Free Hostile Witness by William Lashner Page A

expressed what I was feeling far better than I could have then.” He gazed into his wife’s eyes and recited, “‘Twice or thrice I have loved thee, before I knew thy face or name.’”
    Mrs. Moore took another drink from her glass.
    “What happened to the boy with the sweaters?” I asked. Chuckie Lamb, who was in the middle of a champagne gulp, coughed the bubbles loudly out his nose and fumbled for a napkin.
    “Richard Simpson,” said Mrs. Moore. “Sweet Richard Simpson. He was such a nice boy. Refined.”
    “He stopped coming around after we started together,” said Moore, turning to greet a stooped, grayed man who passed by our table. “Judge,” he said loudly to the man.
    “You broke his jaw,” said Renee.
    “Judge Westcock,” said Moore, reaching out to shake the old man’s hand. “You’re looking better than ever, you fox.” The judge’s palm pressed into the back of a pretty young woman as he spoke warmly with Moore, the conversation at our table stopping cold until Moore was free again to lead it. Every few minutes someone of import stopped by to shake the councilman’s hand and whisper in his ear, and during these interludes we waited until Moore could once again turn his attention back to the table. I knew the names of many of the people who came, basketball players and politicians and local names from every stratum. It was as if this table at DiLullo’s was the councilman’s after-hours office, where he could always be reached and deals always be cut.
    “Funny,” said Chuckie after the judge left. “That didn’t look like Mrs. Westcock.”
    “She’s about fifty pounds lighter and fifty years younger than Mrs. Westcock,” said Jimmy Moore, laughing.
    “I’m tired,” said Mrs. Moore.
    Moore lifted the champagne bottle out of its silver bucket and poured what was left into Mrs. Moore’s glass. “That will perk you up, it always does. Chuckie, get another bottle.”
    Chuckie Lamb pressed his lips together and said, “Yes, Councilman,” before ducking away from the table to find a waiter. This would be our fourth bottle, and though the plan had been to grab a quick dinner before heading back to join the Talbott, Kittredge team at work, the champagne had successfully numbed our desire to deal with the piles of paper waiting for us at Prescott’s office.
    “What kind of name is Carl?” asked Moore, turning his attention at me.
    “My family is Jewish,” I said.
    “So you’re a Jew,” he said in a voice so loud I shrunk from it. He might as well have been a druggist asking for the whole store to hear whether I wanted ribbed or lubricated.
    “I’m sort of nothing, but my family is Jewish.”
    “It’s good we have some diversity now. Prescott’s a fine lawyer but WASPs have such thin blood. It’s that northern heritage, all those millennia shivering atop Scandinavian glaciers. There’s no passion bubbling through his veins, just cool calculation. But the Jews are a Semitic people, your blood was thickened in the heat of the Egyptian desert and the centuries settling beside the Mediterranean.”
    “My grandfather came over from Russia,” I said.
    “You’ll provide the passion in our defense,” said Moore.
    Chuckie Lamb slipped back into his seat and said, “Just don’t spill all that passion until after the trial.”
    “Victor will do just fine,” said Chet Concannon.
    “No doubt,” said Prescott.
    “I’m tired,” said Mrs. Moore, draining what was left of her champagne. “Renee and I would like to go home.”
    “Why are we leaving so soon?” asked Renee.
    The waiter just then brought another bottle of champagne and loosed the cork at the table. It shot into the napkin he held with a festive smack and bright white lather streamed down the bottle’s sides.
    “The car will take you home,” said Moore. Concannon stood as the women readied to leave. Prescott and I joined him.
    The waiter had poured a small amount of the champagne into Moore’s glass and