Depraved Indifference j-3 Read online

  "I'll let him know," said a woman's voice over the intercom.

  Jaywalker waited, passing the time studying the portraits of former Rockland County district attorneys on the wall behind the desk. The only face he recognized was that of Kenny Gribitz, who'd been a young A.D.A. in Manhattan way back when Jaywalker had been with Legal Aid. Then Gribitz had gotten himself elected Rockland County D.A. A short while later, he'd gotten himself into trouble. Over a woman, if Jaywalker remembered correctly. His kind of guy.

  "The boss says this Jaywalker guy has got to file a Notice of Appearance," said the woman's voice, "before he'll talk with him."

  Jaywalker held up his copy of the notice. There was a bright red FILED stamp across it, complete with the date and time.

  "Done," said the trooper.

  Another thirty seconds went by. Then the woman's voice could be heard again, but barely. "Tell him the boss isn't in," she was saying.

  Jaywalker and the trooper exchanged glances. Jaywalker pointed at his wristwatch and held two fingers in the air.

  "He only wants a minute or two," the trooper told the machine.

  This time it was a full minute before there was a voice on the other end. Only it was a man's voice now, gruff and combative. And it said, "Tell him anything. Tell him he can go shit in his hat, for all I care."

  Jaywalker smiled. "Mr. Firestone, I presume?"

  The trooper nodded, returning the smile.

  The attorney's visiting room at the Rockland County Jail was everything the regular visiting room hadn't been. Jaywalker was able to sit across a real table from Carter Drake, with no wire-reinforced bulletproof glass separating them, and no staticky phones to talk over.

  Drake looked like somebody who'd been locked up a month would be expected to look. Jaywalker recognized the signs, the things that incarceration did to a person-some subtle, some not so subtle. There was the pallor, the waxy complexion that came from being indoors twenty-three hours a day, or twenty-four, if it happened to be raining when "yard time" was scheduled. There were the extra pounds that accumulated from a high-carb, low-protein, no-exercise diet. They tended to show up around the midsection, but in Drake's case, there was also a noticeable slackness to his cheeks, the beginning of Nixon-like jowls. There was the not-quiteclean-shaven look, the slightly unkempt hair and the faint odor suggesting that today-and perhaps yesterday, as well-had not been a shower day. But most of all, there were the eyes. Not only did they appear sunken and framed by dark circles, but a dull film had begun to spread over the pupils themselves, producing a listless, faraway expression. It was just one more symptom, Jaywalker knew, of a larger malaise, a gradual sinking-in of the reality that, contrary to early hopes and unrealistic expectations, these walls were going to be home for the foreseeable future.

  So how did Jaywalker greet his new client?

  "You look good," he said, the same way he might have said it to a cancer patient, or a mother who'd just delivered after a forty-eight-hour labor.

  Drake smiled sheepishly. He had to know better.

  "Thanks for writing out that statement for me," said Jaywalker.

  "Was it what you wanted?"

  "Yeah, pretty much."

  "Not long enough?"

  "It was a good starting point," said Jaywalker. "I'm here today so we can fill in a few blanks, get a little more detail. Then we'll go from there."

  Drake leaned back in his chair. He struck Jaywalker as a man who was used to running things, and running them his own way. Having to answer questions and follow directions was going to be something of a new experience for him.

  "How's my wife?" he asked in a way that might or might not have been accusatory.

  "She's okay," said Jaywalker. "Worried about you."

  Drake's smile was as enigmatic as his question had been. "Worried about me?" he asked. "Or worried about herself?"

  Jaywalker shrugged. He had no desire to get into their marital dynamics, and every reason to steer clear of the subject. "Why don't we get to work," he suggested, thumbing through his file until he found Drake's statement. "For starters, I'd like you to tell me everything that happened at the End Zone that evening."

  "Again?"

  "Again."

  Reluctantly, Drake complied. His memory was still fresh enough that he was able to recall the couple of martinis he'd started off with, the food he'd done no more than nibble at, and the two or three shots of tequila that had followed.

  "And that's all?" Jaywalker fixed him with his most skeptical stare.

  "That's all."

  "I spoke with the bartender," said Jaywalker.

  "I figured you had," said Drake, "since you came up with the name of the place."

  They exchanged smiles.

  "According to him," said Jaywalker, "it was more like eight or ten drinks, total."

  Drake said nothing.

  "Who's right?" Jaywalker asked him.

  "It wasn't ten," said Drake. "That much I know. It might have been six, seven at the most."

  Jaywalker rubbed his eyes. "Look, Carter, I'm your lawyer, not your dentist. This shouldn't be like pulling teeth."

  "Maybe eight. No more, honest."

  Eight would have given Drake a b.a.c. of around. 16, double the legal limit. Factor in the 120-proof tequila, and you were still at. 20, maybe a bit higher. Enough to get him convicted of drunk driving, to be sure, but hardly the stuff to turn it into a murder case.

  "What made you leave the place?" Jaywalker asked. He wanted to know if Drake was going to admit that the bartender had cut him off and made him call home, or if he was going to leave that little detail out, as he had in his written statement.

  "My son showed up."

  "How come?"

  "I'd called my wife earlier," said Drake. "The two of them drove up. I guess Amanda didn't want to walk into the place. She was pissed off at me, I guess. For a change."

  "And?"

  "And what?"

  "And I left," said Drake.

  "Who drove?"

  "I did. Amanda stayed in her car, and my son got back into it. I drove my car."

  "How come you drove?" Jaywalker asked.

  "My son only has a permit," Drake explained. "It's not good after dark. I wouldn't allow him to drive. Besides, I really thought I was okay."

  With eight drinks under your belt? But Jaywalker only thought the words. Now wasn't the time for lectures, he knew. He wanted honest answers, even if they were stupid ones. If Carter Drake had truly thought he could drive home safely in the dark in an unfamiliar area, after knocking back two martinis and six tequilas, Jaywalker wanted to hear that. Even if a jury wouldn't.

  "What happened next?" he asked.

  "I got into my car, started it up and drove off."

  "And?"

  "And I guess I must've missed the entrance for Route 9W heading south to the city. When I reached Route 303, I decided to take it, instead. It connects up with the Palisades Parkway, which brings you to the George Washington Bridge."

  "Okay," said Jaywalker. He didn't want this to be a Q and A. He wanted Drake to ramble, to describe the events in his own words. Sometimes, for example, what a person left out from a story could be every bit as telling as what he included. "What next?"

  "At some point," said Drake, "I became aware of a wasp flying around inside the car. That concerned me because I'm very allergic to insect bites. My mouth blows up, my eyes become all puffy, and I feel like my throat's- you know, like I'm not going to be able to breathe. Anaphylaxis, they call it, and it's pretty scary. Life threatening. Emergency-room stuff. You can verify it all through my physician, if you like. Do you want his name?"

  "Sure," said Jaywalker, and he took notes for a few minutes as Drake supplied details.

  "Where was I?" Drake asked.

  "You'd just noticed a wasp flying around in your car."

  "Right," said Drake. "A wasp. I had a newspaper on the console, between the front seats. I rolled it up and took a good swat at the thing. It
was on the inside of the windshield, toward the middle, but more on the passenger side. I guess as I reached over to try to kill it, I must've pulled the steering wheel to the left. You know, to keep my balance?"

  Jaywalker nodded, scribbling a word or two. "Did you get it?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure," said Drake. "All I know is, when I straightened up, I must've been in the wrong lane, because I was looking directly at a pair of headlights. I cut back to the right as fast as I could. I never hit anything, and never heard anything but tires screeching. I assumed the other vehicle got by me safely, on my left. So I continued on home."

  Jaywalker thought for a long moment before saying anything. When finally he spoke, it was to say, "You talk about 'the other vehicle.' When did you realize it was a van?"

  "I didn't," said Drake. "Not till I heard the news the next morning."

  "Or that it was white?"

  "Maybe when I saw the photos in the T imes. I'm not sure."

  Jaywalker had seen the photos in the T imes, too. He'd had to read the story to know it had been a van. And in the photos, it had been charred black. Just about all of it, except for some of the lettering on one side.

  "How come," he asked, "when you wrote out your statement, you said you saw a white van in front of you?"

  "I didn't say that."

  Jaywalker handed him a copy of the statement, and waited while Drake read it.

  "What I meant was," Drake explained, "is that it must've been the same white van that was in the news. And the photos. I see what you mean, though. My fault for not being clear. Sorry about that, but this is all new to me. I've never been asked to write out a statement like that before. I should have been more precise."

  They spoke for another hour, covering a range of topics. But Jaywalker found himself oddly distracted. And as he drove home that afternoon, he found himself trying to reconcile Drake's two stories, the one contained in the written statement and the oral account he'd come up with today.

  It hadn't been the first time a defendant had minimized his wrongdoing, or even lied about it outright. Hell, in Jaywalker's business, which was dealing with criminals, those things were pretty much the norm, especially in the early stages of the lawyer-client relationship. The five drinks instead of eight or ten, for instance. That one was certainly easy enough to understand.

  But how about Drake's backtracking on whether or not he'd been able to tell it had been a white van in front of him? His explanation-that he'd simply been trying to acknowledge that it had to have been the v an-was tortured and lame. The only possible reason Jaywalker could come up with for Drake's correcting himself was that Amanda had gotten to him, had told him that Jaywalker had picked up on the implausibility of the version in the written statement. But if that explained why Drake had corrected himself, it still left the more important question unanswered: Why had he lied in the first place?

  And there was more.

  Why had Drake left out the whole business about the bartender's making him call home, and Eric's walking into the place, explaining that Amanda was outside waiting? And why, in explaining how he'd rejected the idea of letting Eric drive one of the two cars home, had husband and wife managed to use the identical phrase, that Carter "wouldn't allow" his son to drive? Was that simply coincidence, or was Jaywalker's paranoia working overtime?

  Then there was the business about the wasp, and the accidental swerve into oncoming traffic. Jaywalker had no doubt that Drake was seriously allergic to insect stings, and that his doctor would be able to back him up with all sorts of medical records and emergency-room documentation. What left him puzzled was the physics of Drake's account, repeated almost verbatim in both versions. According to Drake, he must have unconsciously steered to the left while reaching to the right in his attempt to swat the wasp. He'd even moved the critter farther away from him in his recent telling of the incident than he'd had it in his original written statement. There the wasp had been closer to the driver's side of the windshield; now he'd pushed it over to the passenger's side, in what seemed to Jaywalker like an attempt to exaggerate the distance he'd had to reach.

  Way back in high school, Jaywalker had signed up for an elective after-school safe-driving course. Because the school had been a small one that couldn't afford to buy a dual-control car, the course had been nothing but a combination lecture and discussion group. It had been taught by a pleasant, bald man named Ed Shaughnessey, whom everyone had, naturally enough, called Driver's Ed. One of the things Driver's Ed had taught them was that while driving along, if you reached to your right- or even looked to your right, for that matter-you'd invariably pull the steering wheel to your right also. And over the years since, Jaywalker had found it to be true. You turned your head one way, or reached for something to one side of you, and as soon as you returned your attention to the road in front of you, you would find that you'd steered in the same direction you'd looked or reached, sometimes dangerously so. Drake's claim that he'd unconsciously steered left while swatting at something to his right was preposterous. Which was nothing but a fancy way of saying he'd been lying about that, too.

  There'd been no wasp, no swat with a rolled-up newspaper. And Jaywalker knew that for another reason, as well. When he'd asked if Drake had succeeded in killing the thing, the only answer he'd gotten had been "I'm not sure." Hardly what you'd expect from someone who'd been scared to death of being stung.

  So Drake had to have made the whole thing up. And Jaywalker, who'd certainly made up more than his share of things over his fifty years, had to grudgingly give his client a certain amount of credit, if only for inventiveness. It was a good story, as stories went, and with a bit of tweaking here and there, it might fool a jury into believing that even if he'd had as much to drink as Riley the Bartender was going to claim, Carter Drake's drunkenness hadn't been the cause of the accident at all.

  In other words, they should blame the wasp, not the WASP.

  11

  PANNING FOR GOLD

  The media was out in force again for Carter Drake's next court appearance. This time Jaywalker drove up to New City by himself, in the Mercury. He wanted to distance himself from Amanda as much as possible. One photo of the two of them together had been more than enough. He had asked her to make the trip, though, since this would be Carter's first appearance before Travis Hinkley, the judge who, at least according to the Disciplinary Committee, intended to put the case on a fast track to trial. And Jaywalker had suggested Amanda bring her son along this time. Not only was a little show of family solidarity in order, but he wanted to meet Eric and get his recollection of the evening of the accident. But Eric, it turned out, had an exam of some sort at school, and given his already spotty attendance record, he couldn't afford to miss it.

  But if he'd driven up alone, Jaywalker had hardly arrived empty-handed. He'd brought along a set of motion papers, as well as a written Demand to Produce. Neither he, nor Judah Mermelstein before him, had so far received a shred of discovery material from the D.A.'s office. True, he had the reports that Jimmy Chipmunk had dug up, and the fruits of his own brief turn as a private investigator. But he wanted to force the prosecutors to pony up everything the law required of them. Not just to give them a hard time, but to preserve for appellate review their withholding of anything, in case of a conviction.

  Because even this early on, those words, in case of a conviction, had become something of a silent mantra for Jaywalker. While he continued to think he had a fighting chance of beating the murder count, he had no illusions about some of the lesser charges in the indictment. A jury might conceivably buy Drake's account that he'd never been aware of the van's going off the highway and acquit him of leaving the scene of an accident. But given the testimony of Riley the Bartender, they were going to have to convict him of driving while intoxicated, and most likely of vehicular manslaughter, too. So appellate review w as something he had to be very much keeping in mind.

  For several days Jaywalker had been trying to conjure up an image
of Travis Hinkley. The last name, he'd decided, was a giveaway. Definitely Irish, never a good omen for a defendant. Conventional wisdom had it that judges of Irish ancestry were among the toughest you could draw, unless you were r eally unlucky and landed in front of a judge with a German name. And for once, Jaywalker subscribed to the conventional wisdom. So he started with a ruddy-faced, blustering, law-and-order ogre. On the positive side, maybe the guy drank. And drove.

  It was the Tr avis part that intrigued him. Travis was a cowboy. Travis was a country-western singer who, when he wasn't riding his horse, drove an Americanmade pickup truck, a Chevy Silverado, Dodge Durango or Ford F-500. He ate meat and potatoes, chewed Red Man tobacco, and drank Budweiser straight from the bottle. But he was also something of a romantic, with a feel for the underdog.

  With a little luck, Travis Hinkley might just turn out to be a regular guy.

  The real Travis Hinkley turned out to be just a wee bit different from the one of Jaywalker's imagination. She might well have been Irish, given her flaming-red hair and piercing green eyes, but her face showed no signs of ruddiness, and there was no bluster to her. She was a small woman, short and stylishly thin, fiftyish. Her mouth was tightly pursed, and she opened it just enough to spit out a generic "Good morning," before retracting her tongue. Nothing about her suggested the possession of even a rudimentary sense of humor. To Jaywalker, who'd still been thinking country-western when she'd walked into the courtroom, she was the personification of a rather pretty rattlesnake.

  Unlike the judge at the appearance several weeks ago, Hinkley had her clerk call all of the other matters on her calendar before Carter Drake's. Jaywalker had no way of knowing whether the order reflected the age of the cases, deference to the media, a flair for the dramatic, or a perverse desire to keep him waiting as long as she could. Some judges welcome "visiting" lawyers warmly; others seem threatened to the point of open hostility. Travis Hinkley made no secret as to which camp she belonged to.

  As he waited, Jaywalker took the measure of his adversary. Jaywalker's expectations and the real thing matched up pretty well. Abe Firestone was a human bowling ball, barely five feet tall and nearly as wide. He squinted out at the world through thick glasses. What was left of his hair was gray. His suit was a three-piece relic from the previous millennium. And he had feisty written all over him.