Defense, page 19
* * *
“You’ve never asked me,” she said late one night as we lay together in the darkness, passion spent, sweet, warm sleep closing all around me.
“Asked you what?”
She raised herself up on her elbow. I could just see the bare outline of her face. “About other men. Aren’t you curious?”
“No,” I said, closing my eyes. “I’m not curious.”
She slid down next to me and put her mouth next to my ear. Her long smooth legs entwined themselves around me like the tendrils of a tropical vine that thrives in the damp heat of a jungle. “Are you sure you don’t want to know?” she coaxed. “I’ll tell you everything I’ve ever done, anything you want me to tell you. I’ll tell you…”
“No,” I said, as I reached up and turned on the lamp. “I don’t want to know.”
She sat up straight, her knees tucked under her. The sheet that had covered her fell down to her thighs. “All right, I’ll just tell you about the first time.”
She touched my chest with her fingers, and then, like a spider, they marched up my throat and over my chin and across my face. She tilted her head to the side and studied my forehead as her hand came to rest just above my eyes. “The first time I had sex,” she went on, her voice full of mischief, “was with Bobby Joe McDaniels when I was a sophomore in high school. He drove me up into the mountains one Friday night, up behind the Flatirons.”
“The Flatirons?”
“The huge rocks that look as if they were piled up on the edge of the Rockies just above Boulder to keep the mountains from falling down. Anyway,” she went on, “we drank a six-pack of beer in the front seat of his car, and then he put his hand up my dress.”
She stopped and just looked at me. “And then?” I asked.
“And then,” she said, “I threw up all over him. It was the first time I’d ever had anything to drink.”
“What about the first time you ever had sex?” she asked as I turned out the light.
With one arm I pulled her down next to me, and with the other I covered her with the sheet. “The first time was four days ago, early Sunday morning.”
“I thought so,” she whispered. A moment later she was sound asleep.
* * *
After a preparation that bordered on negligence, I daydreamed through two and a half days of trial in which I only asked questions to prove I was actually awake. I was convinced the defendant was innocent and there was every reason to have him testify in his own behalf. But when the prosecution rested early Friday morning and it was the defense’s turn to put on its case, I forgot to call him. I forgot to call anyone. When the judge inquired, “Is the defense ready to proceed?” I announced, “Yes, your honor. The defense rests.”
It took everyone by surprise, and after the jury came back with a verdict of not guilty, the judge took me aside to tell me it was one of the most brilliant tactical moves he had ever seen. I thanked him with the kind of modesty that suggested it was something I had planned all along, and hurried away to find Alexandra.
She was waiting for me in the hallway outside the courtroom. “You were great,” she said, as she reached up and kissed my cheek.
“You were there?” I asked as we walked toward the staircase that led down to the courthouse lobby.
“I took the afternoon off,” she explained. Her eager eyes and the clean scent of her soft, brown hair made her seem like a schoolgirl as she walked along, a silk scarf flowing around the collar of her camelhair coat. “I wanted to watch. I wanted to hear you make a closing argument.” She stopped and touched my arm. “Everyone on that jury was watching you. You spoke for seventy minutes. I timed it. And not one of them took their eyes off you. Not once!”
“Seventy minutes?” I asked in disbelief. “I thought it was more like fifteen, twenty at the outside.”
“You lose yourself that much in it?”
“Lose myself?” I laughed grimly, as I realized how close I had come to betraying the trust of my client. “Lose myself! I was lucky I didn’t lose the damn trial!”
That night, and the next night, and the night after that, until she left to go home Monday morning, we stayed at my house, and fashioned what we thought might be a workable arrangement. Alexandra would keep her apartment and stay there, alone, every night she had class except the last night. On Thursdays she would come to my home and we would live together until Monday morning. It was, she thought, the only sensible thing to do.
“That way,” she explained, sitting on the corner of the bed, wearing a pajama top, her arms wrapped around her knees, “I can concentrate on law school, you can stay on top of your work without any distractons, and we’ll still have four nights and three days together every week.”
“This sounds like a custody agreement,” I remarked, poking her in the ribs with my big toe.
“It is,” she said with a playful, provocative grin. “Four nights a week you have custody of my body and I have custody of yours.”
“Not good enough. I want five. Tuesday nights, your place.”
“I wondered if you’d miss my bed,” she said as she unfastened the single button that held together the long, gold-striped pajama top.
* * *
My life assumed a blissful regularity. I did my work and Alexandra did hers. We had dinner late every Tuesday night and made love in the darkened shadows of her canopied bed. Every Thursday night the headlights of her car came up the driveway and we were never apart until she drove away Monday morning. We lived like this through the rest of March and well into April. And then, early one Friday morning, the phone rang.
“Leopold may be in trouble,” the voice said. At first I had no idea what it meant.
“What?” I asked. I fumbled with the telephone, nearly knocking it over, as I reached for the clock. It was quarter past one in the morning. “What did you say?”
“He may need help.” The voice was dimly familiar.
“Horace? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Sorry to call so late, but there wasn’t any choice.” His voice was solemn, subdued.
“It’s all right. What can I do for you?” I said automatically, rubbing my eyes, trying to wake up. The words he had spoken were sounds whizzing by me in the night.
“Who did you say was in trouble?” I asked, suddenly alert. Everything was coming into focus. “Leopold? How? What the hell happened!?”
I sat up in bed and listened as Horace told me what he knew.
“Someone has been killed. A woman. At Leopold’s. A cop I know was on duty tonight downtown. He called me when he heard what happened.”
“He’s sure it was at Leopold’s?” It made no sense. Rifkin had lived alone for years.
Horace began to sound impatient. “Yeah. Yeah, he’s sure. The woman was shot. Close range, apparently. Blood all over the place.”
“They don’t think…!?”
“I don’t know what they think. All I know is someone has to get over there. I can’t do it. I’m a goddamn judge, for Christ sake. I can’t show up during a crime-scene investigation.”
“I’ll be out of here in five minutes,” I said, as I jumped out of bed.
“Before you hang up, one other thing. Do me a favor and call me when you get there. I need to know what’s going on.”
“It’ll be late,” I said without thinking.
“What difference does that make? You think I can sleep?”
“What’s happened?” Alexandra asked, her eyes barely open. “Where are you going?”
“Leopold Rifkin’s. I’ll tell you later.”
I drove out of the West Hills and through the city, out to the river and the tree-lined road that followed it for several miles to Lake Oswego. A young, uniformed officer stood alone at the open gate next to a patrol car with its two blue lights flashing.
I rolled down my window. He glanced at my driver’s license, then he glanced at me.
“They’re expecting you,” he said, doing nothing to disguise his boredom. He waved me through.
The house was lit up, exactly the way it had been the last time I had been here. I half expected to hear the music and the careless laughter of one of Rifkin’s parties just getting into full swing. The lonesome sound of the wind blowing through the trees was all that broke the silence.
The front door was wide open. For a moment I hesitated, uncertain what I should do. Somehow it did not seem quite right to walk in, uninvited. I knocked on the open door. There was no answer. I knocked again. Nothing.
“Is anyone here?” I whispered into the silence.
A face peered out from a doorway at the end of the hallway that led from the front door, past the staircase, to the kitchen at the back. Milo Todorovich, a homicide detective, came toward me.
“Why didn’t you just come in?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. I could not explain it to myself. If Rifkin had been the one killed that night, I still could not have entered his house unannounced.
“The judge is in the kitchen. Judge Woolner called and said you’d be coming by. You’re here as a friend, right?”
It was a strange question. “Why? You think I should be here as a lawyer?”
Ambitious and hard-working, Todorovich was in his mid-thirties and willing to bend the rules, but, so far as I knew, not willing to break them. I had never liked him. He struck me as one of those people who were almost as eager to please an enemy as they were willing to betray a friend.
“Who knows, counselor? Who knows?” he remarked, trying to play the cynical cop. “A woman shot right between the eyes in the study of a judge, when no one else is in the house and the gun that probably killed her is on the floor next to the body. Some people might think that guy might need a lawyer. But who knows, counselor, who knows?”
I was not in the mood for it, not tonight, not in this house. “Listen, you little prick,” I said, glaring at him, “you could try Leopold Rifkin on any charge you want to invent and no jury in America—not even a jury chosen by you out of the state hospital—would ever convict him!”
I shoved past him and went into the kitchen. Leopold was sitting in a lattice-backed chair at the end of the cherrywood table where he had eaten most of his meals for the last twenty years.
Sitting quietly, his fragile hands folded in his lap, he was wearing a light gray cardigan sweater and a white shirt open at the neck. A cup of tea sat on the table in front of him.
I was standing right next to him before he realized I was there. He started to rise. I put my hand on his shoulder. “No. Stay where you are,” I said, and pulled out a chair to sit down. Bending close to him, my hand still on his shoulder, I asked, “What happened? Are you all right?”
Leopold nodded pensively. “Yes, I’m quite all right.” He put his hand on my knee and looked at me with a faint smile.
I smiled back. “Just sit here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I wanted to see what had happened. Todorovich was down the hall, in Rifkin’s study. The body bag on the floor had already been zipped shut. A technician wearing latex gloves, the kind that snap onto your hands like a second skin, was carefully dusting for prints on the French doors that led from the large, book-lined study to the bricked patio outside.
I held out my hand. “Sorry.”
Todorovich shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t of said what I said. He’s a nice man, Judge Rifkin.”
He gestured toward the body bag. “Want to see her? We’re pretty much through here. We’ve got all the pictures we need.”
“What happened? All I’ve been told is that someone got shot here tonight. A woman, right?”
“Yeah. Female. White. Age…” He hesitated. He looked down at the zippered body bag and pursed his lips. “Not sure. I’d guess late thirties, early forties. Somewhere in there. Won’t know for sure until we find out who she was.”
He pulled a dog-eared notebook out of his jacket pocket and began to thumb through the pages. “Okay. The call came in at 10:23 P.M. from Rifkin. He reported a shooting. Said the victim was dead. Patrol car arrived 10:38. I arrived 11:19.”
He stopped, made sure he had covered everything scrawled on that page, and turned to the next. He spoke slowly, deliberately. He made death seem as dull as yesterday’s news.
“Rifkin, Leopold. Judge.” His head was bent over the spiral notebook, nodding at each word like a musician marking time. “Woman came to his door around ten. She looked familiar. She seemed desperate to talk to him. He let her in. Put her in the study. Went into kitchen to make some tea. Heard shot, then thought he heard sound of someone running. He found the body on the floor. Certain she was dead, but called 911 and asked for an ambulance first, then police. French doors wide open. He went out onto patio. Saw nothing. Closed doors. Then he saw the gun, on the floor, a few feet from the body.”
“And he picked it up,” I said, shaking my head.
Todorovich stuffed the notebook back in his pocket. “No, he didn’t touch it. He left it right where it was.”
I felt a surge of relief. “Maybe she came here trying to get away from someone. They followed her and…”
Todorovich was noncommittal. “Possible. Want to see the body before they take it away?”
“I suppose I should.”
“Got to warn you. It’s a little messy.”
He nodded to one of the paramedics who was getting ready to take it away. I stood over the bag while he bent down and unzipped it. He moved back just far enough so I could have a clear view. I turned away as quickly as I could. The dead woman was Denise Morel.
“You okay?” Todorovich asked. “You don’t look so good. I told you it was messy. You want something?”
“No,” I replied, trying to catch my breath. “I’m all right.” I forced a feeble smile. “I’ve just never gotten used to it.”
I walked back to the kitchen and sat with Leopold until everyone had left.
“Did you know her?”
He looked directly at me. “Yes, I knew her.”
“But you told the police…”
“That she looked familiar. Yes. I know what I told the police. There was a reason. I will tell you. I’ll tell you everything I know. But,” he said, rising slowly from the chair, “I find that suddenly I am very tired. We can talk about this tomorrow.”
He placed his hand on the table to steady himself. “You have done me a great favor by coming here tonight. May I ask an even greater one? Would you be able to stay here tonight? There is a very nice guest room. You’ll be quite comfortable. So, if you could indulge an old man who, to tell the truth, no longer feels quite safe in his own home, I would be very grateful.”
I was already in bed when I remembered. Downstairs in the hallway I found a telephone. Horace answered on the first ring. He did not wait to find out who was calling.
“Leopold all right?”
“Yes, fine. I’m staying here tonight.”
“Good. What did you find out?”
“Not that much. He told the police a woman showed up at his door. He let her in and while he was making some tea in the kitchen, someone came in through the French doors in the study and shot her.”
“Is that all he told you?”
“We haven’t really talked. He went to bed right after the police left. It’s been a tough night.”
“Yeah, I imagine. Nothing else?”
“One thing. And, look, Horace, don’t start worrying about this. I don’t know if it means anything.”
I could hear the tension in his voice. “What is it?”
“The woman, the one who was shot. It was Denise Morel, the one you prosecuted for killing her husband.”
There was a dead silence. “You sure? It’s been … what? Four years? Five? Did the cops ID her? Did Leopold know her?”
“No, at least to the first. The police don’t know who she is. Not yet. They’ll know before the end of tomorrow, though, once they run her prints. No, I recognized her. There isn’t any doubt. It was her all right. And I don’t know what Leopold knows. He presided over Morel’s trial, remember. I mean, Johnny Morel, her husband. She was a witness. But, Christ, Horace, that trial was a long time ago. He must have presided over hundreds of trials since then. No, he wouldn’t remember her from that.”
“Then, what?”
“I don’t know. I’ll know soon enough. He wanted to get a night’s sleep before we talked.”
“Listen, Joe, before you hang up. Call me tomorrow at court whenever you can. I’ll make a few calls of my own. I’ll see what I can find out about Denise Morel. A twenty-year sentence doesn’t mean much, does it?”
In the morning, padding around the kitchen in a pair of dilapidated leather slippers, a red-and-black flannel shirt buttoned at the neck, Leopold Rifkin made breakfast.
“Do you know how many years it’s been since I made breakfast for anyone?” He placed a plate of bacon and eggs in front of me, and then shook his head, a doubtful expression on his face. “I’m afraid you’re about to find out.”
“Better than I could have done myself,” I remarked after the first taste.
He looked at me with a puckish grin. “Are you sure that’s praise?”
“You have a point.”
He sat across from me with only a cup and saucer.
“Are you going to eat?”
“I’m not brave enough for that. I seldom have breakfast. It’s an old habit. A very bad one, really. Years ago, when I was a student, I began every day with coffee and a cigarette. I would study for hours, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes. Well, I gave up the cigarettes, but I won’t give up the coffee. That’s all I have, until late morning or early afternoon.”
He sipped some coffee and put the cup back on the saucer. “That is not quite true,” he admitted wryly. “I gave up cigarettes, almost. I still smoke. One each day. You know, like a vitamin. At my age, what can it hurt?”
He drank some more coffee and for a long time said nothing. Then, when he was ready, he started.
