The attorney gestured with pipe in hand, the exhaust fumes aromatic in a way that said money. “You said it yourself, Nate — that was a madhouse. No two people reported the same thing, and my client was under attack even as he kept blasting away. Weren’t you one of the men who tackled him, and didn’t it take Rosey Grier and the rest of an impromptu football team to take that little assassin down?”
Sirhan’s lead defense attorney’s description of his client: “that little assassin.”
“Took a group effort, all right,” I said. “That runt was almost supernaturally strong. But I’m wondering — meaning no criticism, just trying to put things in perspective — why you didn’t bring the autopsy evidence into court?”
He studied me.
Finally, coldly, he said, “We got hold of it very late.”
“Still,” I said, “you didn’t really use Dr. Noguchi’s findings at all, beyond establishing homicide.”
Cooper seemed openly irritated now; both feet were on the floor and he was edging forward on his comfy chair. “I wouldn’t trust that little Jap farther than I could throw him, though I wouldn’t mind trying. He’s a self-aggrandizing, publicity-seeking former Medical Examiner these days, you know.”
I squinted at him, as if I didn’t already have him well in focus. “But you kept the autopsy photos out...”
The heavy eyebrows hiked. “Because that grotesque material would have been obscenely prejudicial to the jury!”
“Those autopsy photos would have demonstrated the kill shot came from behind — you could have absolved your client of the murder itself, if not the general assault.”
Cooper goggled at me. “Absolved him of the murder of a man he killed in front of dozens of witnesses? My goal wasn’t to try in vain to plead the innocence of somebody who stood a few feet from the Senator and emptied a gun at him, wounding five others in the process!”
“What was your goal, Grant?”
His brow knit. “To prove diminished capacity and keep him out of the goddamn gas chamber.”
“How did that work out?”
Cooper reared back, his eyes flaring behind the heavy black frames. “How did your bodyguard assignment work out, Heller?”
I raised a surrender palm. “Fair enough. Then can I assume, with a client on Death Row, you’re going to appeal?”
He grunted. “Why bother? The judge ran a tight ship. We did our best. Do you think I enjoy losing a client to the gas chamber? It’s never happened to me before.”
A sentence of death never happened to Sirhan Sirhan before either, but that “little assassin” wouldn’t get a second crack at improving his batting average. Not courtesy of a crusading defense attorney who didn’t bother mounting an appeal after suffering a Death Penalty verdict.
“Neither one of us,” I admitted, “served our clients all that well.”
“On that much we can agree.” He seemed about to get up, clearly annoyed that a conversation that began well had so quickly degenerated.
I raised a hand as if I were being sworn in, in court. “I have just a few other things.”
He frowned. “I notice you’ve not been taking notes on this journalistic fishing expedition.”
“Would you prefer I did? I wanted to keep things informal. Off the record. Strictly background.”
For a moment he thought, then: “No. That’s all right. Go on.”
“Why did you stipulate to the ballistics evidence?”
He flinched, taking a rabbit punch the ref missed. “Mr. Heller...”
“Nate.”
“Nate. It was irrelevant to our defense. We stipulated to almost everything evidentiary that the prosecution introduced.”
So I’d noticed.
“You almost certainly could have kept the ‘RFK Must Die’ notebooks out,” I said. “They were seized in an illegal search, after all. And even if you couldn’t, you could have questioned whether Sirhan wrote them — no handwriting expert could say that he did. And this Wolf character is a notorious ballistics hack for the prosecution, narrowly escaping a perjury charge in the Kirsch case. Yet you made no effort to impeach his ‘expert testimony.’”
“I thought I’d made clear,” Cooper said tightly, “that our goal was strictly one of proving diminished capacity. Our client wasn’t always happy with us on that score... there were, as you may know, some outbursts from him in court. He claims, not entirely convincingly, that he has amnesia about the shooting itself. The path we took seemed the only way to save his life. And, yes, we failed to do that.”
I tossed down the rest of my gimlet and got to my feet. “Yeah, yeah, and I stink as a bodyguard and maybe we can buy each other drinks or play eighteen holes sometime and meanwhile we’ll just write it off as the cost of doing business, that little prick taking the fall for Christ knows how many other shooters in that pantry.”
He bristled, looking up at me. “The cost of doing business... in what way, for God’s sake?”
“Oh I don’t know. The cost of you not doing jail time for possession of stolen Grand Jury transcripts in that Friars Club card-cheating scandal. Of avoiding disbarment over what the LAPD has on you. Of keeping your big-league mobster clients like Johnny Roselli happy, though what’s in it for them I couldn’t tell you. Not yet anyway.”
Now he was on his feet, tall enough to glare right at me, dark eyes sparking under black eyebrows that blended into the upper black rims of his glasses in twin thick strokes as if applied by a master caricature artist.
“Those are the kind of careless remarks, Nate, that can get you in trouble in court... and out of court.”
“Is that a threat, Grant? Have you forgotten that I’m from Chicago? That I know Johnny Roselli, too?”
He got very close; I could smell the English Leather. He spoke softly, almost whispering.
“Maybe you need to think, Mr. Heller, about whether you want everything I know about Operation Mongoose and certain anti-Castro efforts on your late friend Bob’s behalf coming out before you get too goddamn fucking mouthy.”
“Well, I guess I know at least one thing, Mr. Cooper.”
“Oh?”
“Why you winked at me in court.”
I gave him a cocky little salute and got the hell out of there. But I just might have been shaking a little.
After lunching with Nita at Canter’s on North Fairfax — she had auditions all afternoon — I headed back to my A-1 office to take meetings unrelated to the Kennedy inquiry. But midday Will Harris, our forensics consultant, returned a call I’d left the day before. Will had retired from the FBI last year and opened up shop in Pasadena as a freelance criminalist. He’d been recommended to us by Wes Grapp.
I told him I was researching the RFK assassination for Drew Pearson and would like to go over some photos and documents with him — the material Sgt. Shore had slipped me out at Griffith Park the other day.
Will was past fifty but sounded younger thanks to enthusiasm and a boyish tenor. “I guess I know why you’re calling me about it.”
“Do I?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“You really don’t know? My last job for the Bureau was helping work the crime scene at the Ambassador just hours after the killing. I took my twenty-year retirement the next week.”
I leaned back in my desk chair. “That may be a helpful coincidence. Can you make it to the Bradbury Building yet today?”
Instead of answering that, he said, “How would you like a tour of the crime scene?”