Defense, page 7
“Who is it?” she asked suspiciously. I identified myself. The door shut silently and I could hear the chain slide through the metal aperture before it opened again.
“Come in,” she said, darting a glance down the hallway.
She was tall with broad, masculine shoulders and large, rawboned hands. Her black hair was clipped short, cut straight across her forehead. Her face was chiseled into a triangle that ran along the periphery of her chin and cheekbones. A dark green dressing gown trailed behind her as she walked, like the spiraling bandages of a mummy.
She sat down behind a dining room table buried under piles of newspapers, magazines, and mail that had never been opened. There was a small clearing at the corner for a bottle of beer and a glass ashtray that was filled with cigarette butts. A cigarette perched dangerously on the ashtray’s edge, a thin wisp of gray smoke drifting toward the ceiling. She picked it up and took a deep drag, like a swimmer coming up for air.
She took another drag and stared straight ahead. The muscles in her jaw worked back and forth, and a small, contemptuous smile curled over her brooding lower lip. A hard, cynical look came into her eyes, as she glanced up at me and gestured toward the armless, wooden chair on the other side of the table.
“So, you’re Johnny Morel’s lawyer. Funny, you don’t look like a court-appointed lawyer.”
“I’m not a court-appointed lawyer.”
She raised her eyebrows. “So, she got to you, too. She has a way of doing that,” she said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. No one has gotten to me.”
“If you’re not sleeping with her, why would you be his lawyer? It can’t be because of the money. There isn’t any.”
“I took this case because I was asked to do it.”
“That won’t stop Denise. She’s already come on to you, hasn’t she?”
It was none of her business. “The reason I wanted to talk to you—”
“So, you’re not even going to bother trying to deny it?”
“Look, I didn’t come here to talk about—”
“I don’t care what you came here to talk about!” she snapped. “You don’t have any idea what you’re dealing with, do you? You don’t have any idea what she’s all about, do you? You think I don’t know she’s come on to you? She always comes on to men—women, too, if you really want to know—if they have something she wants. And let’s face it, you have something she wants. She wants you to do everything you can to help Johnny Morel. And there’s only one way she can make sure you will. It’s the only thing that stupid bitch knows how to do. It’s how she gets what she wants. She uses people, she uses everyone. I should know, she used me.”
Her cigarette had been smoked down to the filter. A lazy, willowy ash dangled from the end of it, waiting to fall. She shoved it down through all the butts in the ashtray and rubbed it out. Ashes blew up into the air and a fine gray mist began its gradual descent to the top of the table below.
“Denise and I were lovers. Or I suppose I should say,” she added with a shrug, “I loved her and she took advantage of it. With Denise everything is always one-sided.”
She lit another cigarette. “I should quit,” she said as she extinguished the match with a single, quick, movement of her wrist. “But it’s about the only vice I have left. I gave up drugs, alcohol.” She caught me glancing at the half-empty bottle of beer. “Once in a while I cheat a little. But only beer. I haven’t had any real liquor for almost two years, and I haven’t had a hit in more than a year.” She shifted around in her chair and leaned forward, her elbow on the table. “I’m what they call a recovering alcoholic. And a recovering addict. I drink a little beer, but I don’t do drugs, not even once in a while.” She smiled, this time without the cynicism. “I don’t even use Tylenol.”
She glanced around the second-hand furnishings of the threadbare room. A faded beige rug covered the grimy linoleum floor under the wooden table. In the corner, adjacent to a doorway that led to what I assumed must be the bedroom, was an old, gray upholstered chair with round, fat arms and a sagging cushion on the seat. A cheap floor lamp with a torn, rose-colored shade and a frayed electric cord stood next to it.
When she looked back, a question flickered in her eyes, and then, a moment later, it was gone, replaced by the cynicism that had become her habitual defense against the world around her. She began to tap her fingers, and her eyes started to dart around. “I haven’t always lived like this. Believe it or not,” she said with a look that seemed to dare me not to, “there was a time when I was going to be what you are.”
I was unsure what she meant. I just looked at her, waiting for her to explain.
“I was going to be a lawyer. I decided that was what I was going to be when I was just a kid. I wasn’t even in high school yet. I thought it would be neat. You know, be a lawyer, stand up in front of a jury, defend the innocent, prosecute the guilty. That kind of thing.”
She watched to gauge my reaction. “Why didn’t you?” I asked, and as I asked I realized I wanted to know what happens to those who dream of doing something when they’re young, before the chains of circumstance change their lives and take them in directions they never wanted to go.
“I could have,” she said, her dark eyes wide open, staring at something no one else could see, something only she could remember. “Doesn’t matter now,” she said abruptly.
The afternoon sunlight of a late summer day seeped through the gauze curtains that covered the only window in the room, bathing everything in a yellow, stagnant haze. She got up and pulled back the curtains. The window was clean and clear. A flower box was crowded with geraniums, white and red and orange.
Myrna leaned against the windowsill. She ran her fingers through her short, inky black hair. “Look,” she said, raising her eyes from the floor. “I’m an alcoholic, I’m an addict, I’m a lot of things. But you can go back and tell sweet little Denise that she’s going to have to find someone else. I’m not going to do it. And you can tell her,” she added, her voice shaking, “that if I was going to testify for anyone I’d testify for the prosecution!”
She stepped away from the window, came back to the table, and lit another cigarette. Then she sat down. “She came here last night. Told me she needed my help. Told me that Michelle made up this story to get Johnny in trouble. Said all she wanted me to do was say that Michelle hated Johnny because he wouldn’t let her have her way all the time. And she told me if I did it she’d know I still loved her, and then she’d feel good about us again. She said she wanted us to start spending time together, like we used to … before Johnny.”
Her chest heaved up as she took another drag. Her eyes were always in motion, and always coming back to me. “So you know what I told her?” she asked, her mouth parted in a caustic grin. “I told her I’d do whatever she wanted. I told her that I’d be a witness. I told her I’d tell you whatever she wanted me to tell you. And when she left here last night she never had any doubt I’d do exactly that. I told you, Mr. Antonelli, she uses people. And she’s really very good at it.”
I was irritated and rapidly running out of patience. Denise Morel had lied and Myrna Albright had been wasting my time. I should have left, but I stayed, caught up in the mystery of what this strange woman thought she was doing.
“Why didn’t you just tell her you weren’t going to do it?”
“You don’t really know anything about her, do you? How could you? Well, let me tell you just a little, just enough so maybe you can figure out for yourself why I didn’t just tell her what she could do with it.”
They had met at a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous held for inmates of the county jail. When they were both back on the streets, they found a cheap apartment on the east side of Portland and Denise’s daughter, Michelle, came to live with them. Myrna became very fond of her and did everything she could for her. Denise would disappear for days at a time, sleeping with anyone who would give her a fix or the money to get one.
“I didn’t have any money, just what I got from welfare, and that was barely enough to pay the rent. But Denise would borrow anything I had, or just take it. And it wasn’t just money. I had an old car—it wasn’t much, but it got me around—and it was all I had. She took off in it one night. A couple days later she came back and said someone stole it. She sold it—I know it. She took everything I had—clothes, anything.”
She paused long enough for another drag. “Ridiculous isn’t it? I’m paying for everything—I’m taking care of her daughter for Christ sake!—and she’s stealing from me and I’m so infatuated with her that every time she leaves all I can think about is what I can do to make her like me enough to stay!” She looked away, her face lost in the sullen shadows of self-loathing.
“Do you believe in religion, Mr. Antonelli?” she asked, her eyes still averted. “I don’t. I don’t believe in anything—nothing—except one thing. I believe in the existence of evil. There is evil in the world, Mr. Antonelli, and it has nothing to do with people who can’t control themselves. I’m an addict. I’ve stolen from people, people who cared about me, people who loved me, who would have loved me no matter what I’d done, no matter what I’d become. But I never deliberately set out to harm anyone.” She stopped and stared hard at me. “Denise and Johnny Morel are evil, Mr. Antonelli. They did terrible things, things no one should ever do, things no one should ever get away with.”
She was beside herself. Her eyes flashed with rage, her hands began to tremble. “She brought Johnny Morel to the apartment. She took me into the kitchen, told me how much fun she thought it would be if the three of us did it together. And then I knew she hadn’t just been sleeping with him. She had been telling him about how she could get me to do anything, how she could get me to sleep with him if she wanted to. She had betrayed me, and I told her to go to hell! Do you know what she said then!?”
She sat on the edge of the chair, her teeth bared, her face twisted with hatred. “She said it didn’t matter. Johnny was more interested in Michelle anyway! And they left, Mr. Antonelli, they left and they took Michelle with them! And now she thinks she can come here and come on to me again and ask me for help!? Help them!? I should have killed them! And I wish I had! I wish I had done something to save that poor child!”
She was on her feet, glowering down at me. “So you go back and tell little Denise what I said. And then ask her what it feels like to be lied to, to be betrayed. And then, Mr. Antonelli, why don’t you ask yourself what you’re going to do to make this all come out right!”
I drove back to Portland, the last words of Myrna Albright banging around in my brain. If she decided to go to the police, the credibility of Denise Morel would be ripped to shreds. The only question left would be why the girl had said as little as she had. Johnny Morel had thrown her young body on the bed and raped her, just as she said he had. But it had happened before, and it had happened more than once.
From my office I called Denise Morel. She listened to what I had to say and then dismissed it all as the drug-induced ravings of someone she should never have trusted to tell the truth. It did not matter anyway. She had remembered something else. A few months before her daughter had accused her stepfather, she had falsely accused someone else. For some reason, I was not surprised.
vi
Only an empty church is as quiet as an empty courtroom. I took my place at the far end of the counsel table closest to the jury box and waited. There was nothing left to do. I was as ready as I was going to be. The trial would take on a life of its own. I had never been nervous at the start of a trial, not even in the beginning. I was in a world of my own in which everything had an order and a reason. Outside, men and women lived amidst all the ambiguities of existence. A trial had a beginning and it had an end, and when it was over everyone knew who had won and who had lost. It was just like the black and white movies I used to watch.
A slow, creaking noise broke the silence. The door at the back of the courtroom swung open. With a muffled, rhythmic jangle, Johnny Morel, chained at the ankles and wrists, was led down the center aisle, through the swinging gate at the rail, and up to the chair next to where I sat.
“Be careful!” he whined as the handcuffs were removed. “They’re too damn tight!”
It was the first time I had seen him in civilian clothes. His wife had been told to bring him the best things he had. Wearing a faded tan shirt, frayed at the collar, tan pants that were a little too short, brown shoes a size too large, and a pair of white socks, he looked as if he belonged on a work crew picking up trash on the side of the highway.
He was still rubbing his wrists, complaining, when a sharp crack reverberated all around the courtroom. Horace Woolner, holding a large cardboard box filled with files under one arm and a bulging briefcase in the other, hit the door with his shoulder and nearly knocked it off its hinges. He dropped the box on the table and began rummaging for something in his briefcase.
“Who’s that?” Morel whispered hoarsely.
“The district attorney.”
“What’s he doing here?” he asked. A rabid excitement was beginning to build in his voice. “What’s he doing here?” he demanded more insistently. “What’s he doing here!?” he hissed through clenched teeth, his whole body gone tense.
I ignored him, and it drove him crazy. He reached across and pushed me on the shoulder. I grabbed his wrist and flung it away as hard as I could. I jumped out of my chair. He was on his feet as fast as I was. For an instant I thought he was going to fly at my throat.
“What’s he doing here!?” he shrieked.
The officer who had brought him in leaped over the railing, grabbed him hard by the elbows and pinned his arms behind his back. Somehow he managed to get control of him with one hand while he handcuffed his wrists together with the other.
With deadening monotony, Morel kept yelling, over and over again, “What’s he doing here!? What’s he doing here!?” His eyes were like two boiling cauldrons. “No fucking nigger is gonna try me!!” he screamed as he tried to yank free.
While the officer held him fast, I shouted into his mindless face, “Then plead guilty and get it over with! Or sit down, shut your goddamn mouth and be grateful we don’t just leave you here and let him break every bone in your goddamn body!”
I glanced at Horace Woolner, ready to apologize. He was trying hard not to laugh.
Leopold Rifkin believed that not even lawyers should be made to wait. At precisely nine-thirty he took his place on the bench and called the case.
Woolner was already on his feet. “We are here, your honor, in the case of State v. Johnny Morel.” He paused for just a second, and then added: “The state is ready, your honor.”
Rifkin was impassive, almost stoical. He turned his attention to me and asked: “Is the defense ready to proceed, Mr. Antonelli?”
“The defense is ready, your honor. I do, however, have one preliminary matter.” I waited, listening to the soft, methodic hum of a fan. Rifkin nodded attentively. “I would ask the court, your honor, to exclude witnesses.”
The motion was commonplace, and the court had to grant it. No one who was going to testify would be allowed to hear what other witnesses said under oath. I knew the rules, and I knew how to use them.
“Any other motions?” Rifkin inquired languidly. There were none, and he directed the clerk to bring in the jurors.
Two dozen men and women, many of them elderly, shuffled awkwardly down the center aisle and filled the first three rows of benches at the front. Rifkin greeted them with a smile.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, leaning forward, “I am Leopold Rifkin, judge of the circuit court. You have been summoned to act as jurors in the case of State v. Johnny Morel. This is a criminal case, and I am now going to read you the indictment which has been returned against the defendant.”
With meticulous care, Rifkin read each word of the two-page indictment. When he finished, he looked up and stared intently at the three rows of upturned faces below him “To these charges,” he announced emphatically, “the defendant has entered a plea of not guilty. That means that the defendant denies these charges.” He paused to let the denial sink in, and then added forcefully: “The defendant has pled not guilty, and the law, I now instruct you, presumes he is innocent of these charges. That presumption is to follow him throughout this trial. He is presumed innocent,” he repeated, “until and unless the state proves his guilt to a moral certainty and beyond a reasonable doubt. Your duty as jurors is to listen to all the evidence and not make up your minds until you have gone back to the jury room and deliberated carefully among yourselves.”
Rifkin had impressed them with the gravity of their responsibility. Now he relaxed and became almost amiable. He introduced the district attorney, the defendant, and me. He asked if anyone knew us. No one did. He explained that we were about to begin the process of selecting a jury. In a few minutes twelve names would be drawn by the clerk, and the two lawyers would then ask questions of each of them. These questions, he hastened to point out, were not meant to embarrass them, but, rather, to help determine who was qualified to sit as jurors in this case.
The three rows of prospective jurors had strained to concentrate on every word when Rifkin, with all the force of an Old Testament prophet, read the indictment and insisted on the presumption of innocence. Now they were nodding and smiling as if they were having a conversation with a friend over the backyard fence. Rifkin was always in control.
