Client Privilege (17 page)

None of those things was necessarily true, I knew, and I supposed they knew that I knew it. Nevertheless, Woodruff’s presence symbolized the fact that I had graduated from witness to suspect.

Woodruff, in other words, would serve as the cops’ attorney.

I held my hand out to Woodruff. He frowned at it for an instant, then gripped it quickly.

“Now, then,” said Sylvestro. He glanced at Finnigan, who nodded, opened up his briefcase, and produced a little Sony tape recorder. He placed it on the table between us and pressed a button. A tiny red light went on.

“Testing this thing,” said Finnigan into the tiny micro phone. “One, two, three.” He turned it off, rewound it, and played it back. It sounded okay. He looked at Sylvestro and nodded.

“We’d like to record this, Mr. Coyne, if you don’t mind,” said Sylvestro.

“For my own protection,” I said.

He smiled. “Sure. Right.”

I shrugged. “I guess it’s all right.”

“Good. Appreciate it.”

Finnigan flicked on the recorder. Sylvestro cleared his throat. “February the ninth, ah, nine-forty
A.M.
In the office of Brady L. Coyne.” He peered up at me. “Mr. Coyne, before we ask you any questions, you should understand your rights.”

“I’m not sure how far I’m willing to go with this,” I said. “I do understand my rights.”

“You have the right to remain silent.”

“Yes. Right.”

“Anything you say can be used against you in court.”

“I know that.”

“You have the right to have a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions and to have him with you during questioning.”

I nodded.

“Please reply verbally,” said Sylvestro, nodding his chin at the recorder.

“I understand,” I said.

Sylvestro smiled at me. “If you cannot afford a lawyer,” he recited, “one will be appointed for you before any questioning, if you wish.”

“Oh, I can afford one. I
am
one.”

“If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you will still have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to a lawyer.”

“I very likely will take you up on that one.”

“Do you understand what I have read to you?” said Sylvestro.

“Actually, you didn’t read it. You recited it. You did a good job. And I understand perfectly.”

Sylvestro smiled. “Thanks. Sorry about doing that. So are you willing to talk about this case?”

“You mean the Churchill case, I assume.”

“Yes.”

I shrugged and lit a cigarette. I should call Zerk, I thought. He’d ream me out if I talked to these cops without him. On the other hand, I had nothing to hide, and, after all, I
was
a lawyer. I thought I could handle it.

“Mr. Coyne?”

I nodded.

“Verbally, please.”

“I’m willing to talk,” I said after a minute. “I may take you up on stopping, though.”

Sylvestro smiled. “Good. Thanks.” He glanced at Woodruff, who was staring at the red eye of the tape recorder. Then he looked at Finnigan. Finnigan nodded his head once. Sylvestro turned to me.

“Okay, Mr. Coyne. Would you please repeat for us everything you did last Monday evening, beginning with the time you entered Skeeter’s Infield.”

“I want to ask you something, first,” I said. “For the benefit of your tape recorder.”

Sylvestro shrugged. “What?”

“Two reporters have called me. They indicated they knew I was involved in this thing.” I frowned at him.

“Your question is…?”

“How’d they hear that?”

“Not from me.” Sylvestro turned to Finnigan, who arched his eyebrows and shrugged.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t appreciate it.”

“We have told the media nothing except that we’re working our asses off on this case, pursuing leads, loads of possibilities, blah, blah. It’s hard to keep secrets, Mr. Coyne. Everybody wants a piece of this case. That’s why we’re here.”

“Media pressure,” I said.

He shrugged. “We’d be here anyway.”

“Can we…?” said Finnigan.

Sylvestro nodded. “Okay, Mr. Coyne. Would you mind telling us again about the night of the murder, now?”

“Sure,” I said. And I did, telling it the same way I had the previous two times, but keeping the times straight. They didn’t interrupt me. “And then I went to bed,” I concluded.

“Why’d you say you were meeting Churchill?” said Finnigan.

“I didn’t say. As you know.”

“You’re refusing to answer.”

“Clever deduction.”

“You citing the Fifth?”

“No. I don’t happen to be concerned with self-incrimination right now.”

“Incriminating somebody else,” he said, leaning toward me.

“What’s your next question?”

“Are you gonna be uncooperative here, Mr. Coyne?” said Finnigan.

“I am trying to cooperate as much as I can.”

Woodruff was staring at me. I couldn’t read his expression.

“Okay, then,” said Finnigan. “So what was it you said you and Churchill argued about?”

“I didn’t say that, either. I didn’t even say we’d argued. We’ve already been over that.”

“Protecting a client,” said Finnigan.

“Protecting a client’s confidentiality, which is his privilege when he retains a lawyer. It means something a little different.”

Finnigan shrugged. “And how did you get from Skeeter’s to Churchill’s place on Beacon Street?”

“I didn’t go there. I told you that. I went home.”

“Did Churchill let you in?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Did you go with him, or did you follow him?”

I sighed. “I didn’t go there.”

Woodruff’s eyes darted back and forth from Finnigan to me during this exchange. Sylvestro was leaning back, staring beyond us to the window. I sensed he was listening carefully.

“Where do you keep your thirty-two, Mr. Coyne?” said Finnigan.

“I don’t have a thirty-two. I do have a thirty-eight, which you have seen. I keep it in my safe.”

“Why did you pick Skeeter’s for your meeting?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Who are you protecting?”

I shook my head. “This is getting nowhere, and I’m getting a little pissed. If you had something, you’d arrest me. So why don’t you go get something, if you think you can, before you come in again to interrupt my work? I don’t think I want to answer any more questions. If you keep insisting on asking them, I’m going to call my lawyer. It’ll take him a while to get here.”

“Mr. Coyne,” said Finnigan, leaning toward me, “can we look through your files?”

“Are you kidding? Of course you can’t.”

Finnigan glanced at Woodruff. “I guess we’ll have to get a warrant.”

I took my wallet from my hip pocket and extracted a hundred dollar bill. I laid it on the coffee table. “That says I know you can’t get one. You guys want to cover it?”

None of them did. I left the bill on the table.

Sylvestro scratched the top of his scalp and leaned toward me, an apologetic smile on his face. “You’ve been very patient, Mr. Coyne.”

I nodded. “It hasn’t been easy.”

“I hope you understand…”

I waved my hand. “Sure. You’ve gotta do your job.”

He shrugged. “I want to ask you something else. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“I think we’ve pretty well established that already.”

“Right. Okay. Now, what the papers haven’t printed is this. See, Churchill was known to fool around with cocaine.” He cocked his eyebrows at me.

I nodded and said nothing.

“That mean anything to you, Mr. Coyne?”

“No.”

“You already knew that?”

“How would I know that?”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not, particularly. What I hear, lots of people fool around with cocaine. I’ve heard that cops fool around with cocaine.”

He smiled. “What about Churchill?”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“Not even where he got his dope?”

“For the benefit of your machine, and for your record, no, I don’t know where Wayne Churchill got his dope.” I took a deep breath. “Look,” I said. “Something’s bothering me.”

The three of them inched forward.

“Churchill was killed a week ago tonight, right?”

They nodded, almost in unison.

“And for a week you guys have made no progress on this case. Hounding me, whether you know it or not, is not progress. You think you got yourselves a suspect, I surmise. So you think you’ve done your job. But, see, I didn’t kill the man. That means someone else did. And now a week has passed. Your killer could be in Hong Kong by now.”

“That bothers you,” said Finnigan.

“I should think it’d bother you.”

“Don’t underestimate us.”

“I must say, it’s hard not to.”

“If you can help?” said Sylvestro.

It was delicate. I knew that Churchill had seduced Suzie Billings, the secretary in the Clerk Magistrate’s office, into giving him a photocopy of the old application-for-complaint form that Karen Lavoie had filled in, the form that named Chester Y. Popowski as the respondent in an assault-with-intent complaint. The form also indicated that Karen had subsequently withdrawn the complaint, and no process had issued. If the cops had found that form, surely they would have had the sense to question Pops. Surely, then, they would see that Pops, not I, had a motive for murder. The motive was linked to an old relationship from the days when Pops was an ADA and Karen a clerk in the East Cambridge courthouse.

Surely…

Except Pops was a powerful judge. Power translated into influence. Old favors can be reciprocated on demand. Potential evidence can be mislaid. A discreet suggestion, the mention of a name, and Brady Coyne becomes a suspect.

I began to see the picture more clearly. I was all they had. Maybe they knew they’d get nowhere with me. If so, we were all playing out a charade and when the hubbub died down, when Channel 8 had milked the story dry, Churchill’s death would remain unsolved, like most murders in Boston. Eventually they’d leave me alone.

Or maybe they really thought I did it. Maybe they thought that I sold cocaine to Churchill, or bought it from him. Maybe Pops had found a way to point a finger at me. My rational self doubted they’d ever arrest me, or if they did, that they’d ever get past a grand jury with probable cause. But the part of me that secreted acids into my stomach feared it, all the same.

And whether they arrested me or not, Chester Y. Popowski was free and clear and off on his new career as federal judge.

It pissed me off. And I didn’t know what to do about it.

I wished there were a way of learning what had happened to that photocopy of Karen Lavoie’s application for complaint. It seemed to be the only concrete link in this case.

“Mr. Coyne?” said Sylvestro.

“Nothing,” I said. “I was just sitting here marveling at your collective incompetence. But you’ve probably done that yourselves.”

Sylvestro smiled tolerantly. Finnigan’s smile conveyed something else. Woodruff studied the tape recorder.

“Anyway,” I said, “this being the end of this interrogation, I have work to do.”

“I still got a question,” said Finnigan.

I looked at him and shook my head.

“Who are you protecting?”

“Mr. Finnigan,” I said, “you are a slow learner.”

“Fuck it,” said Finnigan. He reached forward and turned off the recorder. “Let’s get out of here.”

Less than an hour after the three lawmen left my office, Julie buzzed me. When I answered the phone, she said, “Your friend, that Suzie, is on line one.”

I didn’t bother correcting her. Technically, Suzie was my client. But I hadn’t let Julie in on that yet. So I said, “Thanks,” and stabbed the blinking button on the console.

“Hello, Suzie,” I said.

“Oh, Jesus, Mr. Coyne.” Her voice was soft, but I detected the sharp edge of hysteria in it.

“What’s the matter, Suzie? What’s happened?”

“The—there were some policemen. They came to my apartment yesterday.”

“They found the photocopy?”

She sniffed and cleared her throat. “God. I can’t seem to get control here. I’m sorry. No. I mean, I don’t know. They didn’t say anything about that photocopy. But they were asking me all kinds of things about Wayne.”

“What kinds of things?”

“About our—you know, our relationship. Did I know he had other girlfriends, was I jealous, what I was doing the night he got killed—”

“Did they read you your rights?”

She hesitated. “No. Is that bad?”

“No. It’s good. It means you’re probably not a suspect.”

“But they seemed to know a lot, Mr. Coyne. That I had a key to his condo. That we—we slept together. They asked about coke.”

“What about it?”

“Did I know Wayne did coke.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“I said I knew that.”

“Did they ask if you did?”

“No. But they asked if I knew where he got it. The same question you asked me. I told them no.” She sighed deeply. “I’m kinda scared. I mean, I already was scared. But this is different. I mean, now I’m
really
scared.”

“Okay,” I said. “Take it easy.” I started to tell her that if the police came by again, she should call me and I would join her. Then I thought how that would look to Sylvestro and Finnigan if I, of all people, were her lawyer.

It would look damned suspicious, is how it would look.

“Suzie,” I said, “I’m going to give you the number of an excellent lawyer. A better lawyer than me at this sort of thing. Call him, tell him I told you to retain him. Tell him everything you’ve told me, and anything else you can think of about Churchill. He will advise you to say nothing more to the police unless he’s with you. Do as he advises.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know, Mr. Coyne. It was hard enough telling all this to you. I don’t know how I’ll feel about going through it all over again.”

“Trust me, Suzie,” I said. “Do it this way.” I gave her Zerk’s name and phone number and made her repeat them to me. “Promise me, now.”

“Okay. I promise.” Her voice was small but controlled.

“Good.”

“Something funny,” she said.

“What’s funny?”

“Those policemen. They asked me about Rodney Dennis.”