The Bonfire of the Vanities (84 page)

His own voice sounded funny to him as he said, “I’m mindful of that, Your Honor, but I must also be mindful of the importance of this case to the People, to all the Henry Lambs, present and future, in this county and in this city—”

Tell him, bro!…Right on!…That’s right!

Kramer hastened to continue, in an even louder voice, before Kovitsky detonated: “—and therefore the People petition the court to increase the defendant to a significant and credible amount—to one million dollars—in order to—”

Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!
The demonstrators erupted into a chant.

That’s right!…Million dollars!…Yaggghh!…
The voice of the crowd rose in a cheer laced with exultant laughter and then crested with a chant:
Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!

Kovitsky’s gavel rose a full foot above his head and Kramer flinched inwardly before it hit.

KAPOW
!

Kovitsky gave Kramer a furious glance, then leaned forward and fastened upon the crowd.

“
ORDER IN THE COURT!…SHUDDUP!…DO YOU DOUBT MY WORD
?” His irises surfed this way and that on the furious boiling sea.

The chanting stopped, and the cries lowered to a rumble. But little riffs of laughter indicated they were just waiting for the next opening.

“
THE COURT OFFICERS WILL
—”

“Your Honor! Your Honor!” It was McCoy’s lawyer, Killian.

“What is it, Mr. Killian?”

The interruption threw the crowd off stride. They quieted down.

“Your Honor, may I approach the bench?”

“All right, Mr. Killian.” Kovitsky beckoned him forward. “Mr. Kramer?” Kramer headed for the bench also.

Now he was standing next to Killian, Killian in his fancy clothes, before the bench, beneath the glowering brow of Judge Kovitsky.

“Okay, Mr. Killian,” said Kovitsky, “what’s up?”

“Judge,” said Killian, “if I’m not mistaken, you’re the supervising judge of the grand jury in this case?”

“That’s correct,” he said to Killian, but then he turned his attention to Kramer. “You hard of hearing Mr. Kramer?”

Kramer said nothing. He didn’t have to answer a question like that.

“You intoxicated by the sound of this bunch”—Kovitsky nodded toward the spectators—“cheering you on?”

“No, Judge, but there’s no way this case can be treated like an ordinary case.”

“In this courtroom, Mr. Kramer, it’s gonna be treated any fucking way I say it’s gonna be treated. Do I make myself clear?”

“You always make yourself clear, Judge.”

Kovitsky eyed him, apparently trying to decide if there was any insolence in the remark. “All right, then you know that if you pull any more of that arrant bullshit in this courtroom, you’re gonna wish you never laid eyes on Mike Kovitsky!”

He couldn’t just
take
this, with Killian standing right there, and so he said, “Look, Judge, I have every right—”

Kovitsky broke in: “Every right to do what? Run Abe Weiss’s reelection campaign for him in my courtroom? Bullshit, Mr. Kramer! Tell him to hire a hall, call a press conference. Tell him to go on a talk show, f’r Chrissake.”

Kramer was so angry he couldn’t speak. His face was flaming red. Between his teeth he said, “Is that all, Judge?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heels and started away.

“Mr. Kramer!”

He stopped and turned around. Glowering, Kovitsky motioned him back to the bench. “Mr. Killian has a question, I believe. Or do you want me to listen to him by myself?”

Kramer just clenched his teeth and stared.

“All right, Mr. Killian, go ahead.”

Killian said, “Judge, I am in possession of important evidence that bears not only upon Mr. Kramer’s application concerning bail but upon the validity of the indictment itself.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“I have tapes of conversations between my client and a principal in this case that make it appear highly likely that tainted testimony was presented to the grand jury.”

What the hell was this? Kramer broke in: “Judge, this is nonsense. We have a valid indictment from the grand jury. If Mr. Killian has any quarrel—”

“Just hold it, Mr. Kramer,” said Kovitsky.

“—if he has any quarrel with the grand-jury proceedings, he has the customary avenues—”

“Just hold it. Mr. Killian says he has some evidence—”

“Evidence! This isn’t an evidentiary hearing, Judge! He can’t come walking in here and dispute the grand-jury process,
ex post facto!
And you can’t—”

“
MR. KRAMER
!”

The sound of Kovitsky raising his voice sent a growl through the demonstrators, who were all at once rumbling again.

Eyes surfing on the turbulent sea: “Mr. Kramer, you know your problem? You don’t fucking listen, do you! You can’t fucking
hear!
”

“Judge—”

“
SHUDDUP
! The court is gonna listen to Mr. Killian’s evidence.”

“Judge—”

“We’re gonna do this in camera.”

“In camera? Why?”

“Mr. Killian says he has some tapes. First we’re gonna listen to ’em in camera.”

“Look, Judge—”

“You don’t wanna go in camera, Mr. Kramer? You afraid you gonna miss your audience?”

Seething, Kramer looked down and shook his head.

Sherman was stranded back at the fence, the bar. Quigley was somewhere behind him, holding the heavy case. But mainly
…they
were behind him.
When would it begin?
He kept his eyes fixed on the three figures at the judge’s bench. He didn’t dare let his eyes wander. Then the voices began. They came from behind him in menacing singsongs.

“Your last mile, McCoy!”

“Last
supper
.”

Then a soft falsetto: “Last breath.”

Somewhere, on either side, were court officers. They were doing nothing to stop it. They’re as frightened as I am!

The same falsetto: “Yo, Sherman, why you squirmin’?”

Squirming
. Evidently the others liked that. They began piping up in falsetto, too.

“Sherrr-maaannnn…”

“Squirmin’ Sherman!”

Sniggers and laughter.

Sherman stared at the bench, wherein seemed to reside his only hope. As if in answer to his supplication, the judge now looked toward him and said, “Mr. McCoy, would you step up here a minute?”

A rumble and a chorus of falsettos as he started walking. As he drew near the bench, he heard the assistant district attorney, Kramer, say, “I don’t understand, Judge. What purpose is served by the presence of the defendant?”

The judge said, “It’s his motion and his evidence. Besides, I don’t want him rattling around out here. That okay with you, Mr. Kramer?”

Kramer said nothing. He glared at the judge and then at Sherman.

The judge said, “Mr. McCoy, you’re gonna come with me and Mr. Killian and Mr. Kramer into my chambers.”

Then he gave three loud raps with his gavel and said to the room, “The court will now convene with the attorney for the People and the counsel for the defense in camera. In my absence the proper decorum
WILL BE MAINTAINED
in this room. Do I make myself clear?”

The rumble of the demonstrators rose to a low angry boil, but Kovitsky chose to ignore it and got up and descended the stairs of the dais. The clerk got up from his table to join him. Killian gave Sherman a wink, then headed back toward the spectator section. The judge, the clerk, the judge’s law secretary, and Kramer headed toward a door in the paneled wall to one side of the dais. Killian returned, carrying the heavy case. He paused and motioned for Sherman to follow Kovitsky. The court officer, with a huge tube of fat rolling over his gun belt, brought up the rear.

The door led into a room that belied everything that the courtroom itself and the swell term
chambers
had suggested to Sherman. The “chambers” were, in fact, a single room, a single very sad room. It was small, dirty, bare, run-down, painted Good Enough for Government Work cream, except that the paint was missing in splotches here and there and peeling off in miserable curls in other places. The only generous notes were the extraordinarily high ceiling and a window eight or nine feet high that flooded the room with light. The judge sat down at a beat-up metal desk. The clerk sat at another one. Kramer, Killian, and Sherman sat in some heavy and ancient round-backed wooden chairs, the sort known as banker’s chairs. Kovitsky’s law secretary and the fat court officer stood up against the wall. A tall man came in carrying the portable stenotype machine that court stenographers use. How odd!—the man was so well dressed. He wore a lovat tweed jacket, a white button-down shirt, as flawless as Rawlie’s, an ancient madder necktie, black flannel trousers, and half-brogue shoes. He looked like a Yale professor with an independent income and tenure.

“Mr. Sullivan,” said Kovitsky, “you better bring your chair in here, too.”

Mr. Sullivan went out, then returned with a small wooden chair, sat down, fiddled with his machine, looked at Kovitsky, and nodded.

Then Kovitsky said, “Now, Mr. Killian, you state that you are in possession of information having a material and substantial bearing on the grand-jury proceedings in this case.”

“That’s correct, Judge,” said Killian.

“All right,” said Kovitsky. “I want to hear what you have to say, but I must warn you, this motion better not be frivolous.”

“It’s not frivolous, Judge.”

“Because if it is, I’m gonna take a very dim view of it, as dim a view as I’ve ever taken of anything in my years on the bench, and that would be very dim, indeed. Do I make myself clear?”

“You certainly do, Judge.”

“All right. Now, you’re prepared to submit your information at this time?”

“I am.”

“Then go ahead.”

“Three days ago, Judge, I received a telephone call from Maria Ruskin, the widow of Mr. Arthur Ruskin, asking if she could talk to Mr. McCoy here. According to my best information—and according to news reports—Mrs. Ruskin has testified before the grand jury in the case.”

Kovitsky said to Kramer, “Is that correct?”

Kramer said, “She gave testimony yesterday.”

The judge said to Killian, “All right, go ahead.”

“So I set up a meeting between Mrs. Ruskin and Mr. McCoy, and at my urging Mr. McCoy wore a concealed recording device to this meeting in order to have a verifiable record of that conversation. The meeting was in an apartment on East Seventy-seventh Street that Mrs. Ruskin apparently keeps for…uh, private meetings…and a taped recording of that meeting was obtained. I have that tape with me, and I think the court should be aware of what’s on that tape.”

“Wait a minute, Judge,” said Kramer. “Is he saying that his client went to see Mrs. Ruskin
wired
?”

“I take it that’s the case,” said the judge. “Is that right, Mr. Killian?”

“That’s correct, Judge,” said Killian.

“Well, I want to register an objection, Judge,” said Kramer, “and I would like for the record to so state. This isn’t the time to consider this motion, and besides that, there’s no way of checking on the authenticity of this tape Mr. Killian purports to have.”

“First we’re gonna listen to the tape, Mr. Kramer, and see what’s on it. We’ll see if it warrants further consideration,
prima facie
, and then we’ll worry about the other questions. That meet with your approval?”

“No, Judge, I don’t see how you can—”

The judge, testily: “Play the tape, Counselor.”

Killian reached into the case and took out the big tape machine and placed it on Kovitsky’s desk. Then he inserted a cassette. The cassette was exceedingly small. Somehow this secret miniature cartridge seemed as devious and sordid as the enterprise itself.

“How many voices are on this tape?” asked Kovitsky.

“Just two, Judge,” said Killian. “Mr. McCoy’s and Mrs. Ruskin’s.”

“So it’ll be clear enough to Mr. Sullivan what we’re hearing?”

“It should be,” said Killian. “No, I’m sorry, Judge, I forgot. At the beginning of the tape you’re gonna hear Mr. McCoy talking to the driver of the car that took him to the building where he met Mrs. Ruskin. And at the end you’ll hear him talking to the driver again.”

“Who is this driver?”

“He’s a driver for the car service that Mr. McCoy hired. I didn’t want to edit the tape in any way.”

“Unh-hunh. Well, go ahead and play it.”

Killian turned on the machine, and all you could hear at first was background noise, a low steamy rush of sound with occasional traffic noises, including the braying horn of a fire engine. Then a half-mumbled exchange with the driver. It was all so devious, wasn’t it? A wave of shame rolled over him. They would play it to the end! The stenographer would record it all, every last sniveling word as he tried to dance away from Maria and deny the obvious, which was that he was a deceitful bastard who had come to her apartment wired up. How much of it would come through in the words alone? Enough; he was vile.

Now the muffled deceitful tape recorder broadcast the sound of the buzzer in the door of the town house, the
click-click-click
of the electric lock and—or was it his imagination?—the groan of the stairs as he trudged up. Then a door opening…and Maria’s gay, unsuspecting voice: “Boo!…Scare yuh?” And the perfidious actor’s casual response in a voice he scarcely recognized: “Not really. Lately I’ve been scared by experts.” He cut a glance this way and that. The other men in the room had their heads down, staring at the floor or at the machine on the judge’s desk. Then he caught the fat court officer looking straight at him. What must he be thinking? And what about the others, with their eyes averted? But of course! They didn’t have to look at him, because they were already deep inside the cavity, rooting about as they pleased, all straining to hear the words of his deceitful bad acting. The long fingers of the stenographer danced about on his delicate little machine. Sherman felt a paralyzing sadness. So heavy…couldn’t move. In this sad moldering little room were seven other men, seven other organisms, hundreds of pounds of tissue and bone, breathing, pumping blood, burning calories, processing nutrients, filtering out contaminants and toxins, transmitting neural impulses, seven warm grisly unpleasant animals rooting about, for pay, in the entirely public cavity he used to think of as his soul.