“And no matter why you wrote to Detective Starczek, we agree you never mentioned these killings, correct?”
“True. I told him I had to talk to him about something important.”
“Detective Starczek didn’t respond?”
“Right.”
“He didn’t want to deal with you now that you couldn’t do him any good. Is that how you felt?”
“Naw, I wouldn’t say that.”
Muriel returned to Larry for a copy of the letter Erno had written to Gillian, then started toward the witness. Ten feet to Larry’s left, Raven immediately clambered to his feet.
“Judge, I haven’t seen that,” Arthur said. With an innocent look, Muriel displayed Erno’s letter first to Raven, then Harlow. Larry read over another copy Muriel had left on the table. The words were right there, even though Arthur’s dashed look made it apparent that he’d missed their significance. As Muriel returned to the podium, Larry saw her pass Arthur a collegial smile, a pleasant ‘gotcha’ as if they were playing Scrabble or tennis. Then she turned back to Erno and used the letter like a knife to the liver.
“Did you write to Judge Sullivan that the detective on the case had no interest in you ‘now that you can’t do him any good’?”
Erno read it over several times. “That’s what it says here.”
“Would you say you were resentful?” asked Muriel.
“Call it what you want.”
“I’ll call it resentful,” said Muriel. Harlow sustained the objection, but he smiled again. Larry by now had gotten a line on the judge. Kenton Harlow liked lawyers, admired what they did. He believed that the truth would emerge from the hard-fought courtroom contest, and he was clearly taken with Muriel’s style.
“Well, let’s put it this way,” said Muriel. “You provided information to Detective Starczek on what you knew was a major case, right?”
“Okay,” said Erno.
“And your friend Detective Starczek made the case? He got credit for it.”
“Him and you,” said Erno.
“He and I. And the Police Force got credit for it, correct?”
“Right.”
“That Force where no one would help you get to medium security.”
“Okay.”
“That same Force where nobody backed your story that the shooting four years ago at Ike’s was self-defense.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“And by saying what you’re saying now, you’re essentially taking back what you gave Detective Starczek and the Police Force before. Yes?”
“I’m saying the truth.”
“True or not, you’re trying to correct or withdraw the effect of the information you provided previously. Aren’t you?”
“Cause that was a lie.”
Muriel moved to strike and Harlow forced Erno to answer. He had no choice but to say yes. It was all too obvious by now, but a little ruf fle passed through the rows of press when he spoke the word. They had the lead for their stories.
Muriel then began to question Erno about his relationship with the Gangster Outlaws, one of the street gangs that dominated the prison at Rudyard. This was information that Larry had worked most of the night developing, and Muriel laid it out nicely. Erno had gotten on with a G.O. cellmate and had eventually fallen under the protection of the gang, for whom Erno was thought to occasionally obtain information from old pals in law enforcement. Erno would not acknowledge the last part.
“Well, do you know, Mr. Erdai, that there have been several cases where members of the Gangster Outlaws who were incarcerated have provided false confessions to crimes other G.O.’s were accused of?”
“Objection,” said Arthur. “There’s no evidence that Mr. Gandolph is a member of any gang.”
“The question,” said Muriel, “is whether Mr. Erdai knows that.”
“It’s irrelevant,” said Arthur.
“I’ll hear it,” said the judge.
“I’ve heard that,” said Erno.
“And have you also heard, Mr. Erdai, that the G.O.’s control death row at Rudyard?”
“I know there’s a lot of them there.”
“Including Mr. Gandolph?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. You have to understand, those death rows, the Yellow Men, are off by themselves. They don’t see anybody else. I haven’t had a word with Gandolph in all the time I’ve been in the facility.”
“Well, Mr. Erdai, are you telling us that given your experience in the institution, if somebody from the G.O.’s, who’ve protected you, wanted you to tell a story, especially a story that wouldn’t hurt you but that would hurt Detective Starczek and the Police Force who’d let you down, a story that would even help you spend time with your wife before you diedare you really telling us you have too much integrity to do that?”
Arthur had come to his feet long before Muriel finished. He quietly said, “Objection,” and Harlow quickly responded, “Sustained.” But Muriel had essentially given her closing argument for the press. With her job more than done, she moved back toward counsel table, then stopped abruptly.
“Oh,” she said, as if what was coming was merely an afterthought. “After you hauled these bodies down to the freezer, Mr. Erdai, what is it you say you did to the corpse of Luisa Remardi?”
“I pulled her skirt and her underwear down to her ankles.”
“And then?”
“Then, nothing.”
“So you just disrobed her for, what, curiosity?”
“I disrobed her, because I knew she’d been having sex an hour before and I figured it would show in the autopsy. I wanted it to look like she’d been assaulted. It was the same idea as taking everybody’s stuff to make it look like a robbery. I was just trying to cover up.”
“And you didn’t, in fact, perform anal intercourse with the corpse.”
“Nope.”
“You know, don’t you, that the police pathologist, Dr. Kumagai, testified at trial that the corpse had been sodomized.”
“I know that Painless Kumagai has made a lot of mistakes over the years.”
“But you don’t know why a common condom lubricant was detected in her anus?”
“I think you ought to ask the gentleman she was passing time with in the parking lot.”
“And do you think that accounts for why her anal sphincter was distended after the time of death?”
“I’m not a pathologist.”
“But you’ll agree, Mr. Erdai, that your testimony doesn’t explain that piece of evidence, does it?”
“I haven’t explained that, no.”
“Thank you,” said Muriel.
She settled beside Larry. Below the table, quite unexpectedly, he felt her fist knock against his.
MURIEL’S CROSS had gone almost entirely as Arthur had acted it out in his conferences with Erno at the jail. The only exception was the line in Erno’s letter about Larry having no use for him now; Arthur hadn’t recognized the implications. But that aside, Erno had been well prepared. The difference was Muriel. She won any competition on style points.
By the time she had finished, Judge Harlow was sitting up straight in his chair on the other side of the bench, literally keeping his distance from Erdai. As Arthur rose for redirect examination, he was aware he had work to do. He buttoned his coat, and double-checked on Pamela’s notes, before he started what was called, in the parlance, rehabilitating the witness.
“Mr. Erdai, Ms. Wynn questioned why you would take such risks to yourself for your nephew’s sake. Can you explain that to His Honor, Judge Harlow?”
Erno studied the rail on the witness box for quite some time.
“This family—my family—we survived a lot. I mean, they had a hell of a time in the Second World War and then in 1956, my father took part in the revolt—” Erno screwed up his face. “He was killed—he was shot and then hung from his feet on the lamppost in front of our house, to tell it like it was. Our neighbors sold him out to the AVH, the secret police. And my mother a
nd my sister and me, it was quite a story getting out of there and getting here. And then Collins, my nephew—he was the only child either of us had, my sister and me. And I knew if he went to prison for the rest of his life, then that was it. I mean, I thought a lot about my father hanging from that lamppost—they left him out there for days, they wouldn’t let us cut him down, it was a warning.” Erno reached to cover his mouth, as if he was going to be ill, and instead broke down completely. After a minute, he mopped his entire face with the judge’s tissues and, as before, took a while to get his breathing back on track.
“I felt he could be something, Collins. He was smart, just stuck in a tough spot. But I thought I owed it to my father, to my mother, too—to the whole family—to try to get him one more chance. I had to do what I could.”
Arthur waited to see if Erno would offer more, but he’d said his piece. By now, Arthur and Pamela had spent hours with Erno, and one of the hard truths of the case was that Arthur did not particularly like him. It was not because Erno was a criminal, nor even because of the exceptional gravity of what he had done. Over the years, Arthur, like everyone else who worked in the system, had encountered absolute miscreants who were bright as a new penny, and even beguiling. But there was an inalterable coldness to Erno. He was blunt, and not merely indifferent to feelings but somewhat proud of the fact. He did not ask to be liked. And yet his hardness left Arthur with an unshakable conviction that Erno was telling the truth, and also with considerable admiration for Erno’s willingness to proceed without demanding to be regarded as either a saint or a martyr. He knew he wasn’t.
“All right, then. One more area. Ms. Wynn raised questions about the motives for your testimony. Can you tell us why you agreed to speak to Judge Sullivan and me—why you decided to tell the truth about what happened on July Fourth, 1991.”
Predictably, Muriel stood up to object to the assumption that Erno was telling the truth. The judge brushed her aside, the way he’d done to Arthur a couple of times.
“Let’s just try our lawsuit, folks. Let’s not worry about who’s in the peanut gallery,” Harlow said, clearly adverting to the press. “Okay, Mr. Erdai. Explain yourself. Why are we hearing about this now?”
Erno steadied his breathing before he began.
“I would say at first, when I set up Gandolph, I didn’t really worry much about him. I figured, if you laid end to end everything he got away with, he probably deserved quite a bit of time anyway.
“Now, like I said, if Larry had come down when I asked, I’d have told him. I hadn’t worked out in my head exactly how I’d do that, but I’d have done it, because I’d owe him to be straight. But now, I realize I owe it to Gandolph.
“There’s nothing like dying, I’ll tell you. You may think you understand that you’re only here temporary, but when the doctors tell you—I don’t know, maybe old folks feel different about it. My ma was happy to go at eighty-six. But when it’s before your time—for me—I I spend a lot of the day being scared. It’s coming. You know it’s coming. And there’s nothing you can do. It’s coming. It’s cruel, actually. You live your whole life, you survive all this stuff and still the end’s got to be so cruel.
“Now, you know, guys on their deathbed, they rediscover their faith, and I’ve rediscovered mine. I listen to the priest. And I think a lot. I’ve done a lot of terrible things. I don’t know if God gave me this disease as punishment, or if it just happened because stuff happens—He won’t be sending any telegrams to explain it. But it comes in your mind, eventually, that you have it in your power to make things better. And that’s what got me thinking about Gandolph. He’s been over there, every day for nine-plus years now, and he knows every day, just like me, it’s coming. It’s coming, and he can’t do nothing about it. Like me. Only he doesn’t deserve it. If I just tell the truth, he gets out from under. He’s going through what I’m going through, every day, but he doesn’t have to. That’s what I kept thinking. I can’t change it for me. But I can change it for him. All I have to do is what’s right.”
Erno hadn’t been looking at anyone as he gave this oration. His eyes were cast low and he was speaking in the same bare voice, raspy and a bit disembodied, in which he’d answered throughout. But when he finished he looked up and nodded decisively to the judge.
With a long finger laid beside his nose, Harlow was manifestly weighing what to make of Erno. Arthur and Pamela had spent a considerable amount of time asking the same question of one another. Despite Erno’s plainspokenness, there remained an elusive quality to him, which Arthur had eventually decided arose from Erno’s uncertainty about himself. Arthur had no doubt Erdai meant every word he’d just said, yet there was a sense in which the man found such reflections alien. Sometimes Erno reminded Arthur of his schizophrenic sister, Susan, who often claimed to be under the command of voices from elsewhere in the cosmos. Erno had testified that when he shot Paul Judson, he learned something grisly about his own nature. But that was nowhere near as unaccountable to him as the forces that had impelled him at the end of his life to reverse what little he could of the damage done by his savage side. Erno accepted that he was doing right. But he still seemed utterly confounded about what was in it for him.
Eventually, the judge asked Muriel if she had any redirect. After conferring with Larry, she said no.
“Mr. Erdai,” said the judge, “you are excused.” Harlow studied Erno a moment longer, then added in a flat voice, “Good luck to you, sir,” and without looking back, left the bench.
19
JUNE 13, 2001
Still Victims
AS THE SESSION CONCLUDED, Muriel, still flying on adrenaline, faced the gallery, where the onlookers, shoulder to shoulder, were struggling to their feet. There were at least a dozen reporters here on special assignment, and scores of civilians drawn in by the headlines of the last twenty-four hours.
This morning Ned Halsey had gallantly suggested Muriel leave the case—and the controversy—to him. But the reporters knew Gandolph’s prosecution had been pivotal in her career; if Arthur actually proved Squirrel was the wrong man, the press would hang her whether she was in the courtroom or not. And she would not have deprived herself of the challenge anyway. She craved these moments of premium demand, no matter how dire, when the world pressed at her like a clamoring sea. Raven was approaching with a bundle of new motions. Molto and Carol needed to be consulted on the next legal move. Larry was awaiting direction on where his investigation of Erdai should head. And the journalists were already lurching forward to see if they could squeeze some pre-emptive comment from her. But this was the destiny she’d wanted since childhood. ‘The arena’ was Talmadge’s term, but she did not care for the gladiatorial overtone. To her it was more a matter of using herself completely, feeling that every cell had to contribute to managing her place in her times.
With the instinctive clarity with which these matters always made themselves manifest to her, she abruptly saw what she had to do. John Leonidis was present, seated in the rear, as he had faithfully been for more than nine years now, whenever there were court sessions of consequence. She ignored everyone else, and with the reporters gathered round, placed an arm on John’s shoulder and led him across the hall to the witness room. The press, she knew, wouldn’t go away until she’d commented.
John had not come down alone. He introduced a smooth-skinned man, Pan, a Filipino perhaps, who was a good deal younger than John. Even after Muriel closed the door to the small room, the din of the milling outside the courtroom reached them vaguely. John had been enraged by the proceedings. He bit off a piece of his thumbnail while he fulminated, explaining to Muriel, as if it were news to her, that Erdai was lying to get even with the Kindle County police and had been fed all details.
“I want to tell those idiot reporters out there what’s going on,” said John.
For Muriel, it was ideal to be defended by the victims. Nonetheless, she told John he should speak only if he wanted to.
“Believe me
, I want to,” said John. “I think about this piece of dirt every day. Gandolph? Every day, Muriel, I realize I lost something else to this guy. Lately, the last few months, I keep wondering if my old man would have been proud of me.” John had good reason to believe Gus would have taken great satisfaction in him. Not only had John continued to operate Paradise, where business was better than ever in the resurgent neighborhood, but he had also franchised midpriced Greek restaurants across the country in partnership with a local hotel owner. Muriel had lunch at the Center City place, GG’s Taverna—GG for Good Gus—at John’s invitation a few times every year. He would sit at her table, smoke, and go over the case, which remained as fresh in his mind as if it had been tried yesterday.
“I think, you know, Gus would have had some problems with some things in my life,” said John, “same as my mom, but I think it would have turned out okay, with him, too. I really believe that. But I’m entitled to know. Right? Everybody is. This shitbag, Gandolph—he’s not God. But he was God in my life.”
For John, like most survivors, his father’s murder, and the killer’s punishment, would always resound with personal meanings. Yet the principal reason John could not let the case end was simply because it hadn’t. For John Leonidis it had been almost a decade of holding his breath, hoping against hope that the injustice of Gus’s death would not be compounded by seeing Rommy Gandolph escape what the clanking legal machinery had said he deserved.
Years ago, John had been the most adamant of the victims about the death penalty for Gandolph. By the time of the trial, Paul Judson’s wife, Dina, had moved to Boulder and was doing everything she could to start fresh; no one had heard from her for years. Luisa’s mom, who’d been ruffled by Larry during the investigation, appeared in court to ask for death, but seemed cowed. John, on the other hand, would have been happy to go to law school and try the case himself. Muriel had assumed originally this was for his mother’s sake. But what he had testified to, during the victims’ allocution before sentence was imposed, was that he believed his father would have wanted capital punishment, too.