The Losers (37 page)

“That’s what I wanted to
tell
you, but you wouldn’t answer your goddamn telephone! It’s too late now. If you don’t show up at this stage, they’ll put out a bench warrant for you. Just go in there, keep a smile on your face, and keep your big mouth shut.” She glared up at him, her lower lip very active. “At least I was able to cover your ass a little bit.” “What?”

“I purged your file. There aren’t any reports in it but mine.” “Why?” That really baffled him.

“Because you were playing games when you first got here. What the hell were you doing with all those empty bottles? You’re listed as an alcoholic, did you know that?”

“I’m
what?”

“There was a report in your file. It said that there were wine bottles all over that pigeon coop you live in. What were you thinking of?”

He laughed ruefully. “I was trying to be cute, I guess. They gave me a caseworker I didn’t like. I thought I’d give her something to worry about.”

“Dumb! How can you
be
so goddamn dumb? Don’t you know that when you talk to one of us, you’re talking to
all
of us? That’s what those files are
for,
dummy. You owe me at least one roll in the hay, Raphael Taylor, because
I’m
the one who punched the erase button and covered your ass. And I did it with
this
finger.” The finger she held up was
not
her index finger.

He grinned at her. “You’re a buddy, Frankie.” He was genuinely grateful.

“They don’t have a single goddamn thing on you,” she continued. “I even cleaned up some of my own reports. There’s nothing in your file that says that you can’t walk on water or raise the dead. What are you going to say in there?”

“I’m going to tell them the truth.”

She said a dirty word in Italian. “They’ll eat you alive if you do that, Raphael. Just let it slide. Nobody gives a damn about the truth.”

“I do.”

“That’s because you’re a weirdo. Just say what they want you to say and get out of there before they get their hooks into you. Your friend is dead. Nothing can hurt him now.” “I want to set the record straight.”

“The record’s
never
straight, you idiot! Haven’t you ever read
1984?
They rewrite the record anytime it doesn’t suit them. You’re spinning your wheels and exposing your bare fanny for nothing.” She looked up at him and then threw her hands in the air. “All right. Do it your way—you will anyway—but
please
be careful. Now come here.” She grasped the front of his jacket and pulled him slightly off balance. Then she kissed him very savagely.

“Mar-rone!” she breathed. “Why do you have to be—” She stepped back and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve wanted to do that since the moment I laid eyes on you. You’re lucky you’re out of action, Raphael Taylor. I’d have destroyed you. I’d have devoured you. If you’ve never had an Italian girl jump your bones, you don’t know what you’ve missed.”

“I love you, too, Frankie.” He really meant it.

“I’m not talking about love, Taylor. That might have come later, but there would have been much, much more important things to take care of first. Be careful in there, my Angel. Be very, very careful.” She wiped her eyes again. “Now get out of here.”

He smiled at her fondly and half turned.

“Raphael?” She said it in an almost little-girl voice.

“Yes?”

“I love you, too, dammit.”

The assistant prosecutor was the young man who had been sitting in Flood’s hospital room the day he had died, and he was waiting nervously near the elevators when Raphael came up.

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you all week, Mr. Taylor,” he said, coming up to Raphael. “I wanted to go over your testimony with you.”

Raphael immediately disliked the man. “Why?” “No lawyer likes surprises in the courtroom.” “Life is full of surprises. Is this likely to take long? I have a lot of things to do today.”

The prosecutor looked at him, a bit startled by his tone. “I’ll speak with the judge. I think he’ll agree to letting you testify first—because of your disability. To be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Taylor, I didn’t really understand what you and Flood were talking about the night he died. Are you going to be getting into that? I mean, is it relevant?”

Raphael drew in a deep breath. There wasn’t really any way to avoid it. It all had to come out. “Ask me the kind of questions that’ll give me some leeway, okay? It’s sort of long and complicated, but I don’t think anybody’s really going to understand what Flood was doing unless I tell the whole story.”

“I could have the judge delay the proceedings to give us time to go over it if you’d like.”

Raphael shook his head. “I don’t have more than one recitation of this in me. It’s going to be hard enough to say it once. Shall we get on with it?”

They went into the courtroom.

In due time the judge, a balding man with thick glasses and a slightly wrinkled robe, marched in while everyone stood, and the hearing began.

The preliminaries dragged on for a half hour or so with the nervous young prosecutor and an equally nervous young woman from the public defender’s office both behaving with an exaggerated formality that spoke volumes about their amount of experience.

Raphael glanced idly over at Heck’s Angels. Big Heintz was there with one side of his face bandaged. Jimmy’s nose was broken, and both of his eyes were swollen nearly shut. Marvin’s arm was in a cast, and Little Hider was holding a pair of crutches. There were a dozen or so others—strangers—with various bruises and bandages.

Since some of the defendants were quite young, there was a great deal of polite bickering between the two lawyers about whether or not the juveniles should be separated from the adults. Two hard-eyed young women in professional-looking suits sat protectively near the younger members of the gang, furiously scribbling notes and passing them across the railing to the defense counsel. These were the two Frankie had warned him about.

The judge finally ruled that the problem of jurisdiction could be sorted out later, since this was simply a preliminary hearing. The young woman from the public defender’s office hotly took exception, which the judge wearily noted.

“All right then,” the judge said finally, “I guess you may proceed, Mr. Wilson.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” the prosecutor said. “This is one of three hearings to be held in this matter. At the request of the police department and in the interests of maintaining order, it was deemed wise to keep the members of the three gangs strictly segregated.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” the defense counsel said, leaping to her feet. “The word ‘gangs’ is pejorative.”

“Sustained,” the judge decided. “Select another word, Mr. Wilson.”

“Would counsel accept ‘groups’?” the prosecutor asked. “ ‘Groups’ is all right,” she replied.

The prosecutor turned back to the judge. “If it please the court, I have one witness who is severely disabled. His testimony may be out of sequence, but he has asked that he be allowed to testify early in the proceedings since he experiences a great deal of discomfort when required to sit for extended periods.”

“Of course, Mr. Wilson.”

The prosecutor called Raphael’s name, and Raphael rose, went to the witness stand, and sat. He drew in a deep breath and pulled an icy, detached calm about himself. Frankie’s warnings were very much on his mind, and he knew that he could not allow anything to rattle him. He was sworn in, and then they began.

“Mr. Taylor,” the prosecutor said, “are you acquainted with this group of young men?” He indicated the assembled Angels.

“I’ve met some of them—briefly. They live a few doors up the street from me.”

“But you were, I take it, much better acquainted with a Mr. Jacob D. Flood, Junior—now deceased.”

“Yes.”

“Would you please elaborate on that acquaintance?”

“We were roommates at college,” Raphael replied. “He came to Spokane last spring when he found out that I was here.” “You were friends then?” “I thought so.” “Mr. Flood was educated?” “Yes.”

“He came from a wealthy family?” “Yes.”

“Did he ever explain to you the nature of his association with the group of individuals here in this courtroom? I mean, they do not appear to be the sort of people with whom someone of education and wealth would normally associate.”

“They amused him. He had other reasons, but basically it was because they amused him.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” the defense attorney said, coming to her feet. “Purely speculative.”

“I think we can allow a certain latitude, Miss Berensen,” the judge told her patiently. “These proceedings are preliminary after all, and whether or not Mr. Hood was amused by the defendants hardly seems to be a major issue.”

“Your Honor!” she protested.

“Overruled, Miss Berensen.” The judge sighed.

Quite suddenly, perhaps because of the hard chair or his nervousness or the aggravation of the defense attorney’s objection, Raphael’s left thigh and leg and foot began to ache intolerably. He grimaced and shifted his position.

“Are you in pain, Mr. Taylor?” the judge asked, a note of concern in his voice.

“No more than usual, sir.”

The judge frowned slightly and looked down at his notes for a moment. “Mr. Wilson,” he said, looking up, “what is the proposed thrust of your examination of Mr. Taylor?”

“Uh”—the prosecutor faltered—“background, primarily, Your Honor. Mr. Taylor appears to be the only person in Spokane who really knew Mr. Flood, and since Mr. Flood and his role in this matter are likely to play a major part in any trials resulting from these proceedings, I felt that Mr. Taylor’s testimony would help us all to understand that rather strange young man.”

“Then Mr. Taylor is here not so much as a witness for the prosecution as he is in the capacity of a friend of the court?”

“Uh—I suppose that’s true, Your Honor.”

“Miss Berensen.” The judge turned to the defense. “Would
you
take exception to designating Mr. Taylor a friend of the court?”

“Most strenuously, Your Honor. The man Flood was the instigator of this whole affair. The defense could never accept testimony from his close friend with an
amicus curiae
label attached to it.”

“Your exception will be noted, Miss Berensen. It does not become any of us, however, to inflict needless suffering upon the witness. What I propose is to permit Mr. Taylor to present narrative testimony concerning the man Flood—his background and so forth—in order to allow the testimony to be completed as quickly as possible. Would you accept narrative testimony from the witness based upon
humanitarian
considerations, Miss Berensen?”

The defense attorney seemed about to protest further, but thought better of it. “Very well, Your Honor.” She was almost sullen about it.

Behind her the two young women scribbled furiously.

“All right then, Mr. Taylor,” the judge said, “why don’t you just give us a brief outline of Mr. Flood’s background—insofar as you know it?”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Raphael thought for a moment, looking at the patch of golden morning sunlight slanting in through the window at the back of the courtroom, and then he started. “Damon Flood’s dead now, so nothing I can say will matter to him. It’s taken me a long time to piece his story together, so I hope you’ll be patient with me. Flood himself isn’t on trial, but his motives in this business may be important.” He looked inquiringly at the judge, silently seeking permission to continue.

“I think we can all accept that, Mr. Taylor. Please go on.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Jacob Damon Flood, Junior, was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. His family is well-to-do. Mr. Flood’s mother died when he was four, and his father was totally immersed in the family business. Flood was not particularly lovable as a child, and he was in continual competition with a cousin who appears to have been everyone’s favorite—even his own father’s. I suppose it finally came to a head during one of those confrontations between Flood and his cousin. Whatever the reason, they fought, and Flood received a very public and humiliating beating while his own father looked on approvingly. As closely as I can reconstruct it, that was the point where something slipped or went off center. He knew who he was. He knew that it was
his
father
who was the head of the company that was the source of all the family wealth. I guess that all his relatives kowtowed to his father, and he expected the same kind of respect. When
he
didn’t get it, it unsettled him. He became obsessed with the idea of getting revenge—on the cousin certainly and probably on his own
father
as well. Of course a child can’t attack an adult—or a physically superior child—directly, so Flood transferred his rage and hatred to others—to people who resembled the cousin and whose destruction or disgrace would most severely hurt some older authority figure, who represented his father, I suppose. Does that make any sense at all? I’ve thought about it for a long time, and it’s the only explanation I can come up with.”

“It’s not inconsistent with things we encounter occasionally, Mr. Taylor,” the judge said approvingly. “Please continue.”

Raphael took a deep breath and looked down into the courtroom. The two young women Frankie had warned him about had stopped writing and were staring at him with open hostility. “In time Flood was sent to a number of those exclusive and very expensive private boarding schools in the east where the wealthy dump their children. He developed a game—a very personal and vicious kind of game. He made a point of seeking out boys who resembled his cousin. He would befriend them—and then he would destroy them. Sometimes he planted evidence of crimes or expellable violations of the rules among their belongings—those were his earliest and crudest efforts. Later he grew more sophisticated, and his plots— if that’s not too melodramatic a term—grew more complicated. I’m told that this happened several times in various prep schools and during his first two yean at college. It was at that point that I met him. We both transferred to Reed College in Portland from other schools, and we roomed together there. I’ve been told that I closely resemble Flood’s cousin, so I suppose his reaction to me was inevitable.”