I WATCHED the late news that night on the living-room TV, for two major reasons. The first was that I hoped Channel 8 had either ignored Teddy’s police dust-up or prejudiced his case. Given a choice, I would take disregard, but since I might not have my wishes granted in that as in many other things, I wished to monitor what they might have done instead. The other reason was that Mack had stomped upstairs right after the incinerated swordfish had made a seven-dollar snack for the garbage disposal, and I did not feature lying next to her in bed, watching the news next to her wrath on the small bedroom TV. My plan was to sit downstairs and tap the Smirnoff bottle until I heard the upstairs set shut up, which would mean she had also. Our house may not be as small as Mack believed it had become, but it is superb as an acoustical design.
If Teddy had been covered, it would have been a fluke. His case had arisen out of circumstances which by rights ought not have gotten him involved. The police in Framingham had conducted an investigation of a stolen-car ring, apparently in operation for a fairly long time out there. Its membership, quite loosely knit, supplied the Midnight Auto Parts concern so popular with people who dislike paying list price for their automobile repairs. What they did was steal cars, which they then dismantled, selling seats and wheels and front ends, transmissions and engines, from the cut-up cars. What they did, in short, had no connection whatsoever to what Teddy Franklin does, which is steal Cadillacs and only Cadillacs for resale with new numbers and fresh paint of different color somewhere else in the Northeast.
That distinction had eluded Sergeant Earl Glennon. He was young and eager and he disliked Teddy Franklin. This was not because he had met Teddy Franklin. It was because he had heard a lot about him, how he’s never gotten nailed, and this angered Sergeant Glennon to the point of losing judgment. He decided that if cars were being stolen, and the commerce was ambitious, Teddy Franklin must be involved and should not be left out when the suspects were corralled. The fact that Teddy had not spoken on the wiretaps, or been named by the informers, or been seen at any time engaged in helping those thieves, did not concern Sergeant Glennon.
Glennon therefore in the early afternoon, even though he was off duty, drove to Teddy’s house in Sharon. For that purpose he used, as he had a right to do, his pale green unmarked cruiser. Attired in civilian clothes, tweed sport coat and tan raincoat, he parked that four-door sedan right in front of Teddy’s home. He took his portable red flashing light out of the glove compartment and put it on the dashboard, in plain view beneath the mirror. He kept his engine running, so exhaust vapors could be seen, and thus maintained the battery charge while using his radio.
Teddy lives in a nice neighborhood. The low-slung, large ranch houses are set on acre lots. The normal traffic in that area, on weekday afternoons, is limited to school buses, Ford Country Squires, Volvo station wagons, and the odd Riviera. Those cars do not come to a halt out in front of houses; they proceed on into the driveways as the automatic garage doors crank open before them. Consequently, Sergeant Glennon and his pale green unmarked cruiser were conspicuous parked outside of Teddy’s house. This was as he had intended, in his eagerness.
Teddy, as his luck would have it, wasn’t working that day. He had spent the entire morning in his large kitchen. One of his many interests, shared with his lovely wife, is what he considers to be gourmet cookery. They have an enormous kitchen, well equipped with gadgetry. Teddy told me he’d been making stock from marrow bones, working from that toward a fine sauce bordelaise. “At the same time,” Teddy told me, “I was making pastries, a nice meringue vacherin to go with raspberries I bought.”
It is still not clear to me just how Teddy learned of Sergeant Glennon’s car outside. Somehow the telephone played a small part in this. Either an observant neighbor called to inform Teddy, or else Teddy, making his own call about some other matter, passed before the picture window in his living room and spotted it himself. Either way, he was not puzzled as to what was in that car, or what kind of car it was. Who the cop was, where he came from, what had brought him there: these were details that he lacked, and did not feel he needed. “ ‘What is this shit?’ I say, when I see the fucker,” Teddy told me when I met him at the jail. “How come I have got a cop parked there outside my house? Here I am in my own house, minding my own business. Got my raspberries and bones, got my recipes. Made a nice lunch for myself, some veal alla marsala. Glass of red wine, ordinary, nice piece of French bread. This is against the law? Why is my place staked out when there’s nothing going on?
“It pissed me off, Counselor,” Teddy said as he emerged from his cell at the Sharon police station. “Fucking damned Gestapo asshole, staking out my fucking house right in broad fucking daylight. He’s got no right to do that. Make me look like I am Wanted, on the run or something, front of all my neighbors.”
Teddy had a point there, which I could have argued. That is what I told him as I led him out of jail. “Trouble is,” I said, “you didn’t let me do it, haul the guy before some judge and argue harassment. Instead you go out the door, big hair across your ass, and the instant that you grabbed that guy, you lost my argument. He was not on your property. That street’s a public way. Anyone can use it and it’s not posted No Parking. What you did’s not arguable, from any point of view. You accosted someone and he says you battered him. That’s against the law, Teddy, and there is no doubt about it.”
The clerk-magistrate in Stoughton was Don DiGuglielmo. He was pushing seventy and had heard most excuses. The Sharon cops found him at home, having an early dinner. When they gave me the telephone, I said I’d bring Teddy there, saving Don a trip back down to the District Court. “No, you won’t, Jerry,” he said, “not on your life, you won’t. Back when I was young, I did that, held bail hearings in my house. Did it about five times, I think, before I got a lulu. Your guy doesn’t like what I say, he may bust things up. Better it’s the county’s stuff that gets all bashed, than mine.” In the basement of the courthouse, one Sharon cop there for the rules of custody, Teddy pleaded Not Guilty and was released on personal recognizance, trial to be held three weeks later, if he wanted one. “And,” Don said to Teddy, closing up his books, “try not to punch anyone, between now and then, like this complaint says you did.” Then he looked at it more closely. “Framingham?” he said. “What is this guy Glennon doing down here, anyway, in from Framingham?” That set Teddy steaming again, and I had to lead him out.
Channel 8 did cover it, and got it wrong of course. They had shaky tapes they’d made with their damned minicams. “Channel Eight’s Jim Voorhies was right on the scene for this, as you’ll notice watching films he made at the time of the arrests.” The announcer was quite smug about this, since he hadn’t gotten jostled. “Some of those arrested, it seems, didn’t want their picture taken by our On the Spot News Team.” Teddy’s face was not among them, but his name was mentioned. “In what Framingham police said was a related case, Edmund Franklin, thirty-eight, was arrested at his comfortable home in Sharon Heights. Franklin was released on bail in Stoughton District Court, charged with attacking Sergeant Earl Glennon of Framingham in connection with the raids.” That gave me another reason to watch television late: just as soon as Teddy finished eating the rug, if he had watched the news himself, he would be on the phone to me. If by some chance he had missed his moment of fame on Channel 8, some devoted pal would be on the phone to him, which would mean that Teddy’s call to me would be a little later.
Waiting for Teddy’s call with another serving of vodka, I was therefore able to hear Channel 8’s disclosure that the governor had nominated Ann Tobin Belvedere, Esquire, of New Bedford, to the seat on the Appeals Court being vacated by the retirement of Associate Justice Kenneth Duhamel. There was a snippet of tape showing the governor and Attorney Belvedere beaming at each other, while the announcer’s voice recited the blessings bestowed on the appointment by the Massachusetts Women Lawyers Association and the Judicial Nominating Committee. Mrs. Belvedere’s credentials were said to include twelve years of sterling work as a defender of the rights of minor children in the probate courts, and two stints as a lecturer at the BU Law School. I had never heard of her, of course, inasmuch as I would sooner shave my balls with a serrated steak knife than accept a divorce case, and she apparently had had no appetite for the kind of work I do. Nevertheless, I applauded the governor’s selection because her name wasn’t Luther Dawes, and that meant Luther too was having a bad day.
For that vindictiveness I was immediately punished. Sitting there half in the wrapper, on the outs with my good wife, my stuffed effigy in the hands of my devoted daughter being tortured with hatpins out in Utah, waiting for a dispatch from my best client, who would be screaming his hysteria, I was treated to a thoughtful background piece by Channel 8’s so-called Legal Specialist, Jack Rowley. Rowley has lost most of the red hair from his dome and the goatee which he grew to make up for it came in white. He looks like an earnest billygoat, but not as intelligent. Those of us who practice law have learned to dread his appearances. He gets things wrong; he misstates law; he buggers up the facts. A favorite device of his is to suggest that some decision of the State Supreme Judicial Court or the Supreme Court of the United States has thrown all precedent into confusion. This is taken by our clients as a new version of the Gospels, and we spend the next weeks trying to restore them to the real world.
Rowley confided to his viewers that the appointment of Belvedere was something of a shock. He said while she was qualified, and backed by women’s groups, she had not been the front-runner for the seat on the Appeals Court. “Informed speculation,” he said, meaning of course: his, “was that the governor until last week leaned to another choice: Judge Luther Dawes, of the Superior Court.” Behind Rowley’s right shoulder, the face of Dawes appeared. “Dawes, of course, is better known to the public at least.” Rowley was on firm ground there, Channel 8 having given Dawes more air time than its traffic copter. “He’s experienced in trial law, after many years of practice, and he’s spent the last six of them presiding in the chief trial court of this Commonwealth. As one seasoned observer put it, when it was learned he was a candidate for the Duhamel seat: ‘Dawes is strongly qualified, unimpeachably credentialed. It would be a big surprise if Judge Dawes didn’t get it.’ ” My guess was that Luther Dawes was that seasoned observer and the big surprise was his.
“Surprise or not,” Rowley said, “Dawes was not selected. Analysts of the system admit that they are puzzled. As one told me today: ‘This is hard to figure. Nothing against Belvedere—she is a fine attorney. But even with the help this will give the governor among women’s groups, it’s hard to see how he could bypass Dawes for this unknown.’
“Late this afternoon,” Rowley pontificated, “some hint of the reason surfaced with reports of opposition to the Dawes appointment. Eighteen members of the organized trial bar are said to have joined in a petition which declared Dawes unfit for the Appeals Court vacancy. Thus far, at least, the governor’s press secretary has refused to comment on this report, but he will not deny it.
“We’ll be watching for developments in this continuing controversy,” Rowley said, having just created it. “And we’ll bring them to you as they happen.”
I realized, as Rowley’s face dissolved into a commercial for Subaru cars, that I had been holding my breath while the nincompoop was talking. Therefore I heard Mack’s feet hit the floor upstairs as she got out of bed to turn off the bedroom television set. Then I heard her walking out into the hall upstairs, stopping at the landing. “Jerry,” she called, “you awake?”
I perceived no point in lying. “Yeah,” I said, “I’m still awake. More or less, I guess.”
“Were you watching Channel Eight?” she inquired innocently.
“Yes, I was,” I said.
“Did you hear what Rowley said, or are you too drunk for that?”
“I heard every goddamned word,” I said with bitterness.
“Eighteen lawyers, Jerry?” she said. “Eighteen lawyers was it, who went way out on the limb and stuck the knife in Luther Dawes?”
“That was what he said,” I said, “eighteen members of the organized trial bar.”
“Do you think, Jerry,” she said, “that you were one of those? That that was the same petition that you signed for Frank Macdonald?”
“That is my suspicion, Mack,” I said, clearing my throat.
“Well,” she said sarcastically, “don’t you think that is funny? That there were eighteen of you, when you thought there were eighty?”
“Actually, no, I don’t,” I said, taking my lumps. “I think that it’s kind of awkward, since you mention it.”
“Do you think that you misunderstood him, Jerry?” she said silkily.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “I think he said ‘eighty.’ ”
“Still, if you were drunk or something,” she mused on the stairs. “ ‘Eighty’ does sound something like ‘eighteen’ does, I suppose.”
“I was not drunk, Mack,” I said, praying for Teddy’s call. “I had no wax in my ears, and I was not distracted. Frank Macdonald’s kid said ‘eighty,’ eighty goddamned lawyers. Maybe he said that’s how many they were calling, and I thought he said: ‘had signed.’ That I concede could have happened, but not that he said ‘eighteen.’ ”
“Luther Dawes is going to fight this,” she said with satisfaction.
“No,” I said, “you’re wrong there. You’re a day behind the times. Luther Dawes is fighting this. He’s already started.”
“Luther Dawes is going to hurt you, that is what I think,” she said.
“You are partly right there,” I said. “I’m not arguing. Luther Dawes will try to hurt me. He will do his very best. Me and everybody else whose name is on that list.”
“Well,” she said, “all but one. All but Frank Macdonald. Frank Macdonald’s down in Georgia, isn’t he, my dear? Judge Dawes can’t do much to him. But since he can’t get the instigator, he will have more time for you. Wouldn’t you say that was right, Jeremiah dear?”
“Yes, I would,” I said, “my dear. I think that is clearly right. I think that Judge Luther Dawes is hot after my tail. And furthermore, I want to say, it’s nice to know you’re with me in this hour of travail. Really makes me feel much better, knowing I have you.”
That got me a long silence from the second floor. Teddy’s phone call cut it off, at 11:40. “Counselor,” he screamed at me, “did you see Channel Eight?”
“Yes, I did, you asshole,” I replied to him. “When the hell do you think that you might decide to grow up, and stop getting yourself into shitty scrapes like this, you jerk?”