Break and Enter (3 page)

“Question: ‘Spell that last word.’

“Answer: ‘S-u-b-t-e-r-f-u-g-e. So, see what I mean? I wasn’t kidding. I told her I knew she was spreading her legs for about ten new guys a week. She laughed. I told her I knew about the other guys. I gave her a chop. Judy started looking at me funny. I told her not to scream, so the fucking bitch screams. Maybe she was doing it through the television, she had these tricks—I learned them all. I had to hit her to shut her up, and then I held her down to change the TV channel. I got the sports on Channel Three. They got that guy—Why don’t you fucking say something? Just
sit
there … like my father, getting old, shriveling up, both of you preparing for the next step—a swift slice to the prostate. You and my dad, ha! That’s good. I like that. I know this will be part of the police record. You can put in there that my father, Dr. James Covington Robinson the Third, majority stockholder of—‘

“Question: ‘Do you remember the question, Mr. Robinson?’

“Answer: ‘All right, so I wanted to watch the sports guy, the guy with the helmet of hair—shiny, you know, shiny with hair spray. The guy, what’s his name, who’s totally into the
genre
of being a sportscaster in a major market—one of the lesser American arts. So Judy was on the sofa and she had her heels up and was kicking me in the balls. Nobody kicks me in the balls. I guess I was pretty pissed, especially since she was trying to use radiation on me. I got her again and she grabbed this lamp and jammed the light bulb against me. It was goddamn hot. She was fighting—you know what I’m saying? Not screaming. She knew I was serious. I got her once in the leg with my knife, but she kept kicking like she didn’t feel it. Then I jumped on her … I got… I was completely fucked in the head because of all the radiation that was going around.

This is totally scientific. You should see the crystal therapy research going on in California. The Western rational mind just can’t
see
this radiation. And she was flipping the music at me with her eyes—you know what I’m saying? Sort of Madonna, but better. You’re gonna find this out anyway, what the fuck. I mean you got the damn prints already. Right?’

“Question: ‘I can’t comment on that, Mr. Robinson. I can’t say what will happen to you.’ ”

Benita, the good-looking court reporter, filled the sudden silence with her soft clacking. The roving jurors whispered among themselves at the back of the room. Peter glanced at Judy Warren’s family. Her mother sat, head bowed, twisting her wedding ring around her finger, thinking what? That she should have protected her daughter, a young girl studying part-time to be a dental technician? Judy had possessed a sort of sleazy appeal—given to tight dresses and moussing her hair into a frenzy—but was no wiser than what she was, a twenty-year-old still living at home who inhabited the circumscribed world of drifting young people who hang out at malls and bars on the weekends, pass through one minimum-wage job after another, get married, and generally lead dissatisfied, materialistic lives repetitive of their parents’. Judy had been passively promiscuous, without any real desire for men. It was all probably a little boring, and so she began to hit some of the yuppie clubs and restaurants downtown. Peter guessed that she’d learned that a great set of tits helped a girl change crowds easily. She liked what she’d seen, and that had only accelerated her desires. It hadn’t taken long, maybe a couple of months. A change of wardrobe, recreational drugs, quick mastery of the right topics of conversation. People find each other, and Robinson had found her and she him. Seeing that he was rich, she became more than willing to overlook his queer behavior. He had helped her move into an apartment out by the Art Museum. Then she’d dumped him, and he couldn’t take it. When Peter was choosing the jury, he had been sure to eliminate anyone who might decide Judy Warren had been a cheap fuck waiting for trouble and had gotten what was coming to her. It wasn’t
that
simple. He glanced at his notes, not wanting to make the confession any harder than necessary on the family. But he had to get the majority of it into the jury’s heads. Nelson sensed the necessary lull, and shut his eyes.

“Please continue,” Peter said.

“Okay, uh, repeating the question: ‘I can’t comment on that, Mr. Robinson. I can’t say what will happen to you.’

“Answer: ‘You fucking cops don’t have any prints. I didn’t kill Judy. I don’t have the kind you found.’

“Question: ‘Do you wish to continue your statement, Mr. Robinson?’

“Answer: ‘Fuck you. Fuck you. All right, I’ll give you what you want to hear. I stabbed the shit out of Judy. I jumped on her—‘ ”

The sound of the defendant laughing interrupted Nelson. Robinson swiveled his head around and smiled brazenly, nodding enthusiastically to the jury.

“Ha! Ha!” he cackled, addressing the court. “Ready for this?”

Morgan quickly bent toward Robinson to silence him. It was no wonder that he decided to keep Robinson off the stand.

“I can say anything I fucking want,” Robinson whispered loudly.

“Mr. Robinson, you will be held in contempt of court if we have any further outburst!” the judge bellowed. “Is that understood?”

“Yes.” Robinson bowed his head. “Oh-ho, yes.”

Morgan was rubbing his forehead in discouragement.

“Continue,” Peter told the detective.

“ ‘I jumped on her and kept stabbing at her neck and she had her fingers in my eyes, but you don’t fucking need your eyes to stab somebody. I was cutting at her neck and she stopped making those noises and fell sideways on the sofa, and I had to pull her by the hair to get her to sit up so I could keep cutting her. Cut, cut, cut. She was warm. I was getting a lot of the radiation from her now, especially because the television was on Johnny Carson. It was better than coke. I’m talking about L.A. coke, not this lousy East Coast shit. The kind the Bloods and the Crips sell, man, right? Wait till they get to Philly, kill those Dominican dudes. Anyway, I cut her open, right in the heart—it was harder than I thought. I’m telling you this because I’m going to transport myself out of here. I’ve got the technology, that’s what you cops don’t understand. I saw the security camera in the lobby, what goes in can go out… She was all limp and her tongue was hanging out and that gave me a hard-on, her tongue, you see. But I wanted to put it somewhere different—see where I’m coming from? I had the big knife in my coat—‘

“Question: ‘Where is this weapon now, Mr. Robinson?’

“Answer: ‘Both the knives are in the water over by the Art Museum. I practically ruined the blades. It was pretty fucking hard, too. Took about five minutes. I got this flap open and stuck myself in—‘

“Question: ‘Can you be specific, Mr. Robinson?’

“Answer: ‘You fucking know what the fuck I mean. I put my cock in there against her heart ‘cause it’s warm and wet just like it’s supposed to be, you know, and there’s a lot of fucking ways to get fucked. Then she was pretty dead and a car commercial came on. “Make your best deal!” Balloons, small-town America, and you know—family values, and there I am fucking a corpse. Amazing society we live in. Amazing culture. Got a cigarette?’

“Question: ‘Here. Go on.’

“Answer: ‘Well, it was the usual shit, what do you do with the body. Typical cliché situation. Then I remembered that the television is full of crystals, all those solid-state components. I thought about sending her on to Johnny Carson. I was going to make her walk on to the show and sit down and talk with my man, Star Search Ed McMahon. But she was pretty bloody. I had the gasoline in the car and got that and came back in the building and poured it around with absolute care and took the phone off the hook. I turned Johnny up and then lit it—‘

“Question: ‘Were the lights on or off?’

“Answer: ‘This was smart. I was smart. I kept them on, so you couldn’t see the fire for a while. All the lights in the place. I got in my car and put on the Hendrix tape. That man was before his time, he knew about the crystals first. That’s why he died, he came too soon before his time.’ ”

Peter made notes on his pad as the detective finished. The confession showed that Robinson had no legal claim to the insanity defense. Peter could argue that anyone cogent enough to: (1) make sure the phone was busy; (2) attempt to burn the evidence; and (3) throw away the murder weapon was plenty sane enough to understand the gravity of his acts and to be convicted of first-degree murder. The attempt at concealment indicated knowledge of wrongdoing before, during, and after the murder—which fulfilled the M’Naghten Rule test that the Commonwealth used to decide sanity.

“I don’t have any more questions.” He looked up. “Thank you, Detective Nelson.”

Robinson now stared into space, like a man hypnotized by the sound of his own heartbeat. Perhaps he was remembering his own verbiage, perhaps the confession had penetrated his brightly sick confidence, and he finally understood how ludicrous was his defense. Even Morgan, who had long waited for this moment, seemed stunned. But he forced himself up and, like a small, pesky mutt snapping at a huge, immovable bulldog, began to pepper the detective with questions, trying to get him to admit that the defendant was obviously lying. Since Robinson had been arrested the next day, wasn’t it plausible that he had driven by the burned apartment and seen what had happened? And heard about it on the news? Wasn’t it true that the police often received false confessions? Did it occur to the detective that Robinson might be familiar with some of the details of the apartment because he had been there so many times? Such as the location of the lamp and of the television set? Wasn’t it true that the arresting officers had babbled details about the crime scene? Hadn’t Nelson really told Robinson how the crime had been committed first and then “gotten” the confession? Wasn’t it obvious that Robinson was highly impressionable and intelligent and, with some slight coaching, could sing out just about any version of events the detectives wanted? Didn’t the rambling, associative character of Robinson’s sentences demonstrate someone who was not in control of his faculties? Yes or no, sir? Did the detectives really know if the defendant was under the influence of drugs? Did they have a blood test to prove that he wasn’t? Wasn’t it true that no videotape was made because Robinson was so obviously sarcastic and spontaneously creative in his responses that the tape would have been a liability to the detectives? Wasn’t it true that many key statements in the confession were wrong, such as the way the body was mutilated, and wasn’t it true that those points that were more or less correct were easy facts to infer from all that had previously been said? Did the police immediately look for the knives that the defendant mentioned? Wasn’t it telling that no knives were found? Wasn’t it possible that Mr. Robinson included such a detail in order to convince the police and to please himself with his own manipulating intelligence? Wasn’t it true that the entire confession was just
a confabulation of this detail and of that hint and proved only that the detectives had arrested the wrong man?

It didn’t work. Nelson disagreed with each question firmly, and Morgan began to look ridiculous. The detective, a tired man with no vanity, stank of credibility, and the questions came to an end.

Morgan then began his defense, introducing witnesses who would try to prove that the defendant had an alibi. Morgan had assembled a group of Robinson’s local bar buddies who then grunted out various lies about spending much of the night drinking. One by one they seemed sullen and uncomfortable in the chair, dullards who could be bought. It was slow going, and, as was happening with frighteningly increasing frequency, Peter’s mind floated around the room. It was dangerous to do this, he could lose the thread of questioning, but he couldn’t help himself; the conversation with Janice was plowing him under. Perhaps he’d sounded foolish and pathetic to her. He was gripped these days—in court, in the office, anywhere—by the occasionally recurring worry that he might be a clown, a great glutinous-brained clown capable only of honking courtroom verbiage, who in the great scheme of things was as guilty and as doomed as those whom he sent to prison. Society had a way of spreading around responsibility. Laws and punishments and institutions were a thin overlay on the fact of ubiquitous guilt. And, in this brief, too-honest moment, he saw the court and clogged legal system as pathetic, absurd, and that he was, too. The ruffling of documents, the somber, pressed suit, the silk tie, the hours of preparation—it was very little, nothing really, and this depressed him, for without the accoutrements of the prosecutor, he was not even a clown but another cowering hairless monkey. His skeptical pal Berger saw this, but did the other lawyers on both sides? Didn’t the women attorneys realize how pompous they looked, strutting around in women’s business dress, spouting accusations? The men—getting fatter every year—enjoying the tightness of their pants and shirts, as if they would burst their armor with righteousness. He was tired of the legal scowl, that set of the jaw and eyebrows that carried with it an entire combative outlook.

And yet, neurotic relativist that he was, every time he walked into court he felt pride—inflated by his own cheap ego, no doubt—that he was prosecuting the worst crime a human could commit. The Philadelphia
District Attorney’s office handed down a murder charge with great reserve, and usually when the evidence was convincing beyond all reasonable doubt. To be a prosecutor was to have enormous power over the lives of individuals. To charge someone—even a nut like Robinson—with murder was grave business. Whether defendants were convicted or not, the murder charge changed their lives—if not in their own eyes, then in the eyes of those who knew them. Even the innocent were terrified by the power of the prosecutor’s office. The Philly D.A. would never sell out a murder case,
never
plea-bargain down to a major felony in return for dropping murder charges. Such an act would be blasphemous, destroy the victim’s family and police morale, and make a mockery of the public trust, which, all fashionable cynicism aside, was enormous, elemental. You have a fire and call the firemen; you expect them to show. Your daughter is murdered, you call the police, they catch the murderer; you expect that man to be put in prison, preferably for as long as possible. There was a precious covenant between the victim and the victim’s advocate in the courtroom confrontation of a murderer. It was a responsibility he humbly hoped he could uphold, it was a responsibility he cherished.