Читать книгу Depraved Indifference - Joseph Teller, Joseph Teller - Страница 9

The very first thing Jaywalker did the following morning was to pay a visit to his bank. There he endorsed and deposited the five-thousand-dollar check Amanda Drake had given him. As soon as the teller had completed the transaction, he asked her for his current balance. She tapped some keys on her computer and handed him a slip of paper. There were a bunch of numbers on it, showing which funds were available, which weren’t, and when they would be. But he chose to ignore the qualifiers, and went right to the bottom line, which included Amanda’s check: $5,176.24

It had been that close.

After that, Jaywalker the Investigator got to work. He started off by making a visit to the scene. Not the scene of the crime—or accident, as he preferred to call it—where the van had been run off the road. That would come, but for now it could wait. Instead, he returned to the scene of his first meeting with Amanda, the Forty-second Street branch of the New York Public Library. There he went to the newspaper archives room and pulled up on a microfiche screen all the articles he could find on the crash, the surrender and arrest of Carter Drake, and the developments that had occurred since. Had he been a better navigator of the Internet, he probably could have found them on his computer. But he was stubbornly old-fashioned at times, Jaywalker was, and besides, he loved the archives room. He figured it was as good a place as any to get an overview of things, a starting point before he began to dig for details and tried to get first-person accounts.

As overviews go, it turned out to be pretty devastating stuff for the home team.

The photos of the burned van, and of the immediate area where it had come to rest, were hard to look at. Jaywalker could only guess at the ones that had been kept out of the papers, that the editors had deemed too graphic to print. He’d see those later, no doubt, with the police reports. There’d be charred bodies, charred tiny bodies. He shuddered at the thought, shuddered again at the jurors’ reactions to the carnage.

Several of the papers had run with the early rumors of a terrorist cell and the premature detonation of an explosive device, or of a van overcrowded with undocumented migrant apple pickers. Only with the following day’s editions had the truth come out, that eight of the nine dead were young children enrolled at one of New City’s several yeshivas, or Jewish religious schools. There were interviews with the driver of the pickup truck who’d stopped to offer assistance, including his account of the car that had run the van off the road. Looking for the public’s help, the police had released the partial license plate ending in 724 and were imploring other witnesses to come forward. Then, in the next day’s accounts, there was the surrender of Carter Drake and his arrest, as well as some brief comments by his “business attorney.” Jaywalker paused to smile at the phrase. There were business attorneys, patent attorneys, corporate attorneys, trust and estate attorneys, even admiralty attorneys. But when things got truly nasty, you were well advised to go out and get yourself a criminal lawyer. All of a sudden, it was a lawyer you needed. Down in the trenches, there was no room for attorneys.

“Mr. Drake is guilty of absolutely nothing,” the business attorney had said. “He hadn’t been drinking, and he wasn’t speeding. He momentarily lost control of his vehicle. As unfortunate and tragic as the results were—and our hearts go out to the victims and their families—it was an accident, pure and simple. An accident.”

The judge who’d set Carter Drake’s bail at five million dollars had apparently begged to differ.

The newspaper stories had continued for almost a week. There were interviews with grieving parents and outraged school officials. There were calls for tighter seat-belt laws and looser seat-belt laws, the proponents of the latter camp arguing that some of the children might have escaped the fire had they not been restrained, though a look at the extent of the damage shown in the photos strongly suggested otherwise. And there were the funerals, the terrible funerals, accompanied by snapshots of tiny faces smiling out at the camera in happier times.

After that, the coverage dwindled and all but stopped. The exception was the Rockland County Register, which ran editorials daily for nearly three weeks, demanding restoration of the death penalty, “complete with excruciating suffering” for the “cold-blooded killer” of the community’s “most treasured and vulnerable citizens.”

It was midafternoon by the time Jaywalker emerged from the library. He found himself startled by the sudden brightness of the sunshine, and it took his eyes a few moments to make the adjustment. It reminded him of coming out of the movies after a matinee, something he hadn’t done since his wife’s death, a dozen years ago.

He found a phone booth, no mean feat in the Age of the Cell Phone. But Jaywalker had long resisted the ads that promised a powerful network, five bars, and unlimited nighttime and weekend minutes with family and friends. He figured that if he lived long enough, he might just be the last holdout on the planet. Sure, going phoneless meant being inconvenienced from time to time, but that was a small price to pay for the retention of his privacy. Besides, now was no time to get connected, or whatever it was they called it, not while he was still suspended and trying to fly beneath the radar.

Jaywalker had gotten the name of Carter Drake’s business attorney from his newspaper research and found a phone number for him on the Internet. Now he dropped a Samoan penny into the coin slot—they just happened to be the same size as U.S. quarters, so he’d ordered a hundred of them through a Times Square coin dealer for three dollars—and dialed the number.

“PetersonKellnerWhiteandTayler,” said a woman’s voice, as if it were all one name. “How may I direct your call?”

“I’m trying to reach Chester Ludlow,” said Jaywalker.

“Please hold for his administrative aide.”

Jaywalker held, wondering where he’d been while secretaries had turned into administrative aides.

“Mr. Ludlow’s office,” said another female voice.

Jaywalker identified himself and stated his business. If he’d thought doing so might open doors, he was in for a surprise. Over the next fifteen minutes, he sparred first with the administrative aide, and then with a young man who described himself as Ludlow’s executive assistant. Yes, Mr. Ludlow would be more than happy to take a meeting with him, but he billed out at seven hundred and fifty dollars an hour, payable in advance.

“How about six minutes?” Jaywalker asked. He’d neglected to discuss expenses with Amanda, and wasn’t about to spend seven hundred and fifty dollars of his own money, or hers, either—at least not without checking with her first. On the other hand, he figured shelling out seventy-five bucks for a tenth of an hour…

The executive assistant was evidently not amused.

Eventually they settled on a five-minute phone conference, pro bono. Jaywalker was instructed to call Chet back the following day, at 10:15 a.m. “Not any earlier, not any later.”

Fuck you! Jaywalker wanted to say. And fuck Chet, too. Instead he said, “Thank you very much,” and hung up.

Maybe it wasn’t going to be such a picnic after all, this investigator gig.

Next he called Carter Drake’s current lawyer up in New City, a man named Judah Mermelstein. The Samoan pennies were too cumbersome for the job, not to mention too precious, so he used a calling card.

Mermelstein answered his own phone, a sure sign that he was user-friendly and a good indication that he worked on a shoestring budget. Both were attributes that Jaywalker was quite familiar with. As he had with Chester Ludlow’s staff, he explained his business and said he’d like to meet with Mermelstein.

“Sure, sure. C’mon up.”

They agreed on one o’clock the following day. Jaywalker didn’t want to jeopardize his five-minute phone conference with Chet, after all.

The following morning’s five-minute phone conference with Chester Ludlow went pretty much as Jaywalker had expected. Ludlow was brusque, dismissive and completely uninformative. Carter Drake, for whom he’d been doing some complicated mergers-and-acquisi-tions work—the implication being that it was well beyond Jaywalker’s understanding—had phoned the office and said he was the “Audi Assassin,” and that he wanted to turn himself in before the police figured out he was the one they were looking for and came to arrest him. Ludlow had agreed and had accompanied him to state police headquarters. He’d had no idea where it was, he added, “So I set the GPS on my car. We got there, and they took him into custody. And that was pretty much it. Now,” he said, clearing his throat loudly, “if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting—”

“I still have nineteen seconds,” Jaywalker pointed out. Actually, he had no idea how long they’d been talking, but he doubted that Ludlow did, either. “What was the basis of your comment to the press,” he asked, “that Drake hadn’t been drinking or speeding prior to the accident?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean,” said Jaywalker, “did Drake actually tell you those things?”

“Drake? No, of course not. As a matter of fact, I never discussed that with him. I had our media department draw up a statement. They’re real pros at that sort of stuff. It’s what they do.”

Great, thought Jaywalker, trial by sound bite. He wanted to ask Ludlow if he had any idea of the damage such a remark could do to Drake’s chances down the line. But he knew he was already into overtime. “Thanks for your time,” he said, and hung up.

The good news was that Ludlow had given him the five minutes pro bono. The bad news was that Jaywalker had pretty much gotten his money’s worth.

The meeting with Judah Mermelstein went somewhat better. It had taken Jaywalker only forty-five minutes to get to Mermelstein’s office, if you didn’t count the two hours spent locating his ancient Mercury in its parking lot, finding a set of booster cables ($14.95), getting a jump start from an obliging cabbie ($10), and coaxing the relic out onto the West Side Highway (priceless).

The first thing Jaywalker noticed about Mermelstein wasn’t his boyish good looks, his black suit, white shirt and conservative tie, or even his firm handshake. It was his yarmulke.

“Do they let you wear that?” Jaywalker asked. “I mean, in court? At trial?” He’d once known a legal aid lawyer in Brooklyn who was also a Catholic priest, and they’d let him wear his clerical collar in court. But all the guy ever did was arraignments; he never went to trial.

“Absolutely,” said Mermelstein. “U.S. Supreme Court, First and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, expression, association, wardrobe, warmth. Not to mention the little-known but all-important freedom to cover one’s bald spot.”

“Cool,” was all Jaywalker could come up with. It was something his daughter might have said, back when she was, oh, seven or so. But it was cool, and he couldn’t help picturing himself delivering a summation before a home-crowd New City jury, two rows of black-dressed orthodox Jews. Jaywalker was half-Jewish himself, after all, even if he hadn’t seen the inside of a synagogue in a good twenty years. But that gave him the right, didn’t it? And if he were to dig through the side pockets of his suit jackets, chances were pretty good he’d find a yarmulke or two, left over from a long-ago funeral, or a bar mitzvah he hadn’t been able to get out of.

“I understand Mrs. Drake has hired you as a private investigator in her husband’s case,” said Mermelstein, once the two of them had taken seats facing each other across his desk. That experience itself had been momentarily unsettling for Jaywalker, who’d spent twenty-some years sitting in the lawyer’s chair, not the client’s.

“Yes, she has,” said Jaywalker. “But I think you also ought to know that it’s her hope that if the case has to be tried, I should be the one to try it. If the court doesn’t force it to trial before my, uh, suspension is up, that is.”

“Thank you for being up front about that,” said Mermelstein.

Jaywalker shrugged, his way of saying, Hey, it was the right thing to do.

“Actually,” said Mermelstein, “Mrs. Drake told me herself. And I have no problem with it. Not that I couldn’t use the publicity. But the truth is, I’ve never tried a murder case. Or even a felony, for that matter. So not only will I bow out gracefully when the time comes, but in the meantime I’ll appreciate all the help you can give me, until you’re—”

“Kosher?”

“I couldn’t have said it better.”

“Don’t plan on bowing out,” said Jaywalker. “I’m an outsider here, in more ways than one. You’re local, and you seem to have your head on straight. I’m pretty sure Amanda can be convinced of the virtues of a co-counsel arrangement.”

Mermelstein didn’t respond one way or the other, and they talked about the case for the next forty minutes. Jaywalker learned that the Drakes had found Mermelstein through an ad in the local Yellow Pages that touted him as an expert in criminal law, divorce, real estate, immigration matters, slip-and-fall cases, product liability, medical malpractice and dog-bite injuries. He’d tried and failed to get Carter’s bail reduced from the five million set at arraignment. The Rockland County D.A., a tough-on-crime Republican named Abraham Firestone, intended to make an example of Drake, hoping that sending him away for life would deter others from killing vanloads of children. And according to Mermelstein, Firestone intended to try the case himself, if there had to be a trial, rather than assigning it to one of his assistants, as was the customary practice.

“I notice Drake’s charged with drunk driving,” said Jaywalker, “in addition to murder.” He didn’t mention the leaving-the-scene charge, or the unlicensed operator, or the uninsured vehicle. Those charges ranged from the mundane to the serious. Leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, for example, was itself a separate felony. But all of those acts or omissions were either after the fact or merely incidental to the murder charge. Drunk driving, on the other hand, especially when combined with indications of recklessness, could be used to show a depraved indifference to human life, a necessary statutory element of proving murder in a vehicular homicide case in New York State.

“That’s right,” said Mermelstein.

“But Drake didn’t surrender until sometime the following day, did he?”

“Right again,” said Mermelstein. “And his big-shot business lawyer issued a press release announcing to the world that his client hadn’t had anything to drink before the accident.”

“So help me out here,” said Jaywalker. Early on in his career, he’d had occasion to wonder why anyone would leave the scene of an accident, when doing so was a crime and sticking around to face the music wasn’t. The answer, he soon learned, was pretty simple. The ones who fled did so because they were drunk, unlicensed or uninsured, or because they’d just robbed the bank around the corner and had the money on the front passenger seat and a loaded gun on the floor. Getting away, even for a limited period of time, gave them an opportunity to hide the evidence. And part of that evidence was the alcohol in their blood. Ted Kennedy may or may not have been testing his swimming ability that night long ago at Chappaquiddick, but by the time he turned himself in the following day it was too late for the police to draw a meaningful, or admissible, blood sample from him. And even if it hadn’t been, he could have claimed that the incident had so upset him that he’d poured himself a couple of stiff drinks as soon as he got home. Exactly as the captain of the Exxon Valdez had maintained after his little mishap up in Prudhoe Bay.

“It seems Abe Firestone has done his homework,” said Mermelstein. “He had the troopers trace Drake’s movements over the twelve hours preceding the crash. Apparently they can put him in a sports club over in Nyack. And the sport he and his buddies were engaged in seems to have consisted of seeing who could throw back the most shots of tequila before falling on the floor.”

“Wonderful,” said Jaywalker.

They talked for another twenty minutes, following which Mermelstein made Jaywalker copies of whatever documents he had in his file. There wasn’t much: the felony complaint, Drake’s rap sheet, a summary of an accident report prepared by the state police and a couple of other pieces of paper.

“Firestone hasn’t exactly flooded you with discovery,” Jaywalker observed.

“Abe?” said Mermelstein. “He’s so tight his ass squeaks when he walks.”

They exchanged goodbyes and promised to share anything either of them found out.

“And give my best to Amanda,” said Mermelstein.

“I will,” said Jaywalker, noticing that she was suddenly no longer Mrs. Drake, and wondering if she’d followed Judah Mermelstein around for two days and then slept with him, too, before hiring him.

Nah, he liked the Yellow Pages story better.

From Judah Mermelstein’s office, Jaywalker headed west and then north, toward the site of the accident that had claimed nine lives. He drove carefully, not because he was afraid of becoming a tenth victim, but because his Mercury was pretty much on life support. Owning a car in the city was something of a double-edged sword. You didn’t need one to get around, and with parking impossible and garages charging a fortune, you were better off without one. Until you had to get somewhere else.

So Jaywalker had compromised. He’d bought the cheapest car he could find, a ‘57 Mercury with no extras and, so far as he knew, the last remaining three-speed manual transmission in America. Then he’d found an open-air parking lot so far over on the West Side that you had to hike halfway to New Jersey just to get there. He’d bargained the manager down from the usual hundred and twenty-five a month to seventy-five dollars cash, no tax, explaining that since he almost never used the thing, they could bury it way in the back, where it would take about a week and a half to get it out. And because he started it up so rarely and drove it even less, it performed, well, about like a neglected ’57 Mercury with 185,000 miles under its belt. So when he did drive it, he tended to creep along. But even creeping, it took him less than twenty minutes to get from Judah Mer-melstein’s office to the spot marked with a black × on the accident-report summary.

It was nothing but a bend in the road, where the northbound lane had little room for a shoulder. About all that separated it from the drop-off was what remained of a low guardrail, its metal twisted grotesquely and torn away where the van had breached it. There were a handful of makeshift memorials marking the spot—flowers, candles, other stuff. Jaywalker found a place to pull over a hundred yards or so past it, and shut off the Merc’s engine. From there he walked back to the site.

There were eight memorials. One, he guessed, for each child that had died there. He’d seen others like them often enough before—arrays of crosses, flowers and jars containing candles—but only from the cocoon of a car, as he sped by on the highway. Though he’d known what they signified, they hadn’t really touched him. Now, up close, they were something very different. There were Bibles—Old Testaments, no doubt. There were hand-written notes from classmates. There were framed color photographs of smiling children who would never smile again. There was a tiny pink party dress with matching shoes, possibly never worn. There were a couple of stuffed animals, a bear and something that looked like a cross between a small rabbit and a large mouse. There was a leather baseball glove, complete with five impossibly tiny fingers.

The earth leading downhill from the torn-away guardrail was still scarred, and down the embankment there were a couple of trees with fresh damage visible. And then a large, circular charred area, where new grass was just beginning to sprout through the blackness. And there were boulders, big enough, jagged enough and numerous enough to insure that the tumbling van had never had a chance of finding a safe landing spot.

There was a reason why they’d called it Rockland County.

He’d brought a camera along, an old Nikon his daughter had given him years ago when she’d gone digital. As far as he knew, it was the last one left in the world that still took a roll of real film. He snapped a few photos of the scene. Not that there was much of a reason to do so. The police would have taken dozens, and the defense would get copies in due time. But Jaywalker was an investigator today, and it seemed like an investigator-like thing to do.

Then he walked back to the Merc and headed south, to the city.

That night Jaywalker went over his notes and took stock of his investigation. Over two days, he’d familiarized himself with the newspaper accounts of the case, conferred with both of the lawyers who’d represented Carter Drake so far, gotten hold of a few sheets of paper and visited the scene of the crime. Even if it was a good beginning, it had turned up nothing really useful. Still on his checklist were subpoenaing police reports, locating and interviewing witnesses, and researching the law on precisely what it took to elevate a motor vehicle accident into a murder case.

But all of those things could wait a day or two. The next order of business would take Jaywalker back up to New City. Knowing that, and figuring he’d be using the Mercury on a more or less regular basis, he decided he might as well park it on the street. But that was a momentous decision, given that he lived in Manhattan. He spent the next forty-five minutes searching for a legal parking place. Every empty spot turned out to be a fire hydrant, a bus stop or the private driveway to some building. Twice he had to get out and squint at the fine print on the alternate-side-of-the-street parking signs, which were obviously intended to entrap the unwary motorist. Did NO PARKING 10AM TO 11:30 AM MON AND THURS mean you could park there at other times? Or was that sign subject to the one above it that said NO STANDING 4 PM TO 7 PM? And since both of them included the red-letter warning TOW-AWAY ZONE, it appeared to matter.

Back up in his apartment, more or less legally parked, Jaywalker had made a dozen phone calls just to find out what credentials he’d need and what procedures he’d have to follow for what he was planning to do. Next, he’d gone onto his computer and, using a mix of type fonts, print sizes and images, and about two hours of unbillable trial-and-error labor, had managed to create a rather impressive-looking identification card.

Private Investigator in the STATE OF NEW YORK…