Rage of Angels (5 page)

A few of the clients who came into Jennifer’s office were different in a way that puzzled her.

They were well dressed, with an air of affluence about them, and the cases they brought to her were not the nickel-and-dime cases Jennifer had been accustomed to handling. There were estates to be settled that amounted to substantial sums of money, and lawsuits that any large firm would have been delighted to represent.

“Where did you hear about me?” Jennifer would ask.

The replies she got were always evasive. From a friend…I read about you…your name was mentioned at a party…It was not until one of her clients, in the course of explaining his problems, mentioned Adam Warner that Jennifer suddenly understood.

“Mr. Warner sent you to me, didn’t he?”

The client was embarrassed. “Well, as a matter of fact, he suggested it might be better if I didn’t mention his name.”

Jennifer decided to telephone Adam. After all, she did owe him a debt of thanks. She would be polite, but formal. Naturally, she would not let him get the impression that she was calling him for any reason other than to express her appreciation. She rehearsed the conversation over and over in her mind. When Jennifer finally got up enough nerve to telephone, a secretary informed her that Mr. Warner was in Europe and was not expected back for several weeks. It was an anticlimax that left Jennifer depressed.

She found herself thinking of Adam Warner more and more often. She kept remembering the evening he had come to her apartment and how badly she had behaved. He had been wonderful to put up with her childish behavior when she had taken out her anger on him. Now, in addition to everything else he had done for her, he was sending her clients.

Jennifer waited three weeks and then telephoned Adam again. This time he was in South America.

“Is there any message?” his secretary asked.

Jennifer hesitated. “No message.”

Jennifer tried to put Adam out of her mind, but it was impossible. She wondered whether he was married or engaged. She wondered what it would be like to be Mrs. Adam Warner. She wondered if she were insane.

From time to time Jennifer came across the name of Michael Moretti in the newspapers or weekly magazines. There was an in-depth story in the
New Yorker
magazine on Antonio Granelli and the eastern Mafia Families. Antonio Granelli was reported to be in failing health and Michael Moretti, his son-in-law, was preparing to take over his empire.
Life
magazine ran a story about Michael Moretti’s lifestyle, and at the end of the story it spoke of Moretti’s trial. Camillo Stela was serving time in Leavenworth, while Michael Moretti was free. It reminded its readers how Jennifer Parker had destroyed the case that would have sent him to prison or the electric chair. As Jennifer read the article, her stomach churned. The electric chair? She could cheerfully have pulled the switch on Michael Moretti herself.

Most of Jennifer’s clients were unimportant, but the education was priceless. Over the months, Jennifer came to know every room in the Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street and the people who inhabited them.

When one of her clients was arrested for shoplifting, mugging, prostitution or drugs, Jennifer would head downtown to arrange bail, and bargaining was a way of life.

“Bail is set at five hundred dollars.”

“Your Honor, the defendant doesn’t have that much money. If the court will reduce bail to two hundred dollars, he can go back to work and keep supporting his family.”

“Very well. Two hundred.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Jennifer got to know the supervisor of the complaint room, where copies of the arrest reports were sent.

“You again, Parker! For God’s sake, don’t you ever sleep?”

“Hi, Lieutenant. A client of mine was picked up on a vagrancy charge. May I see the arrest sheet? The name is Connery. Clarence Connery.”

“Tell me something, honey. Why would you come down here at three
A.M.
to defend a vagrant?”

Jennifer grinned. “It keeps me off the streets.”

She became familiar with night court, held in Room 218 of the Centre Street courthouse. It was a smelly, overcrowded world, with its own arcane jargon. Jennifer was baffled by it at first.

“Parker, your client is booked on bedpain.”

“My client is booked on
what
?”

“Bedpain. Burglary, with a Break, Enter, Dwelling, Person, Armed, Intent to kill, at Night. Get it?”

“Got it.”

“I’m here to represent Miss Luna Tarner.”

“Jesus H. Christ!”

“Would you tell me what the charges are?”

“Hold on. I’ll find her ticket. Luna Tarner. That’s a hot one…here we are. Pross. Picked up by CWAC, down below.”

“Quack?”

“You’re new around here, huh?
CWAC
is the City-Wide Anti-Crime unit. A
pross
is a hooker, and
down below
is south of Forty-Second Street. Capish?”

“Capish.”

Night court depressed Jennifer. It was filled with a human tide that ceaselessly surged in and out, washed up on the shores of justice.

There were more than a hundred and fifty cases heard each night. There were whores and transvestites, stinking, battered
drunks and drug addicts. There were Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and Jews and Irish and Greeks and Italians, and they were accused of rape and theft and possession of guns or dope or assault or prostitution. And they all had one thing in common: They were poor. They were poor and defeated and lost. They were the dregs, the misfits whom the affluent society had passed by. A large proportion of them came from Central Harlem, and because there was no more room in the prison system, all but the most serious offenders were dismissed or fined. They returned home to St. Nicholas Avenue and Morningside and Manhattan Avenues, where in three and one-half square miles there lived two hundred and thirty-three thousand Blacks, eight thousand Puerto Ricans, and an estimated one million rats.

The majority of clients who came to Jennifer’s office were people who had been ground down by poverty, the system, themselves. They were people who had long since surrendered. Jennifer found that their fears fed her self-confidence. She did not feel superior to them. She certainly could not hold herself up as a shining example of success, and yet she knew there was one big difference between her and her clients: She would never give up.

Ken Bailey introduced Jennifer to Father Francis Joseph Ryan. Father Ryan was in his late fifties, a radiant, vital man with crisp gray-and-black hair that curled about his ears. He was always in serious need of a haircut. Jennifer liked him at once.

From time to time, when one of his parishioners would disappear, Father Ryan would come to Ken and enlist his services. Invariably, Ken would find the errant husband, wife, daughter or son. There would never be a charge.

“It’s a down payment on heaven,” Ken would explain.

One afternoon when Jennifer was alone Father Ryan dropped by the office.

“Ken’s out, Father Ryan. He won’t be back today.”

“It’s really you I wanted to see, Jennifer,” Father Ryan said. He sat down in the uncomfortable old wooden chair in front of Jennifer’s desk. “I have a friend who has a bit of a problem.”

That was the way he always started out with Ken.

“Yes, Father?”

“She’s an elderly parishioner, and the poor dear’s having trouble getting her Social Security payments. She moved into my neighborhood a few months ago and some damned computer lost all her records, may it rust in hell.”

“I see.”

“I knew you would,” Father Ryan said, getting to his feet. “I’m afraid there won’t be any money in it for you.”

Jennifer smiled. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll try to straighten things out.”

She had thought it would be a simple matter, but it had taken her almost three days to get the computer reprogrammed.

One morning a month later, Father Ryan walked into Jennifer’s office and said, “I hate to bother you, my dear, but I have a friend who has a bit of a problem. I’m afraid he has no—” He hesitated.

“—Money,” Jennifer guessed.

“Ah! That’s it. Exactly. But the poor fellow needs help badly.”

“All right. Tell me about him.”

“His name is Abraham. Abraham Wilson. He’s the son of one of my parishioners. Abraham is serving a life sentence in Sing Sing for killing a liquor store owner during a holdup.”

“If he was convicted and is serving his sentence, I don’t see how I can help, Father.”

Father Ryan looked at Jennifer and sighed. “That’s not his problem.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. A few weeks ago Abraham killed another man—a fellow prisoner named Raymond Thorpe. They’re going to try him for murder, and go for the death penalty.”

Jennifer had read something about the case. “If I remember correctly, he beat the man to death.”

“So they say.”

Jennifer picked up a pad and a pen. “Do you know if there were any witnesses?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How many?”

“Oh, a hundred or so. It happened in the prison yard, you see.”

“Terrific. What is it you want me to do?”

Father Ryan said simply, “Help Abraham.”

Jennifer put down her pen. “Father, it’s going to take your Boss to help him.” She sat back in her chair. “He’s going in with three strikes against him. He’s Black, he’s a convicted murderer, and he killed another man in front of a hundred witnesses. Assuming he did it, there just aren’t any grounds for defense. If another prisoner was threatening him, there were guards he could have asked to help him. Instead, he took the law into his own hands. There isn’t a jury in the world that wouldn’t convict him.”

“He’s still a fellow human being. Would you just talk to him?”

Jennifer sighed. “I’ll talk to him if you want me to, but I won’t make any commitment.”

Father Ryan nodded. “I understand. It would probably mean a great deal of publicity.”

They were both thinking the same thing. Abraham Wilson was not the only one who had strikes against him.

Sing Sing Prison is situated at the town of Ossining, thirty miles upstate of Manhattan on the east bank of the Hudson
River, overlooking the Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay.

Jennifer went up by bus. She had telephoned the assistant warden and he had made arrangements for her to see Abraham Wilson, who was being held in solitary confinement.

During the bus ride, Jennifer was filled with a sense of purpose she had not felt in a long time. She was on her way to Sing Sing to meet a possible client charged with murder. This was the kind of case she had studied for, prepared herself for. She felt like a lawyer for the first time in a year, and yet she knew she was being unrealistic. She was not on her way to see a client. She was on her way to tell a man she could not represent him. She could not afford to become involved in a highly publicized case that she had no chance of winning.

Abraham Wilson would have to find someone else to defend him.

A dilapidated taxi took Jennifer from the bus station to the penitentiary, situated on seventy acres of land near the river. Jennifer rang the bell at the side entrance and a guard opened the door, checked off her name against his list, and directed her to the assistant warden’s office.

The assistant warden was a large, square man with an old-fashioned military haircut and an acne-pitted face. His name was Howard Patterson.

“I would appreciate anything you can tell me about Abraham Wilson,” Jennifer began.

“If you’re looking for comfort, you’re not going to get it here.” Patterson glanced at the dossier on the desk in front of him. “Wilson’s been in and out of prisons all his life. He was caught stealing cars when he was eleven, arrested on a mugging charge when he was thirteen, picked up for rape when he was fifteen, became a pimp at eighteen, served a sentence for putting one of his girls in the hospital…”
He leafed through the dossier. “You name it—stabbings, armed robbery and finally the big time—murder.”

It was a depressing recital.

Jennifer asked, “Is there any chance that Abraham Wilson
didn’t
kill Raymond Thorpe?”

“Forget it. Wilson’s the first to admit it, but it wouldn’t make any difference even if he denied it. We’ve got a hundred and twenty witnesses.”

“May I see Mr. Wilson?”

Howard Patterson rose to his feet. “Sure, but you’re wasting your time.”

Abraham Wilson was the ugliest human being Jennifer Parker had ever seen. He was coal-black, with a nose that had been broken in several places, missing front teeth and tiny, shifty eyes set in a knife-scarred face. He was about six feet four inches and powerfully built. He had huge flat feet which made him lumber. If Jennifer had searched for one word to describe Abraham Wilson, it would have been
menacing.
She could imagine the effect this man would have on a jury.

Abraham Wilson and Jennifer were seated in a high-security visiting room, a thick wire mesh between them, a guard standing at the door. Wilson had just been taken out of solitary confinement and his beady eyes kept blinking against the light. If Jennifer had come to this meeting feeling she would probably not want to handle this case, after seeing Abraham Wilson she was positive. Merely sitting opposite him she could feel the hatred spewing out of the man.

Jennifer opened the conversation by saying, “My name is Jennifer Parker. I’m an attorney. Father Ryan asked me to see you.”

Abraham Wilson spat through the screen, spraying Jennifer with saliva. “That mothafuckin’ do-gooder.”

It’s a wonderful beginning
, Jennifer thought. She carefully
refrained from wiping the saliva from her face. “Is there anything you need here, Mr. Wilson?”

He gave her a toothless smile. “A piece of ass, baby. You innersted?”

She ignored that. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“Hey, you lookin’ for my life story, you gotta pay me for it. I gonna sell it for da movin’ pitchurs. Maybe I’ll star in it mysef.”

The anger coming out of him was frightening. All Jennifer wanted was to get out of there. The assistant warden had been right. She was wasting her time.