Thomas P. Halligan and Leland Horowitz arrived at the Criminal Courts building on the West Side shortly after eleven A.M. This in itself was unusual. Though Bud Halligan had been the state’s attorney for nearly seven years, no one in the Criminal Courts building, where much of his office was located, could recall his ever visiting the place.
Halligan preferred to govern his sprawling little empire from a more comfortable office downtown in the Civic Center. There was located the polite and comprehensible civil division of the office, and Halligan liked the men who worked in the civil division. They had pocket calculators and gray suits and wore shirts that always looked clean. When they returned from lunch, their breath did not reek of garlic and cheap Italian wine like those on the West Side who liked to eat in the old Italian section around Twenty-fourth and Oakley streets. Halligan also preferred the downtown office because it was physically closer to the source of political power in the city—just across the street from City Hall.
Frankly Halligan did not like the atmosphere on the West Side. And he did not like or comprehend the strange, snarling men and women who worked as prosecutors in that sprawling criminal division. They did not have pocket calculators, only brown case envelopes. They did not speak, they shouted and laughed—too loudly. And the corridors of their domain seemed perpetually crowded with evil-smelling people. It was chaos.
Shortly before Halligan took office there had been a judge in the old court building who sentenced a young black criminal to ten years in prison for armed robbery and rape; the young man became so upset by the verdict that he suddenly pulled a pistol from his suit and blew the top of the judge’s head away. Before they shot him to death in the court, he also managed to wound the court clerk, a young assistant state’s attorney, and his own lawyer. Halligan thought at the time that the incident symbolized the madness of the place. Who would willingly work in such conditions?
Besides, Horowitz pointed out to Halligan from time to time, the mayor of the city (who was also head of the vast political machine to which Halligan owned allegiance) liked to see Halligan’s face occasionally when he dined in the Bismarck Hotel downtown. That alone was justification for his preference for the downtown office. In fact, Halligan was so seldom a visitor to the West Side building that the guard in the lobby ordered him to open his briefcase and patted him down. The weapons search was routine, instituted years before after a berserk gunman had entered the lobby one afternoon and gunned down two witnesses on their way to a courtroom where they were to testify against the gunman’s brother in a murder trial.
Halligan and Horowitz took the elevator to the state’s attorney’s office, which occupied a large section in the eastern part of the second floor.
Horowitz led the way. He was a dapper man with impeccable taste in clothes who had first been a young lawyer in the same building forty years before. He thought the offices were immutable. Horowitz liked the old building and, as a native of the tough West Side of the city, he liked the atmosphere. But Horowitz had always played a power game, and now at the age of sixty-eight, he stayed downtown where the power was.
Mrs. Farrell was startled to see the two men appear in Jack Donovan’s outer office and she gaped openmouthed for a moment while Halligan smilingly extended his hand. “Hello, Mrs. Farrell,” he said. He never forgot a name but in Mrs. Farrell’s case, it was easy to remember. She had been secretary to the past twelve chiefs of the criminal division.
“Mr. Halligan,” she said, “I’ll buzz—”
That’s all right,” said Lee Horowitz. He again led the way into Jack Donovan’s office.
Donovan looked up from his desk. He didn’t appear surprised.
“Hello, Jack,” said Bud Halligan, like a man looking for votes.
“Hello, Bud.”
Horowitz stood by the door and closed it. Halligan went to a chair next to Donovan’s desk. Donovan got up and walked to the window and looked out at the air shaft. Then he turned and sat on the ledge.
“What brings you out here, Bud?”
It was Horowitz who answered: “We wanna know what the fuck you’re gonna do with this Weiss character?”
“He appeared this morning. We decided to tack kidnapping on him instead of imprisonment. That’ll put us in a better bargaining position later. It’s pretty solid all around and we can go to the grand jury in the next couple of days.”
“I’m not talking about that stuff,” said Horowitz.
“What are you talking about, Lee?” Donovan glanced at Halligan. “And who am I talking to?”
“You’re talking to both of us,” Halligan rumbled. “When are you going for charges on those park murders? That’s why we came down here.”
Donovan shrugged. “There’s no need to right now. We don’t have anything, but Weiss isn’t going anywhere. His bond is three-hundred-thousand dollars. That’s because we leaked it to the Tribune when he was going up, and they sat in the courtroom the whole time.” Donovan smiled.
Lee Horowitz nodded. “Good trick for an amateur.”
“But we’ve got to wait on the park murders. The cops talked to him a little bit but, we really don’t have anything.”
“Nothing?” Horowitz spat. “You got nothing? You had nothing on that guy Norman What’s-his-name, but you sent him up to bat before he walked out of this fuckin’ building. You got us holding a sack of shit downtown and smiling about it.”
“Are you with the sheriff’s office now, Lee? I thought the sheriff took the rap on the escaped prisoner.”
“Yeah, but we got to say it’s the wrong guy and then it’s the right guy for the wrong murder. Shit. What a mess you got us into,” said Lee.
Halligan held up his hand. “All right, you guys. Take it easy. I don’t wanna see a fight.” That was true, in fact.
Horowitz said, “We want an indictment. Right away.”
“There isn’t anything there to indict.”
“So?”
“We can’t indict.”
“Who says?”
“Come off it, Lee. Look at it. I talked to Weiss this morning.” He knew this surprised Lee. “We got him as solid as shit in winter on that little girl. We go to the grand jury, we’ve got it. And he knows it too. And we’ve got another guy we arrested with him, a black guy named Luther Jones, and we’re going to work on him because he’s gone down two times already. What I’m saying is, we don’t have to move on Morey Weiss on that Grant Park stuff yet. Until we get more. Until we’re sure.”
“Sure?” Horowitz looked disgusted. “We get an indictment now. If it doesn’t hold up in three months, who’s going to remember? They remember now. They pick up the paper and they read about the politicians fuckin’ up the country and they read about the state’s attorney can’t even solve a fuckin’ murder when the cops hand him the killer on a silver platter. You wanna know about the public? They remember the girl in the park, two days ago, she was dead and Norman Who-Ha walks out of the Criminal Courts building and they say, “Same old shit. These guys are fucking up, cutting deals.”
Donovan waited.
“So where does all that leave Bud? Bud is all alone downtown. The mayor called him up this morning. And it wasn’t to talk about next year’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade either.”
Donovan said, “You don’t want this, Bud. We don’t have anything on the park murders, nothing to tie it to Weiss. You announce an indictment now, and even the public is going to see holes in the thing. You don’t want that kind of publicity.” He looked at Lee. “I take the responsibility for the Norman Frank mess. I moved on it when I shouldn’t have. But this is different—”
Horowitz started screaming, “Bullshit! What do the papers know about anything? That’s the public, you know. Who gives a fuck about the public? You bring an indictment, you got the guy, he’s guilty. You don’t have to apologize later. Even if he walks in three months, you won. No apologies. Three months from now, who gives a fuck? He’s guilty anyway. And we clear the murders.”
“What if he didn’t do it?”
“Cut the crapola, Donovan. You’re not the fuckin’ jury, you know. You’re the prosecutor.”
“That’s right, Lee. I’m the goddamn prosecutor.” The mild response, delivered in Donovan’s usual flat tone, seemed to infuriate Horowitz. The little man looked as though he would strike Donovan.
“Lee’s right, Jack,” Halligan said unhappily. He hated the wrangling. “We really need an indictment on this. The mayor’s man called me before the mayor called. They’re taking heat at City Hall.”
“That’s right,” said Lee.
“I’m going to give you a little scenario,” said Donovan mildly. He got up and went over to the couch and squatted on his heels beside it so that his face was on a level with Halligan’s. He tried to talk directly to the state’s attorney, shutting out Horowitz. The old man was forced to come around the couch to listen.
“We indict Weiss. This guy killed Christina Kalinski. At least. Maybe we can even tag him with Maj Kirsten. Good enough for a grand jury anyway. We don’t have a weapon, a definite motive, but we indict. But everyone is happy. The papers praise thy name. The TV guys hang him on the air. Everyone is happy, from the cops, who think he did it, to the mayor, who now can get the Streets and Sanitation Department to stop chopping down all the foliage in Grant Park.”
Halligan’s eyes were soft. He was seeing it, just as Donovan laid it out.
“And suddenly, about three weeks from now or maybe four weeks from now or five, some blond, blue-eyed woman of twenty-four is strolling in the park one day and a man grabs her and rapes her and stabs her to death.”
He got up. His knees cracked. He went back to the window while they waited in silence. He turned: “Suddenly, everyone says, ‘Hey, I thought Bud Halligan said he caught the killer of those women.’ Now it turns out we got a phony indictment and Weiss and his lawyer use it to mitigate the little girl case, which we’ve got solid. He’ll say there was no little girl, that we set him up just like we set him up on the other thing.” Donovan stared at Halligan. “You want that kind of trouble, Bud? Or do you want to ride out the trouble you got now?”
“You really think he didn’t do it?” said Halligan at last.
Donovan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“That’s all bullshit,” said Lee.
Halligan shrugged. “What if it isn’t, Lee? What are we gonna do then?”
Horowitz was still worked up. “Crapola. I think this cocksucker has gone soft since he fucked up on the Norman Ho-Ho thing. Fuck this shit. We wanna indict. I talked to Leonard Ranallo this morning and he wants to indict. The cops want to clean this one up. This ain’t Saint Joan of Arc you got. You got a miserable little prick in there. You got a soft spot for him?”
Donovan flushed. “Who are you gonna indict with? You gonna walk in there with a prick in your hand and say ‘Boo’ to the grand jury?”
“You can say black is shit to the fucking grand jury and get an indictment,” Lee Horowitz screamed. “You are the fucking prosecutor. That’s your jury. I can indict Snow White on charges of blowing the Seven Dwarfs. So what the fuck is this?”
“He didn’t do it.”
Halligan said quietly, “What do you mean, Jack?”
“I talked to him. He didn’t do it.” He was sorry he had blurted it out, but now it was there on the table for them all to pick over.
“Did he tell you he didn’t do it?” Lee mocked.
“All right. I feel about this one the way I felt about Norman Frank and I didn’t even see Norman Frank. I made a mistake. I let the pressure carry me along. I won’t do it again. You can’t indict and there’s no percentage in it for you anyway, Bud. But while we take the heat off, the guy who is killing those women is going to set up his next murder.”
“Ranallo says he thinks it’s Weiss,” said Horowitz.
“Ranallo doesn’t know his ass from third base,” said Donovan. “He’s beginning to believe what he reads in the papers. He hasn’t seen either victim and I doubt he’s seen Weiss.”
Halligan said stubbornly, softly, “The mayor really wants this cleared up.”
“And where’s the mayor gonna be tomorrow when you’re standing up there with an indictment that looks like Swiss cheese and another park murder?”
He looked at Halligan and Halligan winced. Donovan suddenly knew he had won. He was aware, for the first time, that his shirt was soaked with sweat.
Horowitz understood too. The tension seemed to drain out of the room like a storm disappearing to the east.
“Okay,” said Halligan finally. “If that’s the way you see it right now, Jack, I’ll back you up.”
Donovan nodded. Halligan’s words were worthless.
“Yeah,” hissed Horowitz. “But I’m against it, remember. If it turns out okay, Donovan, you know I’ll be the first to say it. You know that.”
Donovan stared at him.
“But if you’re wrong, if we don’t get this guy, then I can’t stand by you.”
“That’s nice to know, Lee,” Donovan said. “I appreciate the support. Nice to have you drop by and talk about it.”
“All right there, Jack,” said Halligan. He was on his feet. He sensed the smell of the old building closing in on him. He wanted to get away, escape downtown. Have a gin and tonic at lunch. Maybe with Charlie O’Neill from the civil division. He looked at Donovan. Maybe, he thought again, he really wasn’t the man for the job.
“See you, Jack,” he said vaguely. “We got to have lunch sometime soon.”
“Anytime you say, Bud,” said Jack Donovan.
“Soon,” repeated Bud Halligan. “I’ll check my calendar when I get back and call you. Come on, Lee, we got to leave the man alone. We’ve got things to do. You know what it’s like, I don’t have to tell you, Jack.”
Donovan shook his head.
Bud Halligan didn’t have to tell him.