Dean and Wolfman have taken the elevator one floor down to the district attorney’s conference room. Cherrywood wainscoting and plush leather wingbacks. Granger, the assistant D.A. on this case, has done the stunt where he shows the victim’s family in along the wall of shame, a floor-to-ceiling memento mori wallpapering the outer hallway, mostly push-pinned snapshots of the murdered or missing but the occasional personal effect, too—gold-plated chains and earrings and crosses, laminated student IDs and keychains and other trinkets. Found objects, collaged together in ad-hoc tribute to the unadjudicated dead. Macy calls this “walking the gauntlet” and it gives his team a sizeable home-court advantage.
Opal Jefferson is still trying to absorb the body-shock of seeing her grandson’s face taped to the memorial outside. The brittle little woman has settled down for the most part, but every now and then a whimper works itself from her lips. Opal is flanked on one side by Robert Granger and on the other by her granddaughter Aura. Wolfman and Dean sitting across the table from them. Dean’s boss wishes Granger wasn’t here but the Jeffersons wouldn’t take the meeting unless the assistant D.A. was sitting in.
Even dressed in drab nursing scrubs Aura Jefferson is beautiful, tall and dark and lithe. She stares into the air above the D.A.’s veined marble conference table, looking tired. Wolfman has tried to tread lightly so far but Dean can see his boss wants more than he’s getting from the women.
“Aura, is there anything else you can tell us about Carl?” Wolfman asks.
“I loved my brother,” she answers.
“Of course you did,” Wolfman says. “Can you tell us a little about what he was like?”
“He was like a brother,” Aura says. “Like himself.”
“That wasn’t . . .” Dean starts to interrupt, but Wolfman reins him in with an evil-eyed scowl.
Granger drums a ballpoint pen on his legal pad, rat-a-tattle-tat.
Wolfman goes for it.
“Did you know he dealt drugs?”
Opal weeps, gives herself wholly over to grief. Aura looks at the tape recorder blinking on the table. Her brown fingers are steepled so tightly together the tips have paled nearly to taupe.
Granger pulls a tissue from his herringbone suit pocket and offers it to Opal. The assistant D.A. kills the tape recorder with a finger stab.
“We’re done here.”
Granger shows the women out, his florid face grave. Dean and Wolfman hang back, and when Granger returns to talk shop he affects a square-john swagger, elbows hiked, high-stepping like a bandleader. His loafers look more expensive than Dean’s car.
“Billy Grimes’s dream team isn’t quite as big as O.J.’s,” Granger says, smiling.
“Little pecker like you should’ve learned by now size doesn’t matter,” Wolfman says.
“There’s still time to cop a plea.”
“Our client won’t admit to murder.”
“That’s not what he’s telling everyone else.”
“Bullshit.”
“A little jailbird told me Billy Grimes likes to talk.”
“Go fish, Robert.”
“You sure about that? Have you interviewed his cellie? What about the other perps in his pod? His detention officer? Trent? My guys have. And Barrett’s hair and fiber evidence is going to point right at your boy.”
Wolfman cracks his big bull-neck.
“It must be nice,” he finally says.
“What.”
“Having that black magic to fall back on when you can’t take time to stick your case.”
“Billy Grimes is going to H-unit and get put down like a dog.”
“Under what aggravating factor?”
“Heinous, atrocious, and cruel.”
“Kind of a catch-all, don’t you think?” Wolfman looks at Dean. “Tell me, if Macy goes on vacation how does forensics know who to finger? Do you clowns take turns? Or is it just Macy gets to play God?”
“There’s still time to deal,” Granger says, collecting his things. “But our patience is wearing thin.”
Back upstairs, in Wolfman’s office, Ethan “Dragnet” Podesta is already waiting for them. The liverspotted ex-cop has strewn the Billy Grimes discovery file about the room. Paper covers most every horizontal surface. Dragnet paces meditative laps over the carpet, hands on hips, bloodshot eyes blown big behind Coke-bottle lenses, trying to take it all in.
“So,” Dean says, “whodunit?”
Dragnet gathers his evidence.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
Wolfman has established certain procedural safeguards against perpetrating a fraud upon the court. Dragnet’s still popular with the rank-and-file police squad and gets the dirty work of determining what has happened. Dean only wants to see mitigation testimony. Dragnet often says Tonto wears blinders. The defense wants to preserve Dean’s bright-side mindset long as possible, so until Wolfman gives his blessing the two investigators aren’t to discuss their findings. Every bit of data is classified as attorney work product, a bureaucratic parking lot protecting it from discovery by the D.A., until Wolfman has had the chance to review it.
Wolfman sidesteps a pile of paperwork to sit groaning behind his desk. The decor is decidedly different down here. Dog-eared bubbles of wallpaper peel from water-damaged baseboards. An assortment of threadbare men’s clothes hangs from a coat rack in the corner—navy blue blazers and button-down oxfords, khaki slacks and clip-on neckties. In a pinch this communal wardrobe can civilize an indigent client before his big day in court.
Wolfman swivels his chair around to face the window. Directly across the alley, not ten yards away, the County Courthouse climbs into an ashen hover of cloud cover.
“What’s the weather forecast?” Wolfman asks.
“Who’s wondering?” Dragnet says.
“Billy Grimes.”
“Then a shitstorm is imminent.”
Wolfman gives Dragnet plenty of leeway when deciding if something is relevant to his defense. If a sketchball like Grimes wants to play innocent, the men can speak in this crude kind of cant for weeks.
“How’d it go?”
Wolfman mimics the sound of an explosion, big mitts lifting. “Crash and burn. Tell him, Tonto.”
“Granger’s bragging about a jailhouse confession,” Dean says.
“Goddamn.”
“Dragnet, I want statements from everyone Grimes has talked to since he’s been in County,” Wolfman says. “No stone unturned.”
Dragnet writes while Wolfman talks.
“I heard a different rumor,” Dean says.
“What now?”
“Granger’s offered the girlfriend immunity.”
Wolfman slumps in the chair. “The flannel-mouthed . . .”
“Maybe Granger’s just trying to throw you off his trail.”
“We won’t know until we do the legwork,” Wolfman says. He turns to look at Dean. “How’s business on your end?”
“Still tracking down some missing medical records,” Dean reports. “Still looking for the parents. Grimes was absent from school a few weeks. Might have been a concussion. Abuse maybe. Both, if we’re lucky. I should know soon.”
“Our client needs to shut the fuck up. If he’s not admitting this, Billy’d better get wise post-goddamned-haste.” Wolfman slams a palm on his desktop and howls “Fuck!”
“Jefferson’s family?” Dragnet asks.
“We take a self-defense stance and go gunning for Carl Jefferson in trial, it will be hard on them,” Wolfman explains. “But we’re lucky. No way Grandma can handle the stress of a victim impact statement. That leaves Jefferson’s sister.”
“Did you see what she did?” Dean says.
“What.”
“There at the end. What she said.”
“So she loves her brother. So?”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I said Aura is there anything else you want to tell us about Carl.”
“Then she says, I love my brother.”
“You know,” Wolfman says, “a perp does that.”
“That’s something a perp will do,” Dragnet says.
“Miss Jefferson has got the qualms.”
“What’s she hiding?”
“Aura doesn’t want to speak ill of the dead,” Dean explains.
“It’s an opening,” Dragnet says.
“It’s something,” Wolfman agrees. “I swear Tonto, you get any better at this we’ll start hiring you out as a dope dog. The narcs sure could use the help. Dragnet, stay away from the Jeffersons until Tonto’s done his thing.” Wolfman shoots Dean a look. “Don’t go it strong.”
“Kid gloves.”
“And Dean,” says Wolfman. “I love you like a kid brother. But don’t ever interrupt my interview like that again. Now go get ’em.”
• • •
Back in his own office Dean fires up the Selectric to transcribe his notes. The type ball whiffles round kissing the page in a staccato series of mechanical snaps. A bumper sticker pasted across the typewriter housing quotes Woody Guthrie: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.
Dean has some maneuvering to do.
The head of forensics is a Negro woman named Jane Barrett. Her expert witnessing for the prosecution tends to go above and beyond both the call of duty and the capabilities of modern science. Thus the nickname black magic. Even so, the D.A.’s overconfidence is strange this early in the game. It has spooked the boss. The way he went after Carl Jefferson like that in front of Granger. Wolfman tends to wait before doubling down on the murder victim. It smells of desperation.
Wolfman told him once you only win a race to the bottom by refusing to run in the first place. Dean likes the sound of this saying but can’t figure how it fits with his daily life.