“Sure, to save his neck he admits it. But tell me something. We dusted that apartment for fingerprints—and there were fingerprints of everyone on God’s earth except Claude Loring. How does a man snowed out by coke remember to remove fingerprints of a crime he claims he was too snowed out to know he’s responsible for?”
The D.A. pointed his finger at Cardozo. “Vince—you’ve done your job, let me do mine. Do us both a favor and just butt the hell out of this.”
“Right,” Cardozo said with disgust.
Three minutes later he walked down the steps of the Criminal Court Building, crossed Foley Square, and rounded the corner without looking back.
“Claude Loring, Junior,” Judge Francis Davenport said, “you are accused of negligent manslaughter in the death of Jodie Downs.”
Loring stood facing the bench. He was wearing a dark suit and a conservative striped tie. The suit was new and it fit. Quite a change, Cardozo thought, from sawed-off Levi’s denim jackets. Loring was even clean-shaved, and with the moustache gone his face had lost its pirate glow. Gray skin was tight across jutting cheekbones; eyes were dull sockets.
“How do you plead to the charge? Guilty or not guilty?”
Loring’s voice was small and tight. “Guilty, Your Honor.”
Judge Davenport leaned forward, arching his thick gray eyebrows. He studied the defendant.
In his seat at the rear of the almost deserted courtroom, Vince Cardozo folded his arms and watched. The image sank into his memory: Judge Davenport with his plump, pink face gazing at Claude Loring with his wasted face.
“Mr. Loring, do you understand the legal meaning of the words negligent and manslaughter?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“You admit you took Jodie Downs to an apartment in Manhattan? You admit you tied him up and engaged in behavior which contributed to his death?”
Cardozo looked across the aisle to where Lockwood and Meridee Downs were sitting erect and alone. He felt the pathos of what was happening to them. A boundary was being crossed. They’d spent their lives not breaking laws, and till now they’d thought the rest of the world had been doing the same. But someone had changed the rules and forgotten to send them a telegram.
“I was very spaced out, Your Honor,” Claude Loring said.
“That’s well and good, Mr. Loring, but do you or do you not admit you engaged in behavior which contributed to Mr. Downs’s death?”
“He asked me to, Your Honor, and I deeply regret it.”
“Did you intend to kill Mr. Downs?”
“No, Your Honor.”
Meridee Downs dropped her head into her hand. Her husband put his arm around her. The Downses’ faces were telling Cardozo about loss, about a belief in simple justice that was being murdered as stupidly and brutally as their boy had been.
“And did you intend him bodily harm?”
“No, Your Honor. It was a scene.”
“A scene?”
Ted Morgenstern rose. According to the morning’s Post, there had been a birthday party for him the night before, eight hundred of the New York Four Hundred discoing in black tie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his eyes had a puffy look. “Your Honor, a scene is a sexual encounter between consenting adults. It is a common and usually harmless transaction in the sadomasochistic community. My client was drugged and under the impression that the acts Mr. Downs requested would not lead to bodily harm.”
“This is a pretrial hearing, not a trial, Counselor, so please resist the temptation to prove your client innocent of murder. Mr. Loring is pleading guilty to a lesser but still serious felony, and it is my duty to be sure he understands the meaning of the charge and of his plea.”
“My client admits he performed the acts, Your Honor, without realizing or intending that they would contribute to Mr. Downs’s death.”
“Counselor, I’m not questioning intent to contribute to death, only intent to perform acts which reasonably constitute reckless endangerment of human life. That is after all the issue which we are here to determine. Mr. Loring, you admit that you freely consented to perform the acts?”
Morgenstern nodded yes.
Loring took the cue. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“You admit to these acts and you do not dispute the state’s claim that Mr. Downs’s death resulted?”
Loring glanced again at Morgenstern, who nodded no.
“I don’t dispute anything, Your Honor.”
“Do you understand that in entering a plea of guilty you forgo jury trial and may be sentenced at the discretion of this court to the maximum term allowable by law?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Give this a moment’s reflection, Mr. Loring. Do you wish to change your plea to not guilty and to be tried by a jury?”
Morgenstern shook his head absolutely no.
“I plead guilty, Your Honor.”
Judge Davenport settled back in his chair, face set in a slumber of judicial indifference. “Let the record show that Claude Loring, Junior, pleads guilty to the negligent manslaughter of Jodie Downs. Do the people accept his plea?”
The D.A. rose. “The people accept.”
“Let the record so show. Prisoner is remanded for sentencing three weeks hence in this courtroom at ten thirty in the morning.” Court adjourned with a thump of Judge Davenport’s gavel.
Lockwood Downs rose. His hands were visibly shaking. Up till this moment everything might have seemed a nightmare, but Cardozo could see that this was real to him now: the courtroom, the prisoner in handcuffs and a neatly fitted new suit being led out between two guards, the judge retiring to his chambers, the defending attorney in his snappy dark suit and French cuffs crossing the room to confer with the D.A. in his snappy dark suit and French cuffs, two power brokers thrashing out a merger.
Lockwood Downs helped Meridee to her feet. They stood in the aisle, pulverized, afraid to take even a step in a world where there was suddenly no support for anything or anyone.
Cardozo went to them.
“It takes three weeks to decide on a sentence?” Deep new lines had etched themselves into Lockwood Downs’s face.
“Judges like to take their time,” Cardozo said. “They have a theory it avoids reversible error.” He didn’t bother saying what he thought of the majestic crud of the law, pulsating with crimes against common sense.
“And then what happens to Loring?” Downs asked.
“State penitentiary.”
As Meridee Downs looked up at Cardozo he saw her face flood with hatred.
“That’s worse than a city jail?” she asked.
He nodded. “If you can believe it.”
“We won’t be coming back for the sentencing,” Lockwood Downs said.
Cardozo could feel the man’s pride, the instinct not to cause a scene, not even now when all the promises the universe had ever made him were being taken back.
“I’ll be here,” Cardozo said. “I’ll phone you.”
37
“SCARED OF NEEDLES?”
Jerry Brandon snapped the cartridge into the syringe. He regarded Babe with a hint of mischief, as though they were about to embark together on a lighthearted adventure, a trip through the funhouse of her mind.
“I can’t say I love them,” Babe said.
“Get ready to love. There are people in this town that kill for twenty cc’s of this stuff.” Brandon had gone gray and a little haggard since Cardozo had last seen him, but he still had his smart-talking police-doctor mask, cocky and charming. “Why don’t you have a seat before we boost you to outer space?”
Babe sat down in the black Barcalounger. Her movements were tentative and gingerly. She was a very scared porcelain doll.
Brandon took her arm and placed the tip of the needle at the little blue vein pulsing in the crook. His thumb pressed slowly on the syringe.
Cardozo waited by the wall, out of the light. Babe shot him one scared look. “Babe,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”
Brandon withdrew the needle. “Count backwards from a hundred.”
Babe’s eyes fixed as if they had lost their sight. “One hundred … ninety-nine …”
The outer layers of her brain began shutting down. At 93 she closed her eyes.