False Witness (23 page)

“I was
wondering
about a few things in this case, Lynne. Now, it makes a little more sense.”

“What?”

“Why we aren’t out looking for other possibles. Why we are moving in one tight little circle: prove David Cohen did it.”

“Bobby, for God’s sake, Sanderalee Dawson has fingered him. The
victim
has pointed right into his face and ... ah, the hell, Bobby. That’s it. That’s all. You don’t like the way I’m handling this case, tell you what. You take off in any direction you want. Play devil’s advocate. That’ll strengthen my case. You raise the questions and I’ll find the answers. Fair enough?”

He stood absolutely still and said quietly, “Lynne, do you
really
believe David Cohen did it? Committed this terrible assault on Sanderalee Dawson?”

“Yes. Yes, Bobby, I
really
do.
I really believe David Cohen did it.
And I intend to make a case against him.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“Flat out, just like that, the hell with what the victim said?”

“The victim has got her head screwed on upside down. The victim was in and out of coma. The victim is easily led; she’s highly suggestible; easily influenced, I think she
thinks
Cohen is her assailant.”

“But you don’t.”

“Lynne, there are some people who just
cannot, under any circumstances,
commit certain crimes. A microsurgeon could not, under any circumstances, cut off a woman’s hand with a meat cleaver.”

“Bobby, what about Mr. and Mrs. Wise? What about the things they told us about your Dr. Cohen?”

“He’s not
my
Dr. Cohen, Lynne. For God’s sake, be objective. You’re a lawyer. Pick them apart: parents of a dead girl; grief-stricken; unaccepting. Lynne, no matter what they said, none of it is material to the case at hand. You’re viewing them emotionally.”

“They provided the one negative word we hadn’t found before. A personality flaw—that’s all it would take. An inexplicable personality flaw. Jim Barrow’s checking out the murder that was committed around the time of Melissa’s death. It might fit, Bobby.”

“Now he’s a multi-murderer. Lynne, you’re losing objectivity. Look, in the tape, do you remember that Sanderalee said something about ... at first, she thought she’d met him at the Jog-gon-Inn? Well, maybe this
was
a guy she met there. It was a cold night. He was bundled up. Maybe it was a guy who resembles David Cohen.”

“Prove it. Find him.”

“I’m damned well going to try. Don’t rush this case, Lynne. You know, you haven’t answered my question. Where does Lynne the District Attorney leave me?”

“It has nothing to do with you.” He was glaring down at me now and I was glaring up and my neck hurt and my shinbone hurt and now my eyes were beginning to hurt. “Listen, Bobby, so you won’t say I didn’t tell you right at the start.
If—when
I make the move ...”

He cut in. “Bureau Chief will become vacant.”

That shut both of us up for a moment. He fixed me with such intensity that I almost lost the sense of what I was about to say. Almost; not quite.

I shook my head slowly. “Bobby, it took me nearly twelve years to secure the position of Bureau Chief for a woman. You don’t really think I’d let it slip away after all that planning and plotting and hard work, do you?”

“Lucy? You’d give it to
Lucy Capella?”
He sounded incredulous.

“You’re damn right. After all, I owe ...”

I stopped not quite short enough and we both knew it. “After all, Lucy is totally qualified. She’s waited a long time and ...”

“No, why don’t you back up a little bit, Lynne. ‘After all, I owe,’ I believe was what you were saying. As in ‘I owe Lucy ... what? After all, ‘I owe Lucy’ what?”

I stood up and moved around a little bit; his eyes kept a tight hard focus on me. I could feel their glare between my shoulder blades. Finally, I turned to face him, took a deep breath. Here goes nothing; or something; or everything.

“After all, the position of Chief Investigator should have gone to Lucy Capella two years ago. Instead of to you.”

“Based on what? seniority?”

We both knew that wasn’t what I meant

“Based on
ability; competency; qualifications; suitability;
and,” I added softly, “seniority.”

With each word I had spoken, Bobby’s eyes became harder, colder, darker, bluer; his jawline worked as he clenched his teeth, trying to contain his anger. He turned his head slightly as though dazed by what I had just said. “Well. Hey, just let me think about all that for a second, all right?”

“Bobby ...”

He waved a hand in my direction, walked over to the window, pushed aside the drapes, spun away from the window and turned to confront me head-on.

“Do you mind telling me
why
you promoted me to a position that you feel I wasn’t competent, qualified, suitable for? What was the first thing Lucy had that I don’t have? Ah, yes. Ability. With my
lack
of ability and all those other specifications ...”

“Hold it, Bobby, I didn’t say you
didn’t
have all of those qualifications. I just said ... that Lucy would actually have been more qualified. Would have been the more logical choice.”

“But I’m better in bed.”

“You’re not that good.”
I said it too quickly; it was the obvious rejoinder and I am known for obvious rejoinders. I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Bobby, I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t. We just seem to be sparring and it seemed a good shot at you. The main reason I didn’t appoint Lucy was that I felt it just wouldn’t wash too well: two women in the two top spots. You can see for yourself how paranoid that is: you can have twenty-five top men and never give a thought to appointing a twenty-sixth man. But one top woman: I felt it the better side of discretion to appoint a man.”

“Okay, you had to appoint a man. Why me? Why not ... Sullivan? Troy? Russo? Why not ... why me?”

“Listen, Bobby, you’ve had the job for two years now. You’ve worked into it pretty well. But if you want total honesty, I could have,
professionally,
made a better choice.
Lucy.”

“Oh, let’s have total honesty, Lynne. I’ve always admired you for total honesty.”

“Bobby, both Lucy and I have spent our entire law careers as prosecutors. Do you think I was born wanting to be a prosecutor? After law school, I surveyed the field open to me. It was very, very narrow and the further on I looked, the more it narrowed down. It was a pragmatic decision on my part to build my career the way I did. I had no guarantees, God, I had no smallest hope at all that it would one day open up for a woman the way it has. It’s too late for me to make any changes in direction now. I’ve developed my expertise and I intend to cash in on it. I’ve nowhere else to go professionally. I’m going to stick with what I know. And I
know
how to be a prosecutor. It’s not the same for you. You can still go any way you want to go. It’s always been that way for you. That’s probably why you’re not ...”

“I love the way you always manage to get those last few words out
before
you bite your lip, Lynne.”

“Okay, Bobby. You’re
not
a
good prosecutor.
You don’t have the
killer’s instinct.
You aren’t totally willing to believe the worst possible thing about a human being. You constantly look for mitigating circumstances. You are never willing to suspend every single emotion, every single feeling, other than an intense desire to nail the perpetrator to the cross.” I made a funny sound, intended to be a laugh; sounded more like I was choking. “That’s a hell of a terrible thing to say about someone, isn’t it, Bobby? That you’ve never been purely, cleanly vicious or vindictive enough to be a top-flight prosecutor.”

“That isn’t what you’re saying. What you’re condemning are my professional qualifications for my job.”

“Have it your own way. Whatever you choose to believe. You’ve done a good job as my Chief Investigator. But not ... not as good a job as ...”

“As Lucy Capella would have done? No, don’t say a word, Lynne. Don’t say anything at all. I’ve got the message. So that when you become the District Attorney, and you’ve appointed Lucy Capella as Bureau Chief, she will of course appoint her own Chief Investigator, and that will leave me ... ?” He spread his arms wide.

“With a whole big wide-open world of law out there, Bobby. You’ve got all the options that I never had.” And then I had a most unfortunate flash and spoke impulsively. “Ever think of entertainment law, Bobby? Why don’t you ask your TV lady pal about her world of opportunities?”

That was a low blow and Bobby Jones’ cowboy-killer eyes tightened and focused on me: I was the Indian.

“You mean hitch my wagon to
another rising lady-star?”
he said softly. “Uh-uh. I’ve already done that.
It isn’t worth it.”

And then he left and I kept falling asleep and then waking up and recalling the conversation verbatim. It is an unfortunate ability of mine. Among other unfortunate abilities. Like throwing away people I don’t really want to throw away.

Oh, damn it, Bobby Jones. Damn you.

A
T 10:00 A.M. ON
Saturday morning in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a policeman, disguised as an elderly Hasidic Jew on his way to temple, was confronted and robbed at gunpoint and then shot in the chin. His backup team, another “Hasidic Jew” and a “mailman,” then engaged the assailant in a wild shootout during which some sixteen or eighteen shots were exchanged. At the end of the proceedings, the second “Hasidic Jew” backup cop had been hit dead-center but was uninjured due to his bulletproof vest. The “mailman” cop had been shot in the right foot, either by direct hit or as a result of a ricochet.

The culprit was dead, having sustained a total of eight direct hits scattered throughout the body: face, stomach, heart, lungs, et cetera, et cetera. It was determined by the Medical Examiner that the culprit, who was five feet eight inches tall and weighed approximately one hundred and sixty pounds, had been, in life, a thirteen-year-old, three-months-pregnant black female.

Semantics is a very important part of the public relations announcements offered by the Police Department. If anyone has ever wondered about the stilted, peculiar manner in which policemen describe events, it is because they are rigorously instructed to beware of certain sensitive areas of language. Never identify a black—regardless of age—as a boy or a girl. When referring to culprit by name, it is
Mister
or
Miss.
Beware such words as arrogant uppity nigger, colored guy, PR. Black is the word; Hispanic covers the requirement as needed. Thus, the announcement that a thirteen-year-old black female, the posthumously identified perpetrator of a series of similar assaults on previous Saturdays, had been shot and killed by stakeout police officers after an exchange of shots. Detailed descriptions of the actions and injuries of all concerned would be made a matter of public record as soon as possible.

The policeman who had been robbed and shot in the chin—not a serious wound—was interviewed for the TV news from his hospital bed, his wife and children at his side. He described the events as they had occurred and then, in a painkiller daze, he described the culprit as “a very big black-female youthette.” The department rushed public relations people onto the scene and it was left to fancy Freddie Mandell, Commissioner of the careful explanation, to describe the dead assailant:

Miss Jewel Brown; age thirteen years; no known address; background of six foster homes; appeared in Family Court total of eight times on charges ranging from petit larceny to armed robbery to drug pushing to prostitution. Each time released to different foster family; last “family” has not seen Miss Brown for nearly five months. Never reported missing. By anyone. Miss Jewel Brown had been “turned out at age eleven by a neighborhood pimp; thrown out by her then current foster family; arrested; released; sent away once or twice during her short life.

What he didn’t reveal was that sewn into the lining of her jacket was the school photo of an eight-year-old child, female, with a bright, smiling, hopeful expression; third-grade parochial-school photo of lucky Jewel Brown, placed with a strict but loving Catholic foster mother, who died of cancer within the year. On the back of the photo, in small and irregular print, was Jewel Brown’s total written comment about her life. Undated, the comments were as follows:

Jewel is a pretty girl and good in reading.

Jewel is too fat and too big.

Jewel can hit real hard.

Jewel can fuck all she wants to.

Jewel got a gun and a man.

Fuck Jewel and kill her dead.

Big. Ugly. Dead. Jewel.

In the black community of Crown Heights, it was put out immediately that the men who shot Jewel Brown were,
in fact,
Hasidic Jews who had been permitted by the police to carry guns with which to shoot black children on the streets of Brooklyn.

The dead female–young woman–girl–child, who had been a homeless, vagrant, unwanted, unloved, uncared-for nonentity, was posthumously, and with an overwhelming love and anger and righteous indignation, adopted by
her
“community”: a community that had previously all but ignored her existence. Funds were raised so that her funeral would be more costly than any amounts spent on her existence from time of birth to time of death. A copy of the picture of the third-grader appeared from somewhere, blown up to poster-size and mounted on a placard. The child-face was radiant with innocence and hope and expectation, unaware of her own plunging future and eight-bullet end. There was literally a wailing and crying on the streets as more and more Jewel Brown posters appeared and were displayed and exhibited side by side with blowups of the shot-dead Jewel as she lay face down in her own blood on the sidewalk where she had fallen.

There was a growing, tightening, solidifying racial grouping, which, by late afternoon, early evening, had traveled from Brooklyn across the bridges and over the borough lines until the entire city was put—unofficially—on riot alert. With the darkness came the first sporadic wave of fires; within hours, the acts of destruction escalated until long-established, solidly neighborhood shops on the Upper West Side, black-owned as well as white-owned, were ripped open, looted, despoiled by the wave of emotion and hysteria and anger and frustration as well as the exciting possibilities of opportunity that had spread from the poster-waving processions in Crown Heights.