On June 6, Primo DeGrassi takes the stand. As the Chief has put it, with Primo, what you see is what you get—a big, warm lunk. That’s pretty much the way people talk about my dad, and so maybe that’s why, when Primo walks in a minute or so late, I instinctively take a liking to him—until I remember why I shouldn’t. Primo has kept himself in shape. He’s got this wavy black hair and big shoulders and a nice face, definitely handsome for an old guy. Not hard to understand why the Chief would want to take him home.
On the stand, Primo displays none of Cornish’s arrogance. He’s like an eager child. He listens and nods respectfully and repeats the answers he rehearsed with Marc. He looks, honestly, like one of those people who’s too dumb to lie. He isn’t. He’s too dumb to lie well.
Primo’s story is that in early 2019, he decided to apply for promotion to sergeant. He was looking forward to getting his twenty-five and retiring, and he makes no bones that he wanted the salary bump that would increase his pension. He hadn’t applied before, he says, because he was never great at tests.
Primo’s job performance, in contrast to Cornish’s, was always okay. He did whatever he was asked to do and generally well enough. The only citizen beefs in his jacket came, not surprisingly, when he was partnered with Walter. As far as his job reviews went, the one consistent criticism was that he wasn’t always ‘alert,’ pretty clear code for the fact that the guy isn’t what you’d call a Thought Leader.
Anyway, Primo applied, and ended up number one on the list, since he was also the most senior guy. Everything was looking good for him, he testifies, when he showed up at the Saloon one night in February and, just as happened with Cornish the following year, the Chief asked him to go home and party. He did it, and in fact the Chief required him to return several more times. He was a married man, he says, but he knew the increased pension would help his family.
With that little bit of amusing crap, Marc tenders DeGrassi for cross.
Rik goes straight at him.
“Now, according to you, Mr. DeGrassi, you began this series of sexual interludes with the Chief in late February of 2019, is that right?”
“Right.”
“Isn’t that in fact, Mr. DeGrassi, when your physical relationship with the Chief ended?”
“Not how I remember it.”
“Well, Mr. DeGrassi, I take it on your many visits to the Chief’s house, you noticed the security cameras there?”
“I seen ’em. But you know those systems. Maybe you get thirty days of tape.”
“So you were not aware that an enhanced video storage system had been installed at the Chief’s, which holds at least four years of surveillance footage, were you?”
Primo is accustomed to thinking slow. He holds still while he tries to figure out if this is actually as bad as it sounds.
Rik doesn’t wait for him. “I’d like to show Mr. DeGrassi some video, Reverend, if I may have a couple of minutes to set up the equipment.”
Marc is on his feet. “Members of the commission. This is a complete ambush. We received no notice of potential video evidence.”
Rik shakes his head. “Commissioners, this is cross-examination. We are not obliged to assume that Mr. DeGrassi will lie under oath. And evidence for cross is not subject to discovery. It never has been.”
Mrs. Langenhalter whispers in the Rev’s ear and he grants Rik his recess.
Marc is hot on Rik’s heels.
“This is bullshit,” he says. “You and I have never played this way with one another.”
“I got a client, Marc,” Rik says wearily and walks away. No matter how Rik would deal with the recordings routinely, he’s already explained his problem to me: the more time he gives Marc to think, the more likely Hess will ask to see any footage of the Chief and Cornish. Since catching Marc off guard is essential, Rik is willing to look like the typical courtroom snake.
Once Dorcas—a law student who works around Rik’s office at times—and I have wheeled all the video equipment into the courtroom, Rik begins. There’s a 40-inch monitor set up between DeGrassi on the stand and the three commissioners. The spectators are straining forward along the benches to improve their lines of sight. Tonight, like the second night of Cornish’s testimony, there’s no sign of Vojczek in the audience. Getting picked out of the crowd the first time was clearly enough to keep him home.
“Now, you told us, Mr. DeGrassi, that your encounters with the Chief took place in February 2019, right after you had decided to apply for promotion. May I show you just a few excerpts from the recordings, beginning, say, in January 2019, that might refresh your recollection?”
I work the computer, whose images pop up on the monitor. The first clip I found of the Chief and DeGrassi entering her house is actually from late December, but it took place during work hours, so Rik has formed his question carefully.
As each recording plays, Rik asks, “And do you recognize yourself, Mr. DeGrassi? Is that a fair and accurate image of how you and the Chief looked in January and February of 2019?”
Primo can’t quarrel about the dates, because they were automatically stamped onto the recordings. After about six snippets, the Reverend interrupts and says, “We get it, Mr. Dudek.”
“Now, what was happening, Mr. DeGrassi, was that you and the Chief had started dating, isn’t that correct?”
“Dating?”
“Yes, making arrangements to see one another. You had dinner out, you went to the movies. And you visited the Chief’s house. Right?”
Primo doesn’t answer. He is unhappily considering his options.
“And the reason the Chief agreed to go out with you is that you told her that you and Mrs. DeGrassi were going to get divorced. True?”
“You know,” says Primo. “Marriages. It was a rough patch.”
“You told the Chief that you were getting divorced and that you expected to move out as soon as your youngest daughter graduated high school in June. True?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what happened, Mr. DeGrassi, is that once you were dating the Chief, you decided on your own to apply for promotion. Correct?”
“No, she thought I should do it.”
“Is that so? Isn’t it the fact that she didn’t even know you were applying until after you had taken the promotional exam?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so,” Rik says. “Well, Mr. DeGrassi, you told us that you had a bad history on exams, didn’t you? Wasn’t your 84 much better than you’d historically done on other tests?”
“I guess.”
“Didn’t the Chief ask you outright whether someone took the test for you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
As it happens, that whole scene where the Chief found out about Primo applying and where she questioned him about his score—that all went down on the Chief’s doorstep. Rik nods and I cue up the clip, in which the Chief says, ‘How the fuck could you do this without talking to me?’
“Does that refresh your recollection that the Chief hadn’t known you were going to apply for promotion?”
“I don’t know what she knew. Maybe I told her and she forgot.”
“Shall we replay that clip, Mr. DeGrassi, so you can point out where you reminded the Chief that you had previously told her you were going to apply?”
The Rev, who always hears the clock ticking, interrupts and says, “We saw the video, Mr. Dudek. It speaks for itself.”
“Agreed, Reverend,” says Rik. “And in the interest of time, I’ll also ask the commission to take notice of the fact that the 84 Mr. DeGrassi received is exactly the same score Mr. Cornish received a year later.”
Marc objects, but nobody up there bothers ruling until Mrs. Langenhalter, who doesn’t ordinarily seem to like to speak in public, says, “The score is already in the record, too.”
“Mr. Cornish is your close friend, isn’t he, Mr. DeGrassi?”
“Walt? Yeah. We’re buddies.”
“You’d worked together for years?”
“Right.”
“And you still work together for Vojczek, don’t you?”
Marc, who’s been trying to keep an unruffled demeanor and focus solely on taking notes, now objects that the commission has already ruled that questions about Vojczek are irrelevant.
“I didn’t say ‘irrelevant,’” says the Reverend, who seems to be recognizing that there might be something after all in the Vojczek connection. “But I think for now we can move on.”
Rik bows just a little to accept the ruling, before facing Primo again.
“Now, aside from you applying for promotion, did something else happen in February of 2019 that also served to interrupt your relationship with the Chief?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, didn’t the Chief bump into Mrs. DeGrassi in the grocery store? Do you remember hearing about that?”
“Hearsay,” says Marc.
Marc is right, but after Mrs. Langenhalter whispers to the Rev, he says, “I assume the Chief will testify about this later?”
“If that’s necessary, of course,” says Rik.
“We’ll hear it now then,” says the Rev and motions Rik to continue, figuring we’re saving time overall, rather than forcing the defense to recall Primo later for this scrap of testimony.
“And Mrs. DeGrassi and the Chief had words in the grocery, didn’t they? And didn’t the Chief tell you later that Mrs. DeGrassi had said she had no intention of divorcing you and warned Chief Gomez to stay the hell away from you? Did you in fact hear that from both women?”
In the last few days, I’ve made several visits to the City Market to see if any of the current employees recall what I discovered was a pretty infamous incident. None of them wanted to talk about customers, but one suggested that I speak to a former stock clerk, Angela Marcos, who is now a full-time student at State. Angela was willing to get on the phone, largely because it was such a wild story, a couple middle-aged ladies playing bumper cars in the grocery aisle. Angela had been filling the shelves near where the two women ran into each other—literally, because Mrs. DeGrassi had rammed her steel shopping cart into the Chief’s. The Chief responded by doing pretty much the same thing, followed by a lot of yelling as the two women faced off with less than a foot between them.
“And so after you’d decided to apply for promotion, and after the Chief and your wife had words at City Market—isn’t that when the following occurred?”
The next recording is from the Chief’s doorbell camera. Primo is hammering with the brass knocker and screaming.
‘Lucy,’ he is yelling, ‘Lucy! It ain’t like that. Come on, let me in. I can explain this whole thing. It’s not how you think.’
“Did she let you in, Mr. DeGrassi?”
“No,” he says after again weighing how to answer.
“In fact, she refused to see you any longer, didn’t she?”
“I guess.”
“Would you say she was very angry with you?”
“I guess.”
“And even though she was angry with you, and felt lied to and cheated by you, she did not stand in the way of your promotion, did she?”
“With strings attached.”
“Right, she made an agreement with you, that if you would give her your signed paperwork for resignation, postdated for a year ahead, that she wouldn’t block you from becoming a sergeant. You’d get the bump to your pension and leave the force after twelve months, when you finished your twenty-fifth year in service, right? And that’s when you’d told her you expected to leave anyway? That was the deal, even though she remained personally furious with you?”
DeGrassi looks at me at the computer, trying to figure out what else might be recorded. There is no more, but Primo doesn’t know enough to chance it.
“You could say that’s what’s happened,” he says.
Rik looks at Marc and says, “Redirect?”
Marc passes on that. The session is adjourned until next week.
Rik goes over to make up with Marc, who’s still beside himself with rage, trying to gather his papers on the desk and not getting very far with it.
“Why would you waste an evening of all our lives that we’re never going to get back, just so you can look like Perry Mason?”
Rik does a little bowing and scraping. His obligation is to discredit the City’s case in the most convincing way, he says, but maybe he was stroking his own ego.
“I’d have withdrawn his damn testimony if I’d seen that,” Marc says. “You know me too well.”
“Well, are you going to dismiss your case?”
Marc shakes his head. He doesn’t know.
“I still have Blanco,” he says.
“Strange you mention him, because I have a little preview,” says Rik. “Blanco says Lucy took him home and did all kinds of nasty things to him. And there’s not a single frame from any of the cameras where Blanco appears. He was never at that house any time close to when he says. So unless he dematerialized before going inside, his testimony is bullshit, too.”
“I’ll talk to him,” says Marc and heads out, using his credentials to open the door in the back of the courtroom that leads into the City Hall Building.
The Chief, who’s kept a rock face this whole time, is smiling now.
“Is it over?” she asks.
“I never take an early victory lap,” says Rik. “There’s plenty of time once you’ve actually won.”
“Come on, Ricky,” she says. “I want to sleep through the night for the first time in three months. Tell me it looks good.”
“It looks good,” he says.
Once she’s gone, Rik looks at me. “Five bucks says Marc calls tomorrow to tell me he’s canning the case. Maybe he’ll wait a day because he’s so pissed.”