Last Chance for Glory (30 page)

Blake turned left onto Onderdonk Avenue. The commerce of Northern Boulevard quickly gave way to a neighborhood of sprawling private homes surrounded by dense green lawns and manicured shrubbery. August flowers—asters, snapdragons, dahlias, hollyhocks, zinnias—blossomed behind neat borders of marigolds, imapatiens, or alyssum. A soft mist, reinforced by a dead gray sky, muted the brighter colors, melted them down, ran them together. The densely packed leaves on the Japanese maples seemed, to Marty Blake, like solid sheets of dull red brick.

Paradise, he thought. That’s what it looks like. Split-level paradise with the humans in complete control of everything but the children. Somehow, despite the exalted status of their professional fathers and mothers, some of these kids grow up to be junkies and dealers. That’s when the law-and-order bullshit drops away. “Oh, please, your honor, he’s a good boy. Just give little snookums one more chance. I know I only vote for judges who send purse snatchers away for life, but give my little baby another shot. You can see he’s not a nigger.”

Blake pulled to the curb in front of 2115 Andrew Street. The house, one of the few ranch-style homes in the neighborhood, spread across a square, half-acre lot. Its backyard was hidden by a seven-foot-high redwood fence, a fence required by both the municipality and John McGuire’s insurance company to prevent small children from wandering into the free-form swimming pool behind the house.

The fence had served a far different purpose on Blake’s previous visit. Lost in its shadows, he’d been able to take his time with the alarm, open the rear patio door without tearing the lock apart, enter and leave without a trace. It’d enabled him to bury a receiver/tape recorder in a bed of pachysandra, to check it for defects without worrying about the neighbors, passersby, wandering dogs. Blake, like all burglars, loved a high fence.

“You up for this?” Blake asked.

“Yeah,” Kosinski said, “I am. It’s been a long time.”

“Shit, I wish I was going in.” Blake slid into the back of the van, toyed with the dial of a receiver/tape recorder identical to the one buried in the backyard. He wanted something tangible in case Harrah was smart enough (or paranoid enough) to check for possible surveillance. He knew he wasn’t going to get it from Johan Tillson because Tillson lived on the nineteenth floor of a high-security apartment building in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Blake had managed to work a tap into the basement phone lines, but the apartment itself had represented too great a risk for too little return.

“I know how ya feel, Marty.” Kosinski opened the door, dropped one foot to the asphalt. “So what I think you should do is use the opportunity to work on your own technique. Consider what you would have said, then compare it to what the master says.”

“Thanks, champ. And good luck.”

L
UCK, KOSINSKI THOUGHT AS
he made his way up the walk, has nothing to do with it. When you’ve got what I have, your only challenge is to keep the perp talking. Which ain’t gonna be that hard because I’m not a cop and which doesn’t matter anyway because I’m not lookin’ for him to confess. Even if it
is
good for the soul.

He rang the bell, then unbuttoned his jacket to let the butt of his .38 show plainly. When the door opened a minute later, he systematically wiped all trace of expression off his face.

“Judge John McGuire?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Bela Kosinski, I’m a private investigator.” He held out his ID, waited for McGuire to get a good look. “I represent an attorney named Maxwell Steinberg who represents a man named William Sowell. If you remember, Sowell pleaded guilty to manslaughter in your courtroom.” He waited for a response, accepted McGuire’s grudging nod. “The thing of it is, Judge, there’s real serious doubt about the boy’s guilt. I mean I’m retired now, but I was one of the detectives assigned to the original investigation, so I’m very familiar with the case from a cop’s point of view and I don’t think he did it.”

“Are you preparing an appeal?”

McGuire’s small gray eyes revealed even less to Bell Kosinski than the matter-of-fact tone of his voice. Maybe fifty years old, McGuire carried an extra thirty pounds, mostly on a belly that overhung his belt, yet he stood with his shoulders thrown back, his neck straight, as if ready for an attack.

“We feel that his attorney was incompetent. That’s what I want to speak to you about. If you got a few minutes.” Kosinski noted the hesitation, caught the rapid blink as McGuire searched for a decision. “Look, Judge, I was a detective for fifteen years. I’ve heard every dirt-bag lie a criminal can tell and I just don’t think this particular kid is guilty. If you could give me a few minutes to go through it with you, I’m sure you’ll feel the same way. I mean I visited Sowell a few days ago and you can believe me when I say he’s serving hard time. The kid’s a pure victim.”

McGuire shuffled his feet, looked back into the house. “Yes, well I suppose a few minutes won’t hurt, but we’ll have to keep it quiet. My wife is ill. She’s resting in her room.” Kosinski followed the judge through the deserted living room into a small office at the back of the house. McGuire closed the door after them, gestured for Kosinski to take a chair. “You know,” he said, “I accepted Sowell’s plea bargain with some misgivings. The state’s case was weak and his attorney seemed a little too anxious to strike a deal. Still, my hands were tied. I …”

“Save it for the newspapers, Judge. Which is exactly where you’re gonna find your name.”

McGuire’s eyes snapped up to meet Kosinski’s, then abruptly dropped to the blotter on his desk. “I think you had better explain yourself.” He managed to put a little muscle into the first few words, but his voice fell off at the end.

“I lied before,” Kosinski said. “Deliberately. To get you in here.” He paused, expecting some kind of response. When he didn’t get one, he decided that McGuire was suffering from a guilty conscience. “Billy Sowell’s not planning to file an appeal. You know why? Because
dead
men aren’t allowed to appeal.”

“Dead?”

“Yeah, as in killed in the course of a sexual assault. The medical examiner seemed to think it was unintended, that he wouldn’t submit and his assailants—there was more than one, by the way—hit him a little too hard. Me, I think it was part of the kick. As in: hit him, fuck him, watch him squeal, make him beg, put him down. You gotta see it as a package.”

McGuire swiveled his chair to face the window. He stared at his swimming pool for a moment, then turned back to face Kosinski. “I assume there’s more.”

“Oh yeah, Judge, there’s a lot more. You don’t really think I came here to bullshit about Billy Sowell’s attorney, do ya?” Kosinski paused, took McGuire’s silence for acquiescence. The lamb begging for the butcher’s knife. “Tell me something, Your Honor, what does the ACLU think about hypnotically induced memory enhancement? Is it high on their list of admissible evidence? I mean you were a big-shot liberal, right? Champion of the little people? Protector of the constitution? So what happened to the fucking constitution when you admitted Melody Mitchell’s testimony after she’d been hypnotized?”

“We held a special hearing on the hypnotism. The material uncovered was not relevant. It had no bearing on Mitchell’s identification.”

McGuire’s voice was a little stronger, as if he was remembering the arguments dredged up at the evidentiary hearing. Maybe he’d been repeating them to himself over the years, trying to edge away from the truth of what he’d done. Kosinski wasn’t sure, but as he wasn’t ready to fire his big guns, he was perfectly willing to debate Sowell’s guilt. He stood up, let his chair fall over backwards, leaned across the desk.

“Let’s have a little talk here. Heart to heart so you know where I’m comin’ from. I interviewed the witness, Melody Mitchell, a few hours after the body was found. She saw exactly nothing. You can believe me because I got a lot of experience in these matters. Melody Mitchell was coached all the way. But, of course, you knew this, right? You saw the photo spread and you knew it was biased. You saw the hypnotic session on videotape and you knew Mitchell was looking for the scar, the scar that happened to show up on Billy Sowell when they put him in that lineup. You knew it all and you let it happen when you, all by your miserable fucking self, could’ve put a stop to it.” He was shouting now, letting the cords stand out on the side of his neck. It was all so familiar, so practiced. His face would be red, flecks of dried spit would cling to the corners of his mouth, his eyes would be as narrow and focused as those of a charging pit bull.

McGuire pushed his chair back, looking for a little breathing room. “There was a detailed confession. Don’t overlook that.”

Kosinski smiled, then let his anger drop away. He could feel the muscles along his cheekbone and forehead drop like the curtain at the end of a play. It was a little early for the move, but, then again, McGuire wasn’t a hardened criminal. It took a long time to soften hardened criminals.

He circled the desk, then crossed his arms and sat on the edge. “Sign of a guilty mind, Judge. You should have thrown me out—that’s what an innocent man would’ve done—but you wanna know if I found out about your deal. You wanna know how much I have on you.” He shook his head, repeated, “Sign of a guilty mind.”

“I think I’ve had enough.”

“Listen to me.” Kosinski ignored McGuire’s remark, kept his own tone intimate and cordial. “People with IQs in the mid-sixties don’t give detailed confessions. That’s because they don’t have the details to give. But you knew that, right? Just like you knew there wasn’t a shred of evidence to put him at the scene. Not a shred. Just like you knew the kid had been interrogated for seventy-two hours without a lawyer present.” He laughed out loud. “Jesus Christ, the prosecutor must’ve shit his pants when you drew the case. John McGuire, the super-liberal. John McGuire, every criminal’s dream. Hell, you let killers go back out on the street because some cop forgot to cross the
t
s. Prosecutors with airtight cases got diarrhea when they had to step into your courtroom. Tell me, Judge, what’d your ACLU buddies have to say after you sentenced Billy Sowell to hell?”

McGuire reached around Kosinski to pull the phone into his lap. Kosinski responded by opening the left side of his jacket. He watched McGuire’s gaze drop to the .38 nestled in its shoulder rig. “Don’t worry, Your Honor. I’m not gonna shoot. But there’s something I have to show you, just in case you’re still … still
confused.”
He pulled a photocopy from his jacket pocket, pressed out the creases, then passed it over to John McGuire. “Now, the first thing I want you to notice is the date on the page. It’s up in the right hand corner. See? November twenty-eighth, the morning after Sondra Tillson was killed. Now look at the photograph. You see the face I circled? That’s Billy Sowell’s face. The picture was taken just about the time that Sondra Tillson’s throat was being slashed.”

“Then why didn’t he say so?” McGuire’s voice was soft, nearly a whisper. He was holding the phone against his belly, cradling it with his arms.

“Ya know, Judge, I never got the chance to ask him, but the way I see it, there’s three basic reasons why he didn’t alibi himself. First, nobody asked him where he was until two weeks after the fact. Second, he was retarded and he didn’t have a real good sense of time. Third, he was a hopeless drunk. But someone who knew the truth
did
show up. Guy named Collars. He went down to the precinct and Detective Brannigan put a gun to his head. Told him not to come back.”

“Do you think I knew that?” McGuire set the phone on the floor. He straightened up in the chair, began to button his cardigan. “If I made a mistake, then I’m sorry. I suppose you can always file a complaint with the Chief Judge’s office. I wouldn’t be surprised if they censured me, but …”

“Stop, already. Please. You’re breakin’ my heart.” Kosinski stood up. “You know, letting in the witness and the confession wasn’t the worst thing you did. Far from it. The worst thing you did, the sellout of the fucking century, was when you let Billy Sowell waive his right to appeal. I mean, it
did
turn out to be a death sentence.” Kosinski took off his jacket, twirled it over his shoulder, let it drop to the floor. “Now, before we get into the good stuff, I wanna show you that I’m not wired. I believe standard procedure calls for me to strip.”

He had his shirt, his tie, and his shoulder rig off before McGuire stopped him with a wave. “Enough,” McGuire said. “Enough.”

“Enough?” Kosinski hummed to himself as he dressed. Taking his time about it. When he finished, he took the pint bottle of Smirnoff from his outside jacket pocket, drank deeply, then offered the last couple of inches to McGuire. “Go on, take it,” he said. “What you did wasn’t so bad. If I’d been in your shoes, I might have done it myself. Your kid’s future was on the line.”

McGuire’s head jerked at the mention of his son, but he took the bottle, sipping once, then draining it. He might as well have announced his desire to make a clean confession. Kosinski felt what he could only describe as elation flood his body. As if he was a marathon runner approaching the finish line with his nearest competitor still out of sight.

“The prosecutor told me that Sowell was guilty,” the judge said. “Off the record. He indicated that he had several confidential informants who corroborated Sowell’s confession.”

Kosinski resumed his position on the edge of the desk. “He may have told you that, Judge, but that’s not the reason why you let Billy Sowell go to jail.”

“I didn’t say it was the reason.” He looked at his interrogator for a moment before continuing. “You see, I really believed that Sowell was guilty. I know you don’t want to accept that, but I did. Oh, I knew that his guilt couldn’t be proven, that if I tossed out Melody Mitchell and Sowell’s confession, he wouldn’t be convicted at trial. And I didn’t forget that I’d taken an oath to uphold the constitutions of New York and the United States. I wasn’t unmindful of my responsibility, but I didn’t knowingly send an innocent man to prison.”

“They had you by the short hairs, didn’t they? Your son, Bradford, your only child, was facing mandatory state time. A middle-class kid like him? The sharks up in Attica would’ve had his asshole for breakfast. I mean, what else could you do?” Kosinski hesitated, then launched smoothly into a lie. The ease with which he made the transition pleased him immensely. “Me, I got a kid nineteen years old. He’s pretty good for a New York teenager, but not
that
good. If he got in trouble? If he was facing hard time? Hell, I’d do just about anything to get him out.”