VC04 - Jury Double (8 page)

“I enjoy it if I win. In that regard it’s like arguing a case in court.” Leon turned over a ten of clubs from the pack and laid it on the jack of diamonds. “Speaking of which, which jury is Kyra on?”

“Corey Lyle. The Briar murders.”

“Conspiracy.” For a moment there was no sound except the clicking of Leon’s false teeth. “That’s a real life-or-death case for the government pork barrel.”

“Why do you say that?”

“We haven’t got a Cold War, so they have to cut the fat out of the security budget—or show the public a real cavalcade of domestic conspiracies. Can’t say I’m impressed with the evidence so far. Are you?”

“I haven’t heard any.”

“Conspiracy to murder two politically antediluvian twits.” He shook his head, eyes sparkling like two Boy Scout flints. “Corey Lyle’s a social visionary. And he has the guts to stand up to government bureaucracy. And that’s why the government’s railroading him.”

“Why do you say they’re railroading him?”

“I’ve got an acquaintance pretty well placed in the court system. She says the way they put that jury pool together is just a rat’s whisker short of jury-fixing.”

“They’ll have a hard time fixing any jury that Kyra’s on.”

“Just wait till the government drags in that boo-hoo about children.”

“Children?” She’d read about the case in the papers, heard it discussed on TV—but she didn’t recall any charges involving children.

“Next thing you know, we’ll have preverbal infants giving testimony in capital cases—and after that, chicken entrails will be admissible.”

Tim Alvarez moved the playing cards aside and set drinks and cheeses and crackers on the coffee table. He handed Anne a glass and sat on the sofa beside Leon.

“This isn’t Scotch and water.” Leon held his glass up to the light. He made a face. “It’s water and food color.”

Outside the window, automobile tires crunched gravel.

Tim Alvarez hopped to his feet. “There’s our other guest.”

Tim Alvarez came back into the living room escorting a tall, gray-haired man. “Anne, meet Bob MacLeod. Bob, this is Anne Bingham, Leon’s daughter.”

“Well, well, little Annie.” MacLeod strode forward, hand extended. “You used to sit on my knee when I was your father’s partner—remember?”

Anne tried to pull a match out of her memories. He had a strong jaw, piercing metallic eyes, and he looked ten or fifteen years younger than her father. She couldn’t remember him. “Are you sure that wasn’t my twin sister? Kyra used to love sitting on men’s laps.”

“Kyra was always flirting,” Leon said. “She still flirts. You’d like her.”

“That’s a pleasure for another day.” Bob MacLeod settled himself in the easy chair. “What I’m here about, Anne, is your father.”

A silence passed. Bob MacLeod tapped his fingers together. Anne realized he was wearing a toupee.

“Leon is one of the brightest lights in the history of American jurisprudence—and, of course, we’d like to keep it that way.”

Anne shifted. The tone disturbed her. MacLeod was talking as though something had ended. He was also talking as though Leon wasn’t there in the room with them.

“Over the past two years,” MacLeod said, “young female relatives of some of the most distinguished lawyers in America have been receiving anonymous obscene phone calls.” He paused, biting his lower lip. “The father of one of the recipients put a trace on the line … and the trace led here—to this address.”

Anne’s first instinct was that her mind had tricked her; she had missed something in MacLeod’s explanation.

“Tim phoned me to handle damage containment. I naturally contacted the other numbers Leon had phoned. I discovered four other recipients of similar calls.”

“Who were they?” Anne said softly.

“They were all daughters of lawyers with whom or against whom Leon has argued in United States Supreme Court.”

She looked over at her father, cozy under his afghan. He nodded at her as though to say:
Yes, it’s true. Your old dad has still got the stuff.

“You’re sure these were obscene calls?” she said.

“There’s no doubt about that.”

“And you’re sure Leon made them?”

MacLeod turned to Leon, giving him the floor.

“The calls are protected speech.” A benign, wise, half-smile floated on Leon’s lips. “In fact they’re part of a test case I’m working on.”

Has he gone crazy?
Anne asked herself.

Tim Alvarez laid a stack of bills on the coffee table.

Anne’s hand hesitated and then she leaned forward in her chair and nudged the bills into the circle of lamplight.

Four dozen statements, stretching back twenty-four months. The name and address computer-printed at the top were Leon’s. Half the bills covered calls made from the house phone and half covered calls from the cabin up in the woods, where Leon used to go for privacy. Toll charges to out-of-state numbers had been highlighted in a glowing nail-polish pink. They’d been placed to a variety of area codes. She recognized Connecticut and California. The other codes were unfamiliar.

“The families are willing to forgo a trial,” MacLeod said. “Provided Leon signs a consent form, promising to make no more such calls. And makes a substantial financial contribution to a rape hotline.”

Anne fanned the bills together, tapping them on the edge of her wrist. “Are you willing, Leon?”

“I’m giving it some thought.”

Crazy or not
, she thought with exasperation,
you’re still sly
.
Still exasperating.
She rose and stalked into the kitchen.

Tim and MacLeod followed, footsteps creaking swiftly behind her.

“Just tell me one thing.” She placed both hands on the butcher-block table and faced Tim, barely managing to control her voice. “We pay you to keep an eye on Leon. How is it you didn’t know he was making these calls?”

A tiny drop of sweat crawled down Tim’s cheek, glistening in the lamplight. “Leon made the calls from the phone in his cabin.”

“And for your father to limp all the way up there, with that bad leg of his …” MacLeod glanced toward the hall and lowered his voice. “I’d say that shows a pretty clear conscience of wrongdoing.”

Anne reexamined the bills. Without exception, the highlighted calls had been direct-dialed from the cabin phone. A second oddity leaped out at her: the calls had all been placed after one in the morning. “If Leon was limping all the way up to that cabin—two hours past the time you’re supposed to have him in bed—I don’t see how you could have not noticed.”

“You know your dad. He got me to lower my guard.” Apology danced a hesitation waltz across Tim’s eyes. “I goofed.”

Anne wondered why Leon had chosen this moment to out himself as a dirty old man. Her hands balled into fists. “I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe that old phone up in the cabin even
works
.”

It had begun to rain. Drops made slapping sounds on the rhododendron leaves. Half-groping in the dark, Anne made out the vine-tangled path that led up the hill into the woods.

Lightning ripped a neon crack in the sky, showing her the weathered pine cabin.

The door was unlocked. Thunder growled as she stepped inside. Her hand scrabbled along a plank wall and struck a switch.

On the desk a lamp went on, throwing a circle of raw 100-watt light over strewn newspapers and books.

She searched beneath the papers but couldn’t find the phone. Couldn’t even find the cord.

She tilted the lampshade. Light tipped out over rickety porch chairs and tables. The cabin gave an impression of dust and clutter and emptiness, of time overflowing like an ashtray.

The light caught a group of framed photos hanging on the wall above the camp bed. She crossed the room for a closer look. In all, there were thirteen glossy black-and-white portraits.

One was a group portrait of Leon and Kyra and Toby, posed in her father’s rose garden. Toby couldn’t have been older than six. Toby’s father, who had taken the picture, was present only as a shadow falling along the flagstone path.

Another was a family Christmas portrait, taken when she and Kyra had been six, and their mother had still been alive.

Her eye traveled across the eleven others. They were lawyers who had argued with or against Leon before the Supreme Court of the United States. Several had posed with their families. All were signed, but only one—a photo of Earl Warren in full regalia—was dated.

The other ten had been photographed with their families. The homes of five had received obscene phone calls.

What was it about the five—
these
five? Why had they been chosen?

She went to the desk and lifted the gray plastic cover from the little Rolodex. Her fingers riffled through the cards. The five were listed—business and home phones.

The screen door squeaked. Bob MacLeod stood in the doorway, shaking off raindrops. “I know it’s hard to believe a thing like this about your father. Believe me, it’s hard to believe it about my ex-partner.”

“Why would Leon do it?”

“He’s old. He’s breaking down. Losing his inhibitions. Old people sometimes develop sexual manias.”

“Could there be a different explanation? What if someone wanted to hurt Leon? Destroy his reputation? He has enemies.”

“But he as much as admitted he made the calls.”

“He doesn’t remember things. Tim showed him the bills, Leon assumed he made the calls.”

“I frankly find that hard to believe.”

She stood frowning. “There isn’t even a phone here.”

“Well, there certainly used to be.”

“And even if there was, anyone could have walked in and made those phone calls. That door’s not secure.”

Bob MacLeod examined the door latch. He swung the door back and forth. The hinges meowed. “Hardly.”

She lifted a corner of the army blanket from the bed. “And look at this. Someone’s been using the bed. Leon wouldn’t sleep here—he has a bed of his own. With a mattress and inner springs.”

“Solving the mystery is step two,” Bob MacLeod said. “Step one is making sure there’s no publicity.” He nudged back the cuff of his suit jacket and scowled at his watch. “I have to be going.” He darted a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll be in touch.”

The door slammed.

She sat down on the edge of the camp bed. Her foot struck something. She looked down and saw a black plastic lump hiding under the bed. She crouched and pulled out the phone.

She lifted the receiver. A dial tone stung her ear.

She saw that the phone had an automatic redial button. Which meant the last outgoing call would still be registered.

Curious, she pressed the button. The phone blipped. There was lag, and then a phone rang. Once. Twice.

“Hi there.” The woman’s voice was recorded. “I welcome your call. No one is home at present—please leave your name, your number, the date and time of your call, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.”

There was a beep.

“I’m sorry. I must have dialed a wrong number.” Anne disconnected.

She studied the cabin phone bill and saw that one number in Manhattan—a 427 exchange—had been dialed the same dates as the obscene calls. She tapped it into the keypad.

Two rings. “Hi there.” It was the answering machine that she had just spoken to. She hung up.

Now she studied the house phone bill. Calls to two New York City numbers—an 831 and a 929—had been made from the house on the same dates that the obscene calls had been made from the cabin. The 929 number always followed the 831.

She dialed the 831 number. “Hello.” A man’s voice, genially gruff. “You have reached the answering machine of Judge Robert MacLeod. Please leave a message at the sound of the—”

Anne pressed the disconnect bar and dialed the 929 number.

At the fourth ring a machine clicked on. “Hello, you have reached the residence of Gina Bernheim. If you have a message for the judge, please—”

A woman’s voice cut in live: “Hello? Hello?”

Anne’s finger came down sharply and broke the connection.

“So Bob MacLeod’s a judge,” Anne said. “State or federal?”

Leon’s thumb tapped lightly across a dark stripe in the afghan. “Federal. Southern district of New York.”

“Have you represented any clients before him?”

“I don’t have clients anymore.”

“Then what’s your business with Gina Bernheim?”

A startled look flashed across his face and then he covered it. “Gina and I are old chums.”

She knew there had to be more to it than that. “You phoned MacLeod and Bernheim the same nights those obscene calls were made. But you phoned from the house, not the cabin.”

Leon shrugged. “It’s a free country. I’ll use whichever damned phone I want and I’ll say whatever I want.” He thumbed his nose.

“I suppose the calls have something to do with your pro bono work?”

“What pro bono?”

“You said you’re doing some pro bono.”

“No, I didn’t.” He drew the afghan up to his waist and patted it smooth over the sofa. “Though from the looks of things I may have to consider representing myself. Which would be extremely pro bono.”

Anne felt a shaming surge of jealousy. For as long as she could recall, her father had been involved with one client or another who took precedence over his family’s needs—an atomic spy, a Hollywood black-listee, a Weathergirl protesting Vietnam with an Uzi and killing two Chicano bank guards.

“And you’ve engineered the perfect free-speech case. Dirty phone calls to the homes of five of the most distinguished lawyers in the nation.” She shook a handful of phone bills at his face. “With all the trouble you have walking, you still managed to drag yourself up to that cabin just—”

“It’s not a crime, you know, telling a pretty girl she’s pretty. Brandeis decided that issue once and for all.”

“Leon, this isn’t the forties—this is the nineties—society has changed.” She felt anger now, compounded with an instinctive desire to protect this irresponsible old genius who happened to be her father. “There’s a thing called sexual harassment. There are laws against it.”

He shrugged. “I’d like to argue against a few of those laws in the Supreme Court. The telephone is still protected speech. The government can’t listen in, and they can’t censor it.”