Reversible Errors Read online

  “That means we won’t use it against Collins. We still have to tell Arthur.”

  “Why?”

  The thought was confusing. She reasoned out loud. Legally, strictly speaking, the obligation to disclose favorable evidence pertained only to trial. And since Collins wouldn’t testify, his statements to Larry were inadmissible hearsay.

  “So?” Larry asked. “What’s the problem?”

  “Well, hell, Larry. It’s not smart, for one thing. Collins is going to call Jackson. If it comes out that we didn’t disclose this, we’ll look terrible.”

  “Collins’s version to Aires is, ‘I didn’t tell the cop diddly.’ He’s not going to let Jackson flame him for opening his mouth. And besides, as far as he’s concerned, he didn’t say anything. Why make life complicated?”

  “Damn, Larry, what if Collins is telling the truth? What if his uncle and he did frame Rommy, and he does get on his knees before Jesus every night asking for forgiveness?”

  “No chance.”

  “No chance? None? You mean, you haven’t had just one second where you thought maybe there was this eensy-teensy possibility that Erno’s telling the truth?”

  He passed a heavy hand through the air to wave off the demon of the ridiculous.

  “The little asshole confessed, Muriel. He confessed right in front of you.”

  “Larry, the guy’s out of his depth in a puddle.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Blessedly, the waitress arrived with dinner. She put the plates down and made sweet chitchat. She was from rural Georgia and had an accent out of Gone With the Wind. By the time she’d left to bring one more round of drinks, Larry had chewed through half his steak and still wouldn’t look at Muriel. She knew she could wait to have this out with him, but there was an order—‘hierarchy’ was actually the word—to be maintained. Cops always hated it when the attorneys made the decisions. To the lawyers, the job was all words—the words they spoke in court, or wrote in briefs, or read in police reports. But for the coppers, it was life. They did their jobs with a gun on their hips and sweat dripping down to their shorts from beneath their bulletproof vests. The witnesses who appeared neatened up in the courtroom to answer the prosecutors’ questions had been pulled out of rank shooting galleries by officers who didn’t know if they should worry more about a bullet or HIV. The police lived in a rough world and they played rough if they had to. For a prosecutor, giving in, even to somebody as good as Larry, only encouraged recalcitrance.

  “I want you to promise me that this isn’t going to be Hitler’s bunker,” she said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Keep an open mind. Just a little. I mean, maybe, Larry, just maybe, we made a mistake. Shit happens. It’s not a perfect system. We’re not perfect people.”

  He did not take it well.

  “We didn’t make any fucking mistakes.”

  “I’m not attacking you, Larry. In this line of work, we’re expected to be faultless. That’s what the standard is, really. Beyond a reasonable doubt. Legal certainty. But even our best work and best judgment isn’t always perfect. I mean, it’s possible.”

  “It’s not possible.” Despite the flesh that had accumulated on him, the veining was becoming visible in his square neck. “He’s the right guy. He knew two of the victims. He had motive on both of them. He confessed. He knew what the murder weapon was before we did, and he had Luisa’s cameo in his pocket. He’s right, and I’m not letting you act like the Virgin Mary. You’ll fuck yourself doing that, and you’ll fuck me, too.”

  “Larry, I don’t care what kind of noise Arthur makes, or the judge, for that matter. You think I’d take a walk on a triple murder? You think I’d turn my back on John Leonidis or those two girls? You look at me and tell me you believe that about me.”

  He picked up the scotch as soon as the waitress delivered it and took down half. The liquor was not helping him. He was clearly having trouble reeling himself in. Beneath it all, he was an angry guy. She’d always known that.

  “I don’t want to hear any more of this shit about making mistakes,” he said.

  “I’m not saying it’s a mistake. I just want to be able to say I actually discharged a professional obligation to consider the prospect.”

  “Look, I worked this case. On my own. The whole Force hit the pause button once the headlines faded. I’m the one who kept pressing. I made this case. And I made it with you. And for you, if you want to know the truth. So don’t say it’s any frigging mistake.”

  “For me?”

  Fury throbbed through him. It enlarged his eyes—all of him really.

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t get it, goddamn it. It’s one thing, Muriel, isn’t it? This case. You becoming P.A. You deciding to be great. You deciding to marry Talmadge. You deciding to march down the path of history. You deciding not to take me. So don’t tell me it’s a fucking mistake. It’s too late for any fucking mistakes. I’ve had my pisspoor little life, and you’ve gone ramping up to stardom. Don’t pretend like you don’t know what the game is, because you made all the fucking rules.” With that, he hurled his green cloth napkin down on his plate, and stalked off fast enough to bowl someone over had anybody gotten in his way. The small duffel he’d carried from home bounced on his shoulder as if it were as insubstantial as a scarf.

  In his wake, she felt her Adam’s apple bobbing about. Something huge had happened. At first, she thought she was shocked by the force of his outburst. But after a second she realized the true news was that even a decade later, Larry’s wounds remained tender. She thought he was one person very much as he chose to present himself—too selfsufficient to be vulnerable to any lasting injury. That was more or less the way she tried to think of herself.

  One of her friends liked to say that in junior high school you learned everything there was to know about the way love starts and ends. The vast region in between, the dark jungle of sustained relationships, was penetrated only in adulthood. But the nuclear flash when love began and concluded was the same, no matter what stage of life. And what they would have said about Larry’s outrage in the junior-high girls’ room was probably true: it meant he still cared. Assaying all of this, she felt herself in some danger.

  He’d left his sport coat slung over the chair. She looked at it a moment, then picked it up and went into the bar, thinking he’d escaped there. There was no sign of him. Upstairs, she knocked lightly on the door to his room.

  “Larry, open up. I have your coat.”

  He already had his shirt unbuttoned over the mound of his belly, and he held a dwarf bottle of Dewar’s from the minibar. Half of it was gone. He took the coat from her and threw it behind him to the bed without ever quite mustering the courage to look her way.

  “Larry, how about if we get un-pissed off? We have a long way to go on this case.”

  “You’re not pissed off. I’m the one who’s pissed off.” He glanced down at the little bottle, screwed the cap on, and tossed it several feet into the trash can, which rocked from the impact. “And now I’m less pissed off than embarrassed.”

  “Maybe we should talk.”

  “For what?”

  “Don’t make me stand here, Larry.” She had bags in both hands, her swollen briefcase in one and the small overnight pouch in the other. He considered her situation and motioned her in, turning from her. The bald spot on his crown had grown bright pink from the liquor.

  “Muriel, I don’t even know where that came from.”

  “Hell, Larry.”

  “No, I won’t say I didn’t mean it. But the thing that bothered me was at the end. What I said about myself. I don’t think my life is anything to complain about. It’s good. Better than good. It’s just that I’m like everybody else, you know. Nobody ever gets what they want when it comes to love.”

  The statement—the exactness of it—struck her dumb momentarily, because she knew he had expressed her deepest conviction, one that she seldom had the wherewithal to say to hers
elf. She was drawn back for a second to that howitzer shell he’d lobbed at her on the plane: the notion that she’d chased the same improbable dream in both her marriages. The idea had been with her all day, like a bad meal whose taste kept returning. She’d think it through on Sunday. Because love, most often, was what she was praying for in those precious moments in church, believing and not believing. Now she pondered love’s quest, the way it led us to persistent unhappiness and blithe moments when, however chimerically, love seemed to have been found. Everything else in life—professional attainment, art, and ideas—was just the feathers and hide on the foraging animal of love.

  “This meant a lot to me,” he said. He circled a finger between them. “Afterwards, I had Kevorkian on speed-dial for a while. That’s all. I just, you know, react.”

  Men like Larry, like Talmadge, did everything possible to avoid appearing fragile. But they were all fragile, and the moments when that was revealed were an unending crisis. It was never going away. That’s what he was telling her.

  “I don’t want you to tell Arthur,” he said then. “About Collins.”

  “Larry.”

  “You said yourself it’s not legal that you have to tell him. I don’t want to be charitable just so he has these bullshit opportunities to throw up smoke.”

  Even after all of this, she was disinclined to actually say yes. She took a seat in a desk chair near the doorway while she deliberated. He grew frustrated watching her.

  “Christ,” he said. “Just do me a fucking favor, will you? Will you?” He’d reignited, heard himself, and flared out in a matter of seconds. He fell to the bed several feet from her, exhausted by himself. Next door, the ice machine thumped a full load of cubes into its belly.

  Sooner or later, she’d inform Arthur, but that could wait until Larry settled down. He felt too defeated at her hands to absorb another blow now.

  “Well, this is a moment of auld lang syne, isn’t it?” she said, at last. “You and me and a hotel room and an argument?”

  “The arguments never meant anything, Muriel.”

  “Really? You mean I was just wasting my breath?”

  “It was all foreplay.”

  She lacked the daring to answer that.

  “You just liked sex to be a form of rivalry,” he said.

  “Thank you, Dr. Ruth.”

  “It worked, Muriel. It always worked. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.” He’d found the stamina to look at her one more time. For him, she realized, the story of what had happened between them was inscribed like law on tablets, often revisited, fully parsed and understood. Denial of any element was an affront.

  “My Alzheimer’s is only early stage, Larry. I remember.”

  With that acknowledgment, the past, its passion and pleasure, lay before them, like a corpse at a wake. Only this body was not quite dead. The longing that had always consumed them was suddenly present. She could feel Larry, intent as he measured her response. With his persistent directness about Talmadge, she knew what he wanted to ask, but even Larry recognized that boundary as unapproachable. Nor was there any point in comparisons—a marriage wasn’t a fling, the world knew that. She was person one zillion who enjoyed sex more before marriage than after, although she honestly would never have guessed. Going to bed with someone had never seemed challenging. Important. Fun. But not difficult. She had always assumed Talmadge and she would find a rhythm. But they hadn’t. She never thought she was someone who could live without it, but whether it was exhaustion or age, it was less and less a preoccupation. When she woke to yearning, as she did a few times each month, it came as a surprise.

  And she was surprised now.

  “I remember, Larry,” she said again softly. She glanced up, thinking only to acknowledge him, but her desire was insistent enough that she could feel it beaconed from her. It was less than an invitation. Yet he had to sense that if he moved toward her, she’d find it hard to say no. But she could not go first. She’d made so many choices that Larry regarded as against him. There would be something vaguely imperial were she the one. Instead, she was left feeling like some breathless coquette, shy and powerless, as he pondered, a sensation she’d lived her life to avoid. She listened for movement, so she could rise to him. But his bitterness probably constrained him. The moment prolonged itself. And then the possibility of some rash grasping after all that former glory slipped beyond them, departing with the same slyness with which it had arrived.

  “I’m beat,” he said.

  “Yeah, sure,” she answered. From the threshold, she said she’d see him in the lobby at 6:30. Then she walked along the hall, an endless arcade of closed doors and low light, where she would eventually find the solitary room that was hers for the night. She carried her bags with her, wondering as she peered at every number, how hard it would be to go forward from here with the rest of her life.

  24

  JUNE 25—28, 2001

  The Deposition of Genevieve Carriere

  IN THE MAIL, which always seemed to contain bad news on Monday mornings, Arthur found a form notice from Muriel Wynn. Three days from now, on Thursday, the state proposed to take the deposition of a woman named Genevieve Carriere at the offices of the lawyers she had hired, Sandy and Marta Stern.

  “So who’s the mystery guest?” asked Arthur when he succeeded after several attempts to get Muriel on the line. On the few occasions over the years when Arthur had dealt with Muriel, they had engaged in the good-natured badinage appropriate to former colleagues. But the adversity of the current proceedings had left Muriel’s manner with him no better than crisp. Arthur, who suffered from the loss of anyone’s affections, had prepared himself for more of the same, but he found Muriel in good cheer. He suspected immediately she felt she’d renewed some advantage.

  “Arthur,” she answered, “let me say two words to you: Erno Erdai.” Muriel, like many prosecutors in Arthur’s experience, lived by a simple watchword in dealing with defense lawyers: don’t get angry, get even.

  “I had to do that, Muriel.”

  “Because you didn’t want to give us a fair chance to investigate.”

  “Because I didn’t want you guys to blackjack Erno down at Rudyard. Or string things out until he was dead or incompetent. He’s telling the truth and you know it, Muriel.”

  “Hardly. Your guy confessed, Arthur.”

  “My guy has an IQ of 73. He knows other people are smarter than he is. He’s accustomed to not understanding things and accepting what he’s told. And don’t think Larry didn’t provide some incentives. Most of the time when a grown man craps his trousers, it’s because something’s scared him to death—not because he has a guilty conscience. You don’t live in Shangri-la, Muriel, and neither do I.”

  The reference to Shangri-la, which had been such a zinger from Erno in court, was too much of a dig. Muriel’s voice took on more heat.

  “Arthur, I was there. There wasn’t a mark on your guy. And he looked me in the eye and said he’d been treated fine.”

  “Because he was too bewildered to say anything else. Rommy has no history of violence. Erno’s shot two other people, not even counting these murders. Who does the collar fit, Muriel?”

  Oddly, Arthur felt he had the upper hand in this argument. He had more points. His only problem was that Rommy had never explained his confession in terms that made any sense. He did not really claim the statements were coerced, nor had any of his earlier lawyers, with whom Arthur still had had only minimal communication.

  As usual, when she was falling behind, Muriel cut the conversation short and said simply, “Thursday.” Arthur tried his luck next with Mrs. Carriere’s lawyers. Sandy, always courtly, took a moment to praise Arthur’s work in this case.

  “I’m following your progress in the press, Arthur. Most notable.” Stern, the dignified dean of the criminal defense bar in Kindle County, understood the value of his compliments. Having dispensed them, he transferred the call to his daughter Marta, with whom he’d practiced for ne
arly a decade now. She was representing Mrs. Carriere.

  Arthur had still been a deputy P.A. when Marta had started here. In those days, she offered a studied contrast to her father, scrappy even when it was unnecessary, socially awkward, and less than tidy in her appearance. But she was devilishly bright and people said Sandy’d had a moderating influence on her over the years. Usually, criminal defense lawyers were collaborative. They had a common enemy in the state and a joint cause in limiting intrusions on their clients’ rights. But over the phone, Marta seemed stiff, probably due to her skirmishes with Arthur years ago. She would disclose virtually nothing, beyond the fact that Genevieve was a close friend and co-worker of Luisa Remardi’s.

  “Genevieve has directed us not to give previews to either side,” said Marta. “She wants no part of this. She has to interrupt the family vacation to come down here for the dep, as it is.”

  “Is she going to hurt me?”

  Marta deliberated. The protocol among defenders required at least fair warning.

  “If Muriel sticks to her announced agenda, there will be wounds, but nothing fatal. But make sure you walk in Muriel’s footprints on cross. Don’t try to break new ground.”

  After the call, Arthur pondered the value of this advice. The Sterns both played straight, but if their client was a reluctant witness, it was very much in her interest to discourage prolonged questioning.

  On Thursday, a little before 2 p.m., Arthur walked over to the Morgan Towers, the city’s tallest building. Sandy Stern was an immigrant, but his office was furnished as if someone in the family had been around to fight the Revolution. In the reception area where Arthur was required to wait, there were Chippendale pieces, decorated with china figures and sterling silver implements. Eventually Muriel arrived her standard ten minutes late, with Larry in tow. Marta then led them back to an interior conference room. Mrs. Carriere sat tensely beside an oval walnut table with a glass top. She was dressed formally, in a dark suit with a collarless jacket, and looked very much the physician’s wife, a bit plump, rather pretty, with soupspoon eyes. Her hair, white decades early, lent her a forthright air. Muriel greeted Mrs. Carriere, but received a bare hello in return.