“Have you ever confiscated any cash in connection with those arrests?”
“Objection!” Hilliard said, rising and reaching for his crutches. “This is far beyond any relevant inquiry, Your Honor.”
Judge Guthrie nodded. “I agree, the objection is sustained. Ms. Rosato, please move on to your next line of questioning.”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Bennie addressed the witness and prepared to let it rip. “I have one final question, Officer McShea. Were you aware that Detective Della Porta was involved in a conspiracy of police officers to sell confiscated drugs?”
“Objection!” Hilliard thundered, grabbing his crutches and leaping to his feet.
“Sustained!” Judge Guthrie ruled, the stem of his reading glasses almost falling from his mouth. His eyes flared as he looked past Bennie to the jury, then to the gallery on the other side of the bulletproof divider. Spectators chattered to each other, courtroom artists drew at speed, and reporters dashed off notes. “Order! Order!” he shouted, rooting through the papers for his gavel, then forgoing it altogether. “Order in the Court! Order!” The judge turned to Bennie. “Ms. Rosato, if you ever ask a question like that without laying a proper foundation, I’ll hold you in contempt. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Bennie said, her chin high. She knew what she’d found under that floor. There was only one way to get it into evidence. She was one step closer.
Judge Guthrie swiveled toward the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, please disregard that last question. Merely because defense counsel asks a question does not make it so. There hasn’t been any evidence presented in this trial that the decedent, Detective Della Porta, had any involvement whatsoever in any illicit drug dealing.” Judge Guthrie grabbed his reading glasses from the dais and stood up. “We’ll break for lunch and readjourn at one-thirty. Mr. Sheriff, please escort the jury out.”
Bennie watched the prosecutor slap his legal pad closed in anger, and she sat down in the midst of the havoc she had created, oddly satisfied.
“Meet with me at lunch,” Connolly whispered. Her voice echoed Bennie’s own, and the lawyer’s satisfaction evaporated in the blink of an eye.
59
Judy, on a mission, shot from her seat as soon as the court session ended. She pushed through the locked door in the bulletproof divider and slipped into the gallery, getting a bead on the blond cop as he headed out the double doors of the courtroom. The cop was at the front of the throng, one of the first to leave. Judy went after him, keeping her head down and charging ahead so the reporters wouldn’t bother her. The marble hallway outside the courtroom was mobbed, and Judy lost sight of the cop’s blue shirt in the sea of blue shirts. Cops were always around the courthouse waiting to testify.
The blond cop resurfaced near the elevator bank, waiting with a circle of others. There was usually a stampede to get out of the Justice Center at lunchtime and tacit courthouse decorum demanded that cops get priority to the elevators. But Judy was never one for decorum anyway. She threaded her way through the crowd and ended up only one cop away. Underneath the shiny patent-leather bill of his hat, she could see that the cop’s blue eyes were large and bright, his nose short, and his teeth bright against his tan. He was a hunk, but too Hitler Youth for Judy’s taste. She tried to get a look at the black nameplate on the far side of the cop’s broad chest, but he was turned away.
Judy reached for his sleeve. “Excuse me, may I speak with you for a minute, Officer?” she asked, and the cop’s eyes hardened.
“I’m late for my tour.”
“Maybe I can help you, miss,” offered one of the other cops, with a broad smile.
“She’s one of Connolly’s lawyers, Doug,” interrupted the third cop, but Judy’s eyes stayed on the blonde. The elevator door had opened and he was slipping inside, wedging himself between the already uncomfortable passengers.
“Wait a minute, comin’ through!” Judy said. She barreled into the elevator by bending her knees and plowing ahead, just like Mr. Gaines had taught her. Interesting that boxing lessons came in handy for trial lawyers.
“Hey, look out!” groused one of the passengers as Judy squeezed in the cab and the elevator doors closed behind her. “What you think you’re doin’, steppin’ on my foot?”
“Sorry.” Judy looked past the passenger to the blond cop, who kept his gaze averted. She still couldn’t read his nameplate; it was blocked. “Officer, I do need to speak with you,” she said, but he ignored her. The passengers looked at her like she was crazy, since she had already established that she was ill-mannered. “Meet you in the lobby, Officer.”
The elevator doors opened behind her and the crowd in the cab pressed forward, flowing around Judy like a river. The blond cop brushed past her, but she fell into step beside him and glanced at his nameplate. LENIHAN.
“Is there a reason you’re avoiding me, Officer Lenihan?” Judy asked, practically running to keep pace. “Why were you in the courtroom today?” The cop plowed through the courthouse lobby, passed the line at the metal detector, and shoved the courthouse door open. “What possible interest do you have in the Connolly case, Officer Lenihan?” Judy called out, brash as a reporter, but he charged ahead.
It was raining outside the Criminal Justice Center, a full-fledged summer thunderstorm, and people crowded for shelter under the entrance in front of the courthouse, talking and smoking until the rain broke. Frail beech trees in aluminum cylinders rustled in the downpour, and people opened umbrellas like new blossoms. A group of lawyers scurried into the rain, and Lenihan bolted between them and across Filbert, heedless of the storm.
Judy dashed after him, beginning to anger. She spent her waking hours asking questions people didn’t answer. “Officer Lenihan, stop!”
Lenihan picked up the pace. Heavy droplets pounded on his hat and epaulets, turning them a darker blue in quarter-sized spots.
Judy sprinted to catch up with him, blinking raindrops from her eyes. Her shoulders were getting drenched. “You can’t run away from this, Lenihan,” she shouted, as she dogged his thick, black heels. They passed an empty office building in a controlled run, its granite façade slick in the storm. The crowd wasn’t so thick here, though one old woman peered at them from under a pink ruffled umbrella. “I have your name and badge number!” Judy yelled after the cop. “We’ll subpoena you, Officer Lenihan! We’ll ask you on the stand!”
The cop whirled around suddenly, his handsome face red with anger. “Did you threaten me?” he said through clenched teeth. “I thought I heard you threaten me.”
Judy stepped back in the downpour, feeling a sudden chill she knew wasn’t the rain. “What do you know about Della Porta’s murder? What are you hiding?”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” the cop demanded, his eyes flashing under the wet brim of his hat, but Judy stood her ground. Stance was her specialty.
“What do you know about Della Porta’s dealing drugs? Do you have information for us? Talk to me now and we can make a deal.”
“Don’t mess where you don’t belong,” the cop whispered, leaning close. Then he turned and hurried into the lunchtime throng of bobbing umbrellas, their bright colors a cheery counterpoint to a conversation that left Judy shaking.
What the hell had that been about? What did he mean? Rain soaked Judy’s smock, and she bounded back to the courthouse, clip-clopping in her clogs like a spooked colt.
60
There wasn’t time to go back to the office during the lunch recess, so the defense team staked out a war room in a courthouse conference room, a sterile white cubicle off the courtroom. Light from a fluorescent panel filled the tiny room, which felt crowded with only four chrome chairs with tan wicker backs encircling a round table of fake wood. At the moment, the table was cluttered with deli sandwiches, pungent canoes of kosher dills, and copies of the police activity sheets. Bennie was making notes and wolfing down a tuna fish on rye when Carrier burst in and told her what had happened.
“You did wh
at?” Bennie asked, scanning her soggy associate in alarm. She set down her sandwich. “You threatened him?”
“Not really.” Judy wiped damp bangs from her forehead. “If you don’t count the subpoena part.”
“That counts,” Mary told her, from behind an unfinished tossed salad. She wore a paper napkin bib over a black linen suit and her hair was pulled back into a businesslike twist. “Subpoenas count, definitely.”
Bennie frowned. “You were supposed to find out his name, that’s all. Lenihan. Good work. I didn’t want you to talk to him, much less threaten him.”
“He threatened me back, and he’s a cop.”
“Carrier, if Lenihan was involved in the drug business, he’ll be panicking. Your threat could flush him out, make him do something dangerous.” Bennie had told the associates about the money under the floorboards, but hadn’t told them she was being followed by the black TransAm, to protect them. “From now on, do what I say. No more and no less.”
Judy stiffened at the rebuke, and Mary looked down at her salad.
Bennie regretted her sharpness and tried to explain. “The cops are keeping an eye on us, to see how close we’re getting. If Lenihan heard the cross of McShea, he’ll think we’re a lot closer than we are. That’s good. I’d like the rats to run scared and see what they do. It’ll give me more leads to follow. But I want to do it, not you. Or DiNunzio.”
Judy sat down, mollified. “You think Lenihan took the money?”
“Probably. I don’t know why he’s not halfway around the world by now.”
“The bonehead factor?” Judy offered, and Mary shrugged.
“Maybe he just can’t imagine leaving Philadelphia.”
Bennie shook her head. “Or maybe there’s more where that came from. In any event, I’ll call Lou and turn Lenihan over to him. Let’s us handle the lawyering and Lou handle the investigation, okay?”
“Fair enough,” Judy said, unwrapping her sandwich. A roast beef special, with extra Russian spilling out the sides. “Got it. Kill the body, the head will die.”
“What?” Bennie asked.
“It’s a boxing expression. Mr. Gaines, my coach, taught it to me. It means, you don’t have to go for the head, for the knockout. If you keep whaling away at the body, you’ll win the fight. Same thing here. If we keep pounding on the bottom of this conspiracy, the top will come tumbling down.”
“You’re taking boxing lessons?”
“For the case.”
Bennie’s face fell. “Well, quit. Leave the punching to me, child. It’s not a game, and it’s not lessons.” She stood up. “I have to go. We’re on in ten minutes, and I have a date with the devil.”
“Hilliard?” Judy asked, but Mary knew who she meant.
Bennie met Connolly as she sat handcuffed in her royal-blue suit on her side of the courthouse interview room. It was cleaner and more modern than the interview room at the prison, but a variation on the same theme: two white plastic chairs on either side of a white counter, and a shield of bulletproof glass that separated client from lawyer.
“I have one question for you,” Bennie said, and Connolly scowled. Her skin looked pallid without makeup, or maybe because Bennie wasn’t used to the new blond color that seemed to wash out her features, close-up. In any event, the strain of the morning was plain on Connolly’s face.
“I don’t give a shit about your question. I’ve been trying to meet with you all lunch,” she spat out. “Didn’t you get my note? I gave it to the fucking deputy.”
“I got your note.” Bennie folded her arms and stood beside the empty chair on her side of the glass. “You know a cop named Lenihan? A blond guy, young.”
“No. I wanted to talk to you about—”
“Lenihan wasn’t in your drug business?”
“If he was, I don’t know it, but—”
“You have no idea what cops were in on the drug business?”
“I told you already, no.”
“Bullshit.”
“The cops took care of the supply, with Anthony. He didn’t tell me, I didn’t want to know.”
“Bullshit.”
“I never heard of Lenihan. I sold the shit, I didn’t care where it came from. There was no reason for me to know, so I didn’t want to know.” Connolly edged forward, a pitchfork of wrinkles appearing above the bridge of her nose. She looked just like Bennie when Bennie was antagonized in the extreme. “What, are you cross-examining me? I’m trying to talk to you. What the fuck did you think you were doing in that opening argument?”
“Saving your worthless life,” Bennie said. Then she turned on her heel and walked out of the interview room.
61
On the witness stand, Officer Arthur Reston made a more conservative picture than his partner had. He was trim through the waist and collected in his pressed uniform. His neat, dark mustache had been newly trimmed under a straight nose, and his brown eyes were slightly lifeless, which telegraphed as professional from the stand. “No, I did not hear the testimony given by my partner, Sean McShea,” Reston answered.
Hilliard nodded. “And that was because you were sequestered, is that correct, Officer Reston?”
“Yes, sir.” The witness sat tall in front of the microphone and held his prominent chin high, as if the collar of his uniform were a bit too tight. “I waited outside in the hall until I was called to testify.”
“Would you consider yourself a diligent patrol officer, Officer Reston?” Hilliard asked.
Bennie almost gagged but didn’t object. Self-serving questions were obvious to jurors, and she knew where this was going anyway.
“I take my job very seriously, if that’s what you mean,” Reston said.
“You have served for how many years?”
“Fifteen.”
“Have you received any decorations because of your performance as a police officer?”
“Yes. I’ve received several commendations for certain arrests and for bravery. I was Police Officer of the Year last year. I’ve been lucky.”
“Permit me to take you back, if I may, deeper into your career history.”
Bennie half rose. “Objection, Your Honor, as to relevancy.”
Judge Guthrie nodded. “I’ll overrule it for now, but let’s not travel too far afield, Mr. Hilliard.”
“Certainly, Your Honor.” Hilliard squared his shoulders. He seemed energized since lunchtime, not from food, but adrenaline. Bennie had thrown down the glove with her question about drugs and she could almost see Hilliard’s juices flowing.
“Officer Reston,” Hilliard said, “isn’t it true that your former partner was killed in a shoot-out in the line of duty, in which you were also grievously injured?”
“Yes, sir.”
One of the jurors coughed, several looked moved, and even Bennie felt a twinge at the tragedy of an officer killed in the line of duty. She had nothing against honest police, only crooked ones, and the thought of death sobered her. She knew what death looked like, had felt its chilly touch in the hand of her mother. She realized now that she had seen death coming in her mother’s eyes that afternoon at the hospital, though Bennie didn’t want to acknowledge it then, as if greeting death were to invite it.
Hilliard continued, “You were shot in the cheek and spent four months in the hospital and another five in rehabilitation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Officer Reston, you have been partners with Officer McShea for seven of your fifteen years on the force, have you not?”
“I have.”
“And you were on duty with him on the evening in question, May nineteenth, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
Hilliard checked his notes at the podium. “Please tell the jury why you were in the vicinity of Anthony Della Porta’s apartment, at Tenth and Trose Street.”
“We stopped down there for dinner, at Pat’s Steaks.”
“You left your district to do this, is that correct?”
“Only this one time, and
because we could get cover.”
“So the district is never left unprotected, isn’t that correct?”
Bennie half rose. “Objection, Your Honor. The prosecution is mischaracterizing prior testimony.”
“Overruled, Ms. Rosato.” Judge Guthrie nodded in the direction of the jurors. “The jury can hear for itself.”
“It’s a minor point, Your Honor, and I’ll move on,” Hilliard said, waving in an offhand manner. “Officer Reston, you knew Detective Della Porta, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“Were you friends?”
“Yes. We both like boxing. Liked. Went to the Blue together, once.”
“What is the Blue, Officer Reston?”
“The Blue Horizon, up Broad Street. Anthony, Detective Della Porta, used to get me tickets, ringside.”
“Officer Reston, what kind of man was Detective Della Porta?”
Bennie stood up. “Your Honor, I object on relevancy grounds. Officer Reston purports to be a fact witness, not a character witness.”
“I beg to differ,” Hilliard said, stepping toward the dais. “Ms. Rosato has maligned Detective Della Porta’s character and reputation. I think the jury has a right to know what kind of a man Anthony Della Porta was.”
Judge Guthrie leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers the same way he had in chambers. Bennie noted that the overhead lights made him look older than his years, or perhaps he’d had a few sleepless nights since their meeting, too. “Overruled,” he said. “Mr. Hilliard, I’ll allow the question.”
Bennie took her seat, frustrated. She could feel Connolly beside her, equally unhappy, but didn’t look over.
“You were going to tell us something about Detective Della Porta, Officer Reston.”
The cop nodded. “Detective Della Porta was a good man and a fine police officer. He worked his way up to Detective. He got one of the highest scores ever on the exam, which tests general knowledge, you know. Intelligence. It’s not about police procedure.”