The Judge (21 page)

"Not if I see you first," says Leo. He's into the shadows of the parking garage, and three seconds later I can hear only the click of his heels on concrete as he disappears around a corner.

I head out into the sunlight and make my way across the intersection with the traffic light, all the while keeping a bead on the tall man in tan pants and white shirt. He is slender, well over six feet, with dark brown hair.

He's seated on a bench under a large elm a hundred feet from the fountain in the center of the park. The sun picks up the glint of metal in his hand as I draw near. He has a small container of yogurt, an apple, and a metal spoon in one hand. That Leo would recognize such as lunch is amazing.

"Jim Cousins." I use a normal voice, and I am ten feet from the bench when I say this.

He looks up, squinting into the sunlight, his dark glasses now dangling from his shirt pocket.

"Do I know you?"

"My name is Madriani," I tell him. I come closer. "I was given your name by a mutual acquaintance."

"Who's that?"

"A friend," I tell him.

The initial smile drops from his face. "What do you want?"

"To talk," I tell him.

I can sense him stiffening. What I myself would do if I worked for the police department and some stranger came up knowing my name.

"I'm on my lunch hour. If it's business it will have to wait." He gives me another once-over, this time with his dark glasses on.

"You look familiar," he says. "Have we met before?"

"I don't think so. I'm an attorney," I tell him. I hand him a business card.

"You're one of the lawyers representing that judge," he says. "That's right."

"I saw you on TV." The ticket of fame. Apprehension seems to melt. I'm giving out business cards, not bullets.

"You mind if I take a seat?" "Suit yourself," he says.

"I was told that you might know something about a case that occurred a couple of years ago."

"I think maybe you have me confused with somebody else," he says. "I'm not a cop."

"Right. Your name is James Cousins. You work the police property room." "You know a lot about me. Like I say, if you want to talk business, chain of custody on drugs or something, catch me in the office." He pulls a paperback book from inside his shirt, opens it, and starts to read.

"I want to talk to you about Zack Wiley's murder," I tell him. With this he looks up and shakes his head. "What is this? All of a sudden everybody and his brother wants to talk about Zack Wiley. Do I look like an information booth?"

"Is somebody else trying to talk to you?"

"Listen, I'm not saying a word. Either leave, or I will." "The grand jury?" I say.

He looks at me but doesn't say a word. From behind his dark glasses I cannot read his eyes. His face is stone. He picks up his spoon and yogurt, pockets the apple, gets up, and starts to walk away.

"We can do it here, or I can subpoena you and we can do it in open court," I tell him.

"Fine. Do it in open court," he says.

"In front of the press, where everybody you work with will know what you have to say or at least what questions I have to pose." This stops him.

He turns, looks at me.

"That assumes you know the right questions," he says. The glasses come off, a smug look.

"Oh, I think I do. The gun was a setup from the start. What did they do, set it aside in case they needed to drop a convenient piece on a suspect?" This draws nothing but pensive looks.

"When it landed in the property room they didn't fudge on the serial number. That would be too obvious," I tell him. "It must have been something else." If he could mislead me with his eyes at this moment he would, take me where it is cold, colder, coldest.

"What was it?" I ask him. I scratch my chin, turn to sun a little, gestures for effect. Suddenly I snap my fingers and look back at him.

"The model number!" With this I can actually see his jaw drop a millimeter.

"Sure. That would do it," I say.

A little saliva going down his throat.

"They must have needed some help inside the property room. An identification tag that gave the correct serial number, the right make and caliber, but forgot to include the model number. Smith and Wesson must make what, a dozen different models in that caliber?" He almost answers me, but at the last instant holds back.

The manufacturer would use the same serial numbers over for each tell Mmm different model, so there would be no way to identify a specific weapon unless you had both the serial number and the model number.

That's smart," I tell him.

He wants to talk, but he doesn't dare.

"How did they mess up?" I ask. "What tipped off the grand jury that this gun had been in the property room before it was used to kill Wiley?

"

"Listen. I can't talk," he says. "Not here. Not now."

"They don't know you testified, do they? Your friends?" Suddenly it hits me. I am talking to the grand jury's star witness, and whoever killed Wiley doesn't know it.

"Where can my process server find you?" I ask him. "In your office?" "Gimme a break," he says. "I didn't know what was happening until it was over."

"Right. You just looked the other way," I tell him. "They're satisfied. They're not after me," he says.

"Gave you immunity, did they?" He doesn't answer this. He doesn't have to. It is written in the dodging pupils of his eyes.

"How did the grand jury get onto them? How did they find you? Fingerprints? Did you leave yours on the gun when it was in Property?" "When's the last time you saw prints lifted off a handgun?" he says.

He laughs at this. "Something from the movies. All they get in real life are smudges. Everybody grips a gun too hard. The oil, the recoil. It all leads to nothing but smudges. Test ten thousand you might get a single thumbprint," he says.

"But you weren't shooting it," I tell him. "It wasn't fingerprints," he says.

"Then what?" Cousins is in a box and he knows it. "If I tell you will you forget the subpoena?" "Maybe yes, maybe no."

"Then why should I tell you?"

"Weigh a maybe against a certainty, you have your answer," I tell him. A lot of saliva going down his throat, Adam's apple bobbing in time to the tune on a boom box that some kid is packing on his shoulder near the fountain.

"How did they know the gun had been in the property room?"

"A scratch on the cylinder," he says. "And a scribe mark inside under the handle."

"What?"

"Whenever a revolver comes into Property, it's unloaded, usually in the field. For safety," he says. "Each bullet or empty cartridge is taken out and put in a separate envelope, and the cylinder is marked with a scribe, a little scratch on the metal, showing which chamber was lined up with the barrel at the time the gun was taken into custody. They also mark it inside someplace where it's not so easy to see. It's the procedure," he says. "When Forensics picked up the gun after Wiley was shot they did this. What they didn't realize is that there was already a second scribe mark on the piece," he says, "from when it was taken the first time. Somebody at Internal Affairs, a guy who used to work ballistics, got onto this." All the reasons you never want to commit crime. A million things you do not know, half of them microscopic, any one of which can trip up the most canny mind.

"Who was the triggerman?" I ask.

"Hey. I'm not saying another word. You want to subpoena me, you go ahead." My question assumes that he knows the answer, which I doubt.

"Then tell me who took the gun out of Property." "I don't know."

"Is that what you're telling the grand jury?"

"It's the truth," he says. "They just asked me to look the other way. Leave the door unlocked for a few minutes while I had coffee. I didn't even know what they took."

"Who asked you to look the other way?" A stern face, like maybe he has gone too far already, more candor than he gave the jury.

"I'm not saying another word," he says. Suddenly his gaze is lost in the distance, some floating object off in the direction of the garage. I wonder for a moment if perhaps Leo has come back for another peek, to see how long we talk. I gotta go," he says. "You've screwed up my whole lunch hour."

"Yeah. Well, somebody screwed up Zack Wiley's whole life," I tell him. "It wasn't me," he says. "And if you know what's good for you, you won't follow me." The last I see is his long stride making its way around the fountain and off toward the traffic light at the corner.

While we were talking the park has filled with people. It is twelve-thirty, and workers have made their way out of City Hall. Women with brown bags and dressy heels take a moment in the sun from their busy day. I see two judges strolling on the sidewalk across the way, their daily trek from the courthouse to restaurant row a few blocks away.

"Counselor!" It's a voice from behind me, the direction of the garage. I turn.

Staring at me with a Nicholson grin is Tony Arguillo, sporting round aviator shades over pearly white teeth, and a tan like he's just stepped off a Caribbean beach.

"You do get around," he says. "Tony. How are you?"

"Oh, I'm fine," he says. "Just fine. More than I could say for some people I know." He looks off in another direction for an instant, and I track on his line of sight. Cousins is making his way up the steps of the center, back to his office.

Tony's looking back at me. He does the thing that little kids do to the tune of shame-shame, one finger pointed at me, with the first finger of the other hand scraping over its top. He is backing up away from me all the while as he does this, in the direction of mcgowen Center.

"Dangerous liaisons," he says. "You should watch yourself." With this he spins on his heels like something choreographed in a dance step, snaps the fingers of both hands down to his side, and walks away.

WITNESS LISTS HAVE NOW BEEN EXCHANGED, AND the name Oscar Nichols does not appear on theirs. Harry admits that E Lenore was right not to kick this particular sleeping dog. For the m moment, at least, he and Lenore seem to have put aside their differences.

In the grind of final preparations for trial, they are both too busy and tired to fight.

It is midmorning and ten days have passed since the unpleasantness with Tony in the park. Arguillo is the original cop-child, what you would get if you issued guns and badges to kids in the fifth grade. Perhaps one day he will grow up, but with Tony I do not see it happening in this life.

"Well, do we have a consensus?" Lenore whispers, leaning over the counsel table. "What do we do with Mrs. Ramirez? Is she on or off? Or do you want to do more voir dire?" Today we are ensnared in the next course of the Coconut's juridical minefield. The four of us. Harry and Lenore, Acosta and I, are camped at the defense counsel table in Radovich's courtroom, delving through a pile of jury profiles.

We did some legal parrying last week, motions to suppress, arguing that the cops had exceeded the scope of the warrants when they collected the fibers from Acosta's county car and the animal hair from his home. Radovich gave them wide berth. With this judge, if we are to win at trial, it will not be grounded in the nuance of constitutional law.

He gave our motion the old smell test, and flatly pronounced that the warrants were specific enough. The hair and fibers are in, subject to the state showing relevance and proper foundation.

Kline seemed vindicated. First blood for his side. On a roll, he told the judge that he wanted to join the prostitution case with the murder.

We were hard pressed to resist this, having argued for it originally ourselves, and so the matters are now joined, to be tried in one case.

It seems that he is headed somewhere with this, but we are not sure where. Kline then told Radovich that he had one other matter to be discussed in chambers when we are finished here today.

"The judge is waiting," says Lenore. "Mrs. Ramirez," she reminds us. "Thumbs up or down. Do we burn a preemptory or leave her on?" "Maybe the state will waste her," says Harry. "Mediterranean flavor,"

he says, "they can't be too happy."

"What's that supposed to mean?" says Acosta. Harry's getting the evil eye.