The Judge

by Steve Martini

  There is some taking of stock here, as we size each other up across a million miles of marble. The rose-hued surface of his desk is as barren and cold as the moons of Jupiter. There is not an item on it but for Kline’s folded hands, an ominous image.

  His office has a sterile quality about it: two corner walls of windows without any coverings, their interior counterparts stark white and decorated by a single small mural, an abstract akin to a Rorschach blotch in color.

  “You are a friend of Lenore Goya,” he says. There is no accusation in his words, merely a statement of fact.

  “Lenore and I have known each other for a while,” I tell him.

  “You should take care not to get drawn into a case out of spite,” he says. “Particularly someone else’s.”

  I question him with my eyes.

  “It’s no secret that Lenore harbors ill will toward me. Perhaps this is her motivation for representing Acosta?” There is a little uptilt to the end of this sentence, so that it is an open question.

  “I hadn’t heard.” Dissembling is a lie only if the other party is deceived. Kline and I both know the truth. He smiles, tight-lipped and straight, a pained expression as if he’d hoped this opening might be more fortuitous, something built on candor.

  “Malice can lead one astray,” he says. “To take a case for the wrong reasons would be a mistake.”

  “Sort of like mixing business and pleasure?” I say.

  The thought is not lost on him, though he does not smile. The original tight-ass.

  “Are you of record in the case?” he asks me.

  Lenore made the appearance for arraignment with Acosta, and a quick pitch for bail, which was summarily denied. I tell him this.

  “Then you might wish to reconsider your role in this matter.”

  “Whether it’s me or someone else, the judge is likely to obtain vigorous representation,” I tell him. “It’s that kind of case.”

  “What kind?”

  “High profile,” I say. The media circus is already convening. There has been talk of television coverage. A judge charged with first-degree murder does not occur every day.

  He mulls over the term “high profile.” A judicious look. “I suppose. Though it’s a shame.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The sort of stuff that seems to rivet public attention these days.”

  “What? Sexual scandal and a fallen judge?” I say.

  “Precisely.” Life among the tabloids. He is offended.

  “Age-old story,” I tell him.

  He gives me a look.

  “David and Bathsheba,” I say.

  “Armando Acosta is not exactly a man of biblical proportions,” he tells me.

  Finally, a point on which we agree.

  “This is all very good,” he says. “But you asked for this meeting. I assume you have some purpose?”

  “Bail,” I tell him. “I thought perhaps we could work out an accommodation. Avoid a contentious argument in court.”

  I can tell by his look he is not surprised. Still he gives me all the arguments.

  “It’s a capital offense, Counselor. Special circumstances. The murder of a witness in another criminal case,” he says.

  “The court has discretion,” I tell him.

  “And has chosen not to exercise it.”

  “You mean the arraignment?”

  He nods.

  “A summary argument,” I tell him. “There was no real evidence presented.”

  He spins in his chair, and takes a book off the credenza from a stack neatly lined between two bookends behind him. A quick glance in the index, and he pages with one thumb.

  “I quote,” he says. “Penal Code, Section twelve seventy point five: A defendant charged with a capital offense punishable by death cannot be admitted to bail when the proof of his guilt is evident or the presumption of guilt is great.” He slaps the book closed.

  “It’s not,” I tell him.

  “How do you know until you’ve seen the evidence?” he says.

  He has me on that. The fruits of our first motions for discovery have been received only this morning and are sitting on my desk awaiting review.

  “Irrespective of your feelings toward Mr. Acosta, he is a man with considerable contacts in the community, no evidence of flight, even with the swirling rumors in the press. He has a family, a reputation . . .”

  “Yes. I give you his reputation,” says Kline. Touché.

  “You don’t really think he’s going to run?” I say.

  “It’s been known to happen. But let’s set all of that aside for the moment, my feelings about your client, whether the court would even accept an argument for bail even if we did acquiesce. Let’s set all of that aside. Just for the moment,” he says.

  There is something coming. The odor of sinister thoughts. He studies me like an insect under glass.

  “You talked a moment ago,” he says, “about an accommodation.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. You said perhaps we could come to some accommodations.” His eyes get round and inquisitive.

  “A manner of speech,” I tell him.

  “Ah. Then you’re not offering anything in return?”

  We are down to it. Ali Baba’s nickel and dime, Coleman Kline’s Casbah of justice.

  “Just checking. Wanted to make sure I understood,” he says.

  “What can we offer? Certainly he’s not going to cop a plea.”

  He shakes his head, makes gestures with his palms open and down low, just off the surface of the desk, evidence that this is the farthest thought from his mind.

  “Still.” He speaks before his hands have even hit the desk. “Your client has not been very cooperative,” says Kline. “He did refuse to talk to the police when they tried to interview him.”

  “Well. We apologize for the insult,” I tell him. “But I’m sure the cops weren’t stunned by his silence.”

  “Perhaps not. But you’d think an innocent man would be anxious to clear himself as a suspect.”

  “Oh. So you think he can be cleared?”

  “He might have been if he’d talked to us. How can we know all the facts when your man won’t cooperate?”

  “I hope you took pains to explain that to the grand jury,” I tell him.

  This draws his eyes into little slits. “It’s not I who is sitting here asking for bail,” he says.

  “Good point,” I tell him. “And what exactly was it, what kind of information did the police want that might have cleared my client?” I ask.

  He finally eases back in his chair, the fingers of both hands steepled under his chin.

  “For starters,” he says, “information as to where he was at the time that Brittany Hall was killed.”

  He wants to know if we have an alibi. To tell him that we do not would be to give aid and comfort. It is the one thing he cannot get in discovery, anything that is testimonial from our client. Kline has more brass than I would have credited.

  “To know that,” I tell him, “we’d have to know the exact time of death.”

  “Ah,” he says, smiling. “There’s the rub,” he says.

  “How so?”

  “For the moment we are able to fix that only within broad parameters.”

  “How broad?” I say.

  “Within a six-hour period.”

  “That’s not broad,” I tell him. “That’s the cosmos.”

  “We’re working on it,” he tells me.

  I’ll bet. Unless Hall was seen alive by a witness or spoke to someone within a short period before her body was discovered, time of death is a matter of conjecture upon which medical evidence is a vast swearing contest, their experts versus ours.

&nb
sp; “Still,” he says, “I would assume that if you had an ironclad alibi you would have given it to us by now?”

  This is a fair assumption, but he would rather be certain.

  “As the first syllable suggests,” I tell him, “assumptions have a funny way of biting the holder in the ass.”

  Absent an alibi, the next best ploy is to keep Kline guessing. Investigators who are trying to exclude an alibi don’t have time to do other damage.

  “It seems there is no basis for accommodation,” he says. There is no anger here, just a statement of brutal fact.

  “A capital case, we must assume your client to be a flight risk. Certainly a risk to public safety,” he says. “I could not in good conscience agree to bail.”

  I start to talk, but he cuts me off.

  “It’s been nice,” he tells me. He’s on his feet, walking me to the door.

  “You really should reconsider your position in the case,” he says. “At least inform yourself as to Ms. Goya’s motives.”

  Suddenly I find his hand inside of mine, bidding me farewell, smoother than I could have imagined. His office door closes and actually hits me in the ass. I am left with the certain assessment that Coleman Kline is not the lawyer simpleton I’d been led to expect.

  “The man is angry because his ego has gotten him in over his head,” she says. This is Lenore’s answer to Kline’s assertion of a vendetta.

  Tonight she stands in the doorway to my kitchen, the tips of her thick dark hair grazing her shoulders, the whites of her eyes flashing in contrast to her tawny complexion. Her hands are on her hips. Lenore cuts a formidable and enticing figure when she is angry.

  “Think about it,” she says. “He was willing to take on Acosta on the misdemeanor because it was low risk, high theater,” she says. “A judge on the hook. Now he has to do the murder case or lose face in the office.”

  Lenore tells me that at least three of Kline’s senior deputies, people who were there before the change of regime, are entertaining thoughts of challenging him in the next election. These are civil servants whose job protection carries more armor than a medieval knight. Backing away on the murder case, handing it to subordinates to try, would be an admission by Kline that he is not up to the job.

  She retreats far enough into the kitchen to grab the pot of coffee off the counter and is back in the dining room offering refills.

  “Besides,” she says, “Kline would say anything to undercut me.”

  None of this, of course, answers the charge that her representation of Acosta is motivated by all the wrong instincts. Acosta’s case is taking on all the signs of a feudal bloodletting.

  Tonight we are assembled around the table in my dining room, a working dinner which we have just finished, Lenore, Harry, and I. We are sampling liqueurs with coffee. Harry wants to know if he gets paid even if he can’t remember details tomorrow. He has given up the coffee and is now alternating straight shots of creme de menthe and Kahlúa from his cup.

  Sarah is playing with Lenore’s two daughters, ages eleven and ten, older girls whom she idolizes. She has reached the age at which her entire lexicon is reduced to a single word: “Cool.” The kids have disappeared into Sarah’s upstairs bedroom as if they had died and gone to heaven, the only evidence of their existence the occasional thumping of feet and laughter overhead.

  Since my wife, Nikki, died of cancer nearly two years ago I have tried to spend as much time as possible with Sarah, dividing my life between my daughter and that jealous mistress that is the law. It has not been easy. There have been crying jags and shouting, not all of these emanating from Sarah.

  As a father in Nikki’s parental wake it was always easy to be the good cop. Nikki was the law under our roof. She loved our daughter very much. It was out of that love that she held to standards while I became the perennial soft touch. Now I must wear both hats, partier and disciplinarian, and Sarah’s take on the latter is that her mother would always and invariably have cut more slack. I have a whole new respect for single parents and the forces that play on them.

  Before us on the dining table are stacks of manila folders, legal files with labels and burgeoning stacks of paper. Harry has spent the afternoon organizing and digesting the first bits of discovery from Acosta’s case, mostly police reports and preliminary notes from their investigation. The first thing I notice is that some of these are authored by another client, Tony Arguillo.

  “Worried about a conflict?” says Harry.

  It is an issue, a cardinal rule in the law that an attorney may not represent two clients with adverse interests. The fear here is that Tony, should he become a witness against Acosta, might be victimized on the stand by me should I possess confidential information derived in my role as Tony’s lawyer: something to discredit him on the stand, knowledge of a crime or other misdeed. It is one reason that criminal lawyers do not make a habit of representing peace officers.

  “Has Tony told you anything that might compromise him?” says Lenore.

  “If he did I couldn’t tell you,” I say. In point of fact he has not. I am probably the only person in whom he has not confided.

  Lenore guesses that this is only a potential problem. “We can avoid it by finding other counsel for Tony. A substitution,” she says. “Besides, his part in the grand jury probe is over.”

  The fact that she knows he has testified is itself a violation of confidence.

  “Arguillo is not paying anything. Acosta is,” says Harry, ever the pragmatist. “Facts of life. I’ll draw up a consent for substitution of counsel. I know some schmuck who will take his case.” What Harry means is some other schmuck.

  “As long as we’re cleaning skirts,” I say, “what about yours?” I’m looking at Lenore.

  “What?” she says. “I didn’t represent Tony.”

  “No, but you talked to Hall.”

  “You mean the interview in the office?”

  “Right.”

  “She wasn’t a client.”

  “True,” I say. “But you were privy to information held by the state in its case against Acosta.”

  “That was prostitution. This is murder. Different case,” she says.

  “You don’t think Kline will tie the two together? It’s all motive,” I say. “The prostitution sting led to the murder. That’s the state’s motive.”

  “All the same, we’ll acquire everything they have in discovery. Where’s the harm?”

  “Except for attorney work product,” I tell her, “your own notes.”

  “There was nothing there of any substance. I was never privy to the state’s strategy in the case. You think Kline would have taken me into his confidence?”

  “You can be sure he’ll raise it.”

  “Yeah, along with the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. That doesn’t mean it’s relevant.”

  “Just a warning,” I tell her.

  “Worry about it when we get there,” she says. Lenore is not the kind to get ulcers borrowing future problems. Not like me.

  “So what have we got?” I ask Harry.

  He’s rummaging through papers, mostly his notes on a yellow legal pad.

  “Two crime scenes,” he says. “The alley where they found the body, and her apartment. That’s where they think the murder occurred. They dusted her place for prints. No report yet. Let’s hope the Coconut had the good taste to wear gloves,” says Harry.

  Lenore gives him a look, exasperated. The thought is well taken. If we’re going to take the man’s money, we should at least make a show of innocence.

  “Bad form,” says Harry.

  We move on.

  “Hair and fibers,” he says. “Hair is coarse and reddish brown. Not human, according to their report. It was found in the girl’s apartment, and on the blanket in which the victi
m was wrapped. Armando was probably shedding. Full moon,” says Harry.

  “Shit,” says Lenore.

  “There are children present,” he says.

  “I know. I’m looking at one of them.” Lenore fixes Harry with a steely gaze and moves the bottle of Kahlúa away from him. As she does this she has to lean over the table, and I catch Harry taking a peek.

  The association of Madriani, Hinds, and Goya may have some rough sailing ahead.

  “Maybe Hall owned a cat or a dog?” says Lenore.

  “Not according to the neighbors,” says Harry. “They’ve never seen an animal in the place.”

  “She was wrapped in a blanket?” I ask. Back to basics.

  “We’ll get to that,” he says. “Also some blue carpet fibers found on the blanket. Unknown origin.”

  “What color was the carpet in her apartment?” I am hoping that Lenore has the presence of mind not to answer this. Harry doesn’t know about our little jaunt to Hall’s apartment that night. We have treated this on a need-to-know basis. Harry doesn’t need to know.

  “Bzzzzz,” Harry. Sound effects like a quiz show, the problem with meetings outside the office over drinks and dinner.

  “The answer is mauve,” he says. “There’s no lab report yet, but my guess is the fibers are some cheap nylon. I think they’re assuming some trunk fur here,” says Harry. “From the perp’s vehicle.”

  “Do we know the color of the carpet in Acosta’s car?” asks Lenore. “The one they impounded.”

  Harry shakes his head.

  “Make a note to ask Acosta,” she says.

  “What am I, the fucking secretary?”

  Lenore reaches over and grabs the other bottle. Harry cops another peek, a man with a death wish. He must like what he sees. He makes the note and goes to the next item.

  “They also found a broken pair of reading glasses, bent frames. At the girl’s apartment,” he says. “Wire rims. Half frames. One lens was cracked, like maybe somebody stepped on it.”

  “Did Hall wear glasses?” I ask.

  The thought is piercing, that the killer dropped a pair of glasses.