The Attorney

by Steve Martini

  “Who’s this mutual acquaintance?” she asks.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  She’s clearly interested, racking her brain, trying to figure who would know the intimate details of her life, or for that matter care enough to tell some stranger.

  “What do you want?”

  “As I said, to talk. Just a little help.”

  Her gaze comes up, her expression suddenly filled with an afterthought.

  “Stop. Are you wearing a wire?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a simple question. Are you wired?”

  “Why would I be wired?”

  “Three little letters,” she says. “FBI. You don’t mind if I look?”

  She doesn’t wait for a reply, but comes around the counter and starts to feel me up, around the waist in the cleft at the center of my back, and at the belt line. She is still holding the needle-sharp letter opener in her hand.

  She steps away, wearing a look of suspicion, wary eyes.

  “You’re clean.” She says it as if I don’t know this. Like some aliens might have planted a bug on my body without my knowledge. Suade obviously lives in a world of her own invention.

  “The fibbies would love to bust me,” she says. “They park out front. Watch me with field glasses. Try to read my lips.”

  I’m wondering if she has a rich fantasy life, or if the feds really are onto her.

  “I’m not working for the FBI. My sole concern is a little girl. At the present time I think she’s in danger. I think you can help and I think once you hear all the facts you will want to.”

  She looks at me as if this is nine-to-five work. Another hour, another child to save. It’s a story that puts me squarely in the fold of followers.

  “You have a client?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  The first problem.

  I’m saved by the tap of metal on the glass door behind her. I see some guy standing there, a file of paper under his arm. He’s looking intently at Suade, tapping on the glass with his keys.

  “What do you want?” She doesn’t turn but shouts at him through the closed door. Hers is a voice with multiple personalities. This one is a candidate for exorcism.

  “I need some copies.” Muted voice from outside.

  “Try Kinko’s.”

  “Just take a minute,” he says.

  “How do you know how long it’ll take? Machine’s not warmed up. Read the sign. We’re closed.”

  He looks at the closed sign, and the hours posted next to it on the door. “It’s after nine,” he says.

  “Excuse me.” She turns around, brim of her hat like a cutting edge. “What is this? Nobody can read.” She’s still holding the letter opener with its tip like a stiletto. “Maybe if I stick this up your ass, you’ll get the point,” she says.

  By the time she gets to the door, the guy’s already backing up, staring at her wide-eyed, wondering if somehow he’s wandered through the portal to hell.

  She turns the lock on the door. In less than an hour, she’s run one man down on the street and now she’s threatening to stab another. Discretion tells me I should end my conversation while I’m ahead.

  “No need to get abusive, lady. All I wanted was some papers copied.”

  “You think this is abuse?” she says. “You want abuse? I’ll show you abuse.”

  The guy’s staring at the needle-sharp point. By the time the door is open, he’s out in the middle of the sidewalk, pedaling in reverse like some back judge in a football game.

  Suade picks up a newspaper that’s in front of the door and throws it at him, classifieds flying in the breeze.

  He turns and starts to run.

  “Like I said, try Kinko’s,” she says.

  “Well, the hell with you.” He tries to reclaim a little pride as he scurries down the street.

  “Yeah, right. Another hero,” she says and steps back through the door. Almost in the same breath: “You say your client’s child is in danger.”

  “Yes. I think that’s safe to say.”

  “This child. Boy? Girl? How old?”

  “A girl. Eight. My biggest problem is I’ve got to find her.”

  “What are you talking about, find her? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who’s the mother?”

  “The mother’s got some problems.”

  “Who doesn’t,” she says.

  “She has a serious criminal record.”

  “Is that how you came to represent her?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Listen. I don’t have time for twenty questions,” says Suade. “Why don’t you just tell me your story so we can cut to the chase.”

  “I don’t represent the mother,” I tell her.

  This stops her in her tracks. “Don’t tell me. You represent the father?”

  “No.”

  An instant of relief.

  “The grandfather,” I say.

  She looks at me and laughs. I can’t tell if I’m about to get the point.

  “I knew it. Have you got a subpoena? If so, hand it here and get out,” she says.

  “I don’t serve subpoenas. I have a process server who does that.”

  “Fine, then just get out. Or would you like me to call the cops?”

  “No need for that. What are you afraid of?”

  “Not you,” she says. She’s reaching for her purse, pulling it closer.

  “Fine. I just want to talk. Easier here than in a courtroom.”

  “For who? Not for me,” she says. She’s giving me a look I’ve seen in barrooms from guys with broken bottles in their hands, offering the business end to somebody else.

  “There’s no reason for hostility,” I tell her.

  But the look in her eyes tells me that’s my opinion. Some of us get off on it.

  “I have a client. . . .”

  “Good for you.”

  “His only interest is in finding his granddaughter.”

  She doesn’t say a word and is no longer looking at me. She’s back to her envelopes.

  “For some strange reason, he thinks you might know where she is.”

  Suade is a stone idol of contempt, an expression that says if I had anything, I’d be here with the sheriff and a summons.

  “He’s led to this belief by the fact that you met with him once. At his home. In the presence of his daughter and granddaughter. That you made certain statements, and that both his daughter and granddaughter disappeared shortly after that meeting.”

  “Life is just a simmering pot of coincidences,” she says. “Tell me. Did your client see me take this child?”

  “What he saw or didn’t see is for a court of law. I was hoping that could be avoided.”

  “I’ll bet you were. Now for me, I love going to court,” she says. “All that pomp and ceremony. All that lying. Proof by the preponderence of perjury. Lawyers tripping over their tongues. Notice how they can always come up with some excuse for why their clients did it or didn’t do it. Or why it doesn’t matter even if they did do it. Should I tell you how many times I’ve been to court in the last year?”

  When I don’t ask, she volunteers.

  “So many times I’ve lost count. And no matter how many times I go, it always ends the same way. Like a movie you’ve seen too many times, with a bad ending. You keep hoping for a happy one, but you never get it. They always get it wrong. That’s why I do what I do. If they knew what they were doing, if they cared, they wouldn’t be giving custody to child molesters, and abusive husbands. Of course that assumes they want to get it right.”

  “Have it your way,” I tell her. “But it’s g
oing to get very messy. My client is what you might call well-off. Deep pockets. And he’s willing to spare no expense to make your life hell if you want to force the issue.”

  “Hell. He’s going to make my life hell!” Her eyes light up like two glowing coals. “You tell your client I’ve been there and back and got the burns to prove it. Trust me, he couldn’t find the place with a map and a flashlight if all the road signs pointed up his ass and he had the devil as a guide. But you tell him, he screws with me, and I’ll be happy to show him the way.”

  Then he would indeed have the devil as a guide, I am thinking.

  “You can leave now,” she says. “And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” She reaches for her purse and buries her hand deep inside.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Do I look like I’m threatening you?”

  “I don’t know.” Which is the way she wants it.

  Then curiosity gets the better. “You never told me your client’s name?”

  “His granddaughter’s name is Amanda.”

  “That doesn’t help me.” Like she doesn’t keep track of the kids. They’re incidental to the process, the war between Zolanda and American justice.

  “Jonah Hale is my client.”

  She lights up like a lantern. “Mr. Lotto. Why didn’t you say so?” The hand comes out of the bag. The purse is back under the counter. She’s suddenly all smiles. The fact that she takes such pleasure in this information has me worried.

  “I was just getting ready to do something special for him,” she says. “I hope he likes publicity.”

  I don’t bite.

  She drops behind the counter like a jack-in-the-box on the rebound. I’m wondering if she’s going back into her purse. Visions of me running for the door and getting shot in the ass. But instead she’s talking to herself all jovial, fussing with boxes and papers as I hear them clunking and shuffling under the counter.

  “Where did I put that? Just had it,” she says. “Damn. Oh here it is.” She emerges from the other side holding a letter box, heavy with papers.

  “Copied these just yesterday,” she says. “I was gonna wait and surprise him tomorrow. But since you came all this way, why wait?” She hands me one of the packets, two pages stapled together.

  In inch-high letters across the top the words—PRESS RELEASE—so everybody knows what it is. CONTACT: ZOLANDA SUADE, and her phone number.

  Vanishing Victims, a self-help organization for abused women and their children, today announced that it is bringing charges of child molestation and rape against a man who won one of the largest payouts in the history of the state lottery.

  “I want the taxpayers to know what they’re supporting,” she says.

  I continue reading:

  Jonah S. Hale, a resident of the wealthy seaside community of Del Mar in San Diego County, has been charged by the organization with the forcible rape of his daughter, Jessica. On at least three separate occasions, Hale is alleged to have sexually assaulted his daughter, who at the time was a minor. In addition, Hale is charged with having molested his granddaughter, a minor who had been placed in his care under a formal custody order entered by the San Diego Superior Court more than a year ago. The child’s name is being withheld.

  In her all-knowing arrogance Suade has written it not in the style of a press release but with the tone of a news story, an accomplished fact, as if Vanishing Victims were a public agency and her libel of Jonah were a grand jury indictment.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Hardly,” she says.

  “What evidence have you got?”

  “Jessica’s testimony in a sworn affidavit.”

  “A pack of lies from a jealous and vindictive daughter,” I tell her. “You know she tried to get money from her father and that he turned her down. Jessica’s engaged in extortion and now you’re helping her.”

  “What I would expect from you,” she says. “A mouthpiece for the male establishment. How much is your client paying you?”

  “And I could call you a self-appointed vigilante. We can call each other names, but it doesn’t address the issue of evidence.”

  “It’s the truth,” says Suade. She raises one hand as if in a mock oath. “Though I wouldn’t expect someone like you to believe it. Read on. It gets better,” she says.

  “Besides the rantings of a convicted felon, a drug addict, what else have you got?”

  “Former drug addict,” she says. “She’s rehabilitated herself.”

  “She tell you that? Fine, for the moment, former drug addict who wants money. Did she tell you that she offered to leave Amanda with her grandparents if they paid her enough?”

  Suade doesn’t answer, but her eyes don’t lie.

  “She didn’t, did she?”

  “That’s an easy thing to say.”

  “Just like allegations of rape and child molestation. Put it this way, I’d believe Jonah and Mary Hale before I believed their daughter on virtually any subject.”

  “I know the woman’s background,” she says. “I’ll tell you what else I know. I know that agencies in this county have been carrying water and providing cover for people like Jonah Hale for years. Men of influence with money,” she says. “The old boys’ club.”

  “You don’t know anything about Jonah Hale other than the fact that he won the lottery and that his daughter likes to tell lies.”

  “I know that the authorities wouldn’t have listened to Jessica Hale if she’d gone to the cops with a videotape of the evidence. Well, it’s all going to come out now. Read it,” she says. “Go ahead.”

  I look down at the sheet again.

  “No, not there,” she says. “The next page.” She rips it from my hand and flips the sheet over. “There. Read right there.” The pressure of her fingernail on the paper actually leaves an impression under the words.

  Charges against Hale were known to county officials and a number of public agencies, including the Department of Children’s Protective Services, which did nothing in response. Instead, they assisted Hale in his attempts to obtain formal custody of the child in question. The failure to act on the part of the county is part of a much larger and more serious scandal, involving public corruption and criminal wrongdoing on the part of county officials. These officials will be named and further details concerning their activities will be disclosed during a press conference on Wednesday morning, April 19th, at 9:30 A.M. on the steps of the Hall of Justice.

  “Tell me you didn’t know that she brought these charges to the cops eight months ago, to Children’s Protective Services, to that Judas, McKay.”

  Suade dropping Susan’s name stops me cold. For a moment I wonder if she knows about Susan and me. She couldn’t.

  “That pack of whores,” she says. “They’re in the pocket of people like your client. They’re worse than worthless. They lead people to think that something’s being done when it’s not. You can read all about it in the morning papers. After the news conference. Two days,” she says. “Read it and weep.”

  This is the first I am hearing that Jessica made charges against Jonah, that is, if Suade’s telling the truth. I am not surprised that the cops didn’t do anything. No doubt if Jessica went to them, they took one look at her record, made a few inquiries, and without any evidence closed the matter. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure that a woman right out of prison, locked in a death struggle over the custody of her daughter, might say anything that came into her head in order to gain an edge. But if she made the charges, I’m wondering why Jonah didn’t tell me.

  “Jessica Hale is a drug addict with the basest of motives to lie,” I tell Suade. “All she’s ever wanted from her parents is money. That’s what this is all about.”

  “Well, it looks like he’s found other r
ecipients for that,” she says.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the old man sprinkling money in all the right places, to sweeten the judgment of judges, to have cops look the other way. That is the way it’s done.”

  “Jessica told you this?”

  “She didn’t have to. I know how the system works, how they discard the rules when it suits their purposes. And I have evidence,” she says. “You can tell them that.”

  “Tell who what?”

  “Read about it,” she says. “In the paper.”

  I look back at the press release as if there is something I’ve missed.

  “No, not there,” she says. “The morning papers. What do you think, I’m going to put it all in the press release? Turn it over to some stupid reporters to blow by asking all the wrong questions? I have documents to prove it. All of it,” she says.

  “What? Documents to prove that Jonah Hale molested his granddaughter? That’s not something anyone would reduce to writing unless he were demented.”

  “Never mind,” she says, as if we are talking on two different levels.

  “Oh, I do mind. Jonah Hale has nothing to do with any of this. If you’re engaged in a war with the county, that’s between you and them. Don’t drag an innocent man into it.”

  “Innocent man!” she says. “You can take that copy of the release to your innocent man and watch him sweat.” She points to the press release. “And tell him to wear his asbestos galoshes. Cuz he’s about to step in it.”

  I give her a quizzical look.

  “Hell,” she says. “Now get out.” She dismisses me with a flick of the back of her hand. “I have work to do. Envelopes to address.”

  I am feeling heat out to the tips of my ears, anger that I cannot repress.

  She looks up. I’m still there, beet red. “Go,” she says. “Get out. And close the door.” She turns her back on me and disappears into the shadows at the back of the shop. I look for the box of releases on the counter. She has taken them with her.