She shook it, I’m sure with a grip Veckstrom felt the next day.
“Ross, we need to move to processing immediately,” she said.
“I agree,” said Veckstrom. “Shouldn’t encourage violent behavior.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jackie asked.
“Your client is well known to engage in brawls. Like the one with Robbie Milhouser the night of April fifth in front of a restaurant on Main Street in Southampton.”
“You’re planning to characterize what your own police report describes as a man slipping on a curb, and then accidentally hitting his head on the front of a parked vehicle, as a brawl? Interesting.”
“Witnesses claim otherwise.”
“After the fact. No mention of it in the report. Revisionist history.”
“You want us to believe that a former professional boxer threw not one single punch in the midst of a street fight?”
“If you call that a street fight, better steer clear of the real thing,” I said.
“Oh, experienced in that, are we?” asked Veckstrom. Before I could answer back, Jackie kicked me in the shins, right out where everyone could see.
“What did I tell you?” she said.
“He addressed me,” said Veckstrom to Ross, obviously for the record.
“Don’t address him,” Jackie said to me. “Ross, we process right now or we start talking police misconduct.”
“Go ahead,” said Veckstrom. “It’s not going to change the fact that Acquillo had motive, malice and means. Confirmed by forensics and eyewitnesses.”
“The witnesses are the victim’s asshole buddies at a street fight that didn’t happen and one half-blind old lady,” said Jackie, warming to the taunt, “who thinks she saw somebody who looks like Sam running at
“Twenty-twenty with her glasses on. Which in fact doesn’t matter. Your client has already admitted to jogging past the murder scene.”
“But never at night,” said Jackie.
“His memory could be faulty.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my memory,” I told him. “For example, I remember hearing you’re an asshole.”
Veckstrom smiled at me, but not endearingly.
“We’ve stipulated that Sam runs on Bay Edge Drive,” said Jackie, reaching for my arm again, but missing. “But hadn’t been in the vicinity of the Milhouser project for at least a week.”
“At least a week?” asked Veckstrom. “Do you mean seven days or five, or twenty? Or do you mean a single day?”
Ross picked that moment to light up the cigarette I wasn’t allowed to have. Cheap psychological torture. So I spoke to him.
“Somebody tell this dickhead that a week is seven days. At least a week means seven days, plus a couple more. How many’s up for grabs. I’ll let you pick a number.”
This time Jackie got a good grip on the sleeve of my jacket and yanked me down the hall toward the room where you got photographed and fingerprinted and filled out forms. The administrative cops who handled this stuff were friendly and chatty, not unlike nurses who took your blood pressure or gave you a cup to piss in. We didn’t see Veckstrom after that, which I was glad for. Too hard a load on the Zen mantras of patience and forbearance.
——
As the coffee from the diner soaked in I started to hear what Jackie was saying from the Grand Prix’s front passenger seat, which to be fair was pretty far away.
Ross was in a patrol car escorting us to the arraignment at the Town courts in Southampton Village. I’d offered to bring out some of the same coffee for them as well, but they demurred. A wise choice.
“My experience in criminal defense amounts to about a half dozen cases, only one of which had any substance,” said Jackie, referring to her defense of Roy Battiston, “but even I know sometimes police officers, especially hard-ons like Lionel Veckstrom, use overt antagonism as an investigative technique to provoke idiot suspects into incriminating themselves. Easy to do with a hothead whose lack of self-control likely got him in the situation in the first place. Wouldn’t work with everybody. Not your well-educated corporate executive types. Cool as a cucumber, those guys.”
“It’s hard to be cool with a tie on. Squeezes all the blood out of my brain.”
“Then loosen that top button. Because if you pull that shit in front of the judge I swear to God I’ll plead you guilty and leave you there and go work for clients who actually deserve to be saved.”
“I’ll be cool. As well as nattily turned out.”
“No. You’ll be silent. Neutral. No looks, no noises, not one tiny little peep.”
“Okay, but my stomach’s been growling all morning. This shitty coffee doesn’t help.”
I burped to prove my point.
“Unbelievable.”
——
The arraignment was an interesting theatrical performance. Jackie’s role was righteous defender of civil liberties. Deferential, while exuding confidence that the issue at hand would be easily and promptly resolved as soon as the wise and distinguished judge had a chance to merely glance at the ludicrous proposition the prosecutor was peddling as a pathetic excuse for a case. The Assistant District Attorney equaled Jackie’s confidence, but was more sparing in her commentary, as if patiently indulging Jackie’s childish flights of fancy.
Any of the third-graders sitting in the back of the courtroom, victims of a civics lesson gone terribly wrong, could see the judge was playing along with various fictions created by people for whom he had little or no professional regard.
The ADA was a tall young woman with translucent skin like Jackie’s, though with none of the ruddy blush or seditious fields of freckles. In fact, her flesh tone was so uniform it looked applied with a spray gun. Her blonde hair was thin, longer than it would be ten years from now and securely restrained behind a hedge of hairpins that pulled the edge of her scalp tight against her skull. Her legs, on the other hand, were very nice, and she filled her light blue suit the way fashion magazines wanted every woman to think she could.
The only time she looked over at me I winked at her. She instantly flicked her eyes back to the judge.
My timing probably wasn’t all that good because that’s when she entered a charge of second-degree murder.
“Your honor,” she said, “Mr. Acquillo clearly went to Mr. Milhouser’s work site with the intention of causing him bodily harm. Transporting to the scene a construction tool that could be easily adapted to lethal purpose.”
Jackie jumped in there with a flurry of counterarguments. The judge listened as if he was trying to read
“The People are willing to concede to Ms. Swaitkowski’s assertions if she can prove that a hammer stapler is common accoutrement among joggers plying the sand roads of North Sea,” she said, the word “accoutrement” spoken in what I fancied to be perfect Parisian French.
After that the judge cut Jackie off mid-sentence and ruled that they could hold me over for trial. Then the discussion shifted to the prosecution claiming I was poised to zip off to Brazil immediately following the proceedings, countered by Jackie’s rather poignant description of my voluntary surrender, my reduced financial circumstances, my devotion to my daughter in the City—which I wished Allison was in the audience to hear—and other proofs of my general compliance, incompetence and ineptitude, which rendered flight from prosecution not only unlikely, but sadly impossible.
The kicker to Jackie’s argument was that Burton Lewis, a towering figure in the legal profession of New York State, was standing by with his checkbook and personal assurance that I’d show up for all scheduled appointments with the court.
I must have been the ADA’s only case that day, because she quickly packed up her stuff and left the courtroom as soon as the judge passed down the weary opinion that he was happy to hold Burton’s million bucks in lieu of providing room and board to another worthless miscreant.
