Reversible Errors (22 page)

"So I just needed a minute, a minute, you know, to come to grips, to stop being so freakin scared, frankly. Just if he give me thirty seconds, maybe. But Gus, he was scorched. A shooting in his place. With his gun. When I say 'Wait' a second time, he walks away and goes to the phone. And I'm pretty wigged out and upset. All I want is to get a little control here. I tell him to stop. I tell him I'll kill him. He don't stop. He goes right there. And I shot him. Good shot. Good shot," said Erno again, in plain lamentation. "Right through the head.

"So I go back to the booth now. Luisa is not doing too well. Gonna bleed out and die. But there isn't a whole lot to do about it. Now at least 1 have a minute to think. And the only choice I got is to try to get away with this. I can't change it. The worst that happens is I get caught. At least I've gotta try.

"So I figure, make it look like a robbery. I go back and take everything out of the register. I pull off Gus's watch, his rings. I wipe down the table where Luisa was sitting so there aren't fingerprints. And I don't know, in a mirror I think I see something on the other side of the restaurant. I'm not real sure, but could be somebody else was in one of the booths when I ran in. I realize I better look, and lo and behold in the far corner, I see this guy hiding under the table. Just a guy. A guy like me. Suit and tie. He couldn't have made a run for it because I was between him and the door and so he's smart enough to hide, only it didn't work. That's all. It didn't work. I found him.

"I got him out from under there. He was blubberin and carryin on by then, sayin the same as I'd say, 'Don't kill me, I'm never gonna tell.' He started in showin me the pictures of his family in his wallet. He musta seen that on TV. And I told him the truth. 'I don't wanna kill you, fella. No way I want to kill you.' I had him drag Gus downstairs to that freezer. By then, Luisa was gone, so I had him do the same with her. Then I tied him up there, this guy, Paul, I think I read was his name. The whole time I'm wondering how I could not kill him. I'm thinking, maybe if he just ends up blind, you know, but Christ, putting a fork in his eyes or something, that's harder than pulling the trigger.

"I never was sure I could kill a man like that. I mean, I have a temper. I know that. I go off. Like I did with Gus. But kill somebody, cool as you please, just because it worked out as him or me?

"When I was a kid, in Hungary, they killed my father because the neighbors gave him up to the secret police, and I always kind of took my lessons from that. I never expected much from anyone but my family. You do what you have to, I figured. But I didn't know I actually believed that. Not till then. Gause I killed him. I shot him right through the back of the head, and you could see that the life was gone from him just that very second by the way he fell straight over on the floor. Then I took Luisas jewelry- off of her, and rearranged her clothes too, cause of her visit with that guy in the parking lot. I wasn't sure what would show in the autopsy."

Again, he awaited his breath. There was no sound in the huge old courtroom but the hissing from his oxygen tank. Arthur was the only person on his feet, and it seemed to him no one else could have found the wherewithal to stand anyway. On the faces in the gallery there was awe -perhaps at the momentousness of-evil, or the incongruity that Erno was sitting here and using the same words we all spoke to describe actions so far beyond our capacities. Or were they? From that region of uncertainty, everyone awaited what Erno would report next.

"All the time I was in that freezer, while the whole thing was happening, I was like a zombie. But afterwards, afterwards I didn't know what to think. Sometimes, I'd see people on the street-tramps and gangbangers, guys with half a brain, everybody you look clown on - and I'd think that none of them did anything like I'd clone. T hey all had something on me. I was waiting to get caught. I was sort of preparing myself mentally for the day the coppers knocked on my door. But I'd done a good job. The police were running in every direction and bumping into themselves."

While Erno permitted himself another interval, Arthur surveyed the courtroom to see how he was doing. Pamela had her lips rolled into her mouth, appearing as if she didn't dare breathe for fear of disturbing the perfect rhythms of the moment. He winked at her, then finally dared to look at the prosecution table, first to Larry Starczek, whom he hadn't seen for years. Arthur had considered trying to ex- elude Larry from the courtroom because Erno was going to be testifying about him, but Arthur had ultimately decided that Erdai would make a better impression if he took on Larry face-to-face. And that judgment was correct. Larry was not behaving in a fashion likely to impress Kenton Harlow. He appeared on the verge of laughter. To him, the whole thing was so ridiculous, it qualified as humor.

Beside Larry, Muriel was far more pensive. She finished writing a note and her line of sight crossed Arthur's. He expected her to be furious. She would recognize at once that Arthur was exploiting her vulnerability as a prospective candidate. Convicting an innocent man and executing him was not the kind of on-the-job experience the voters typically had in mind for their elected prosecutor, and Arthur's aim was to set off a public clamor that would force Muriel to dismiss the case quickly to get it out of the headlines. But she had always loved the game, and Muriel actually tipped her head to him very slightly. Not bad, she was saying. Not that she believed it. Not for a second. But lawyer to lawyer, she had to give Arthur credit for pulling this off. Arthur nodded back in what he hoped was a respectful manner, then faced Erno once more.

"Mr. Erdai, I didn't ask you earlier. Were you acquainted with Romeo Gandolph at this time in July of 1991?"

"Acquainted? You could say I knew him."

"In what capacity?"

"As a complete and total pain."

Laughter of unexpected volume rang through the courtroom. Everyone had apparently craved the relief. Even Harlow chuckled on the bench.

"Squirrel, Rommy, whatever-he was kind of a street person. He used to hang out at DuSable Field in the winter to get out of the cold, and stuff had a habit of disappearing when he was around. So my guys and I kind of encouraged him to depart, you might say, on a regular basis. That's how I knew him."

"Do you have any knowledge how Romeo Gandolph came to be charged for this crime?"

"That I do."

"Please tell the Court in your own words what happened."

"What happened?" asked Erno. He inhaled for a time on his oxygen. "Well, its like the priest at Rudyard says. Its not as if I don't have a conscience. And I have this nephew. Collins is his name. Collins Farwell. I've tried to help him. I always have. All his life I worried about him. And he gave me a lot to worry about, I'll tell you that.

"Anyhow, he got himself cracked a few months after I killed those people. Narcotics. Triple X. Life in the can. And it worked on me quite a bit. Because here I am, a murdering bastard running free, and there's Collins who didn't do anything besides sell people what they wanted, and he's going to spend his natural life behind bars. I don't know. It bothered me.

"And then there's a part of me that figured I would never have any peace with this unless somebody else got nailed for it. Looking back, that was stupid. It was always gonna bother me. But at that point I thought, Well, if I can put this on somebody, then I'll be better off, and Collins'll be better off, too, because he had to give the prosecutors something to get out from under that life sentence."

Arthur asked the obvious-why Rommy?

"Well, Mr. Raven, the real answer is because I knew I could stick it on him. See, basically, it came down to this cameo, this locket, they found him with. That was Luisa's. And I knew Squirrel had it."

"Squirrel is Rommy?"

"That's what they called him."

"Can you explain how you happened to know he had that cameo?"

"Can, but it's a long story. A week or two before Luisa died"- Erno straightened up to correct himself-"before I killed her, I was checking on her all the time, spying on her is what it really came down to. But I come in early one morning as she's leaving, and she chews me up one side and down the other about all the thieves I let roam around this airfield. Bottom line, she'd taken this locket off, when it got wound up in her telephone cord, and she'd laid it on her counter. She goes away for a second and when she comes back, there's Squirrel slipping off like a shadow and the cameo is gone. She's cussing me out about this, and crying because it's been in the family for a couple centuries.

"Well, what are you gonna do? So I go hunt up Squirrel. Took a day, but I found him in some hellhole in the North End. Course, he said he didn't know nothin about it, but I said, 'Listen, knucklehead, that piece is worth a hell of a lot more to that lady than anybody you can peddle it to. Get it back and we'll make it worth your while, no questions asked.'

"Naturally, once I killed her, I didn't think much about that, except I noticed the papers were featuring the cameo as taken off her when she died, which I knew was a crock. I figured Luisa didn't want to confess to Mamma Mia that she'd lost the family treasure. You know, there's always a lot the cops think is true that isn't, but that's another subject." Erno cast a fast glance at Larry, then reached over to adjust his oxygen. He was starting to look tired.

"Anyway, must have been late September, I run into Squirrel out at the airport. I don't think he could have told you my name but he knew I'd promised him money. 'I still got this here,' he says and takes the cameo out of his pocket. Right there in the terminal. I thought my heart was going to fall out of my chest and roll down my trouser leg, just from shock, you know, because that thing was in the media and I didn't want to be within a mile of it. I told him I'd work on the money, and ran off, fast as if he was leprosy.

"Afterwards, I started in thinking, takin off like that might have been a dead giveaway. Maybe I should have had him arrested and carried on like he was the bad guy. I kind of liked that idea and began researching, you might say, talking to copper friends, pretending I was interested in Squirrel because he was a problem at the airport. Once I found out he had a thing with Gus, too, I started considering it seriously, you know, unloading this on him. Even so, I might not have done it, but then Collins got into that jackpot, and there was Rommy, sort of made to order.

"So far as Collins knew, Rommy was the right guy. I put it that I'd been developing information about Rommy, and I was just letting Collins dress it up a little and pass it on to get out of this jam. I told Collins I'd send some cops around, and he should make the best deal he could-squirm real hard about having to testify, because I wasn't sure how good Collins would do on the stand. Then, I just waited for a chance to lay all this on some officer, which turned out to be Larry Starczek, when he showed up at the airport a day or two later."

Erno lifted his hand to point across the courtroom to Larry, who, in the face of this dissection of how he'd been had, seemed finally to be reflecting on the possibility.

"The rest is history," Erno said.

There was a lull again as Arthur considered his notes. He was going on to Erno's letters to Larry and Gillian, but Erno held up his hand, which, for some reason -his health or the strain -trembled slightly.

"Can I say something here, Judge?" He coughed again, a harsh sound in the silent courtroom. "It probably won't mean much, but I'd like you to know this, because it's something I always consider. My nephew? He got out in five. Cause he ratted out Squirrel. But he's all grown up. He's come to Jesus, which is a bit much, but he's got a wife, he's got two kids, he's got a little business. I gave him a chance -well, more than one -but he took it. Finally. So in the middle of this horrible mess I made, there's that. I always think about it. I think about it a lot."

Harlow took this in, like the rest, neutrally, in a mood of somber contemplation. Arthur knew it would be hours before even the judge could puzzle through all the details. But he had a question now. Harlow turned first to Muriel to ask if she minded inquiry from the Court. She answered that she had several questions of her own, but would be happy to let the judge go first. That was the kind of courtroom posturing the judge revered as an art form. He granted her a small smile, before he returned to Erno.

"Before you leave this area, Mr. Raven, I want to be certain I'm following Mr. Erdai's testimony. As I understand what you're saying, sir, you expected to frame Mr. Gandolph, is that correct?"

"That's the best word for it, I'm afraid," Erno answered. "I mean, it was a flier, Judge. I was trying to do what I could for the kid, but I couldn't guarantee anything. I knew enough about how this all goes to realize Collins wouldn't get a real big break unless Rommy went down."

"Well, that' s what I'm wondering about. Your calculation was that you'd accomplish that by having your nephew lead the police to the cameo in Mr. Gandolph's pocket. Correct? That's not much of a case, is it? What happens if Gandolph has an alibi? Or explains how he got the locket?"

"That could've happened, I suppose. Course, I'd never have backed him up on the cameo. And you're forgetting that he had a bad history with Gus, too. But I had a pretty good guess what would, you know, transpire."

"And what was your guess?"

"My best guess? My guess was that sooner or later I'd hear that Rommy had fessed up."

"To a crime he didn't commit?"

"I mean, look, Judge." Erno stopped again, his chest and shoulders heaving. He was smiling faintly. "I mean, Judge, I've been around. You got a heater case and a sewer rat with one victim's jewelry in his pocket and a motive to kill another. I mean, Judge," said Erno, raising his worn, sallow face to the bench, "this ain't Shangri-la."