The park was larger than a city block in size, ringed with a low brick wall. I ran through a gate and toward the center. The square was black with shadow, trees hanging low, blocking out whatever light the sky was dropping down. A few of the colonial-style street lamps let out a thin, lethargic light, the majority were dark. At the fountain in the center, its spout dead on this wet night, I spun around. From there I could see, on the west side of the park, twin rows of flagpoles, like a guard of honor, leading to a large wall of stone fronted by a statue.
I walked through a well of darkness between the flagpoles and came upon the tomb, lighted by two thin beams of white halogen. On a raised stone platform, behind a chain held aloft by bronze balusters, was a sarcophagus and behind that, atop a granite pedestal, a bronze of Washington leaning on his sword. I looked around. Nothing. I read the inscription on the wall of stone behind Washington: FREEDOM IS A LIGHT FOR WHICH MANY MEN HAVE DIED IN DARKNESS. I looked around again. Nothing. I had missed him. “Dammit,” I said out loud as the rain spilled from my bare head down the collar of my coat, drenching my shirt. “Dammit to hell,” I said.
Then I heard something from behind that great wall of stone.
“Chuckie?” I said.
No answer.
But then came the shadow. From behind the wall of stone. It staggered through the low bushes, stumbling around the wall, toward me. I stepped back. It still came at me, stumbling again, reeling, barely maintaining its balance. And then it lurched into that thin halogen beam and the weak white light fell on its face.
It was Chuckie.
He came closer, it looked like he was wearing a beard, a disguise, and then he stumbled again and fell into my arms and slid through them and fell upon the raised chain, his shoulders slipping down until his head rested beside the foot of the sarcophagus.
I bent over him. My God, it wasn’t a beard.
He was making a sound, a soft gurgle of a sound, blood pouring onto the stone platform from his mouth, from his slit throat, blood mixing with the rain, pooling into a puddle, growing lighter, weaker, until it was washed clean. Another gurgle, soft, horrifying, and then no more gurgles. Just Chuckie Lamb and the blood falling from his throat being washed to clear by the rain and no sound but the drops falling onto the park, onto the great stone wall, onto Washington’s sword, onto the sarcophagus, onto his lifeless body, onto an envelope peeking out from his jacket, onto his neck, onto his face, no sound but the cleansing voice of the rain.
I took the envelope and ran like hell.
49
IT WAS BIG NEWS the next morning. The police had been summoned by a mysterious 911 call and had found him lying in the rain, his throat slashed. The official statement was that Charles Lamb, 43, unmarried, of Northeast Philadelphia, press secretary to City Councilman Jimmy Moore, had been found murdered at Washington Square. No motive for the killing was yet known and there were no suspects. He was survived by only his mother, Connie Lamb, residing at the St. Vincent’s Home for the Aged. The funeral was scheduled for Thursday afternoon at the Galzerano Funeral Home on Torresdale Avenue. That was the official statement, but there were rumors of late-night liaisons in public places with young boys and an editorial in the Daily News suggested that the police kiosk in the park be manned all night to ensure that Washington Square not turn into still another location for shadowy rendezvous as had turned so many of the public parks in the city.
Chester was mute with suffering, his pain marked only in a redness about his eyes, a tightness in his lips. I told him I was sorry and he shrugged me away, but I could see the hurt. I hadn’t known before that they had been so close. Jimmy chose to vocalize his feelings, telling the press how valued a member of his team Chuckie had been. “This crime,” he said on the steps of the courthouse, the start of his speech timed with precision so as to be captured live by the television cameras, “will only increase my determination to continue my crusade. I have experienced many tragedies in my life, and this is still one more. But whoever thinks they can deter me from my cause, whoever thinks they can halt my progress, whoever thinks they can threaten or bully or kill my good work is deeply mistaken. We go on, we keep fighting, the dealers of death will be beaten and we will be victorious, and those like Chuckie Lamb, who were martyred in the struggle, will for always be remembered as heroes.”
Jimmy Moore, I figured, had wasted no time in grabbing himself another speechwriter.
Chuckie Lamb had neither been indicted nor intended to be called as a witness for either side, so his murder had no real impact on the trial. Judge Gimbel suggested, in light of the death of someone so close to the councilman, that we adjourn until tomorrow and Eggert readily agreed, but Jimmy Moore stood up in the courtroom and stated that he was ready to testify that very day.
“You want to testify today?” asked the judge.
“Yes, sir,” said Jimmy Moore. “Mr. Lamb would have wanted the trial to continue so that I can get this shoddy affair over with as soon as possible and direct my full attention once again to the business of the people.”
“That’s fine, Councilman Moore,” said the judge.
And so the jury was brought in and Prescott stood. “The defense,” he said, “calls Councilman James Douglas Moore to the stand.”
Jimmy Moore had not spent a career riling up constituents and making impromptu political speeches without learning a thing or two about how to work a crowd, whether it be a thousand supporters on an election-eve rally or twelve jurors and two alternates with his future under their thumbs. I knew what his story would be, that he was the unwitting victim of the fiendish Chester Concannon’s extortion plans, and such was the story he told, but the way he told it was something else again. He wasn’t the chagrined and sorry defendant, he wasn’t the humble man pleading his innocence, he wasn’t quiet and reserved, confident to leave his fate in the hands of a jury of his peers. What he was instead was an angry man who had been betrayed by his aide, victimized by his government, subjected to political vendetta, and forced to defend what needed no defending. I would have thought before his testimony that such a demeanor would inspire enemies and turn off the sympathy of the jurors, but I would have been wrong. It was clearly playing in the Peoria that was the jury box.
Under Prescott’s gentle questioning Moore spelled out his defense in clear and angry sentences. No, he did not illegally extort money from Michael Ruffing. Yes, he had helped with Ruffing’s development plan in City Council because it was a good plan, and yes, he expected campaign contributions for such help, but that was the way the world worked in politics. “It’s the American system,” said Jimmy Moore, “and God bless the American system. God bless America.” No, he had not known of the $250,000 given to Concannon in cash and had he known he would have forbidden it. No, he had not talked about money with Ruffing, that was not his style, he would have accepted whatever support Ruffing chose to give and he had thought the five fifty-thousand-dollar checks actually received by CUP to be extremely generous. Yes, he was angry when Ruffing told him he would stop payments, it smacked of betrayal. “We were fighting for something side by side,” he testified. “Ruffing knew I was counting on him to help with the agenda of healing. And then he had simply walked away.” But no, of course he had not killed Zack Bissonette. He had already raised over two million dollars for a run at higher office, why would he risk everything over a few thousand here or there? No, he had not burned down Bissonette’s, it had been one of his favorite clubs. Yes, he lived an extravagant lifestyle, and why not? His wife had money, he had money from outside investments, why not live high if he could afford it? “If the prosecutor wants to indict me for drinking champagne and having a limousine, then fine, indict me for that and let’s try it on those grounds. But not on the fabricated charges they are leveling against me here. Not on the basis of nothing but political vendetta.”