Death Penalty (10 page)

So on every Thursday, unless I was caught up in court, I drove into Detroit, worked the afternoon at the law library, then caught a quick dinner so I could make the regular weekly meeting of the club in the basement beneath St. Jude's Church.

It was a rather tranquil way to live, and Thursday was fast becoming my favorite day of the week.

I was in the school's law library reading a North Dakota case almost identical to the McHugh facts. It was a new decision, just in. Part of it hurt us, but part of it helped. I was lost in complete concentration when I felt a strong grip on my shoulder. Like a vise. So strong I was immediately at the edge of pain.

I turned and looked up.

“Charley Sloan. What a pleasant surprise.” The words seemed to echo in the quiet library.

“Hello, Judge.” His fingers bit even deeper into the flesh around my shoulder.

Students glanced up at the disturbance and frowned their disapproval.

“Got a minute, Charley?” he asked.

I marked the page for the North Dakota case and followed him out of the library.

He wore a tailored, gray pinstriped suit in place of a toga, but he looked the way I thought Roman senators probably had. Tall, wide-shouldered, and powerful, he had the fleshy build of a football player. Everything about him was big, muscular. His snow white hair was brushed back so smoothly that it resembled a white helmet until it curled regally around his expensive collar. His florid features could have graced a Roman coin. Although he was nearing sixty, his manner was youthfully energetic, his walk was two points away from a strut.

Judge Jeffrey Mallow.

Judge was a title of courtesy. He had resigned from the court of appeals to go into private practice. To make a little money, he had told the newspapers at the time. But his career off the bench had been stormy.

“Coffee, Charley?”

He put his big arm around my shoulders and led me toward the student lounge down the hallway.

“Damn, I love this place, don't you?” His deep baritone voice was unnaturally loud in the quiet hall. “They're going to surrender to the goddamned Jesuits and close this place down. Perhaps by the end of this school year. It breaks my heart.”

He gripped me as if he thought I might try to escape. It was awkward to try to walk in step with him but there was no alternative.

“This place was the dream of our fathers, wasn't it?” The question was rhetorical. “Without this place you and I wouldn't have had much of a prayer, would we?”

I said nothing, mostly because I didn't get the chance.

“Were you one of my students, Charley?”

“No. You taught procedure here after I graduated.”

He nodded and guided us through the door into the lounge. The few students there glanced up, probably wondering who we were and what we were doing there.

He released me. “What do you take, Charley? Cream? Sugar?”

“Black.”

He nodded and played the coffee machine until he came up with two steaming cups.

“How about over there?” It was in the form of a question but it was really a command. We took a small table well away from everyone else.

“So, how's it feel to be back in harness, Charley?”

He talked as if we were old friends. We weren't. He had been chief judge of the appellate court when I had clerked for Judge O'Dowd. Mallow had ignored me then. And he hadn't shown any great interest later when I had appeared before appellate panels he had been on.

Our only other contact had been at St. Benedict alumni meetings. Before I had disgraced myself, I had been quite active in support of the school. We had talked a few times then, or to be more accurate, I had listened.

In any event, we were not buddies under any construction. I wondered what he wanted from me now. I presumed he was about to work me for some kind of financial contribution to a school activity.

I sipped the metallic-tasting coffee and waited.

He didn't touch his coffee but studied me, as if he were about to pass sentence.

Finally, he spoke. “I've been following your career since”—be paused—“since your suspension. Apparently you're beginning to do quite well again.”

It was time to poor-mouth a little in case this was leading into a serious solicitation for some St. Benedict cause. It would help keep the request on a reasonable dollar level.

“I've had a few front-page cases lately, but financially there's been more smoke than fire. I do all right. I support myself, but that's about it.”

He smiled as if he didn't believe a word. “That chap,
Doctor Death, must be paying you a pretty penny. He could end up in prison for life. He has money. I hope you're getting your share, Charley.”

“A good fee. It balances out some of the stuff that doesn't pay or that I do for free.”

“Free?”

“It happens.”

“I hear you have an extremely juicy product liability case coming up on appeal,” he said, studying his coffee but still not drinking.

I nodded. “The damages are substantial. A young man paralyzed for life. The company's liability is the big issue.”

“What was the jury award, something around five million?”

“Yes.” I wondered how he knew it was my case. My name wasn't in the newspapers, only on the amended appearance filed as cocounsel.

“I presume the fee is at least a third of the award?”

I nodded.

He smiled slowly. “Well, if you win, Charley, you'll be a millionaire. Thinking about retirement, by any chance?”

I shook my head. “It's not my case. I'm just arguing the appeal. I'm being paid for that.”

“I'm curious. How much?”

I resented the question but I answered. “A percentage of the fee, if any. Twenty percent.”

He nodded. I could see he was doing mental arithmetic. “Perhaps not enough to retire on, but substantial nevertheless.”

“If we win.”

The smile got wider. “Life's little problems. Everything else going well?”

I presumed he was asking if I was still off the stuff. “Yes.”

“I'm proud of you, Charley. We all are.”

“Thanks. How about you, Judge?” It was a delicate subject. He had been in the newspapers a lot, and none of it good.

“A minor setback here and there. I left Brookins Stanley, as you probably know. The damned newspapers have treated it like some banana republic war. My former partners are suing me, but they'll never win.”

He made a wry face. “And I have that other suit against me, the one brought by the widow of that chap who worked for me up on my farm, the one who fell into the reaping machine. You'd think the reporters had nothing else to write about but me. That's another lawsuit I have no fear of losing. The woman doesn't stand a chance. The man caused his own death. The case should have been thrown out. And I think in time it will be. I don't even own that accursed farm anymore.”

“What are you doing now?”

For the first time he sipped the coffee, almost as if trying to avoid answering. He looked at the cup. “God, but this stuff is awful. They must not clean that machine very often.” He pushed the cup away from him. “I was on my own for a while,” he said quietly. “Now I share offices with Thomas Slatmore. Do you know him?”

I nodded. I did. Thomas Slatmore had an odious reputation, a lawyer who slithered into courtrooms. He had narrowly escaped indictments in several corruption scandals. I was surprised and I supposed it showed.

“Thomas isn't such a bad fellow,” he said. “Charming, actually, but the kind of man who seems to attract a bad press. We're not partners, we just share an office. It's working out quite well.”

I wondered if that were really true.

“Do you come back to the school often, Charley?”

“Not usually. But I'm doing some research on that product liability case. I'm here on Thursday afternoons lately.”

He stood up. “I'm frequently here myself. Perhaps we'll run into each other again.”

He didn't offer his hand, but merely smiled down at me. “We talk of you often, Frank Palmer and myself. He's quite interested in what you do.”

“I'm flattered.”

“I understand he'll be on the panel assigned to your case.”

Before I could comment, Mallow turned and walked briskly from the lounge.

I wondered if getting Judge Palmer might be good or bad. But chiefly I wondered how Judge Jeffrey Mallow knew so much about the case.

It occurred to me that he might be trying to muscle his way into the McHugh case, maybe even try to take over the whole thing.

My coffee was almost cold, but I finished it anyway.

It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Like a lot of things.

His son had asked me to represent him, although over the phone
fils
did not sound overly enthusiastic about
père
.

I went to the jail, and after the usual two-step with the bored guards—they love to practice officiousness whenever the chance presents itself—I was finally allowed to see my new client, albeit through glass and over microphones.

I knew him. Everyone in Pickeral Point knew him.

Without his wearing his usual uniform I hardly recognized him. His customary mode of dress consisted of a perfectly pressed dark suit, starched white shirt, and sensible tie. It was the uniform of a banker, which suited him perfectly, since that was his occupation.

But now, as he sat across from me in the interview room, blinking at me from the other side of the glass, he
didn't look like a banker. The wrinkled white shirt was disheveled and stained. And, if he had been wearing one, his necktie had been confiscated. Despite everything he sat ramrod straight. In his sixties, a tall, heavy man, he looked as out of place as a hamburger in a vegetarian restaurant.

His perfectly groomed gray hair was no longer perfectly groomed. Uncombed, it sprayed out from his skull like a mop that had accidentally encountered an electric socket, making him look like a white version of Don King.

A one-day gray stubble frosted his fleshy jaw. His banker's expression was the same, however: dignified and just a tad suspicious. But the usually cold eyes were different. They had that same shocked look that accident victims do upon awakening in an emergency room. There was some minor swelling under one eye, and his lower lip had been cut slightly.

Vincent Villar was the vice president and chief loan officer of the Pickeral Point Bank, a small bank that had grown large holding mortgages on most of the homes and businesses in our river community.

I had first met Vincent Villar when I had come up to Pickeral Point after getting my law license back. I had wanted a small loan, unsecured, since I owned nothing of value after my troubles. His mouth had been sympathetic but not his eyes. He had gently but firmly turned me down. I didn't resent it. Given the circumstances then, I would have done the same thing if our positions had been reversed.

Now, in a way, they were.

“Your son asked me to represent you, Mr. Villar.”

“I don't want a lawyer.” His was a no-nonsense voice that had turned down a thousand would-be borrowers. “I'm guilty, and I intend to plead that way.”

“Indecent exposure is a misdemeanor, but sometimes
things can be worked out. I'm not promising anything, but sometimes, with treatment, an arrangement can be made so that a conviction doesn't even become part of the record.”

“I know.”

“Has this happened before to you?”

“Yes.” The word was spoken with cold finality, as if closing the subject for all times. “I appreciate your coming here, Mr. Sloan. But I won't be needing your services. Please send me a bill for your time.”

“You'll be going before the judge this morning, Mr. Villar. Obviously, things at that point become public. I don't think you want that. Let me talk to the police and the prosecutor. Maybe I can work something out.”

“No.”

It was a simple, one-word sentence, ending the conversation. He got up stiffly, as if in pain, and the deputy escorted him back to the holding cells.

One of the convenient things about Pickeral Point is that everything governmental is close by. For a lawyer that's a nice perk. I walked over to the sheriff's office and looked up Sue Gillis.

She was on the phone when I got there, but she nodded a greeting and pointed toward a chair at the side of her desk.

The phone call was obviously official; she was using her ministry-of-fear voice. It sounded incongruous coming from her cheerleader lips in her cheerleader face. Even her ponytail seemed suddenly businesslike. Her words were polite, there was a hard edge to her tone. Apparently a witness was a little reluctant to come and testify. When Detective Gillis finished, I got the impression that the reluctance was a thing of the past.

She put down the phone and grinned at me. “We're out early this morning, Charley? What's up?”

“Do you have Vincent Villar as a customer?”

Her smile grew less broad. “Yes. Indecent exposure. I was about to go over to the court and introduce him to the justice system. Is he your client?”

“That's problematical. His son asked me to represent him. I went over to the jail to see him, but he says he doesn't want a lawyer and is determined to plead guilty.”

“Isn't that sweet of him. If only there were more criminals like that, the world would be a better place.”

“What's his story, Sue?”

“He's guilty, if that's what you mean.”

“Tell me about it.”

She giggled. “It sounds like something out of a farce but it's all true enough. You know the Kerry County Park?”

I nodded. Calling it a park was stretching things a bit. It was a vast weed-filled hunk of land with a few scruffy bushes and some rusty swing sets.

She continued. “The complaining witnesses, two young ladies, were engaged in a twilight jog around the park when a man, later identified as your client, popped out of the bushes. He wore a shirt and a ski mask and nothing much else besides his shoes. He was, as we like to say in court, fully erect. He said nothing, just stood there and let his swollen appendage do the talking.