husband’s name, but she doesn’t deny
that he bought it for her. It was her gun; she killed him with it;
and before she could get rid of it – toss it overboard into the sea
– she was caught with it, still holding it in her hand. All the
evidence points to her, evidence about which there is not even the
possibility of a doubt. But the question, the question the defense
has tried to raise every chance it could, is why? Why would
Danielle St. James have murdered her husband?”

Franklin stood at the end of the jury box,
resting his left hand on the railing. A thin line of perspiration
glistened on his forehead.

“I told you in my opening statement, as I
reminded you just a few minutes ago, that it was ‘cold-blooded
murder carried out for gain.’ Perhaps I should have said,
‘cold-blooded murder carried out because of money.’ The defense has
tried to argue that Danielle St. James had every reason to want her
husband alive. He was going to get a divorce, but so what if he
did? She would get the house in the Hamptons and a million dollars
a year. Now, because he’s dead, she doesn’t even get that. The
death of Nelson St. James, in other words, costs her everything.
But that leaves out all the anger, all the rage, the humiliation,
she must have felt at being forced to submit to a pre-nuptial
agreement that, no matter how large it may seem to you and me, was
nothing compared to what she would have gotten in a divorce had
that agreement never been signed. She murdered him, ladies and
gentlemen – shot him to death – not because of the money she was
going to get, but because of the money she was going to lose!”

Folding his arms across his chest, Franklin
stepped back from the jury box and cast a baleful glance at
Danielle.

“The evidence against her is overwhelming.
What is her defense?” he asked, turning back to the jury as if they
already knew the answer. “Does she claim that someone else on board
took the gun and killed him? Does she claim that it was an
accident, that the gun went off while they were in the middle of
another one of their arguments? Does she claim that it was
self-defense: that he was attacking her and it was the only way she
had to stop him? No! She tells us that he killed himself! He was
depressed, she tells us: depressed that he was losing her,
depressed that he was in trouble. And the evidence offered for
this? – Why, the testimony of the defendant herself. All the
evidence proves she did it, and what does she say? – ‘I didn’t do
it – he did. I didn’t kill him – he killed himself!”

Pausing, Franklin cast a long, knowing look
at the jury, a look that told them they should treat Danielle’s
testimony with all the contempt lies like that deserved. When he
began to speak again, he was cool and methodical, calm and
efficient, all the outrage gone as he became the voice of reason
and responsibility.

For the next hour, Franklin reviewed with
textbook precision the testimony of each witness, listing every
relevant fact in a bare-bones outline of everything that had been
said in the course of the trial. My mind on other things, I barely
heard a thing he said. With everyone watching him, I looked at
Danielle. Odd as it may seem, I felt grateful just to see her, a
woman that beautiful with a face that perfect. And then, suddenly,
I realized what I had been missing; what, of all things, I had not
understood. That face – her face – was the best defense she had!
Hurriedly, I scribbled a note to myself, not that I thought I could
possibly forget what, had I only noticed, had always been obvious,
but for the pure pleasure of seeing it in tangible form down on
paper.

Franklin was nearly finished. I gave him my
full attention and, because I now knew not only what I was going to
do, but the effect it was likely to have, began to enjoy it, the
way someone enjoys the performance of a play they have seen once
before.

“All the evidence points to the defendant,
Danielle St. James – and what does she tell us?” he asked,
repeating with studied cynicism the question he had raised at the
beginning. “That she did not do it, he did. It was suicide, and she
feels bad about it because when he threatened to do it, she told
him no one would miss him if he did.”

His hands on his hips, he thrust his chin
forward and glowered defiance. He stared at Danielle, daring her,
as it seemed, to rise from her chair and deny the truth of what he
was saying.

“All good lies have some basis in truth. You
wanted him dead, and by these words of yours you admitted it! But
kill himself!” he asked, incredulous, as he wheeled around to the
waiting eyes of the jury. “Why? Because he was about to lose his
‘young and beautiful’ wife, as Mr. Morrison would have us believe?
But wasn’t it the defense that kept insisting that Nelson St. James
was habitually unfaithful: all those other women and Nelson St.
James kills himself because he is about to lose his wife? If this
weren’t a case of murder, we’d all be laughing!

“But forget all that; forget that Nelson St.
James was one of the wealthiest men in the world and, whatever you
or I may think of how he lived, could do pretty much as he pleased;
forget that he was in trouble with the law. Nelson St. James had a
son, his only child, the child he wanted, the child he had married
his wife to have. The defense wants us to believe that he killed
himself because he was depressed? He had everything to live for,
and the only reason he isn’t home with his son somewhere is because
his wife could not stand the thought that she was about to be cast
aside, replaced by someone else, cheated out of the fortune that in
her mind should have been hers! Danielle St. James is guilty of
murder, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and guilty is the only
verdict you can give!”