Hostile Witness by William Lashner

Author:William Lashner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-03-23T22:00:00+00:00

31

WHAT HAD STUNNED ME by the last series of Prescott’s questions to Ruffing was not just that he had turned on Concannon, shifting blame to him, but that he had done it so blatantly. I would have expected him to do his damage subtly, a question here, a remark there, I would have expected Prescott to slip the knife into Concannon surreptitiously, silently, the razor-thin blade sliding through the vertebrae so cleanly that Concannon himself wouldn’t have known he was dead until his knees collapsed beneath him, and even then not be sure. But Prescott had discarded all subtlety. He had looked at the jury, smiled, and said it wasn’t my guy, it was his guy, and all of a sudden the strategy imposed upon me of trying to make my client seem not a part of the proceedings was revealed to be a sick joke.

My first reaction was to sit down at that counsel table and put my head in my hands and try to keep from crying. It is undignified for a lawyer to cry at a trial, unless it is in front of a jury and then only for effect. But the jury was out of the room, the spectators were milling, my client had left for the men’s room, in that situation crying was not a trenchant strategy. Even so, I couldn’t stop my eyes from watering. I heard Prescott laugh to my left, not a loud laugh, but loud enough.

I felt a hand on my arm and I turned around as quickly as my hangover would allow.

It was Herm Finklebaum. He was back on his heels, smiling thinly at me. “You feeling all right, buddy boy?” he asked.

“Not so good just now,” I said.

“I been watching you, like I said I would, but I ain’t seen much.”

“By design,” I said.

“By whose design? Eggert’s?”

“It’s a very complex strategy, Herm. You wouldn’t understand.”

“A toy company came out once with a doll that pooped in its diapers,” said Herm Finklebaum, the toy king of 44th Street. “I asked the sales rep, ‘What’s the fun in that? I’ve changed diapers. Changing diapers is not fun.’ The rep told me I didn’t understand but that the doll was hot hot hot, that it was going to sell like flapjacks. I bought fifty for the Christmas season, sold three. He was right, I didn’t understand, didn’t understand that I was being a schmuck for buying fifty.”

“What’s your point, Herm?”

“Point? There’s no point,” he said, turning away from me and starting to walk away in his jaunty, splayfooted walk. “It’s just a story I like to tell on myself.”

As I watched Herm walk to the rear of the courtroom I saw Beth sitting in the back row, staring at me, not triumphantly or angrily, just staring. She stood and gestured me to meet her in the hallway. I nodded and turned around again.

I didn’t have much time to figure out what I was going to do. Judge Gimbel would be asking me

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.