The Ophelia Cut (52 page)

Sher leaned toward her. “And you haven’t mentioned this until now? How could you, a lawyer, have done that?”

“Being a human being,” Gina replied, “I kept hoping it wouldn’t be needed. But today the defense case pretty much blew up. As to why I wouldn’t want to bring it out at all, that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? It’s going to cause severe pain and suffering to his family, on top of everything they’ve been through.”

Sher turned to Brady. “This is unbelievable.”

He nodded. “You realize we’re going to go back and check your phone
records for that date. And McGuire’s. We’re going to know where both of you were every second that afternoon and evening.”

“I’m telling you where we were,” Gina said, “and you’re wasting time.”

A
T HER DESK
outside of Wes Farrell’s office, Treya Glitsky was wearing a telephone earpiece and whispering into it. “I don’t know what it’s about, Abe, but they’re screaming bloody murder in there. It’s got to be about Moses.”

“Who’s doing the yelling?”

“Mostly Brady.”

She could almost hear her husband break one of his rare smiles. “Gee, wouldn’t it be awful, if in their rush to find something on Moses, they didn’t get around to something else that might have been important?”

“That’s what this seems like. Whoa!” She looked over at the closed door. “Somebody just hit or threw something.”

“Is anybody screaming in pain?”

“Not yet.”

“You say it’s Gina in there with them?”

“Yeah. She looks terrible. Well, for her. Still better than the rest of us.”

“I doubt that,” Abe said, “but what do you think she’s got?”

“No idea. But it’s got to be huge.”

“Is court still in session downstairs?”

“I’d assume so. I could check and let you know, get back to you in five. You thinking of coming down?”

“It might be fun.”

“Where are you now?”

“Believe it or not, I’m with Bill Schuyler in the Fed Building. I’m working with Wyatt Hunt, trying to get some kind of line on Tony Solaia.”

“After this, maybe you won’t need him.”

“Your mouth to God’s pretty little ear. Meanwhile, if you could find out whether they’re still in court . . .”

“I’ll get right back to you.”

I
F NOT BONA
fide arrows, Hardy thought he had at least a couple of darts left in his quiver. He had the theory about how the blood came to be on McGuire’s boots, and the jury had heard it. The entirely plausible
possibility was that Moses had inadvertently stepped in Jessup’s blood while beating him up back in February outside his office in city hall. The blood had worked its way between the sole and fabric—indeed, that was where it had been found. Of course, Stier had established the beating in his case in chief to show Moses’s animosity toward Jessup and Moses’s potential for violence. But given the importance of the blood evidence, Hardy wanted to reinforce it now. The only problem was that his witness was Joseph DiBenedetto, of Liam Goodman’s staff, who had not witnessed the beating. So to get anything, what Hardy needed was not just that there had been a beating but that Moses had drawn blood, and to get that, Hardy was wading through a sea of hearsay objections from Stier, most of them valid and most sustained. The young man had been on the stand for the better part of forty-five minutes, and Hardy had just about decided to let him go and concentrate instead on Goodman’s admin, Diane, who had at least met Moses and witnessed the opening minutes in the exchange that led to the beating. Then a chorus of murmurs from the gallery made Hardy stop and turn to see Wes Farrell coming down the center aisle, followed by Inspector Sher, then a stone-faced Gina Roake, followed by Brady.

“Your Honor,” Farrell said as he got to the rail, “please pardon the interruption. Permission to approach the bench?”

Gomez looked the question down at Hardy, who was technically in the middle of the examination of his witness. He said, “No objection, Your Honor. In fact, I’ll excuse this witness.”

“Mr. Farrell,” Gomez said, “you may approach.”

Farrell, with unaccustomed fury in his eyes, pushed open the low door in the railing. Coming abreast of Hardy, he slowed down and punished him with a flat and hostile glare. Turning his whole body away from the jury, he brought his mouth close to Hardy’s ear and whispered, “This bullshit is beneath you.”

I
N THE JUDGE’S
chambers, havoc and anger had been the order of the day. Gomez had no choice—Gina Roake’s testimony had to be heard. Everyone knew that if any evidence were ever discovered or came to light, Farrell would prosecute her for perjury to the fullest extent of the law. Hardy stood, most of the time, mute and in shock. Whatever this
was felt and smelled like disaster. He knew that he had joked about the scenario with Gina the night before, but never in his wildest imaginings had he envisioned her coming forward this way, with this story. When at last the meeting in chambers broke up, the principals began moving back toward the courtroom, where court would reconvene in fifteen minutes.

Hardy stood just outside the door to the women’s restroom and met Gina as she was emerging. She gave him a tense and trembling smile. “Are we having fun yet?” she asked.

He couldn’t dredge up any kind of response. He motioned with his head, and she fell in next to him. They both were intimately familiar with the back rooms of the Hall of Justice, and Hardy, gripping her arm tightly above the elbow, quick-stepped her along to an empty interrogation room down by the elevators. Leading her inside, he turned and closed the door, placing his foot against it so it couldn’t be opened. Whirling on her, he said, “Now what?”

“Now you get me on the stand and I tell my story.”

“Gina . . . Jesus Christ.” He ran his hand through his hair. “This can’t work. This is insane.”

“What is?”

“Please. What are you doing?”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“You can’t—”

“I can. I most certainly can. You’ve lost, Diz. Stier has won with every witness. If Moses goes to jail, you and Abe and I might not be far behind him. Don’t you realize that? Are you willing to risk it? Doesn’t it matter to you?”

“Of course, but—”

“No ‘buts,’ Diz. They’ve shut down every affirmative defense. This is the only chance.”

“But it’s perjury. It’s a lie.”

“It’s not a lie. It’s the truth.”

“You know it’s not. It’s an idea we laughed about last night. It never really happened.”

“I’m telling you that it did.”

He shook his head. “Gina, please. You can’t win this way.”

“You can if it’s the only way. And none of us can afford to lose.”

“We don’t know that. We don’t—”

“We can’t take the chance.”

“This is no chance. The jury won’t believe it.”

“Yes, they will. I’ll make them believe it.”

“And then I’m supposed to argue it in my closing?”

“You do what you’ve got to do. I do the same. You’re the one who always says it: we’re all grown-ups here on this bus.” Gina stood facing him, feet spread, arms crossed. “This is happening, Diz. You’re going to question me, and I’m going to tell my story on the stand.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have to. I’m swearing to you right now that it’s the literal truth, every word. Let the jury decide.” Gina checked her watch. “We’ve got three minutes. I’m not changing my mind. What’s happened has happened.” She stepped toward him. “Let’s go,” she said with a sudden gentleness. “It’ll be all right.”

H
ARDY FELT IN
many ways that nothing would be all right ever again.

The attorneys, the judge, the court recorder, and the district attorney had returned to the courtroom, and now Gina Roake raised her right hand and swore that the testimony she was about to give was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Numb, Hardy stood in front of her. He was Moses McGuire’s attorney, sworn to give his client the best defense allowed by the law. And here he was, about to solicit testimony that might convince a jury to acquit.

Even though he knew it was a lie.

She could swear forever that it was the truth, and he would always know it was a lie.

The plain fact was that she had told him, as she would swear in court, that it was true. It was neither his job nor his moral obligation to expose flaws in her testimony but, rather, to solicit it. He could not prove she was lying, he told himself. And even if he could, that was not his job.

He hated the rationalization, knowing that it, too, was false; nevertheless, there was nothing else he could do. As he would have to do for any other client, he was obliged to put on this evidence. “Ms. Roake, what is your relationship with Mr. McGuire?”

“We have been friends for six or seven years.”

“Has that friendship included physical intimacy?”

Gina looked away from Hardy, over to Moses, out to Susan at her place in the gallery. “Yes, it has.”

A low buzz ran through the gallery. Somebody said, “Holy shit.” Susan brought her hands up to her mouth at about the same instant as Moses lowered his head and covered his eyes. Several of the jurors, already alert to the fact that something extraordinary was afoot, exchanged glances, coming forward in their seats. At the defense table, Amy Wu leaned over and whispered something in McGuire’s ear, her hand resting possessively on his forearm.

“Ms. Roake,” Hardy continued, “did you recently come forward to the police with information about this case?”

“Yes.”

“Where were you on Sunday, the first of April of this year, the afternoon of Rick Jessup’s death?”

Gina, dark shadows showing like bruises under her eyes, took in a deep breath. With a series of questions and answers, Hardy had her put her account in front of the jury. “I was at my apartment doing some writing in the late afternoon, four or five o’clock, when Moses—Mr. McGuire—came and knocked at my door. He was very upset. He told me that his daughter had been raped the night before. He was beside himself with rage and helplessness. He didn’t know what to do. He knew who his daughter’s assailant was and where he lived because he’d had occasion to look up the address earlier, when he’d sought out Mr. Jessup and gotten into a physical confrontation with him. Now he thought he wanted to go to Mr. Jessup’s apartment and kill him. I tried to reason with him and got him a little calmed down. After a while, he started crying in his helplessness, and I came and sat next to him, hoping to comfort him.” She let out a breath, took in the jury, and then quickly looked away. “In any event,” she went on, “one thing led to another, and we . . . we became intimate. When we got up several hours later, he took a shower, and then, just as it was getting light outside, he left.”

The courtroom had become dead silent. Susan Weiss stood up, turned her back to the court and her husband, and walked down the center aisle of the gallery and out the door.

Hardy stood without any movement. Finally, he nodded. “Thank you, Ms. Roake.” And to Stier, “Your witness.”

The prosecutor took his time rising from his seat and moving to the center of the courtroom where he would face Gina. Before turning to her, he stood before the jury for a moment with a completely neutral expression, somehow conveying the notion that he was inviting them to share his skepticism and disdain.

But the wind was gone from his sails.

In all the time Hardy had known the Big Ugly, this was the closest he had come to feeling sorry for the man. He seemed confused and disorganized and did himself more harm than good in what followed.

He made the last quarter-turn toward the witness and began. “Ms. Roake, what is your profession?”

“I’m an attorney and a writer.”

“You write fiction, do you not?”

Hardy stood and objected. Somewhat to his surprise, Gomez sustained him.

“All right, let’s talk about the attorney side of your profession. Are you affiliated with a firm?”

“I am a partner with the firm of Freeman Hardy and Roake.”

“And is the Hardy in the name of that firm in this courtroom?”

“Yes. Dismas Hardy is Mr. McGuire’s attorney.”

The courtroom broke into tumult. Gomez wielded her gavel, called for order, and eventually restored it.

“In other words, you are Mr. Hardy’s partner, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, now, Ms. Roake, might we assume that you are on Mr. Hardy’s side, as it were, and want to help him in any way you can gain an acquittal for his client?”

Gina shook her head. “No more than I am on Mr. Farrell’s side. He was also my partner in the same firm, and he is your boss, is he not?”

Hardy caught Gina’s eye and gave her a solemn nod. Stier, in his enthusiasm to take her down, had just made an unforced error, perhaps a costly one.

Clearing his throat, Stier took a different tack. “As a lawyer, Ms. Roake, I’m sure you realize that the testimony you’ve just given comes
rather at the eleventh hour. Why did you wait so long to bring this apparently crucial evidence to light?”

“For obvious reasons, I was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary, that we wouldn’t have to involve Mr. McGuire’s wife or children, or that Mr. McGuire’s other defense options would prevail. But the judge ruled against almost all of them just this morning, which didn’t leave the jury much if anything to consider in the way of alternatives. If I didn’t speak up, they might convict him, and that would be a travesty.”

“All right.” This was a losing argument, too, and Stier seemed to realize it. “Let’s go to another point,” he said. “Where is your home located?”

“It’s on Pleasant Street on Nob Hill.”

“That’s nowhere near the Marina District, is it?”

“Not really. Maybe two or three miles.”

“Ms. Roake, we have heard three eyewitnesses tell the court that they saw the defendant walking through the Marina District in the late afternoon on Sunday, April first, carrying a clublike instrument. Can you see any way to reconcile your account with theirs?”

“No. They must have seen somebody else. Because he was with me from about two or three o’clock until the next morning. That is my sworn testimony, and it’s the truth.”

Stier, shaking his head, let his shoulders sag in disappointment with Gina and, by extension, with humanity in general. “I’m through with this witness,” he said.