“I’m not smarter.”
“Pay attention to me, Juan. It is not good for you that the jury, probably in fifteen minutes, will know that you were fucking Joan Richardson. Do you understand? There’s no real evidence against you: no fingerprints, no bloody clothes, no knife, no one who saw what happened. You understand, Juan, don’t you?”
He said, “I do,” and she had no doubt that he understood.
“What they will have in a few minutes is a motive. No weapon, no witnesses, but a motive. And you’re going to hear about it again and again.”
Juan said, “I didn’t hurt Mr. Richardson. I didn’t hurt the dogs.”
“Get this, Juan: that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether you did it or not. Juan Suarez, they’re going to say, had a motive to kill-he imagined himself in love with a very beautiful, very rich American woman, and he believed she was in love with him. Juan Suarez was a man with many troubles in the world: he had no money, he could be deported, the police in New York were after him. Immigration could arrest him. How does he solve his problems? They’ll tell the jury that he got it into his head that if he used his knowledge of the house, his knowledge of Brad Richardson’s habits, his knowledge of where Joan Richardson was going to be, his knowledge of when the house would be empty, and if he left no weapon and picked a time of the day when Brad was alone, then he could do the perfect killing. They’ll say Juan Suarez lived in a fantasy world where he believed that the fact he was having an affair with Joan Richardson meant that if Mr. Richardson was killed Juan Suarez and the beautiful Mrs. Richardson would live happily ever after.”
“I never thought that, Raquel.” And then, for the first time, Juan became as blunt as Raquel wanted him to be: “Joan Richardson liked to fuck, Raquel. I’m only 29, Raquel. I can fuck all day long. Anywhere, anytime. Joan liked that. I’m not stupid, Raquel. I had no plans with her. Just to fuck her.”
“Talk to me now, Juan. Who started this?”
“She did.”
“Did she ever try to end it?”
“She didn’t. I wanted to but I didn’t want to. Why should I stop? She never said she wanted to stop. She liked what we did.”
“Did she ever talk to you about Brad?”
“What do you mean, Raquel?”
“I mean, Juan, did she describe their life, what their marriage was like?”
“She said Brad should just live with one of his boyfriends and that he would be happier.”
“Did she know he had boyfriends?”
“Sure, I knew, too. Once Joan was in bed with me. She said, Christ, that son of a bitch was just in here. She was talking about Mr. Richardson and another man, I don’t remember his name. And then we really fucked, Raquel. That’s what she wanted.”
“Did she say anything else to you about Brad?”
“Not to me.”
“To anyone else?”
“They argued, many times. She knows how to scream. I heard her say, You butt fucker, let’s break up.”
“What did he say?”
“I didn’t hear him. He never raises his voice.”
“What else did you hear her say?”
“She said that she was going to use pictures of Mr. Richardson buying drugs. She took them when he didn’t see it. She said she was going to give the pictures to television, newspapers, magazines.”
“Did Brad Richardson use drugs?”
“Never saw that.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Did you sell drugs to Brad Richardson?”
“Sell? No.”
“Give them to him?
“No.”
“Did Joan Richardson use drugs?”
Juan paused. “Yes, the cocaine.”
Suddenly the buzzer that signaled when Judge Conley was about to re-enter the courtroom sounded. One of the guards said, “It’s show time, ladies and gents.”
Juan stepped back while the guard opened the cell door and unlocked the handcuffs. Juan rubbed his own wrists. Raquel saw the deep indentations that the plastic handcuffs had made on his wrists in such a short time. She had one of those moments when she recognized that her client lived in a world of pain and fear unlike any she had ever known. Until that world-changing moment a year earlier when her doctor, a straightforward woman, said, “You’ve got cancer, Ms. Rematti.” Even in the horrible months of chemotherapy when fear ran her life, she had never been locked for months in a cell from which there was no exit.
27.
Margaret Harding had not lost any traction during the break. “Mrs. Richardson, was there cash in the house?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In our bedroom, most of it. Brad wasn’t careful about where he put money.”
“Was any of the money in a safe?”
“Some of it. There was money in a safe. But Brad never locked the safe. In fact, he left the door open.”
“Did Juan Suarez know where the cash was?
“He did.”
“Where did the money come from?”
Puzzled, Joan asked, “Where did it come from?”
“There was cash in the house, Mrs. Richardson, wasn’t that what you just told the jury?”
“Yes. Brad always had a great deal of cash in the places where we lived. But he carried only small amounts when he walked around. He never carried a credit card. Sometimes in restaurants I paid the check.”
“Mrs. Richardson, I asked if you knew where the cash came from?”
“I don’t know, Ms. Harding. He never told me. I never asked. He had no reason to tell me, I had no reason to ask.”
“Who paid Juan Suarez?”
“I did.”
“Why you?”
“Brad was an incredibly busy man. He ran a worldwide business, he wrote articles, he gave speeches. But he was terrible with cash. If he had paid Juan and the other workers, Brad would never have gotten the right amount. So I did it.”
“How often?”
“Every week.”
“In cash?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“It varied, Ms. Harding. Sometimes two thousand dollars a week, sometimes four, depending on whether he did extra work for us. And sometimes Brad just handed me money to give to Juan, almost as a gift. Brad was generous, and he very much liked Juan.”
“Why didn’t you pay Mr. Suarez in a check?”
“He didn’t have a bank account.”
“Was there any other reason he was paid in cash?”
“He was an illegal alien. He told us he didn’t have a Social Security number, he didn’t have a driver’s license, and he didn’t have a bank account.”
“You knew it was illegal to hire a person in his status?”
“I know that now. I didn’t think about it then. He said he had a wife and two children, or that he lived with a woman and she had two children. We weren’t trying to take advantage of anything. He was a hard worker. He was poor when he came to us. It just seemed natural to hire him and to pay him. Brad used to say he got paid for his work, so it seemed natural to pay Mr. Suarez for his work whether or not he was legal or illegal.”
“And how did you know he didn’t have a Social Security number or a driver’s license?”
“He told us. You have to understand, he is a charming man, he can talk an oyster out of its shell.”
As she was rising to her feet, Raquel said, “Move to strike that statement.”
Judge Conley glanced at the jurors. “I instruct you to disregard the last answer.”
Then Margaret Harding shifted the subject. “Did you know Mr. Suarez by any other name?”
Joan Richardson again glanced at the jurors. “Anibal.”
“What was that name again?”
“Anibal. For some reason, once during a break while he was cleaning the pool, he just mentioned that his name was Anibal. But he said I could go on calling him Juan if I wanted to.”