Extenuating Circumstances (10 page)

Then, early in the morning on the first day of September, that all changed. Around 9 A.M. I got a call from Carnova's attorney, a guy named Jack O'Brien. He sounded polite and pleasant on the phone, but I found myself disliking him immediately. I knew why too -because he represented Carnova, because he was bent on dragging me back into the case.

All he wanted, he said, was a little of my time. Only I didn't want to give him that much of an opening.

"I've got a pretty busy schedule," I said brusquely.

"I can subpoena you," Jack O'Brien said in his affable voice. "In fact, I will subpoena you if I have to."

"For what? What the hell do I have to do with your client?"

"Let's not kid each other, Mr. Stoner. We both know that you witnessed Terry's confession."

It wasn't hard to figure out who'd told him I'd been in the interrogation room -the girlfriend, Kitty Guinn.

"Look, it'll only take a few minutes," O'Brien said. "Half hour tops. You'll save me some time and save yourself some grief."
 
 

O'Brien's office was in the Tri-City Building, on the corner of Fifth and Race, within easy walking distance of the Riorley. On the way over there I wondered what I was going to tell the guy. I already knew what he was going to ask.

Art Finch and the cops had worked hard on Carnova -to get him to retract the homosexual accusation, to get it off the record. It was a cinch that O'Brien knew that as well as I did.

Bullying the kid into changing his story, simply because the cops hadn't liked it, wasn't strictly legal. But in both versions of his confession Carnova had freely admitted murdering Lessing. And when it came down to it, that was all that mattered to me. Carnova was guilty, and I wasn't going to help him slip out of a death sentence. Even if I'd believed that the kid was telling the truth about Lessing's homosexuality, I'd have felt the same way.

So I made up my mind to lie to O'Brien if he questioned me about the interrogation. It wouldn't be much of a lie. Just enough to hang the little bastard.
 
 

15

As law offices went, the Tri-City wasn't the high-rent district. O'Brien's suite was on the sixth floor at the end of a dark, dingy hallway, intermittently lit by greasy yellow fixtures and pale daylight filtering through the pebbled glass of office doors.

The furniture inside the anteroom was beaten at the legs and corners. The carpet smelled of mildew. The secretary, playing hunt and peck at the typewriter, looked like a temp. She buzzed O'Brien after I gave her my name, and he came out of an inner office to meet me. I guess I'd expected a younger man -an up-andcomer. But he was in his late forties. Thin, stoopshouldered, bald. He had a movie mortician's face long, dour, sunken, vaguely haunted about the eyes. He held out his hand and I shook with him.

"I just want you to know, before we start here, that I didn't take this case on my own. It was assigned to me by the court."

I nodded. "I understand."

"I don't like Terry Carnova. But he's my client, and he's getting a raw deal."

"He's getting what he deserves," I said.

"Why don't you hold off on that until I've had a chance to say my piece?"

He waved me through a door into the inner office. Kitty Guinn was sitting on a tufted couch across from O'Brien's desk. She didn't look at me as I sat down beside her. But I could tell from her pallid face that she was nervous.

O'Brien settled in behind the desk, shooing away some loose papers in front of him.

"You've met Kitty, I know." He smiled at the girl and she smiled back at him anxiously. She was wearing a white summer dress that made her look like a candle wrapped in tissue paper. "Kitty, why don't you tell Mr. Stoner what you've told me?"

"I done already told him," she said in a shaky voice. "Terry didn't kill that man."

O'Brien smiled without showing his teeth -tightlipped, like a man with loose dentures.

"Is that it?" I said.

"That's part of it." He linked his fingers and settled his 'hands on the desk, leaning forward. "Terry Carnova is protecting a friend of his. A boy by the name of Thomas Chard. Tommy T. to his friends. It was Tommy who committed the murder. Terry's no more than an accessory."

"Bullshit."

"Yeah?" He leaned back again in his chair. "Let me ask you a question, Stoner. When Terry confessed to the murder, what weapon did he say he'd used?" He didn't wait for me to reply, which was a good thing because I had no intention of talking about the interrogation. "He said he used a rock, didn't he?"

I didn't answer him.

O'Brien smiled his toothless smile. "Well, let's just agree, for the sake of argument, that that's what he said. Anyway, it's on the record -one of the few things that is." O'Brien reached across his desk and fished out a piece of paper. "I have here a list of exhibits that the prosecution has prepared for disclosure. You want to look?"

"Why?"

"I thought you might notice that a couple of items are missing. Like a bloody tire iron found in the trunk of Lessing's car. Some jumper cables."

"So what?"

"I guess the prosecution didn't think they were evidentiary, huh?" He dropped the sheet of paper back on the desk. "Kind of hard to explain how Lessing's blood ended up on those items, if Terry just hit him with a rock."

"All you got for that is Carnova's word. He could have used any number of weapons."

"Then why isn't the prosecution presenting the stuff from the trunk as evidence?" He slapped his palm on the edge of his desk and Kitty Guinn jumped. "I'll tell you why. Because there's been a concerted effort to withhold certain facts in this case -facts that would make a murder-one conviction difficult or impossible to get. You know as well as I do that Lessing was a homosexual, that he'd been seeing Terry for better than three years, that on the night of the murder he'd picked Terry up outside a homosexual bar."

"I don't know anything like that," I said.

"Now who's bullshitting?" O'Brien said. "Let me tell you a few things you really don't know. For instance, I have a witness who will swear that Terry was driving Lessing's BMW on the afternoon of June 15, almost three weeks before the murder."

"And who would that be?" I said sarcastically. "His girlfriend here?"

Kitty Guinn stirred on the couch as if I'd prodded her with a stick.

O'Brien shook his head. "The guy's name is Quincey Calloway. He's the service manager at Riverbank BMW in Covington. He's prepared to testify that Terry brought the car in, waited for two hours while the car was serviced, and drove it off. Terry told Calloway that the car belonged to his father, and Calloway had no reason to doubt him until he saw the kid's photograph in the paper. Check it out if you don't believe me."

"So what? So Carnova was hired to run an errand. That doesn't prove anything. Lessing may not even have known about it."

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

"I believe that Carnova killed Lessing."

O'Brien shook his head again. "Christ, you people really want to crucify Terry, don't you? Why? Because he's a poor kid who made his living on the streets? Who learned how to fend for himself by watching guys like Lessing pick up eleven- and twelve-year-old boys on dark corners?"

"Save it for the jury," I said disgustedly.

"You'll be there to hear it, Stoner. I kid you not. Somebody in this case is going to have to start telling the truth about Ira Lessing."

"Whose truth? Carnova's? Kitty's here?"

"He didn't do it!" the girl exploded. "It was Tommy T. He kept egging him on, making like Terry weren't no real man, like he was soft for liking Mr. Lessing. Tommy T. was jealous is all. Pure mean and jealous, 'cause Mr. Lessing thought more of Terry than he did of him. That's how come it happened -pure mean jealousy. Tommy T.'s the one who started the hitting. He was showing Terry up. Showing him what Mr. Lessing was really like. Didn't Tommy T. tell Terry he'd done it to him? Didn't he tell him that very day that Mr. Lessing used to pick him up to have it done to him? He liked to have it done to him!"

I glanced at O'Brien. "To have what done to him? What the hell's she talking about?"

O'Brien didn't smile this time. "Look, I never met Ira Lessing. But the people I've talked to . . . well, they've told me he was a good man. A kind man. That's why I've held off on this for so long. I've kept it out of court and I've kept it out of the papers. But if you people don't stop lying about Terry's confession, you're not going to leave me a choice."

I was still confused. "Kept what out of the courts?"

O'Brien. sighed. "Have you ever heard the phrase 'beat freak,' Stoner?"

I shook my head.

"It's street slang for a homosexual masochist. For a guy who likes to be hurt while he's having sex."

I laughed out loud. "You're telling me that Ira Lessing was a beat freak? That's quite a reach, even for a lawyer."

"You think I like it?" O'Brien said, flushing angrily. "I don't like any of this. But that happens to be the truth. Periodically, Ira Lessing hired Tom Chard to slap him, to punch him, to put his fist . . . inside him, to choke him almost to death while he masturbated."

O'Brien's face had turned bright red with embarrassment. "God knows how a man gets that way. I've talked to a forensic psychiatrist about it, and he says that some twisted part of Ira Lessing needed the punishment, the humiliation. He was irresistibly drawn to it, probably for most of his life. That part of Lessing was looking to be punished -for past sins, shortcomings, maybe for the masochistic need itself. Whatever the reason, he wanted to be badly hurt." O'Brien rubbed one of his red cheeks."And I guess he got his wish."

I stared at him contemptuously. "So Lessing committed suicide? That's mighty damn convenient for your client. You're not actually going to feed that drivel to the papers, are you? That psychobabble?"

He didn't answer the question. "Ira Lessing didn't commit suicide. He was slowly and viciously beaten to death by Tommy Chard."

"What about Terry? What did he do, just sit around and watch?"

"Lessing's relationship with Carnova was different. Apparently, he was genuinely fond of the kid, and the kid thought of him as a father. It was Tom Chard that Lessing went to when he wanted . . . the rough trade. Tom Chard has the reputation for it. Ask about Chard on the street. Ask at the homosexual clubs -the Underground, the Ramrod. It was Chard that Lessing picked up on the night of the Fourth. Terry Carnova just went along for the ride."

I got up from the couch. "I don't believe a word of this crap. I'm not even sure I believe that Tom Chard exists. Hell, every prisoner in jail says he's the wrong guy."

"Terry Carnova didn't," O'Brien said coolly.

"And you know why?" I said, pointing a finger at him. "Because he's a fucking psychopath."

"Terry's a very screwed-up kid. But he didn't kill Lessing. Tom Chard did. And Terry confessed because ... hell, I'm not even sure why myself. Because he didn't want to be a squealer. Because he wanted to be a big man. Because he looked up to Chard the way younger kids admire older brothers. Because he felt so guilty about what happened to Lessing that he thought he should be punished for it. Take your pick. And there's something else." O'Brien glanced at Kitty Guinn. "Terry was afraid for his family. For Kitty and his aunt. Afraid that Chard would do something to them if he ratted on him."

"You've got it all worked out, don't you?" I said. "The cops bust this kid, Chard. He and Carnova get separate trials. Each one makes a deal to cop out on the other. And neither of them gets the chair. The only guy that ends up dead is Lessing."

"Look, all I'm asking you to do is check out what I'm saying. Christ, you're a detective -ask a few questions. But I'm telling you now, if you and the cops and the Lessing family don't quit pretending that Ira was just an innocent victim, all of this is going to come out in court and in the papers. And you're going to be sworn in as a witness." O'Brien gave me a long, hard look. "I kid you not."
"What does the family have to do with it?" I asked him.

"She knows," the girl said, turning toward me with a wild look. "That man's wife knows. You ask her if she don't."
 
 

16

The first thing I did, when I got back to the office, was call my lawyer, Laurel Gould. I didn't tell her about Carnova or Lessing. I didn't even tell her that I might be called as a hostile witness in a murder trial. Instead I asked her about Jack O'Brien -what kind of lawyer he was, what kind of man he was.

Laurel thought about it for a moment. "Uninspired about covers it."

"He's not a headline hunter? Or some sort of bleeding heart ACLU type?"

"Just the opposite. He's a second-rate attorney with a conservative practice. He makes a living, but not a great one. I've never heard anybody say anything bad about him. But then nobody talks him up, either. I suppose he's competent. Why? Are you dissatisfied with the service at this window?"

"Christ, no. It's in reference to a case I'm working on."

"Meaning I'm not supposed to ask any more questions. Right?"

"Right."

She hung up.

I stared at the phone, thinking that I didn't want to hear what I'd just heard. I'd wanted Jack O'Brien to be a guy on the make, looking to get into politics, looking to get his name in print. The fact that he wasn't didn't make me believe what he'd said. There were just as many sincere idiots as there were insincere ones. But it sure as hell made him harder to dismiss.