they took him into custody. And that was pretty much it. Now,” he said, clearing his throat loudly, “if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting—”
“I still have nineteen seconds,” Jaywalker pointed out. Actually, he had no idea how long they’d been talking, but he doubted that Ludlow did, either. “What was the basis of your comment to the press,” he asked, “that Drake hadn’t been drinking or speeding prior to the accident?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean,” said Jaywalker, “did Drake actually tell you those things?”
“Drake? No, of course not. As a matter of fact, I never discussed that with him. I had our media department draw up a statement. They’re real pros at that sort of stuff. It’s what they do.”
Great, thought Jaywalker, trial by sound bite. He wanted to ask Ludlow if he had any idea of the damage such a remark could do to Drake’s chances down the line. But he knew he was already into overtime. “Thanks for your time,” he said, and hung up.
The good news was that Ludlow had given him the five minutes pro bono. The bad news was that Jaywalker had pretty much gotten his money’s worth.
The meeting with Judah Mermelstein went somewhat better. It had taken Jaywalker only forty-five minutes to get to Mermelstein’s office, if you didn’t count the two hours spent locating his ancient Mercury in its parking lot, finding a set of booster cables ($14.95), getting a jump start from an obliging cabbie ($10), and coaxing the relic out onto the West Side Highway (priceless).
The first thing Jaywalker noticed about Mermelstein wasn’t his boyish good looks, his black suit, white shirt and conservative tie, or even his firm handshake. It was his yarmulke.
“Do they let you wear that?” Jaywalker asked. “I mean, in court? At trial?” He’d once known a legal aid lawyer in Brooklyn who was also a Catholic priest, and they’d let him wear his clerical collar in court. But all the guy ever did was arraignments; he never went to trial.
“Absolutely,” said Mermelstein. “U.S. Supreme Court, First and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, expression, association, wardrobe, warmth. Not to mention the little-known but all-important freedom to cover one’s bald spot.”
“Cool,” was all Jaywalker could come up with. It was something his daughter might have said, back when she was, oh, seven or so. But it was cool, and he couldn’t help picturing himself delivering a summation before a home-crowd New City jury, two rows of black-dressed orthodox Jews. Jaywalker was half-Jewish himself, after all, even if he hadn’t seen the inside of a synagogue in a good twenty years. But that gave him the right, didn’t it? And if he were to dig through the side pockets of his suit jackets, chances were pretty good he’d find a yarmulke or two, left over from a long-ago funeral, or a bar mitzvah he hadn’t been able to get out of.
“I understand Mrs. Drake has hired you as a private investigator in her husband’s case,” said Mermelstein, once the two of them had taken seats facing each other across his desk. That experience itself had been momentarily unsettling for Jaywalker, who’d spent twenty-some years sitting in the lawyer’s chair, not the client’s.
“Yes, she has,” said Jaywalker. “But I think you also ought to know that it’s her hope that if the case has to be tried, I should be the one to try it. If the court doesn’t force it to trial before my, uh, suspension is up, that is.”
“Thank you for being up front about that,” said Mermelstein.
Jaywalker shrugged, his way of saying, Hey, it was the right thing to do.
“Actually,” said Mermelstein, “Mrs. Drake told me herself. And I have no problem with it. Not that I couldn’t use the publicity. But the truth is, I’ve never tried a murder case. Or even a felony, for that matter. So not only will I bow out gracefully when the time comes, but in the meantime I’ll appreciate all the help you can give me, until you’re—”
“Kosher?”
“I couldn’t have said it better.”
“Don’t plan on bowing out,” said Jaywalker. “I’m an outsider here, in more ways than one. You’re local, and you seem to have your head on straight. I’m pretty sure Amanda can be convinced of the virtues of a co-counsel arrangement.”
Mermelstein didn’t respond one way or the other, and they talked about the case for the next forty minutes. Jaywalker learned that the Drakes had found Mermelstein through an ad in the local Yellow Pages that touted him as an expert in criminal law, divorce, real estate, immigration matters, slip-and-fall cases, product liability, medical malpractice and dog-bite injuries. He’d tried and failed to get Carter’s bail reduced from the five million set at arraignment. The Rockland County D.A., a tough-on-crime Republican named Abraham Firestone, intended to make an example of Drake, hoping that sending him away for life would deter others from killing vanloads of children. And according to Mermelstein, Firestone intended to try the case himself, if there had to be a trial, rather than assigning it to one of his assistants, as was the customary practice.
“I notice Drake’s charged with drunk driving,” said Jaywalker, “in addition to murder.” He didn’t mention the leaving-the-scene charge, or the unlicensed operator, or the uninsured vehicle. Those charges ranged from the mundane to the serious. Leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, for example, was itself a separate felony. But all of those acts or omissions were either after the fact or merely incidental to the murder charge. Drunk driving, on the other hand, especially when combined with indications of recklessness, could be used to show a depraved indifference to human life, a necessary statutory element of proving murder in a vehicular homicide case in New York State.
“That’s right,” said Mermelstein.
“But Drake didn’t surrender until sometime the following day, did he?”
“Right again,” said Mermelstein. “And his big-shot business lawyer issued a press release announcing to the world that his client hadn’t had anything to drink before the accident.”
“So help me out here,” said Jaywalker. Early on in his career, he’d had occasion to wonder why anyone would leave the scene of an accident, when doing so was a crime and sticking around to face the music wasn’t. The answer, he soon learned, was pretty simple. The ones who fled did so because they were drunk, unlicensed or uninsured, or because they’d just robbed the bank around the corner and had the money on the front passenger seat and a loaded gun on the floor. Getting away, even for a limited period of time, gave them an opportunity to hide the evidence. And part of that evidence was the alcohol in their blood. Ted Kennedy may or may not have been testing his swimming ability that night long ago at Chappaquiddick, but by the time he turned himself in the following day it was too late for the police to draw a meaningful, or admissible, blood sample from him. And even if it hadn’t been, he could have claimed that the incident had so upset him that he’d poured himself a couple of stiff drinks as soon as he got home. Exactly as the captain of the Exxon Valdez had maintained after his little mishap up in Prudhoe Bay.
“It seems Abe Firestone has done his homework,” said Mermelstein. “He had the troopers trace Drake’s movements over the twelve hours preceding the crash. Apparently they can put him in a sports club over in Nyack. And the sport he and his buddies were engaged in seems to have consisted of seeing who could throw back the most shots of tequila before falling on the floor.”
“Wonderful,”
