The Laws of Our Fathers Page 13

  'So stipulated,' Hobie intones.

  'The People and the defendant, Nile Eddgar, further stipulate that the remains examined by Dr Russell were in fact those of June LaValle Eddgar, date of birth March 21, 1933.'

  'So stipulated.' We have a murder case. A victim dead of violent means.

  Next, Rudy reads a summary of an array of telephone toll records. In the era of computers and multiple area codes, the phone company maintains magnetic media recording every call from every number. These summaries show that in August and early September Nile seldom let twenty-four hours pass without calling a pager number. The testimony, no doubt, will be that the pager was Hardcore's. It was dialed repeatedly from Nile's apartment and office, and his father's home on several evenings and weekends.

  After that, Rudy recites the parties' agreement about the fingerprint expert's report. One of the shell casings recovered from the scene shows a partial print from Gordon Huffington, a.k.a. Gorgo. Huffington has not been available for any current comparisons.

  'He's a fugitive?' I ask. 'Huffington?'

  Singh looks to Tommy, then Hobie, before responding. Hobie waves a hand to show he could not care less if Rudy answers.

  'Yes, Yaw On-ah,' Rudy replies.

  'And the state's theory is that he's the shooter?'

  Again, there's a pause. Molto gets to his feet, his small mouth shriveled by chagrin about my frequent questions.

  'It wasn't covered in openings,' I explain. 'I'm just trying to get my bearings.'

  'He's the alleged member of the conspiracy who fired the shots,' Tommy answers. 'And he's at large.'

  I nod. But there is a hole in the state's case. The actual killer is unaccounted for. That's bound to provide room for the defense.

  Singh resumes reading. He allows his voice a flourish meant to inform that we've reached a point of drama. People's Group Exhibit 1 consists of Exhibits 1A and iB. Exhibit 1A is a plastic bag. Singh holds it aloft, displaying a long blue plastic sleeve resembling the wrapper from my Sunday newspaper. Group Exhibit 1B consists of 177 pieces of United States currency, 23 hundred-dollar bills and 154 fifty-dollar bills. Like the blue bag, the bills are encased in thick plasticine and sealed with heavy tape, which is inscribed in red with the repeated word 'Evidence.' When received by the lab, the bills in iB were bound by a single

  common latex band and were contained in Exhibit 1 A, the blue bag. Eighty-nine bills from Exhibit iB were submitted for fingerprint examination: the top and bottom bills of the stack - a $100 bill and a fifty - and 87 bills chosen at random, each one identified in the stipulation by serial numbers.

  Rudy's reading continues monotonously. The stipulation discusses points of comparison and ridge details, and goes on at particular length about the so-called Superglue Method, involving cyanoacrylate, which was used to develop prints on the plastic bag. But there is no missing what's significant: Nile's fingerprints were identified on the two outer bills of the stack of money, and his prints, as well as Hardcore's, were also discovered on the blue plastic bag in which the money was wrapped.

  As a prosecutor, it took me years to learn I was almost always better off with a stipulation. It avoided the hundred ways witnesses fail - memory lapse or slip of the tongue, the fatal, blurted remark on cross-examination. Especially without a jury, Tommy is probably doing exactly what he should. But he's also allowing Hobie to make the best of the situation, by underplaying highly damaging testimony. What excuse, after all, is there for a probation officer to be exchanging large bills with one of his clients? Even the reporters, minutely whispering at the onset of Rudy' s recitation, gradually quiet as the details about the fingerprints emerge. Everyone in the courtroom now knows the case has passed beyond the stage of accusation. No matter how dryly delivered, the state has offered real evidence against Nile Eddgar.

  As its first witness, the prosecution calls Detective Lieutenant Lewis Montague of Area 7 Homicide, who supervised the case investigation. When his testimony is complete, Montague will be in and out of the courtroom to assist the prosecutors - contacting witnesses, retrieving exhibits. He's the cop on the case. Questioned by Rudy Singh, in an orderly and energetic way, Montague describes what confronted him on the morning of September 7 - uniforms, yellow tape, ambulances, and cruisers. Photos are produced. Pictures of the body are passed up to me. I thumb through them and write down the exhibit numbers. There is no face, just mess. Grim, I think. But it's not June. It occurs to me after the fourth or fifth eight-by-eleven I may be reacting to the fact she gained so much weight. In the scramble of papers already heaped here on my leather blotter, I find the path report. Seventy-seven kilograms! I am mortified for June's sake. The woman I knew had an enviable adult sensuousness, on which she clearly counted, even in the midst of the revolution.

  'Did you examine the victim?' Rudy asks.

  'We waited for the PP.' Police pathologist. Montague bothers himself with a glance my way and adds, confidentially, 'She was off-line, Judge. Clearly.' Dead, in other words. The cops are always at their toughest when the subject is dying. They have a thousand euphemisms. 'Giving the Q sign' is the one that occasionally makes me suppress a smirk. It means the decedent was found with her tongue hanging out of the corner of her mouth.

  'And did you, Detective, have occasion to make observation of a young woman who was subsequently identified as Lovinia Campbell?'

  'Ms Campbell was on the pavement at the time I arrived, about fifty feet from Mrs Eddgar. A paramedics team which was on scene was preparing to remove her.'

  Montague details her position. A photo of a bloodstain is offered, then a schematic line drawing of the street. Montague makes an X and a Y to indicate the positions of Lovinia and June Eddgar. The testimony is crisp, dispassionate. Montague describes the work of other officers whom he supervised. Evidence techs went over the interior of the vehicle. They found June's purse and dusted it for prints, then inventoried the contents. A uniformed officer called in the plate on the Nova and received a report that the car was registered to Loyell Eddgar in the town of Easton. Finally, Montague says he directed a canvass of the neighborhood. After the results were reported to him, he instructed Homicide investigators to attempt to locate an individual.

  'And what was the name of that individual?' asks Rudy, tiptoeing past the hearsay rule. 'Ordell Trent.'

  'And was Ordell Trent identified by any other name?' 'Hardcore,' says Montague. 'That's his gangster tag.' 'And calling your attention, sir, to September u, 1995, four days later, did you have occasion to meet with Hardcore?' ‘I met him that day, at Area 7.' 'And who else if anyone was present?' 'His lawyer. Jackson Aires.'

  'And did you receive anything that day from Hardcore?' Rudy has gone back to the prosecution table and fishes in the cardboard box where the state stores its exhibits. On the white carton, the prosecutors have written the case name, People v. Eddgar, and in letters big enough for a street sign - and certainly for a jury to have noticed - consp. murder. Rudy again holds up People's Group Exhibit 1, the $10,000 on which Nile's fingerprints were found. Montague says he received the money from Hardcore, initialed it, and submitted it for fingerprint examination.

  'And what, if you please, was the result of that examination, Lieutenant?'

  Rankled, Hobie takes his feet. 'Your Honor, I already stipulated. What's this about?'

  'Yaw On-ah,' answers Rudy majestically, ‘I am merely trying to establish the process of Lieutenant Montague's investigation.' He is, in fact, attempting to emphasize his best evidence, which is why Hobie accepted the stipulation in the first place. I sustain the objection and Singh is done.

  Montague turns his head minutely, awaiting Hobie. Sitting below me a few feet away, Lew Montague is a picture of repose. He wears a blue blazer and a shirt pilled at the collar. His long black hair is smoothly combed. He seems thickened by experience, by his years of scraping blood and guts off the streets near the projects. In the witness chair, he sits almost limply. Montague has been crossed and recrossed once a w
eek for at least a decade and has fully mastered the body language of credibility. He will maintain his calm. His voice will never rise. His answers will be brief. A cop like Montague, a true expert on the stand, could convict virtually anyone he chooses, support the theory of phlogiston or the burning of witches at the stake.

  'Just a few questions, Detective,' says Hobie. He is in another gorgeous suit; his beard is trimmed and his fingernails sparkle with clear polish. He starts toward Montague and then, seemingly struck by something, retreats. He takes the plastic bags containing the currency, People's Exhibit i, from Rudy's hand. The band of Hobie's watch, a huge hunk of gold, comes briefly into view from beneath his French cuffs.

  'Now when you sent this money here to the state police lab, did you happen to ask them to test for anything besides fingerprints?'

  Montague frowns barely. He catches Hobie's drift at once. My friend Sandy Stern has often told me that a defense lawyer is like a person feeling along a wall, looking for a light switch in the dark. Hobie, apparently, is in search of procedural defects, hoping the state performed scientific tests about which they failed to advise him. There is always the vague hope, even in the era of the Rehnquist court, that a defendant can be set free, not because he is innocent, but because the state has been unfair.

  'No,' Montague answers to the question about other tests.

  'So you didn't test to see if there were, perhaps, traces of blood on this money?'

  'No.'

  'You didn't attempt to see if there was, for instance, any evidence of gunpowder?'

  'Gunpowder?' Montague contains himself. 'No.'

  'Could you have run those tests?'

  'I saw no reason to.'

  'You could have, though?'

  'Sure.'

  'Could you do it now?'

  'No,' says Montague. 'No, wait. Yes, you could. I was going to say no, because the money was treated with ninhydrin' - the stinky purple print-developing agent - 'but we only sent half of it. The lab -' Montague lifts a hand, but it is the soured mouth that says it all.

  'The lab sometimes loses track of things?'

  'Yuh,' says Montague, happy to say no more.

  Hobie nods gravely, as if this were a major concession. I'm not surprised to find that Hobie is a bit of a courtroom con artist. As a young man, he was always so emphatic, even when he was out of his mind or ill informed. His initial inquiries of Montague predictably reveal a sort of high-wire style, asking another question because he asked the first one, letting his ego roam free in the thin air of the courtroom. As a trial lawyer, I always felt stifled. I was never one of these great performers. I was more Tommy's style, just somebody who got the job done, but as a result I was not inclined to the kinds of blunders that seem the inevitable consequence of Hobie's free-association manner.

  'Now this fellow Ordell - Hardcore,' Hobie says, changing subjects, 'you indicated he was known to you as a gang member. Which gang was that?'

  'You mean what gang he belongs to? At Tower IV at Grace Street, they tend to be Black Saints Disciples. Most are jumped-in to a set called the T-4 Rollers.'

  'And is Hardcore a leader in that gang?'

  'Counselor, a gang isn't organized like the police department or a corporation. You know, who's in charge can vary from day to day, depending on who they think is cool - who shot, who robbed, who busted on the Goobers. Candidly, that's not my thing. They kill each other, I learn what I have to. Otherwise, you know -' He lifts a hand with a glistening ruby ring on the smallest finger and doesn't bother with the rest. Montague is from the Joe Friday school: Just the facts. The kind of stuff Hobie is asking about is for sociologists or reporters, people who think there are motives worth understanding beyond plain meanness. Worst of all, the questions imply that Montague has an abstract interest in people whom, truth be told, he largely despises. In reaction, he casts a wayward glance at the prosecutors. Molto, in his frumpy suit, throws an elbow in Rudy's side and Rudy takes his feet, even as Tommy continues whispering what it is he ought to say.

  'Judge, these answers are calling for hearsay and speculation from the witness. Detective Montague is not a gang member.'

  'This is background on Hardcore?' I ask Hobie, and he nods eagerly, pleased I've gotten the point. I overrule the objection. The defense is entitled to show that the state's main witness did not arrive in the courtroom fresh from finishing school. At the prosecution table, Tommy shrugs off my ruling. He merely wanted to assuage Montague, who apparently was feeling beleaguered.

  Granted some latitude, Hobie rephrases his last question, asking Montague to describe the leadership structure of BSD, as he understands it. Montague reacts as he did before, rolling his mouth about with mild distaste.

  'Again, counsel, these folks don't give us an organizational chart. This particular bunch,' says Montague, 'have some relationship to another gang, called the Night Saints. There were some arrests and convictions, say, a dozen years ago. And this is sort of what you could call the surviving organization, although it's much bigger by now.'

  'And how big is that, Lieutenant?'

  'Jeez.' Montague directs a few stray hairs back into the black mass shining under the strong courtroom lights. 'From what I've seen, the Force estimates, they place membership in B SD at five, six thousand.' A murmur from the press section follows this news. Glancing over there, I am mildly startled by Seth Weissman, whom I hadn't noticed yet today. He has his arms laid across the chairs on either side, and he is fixed on me, somewhat disconcertingly. Having caught my eye, he issues a smile of greeting, which I return vaguely. Really! I think, although I am not certain if I mean to criticize him or me.

  'And is Hardcore in charge of all six thousand?'

  'Not as I get it. You know, the head of the Night Saints was a three-timer name of Melvin White, who was known on the street as Harukan. One of his sons now - who's called Harukan-el - son of Harukan, I guess - anyway, Kan-el is supposedly the head of the organization. But he's been in the state penitentiary at Rudyard for many years. So there's a Jeffrey Wilson, Jeff T-Roc, who is usually acknowledged as the top dog in BSD. Or so I understand.'

  'And am I correct that this Kan-el is eligible for parole?'

  'Supervised release. Parole by another name. That's what I hear. As I remember, he's been up twice. You know, he applies, he gets turned down. He's not a favored candidate, let's say.'

  'There's some opposition from the law-enforcement community?'

  'Some,' says Montague dryly.

  'Judge,' interjects Tommy, 'what's the relevance of any of this?' I tell Molto that I want to hear objections only from the lawyer who questioned the witness, meaning Singh, then direct Hobie to explain his line of inquiry. He says he's only trying to establish where Hardcore fits in the organization in relation to Kan-el and T-Roc.

  'Then ask that question,' I tell Hobie.

  'Under them somewhere,' answers Montague, when Hobie does. 'Core's what they refer to as a "shot-caller" or "caller." He runs the T-4 set.'

  'Was he over this Ms Campbell, this young lady who got herself shot?'

  'So I understand.' Montague, although visibly unruffled, cannot resist an addition. 'You've seen her more recently than I have.' At that, Hobie comes to a complete stop. Every trial lawyer has his way. Hobie moves. He's big and seems to try to occupy the entire courtroom as a way of guaranteeing attention. He careers between the tables, slides up on the witness, nodding his dark, bearded face over his shoulder as he retreats. He's effective, too. Sloppy at moments, as when he groped with the money. But cagey and stylish. Now he takes full advantage of Montague's lapse by staring the witness down before moving to strike the last remark. I grant the motion and he goes on to another subject.

  'Now, Detective, Mr Singh asked you a couple of questions about the investigation you conducted on September 7 following Mrs Eddgar's murder. Remember?'

  'That I had a canvass done?'

  'Right. When you canvassed that neighborhood, no officer reported to you that anybod
y'd mentioned the name of Nile Eddgar, did they?'

  'Not that I remember.'

  'They mentioned Hardcore, right?'

  'Right.'

  'But not Nile?'

  'No.'

  'Then there was this Lovinia Campbell. This young lady on the sidewalk? What's she called in the gang?' 'Bug,' says Montague. 'Bug. Did you speak with her?' 'Very briefly.'

  'And did you ask Bug what had happened there?' 'I did.'

  'And did Bug tell you that Nile Eddgar had conspired to murder his father, or his mother, or anybody else?'

  Tommy prods Singh, who objects that this is hearsay. I overrule. The state opened up the subject of which suspects were named at the scene.

  'No, she didn't,' Montague answers, somewhat wearily.

  'As a matter of fact, Lieutenant, what she said was this whole thing was a drive-by shooting and Mrs Eddgar had got herself caught in the crossfire - isn't that what Bug said?'

  'I suppose that's what she said. You know, she was in shock.'

  ' "In shock"? Is that your medical opinion, Detective?' Tommy's on his feet. 'Judge, he's arguing with the witness.' 'If anything, I think the witness is arguing with him, Mr Molto.

  And I believe this is Mr Singh's witness, and even in a bench trial, I told you, I don't want to be tag-teamed.' I nod to Hobie to proceed.

  'The fact here, Lieutenant, is that this Lovinia - Bug - didn't mention Nile Eddgar in any way that day, isn't that so?'

  'She mentioned Nile a few days later when she talked to Officer Fred Lubitsch at General Hospital.' In exasperation, Hobie wilts. The question was what she said on September 7. In his worn blazer, Montague stares at Hobie hotly. There's no doubt any more that Lovinia Campbell is the state's problem or that Montague blames Hobie for their trouble. In theory, a defense lawyer is entitled to interview any prosecution witness, but usually when the witness has made a deal with the state, her own lawyer will discourage her from co-operating with the defendant. It keeps the prosecutors happy and avoids the jeopardy that might arise from contradicting what she told the state. Somehow, though, Hobie slipped past Bug's counsel, or even got her help, and the cops and prosecutors don't like it. I'm sure now this is why Hobie brought up Lovinia's name this morning - so I'd have the picture if Montague acted up.