The Bomb Maker's Son (25 page)

“Yes, Mark and Jerry were the same age, but Jerry was always bringing his little brother, Ian, around, I knew exactly who he was.” Again, this isn’t what she told me when I met with her. Age hasn’t affected this woman’s powers of prevarication.

Fortunately, we’re prepared for this lie—with the help of Ian’s childhood friend, Carol Diaz. On cue, Lovely hands me a photograph. What I’m about to do could rescue our case or doom it, just like those assistant district attorneys doomed their case when they had OJ Simpson try on the ill-fitting glove.

Lovely projects the photo onto the courtroom monitors so the judge and jury can see. The clerk marks the hard copy and hands it to Giddens, who holds it in a withered hand and squints at it. It’s a picture of a twelve-year-old boy with short brown hair, cut straight and parted on the side. For the first time today, Giddens looks befuddled. There’s a perceptible rustling as those in the gallery who were reading their iPads and iPhones refocus their attention on the witness. Several jurors sit straighter in their seats.

Giddens looks up at me in anticipation of my next question. I’m certain Marilee Reddick showed her pictures of the adult Jerry and Ian and made sure she could tell them apart. But the boy in this picture looks like neither of those adult men.

“Is this picture one of the Holzner brothers?” I thought of simply asking which brother it is, but that would give her a fifty-percent chance of guessing right. By asking this question, she has two chances to be wrong. Of course, if she truly recognizes who’s in the photo or guesses right, this case is lost.

“Objection,” Reddick says. “There’s no foundation for what this picture is.”

“This is impeachment on a critical point,” I say. “A man’s freedom is at stake. We could interrupt Mrs. Giddens’s testimony and sequester her out in the hall, and I could call a witness to authenticate the photo. It seems like a waste of time to interrupt Mrs. Giddens’s testimony to do that, though, when we can do it later.”

“I agree,” the judge says. “You can prove it up later, Mr. Stern. The objection is overruled.” One advantage in having Gibson as the judge is that he’s not much younger than Gladdie Giddens and so is perhaps less likely to see her as grandmotherly—as I did, until she started telling the brazen lies.

“I’ll repeat the question,” I say. “Is this one of the Holzner brothers?”

“Yes, I believe it is,” Giddens says without hesitation. The odds of shaking her testimony have just gone way down.

“Is it Ian or Jerry?”

Her forehead knitted in thought, she stares at the photo a long time and tries to guess the right answer—not the truthful answer, but the one that will help condemn Ian Holzner.

“I don’t know from this picture,” she says. “Those brothers looked so much alike. Back then I knew Jerry was younger—”

“Did you say
Jerry
was the younger one, Mrs. Giddens?”

Her eyes glaze over with a kind of geriatric indignation. “Excuse me sir. I meant to say Ian was the younger one. Jerry was my son Mark’s friend, Ian the little brother.”

“You just told us the brothers looked very much alike,” I say, abandoning my deferential tone and replacing it with incredulity. “If that’s true, how do you know it wasn’t Jerry you saw at the Playa Delta VA on the day of the bombing?”

Behind me I hear the tinkling of Holzner’s shackles, a sign of unease, because I’m implying his brother Jerry planted the bomb, and he doesn’t want that. Who cares? My only job—my sworn ethical obligation—is to defend Ian any way I can, even if he won’t do the same for himself.

Giddens crosses her arms. “No sir. I know who I saw that morning. It was Ian Holzner.”

“Even though the brothers looked so much alike?”

“Even though.”

I nod to Lovely, who hands me the second photograph that Carol Diaz gave her. It’s a picture taken the same year, but of a ruddy faced, stocky, round-shouldered kid of sixteen with a blond flattop haircut. His smile is sad and innocent. The clerk hands the photo to Giddens, and Lovely projects it on the monitors.

When Giddens sees the photograph, her hand starts trembling.

“You recognize this photograph, don’t you, Mrs. Giddens,” I say.

She nods.

“You’ll have to answer audibly,” I say.

“Yes. I recognize it.”

“This is Jerry Holzner, your son Mark’s friend, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she replies in a raspy whisper.

“He doesn’t look anything like the young Ian Holzner, does he?”

“No sir. Not so much as I remember.”

“And you remember now that Ian was adopted into the Holzner family?”

“I do remember that now.”

“You didn’t remember the picture of the younger brother, Ian?”

Her failure to reply is the best answer I can get.

“You were a bit confused about the Holzner brothers, weren’t you?”

She tries to speak but only lets out a phlegmy wheeze. I let that stand as her last answer and pass the witness.

On redirect, Reddick gets Giddens to testify that because the brothers looked so different it
must
have been Ian whom she saw at the crime scene. The testimony falls flat. A factual misstatement during testimony is like a dropped stitch that causes the entire fabric of a story to unravel.

Judge Gibson calls the lunch recess, and the jurors file out. Before the marshals take Holzner back to the holding area, he whispers to me, “Don’t lay this on Jerry.” No paternal pat on the back for a job well done in discrediting a witness who threatened to put him on death row.

Lovely and I intend to repair to the attorneys’ lounge, where I can force-feed myself some energy bars and pore over my cross-examination notes for this afternoon’s witnesses. We exit the courtroom, but before we can turn toward the lounge, there are shouts and a shriek. The reporters have encircled someone and are shouting unintelligible questions. When I understand what’s going on, I sprint over and throw a body-block through the crowd that former gridiron star Carlton Gibson would be proud of. Amidst the predatory reporters is a cowering Emily Lansing, her body turned half to the side, her arms pressed together against her chest and shoulders, her fists clenched, her knees bent—a standing fetal position. These pillars of journalism don’t break rhythm:

“Hey, Stern, did you know that your client’s daughter was expelled for physically attacking another student and vandalizing his car?”

“Does violence run in the family, Parker?”

Lovely knows this building. She finds us a conference room two floors up, where the media and public don’t go.

“Ben Harwood deserved it,” Emily says.

“What did you do to him?” Lovely asks. I’ll let her handle this. I know nothing about teenagers.

“I punched him in the face and broke his nose. Then I keyed his new Prius. It was worth it. Harwood is a spoiled rich kid, a fascist asshole.”

“Why did he deserve a broken nose?” Lovely asks.

Emily starts twisting her hair.

“Stop playing with your hair and act like the grown-up you think you are,” Lovely says sharply.

Emily flinches like a reeling drunk slapped on the cheek for her own good. “It was only six weeks after Dylan died. I was telling some friends how I thought the damn government had wasted his life and the lives of others for no reason. I mean, what’s Afghanistan even for? The oil companies? Harwood started arguing with me, and it got ugly. When he told me that I was being a traitor to Dylan’s memory, I hit him.”

“And then you keyed his new car?”

“A few hours later, after school. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I guess I was still mad.”

“What did the school do to you?”

“I got suspended for a week. I still aced my classes. And . . . and the Harwoods threatened to sue my parents and me, but when everyone realized what Ben said about my dead brother, they backed off. And that’s it.”

“You’re sure?” Lovely asks.

“Absolutely.”

“Is there anything else we need to know about you?”

Emily gives a contrite half shrug. “I have a temper sometimes. I’m not the only person who does. But that was the only time I was suspended.” Then the realization. “Omigod, is this going to hurt my dad’s case?”

“It’s irrelevant to him or what happened in nineteen seventy-five,” I say.

“Nothing’s irrelevant,” Lovely says.

“What do I do?” Emily says. “I could tell the reporters—”

“No!” Lovely and I shout in unison.

“Here’s what you’ll do,” Lovely says. “You’ll go back in the courtroom and sit in the first row and support your father and keep your mouth shut. And think about whether there are going to be any more surprises like this.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Emily says.

“I’m going to walk you back and then Parker and I are going to work on this afternoon’s testimony.”

“I’ll walk her,” I say.

“No you won’t,” Lovely says. “You’re liable to punch one of these media people, and as much as I like trying cases, I’m not about to handle this one alone. And I know you don’t want Lou to take over.”

After lunch, Reddick calls three other survivors of the bombing, who describe the events leading up to the explosion consistently with Giddens’s testimony. I don’t bother cross-examining them, because they shed no light on the identity of the bomber. The testimony of the day’s last witness, the pathologist who performed the autopsies on the Playa Delta dead, is both gruesome and tedious—minute detail about missing extremities, faces shredded beyond recognition, identification only through dental records.

When the pathologist finishes, the judge adjourns for the evening. As Lovely and I are packing up, Marilee Reddick walks up, hands me the agreed-upon notice of the witnesses she intends to call tomorrow, and says, “We’re going to hang your son-of-bitch client.” She’s either forgotten about the courtroom microphones or no longer cares. Only after she walks away do I look at the paper. It has only one name on it. Ilan Goldsmith. When I show it to Lovely, she sighs. Marilee Reddick intends to call Secretary Cracknamara to the witness stand to testify that Ian Holzner bragged about his plans to bomb the Playa Delta VA.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I don’t want to go back to my condo. Holzner and Emily will distract me. Lovely has gone back to her own law office. Dworsky’s place is too far away in rush-hour traffic. So I decide to work at The Barrista. When sitting at my back table, I feel an odd serenity amidst the café’s tumult. I miss my friend Deanna, and though I’m not spiritual enough to believe that her essence is present in the shop, memories of her abound, and that’s pretty close to immortality.

I spend hours crafting a cross-examination that will chip away at the credibility of the prosecution’s second star witness, Ilan Goldsmith. You’d think it would be easy. He was a radical, a clown, a terrorist, a snitch. But most informants in criminal cases have a sordid past. If they didn’t, they’d have nothing to tell.

Just before closing time, as I take a sip of my fourth—or is it fifth?—cup of coffee of the evening, a sallow-faced, gray-haired man approaches my table. Probably in his seventies, he resembles a world-weary Satan—hair shaped like small horns growing out of the top of his earlobes, a straight-angled Vandyke beard, and eyes burdened by heavy, dark half circles. He’s dressed in a herringbone sport coat, white turtleneck sweater, and pleated brown slacks. The flesh hanging over his belt is more flab than fat. He sits down across from me, takes out a deck of playing cards, and begins shuffling expertly, making him look like the devil rehearsing a Vegas lounge act.

When he notices me staring at his hands, he says, “Faro shuffle. It relaxes me. At the moment, I need to relax.” He talks fast, like someone hawking products on a basic-cable infomercial.

I look up from my laptop.

“My name is Ilan Goldsmith,” he says.

I close the cover of my computer. The key witness for the government, a man we couldn’t locate, has come to me on the eve of his testimony. Why?

He looks at me with his penetrating eyes, all the while shuffling those cards, the riffling rhythmic, hypnotic. I wait for him to begin. It’s a lawyer’s nature to interrogate, but sometimes questions just get in the way. At last, he cuts the cards three times and puts them in his coat pocket. “Ian Holzner was quite a magician, you know.”