CHAPTER 1
The prosecution calls Lillian Pentecost to the stand.”
A wave of barely hushed whispers washed over the courtroom. Judge Harman, never one to shy away from a good gavel-banging, let it go unscolded for a change. He couldn’t really blame folks. They’d been packed shoulder to shoulder on the hard courtroom benches for three long days, watching the calendar flip from July to August 1946 while they slogged through the boring nuts and bolts of the prosecution’s case. Waiting for the real drama to start.
The air-conditioning had gone belly-up halfway through day one and the two hundred or so reporters, family members, and assorted lookie-loos were sweating through their stay-pressed as we approached the climax of the city’s murder trial of the moment.
My boss was the climax.
Every eye in the room was on Lillian Pentecost as she made her way to the witness stand, cane thumping out an even rhythm on the courtroom’s hardwood floor. She cut an impressive figure: tall, slender, on the far side of forty, impeccable posture—the better to show off the lines of her gray herringbone suit, white collared blouse, and favorite blood-red tie. Her long chestnut hair was tied up in a labyrinth of braids, her signature streak of gray weaving through like a vein of quicksilver.
I even got her to slap on some makeup. A little eye shadow to bring out the winter-gray of her eyes, blush to add drama to her hawkish profile, and the palest of pink lipsticks to make her mouth seem a tad less severe. The goal was no-nonsense but approachable. A woman you’d trust to tell you who murdered who.
The defense table was an island of stillness in the midst of the tittering. Forest Whitsun, attorney for the defense, turned in his seat to watch Ms. P’s approach, the look on his face steely confidence mixed with a dash of curiosity.
Sure, I’m interested in what she has to say, his expression told the jurors, but only so I can explain to you good people why she’s mistaken.
As for the defendant, you could have propped him outside a cigar shop, he was so wooden. Over the last few days, Barry Sendak had perfected the look of the unjustly accused, woe-is-me. Now, his eyes were blank, lips pressed in a thin line.
I’ll give him this, though—he didn’t look like an arsonist.
Which was a problem.
Not that arsonists come ready-to-wear. But you’d expect someone who was responsible for burning seventeen people alive and leaving hundreds more homeless and grieving to show it on his face.
The Old Testament scribblers had it right. Murder should leave a mark.
But that was wishful thinking.
The jury had spent the last three days looking for a tell and coming up empty. All they saw was a soft pudge of a man who barely topped five feet. Who at thirty was sliding to bald and thought a brush mustache would make up the difference. He had the imposed-upon air of a civil servant, which is exactly what he was, having spent the last ten years as a safety inspector for the New York City Fire Department. He had the watery brown eyes of a doe in the forest, and in his one-size-too-big suit he looked more like prey than predator.
I knew different.
I’d been with him when my boss pointed the finger and Lieutenant Nathan Lazenby, one of the city’s top homicide cops, slapped on the cuffs. Nobody would have mistaken Sendak for prey then.
When I was little, my father made me help him drag a badger out of its burrow near our garden. It had been making waste of our lettuce and my father decided it was time for the thing to go. He stood behind me with a shotgun while I grabbed it by its legs and pulled. It came out spitting and clawing and if my Dad hadn’t been so quick on the trigger, that rodent would have torn my face off.
Sendak had the same look on him when Lazenby led him away. Like he wanted to sink his teeth into Ms. Pentecost’s cheek and give a good yank.
The problem was the jury wasn’t seeing the beast.
The other problem—and the DA had been clear that this was the larger of the two—was that the three tenement buildings Sendak had torched had been in Harlem. The seventeen dead were all Negroes. And if you could find a more lily-white jury, I’d have given you a medal.
The evidence against Sendak was circumstantial. Sure, there was a truckload of it, but if you were hunting hard for reasonable doubt, you could squint and convince yourself it was there and only have a little trouble sleeping at night.
It took some serious arm-pulling and a few scathing editorials in the papers to convince the DA to move forward with the case. Even then, he only pulled the trigger because of a specific thumb pressing down on the scales.
That thumb, along with its four friends, was at that moment laid out on a Bible, its owner swearing to tell the truth, whole and nothing but.
“Put me on the stand,” Ms. Pentecost had told the district attorney. “I promise you I will reveal to the jury just what kind of man Mr. Sendak is.”
Lillian Pentecost didn’t make promises lightly, and the DA knew it. So here we were. Last day, last witness, and the whole ballgame riding on my boss.
Someone once told me that ladies don’t sweat, but I guess I wasn’t much of a lady. I was schvitzing along with the rest of the audience.
From the back row of the courtroom, I watched as Howard Clark, the assistant DA who’d drawn the short straw, began to lead Ms. Pentecost through the whys and wherefores. None of it was news to me, so I took the opportunity to pull out the telegram that had been delivered to our door that morning by an out-of-breath Western Union boy and read it again.
ruby found murdered. circus currently in stoppard, virginia. request professional assistance. —bh
BH was Big Bob Halloway, owner and operator of Hart & Halloway’s Traveling Circus and Sideshow. The telegram included a phone number where he could be reached.
Ms. P had been upstairs putting herself together when it arrived. I hadn’t shown it to her yet. I didn’t want her mind on anything but the task in front of her.
I, on the other hand, had the luxury of letting my mind wander.
Ruby Donner. The Amazing Tattooed Woman.
An impossible landscape of roses and sailor girls, hearts and mermaids and pirate ships, and an emerald-green serpent spiraling up her left leg from toe to thigh and places beyond. The count had been north of three hundred when I’d last seen her.
Four years since then. I wondered what she would have thought of little Willowjean “Will” Parker, dolled up in her going-to-court jacket and skirt so she’d blend in with the rubes in the cheap seats.
The reporters I was sharing the row with had teased me about my outfit.
“You undercover as someone’s secretary?” one wit from the Times had asked. “You can sit on my lap and take dictation anytime, Parker.”
I showed him my favorite finger and quietly suggested he sit on that.
“Aw, don’t be like that, Red. I’m just playing.”
That’s what passes for flirting from the Fourth Estate.
I self-consciously ran my hand through my frizzy red curls. I’d spent the last eight months growing them out, and they were within spitting distance of shoulder-length for the first time since grade school. My fingers got caught in a tangle and I had to yank them free. I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, but everyone’s eyes were on the witness stand.
Ruby.
I asked her once, “Why do you do it? It’s got to hurt like a bastard.”
She smiled that smile that always gave me shivers.
“Of course it hurts, honey. But no more than anything else.”
There was more to that conversation—one that ended with me making a fool of myself in her bed not long after. But I couldn’t afford to think about that now. Clark was wrapping up and it was time for the real show to begin.
Whitsun approached the witness stand, walking with an easy confidence that probably wasn’t a put-on. He had a reputation as the best defense lawyer in the city. A profile in The New Yorkerhad dubbed him “the real-life Perry Mason,” and people in the know didn’t disagree.
It didn’t hurt that he could have modeled for the book jackets. Whitsun was six feet of blue eyes, broad shoulders, and a face that was only a few degrees from Gary Cooper. Sure, there were no women on the jury—not that that meant anything—but he gave off that leader-of-the-posse aura. Basically, where he went people liked to follow. My boss’s job was to rip the reins out of his hands.
“Ms. Pentecost. You prefer ‘Ms.,’ is that right?” he asked.
“I do.”
He nodded and smiled, shooting a quick glance at the jury. I wasn’t at the angle to catch it, but I imagine the look translated as: “Too good for marriage or ‘Miss’? Hard to trust a woman like that.”
Out loud he asked, “Who hired you to investigate these fires?”
“No one hired me.”
“No one? You devoted two months of your life out of the kindness of your heart?”
“I decided to look into these incidents because people were dying,” my boss lobbed back.
“Is this the first time you’ve assisted the police without a paying client?”
“It is not.”
“Actually, you’ve made something of a reputation for inserting yourself into high-profile cases, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know if I would say I have a reputation for it.”
“I think you’re being modest. I don’t know if there’s anyone in this city who hasn’t heard your name,” the defense attorney said. “And working on high-profile crimes, that must go a long way toward bringing new clients to your doorstep. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t quiz my clients on how they may have heard of me,” Ms. P said.
I cringed. Snideness wasn’t going to do her any favors.
“No, I don’t suppose you would,” Whitsun said with just the right amount of good-naturedness and a smile to the jury.
Isn’t she a pill, that smile whispered.
“Needless to say, you’ve made a lot of headlines in this city,” he continued. “The bigger the case, the bigger the headlines. And this case? Whoo-wheee. Pretty big.”
If Whitsun sounded a little too aw-shucks for a big-city lawyer, he meant to. It was part of his act. It got juries to like him. Witnesses did, too.
Until they didn’t.
“How many times did your name appear in print due to your participation in this case?” he asked.
“I can’t say. I did not count.”
“I did.” He ambled over to the defense table and held up a stack of newspapers with a flourish. “Your name appeared in thirty-two articles across fifteen papers and three globally syndicated magazines.”
He held up one paper after another, reading the headlines as he did.
“ ‘Pentecost Hunts Harlem Firebug.’ ‘Lillian Pentecost Combs Scene of Second Blaze.’ ‘Private Detective Pentecost Leads Police to Arsonist.’ ‘Pentecost Brings Firestarter to Justice.’ ”
Whitsun posed there with that last paper, letting the moment stretch out.
“Is there a question?” Ms. P asked with minimal politeness.
“Sure there is.” He tossed the newspapers back on the table. “Do you think you’d have gotten a lot of that press if you hadn’t handed the police a suspect?”
As he asked the question, my boss reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a silver lighter. She spun it around in her hand and flipped it open.
Judge Harman leaned over. “Ah…Ms. Pentecost? I don’t allow smoking in my courtroom.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I don’t smoke,” she said. “As you know, I have multiple sclerosis. Keeping my hands occupied helps with the tremors.”
Not exactly a bald-faced lie but pretty damn close.
“I’ll put it away if it’s distracting,” she added with just the right amount of pleading.
“It’s quite all right, Your Honor,” Whitsun said with a sympathetic smile. “Ms. Pentecost isn’t well. Anything that helps settle her nerves.”
I called Whitsun an impolite name under my breath and the newshounds on either side of me chuckled. There was no opportunity to give the jury a primer on multiple sclerosis. How her body might give out on occasion, but not her brain.
Still, we’d gotten what we wanted.
Ms. P spun the lighter in her hand, flipped it open, flipped it closed. Did it again.
“Could you repeat your question, Mr. Whitsun?” she asked.
“Is it fair to say that, if you hadn’t given the police a suspect, you wouldn’t have gotten nearly so many headlines?”
“Yes, that’s fair to say.” Twist, flip open, flip shut. “And if I hadn’t caught Sendak, he’d have continued putting tenements to the torch.”
A late, weak jab, and Whitsun barreled through it.
“In your previous testimony, you talked a lot about this so-called evidence against Mr. Sendak, but I noticed that you neglected to mention—or Mr. Clark neglected to ask you about—the first time you met my client. When was that?”
“At the scene of the second fire several days after the crime,” Ms. P said. “Ostensibly, he was there to assist the firefighters in making the building safe.”
“ ‘Ostensibly’? Ms. Pentecost, what is my client’s profession?”
“He’s a safety inspector with the New York City Fire Department.”
“Yes!” Whitsun exclaimed. “So it’s not surprising to find my client there, is it? It was his job to be there.”
Whitsun was good. He was taking every opportunity to remind the jury that Ms. Pentecost was a civilian butting in where she didn’t belong.
“What did my client say to you when he saw you walking through the wreckage?” Whitsun asked.
“He asked me to leave.”
Whitsun chuckled. “Oh, I think he did a little more than ask. What were his exact words? And don’t be afraid to use colorful language. We’re all adults here.” He flashed another aw-shucks grin to the jury. They echoed it. My boss didn’t.
“His exact words were ‘Listen, you clumsy bitch. Get out or I’ll have you thrown out.’ ”
Twist, flip open, flip shut.
Whitsun threw his hands in the air in mock horror and turned to his client. From the back row I caught a sliver of Sendak’s abashed grin. I wondered how many times they’d rehearsed that. Bet you it wasn’t as long as I’d rehearsed the lighter trick with Ms. P.
“ ‘Clumsy bitch’? What prompted that?”
“I stumbled over a collapsed doorframe.”
Whitsun shook his head.
“My client probably didn’t make a very good first impression, did he?”
“To be honest, Sendak left little impression,” Ms. Pentecost declared. “At the time, I found him quite forgettable.”
Twist, flip open, flip shut.
Sendak shifted uncomfortably in his seat, uncrossing one leg and crossing the other.
“I find that hard to believe, Ms. Pentecost. Considering his language and attitude.”
“Oh, it’s a rare day when I’m not called a bitch,” she said, teasing a couple of chuckles from the jury box.
“Still, you could hardly blame him,” Whitsun said. “It was a crime scene. You were a civilian. Not even one with a paying client. Trudging around, kicking up evidence. I probably would have used some blue language as well.”
Clark stood up. “Your Honor, Mr. Whitsun is testifying in place of his client.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I withdraw that statement,” Whitsun said. “Sometimes I just get a little worked up.”
I was really starting to hate that how-do-you-do smile.
The trick Ms. Pentecost was looking to pull would have been easier during the prosecution’s questioning. That way we could have scripted the thing ourselves. But she’d argued in favor of doing it during cross.
“Mr. Sendak’s guard will be down,” she’d said to me. “More importantly, his attorney will not be at his side. He will have sat and listened to accounts of his crimes. Crimes that he is proud of, that stem from deep-seated flaws in his character. A need for control. For power. His façade will be worn and fragile. I believe it just needs the right push to crumble.”
Theoretically, Sendak had been softened up. The prosecution witnesses had been instructed by the DA to refer to him only by his last name. No “Mr.” Like he was a thing, not a person. And they’d sprinkled in words like “cowardly” and “weak” wherever they could.
Chipping away.
The trick with the lighter was part of the package. It was identical to one he’d been carrying when he was arrested. It was meant to focus his attention. Keep his eyes and his mind on Ms. Pentecost, and not on playing to the jury. I’d spent the last two weeks drilling my boss so she didn’t fumble it.
These were all techniques we’d picked up working our last big case, which had involved a phony spiritualist who’d used similar tricks to pry secrets out of her clients.
Ms. P explained that this gambit of ours was a lot like a particular maneuver in fencing. She’d taken an interest in the sport after I presented her with a sword cane for Christmas. She labeled the maneuver with a French word I couldn’t pronounce then and can’t remember now.
“It’s where you leave your guard open, inviting an attack, all for the chance of running your opponent through.”
For those of you who aren’t sword-fighting aficionados, we were basically all in on a draw.
Even if the cards didn’t fall in our favor, there was still a chance the jury could find their way to a guilty verdict. A very slim one. I’d called around the night before. None of the number runners were leaning toward a straight-out acquittal. But it was five to two in favor of a hung jury. And it wasn’t likely the DA would go for a second bite at the apple.
So here we were. The last, best chance to put Sendak away for good. All Ms. P needed to do was outwit the best defense attorney in the city and get the accused to show just a hint of his true face to the jury, something he’d been rehearsing for the better part of a year not to do.
I’d have said “no sweat,” but the back of my blouse was already soaked, so why bother lying?
Whitsun wound up for his next pitch.
“As you testified earlier, the next time you saw Mr. Sendak was two weeks later, at the scene of the next fire. Is that so?”
“That’s correct. He was across the street watching the flames.”
“As were hundreds of other people, isn’t that so?”
“That’s correct.”
“And yet, you zeroed in on him. You directed your investigation at him. Not a shred of evidence, but you decided he looked like a good candidate. Is that so?”
“That’s correct,” Ms. P said.
“Was he the only person connected to the fire department there?”
“No.”
“No, there were a number of off-duty firefighters who heard the alarm and came. Because that’s their job. Even when they’re not on duty. To protect the good people of this city.”
I thought maybe Clark would object again, but he smartly kept mum. He was leaving things to my boss.
“Ms. Pentecost, isn’t the real reason you directed your ire at Mr. Sendak because your first interaction with him went so poorly? Because he had the temerity to say an amateur didn’t belong at a crime scene? Because he called you some nasty names? Weren’t you prejudiced against my client from the very beginning?”
Twist, flip open, flip closed.
“Yes.”
Every breath in the courtroom hitched, including Whitsun’s.
“You admit that you were prejudiced against my client?”
Whitsun could barely keep the joy out of his voice.
“Absolutely, I admit it,” Ms. P said matter-of-factly. “But not because he called me names. He simply looked like an arsonist.”
That set off a whole new wave of titters, and this time Judge Harman made liberal use of his gavel. Everyone in the room was giving one another looks that ranged from the mildly quizzical to the deeply confused. Everyone except Whitsun, who stood frozen. Like a guy who was walking through a field in France and heard a click under his feet.
The obvious question to ask would have been: “What do you mean he looked like an arsonist?”
But the first rule of trial law is you don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to, and Whitsun had no clue what would come out of my boss’s mouth if he pressed her.
He basically had two choices. He could drop it, but the jury had heard the comment and would wonder what she meant. Besides, Clark would pick it up on redirect and then it wouldn’t be Whitsun’s ball anymore.
Or the real-life Perry Mason could craft his next questions carefully and hope he could manage the witness.
Twist, flip open, flip closed. Back at the defense table, Sendak was shifting from side to side like someone had slipped a tack under his seat.
After a second of thought, Whitsun squared up to the witness stand. I couldn’t help but smile. He was going to try to manage Lillian Pentecost.
God help him.
“You thought my client—a hardworking, law-abiding man with not a single offense, not even a parking violation, who has devoted his life to making the city safe—looked like an arsonist? That’s why you used your outsized influence with the police and the district attorney’s office to tear his life apart?”
My boss gave the tiniest of shrugs.
“As I understand it, his life was already in shambles,” she said. “His wife left him some months earlier, did she not?”
Another wave of murmurs and a full-on spasm from Sendak. I couldn’t see his face, but the jury could. Whatever they saw caught their attention.
Judge Harman leaned over again. “Ms. Pentecost? Are you well?”
It was a fair question. Lillian Pentecost wasn’t a demonstrative woman and people knew it. She’d sat on the witness stand more times than I had digits, and this is the first time she’d ever seasoned her testimony with attitude.
“Quite well,” she answered.
Twist, flip open, flip closed.
Whitsun must have known something was up. ...
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