Thomson went down the broad stairway from his wife’s suite to the foyer, where Allan Davic waited for him. The lawyer had collected his hat and gloves.
“I have an appointment in Philadelphia,” he told Thomson. “But I believe we’ve covered the events that could come up in regard to your wife’s testimony. I’m sure she’ll make an excellent witness.”
“Just one thing,” Thomson said. “Forget the talk we had at lunch yesterday.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m telling you to use the court-martial material, use every goddamn thing you’ve got or can get on Selby and the DA. And that girl.”
“Mr. Thomson, the testimony of the plaintiff today was devastating. Whether you believe her story or not, take it from me as your lawyer... those jurors did. She had the whole courtroom with her.”
“Davic, I don’t want to discuss—”
“May I finish?”
“Go ahead.”
“Earl’s emotional display in court today probably won’t hurt him. That was a reaction people can relate to and even sympathize with. In fact, it might have been the smartest thing he could have done. But make no mistake, we’re in a fight. My job is to defend your son, and I’ve got my work cut out for me. That jury — any jury — is an unpredictable beast. They’re supposed to weigh the facts impartially. But too often they believe their job is to punish someone, to take revenge. Do you understand what I’m telling you? They know there’s a victim. They’ve seen her. She sat before them today. They heard the doctor, those pictures showed the cuts in her hands, the welts on her face. They didn’t have to imagine those rope burns. Now they’re looking for a culprit. We can’t risk creating additional sympathy for Shana Shelby. There’s such a thing as legal overkill. We’ve got a case to make, our witnesses to call. But if we now drag her father into it... and with him drag the past into it... well, we may create results we can’t foresee.”
“Never mind all that... I’m doing what I have to do... I don’t intend to explain myself any further. Take the wraps off. Use ail you’ve got to hit them. That’s the way it’s got to be. Good night, Mr. Davic.”
After the sound of the attorney’s car faded from the drive, Thomson and Dom Lorso talked in the shadowed study.
“We can live with it, Giorgio.” Dom Lorso studied his cigarette. “Earl wants to protect himself, that’s normal. He’s taken a lot of shit. But you and I, Giorgio, we gotta be clear about it. Very clear between you and me, okay?”
Thomson opened a bottle of wine and filled two glasses. He snapped on a lamp and was relieved to see the shadows leap away, the light revealing shelves of books and pictures of Adele in silver frames. On a beach with Earl, on a horse in an exercise ring...
“Earl should have satisfaction,” Lorso was saying, “but we got to know what it could cost, right?”
“It won’t cost you, Dom. That’s a promise.”
“If it hurts you, it hurts me.” Lorso inhaled deeply. “Davic does what Earl wants, right? Earl calls the shots?”
Thomson nodded and sipped his wine.
Dom Lorso pointed his cigarette at him. “That’s what we got to be clear about. Something could go wrong, Giorgio. You and me, we know Earl was involved with that girl—” He held up a hand. “Hear me out. You don’t want to admit it and he probably considers himself innocent the way he looks at it. Maybe he does know more about loyalty than we do... except we must’ve been doing something right for thirty years.”
Thomson nodded and drank some wine. It warmed him, was more comforting than whiskey. He’d never lived in a kitchen with melons and cheese hanging on the walls and peppers drying in the windows, but he missed it all the same. Bocci games on church lawns, old men and women sitting out on the stoop in the summer watching children play... it was all a world his grandfather Carmine had told him about, but still, he could hear echoes of those distant, safer days in Dom Lorso’s doggedly blood-loyal defense of Earl...
“The Selby kid, hey, she could be as kinky as a fox, never mind those choir girl eyes. Maybe, once it started, she wanted him to do all that shit to her, threatened to blow a whistle if he didn’t. I don’t put anything past any of them. I knew a crazy cunt once liked electric shocks in places you wouldn’t mention in front of your mother. I’m with Earl, but if things go wrong, can we handle it our way? That’s what I got to know, Giorgio.”
Thomson shook his head, more an act of despair than an answer to Lorso’s question. “You got your money, Dom, hell, you old guinea bastard, you could buy half of Miami, Palermo, if you want. You can get out now. I wouldn’t mind if you did, that’s the truth. You’re the friend of my life and my heart, Dom. That sounds like a bullshit thing to say, but I heard my grandfather use those very words, and I couldn’t have been more than six or eight at the time. Funny the things that stick in a kid’s mind.”
Lorso lit another cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. “How long’s Earl had a gun at your head, Giorgio?”
Thomson poured more wine. He offered the bottle to Lorso, but the Sicilian waved it away.
“How long, for Christ’s sake?”
Thomson finally said, “I heard Ledge’s tapes on that call to Earl. Ledge told him we had a problem with Harry Selby about Summitt. I think Earl took a notion to help us out by scaring the Selby kid, creating a little accident that would get her father home and away from Summitt. He didn’t mean to hurt her. Then it got out of hand... like that business at Rockland. He panicked when that DA made a case against him. He’s got cracks like all of us, Dom. He’s afraid, and who can blame him for that? He decided to protect himself. Nobody looks out for number one like number one. We taught him that, Dom.” Thomson smiled ironically. “But he’s also got other ideas... an office next to mine, a place near the center of the Group, a voice in decisions.” He sighed. “Can’t blame him for that either, I suppose. Once you get power, it’s hard not to use it. Otherwise you’re never sure you’ve still got it.”
Lorso said, “How long’s he had this gun at your head?”
Thomson looked directly at his old friend. “Since that fire at the general’s place, since Slocum’s people torched Vinegar Hill. That’s how long, Dom. But it’s not a gun like you mean.” Thomson sighed. “It would be simpler if it was. Remember when Earl slipped off and flew from Philadelphia down to Summitt City? And you had Slocum and Eberle burning the wires trying to find out where he was? Well, that’s where he found the pressure to use against us.”
Thomson sipped his wine and looked out at the darkness beyond the terrace. “He knows we killed Jarrell Selby, and he can prove it. He also pretty well knows why we killed him, that he’d become a threat to our experiment at Summitt City. So you might as well go ahead and buy Sicily and plant the whole damned island in garlic, Dom.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Before opening for the defense, Davic apologized to the court for Earl Thomson’s behavior of the day before.
“There are, Your Honor,” he said, “no extenuating circumstances which can or will ever justify a violation of our judicial processes. No pressures are so heavy, no allegations, unfounded or otherwise, so provocative that they may be offered as an excuse for disrespect to the bench or to our legal traditions.”