Corpus Corpus by Harry Paul Jeffers Read Free Book Online

Gerald Chapman, America's first Public Enemy Number One? The late Jonathan Dodge's town house is a block from here."

    "But he wasn't murdered there, was he? That deed took place in an apartment on the Upper West Side and the body was dumped in Stone County. And even if Dodge had been killed here, if I could afford it I'd love to live in one of these houses and I wouldn't care if my next-door neighbor was an ax murderer."
    Standing on a curb as the traffic passed, Bogdanovic peered across Twenty-first Street at the hotel. "I stayed here once when I was in the academy. There'd been a blizzard and the whole damned city was shut down. I was living way out in Queens and drove in every day. I didn't even try digging that old heap of a car out. I think half my class was put up here. It's a very nice hotel. The place was full of Air France airline stewardesses that night, as I recall."

    "Vive la France," Goldstein said, stepping from the curb to the street. "Vive la difference!"

    Dominating the northwest corner of Twenty-first and Lexington Avenue, the Gramercy Park Hotel rose seventeen floors. Pushing through a revolving door, they entered a lobby that seemed far too small for the crowd. Behind a tree of microphones in the middle of the throng stood Dane and Janus.

    "Meet the press," Goldstein said grumpily. "The news media and celebrities, bees to the honeycomb."

    "In Janus's case," grumbled Bogdanovic, "it's more like a swarm of flies on a pile of manure."

    Frequently shouting over one another, the reporters acted as if the fame of those being questioned afforded those with press credentials hanging from cords around their necks the privilege of abandoning the courtesy of formality in addressing strangers for the familiarity of first names. She was neither Miss Dane nor the politically correct Ms. Dane, but Maggie. The man in fringed buckskin jacket, clutching an unlit long black cigar and towering over her, was not Mr. Janus, or even Theodore, but Theo.

    "Maggie, how does it feel now that you're as famous as the man who used to be your boss?"

    "Hopeful that it won't last."

    "Theo, how did you feel about Maggie as your adversary?" "Proud."

    "How would you have felt if Maggie had won?"

    "I never doubted for a moment that she'd lose. That's not a criticism of Maggie. She did the best she could with what she had to work with."

    "Meaning?"

    "A prosecutor plays the hand that's dealt. Maggie was given losing cards from the start. Evidence the police had was garbage. Their witnesses were ineptitude incarnate. It is a tribute to her skills that she almost turned a sow's ear into a silk purse."

    "Speaking of purses, some observers say that it was only because your client had money to hire you that he got off."

    "My client got off, to use your term, because the people's case was riddled from the beginning with reasonable doubt."

    "Maggie, are you appealing?"

    Janus blared, "Just look at her! That face! The flaming red hair! Those smiling green Irish eyes. Is she appealing? Why, the evidence speaks for itself."
    "Maggie, are you appealing the verdict? Might there be a new trial somewhere down the road?"

    Standing at the rear of the crowd, Goldstein grunted. "What an idiotic question."

    "The people get no second bite of the apple," Dane replied. "Appeals can only be made by the defense. Unless there has been a mistrial, the constitutional provision against double jeopardy prohibits the state from holding a second trial."

    "Even if new evidence turns up?"

    "Mr. Janus's client could confess and it wouldn't matter. He cannot be tried again on the same charge." 

    "Isn't that unfair to the people?"

    "We Irish have a saying. Life is unfair," Dane said as a TV news cameraman moved to capture her and Janus from behind with the crowd of reporters arrayed before them.

    "There's a rumor out in L.A.," said a woman representing a supermarket tabloid, "that you're so disgusted with how the case ended that you are thinking about