The Best American Mystery Stories 2005
- Автор: Хиггинс Джордж, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51744-2
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
Duggan looked dreadful. He had not shaved. He was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing the night before. He had not gotten much sleep and his eyes showed it. So did his expression. He closed the door. He stared blearily at Mrs. Ellis. “Mrs. Ellis,” he said.
She pursed her lips. She looked him up and down. Cynthia paid no attention to either of them. Mrs. Ellis said, “I came to see you.”
“So I see,” Duggan said. “I don’t recall inviting you, but I see you’re here.”
“I’m surprised you can,” she said sternly.
“Oh, Mrs. Ellis,” Duggan said, “there are many things I cannot see this morning. One, for example, is the money to defend Frederick on a murder charge. You will recall, we had some discussion about that. You weren’t interested. Another thing I cannot see is your appointment at this ungodly hour.”
“You didn’t have an appointment to see me,” she said. “You came anyway, at your convenience.”
“You are not defending my son on a murder charge,” Duggan said. “And losing your shirt on it.”
Mrs. Ellis surveyed him again. “Your son might do better if I did,” she said.
“Would you like to talk about sons, Mrs. Ellis?” Duggan said. “Do you really want to do that? I’m willing if you are. I ain’t perfect, but until one of my kids gets hauled up on a murder charge, I’m way ahead of you. And if one of my kids does, I’ll pay for his defense. No welfare for Duggan, no sir.”
She paused and looked down at her handbag. Then she looked up at Duggan. “I want to talk to you,” she said.
“So I gathered,” Duggan said. He looked at his watch. “It is nine-oh-five, Mrs. Ellis. I am due in court at eleven. I can get there in twenty minutes if I’m lucky. That gives us almost two hours. You must’ve left home early. Go get something to eat and come back at ten.”
“I don’t know this area,” she said with a whine in her voice.
“Walk around and get acquainted with it,” Duggan said. “You won’t like it. No cows. Now beat it.”
Her lower lip trembled.
“I mean it,” Duggan said.
She stood up and straightened her coat. She headed for the open door.
“Cynthia,” Duggan said. Cynthia looked up. “Did I wake you?” Duggan said. She gazed at him as though she had just noticed that he was in the office. “Of course I did,” Duggan said. “Go and get me a fried egg sandwich with two strips of bacon inside, and two large coffees.”
“You want toast?” she said, chewing the gum.
“I would like the sandwich on toast,” Duggan said. “I do not want the sandwich and the toast on the side.”
“I haven’t got any money,” she said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled five, which he threw on her desk. He stalked to his office.
“What about the phones, Mr. Duggan,” Cynthia said.
“They’ll be here when you get back, Cynthia,” he said.
He was taking off his jacket, loosening his tie and pulling it down, and unbuttoning his shirt as he walked.
Duggan entered the Fifth Criminal Session of the Suffolk Superior Court through the swinging oak doors. The benches were empty and the high windows spilled sunlight into the courtroom. There was one court officer on duty, a heavyset man about fifty. The officer was smoking a Salem.
“Not supposed to smoke in court, Bailey,” Duggan said. He was clean-shaven. He wore a clean yellow shirt. He wore a gray hopsack suit and a blue-and-gold tie.
Bailey looked at Duggan. “My, my,” he said, “and what a fine figure of a fellow we’re cutting this morning.”
“Clean living,” Duggan said, “that’s what does it.”
“Got a shower in your office, huh?” Bailey said.
“Nope,” Duggan said. “Complete wardrobe, though, and a men’s room with running water, sometimes hot.”
Bailey shook his head. “I wished I was a lawyer,” he said. “Way it is, I got to work for a living.”
“Lemme know when you start,” Duggan said. “Judge in?”
“Judge Shanahan?” Bailey said. “Oh, Judge Shanahan is in all right. He’s been in since eleven, when you were supposed to be here. So’s Edie.” He got up from his chair and started toward the judge’s chambers. Over his shoulder he said: “Hope your shaving lotion’s nice.”
Judge Shanahan had a rosy, pudgy face, a roly-poly body, sparse graying hair and an unfiltered Lucky Strike. He was short and he had an executioner’s sense of humor. He was seated behind the scarred desk in chambers and regaling Edie and defense counsel Sam Waldstein when Duggan entered. He gave Duggan a perfunctory greeting and continued.
“So,” Shanahan said, “this jerk Cangelosi gets up on his hind legs and asks the cop when he first wrote down someplace that the defendant was suspected of being a drug dealer. Now there is a beauty. You can see the cop cocking his bat already. He looks like Ted Williams, up against a slow pitcher. And the cop says he wrote it down a long time ago.
“Now,” Shanahan said, “even I know this. I read the damned reports. They are full of the most scandalous gossip you can imagine. There is stuff in those reports that would be enough to hang the pope if you could prove it. The trouble is that Gould can’t prove any of it. And if Edie, for example, offered all that hearsay, I would take her head off. But the DA isn’t offering all that hearsay, and for some reason or other, the DA is not objecting to Cangelosi bringing it in. I think I know what the reason is, but that is beside the point. I leave him do it.
“Well,” Shanahan said, leaning back in the chair and blowing smoke rings, “Cangelosi asks the cop when he wrote it down. And the cop says he wrote it down in the same damned report that Cangelosi’s waving around like a damned flag. Which, of course, he did. And Cangelosi demands to have the cop show him where it is written down. And he throws the report at the cop and invites him to read from it.
“So,” Shanahan said, “the cop does. He does it slowly. He considers every word like it was cole slaw and he had to chew it, so as to get all the flavor.
“It was in the report, all right,” Shanahan said. He was grinning. “Everything was in the report. The report said the cop knew the defendant was a dirty, rotten, no-good, lousy, miserable dope pusher. It said the cops had good reason to believe he was a pimp who beat up on his ladies. It said there was no question that he carried a gun and used it to pistol-whip the people that he didn’t find it necessary to shoot. It went on and on. The jury was eating it up. It was really good stuff.
“In the middle of this recital,” Shanahan said, leaning forward, “Cangelosi objects. Now, that was a new one to me. I never had an objection before from a lawyer who was asking the question. “You’re objecting to your own question Mr. Cangelosi,’ I said. He tells me he is not objecting to his own question. He is objecting to the cop’s answer to the question. I can see why he might. It is blowing his boat right out of the water. The trouble is, when you ask the question, you don’t get to object to the answer.”
“ ‘He is putting in hearsay and undocumented evidence,’ Cangelosi says. ‘He certainly is,’ I smartly reply. ‘He is able to do that because you invited him to do it.’ Well, there was a great tussle, and in the meantime the prosecutor is sitting there with a grin that the Cheshire Cat would’ve envied.”
Shanahan rocked back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “And that, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “is today’s lesson in trial practice. Sam, you are excused.”
As Waldstein arose, Shanahan stubbed out his Lucky and lit another one. He surveyed Duggan critically. “You look reasonably good today, Jackie boy,” he said. “What did you do, go through the car wash on foot?”