The Judgment (40 page)

And with that—no good-bye or see-you-later—he hung up on me. This was better than I’d hoped for, or so it seemed. Ismail Carter was apparently more than willing to talk with me on the Conroy matter: He was eager. He must have called just as soon as he heard from Tolliver that I was trying to contact him. And while I’d rather see him earlier than Saturday, I had to respect the limits he put on his strength. I realized that he must be a pretty sick man.

By the time the next morning came, my attitude on the Conroy matter had improved considerably. I’d allowed myself to sink into pessimism, which is surely the unpardonable sin for any defense attorney. To carry him through a trial, a lawyer needed inexhaustible reservoirs of optimism. A client’s innocence was beside the point; it: was such an elusive ideal that it could only be considered
in the abstract. No, what a lawyer had to believe in was the cause of his client—that justice could best be served only by finding in his favor. Perhaps most of all, a lawyer had to believe in himself and his ability to sway the jury in the direction he desired. For all that, he needed the kind of optimism that would fuel him right through his final argument.

I’d lost that. Or perhaps better put, I’d been unable to generate it. Things just seemed to have gone from bad to worse. The more I came to back Conroy’s cause, the less I felt I could do to make it prevail. I had, in short, become pessimistic about his chances in front of any judge or jury. That, I think, was why I allowed him to go out on that fool’s errand with Tolliver. I must have been desperate myself, or I would never have accompanied him.

But now I suddenly felt different about it all. Was it simply because of the contact I’d made with Ismail Carter? Surely not. I didn’t know how he could help me, and perhaps he didn’t either, nor could I be certain that between us, we would think of something. Why, I couldn’t even be certain that he would want to help Conroy, though he had given some indication that he did when we talked on the telephone. Still, I felt strangely lifted by the encounter. For no good reason I felt a sudden rush of optimism.

That enabled me to do a bit of constructive work on the case. I had listened a number of times to the interview I had tape-recorded with Mary Margaret Tucker. Well, I listened to it a couple of times more. Then I thought about what I heard from Conroy about the safe and its positioning in his office, and then I thought about the Mouse, as well. And in no time at all, I had postulated a theory of the crime.

In a criminal case, the lawyer for each side, prosecution and defense, has a theory of the crime that he must try to sell to the jury. What have you got? A murder? A theft? The fact of a corpse or missing money is undeniable. But how the corpse got dead or the money went missing is, to some extent, a matter of theory and sometimes even conjecture.
The prosecution’s theory of the crime has been, for the most part, determined by the police investigation that preceded it. The prosecution must try the case on what they’ve been given, but the defense, in offering its theory of the crime, has far more latitude—and that’s where conjecture often comes in. I have taken juries on some pretty wild journeys into what-if land. Yet they must have liked what I showed them, for more often than not, they accepted my theory and rejected that put forward by the prosecution.

In the case at hand, however, no great leaps were necessary, nor suspension of disbelief. It was simply a basic knowledge of office customs and folkways that was required, and almost any member of any jury had that, certainly.

This is how I had it figured:

Mark Conroy had made it clear that even though Mary Margaret Tucker was not officially in possession of the combination to the safe that contained the W-91 Fund, it was certain from her remarks that she had easy access to the combination and may well have had it memorized. She had the requisite knowledge.

She broke with Conroy in the third week of September, and left her employment as his secretary at 1300 Beaubien during the first week in October, so that she might begin classes at Wayne State.

On her last day of employment, she would almost certainly have been taken to lunch by her office mates and presented with a gift, probably one in a good-sized box. I would check on this.

Winding up office matters with Conroy in absentia would have meant writing notes, pulling files, and leaving them on his desk. All this and other matters as well would have meant making frequent trips in and out of his office. No one would have expected otherwise.

On one of these trips to Conroy’s office, Ms. Tucker took with her the gift box, or perhaps just another large box with which she would have been expected to take
home with her anything of a personal nature—pictures, letters, notes, everything that would have carried her imprint. She would then have opened the safe and emptied it, putting its contents in either the gift box, providing it was large enough, or the one intended for her personal effects.

Either box would have served just as well in getting the money out past the guard in the lobby. He would have been as uninterested in the contents of one box as the other. Giving her a wave, he would have wished her good luck and urged her to come back and visit them sometime soon.

What she would have done with the money after leaving the building, I couldn’t say. I don’t think she kept it. Although she was probably following Timmerman’s orders, she couldn’t have handed the prize over to him, for as late as my meeting with her at Wayne State, she still did not know what he looked like. That, I decided, was a loose end. I would have to work on that, as well as the extent and nature of the Mouse’s participation in the master plan. It was he, over a week later, who discovered the theft.

You may not believe it, since all this may seem fairly obvious to you, but working my way through this bit by supportable bit took me the better part of the day. Yet what I had by the time I finished was considerable. I knew that even though there were holes to be filled and details to discover, my theory of the theft was reasonable and sound. I stood a good chance of selling it to a jury, almost any jury, and I could shape my whole defense to it.

I called up Mark Conroy and asked him to come out the next day. I told him I had something to talk about that couldn’t be discussed on the phone.

“Be at my office tomorrow morning by ten o’clock at the latest,” I said. “Be prepared to stay through lunch and afterward, if need be. We’ve got a lot to talk about and some decisions to make.”

Then, without waiting for him to agree, object, or otherwise extend the conversation, I hung up on him. That
made me feel good. He hadn’t, after all, been the most cooperative of clients. Let him feel a little of the frustration I had felt in dealing with him.

It didn’t take me long to decide that I was probably being a little too tough on him. After all, if I’d been infected by the virus of pessimism myself and only a day ago had managed to shake it off, Mark Conroy must be suffering a severe attack right now. And why not? He knew as well as I that as far as I was concerned, if I lost the case, I simply lost the case—he, on the other hand, would go to jail.

Then, near the end of the day, I got a telephone call that in a way surprised me even more profoundly than my talk with Conroy.

“It’s that man, Tolliver,” Mrs. Fenton called in to me. “He’s been trying to reach you.”

“Put him through, Mrs. Fenton.”

I picked up the phone on my desk, and there he was.

“Ah, Mr. Sloan!”

“Charley, please!”

“Okay then, Mr. Charley. I just called to tell you that I’m still workin’ real hard to find out where Ismail Carter might be.”

I didn’t know quite what to say to that. Hadn’t it been through LeMoyne Tolliver that Ismail had reached me yesterday? I started to tell him that all that had been taken care of: Ismail and I were in contact, and a meeting had been arranged.

But for some reason, I withheld that. I said simply that I appreciated his efforts on my behalf, more than appreciated them, for though I hoped to talk to him soon, I could wait for a while because the important thing was to come at Carter from the right direction.

“Oh, I agree,” said Tolliver. “I agree, totally.”

“Yeah, I thought you would. Didn’t you say that Ismail Carter got you your job as a policeman?”

“He did, he sure did,”

“Then you’re the one to approach him.”

“Right. I’ll do what I can.”

He said his good-bye then and left me wondering at these circumstances and my reaction to them. Why had I held back? Mark Conroy said he trusted LeMoyne Tolliver and had certainly shown his trust. Shouldn’t I trust him, too? But what was his point in calling me if he had nothing to report?

One thing was plain. Ismail Carter was far more interested in talking to me than I had realized. He had sought me out just as I was seeking him. That meant he was willing to do more than listen. He really must have something to say.

It was well before ten when Mark Conroy arrived at my office the next morning. I hadn’t been there long myself. The phone rang.

“This is Sloan,” I growled into the receiver. “Are you just leaving?”

“No, I’ve arrived. I’m downstairs in the car right now. Why don’t you come down?”

“You still don’t trust my office—even after you had it swept clean?”

Well, why not? I wasn’t entirely comfortable myself talking to Conroy there in the office. And it was too damned cold that morning to take another walk.

“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” I said to him. “I have to do some organizing first.”

It took me no more than five minutes—a phone call or two, a hurried conference with Mrs. Fenton—and I was downstairs, climbing into the passenger’s seat beside Conroy. He simply nodded and twisted the key in the starter. I assume the engine started, for a moment later we were in motion—yet I heard nothing.

We were out on 1-94 before he said a word. He surprised me by turning in the direction of Port Huron, instead of Detroit. Our last, long conversation had taken rather a philosophical turn. He had revealed a good deal
more of his personal history than I had ever expected him to do. Perhaps he had it in mind to take me on a nostalgic tour of the town where he’d grown up. Well, if that was what I expected, I got a bit of a start when at last he did speak up.

“I’m going to miss this car,” he said. “You can drive all day in it and never notice.”

At first I didn’t grasp what he was getting at. “Are you going to sell it? Better wait until you get my bill.”

“No reason to keep it. By the time I get out of Jackson, it’ll be an antique. They probably won’t even let gas-burning cars on the road in twenty-five years.”

It was his relaxed manner that had confused me, a cop’s stoicism. It disguised more of that defeatist talk I’d heard from him yesterday.

“You really seem to have made up your mind to lose this one,” I said to him.

“It’s not tip to me, is it?”

“I told you I have no intention of losing, but I can’t win it if you don’t want mé to. Look, Conroy, I’ve never had a client just quit on me. I’ve lost some, I admit it, but it wasn’t because I didn’t try, and it wasn’t because the client was indifferent.”

“I’m not indifferent.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I just think they’ve got us—I mean, you and me—in a bind, a place that’s just too damned hard to get out of. You saw what happened Saturday night. I’ve run out of options.”

“Well, I haven’t,” I said a bit immodestly. “Now listen to me,”

And so he listened as I narrated the scenario I had devised the day before. I was mildly surprised when, at the interchange, he took Interstate
69
toward Flint; we went: cruising at about seventy, voyaging. It had been some time since I had been out in this direction, and I found myself looking once again at the passing, snow-dusted countryside as I talked to Conroy. Just look at it out there—fields
plowed under, and stands, clumps, clusters, and whole orchards of trees, trees of all kinds. Even as I talked, it occurred to me that in spite of Henry Ford and Lee Iacocca, and all the rest of those giants of industry, this state of Michigan was, in its great expanses, long acres, and country miles, dedicated to agriculture, or to just plain wild growth. The assembly plants and parts warehouses would never win, not completely.

It was a good day to go for a long drive like this one. The sun still slanted at the morning angle. The flocks of geese flew high above, south from Canada. I found myself pausing a few times in the course of the story I told to look up at the sky and out at the flat landscape of late fall.

Mark Conroy did his part. He listened. It’s funny but sometimes, out there on the highway with your eyes fixed on the road ahead, you can put forth a keener sense of concentration than in a more conventional setting. I don’t think he looked at me once as I told this tale, which was about equal wild hypothesis and educated supposition. Yet he took it all in, examined its implications, and tested it with his developed instincts for discerning a story that sounds right and real.

When I finished, he said nothing for a mile or so—not much time by the clock at the rate we were traveling—and seemed to be savoring the story, tasting it, trying it.

“I think it works,” he said, still staring at the road ahead.

“There may be some holes in it, but—”

“Fewer than you think,” he put in.

“Well, for instance, were you out of the office, or off the floor for any extended period on her last day there? Would she have had time enough to manage the sort of transfer we’re talking about?”

“Would she?” He chuckled. “Sloan, I made it a point to be away the whole day she left. I didn’t want any contact at all with her. It seemed best for both of us that way. I was naive enough to think she might be throwing me
soulful looks.” Then he turned to me. “I’ll tell you something else. Mary Margaret had a key to my office. She used it. People were used to seeing her go in and out. She had a daylong opportunity.”

“What about a farewell party—a lunch?”

“There was one for her. They took her to Greektown. I heard all about it from the Mouse the next day.”