KC09 - Identical Read online

  She went out to the hall to call her assistant VP who covered the Ohio Valley and told him to get up to Indianapolis and find somebody who could look for environmental contamination. Back inside, Mel Tooley, Hal’s lawyer, told her that the hearing had been delayed again, because Cass’s lawyer was still en route. Her boss had gone out to return a few calls. Mel was checking his handheld from a seat in one of the three rows of card chairs that had been set out for spectators, and Evon put herself down beside him. As a Bureau agent, Evon had known Mel mostly by reputation, which was as another scumbag defense lawyer, smart but basically deceitful. Through Hal, she’d seen Mel’s better side, but she still took him with a grain of salt. He looked ridiculous, for one thing, wearing suits too tight for his wide form and a shaggy toupee, which he must have adopted when Tom Jones was the rage. The mess of black curls fell all over his head, resembling the stuff he might sweep off the floor when he took his poodle to the groomer.

  She asked Mel for a better picture of what was supposed to happen this afternoon. Mel wrenched his eyes in passing anguish.

  “It’s just Hal being Hal,” he said. He explained that family members of homicide victims had a statutory right to demand a hearing before a convicted killer was released. There was no basis, however, to hold Cass Gianis any longer. He had done all but six months of good time on the twenty-five-year sentence imposed when he pled guilty, and the only way to keep him inside would be for a serious disciplinary infraction. Instead, Gianis had been a model prisoner.

  “Here,” said Mel, “take a look at his file. See if I missed something.” Mel handed over a heavy redwell folder and left to return a call of his own, while Evon sat there, turning the pages. An essential element of Cass’s original plea deal had apparently been incarceration in a minimum-security institution, treatment rarely accorded a murderer, and for which she assumed there had been hard bargaining. As a result, he had been in the Hillcrest Correctional Facility about seventy-five miles from the Tri-Cities for more than two decades, even turning down transfers to newer prisons where he could have had his own room. The forms he’d filled out stated that Hillcrest, despite its barracks, was a better location for his family, especially his twin brother, who visited most Sundays. Tooley had subpoenaed every piece of paper Hillcrest had on Cass, starting with his intake photo and the fingerprints he’d given when he entered prison in July 1983, and concluding with the most recent status report of his counselor. As Mel had said, the overall impression from the heavy file was of someone who had managed the rare trick of being a popular figure with the administration, the correctional officers and fellow prisoners, to whom Cass taught classes on law and GED equivalency every day. Most recently, Gianis had finished distance classes to qualify for a teaching credential. In a milieu in which disciplinary beefs were routine—fistfights over the TV channel, fruit secreted from the mess that could be fermented with a little bread into rotgut liquor, joints that relatives had smuggled in—Cass’s record showed only a few “tickets,” write-ups for offenses no graver than reading after lights-out.

  At the doorway, there was a ruffle of activity. Paul Gianis, looking as good as he did on TV, was on his way in, followed by two scrubbed young underlings, a black woman and a white man, campaign staffers, Evon surmised. Mayoral race or not, Paul was apparently going to resume the role he’d played from the start, as one of his brother’s lawyers. He hung his gray wool overcoat over a metal chair and threw down a beaten briefcase on the table designated for the prisoner’s representatives.

  There had been a time, fifteen years ago, when Evon would have said she knew Paul Gianis fairly well, although she realized that he might not even remember her now. At that time, she had been transferred here to work on Project Petros, an FBI undercover investigation of corruption in the state courtrooms where personal-injury cases were heard. Paul was that rare Kindle County lawyer who’d first had the guts to refuse a shakedown attempt by a prominent judge, and then exhibited the even greater courage required to say yes when Evon asked him to testify about the incident after the judge was indicted. Afterward, widespread admiration for Paul, especially in the press, had propelled him into a political career that had led him to become majority leader in the state senate. Now running for mayor, he was far ahead in the early polls due to his name recognition and the generous backing of the plaintiff’s bar and several unions.

  Evon nodded when Paul finally cast an absent glance her way. He seemed to register nothing at first, then looked back and beamed.

  “My God, it’s Evon.” He crossed the room immediately to offer his hand and chatted as he stood over her, jingling the keys and change in his pocket, answering her questions about his family. Paul’s wife, Sofia Michalis, was famous in her own right, a reconstructive surgeon who’d made national news twice for leading teams of doctors to Iraq to treat the victims of IEDs. Their two sons, he said, were both at Easton College.

  “And what about you?” he asked. “I heard you went to work for Hal. How’s that been?” The corners of his mouth peaked. Paul clearly was familiar with Hal’s reputation for irascibility.

  “He’s not a bad guy. Bark is a lot worse.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I’ve known Hal all my life.”

  Evon straightened up. She’d never heard that.

  “The families were always like this.” Paul crossed his long fingers. “His Aunt Teri was my mom’s best friend and her koumbara, the maid of honor at my parents’ wedding. In our church, that meant she was also my oldest sister’s godmother, the nouna, which is a big deal if you’re Greek. Teri was at every family celebration—Easter and Christmas and saints’ days—and Hal was her favorite, so she brought him along. My Big Fat Greek Family.” He smiled at his bland little joke. “Eventually my dad and Hal’s got into this insane tussle about the lease on my father’s grocery, but before that, Hal even babysat for Cass and me.” He showed the same great white grin, engaging because it made him seem briefly unguarded. “Needless to mention, he hates my guts now.”

  Even leaving aside Dita’s murder—a lot to leave aside—Hal hated all liberal politicians, who, as he would tell you, almost always wanted to pay for inept government services by raising property taxes, which would drive out of the city business and employment and, most important, the tenants who rented in ZP’s three major shopping centers in Kindle County. Evon tended to see his point. She’d voted Republican her entire life, until 2004, when she felt like they’d closed the door on her with the national effort to equate gay marriage with leprosy.

  “How’s your campaign?” she asked.

  “Everybody says it’s going great,” he said, again offering that expansive smile. He was a nice-looking man, fit, a tad better than six feet, with a mountain of black hair that gleamed like a crow, save the scattered strands gone to silver. His long face had been weighted by time in that way that somehow looked good only on men, who ended up appearing wiser, nobler and ergo more fit for power. On women, it was just age. “Can I count on your vote?”

  She probably would have said yes, even if it hadn’t been banter, but Paul was interrupted by the arrival of Cass’s main lawyer, Sandy Stern, who, according to the prison file, had represented Cass when he pled guilty. Round and bald, with an enigmatically elegant manner, Stern demonstrated there was an advantage to looking middle-aged when you were younger. He seemed barely changed by the fifteen years that had passed since he’d first cross-examined Evon in one of the Project Petros cases. Stern greeted Paul and also shook hands with Evon with a tiny bow, although she was unsure he actually remembered her.

  A skinny female clerk appeared then from the back room to announce the commissioners were ready, and Evon summoned Tooley and Hal from the hall. By the time they returned to the conference room, a deputy sheriff was steering Cass Gianis in from a side door. He moved with mincing steps, since he wore leg irons and manacles, both connected to a metal chain that circled the waist of his blue jumpsuit. Paul asked the deputy’s permission before embracing his
brother.

  Although the Gianises were obviously identical twins, seeing them side by side Evon recognized that, like her friends the Sherrell sisters back in Kaskia, they had not matured as exact photocopies. Cass was a tad taller, and somewhat broader. The most notable difference was that Paul’s nose had been broken years ago. There was a funny story about that, retold in every profile of Paul, because, during their honeymoon in 1983, his wife, Sofia, had accidentally hit him with a tennis racket when he was trying to teach her the game. His father had supposedly taken one look at the bandage when they returned and said, ‘I thought I told you not to talk back.’ Paul had been left with a purplish lump at the bridge that looked a bit like a knuckle. Both brothers wore glasses, Cass’s simple clear plastic prison-issue frames, Paul’s black and stylishly squared. By some accounts, Paul had given up his contacts to obscure his broken nose, but to Evon it made the contrast in their profiles more noticeable. The resemblance between the twins was strong otherwise, except that Cass parted his thick hair, grown out as a privilege of minimum security, on the left, while Paul combed his hair the other way.

  The five members of the commission filed in from a back door, four men and one woman, a diverse racial array like a UN poster. Evon had no idea who any of them were. No doubt they were all friends of the governor, a Republican, and thus, if anything, likely to be inclined toward Hal, who, largely by himself, financed the operations of the Republican Party in Kindle County.

  The chairman, a sorrowful-looking fellow named Perfectus Elder, went through a discussion of several cases that received nothing but perfunctory commentary from the assistant attorney general, a lean guy named Logan whom Hal and Tooley had been talking with when Evon arrived. While this was occurring, an elderly lady in a wheelchair was steered into the hearing room by her tiny Filipina caregiver. The woman was engaged in an addled murmur, and the caregiver remonstrated with her quietly, as if speaking to a young child. The old woman’s white hair was disordered and thin, like the remains of a milkweed pod, but she was beautifully dressed, and, even reduced by age and disease, retained a look of some determination. Paul turned away from his brother to greet her and she fell upon him with sufficient desperation that Evon realized the old lady was their mother.

  “Typical stunt,” Hal muttered immediately, loud enough that the commissioners had to hear the remark. Under the table, Tooley grabbed Hal’s hand. Evon had been around enough hearing rooms to share Hal’s suspicion. Stern and Paul, an accomplished trial lawyer who’d made a bundle in the national tobacco litigation after he left the PA’s office, were using the twins’ mother as an exhibit, demonstrating that there was no time to lose in letting Cass out. In the meantime, Paul again awaited the deputy’s agreement before nodding to Cass, who turned back to embrace their mom. She became a burbling mess, her wailing briefly filling the hearing room. Evon realized it might have been years since the old lady had last seen her sons together. Chairman Elder grimaced a bit, then called the case everyone here was clearly waiting for.

  “Matter of Cassian Gianis, number 54669, objection of Herakles Kronon.” Elder made a complete hash of Hal’s names, not just the first, which was often mispronounced, but the last as well, which was spoken as if he were an Irishman named Cronin.

  Mel on one side, and Stern and Paul on the other, met at the lectern and gave their names for the record, which was a tape recording being made by the slender young woman who was operating the machine at the end of the table. Several reporters had filed in in the last few minutes, taking the seats next to Evon in the first row of chairs, joining Paul’s two staffers. Word that Paul Gianis was in the house seemed to have attracted several additional onlookers, who filled the second and third rows.

  “Mr. Gianis is scheduled for release on January thirtieth,” said Elder, “and Mr. Kronon has objected. Mr. Tooley, how should we proceed?”

  “My client would like to address the commission,” said Mel, and moved aside to let Hal take his place. Tooley was giving the wild horse its head, but doing his best not to be splattered by the mud as he galloped by. Everyone in the room, except Hal, accepted the inevitability of Paul Gianis’s election.

  Hal came to his feet, looking awkward, as Evon could have predicted. He had forgotten to re-button his shirt collar and his tie was to the side, and he couldn’t figure out where to put his hands, which he finally folded in front of himself. Her boss, even at his best, was not a pleasing physical presence. He had a large sloping belly and an oddly lizard-like face with goggle eyes, heavy jowls, thick horn-rimmed glasses and a flattened nose. His hairline had been reduced to a few flyaway scraps.

  He expressed his thanks to the board members and then began a free-form soliloquy about Dita’s death. Although Hal generally avoided the unruly emotions summoned by speaking about his sister’s murder, she was never far from his mind. In Hal’s office, on one wall, was a small shrine to Dita, including her senior sorority picture from the Kappa Kappa Gamma house at State. She had been striking and dark, with huge eyes and a wide wry smile.

  By the time Hal was a couple of minutes into his remarks, he was weeping, but he was also largely incoherent. Only one thing was clear in his presentation. Because Hal’s pain remained, it seemed wrong that Cass Gianis would be allowed to walk free.

  As Hal spoke, occasional loony mumblings came from the twins’ mother on the other side of the room, her caregiver making persistent efforts to shush her. At the other table, Paul and Cass remained respectfully stone-faced throughout Hal’s presentation.

  When Hal finally sat down again, Stern rose, taking care to first close the center button on his suit coat. He still retained the faint accent of his native Argentina.

  “No one wishes more than Cass, and his mother and brother here beside him, that the events of that night twenty-five years ago could be undone. It has been a source of terrible grief to their family, and they understand that their own loss has been small next to the Kronons’. But Cass has paid the price fixed by the law, a sentence that was agreed to with the consent of the Kronons at the time. The record—”

  Hal could not contain himself. “It was all right with my father and mother. It was never all right with me.”

  Chair Elder looked even more sorrowful in the face of this outburst. He searched around for a gavel and, finding none, banged the flat of his hand on the card table as Tooley hauled Hal back to his seat. Several of the observers murmured. If Hal was hoping to agitate public opinion, it wasn’t working. He was making a fool of himself.

  Elder nodded to Stern, who continued for only another moment. When he was done, Elder leaned left and right to consult with his colleagues. It was unusual for anyone of stature to appear at these hearings, except when grandstanding prosecutors, usually those running for reelection, came to inveigh against the release of a particularly notorious prisoner. But that was part of the established agenda. To have influential strangers like Paul and Hal embroiled before the commission was uncomfortable, especially when there were reporters here. Elder clearly wanted to get this over with now.

  “Release date to stand,” Elder said. The panel then rushed out the back door, like liquid through a funnel.

  Evon watched as Paul Gianis hugged his brother. The deputies took hold of Cass’s blue sleeve, but allowed him to embrace his mother briefly before they steered him from the room. The reporters surrounded Paul.

  Stern shook hands with Tooley and left first. Hal marched out with Evon and Mel in unhappy cortege behind him.

  “Talk about wasted breath,” said Hal in the corridor. The conference room door swung open a second later, and the attendant appeared, struggling to back Mrs. Gianis’s chair across the threshold. Hal, who in his own way was quite a gentleman, rushed over to help. Just to prove you never knew what you would get with Hal, he knelt beside the old lady as soon as she was outside, purring to her, as if he had not just been painting her son as the spawn of Satan.

  “Auntie Lidia,” he called her. He rested a hand on her for
earm, the brown skin mottled with age spots and a skinny white patch, shiny like an old burn. Evon was reminded of the deterioration of her mother’s skin when she was dying. It had seemed as thin as paper, as if you could tear it with your fingers. “Auntie Lidia, it’s Hal Kronon. Zeus and Hermione’s son. It’s so good to see you.” He smiled at her, as the old woman looked about trying to comprehend. Her eyes were watery from age and bald of lashes. In order to help her, Hal switched to Greek. The sole word Evon understood was when Hal repeated his given name. But Mrs. Gianis caught that, too.

  “Herakles!” the old lady exclaimed. She nodded several times. “Herakles,” she repeated, and then brought her hand to Hal’s cheek with remarkable tenderness. The door swung outward again and this time Paul emerged, followed by a trio of reporters and his two young staffers. Hal stood up, wet-eyed again, his overused hanky crushed into the center of his face. Paul surveyed all of this for a second, then spoke to the attendant.

  “Nelda, I think you should get Mom upstairs. They’re waiting at the home.” Mrs. Gianis was still saying ‘Herakles’ while the attendant wheeled her away. Paul turned back to Hal with a ripe expression, something between bitterness and bemusement, his lips drawn tight.

  “Don’t give me the evil eye, Paul,” Hal responded. “Your mother was always kind to me. She didn’t murder anybody. Which I’d never say about you.”

  At the last remark, Paul’s mouth actually fell open and he took a step back.

  “Jesus, Hal.”

  “Don’t ‘Jesus’ me. You got away with it, but I know you had a hand in Dita’s murder. I’ve always known that.”

  The three reporters wrote furiously on their spiral pads. Paul’s brow collapsed toward his eyes. His public image was of an eternally measured person and he was not about to let that go, no matter what the provocation. He stared Hal down for only an instant longer.