Depraved Indifference

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“Tell me,” said Jaywalker, “before they took you into the grand jury, did they make you sign any papers?”

“Papers. What kinda papers?”

“Something called a Waiver of Immunity.”

“Nah,” said Riley, “I didn’t sign no papers. I’da remembered if I did.”

They talked for a little while longer. Drake and the other people at his table had not only been doing shots of tequila, they’d been downing a “designer brand” that went for fifteen bucks a shot. Riley reached behind him at that point and produced a bottle. Jaywalker paid little attention to the name, other than spotting the word oro, which he was pretty sure meant “gold” in Spanish. Instead he looked for, and found, the alcohol content. According the label, the stuff was 120 proof.

As for the bar bill, the detectives had taken that, then had Riley decipher it during his grand jury appearance. There’d been no way for him to tell from it exactly how many of the shots had found their way into the man whose photo Riley recognized, but Riley had estimated the number at eight to ten.

Walking through the End Zone’s parking lot, Jaywalker replayed the conversation in his mind. According to Riley, not only had Carter Drake had more to drink than he’d admitted to in his written statement, but the shots had been stronger. Ordinary tequila ranged from 86 proof to 100, with proof being the alcohol content doubled. Drinking 120-proof tequila changed the formula a bit, and pushed Drake’s blood alcohol content even higher, up around the .20 percent range.

The other noteworthy piece of information to come out of the discussion was that the D.A. hadn’t asked Riley to waive his own immunity from prosecution before putting him into the grand jury. A bartender who continues to serve an intoxicated customer commits a crime, and if that customer drives off and kills somebody—as Drake had done—that crime becomes a very serious one. But by having Riley testify without a waiver, Abe Firestone was giving him a pass: he was now immune from prosecution for whatever law or laws he may have broken. Evidently Firestone had made a decision as to his priorities. He didn’t want some bartender minimizing how much he’d served a customer in order to protect his own ass.

Firestone had apparently wanted truthful answers out of Riley, even if they came at the expense of never being able to charge him for his contribution to the nine deaths the tequila had led to. It was a reasonable trade-off, Jaywalker knew. After all, Riley might have been guilty of serving his customers too much and too long, but he hadn’t killed anyone. So, forced to choose, Firestone had decided he didn’t want Riley.

He wanted Drake.

Jaywalker found his Mercury, unlocked it and got in. He would have liked to revisit the scene of the crash—he figured it couldn’t be more than fifteen or twenty minutes away—but knew it would be too dark to make the detour worth it. He started the engine, put the car in Reverse, and had just backed out of the spot he’d been in, when the driver of another vehicle, off to his right, evidently decided he was taking too much time doing it. The headlights of the vehicle headed straight toward him, or at least straight toward the side of his car, and for an instant Jaywalker braced for a collision. Then, at the last possible moment, the other driver veered off sharply and, without ever braking, pulled out of the parking lot, noisily spraying gravel behind him.

“Goddamn drunken idiot!” Jaywalker yelled, by that time to no one but himself. He waited a moment for the adrenaline rush to subside, then pulled the Merc carefully out onto the highway.

It was a full two miles and five minutes later that the true significance of the event dawned on him. Back in the parking lot, Jaywalker had briefly thought about calling 9-1-1 and reporting the other driver before the jerk killed somebody. Then he’d realized that not only had he failed to get the guy’s license-plate number, he couldn’t even say what make or model the car had been—if indeed it had been a car, rather than a pickup truck or an SUV—or what color it was.

All he’d seen had been headlights.

Yet in his written statement, Carter Drake had recounted how he’d looked up from trying to swat a wasp, only to see an oncoming vehicle about to hit him head-on. Yet he’d been able to tell not only that it had been a van, but that it had been white.

That, Jaywalker now knew for a fact, would have been totally impossible. In the dark, all Drake would have seen would have been a pair of headlights, coming straight at him and just about blinding him.

He’d made up the rest.

But why?

Chapter Eight

Out for Blood

The following day was a court day, Carter Drake’s arraignment on murder charges in New City. That the charges would include murder—as well as a laundry list of lesser crimes—should have been a secret, known only to the grand jurors who’d voted to indict him and the prosecutor’s office that had presented the evidence to them. But nine people had died, and this was a big case. And the bigger the case, and the more media and public interest it generated, the more leaks it tended to spring.

Not that Abe Firestone, the Rockland County district attorney, had held a press conference or called the editor of the New York Times or anything like that. What he’d done instead was to give Judah Mermelstein a “courtesy call,” designed to prepare him and his client for the worst. Or so the D.A. had phrased it. More likely, Firestone had had an ulterior motive in mind. While he was prohibited by law and ethics from divulging the specific charges contained in the indictment, no such prohibition extended to the defense. To Jaywalker’s cynical way of thinking, Firestone was counting on Mermelstein to go public, thereby doing Firestone’s work for him.

It wasn’t a matter of the two adversaries working together, though. Firestone, Jaywalker guessed, wanted the added publicity a murder indictment would generate. He was an old-school politician, a law-and-order former sheriff up for reelection in November. The community had been outraged by the incident, and the sentiment on many lips was that, short of a slow and painful death, no sentence handed out to Carter Drake could possibly be enough. There’d been an early rumor, stoked by a column in the Rockland County Register and fanned by local radio talk-show hosts, that because Drake had turned himself in so long after the accident, after he’d likely sobered up, he might not be able to be charged with anything more serious than leaving the scene of an accident. Abe Firestone was eager to put that rumor to rest.

Judah Mermelstein, on the other hand, was interested in defusing the drama from the situation. Short of coming right out and announcing that Firestone had told him there’d be a murder charge, Mermelstein could say pretty much whatever he wanted to. And he did. Constantly hounded by reporters intent on keeping the story on the front page and the evening news, he took advantage of every opportunity to tell them that he fully expected his client to be indicted for murder. “Yes, murder,” he’d add solemnly. “Nine counts of it.” Then he’d paused a moment for dramatic effect.

“Now, is this really a murder case?” he’d ask them rhetorically. “Of course not. But given the very understandable anger of the good people of Rockland County, there’s been a tremendous amount of pressure brought to bear on the authorities. The D.A. happens to be a friend of mine, and a good man. But he’s also a politician. I can absolutely guarantee you he’s going to overreact and make a point of showing everyone how tough he is. If I were in his shoes, I might even do the same thing. I’d be dead wrong to do it, of course. But that’s our system for you.”

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, so too does criminal law, at least occasionally.

Amanda had phoned Jaywalker the night before and asked him if he was going to be present in court for the arraignment. “I’m not too confident in Mr. Mermelstein,” she’d confided. “And since eventually you’re going to take—”

“I’ll be there,” Jaywalker had told her. “But I’ll be in the audience, just like you.” Being suspended meant he wasn’t permitted to pass the bar. The bar in this case was a literal one, a solid railing, waist high and usually fashioned out of dark wood. It had a break in the middle, where either a swinging gate or a chain, often wrapped with ceremonial red velvet, divided the spectator section from the well, the front area where the judge and other court officials sat, facing the lawyers and the defendant.

“Do you need a ride?” Amanda had asked.

“That’d be nice,” Jaywalker had said. No need to overtax the Mercury, which was in a legal parking spot for the next two days, nothing to sneeze at.

“Do you need me to bring my son along?” Amanda asked. “Or can I leave him home?”

“Your son,” echoed Jaywalker. That would be the kid described by Riley the bartender, the one who’d showed up at the End Zone after Drake had called home. “How old is he?”

“Eric is seventeen,” she’d said, “going on twelve.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he’s in his rebellious stage. One day it’s blue hair, the next it might be a nose ring. He likes to keep us guessing.”

“Why don’t we leave him home this trip,” Jaywalker had suggested. “Or in school.”

“Fat chance of that.”

After he’d hung up, Jaywalker hadn’t quite been able to decide if he’d excluded the son because he was afraid his appearance might work against Carter Drake, or because he wanted Amanda Drake for himself.

Even before they reached the courthouse, it became clear to Jaywalker that they were heading into a circus of sorts. There were a dozen television vans, their telescoping antennae reaching skyward. Hundreds of people surrounded the building, spilling out into the streets and across the way. Many chanted and carried signs. A representative sampling of the ones Jaywalker could read from inside Amanda’s Lexus included “MURDERER!” “DEATH PENALTY FOR DRAKE,” “HOLOCAUST II,” “KILL THE KILLER,” and “IT WAS NO ACCIDENT, IT WAS A POGROM!” Cops were everywhere, many of them sporting riot helmets and plastic shields. Blue wooden barricades cordoned off the crowd and kept the courthouse steps clear. Jaywalker was able to count more than two dozen still cameras and almost as many video recorders, most bearing the logos or numbers of national networks or their local affiliates, or the cable news channels. Off to one side, MADD had set up a booth where volunteers were busily handing out flyers decrying the menace of drunk drivers. And some guy with a pushcart had set up shop, and was selling coffee and doughnuts. Jaywalker half expected to spot a lion tamer next, or a dozen clowns climbing out of a Volkswagen.

So much for Judah Mermelstein’s efforts to defuse the drama from the situation.

Once inside the building, Jaywalker stood in a long line with Amanda, waiting to go through the metal detectors and the briefcase searches that had become standard since September 11, 2001. Afraid to take a chance with his homemade ID card at the Court Personnel, Police Officers and Attorneys Only line, Jaywalker opted for the All Others line, which was about ten times longer. But he didn’t resent the delay. Although he was pretty confident that few Mideastern terrorists were listing the Rockland County courthouse as their next big target, he was less certain about the “Death-Penalty-for-Drake” crowd. Not to mention the Mothers Against Drunk Driving.