“I understand Mrs. Drake has hired you as a private investigator in her husband’s case,” said Mermelstein, once the two of them had taken seats facing each other across his desk. That experience itself had been momentarily unsettling for Jaywalker, who’d spent twenty-some years sitting in the lawyer’s chair, not the client’s.
“Yes, she has,” said Jaywalker. “But I think you also ought to know that it’s her hope that if the case has to be tried, I should be the one to try it. If the court doesn’t force it to trial before my, uh, suspension is up, that is.”
“Thank you for being up front about that,” said Mermelstein.
Jaywalker shrugged, his way of saying, Hey, it was the right thing to do.
“Actually,” said Mermelstein, “Mrs. Drake told me herself. And I have no problem with it. Not that I couldn’t use the publicity. But the truth is, I’ve never tried a murder case. Or even a felony, for that matter. So not only will I bow out gracefully when the time comes, but in the meantime I’ll appreciate all the help you can give me, until you’re—”
“Kosher?”
“I couldn’t have said it better.”
“Don’t plan on bowing out,” said Jaywalker. “I’m an outsider here, in more ways than one. You’re local, and you seem to have your head on straight. I’m pretty sure Amanda can be convinced of the virtues of a co-counsel arrangement.”
Mermelstein didn’t respond one way or the other, and they talked about the case for the next forty minutes. Jaywalker learned that the Drakes had found Mermelstein through an ad in the local Yellow Pages that touted him as an expert in criminal law, divorce, real estate, immigration matters, slip-and-fall cases, product liability, medical malpractice and dog-bite injuries. He’d tried and failed to get Carter’s bail reduced from the five million set at arraignment. The Rockland County D.A., a tough-on-crime Republican named Abraham Firestone, intended to make an example of Drake, hoping that sending him away for life would deter others from killing vanloads of children. And according to Mermelstein, Firestone intended to try the case himself, if there had to be a trial, rather than assigning it to one of his assistants, as was the customary practice.
“I notice Drake’s charged with drunk driving,” said Jaywalker, “in addition to murder.” He didn’t mention the leaving-the-scene charge, or the unlicensed operator, or the uninsured vehicle. Those charges ranged from the mundane to the serious. Leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, for example, was itself a separate felony. But all of those acts or omissions were either after the fact or merely incidental to the murder charge. Drunk driving, on the other hand, especially when combined with indications of recklessness, could be used to show a depraved indifference to human life, a necessary statutory element of proving murder in a vehicular homicide case in New York State.
“That’s right,” said Mermelstein.
“But Drake didn’t surrender until sometime the following day, did he?”
“Right again,” said Mermelstein. “And his big-shot business lawyer issued a press release announcing to the world that his client hadn’t had anything to drink before the accident.”
“So help me out here,” said Jaywalker. Early on in his career, he’d had occasion to wonder why anyone would leave the scene of an accident, when doing so was a crime and sticking around to face the music wasn’t. The answer, he soon learned, was pretty simple. The ones who fled did so because they were drunk, unlicensed or uninsured, or because they’d just robbed the bank around the corner and had the money on the front passenger seat and a loaded gun on the floor. Getting away, even for a limited period of time, gave them an opportunity to hide the evidence. And part of that evidence was the alcohol in their blood. Ted Kennedy may or may not have been testing his swimming ability that night long ago at Chappaquiddick, but by the time he turned himself in the following day it was too late for the police to draw a meaningful, or admissible, blood sample from him. And even if it hadn’t been, he could have claimed that the incident had so upset him that he’d poured himself a couple of stiff drinks as soon as he got home. Exactly as the captain of the Exxon Valdez had maintained after his little mishap up in Prudhoe Bay.
“It seems Abe Firestone has done his homework,” said Mermelstein. “He had the troopers trace Drake’s movements over the twelve hours preceding the crash. Apparently they can put him in a sports club over in Nyack. And the sport he and his buddies were engaged in seems to have consisted of seeing who could throw back the most shots of tequila before falling on the floor.”
“Wonderful,” said Jaywalker.
They talked for another twenty minutes, following which Mermelstein made Jaywalker copies of whatever documents he had in his file. There wasn’t much: the felony complaint, Drake’s rap sheet, a summary of an accident report prepared by the state police and a couple of other pieces of paper.
“Firestone hasn’t exactly flooded you with discovery,” Jaywalker observed.
“Abe?” said Mermelstein. “He’s so tight his ass squeaks when he walks.”
They exchanged goodbyes and promised to share anything either of them found out.
“And give my best to Amanda,” said Mermelstein.
“I will,” said Jaywalker, noticing that she was suddenly no longer Mrs. Drake, and wondering if she’d followed Judah Mermelstein around for two days and then slept with him, too, before hiring him.
Nah, he liked the Yellow Pages story better.
From Judah Mermelstein’s office, Jaywalker headed west and then north, toward the site of the accident that had claimed nine lives. He drove carefully, not because he was afraid of becoming a tenth victim, but because his Mercury was pretty much on life support. Owning a car in the city was something of a double-edged sword. You didn’t need one to get around, and with parking impossible and garages charging a fortune, you were better off without one. Until you had to get somewhere else.
So Jaywalker had compromised. He’d bought the cheapest car he could find, a ‘57 Mercury with no extras and, so far as he knew, the last remaining three-speed manual transmission in America. Then he’d found an open-air parking lot so far over on the West Side that you had to hike halfway to New Jersey just to get there. He’d bargained the manager down from the usual hundred and twenty-five a month to seventy-five dollars cash, no tax, explaining that since he almost never used the thing, they could bury it way in the back, where it would take about a week and a half to get it out. And because he started it up so rarely and drove it even less, it performed, well, about like a neglected ’57 Mercury with 185,000 miles under its belt. So when he did drive it, he tended to creep along. But even creeping, it took him less than twenty minutes to get from Judah Mer-melstein’s office to the spot marked with a black × on the accident-report summary.
It was nothing but a bend in the road, where the northbound lane had little room for a shoulder. About all that separated it from the drop-off was what remained of a low guardrail, its metal twisted grotesquely and torn away where the van had breached it. There were a handful of makeshift memorials marking the spot—flowers, candles, other stuff. Jaywalker found a place to pull over a hundred yards or so past it, and shut off the Merc’s engine. From there he walked back to the site.
There were eight memorials. One, he guessed, for each child that had died there. He’d seen others like them often enough before—arrays of crosses, flowers and jars containing candles—but only from the cocoon of a car, as he sped by on the highway. Though he’d known what they signified, they hadn’t really touched him. Now, up close, they were something very different. There were Bibles—Old Testaments, no doubt. There were hand-written notes from classmates. There were framed color photographs of smiling children who would never smile again. There was