Authors: Mark Arsenault
Loot the Moon (6 page)
M
artin probably should have been listening to the testimony being offered to the court by the mother of the teenager who had died at the hands of Martin's client. But there was nothing else Martin could do for his client, who sat beside him, already convicted of motor vehicle homicide.
artin probably should have been listening to the testimony being offered to the court by the mother of the teenager who had died at the hands of Martin's client. But there was nothing else Martin could do for his client, who sat beside him, already convicted of motor vehicle homicide.
This was the gut-wrenching part of the sentencing hearing, the victim-impact statements, and Martin allowed himself to be distracted. He thought about June Harmony and her son, Brock. They would be on their way to Martin's office by now, so that the three of them could walk together to the opening of Gil Harmony's will. Martin had not seen Brock since the crashâactually, he realized, had not seen him since he was a teen. And though he knew Brock was now in his twenties, he dreaded having to look a fatherless little boy in the eye.
Thoughts of Brock reminded Martin of his client, who, at twenty-seven, was just a few years older. He was an incurious roofer named Stokely, who seemed incapable of a single empathetic thought. Martin looked at him. Stokely was a pudgy son of a bitch, deeply tanned,
with a buzzed haircut and a sour expression that made him seem eternally put out. He had worn blue jeans to his own sentencing, which had nearly given Martin a heart attack. Was he
trying
to get the maximum?
with a buzzed haircut and a sour expression that made him seem eternally put out. He had worn blue jeans to his own sentencing, which had nearly given Martin a heart attack. Was he
trying
to get the maximum?
They sat together at the defense table, a varnished maple rectangle as smooth as a mirror. At trial, the table had been cluttered with documents, transcripts, and notes. For sentencing, it was bare.
At a podium a few feet away, the mother of the young man Stokely had run down addressed the court. She spoke slowly, in a low voice, about her boy. In the sausage-making process of criminal justice, the court always gave victims or their families the chance to testify about how the crime had wrecked their lives, before the judge pronounced the sentence.
“ ⦠and you never once during the trial showed remorse, Mr. Stokely, for what you've taken from my family,” she said.
Stokely stared straight ahead, looking bored. Martin looked away.
She's right
, Martin thought. In private conferences, Stokely had seemed contemptuous toward his seventeen-year-old victim, whom he vaguely seemed to blame for ruining Stokely's life by dying under the impact of an SUV doing forty miles per hour on a sidewalk.
, Martin thought. In private conferences, Stokely had seemed contemptuous toward his seventeen-year-old victim, whom he vaguely seemed to blame for ruining Stokely's life by dying under the impact of an SUV doing forty miles per hour on a sidewalk.
“ ⦠you have stolen sixty or seventy years of a young man's life and forever changed the course of our family history ⦠.”
Martin dropped his hands in his lap and looked at the witness. She was trim, a little older than most moms of a teenager, maybe fifty-five. Her hair was cut in a perfect shoulder-length bob. She had worn no makeup to court and her eyes looked lifeless. Maybe she didn't want to take the chance she'd cry and smear mascara over herself, or maybe she just felt lifeless. She stood stiffly at the podium and spoke from notes handwritten on sheets of paper that were ragged down one edge where they had been ripped from a spiral binder. She spoke directly at the side of Stokely's head. He did not look at her.
The mother's grace awed Martin, and fed the disgust he held in his heart for his client. Martin had busted his ass for this guy, uncovering a crack in the chain of evidence with Stokely's blood test the night of the accident. A cop had left the test sample unguarded for three hours in an unlocked cruiser. With a ferocious argument, Martin had the blood test thrown out of evidence. Prosecutors could not prove by science that Stokely's blood had approximately the alcohol concentration of a Polynesian mai tai. Then Martin had negotiated a fair plea bargain with the prosecution. Some reasonable jail time for Stokely to think things over, but not so much that he couldn't salvage the best part of his own life.
The deal was just.
His client had rejected it.
“Don't want justice,” Stokely had said. He had wanted Martin to get him off at trial.
“ ⦠my son was an industrious young man who was studying education. Being a teacher, that was Clarke's high hope, not to conquer Wall Street or Mount Everest, just to teach children how to read ⦠.”
The prosecutor didn't need a blood test to prove Stokely had been drinking all night. Not with the testimonies of bartenders and other patrons, and with Stokely's own credit card receipt for seventy-five dollars in liquor, signed by Stokely in handwriting that looked like a kindergarten doodle.
At trial, the prosecutor had pounded the facts. Martin could only pound the table. The Constitution provides that no matter how cold your heart and how terrible your crime, you deserve a competent and robust defense. If Martin could have won the case on some arcane technicality, he would have gone for the prosecutor's throat. He gave Stokely a tenacious fight, and lost.
Sometimes, despite the best efforts of everyone involved, justice prevails.
He thought about Gil Harmony, and of justice. Martin hoped that justice didn't consider that case closed, as the police did.
Stokely sighed in boredom and blatantly checked his wristwatch. Martin blanched.
What the fuck are you doing?
Was he really that obtuse? Or was this a message to the court and to the grieving mother that he just didn't care?
What the fuck are you doing?
Was he really that obtuse? Or was this a message to the court and to the grieving mother that he just didn't care?
The mother paused a moment, then raised her voice. “Am I bothering you, Mr. Stokely?” she asked. She drummed her fingernails on the podium. “You know what bothers me? You ran down my son from behind, so you never saw what he looked like. Well, I want you to see him.”
She left her notes on the podium and grabbed a shoe box from the front row of the gallery. With her lips sealed with determination, she marched toward the defense table. Martin glanced to the judge, a rookie on the bench, who seemed startled by this breach of courtroom procedure. The judge hesitated, silent, jaw open. He reached for the gavel but seemed unsure if he should pound it.
Stokely ignored the mother until she was beside him. He shot her an uninterested glance. “Not looking at your pictures, lady,” he mumbled.
Calmly she said, “Meet my son, Clarke.”
She flipped the lid off the shoe box and cast the contents over the table. Pale ash, as fine as talcum powder, flowed across the desk in a wave and poured into the laps of the two men. Particles swirled into the air, and seemed to come together as a ghost that brushed almost imperceptibly on bare skin.
“Jesus Christ!” Martin screamed. He bolted up. Ash clung to his suit. He tried to wipe away the stain, but his bare hands refused to touch it.
Â
Â
A few minutes before the opening of the will, Billy met the judge's brother.
He was everything Gil Harmony had been, except less.
Judge Lincoln G. Harmony, six years younger than his brother, sat on the bench of the traffic tribunal, a maligned fiefdom of the judiciary, despised by Rhode Islanders summoned there for motor vehicle violations. Traffic court was the sweatshop of justice, where people waited hours on pine benches under buzzing fluorescent lights in steamy rooms with fake paneling on the walls, before their cases were brusquely called and disposed of with the grace of an assembly-line production.
“So you work for Martin Smothers?” Lincoln Harmony said. He had a big shock of wavy gray hair, and a sweaty palm. Billy freed himself from their handshake and casually wiped his hand on his pants.
“I help him out from time to time,” Billy replied.
Lincoln Harmony wasn't listening. “Because I never imagined that Martin Smothers
earned
enough to hire full-time help,” he said. His skin was pink and rough, as if scrubbed by a hard brush. His oily face gleamed wet under the hot lights in the law office. He struck Billy as a small-minded man of immense self-importance. He was accustomed to having his butt kissed by lawyers and clerks and bad drivers, in the small pond of the traffic court.
earned
enough to hire full-time help,” he said. His skin was pink and rough, as if scrubbed by a hard brush. His oily face gleamed wet under the hot lights in the law office. He struck Billy as a small-minded man of immense self-importance. He was accustomed to having his butt kissed by lawyers and clerks and bad drivers, in the small pond of the traffic court.
“Sorry about your brother,” Billy said, mostly to change the subject.
Lincoln Harmony waved a hand, as if to shoo some bug from around his head. “Tragic. Senseless. And beyond our power to change. What did the wise one say? âThe future, present, and the past. Fly on proud bird. You're free at last.' That was Confucius, I believe.”
“I think that was the Charlie Daniels Band.”
“Oh, whatever, Povich,” he snapped. “The point is, Gil lived high and mighty, and now he's gone. If there is an afterlife, my brother has finally realized that money can't buy security, and accolades won't stop a bullet. He was mortal, like the rest of us. Imagine his shock.”
He paused, smiled, showed teeth. Billy caught a whiff of alcohol, very faint, like the echo of an odor. Vodka, maybe?
“Don't look at me that way, Povich,” he said in a low voice. “I
loved
my brother. Don't you think I know what I owe him?” He pointed to himself with a thumb. “I'm on the bench because I'm Gil Harmony's kid brother. I work four days a week, I got a pension coming my way in a few years that's worth more than most people will ever see. But I've known for a long time that Gil was going to get knocked off Mount Olympus. He'd been up there too long. It's a shame he had to be knocked so hard.”
loved
my brother. Don't you think I know what I owe him?” He pointed to himself with a thumb. “I'm on the bench because I'm Gil Harmony's kid brother. I work four days a week, I got a pension coming my way in a few years that's worth more than most people will ever see. But I've known for a long time that Gil was going to get knocked off Mount Olympus. He'd been up there too long. It's a shame he had to be knocked so hard.”
Lincoln Harmony suddenly clapped Billy on the shoulder, as if telling him to
buck up!
He excused himself and wandered away, clipping his elbow on the door frame on his way out of the conference room. He recovered without a sound, and disappeared around the corner into the receptionist's hallway, where the world's slowest elevator made its stops on this floor.
buck up!
He excused himself and wandered away, clipping his elbow on the door frame on his way out of the conference room. He recovered without a sound, and disappeared around the corner into the receptionist's hallway, where the world's slowest elevator made its stops on this floor.
Billy pulled out a winged leather chair on wheels and sat at the head of a long table that would fit a dozen people, though there were just seven chairs.
This would have been Gil Harmony's chair
, he figured.
, he figured.
Though the judge had left the firm when he had been appointed to the bench, the law offices of Harmony & Thybony still carried his name. Billy had expected chandeliers and marble tile in Gil Harmony's law office, and was surprised by creaky floors and wall-to-wall carpet. This was a utilitarian space, on the mid level of a three-story, brick-faced building, discreetly tucked among the office towers in Providence's financial district. Between the tall buildings, the sky was a strip of gray. Rain was on the way.
The conference room windows looked out to an intersection paved in cobblestone. Across the square, a stone sultan hung like a gargoyle above the arched entrance of the Turk's Head Building. The statue glowered at Billy and made him feel like he was being watched.
Billy closed one eye and pretended to aim a gun at the squinting stone statue, which had been chiseled nearly a century ago with angry features and a drooping mustache.
Lincoln Harmony had looked up to his brother all his life. Not that he had a choice.
When you drive past Respect, how far is Jealousy?
He turned when he heard the elevator
bing
. The steel doors crept open. Martin Smothers burst out as though he were shoved. He turned to a woman and a young man in the elevator and blurted, “Claustrophobia! It comes and goes.” They followed him off the car. The woman sighed and pulled off a wide-brimmed safari hat. “I'll take that,” Martin said, snatching it from her. He looked around for a table or a hat rack, or something, and saw Billy.
bing
. The steel doors crept open. Martin Smothers burst out as though he were shoved. He turned to a woman and a young man in the elevator and blurted, “Claustrophobia! It comes and goes.” They followed him off the car. The woman sighed and pulled off a wide-brimmed safari hat. “I'll take that,” Martin said, snatching it from her. He looked around for a table or a hat rack, or something, and saw Billy.
“Povich!” he shouted. He flung the hat, Frisbee style, in Billy's general direction. It sailed over the table and crashed into a set of Venetian blinds.
“Povich!” Martin shouted again. “You could have dived for it.”
“Had this been a playoff game, I would have,” Billy deadpanned. He stared at the woman, who watched him back, expressionless. She was very tall, close to six feet, with dark brown hair, nearly black, wound into a tight bun. Her cheekbones pressed sharply from beneath the skin; her mouth was an arch of red lipstick. Her light eyes hovered over blood-blue dark circlesâthe stains of stress or tears or insomnia. Her face looked tightened by emotion. Anger maybe? Even in anger, she was stunning. She looked to be chiseled by the same artist who had done the Turk's Head across the street.
June Harmony, of course
.
.
The dark-haired young man at her side was in his early twenties, a few inches shorter than June, with similar bone structure, similar eyesâthis was her son, naturally. Billy's eyes widened at the black slash up the young man's faceâa row of surgical stitches like train tracks that began at the jawbone, climbed past his ear, and disappeared
under a baseball cap. The brown remnants of a fading shiner lingered under his eye.
under a baseball cap. The brown remnants of a fading shiner lingered under his eye.
Judge Harmony's son, Brock, was still recovering from the car crash that had killed his kidnapper and sent Stu Tracy to intensive care. Brock kept his hands in his pants pockets. He glanced around the office without looking anyone in the eye.
The woman said to Martin, “Do we wait in here?”
Martin pressed his hands together, as if praying. “You know your way around this firm. Why don't you check in with Mr. Thybony, in his office, so he knows we're here.” He chuckled, sounding nervous. “I'll get your hat.”
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