Reversible Errors (34 page)

"I wanted to die after he died. I thought about killing myself. I'd make up plots. Schemes. Ways to do it. I'd have discussions with friends. Hanging. Fire. Drowning. I wanted to jump under a train - I'd already read Anna Karenina. And then for a while I actually burned myself with cigarettes. In places other people couldn't see. But it passed. I stopped acting like that. I stopped thinking like that, or about why I'd felt that way in the first place. People do bizarre things when they're growing up. We all do. We survive them. But there was nothing about the experience that ever squared for me with the word 'abuse.' " She looked down to find herself about to put fire to another cigarette. The left hand holding her lighter was steady, but in the other, the cigarette was teetering between her fingers as if there were a strong wind.

"I've never told anyone that story, Arthur," she said. "No one." She had sat through dozens of hours of confessions in various groups, and had shared everything with Duffy. Or thought she had. She found the courage to look again at Arthur, who was studying her.

"You don't have a clue what you're doing, do you?" he asked.

So he had figured that out as well.

"No," she said.

Leaning against the car door, he used the wheel to pull himself forward. His face ended up inches from hers, and he spoke quietly.

"When you grow up with somebody as frantic as my father," he said to her, "you spend a lot of time figuring out what there is in the world that's really worth being scared of." He reached across her to open the passenger door, but his eyes never left hers.

"And I'm not scared of you," he said.

Chapter
23

june 19, 2001

Paging Dr. Kevorkia
n i
t was past 5:30 by the time Larry phoned Muriel and agreed they should set out separately for the airport. Morley and Larry made good time back into the city going against traffic, but on a stretch of road called "the Connector," they came to a dead stop. The radio said a truck had spun out not far from Turner Field. At 6:15 Larrys cell rang. It was Muriel in her taxi. She'd started out half an hour ahead of them, but at this point was only a couple of miles closer to Hartsfield.

"We're toast," she said. By now, as usual, she had explored all options and executed a plan. The Delta 8:10 was booked solid, with eighteen people outranking them on the standby list; a switch to another airline was impossible because their tickets were government rate. Instead, Muriel had reserved seats on an early-morning flight and had taken two rooms at an airport hotel.

When Larry arrived there, fifty minutes later, Muriel was in the lobby with her bags, running the P
. A
.'s Office by phone from a thousand miles away. A gang murder case was deteriorating in standard fashion-every witness, including the ones who'd been locked in by testifying before the grand jury, now claimed to have misidentified the defendant, judge Harrison, who thought developments in the rules of criminal procedure had ceased when he left the P
. A
.'s Office forty years ago, was being impossible, and by the time Muriel dropped her cell phone back in her briefcase, she'd authorized a mandamus petition, to ask the state appellate court to set Harrison straight.

"Every day a new clown in the circus," she said. She'd registered and handed Larry his key, but neither of them had had lunch, and they agreed to go directly to the restaurant. Larry nearly sat up and begged when the waitress offered a drink. He ordered a boilermaker, but quaffed the beer first, downing almost all of it at once. He could feel his clothing adhering to his body and removed his light sport coat, tossing it over a chair at the table. They had to measure the discomfort index in this city in four digits. Not that he'd helped by sprinting after Collins. He told Muriel the story. She laughed heartily until he reached the part where Collins had said his uncle was telling the God's truth and that Collins himself asked Jesus to forgive him every night for what they had done to Gandolph.

"Ouch," said Muriel. "That's not good. Was he smoking you?"

"Probably. He was pretty cagey. Said flat out he'd never talk against Erno. And wouldn't admit to anything." There was bread on the table and Larry buttered his second piece. "To tell you the truth, he does a pretty good impression of a grown-up. Says he's born-again. There's a cross the size of Cleveland on the wall of his office and he gave me a real mouthful of that Holy Roller bullshit."

Muriel fingered her wineglass and frowned.

"Don't dis God, Larry."

He looked at her.

"He's there," she said. "Something. He, She, It. But it's there. I actually look forward to church. It's the most complete I feel all week."

She wasn't telling him anything he didn't know. Not about the big picture.

"Catholicism ruined religion for me," Larry said. "The pastor in our parish is wonderful. We have him to dinner. The boys love him. I could talk to the guy all day. But I can't go through the door to the church. I do my praying in the garden. That's the only time I feel like 1 have the right to ask."

He smiled hesitantly and she smiled back in the same fashion, but he was unsettled by the thought that Muriel had undergone a transformation. Some of the stuff that had come out of her mouth lately, about God or babies, made him wonder if she'd had a brain transplant at some point in the last ten years. It was funny what happened to people after forty, when they realized that our place here on earth was leased, not owned. There seemed a peril, one he could not name, in finding Muriel had grown softer in ways.

Rather than face her, Larry surveyed the dining room. It was half empty, done improbably in a tropical theme, with palm fronds, and bamboo railings and furniture. Everybody in here was tired. You could see it. Who could call a clean bed and a room of your own a hardship? Yet it seemed hard, being removed from home and set down in places you'd never been. There was something unsound in losing connection to your own piece of earth, he thought. Somehow, everything in life took him back to the garden.

He decided to look for a pay phone. He'd just about burned up his free long-distance minutes on his cell and the Force refused to reimburse any overage. He needed to leave messages at home and at the Hall about getting stuck down here. Walking toward the lobby, he was still thinking of Muriel. He'd had a thought to ask if Talmadge went to church with her, which would have violated the promise he'd made on the plane. He knew enough now, anyway. Like everybody else's, Muriel's life was, at best, complex. But he could not quite quell a grim satisfaction. Muriel believed that God made order in the universe. In his hardest moments, Larry thought it was revenge.

"we have a problem," Muriel said when Larry returned. She'd thought it through carefully while he was gone. "The other shoe dropped this morning: Harlow buys Erno."

"Fuck," Larry said.

She explained the ruling, which Carol had read to her over the phone.

"Fuck," Larry said again. "The other judges-they don't have to go along with that, do they?"

"The Court of Appeals? In theory, no. But they didn't see the guy testify. Harlow did. They won't have much choice about accepting his views unless we can come up with something new that makes Erno a liar. And this stuff with Collins today only cuts the other way. Once I tell Arthur, he's going to whine and lie on the floor and renew his motion to force me to grant Collins immunity."

"And?"

"The motion's still a loser. Immunity is strictly a prosecutorial decision. But he gets the information in front of the appellate court that way."

"You don't have to tell Arthur diddly. I promised Collins I wouldn't write any of it down. As far as Arthur is concerned-or anyone else for that matter-the conversation never happened."

"That means we won't use it against Collins. We still have to tell Arthur."

"Why?"

The thought was confusing. She reasoned out loud. Legally, strictly speaking, the obligation to disclose favorable evidence pertained only to trial. And since Collins wouldn't testify, his statements to Larry were inadmissible hearsay.

"So?" Larry asked. "What's the problem?"

"Well, hell, Larry. It's not smart, for one thing. Collins is going to call Jackson. If it comes out that we didn't disclose this, we'll look terrible."

"Collins s version to Aires is, T didn't tell the cop diddly.' He's not going to let Jackson flame him for opening his mouth. And besides, as far as he's concerned, he didn't say anything. Why make life complicated?"

"Damn, Larry, what if Collins is telling the truth? What if his uncle and he did frame Rommy, and he does get on his knees before Jesus every night asking for forgiveness?"

"No chance."

"No chance? None? You mean, you haven't had just one second where you thought maybe there was this eensy-teensy possibility that Ernos telling the truth?"

He passed a heavy hand through the air to wave off the demon of the ridiculous.

"The little asshole confessed, Muriel. He confessed right in front of you."

"Larry, the guy's out of his depth in a puddle."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Blessedly, the waitress arrived with dinner. She put the plates clown and made sweet chitchat. She was from rural Georgia and had an accent out of Gone With the Wind. By the time she'd left to bring one more round of drinks, Larry had chewed through half his steak and still wouldn't look at Muriel. She knew she could wait to have this out with him, but there was an order-'hierarchy' was actually the word- to be maintained. Cops always hated it when the attorneys made the decisions. To the lawyers, the job was all words -the words they spoke in court, or wrote in briefs, or read in police reports. But for the coppers, it was life. They did their jobs with a gun on their hips and sweat dripping down to their shorts from beneath their bulletproof vests. The witnesses who appeared neatened up in the courtroom to answer the prosecutors' questions had been pulled out of rank shooting galleries by officers who didn't know if they should worry more about a bullet or HIV. The police lived in a rough world and they played rough if they had to. For a prosecutor, giving in, even to somebody as good as Larry, only encouraged recalcitrance.

"I want you to promise me that this isn't going to be Hitler's bunker," she said.

"Meaning?"

"Keep an open mind. Just a little. I mean, maybe, Larry, just maybe, we made a mistake. Shit happens. It's not a perfect system. We're not perfect people."

He did not take it well.

"We didn't make any fucking mistakes."

"I'm not attacking you, Larry. In this line of work, we're expecte
d t
o be faultless. That's what the standard is, really. Beyond a reasonable doubt. Legal certainty. But even our best work and best judgment isn't always perfect. I mean, it's possible."

"It's not possible." Despite the flesh that had accumulated on him, the veining was becoming visible in his square neck. "He's the right guy. He knew two of the victims. He had motive on both of them. He confessed. He knew what the murder weapon was before we did, and he had Luisa's cameo in his pocket. He's right, and I'm not letting you act like the Virgin Mary. You'll fuck yourself doing that, and you'll fuck me, too."

"Larry, I don't care what kind of noise Arthur makes, or the judge, for that matter. You think I'd take a walk on a triple murder? You think I'd turn my back on John Leonidis or those two girls? You look at me and tell me you believe that about me."

He picked up the scotch as soon as the waitress delivered it and took down half. The liquor was not helping him. He was clearly having trouble reeling himself in. Beneath it all, he was an angry guy. She'd always known that.

"I don't want to hear any more of this shit about making mistakes," he said.

"I'm not saying it's a mistake. I just want to be able to say I actually discharged a professional obligation to consider the prospect."

"Look, I worked this case. On my own. The whole Force hit the pause button once the headlines faded. I'm the one who kept pressing. I made this case. And I made it with you. And for you, if you want to know the truth. So don't say it's any frigging mistake."

"For me?"

Fury throbbed through him. It enlarged his eyes-all of him really.

"Don't pretend like you don't get it, goddamn it. It's one thing, Muriel, isn't it? This case. You becoming P
. A
. You deciding to be great. You deciding to marry Talmadge. You deciding to march down the path of history. You deciding not to take me. So don't tell me it's a fucking mistake. It's too late for any fucking mistakes. I've had my piss- poor little life, and you've gone ramping up to stardom. Don't pretend like you don't know what the game is, because you made all the fucking rules." With that, he hurled his green cloth napkin down on his plate, and stalked off fast enough to bowl someone over had anybody gotten in his way. The small duffel he'd carried from home bounced on his shoulder as if it were as insubstantial as a scarf.

In his wake, she felt her Adam's apple bobbing about. Something huge had happened. At first, she thought she was shocked by the force of his outburst. But after a second she realized the true news was that even a decade later, Larry's wounds remained tender. She thought he was one person very much as he chose to present himself-too self- sufficient to be vulnerable to any lasting injury. That was more or less the way she tried to think of herself.