Star Time (77 page)

Dan immediately rose and moved that the charges be dismissed because none of the testimony tied the defendant directly to the crime. Gil
Huyton
was irate.

Carver hushed the lawyers’ angry voices and led the way to a far corner of the courtroom, where the men could not be overheard.

"Lou,"
Huyton
hotly contended, "you'll be putting a dangerous animal back on the streets!"

"There's no evidence that Montano's the killer," Dan countered.

Carver's shoulders lifted apologetically, as if he was about to deny Dan's motion. Dan exploded.

"If you cave in here, you're going to look like shit. I'll blast you to those TV cameras waiting outside and file a motion to quash. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that your decision would stand up."

For a moment Carver considered disciplining Dan for the outburst, but thought better of it. The apologetic look turned on
Huyton
.

"Sorry, Gil, but I'm having trouble seeing my way clear to charge the guy. None of the evidence connects him to the crime."

Huyton
was beside himself. "He's a brutal rapist and murderer! He's a menace. Even his whores want him behind bars. They're terrified. One told us he once raped her and beat her up so badly she was hospitalized. There's a pattern of conduct here."

Dan shot back, "That testimony's so suspect, you didn't even bring it up when she was on the stand, so don't try to smear him with it here."

"Smear
him!
He's a pimp! He's slime!"

"So far he's only a suspect."

"I'm sorry, Gil," Carver finally ruled, "I've got to agree with defense counsel. None of this is admissible, and it certainly isn't relevant as to whether a
prima facie
case has been made against Montano here. I've got no alternative. I've got to discharge him."

Huyton's
eyes on Dan smoldered with the resentment raking him. "That cross-examination of yours smells to high heaven."

"You had a lousy witness to build a case on. Why the hell didn't you do a DNA test on my client?"

"Yes, why didn't you?" Carver asked
Huyton
, as well, eager to pass off the blame for the dismissal.

''We intended to for the trial, but had him dead to rights here,''
Huyton
snarled.
"An eyewitness."

"Too late now," Dan remarked to needle
Huyton
.

The two men were nose to nose. "This trick of yours sets a killer free and makes me look like an ass in front of the whole city."

"I'd like to take credit for that last part, but you did that all by yourself. I just defended my client."

"You're an unprincipled swindler, Lazar. I don't know what happened today, but I'm going to get to the bottom of it."

"Gentlemen, take your seats!" Carver ordered.

Back on the bench, he announced his decision, letting loose tumult in the courtroom.

Susan and Peter
Boelter
arrived at the elevators as Dan was waiting for one.

"Congratulations," Peter offered. "My wife's been telling me all along the
Herald
went too far. She said we had no business taking such an aggressive position. Sorry about that." No tone of apology accompanied the words.

"I don't excuse libel that easily," Dan sharply replied. "I understand you're selling a lot of papers at my expense."

Peter offered a self-deprecating smile, declining the quarrel. "As a matter of fact we are. Not easy to do when you consider the state the newspaper business is in right now."

The polished aluminum doors slid open.

"You could lose those impulse buyers just as quickly," Susan pointed out to her husband once they had stepped into the elevators and the doors had closed on the three of them.

Peter mused for a moment and then puckishly asked Dan, "Any more good murders for us on the horizon?
Something with a lot of illicit sex?
A hot crime of passion?"

Dan chuckled. "They don't make murders like they used to."

The elevator doors opened. The three, laughing, stepped into the lobby.

"I like you, Lazar," Peter said with the congenial smile and ingratiating tilt of the head Dan had noted earlier. ''We're having some people over for dinner next week. Next Friday night. If you're free, I'd like you to join us. To bury the hatchet and end any hard feelings."

Surprised, Dan started to decline.

Susan spoke up. "Please come. It will be an opportunity for you two to put any misunderstandings behind you."

Peter said, "Your performance this morning and what I know about you, they intrigue me."

"From Peter, that's a great compliment," Susan commented. "Please join us. It will be wonderful to have someone new."

Dan had intended to ask Mara to go away with him for a long weekend. They had not been away together in a while. "I might have other plans.''

"Your wife?" asked Susan.

"A woman friend.
I'm not married."

"Please bring her."

"I don't know if we'll be able to make it."

Susan promised to phone Dan's office at the end of next week and, if he could come, give him directions to their house.

"We live in
Dellwyne
," she added.

I never doubted it for a moment, Dan remarked to himself.
Or if not
Dellwyne
, then Gladwyne or Ardmore or Haverford or Villanova or Merion or one of the other in the string of Main Line enclaves of large mansions and estates.
Just what I need in my life, he thought as he watched the Golden Couple depart, the gentility of rich gentiles. He decided to tell Susan
Boelter
when she phoned that he would be unable to make it.

After work Dan went out for a celebratory drink with Cal Patterson, his law partner, and arrived back at his apartment in a jubilant mood. Mara was waiting for him. He tossed his coat on the hall chair and bent to kiss her hello.

She pulled away, her eyes cold and hard. "I spent the afternoon meeting with Gil
Huyton
. He's offered me a job with the DA's office. I'm taking it."

"You're serious."

Like many of the city's best trial lawyers, Mara had started out in the DA's office, but had left the Homicide Unit two years ago to join Lazar and Patterson.

"Dan, I was repulsed by what I saw in court today. You scared Feeney into denying an ID he was absolutely certain of."

"Hey, nobody twisted his arm."

"You were clever. You reminded him about the broken streetlights, but conveniently left out that there was a lot of light coming from the buildings."
She took a deep breath. "I've had it, Dan. Last month you bamboozled a jury into acquitting the state's biggest Mafia boss of murder and extortion when he should have been sent away for life. Your Boy Scout's good deed today kept a despicable piece of human garbage on the streets, where he can kill more women."

"He's thinking of going back to Colombia," Dan said quietly, his pleasure at the victory rapidly draining away.

"Where he'll rape and kill and exploit Colombian women, instead of Americans.
A real triumph!"

"We've already been over this a couple of times today." Dan's voice sounded
weary,
as if his private doubts these last months had taken on physical weight. "It’s the old story, we both know that: The adversarial
system isn't foolproof, but it's the best way anybody's found to get at the truth."

"The truth?
Is that what we get at? If more than one in a hundred of these
slimeballs
we defend was innocent, I'd be shocked. How many rob or kill or rape again?"

“You sound like
Huyton
already.” Why the hell should he have to defend to another lawyer the basic right of everyone to a vigorous defense? The Constitution required it, and he believed in it; it was his creed, his justification. "I'm not responsible for their lives, just for trying to see that they get justice in court."

Mara pounced on his statement. "You don't care about justice, only winning. You're a high-priced hired gun. You'll fight as hard for a serial killer as for a corporate looter."

"So will you. That's our job."

"Not anymore. Today convinced me I want to lock up all those creeps so the rest of us are safe from them."

Dan stared at Mara. Examining her remarks, he discerned fabrication.

"All that's bullshit!
Huyton
must have offered you a hell of a job."

Caught off guard by the insight so she was unable to summon an appropriate evasion, she nodded; he would soon learn the truth anyway.
"Deputy in charge of the Trial Division."

"He fired Jensen?"

"
Huyton
was furious at him. He botched your Mafia case.
Now the broken streetlights.
Besides, I told him Jensen's job was what it would take for me to leave your firm and go there."

"A woman of principle!"

"It isn't just the law practice," she said quietly. "I'm ending it personally between us, too."

"Just like that?
What about these last few months? Last night?"

"Dan, let's just say good-bye nicely . . . end it as friends."

"Hey," he angrily shot back, "this is no longer about a job you want, about getting ahead, it's about us. For the first time since my divorce, I really cared for someone. I was pretty sure you felt the same way."

"I have real feelings for you, Dan, I do. And we had some good times." Her tone was firm, businesslike. "But it just didn't work out."

"That's it? That's all? 'It just didn't work out?'"

"I've already thought it through."

She handed him his key and moved to the door. He noticed her small suitcase against the wall; she had already packed the few things she kept at his place.

"Good-bye, Dan."

Her purposeful walk carried her out of his apartment and his life. She did not glance back or display even a pretense of regret. He was already part of her past, a curio absently tossed into her memory's
rollabout
. Just as she had moved from one country to another that promised her more, she had moved from his firm to the powerful post just below the DA.  For her, he realized, love could not abide where ambition no longer resided; the one evoked the other.

But recognizing her self-centeredness did not lessen his distress. Like an amputee's phantom limb, the recollection of her presence remained—provocative, calculating, confrontational,
seductive
.

Dan decided that ending the relationship as she had—quickly, with no time for tears or backsliding—had been the best way. Better now than later, when he might have grown to need her—rather than simply to desire her—or, worse, to trust her. Loving Mara, allowing her—or any woman—to wriggle her way inside his emotions had been a mistake he'd known he was making but could not help. His wariness had been futile, and did not diminish either the hurt or the sorrow. Both lingered everywhere, like her perfume.

A few hours later, in the men's room of a bar near where
Cassy
Cowell and Jane Hopkins were raped and murdered, Tim Feeney was arrested as he tried to buy drugs from an undercover cop.

A Question of Proof
is available for purchase where you bought this book
.