11-Trial Page 8

  “Not really.”

  “But you remember the hand?”

  “I remember there was a hand. I don’t remember it well.”

  “But it was a high/low pot and Anson took it all?”

  “Right.”

  “Do you remember what he had?”

  “No.”

  “Did he go high or low?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Do you know what time of night this was?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  I took a breath. “Look. When I said you could say you don’t remember, that wasn’t a blanket excuse to stop answering questions. Anson Carbinder’s a friend of yours. I would think you’d want to help him.”

  Phil Janson had been fidgeting, tugging at his ear, and for the most part looking down at the floor. Now he looked up at me. “I do want to help him. I really do. It’s just...” He broke off, shook his head. “It’s just, I’m not going to make a very good witness.”

  No argument there.

  16

  “I ALWAYS LEAVE AT MIDNIGHT.”

  I could buy that. Everyone I talked to told me Tim Hendricks left at midnight, like it was an event you could set your watch by. And the man himself gave that impression. Tim Hendricks was some sort of broker, who did something tremendously important on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He practiced early to bed and early to rise, so that he’d be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every morning when the trading bell rang.

  Hendricks was a tall, thin man, with precise manners and a snippy air. In that respect, he was not unlike Barry Brown, but where old B.B. merely got my back up, for some reason I found myself almost deferential to Mr. Hendricks. In retrospect, I guess he reminded me of a high-school teacher and made me feel like I was back in tenth grade.

  “Midnight?”

  “Absolutely,” Hendricks said. “I’ve been doing it for years, no matter what they say.”

  “Actually, no one’s said any different.”

  “Huh?”

  “Everyone agrees you left then.” He frowned, then raised his eyebrows. “No, no. You misunderstand.” He raised one finger. “No, I mean I leave at midnight, no matter how they try to get me to stay.”

  “They do that?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s always One more hand or Why don’t we deal around to Sam? Or Why don’t you deal off?”

  “You ever do that?”

  “Absolutely not. Midnight, I leave.”

  “What if you’re in the middle of a hand?”

  “I don’t start a hand close to midnight. I cash in.”

  I was sure he did. I could imagine him doing it, too. Precise, proper, arrogantly pushing his stacks across the table, pissing the other players off.

  “And on the night in question?”

  “I left at twelve.”

  “Twelve exactly?”

  “Close enough. I started cashing in at eleven fifty-five. By midnight I was out the door.”

  “People argue with you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said people always try to talk you into staying. Did that happen this time?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “And who was that?”

  “I think Marv said Play another hand. And Barry Brown made some crack. He didn’t ask me to stay, just said something insolent.”

  “Uh-huh. But you ignored this and cashed out?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you win?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “In the game. How’d you do in the game?”

  “Oh. I won.”

  “How much?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “Probably not. But I’m trying to get a picture here. Do you have any objection to telling me what you won?”

  “No. I won fifty-three dollars.”

  “Is that a lot?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “For that game. Is that a lot to win in the game?”

  “No, not a lot. I’ve won over a hundred. I suppose that’s a lot, considering I don’t stay for the whole game.”

  “Uh-huh. So on the night in question you won fifty-three dollars between the hours of eight-thirty and midnight?”

  Tim Hendricks frowned. I could see his mind doing the math, figuring out if you spread it out over that amount of time, fifty-three bucks didn’t seem that good. “That’s right,” he said.

  “That is right—you were there from eight-thirty till twelve?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Who else was in the game?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Yes, I do. But I can’t testify for you. You’ve already mentioned Marvin Wainwright and Barry Brown. Who else was there?”

  “Well, Sam Kestin, of course. And Ollie Pruett. And the actor. Phil Janson. How many is that?”

  “Counting you, six.”

  “Right. And Anson Carbinder makes seven.”

  “Mr. Carbinder was at the game?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You remember when?”

  “I can only speak for the time I was there.”

  “He was there when you got there?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “He was there when you left?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That would be from eight-thirty till midnight?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he ever leave the game for any reason?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Not even to run out to the store?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know for what, I’m asking if he did.”

  “And the answer is no.”

  “So you can give Anson Carbinder an alibi from eight-thirty till twelve?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You left the game at midnight?”

  “Yes. I’ve said so. Many times.”

  “When you left the game, where did you go?”

  “I went home.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Here was Tim Hendricks West Seventy-second Street apartment. I was calling on him at home rather than brave the floor of the stock exchange. Actually, I had braved the floor of the stock exchange earlier that afternoon, only to find, as I had feared, a swarm of people shouting in what to me might as well have been a foreign language. The fact that I’d located Tim Hendricks in that chaos was remarkable. The fact that he’d declined to speak to me there was not.

  “How did you get home?”

  “I took a taxi.”

  “Through the park?”

  “Of course.”

  “How long did that take?”

  “No time at all, that time of night. I was home by twelve-fifteen. I was asleep by twelve-thirty. Which for me is late.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  I wondered if Tim Hendricks could prove that. His building did not have manned elevators. The doorman in the lobby might or might not remember him coming in.

  Which was a crazy way of thinking. But he was the only person I’d questioned with no alibi from twelve till two.

  “Anyway,” I said, “getting back to the game. Was there anything about it that you remember particularly—relating to Anson Carbinder, I mean?”

  “Sure. He won a big hand.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. Didn’t anyone else mention it? He won a big hand of high/low.”

  “He took the whole pot?”

  “He sure did. It was a hand he looked like he was going low, but he had a full house.”

  “And everyone went high?”

  “Sure did.”

  “It was a big pot?”

  “Real big.”

  “A lot of people stayed in?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Including you?”

  “I’ll say. I’d have won a lot more than fifty-three dollars if it wasn’t for that pot.”

  “I see,” I said. “You say Anson had a full house?”
/>
  “That’s right.”

  “What did you have?”

  “A flush. King high. What a kick in the teeth that was. Nothing like a second-best.”

  “You didn’t have a low?”

  “No. And even if I’d had, I wouldn’t have gone low. Anson looked like a lock.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I was out of there ten minutes later, without having learned anything else useful.

  I was not happy.

  Hendricks was the last of my witnesses, saved till last because he’d gone home early, making him the least important on the list. So, with his statement, I was ready to wrap the whole thing up.

  Only, Tim Hendricks, who went home at midnight, had played in Anson Carbinder’s big hand.

  The hand Sam Kestin said had taken place at one o’clock.

  17

  RICHARD SEEMED ALARMED. “YOU DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING?”

  “What?”

  “To this guy...”

  “Tim Hendricks?”

  “Right. You didn’t say anything to him?”

  “About what?”

  “The hand. You didn’t say, How could you have been in that hand if you left at midnight?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you say anything to him?”

  “Not about that.”

  “About what, then?”

  “I asked him what time he got home, how he got there.”

  “But not in relation to the hand?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You didn’t give him any indication that there was any discrepancy with anything anyone else had said?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you didn’t call this other guy up and say, How could the hand have taken place at one o’clock if the guy who went home early was in it?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Really? It would seem a natural thing to do.”

  “Are you telling me I should’ve?”

  “Certainly not. I’m just surprised that you didn’t. And you didn’t contact anybody else, call any other players, try to pin down the time of the hand?”

  “No, I didn’t. I brought it to you.”

  Richard frowned. “I see.”

  “You don’t seem happy.”

  “A discrepancy of this kind is a major kick in the ass.”

  “Well, don’t shoot the messenger. Aren’t you glad I found it, rather than getting surprised with it in court?”

  “I don’t know,” Richard said. “It’s the type of thing, you don’t ask, might never come up.”

  “Pardon me for doing my job.”

  Richard looked at me. “You’re too quick to take offense. You will pardon me if I point out you have a rather self-centered viewpoint. Try and understand what is happening here. This is not a case of evaluate Stanley Hastings and grade him on the performance of his job. This is a case of defending a man accused of murder. If you could keep your ego out of it, you’d be a lot better off.”

  I nearly gagged. This, from the most arrogant son of a bitch ever to pass the bar exam.

  “Now, then,” Richard said. “Since what you are clearly looking for is praise, what you’ve done right here is backing off from the situation. I don’t want you cross-checking stories, coordinating details, and getting accounts to conform. All I want you to do is gather the facts independently from each individual. And then lay them before me, so I can analyze them.”

  “You don’t want me to point out discrepancies?”

  “Don’t be a moron. It’s all right to tell me, I just don’t want you pointing it out to them.”

  “Well, that’s your major discrepancy. You can do with it as you choose.”

  “Is that the only one?”

  “It’s not the only discrepancy. But it’s the only one that jumps out and bites you.”

  “Uh-huh. And, aside from that, what’s your general impression?”

  “Of the alibi?”

  “Right.”

  “Holds up pretty well. I would say the DA’d be hard pressed to make a case. Unless, of course, she was killed some time after two o’clock.”

  “That’s not a consideration,” Richard said.

  I looked at him in surprise. “You know she wasn’t?”

  “No. But if she was, all the work you’ve done is useless. So for the point of this discussion, we’re assuming she wasn’t. Now, making that assumption, you’re telling me Anson’s in the clear?”

  “It would appear so. We have six independent witnesses. Well, five, actually, until two o’clock. The sixth only goes till midnight.”

  “Fine,” Richard said. “Let’s go over them now. I want to know what they said, plus your general impression of them and how you think they’d do on the stand.”

  “You haven’t talked to any of them?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re going to, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You’re not going to talk to your witnesses before you put them on the stand?”

  “Not if I don’t have to. I may have to straighten out this time element, but that’s it.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “I don’t want a bunch of stories that sound like they’re rehearsed. So I don’t want to talk to ’em. Fortunately, I don’t need to. Because I have you. Okay, so give me what you got.”

  I opened my notebook. “Okay, first up is Sam Kestin. He ran the game. Or, rather, hosted it. He’s a bank executive and looks it.”

  Richard raised his eyebrows.

  I put up my hand. “Sorry. That’s a totally biased viewpoint.”

  “Not at all,” Richard said. “That’s the type of observation I want. I’m just surprised to hear you come up with it. Go on.”

  “Well, in my humble, biased opinion, the man looks well fed, prosperous, and smug. We’ve already been over the major discrepancy in his testimony. Aside from putting the big high/low hand at one o’clock, his story conforms nicely with all the others. Anson Carbinder got there between eight and eight-thirty and didn’t leave until the game broke up at two.

  “In terms of the big hand, he remembers it particularly because he had a nine low and could have won half the pot, but chose to go high with a three of a kind.”

  “Okay,” Richard said. “Explain to me about this hand.”

  “You don’t play poker?”

  “I play poker.” Richard said. “I don’t play this high/low shit. I don’t consider that poker. So why don’t you fill me in?”

  I gave Richard a rundown of the nuances of high/low poker.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me be sure I understand this. The high hand, no problem, it’s the same as straight poker. But the low hand is the worst hand you can get?”

  “More or less.”

  “What do you mean, more or less?”

  “Well, ace counts low.”

  “So?”

  “So a hand with an ace in it can be lower than a hand without an ace in it. Even though, if you were going high, the hand with the ace would be the higher hand.”

  “But aside from that?”

  “Aside from that, you would be correct if they were playing sixty-four low.”

  “You just lost me.”

  “Okay, there’s two ways to play high/low. One, straights and flushes are only high hands, or, two, straights and flushes can also go low.”

  “What’s that got to do with sixty-four?”

  “If a straight can’t go low, then the best low you can get is six, four, three, two, one. It’s called a sixty-four low. If a straight can go low, then the best low is five, four, three, two, one. It’s called a fifty-four low. It’s sometimes called a wheel, because it can go both ways, as a low and as a straight.”

  “Uh-huh,” Richard said. “And in this case?”

  “They were playing straights and flus
hes swing.”

  “Swing?” Richard said. “You’ll pardon me, but I have a law degree, and I’m having trouble following this.”

  “It’s not you,” I said. “I’ve played with people who can’t figure it out. Swing means go both ways. In other words, they were playing fifty-four low. So if you had a five, four, three, two, one, you could declare it as a low, declare it as a high, or declare it both ways.”

  “How do you declare?”

  “Actually, I didn’t ask, but usually it’s done with chips. After the last bet, everyone puts their fist in the middle of the table. Then you open your hand. If your hand’s empty, you’re going low. If you have a chip in your hand, you’re going high. If you have two chips in it, you’re going both ways.”

  “What if you go both ways?”

  “Then you have to win both ways. If you lose either way, you lose the whole thing.”

  “People play this for fun?”

  “Sure. I’ve played it myself.”

  Richard gave me a look that clearly conveyed that his opinion of me had just dropped another two notches.

  “Okay,” Richard said. “So the hand we’re talking about was seven-card stud, high/low, where the best low was a fifty-four, which means a straight can go high or low or both?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what did Anson have again?”

  “He had ace, two, three, four showing. So it looked like he had a low.”

  “Or a straight.”

  “Right. But if he had a straight, it would also be a perfect low. So he’d either go low or both ways.”

  Richard’s eyes were larger than I’d ever seen them. It was the first time I could recall him appearing to be not fully in control of the situation. “Okay,” he said. “And Sam Kestin? What did he have again?”

  “He had a nine low, and he also had three eights. He went high with the three eights, because nine low is not a very good low, and it looked like Anson would have it beaten. He was, incidentally, the only person at the table who had a legitimate low and who might have gone low on the hand.”

  “Is it at all strange that he didn’t?”

  “Not at all. As I say, nine’s a poor low to begin with and looking at Anson’s hand, there was almost no chance of it winning.”

  “So he went high with three eights and lost?”

  “Right.”

  “And there’s a lot of money in this pot, so he’d really remember, it would make a big impression?”

  “Right.”