The Attorney

by Steve Martini

  “Old lady inside sez she saw him. He run out this way. Cross the street. You wan I look for him?”

  “No.”

  Hulk slams the door and the car starts to ease its way out into traffic, a sharp left into the slow lane so that for a half second both taillights are visible, along with the license plate, green numbers on a white background. One of the states, I don’t know which one, but not from here. The plate is Mexican. I kill five minutes huddled in the shadows, praying they don’t come back.

  FIFTEEN

  * * *

  “Can you take Sarah for a while?” I’m talking to Susan on the phone, sweeping graphite dust off the surface of my desk with a sheet of paper, like shoveling black snow. “No, I can’t tell you why right now.”

  Floyd Avery is standing in the doorway to my office watching Harry as he wades through paper on the floor up to his knees, and steps around the splintered wood splayed all over the floor from one of the drawers of my credenza.

  “Trust me on this one. Right now it would be best if she wasn’t around the house for a few days. I’ll explain tonight. Can you pick her up at school? Great. I owe you one,” I tell her.

  She tells me I owe her more than one, then gives me a smooch of a kiss for a good-bye. I don’t return the gesture with Avery watching. Instead I just hang up.

  “Should at least tell the girl you love her,” he says. “Kiss like that.”

  I can only hope he didn’t hear her voice enough to recognize it.

  “Remind me not to hire your janitor,” he says. “Fortunately, it’s not my jurisdiction. But if you want my advice, I wouldn’t be touching things. Not if you want any chance of getting prints.”

  “They dusted already,” says Harry.

  Avery looks at one of the windowsills. “Thought it was ant shit,” he says.

  “Yeah, I suppose your guys would save that to use in law-office break-ins,” says Harry. “They didn’t bother doing the front door. Guess they figured that’s the way they came in, seeing as the wood’s splintered all around it.”

  “Probably figured you don’t get much off the bottom of a boot that kicks your door in,” says Avery.

  “All I know is it’s gonna take the cleaners a month to get all that black crap off the windows that were locked.” Harry picking through papers on the floor.

  “Missing anything?” asks Avery.

  “Yeah. We’re gonna give you an inventory,” says Harry. “Soon as we’re done counting up the missing confessions to murder, notes on current drug deals, and the list of who did JFK. Hell, you could just dip into the pile and close all the pending cases in your department.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” says Avery.

  “I’ll bet you wouldn’t. Man’s wading through our claim and he wants to get his pan in the water,” says Harry.

  “Your partner has a hair trigger,” Avery tells me.

  “What brings you this way?” I ask him.

  “I heard ’bout the break-in. Thought I’d come by. See what happened.”

  “What you thought is that it had something to do with Jonah Hale.”

  “Did it?”

  “You should learn to trust your instincts. If you’d followed them earlier, you would never have arrested Jonah for Suade’s murder.”

  “Other people callin’ those shots,” says Avery.

  “So you’re not committed to the case?”

  “Fortunately, I don’t have to lay odds. But I wouldn’t be feelin’ too comfortable if I was your client.”

  Harry’s still grumbling. “Only prints they’re gonna find are yours and mine,” he says.

  “We could get lucky. Nail one of your clients,” says Avery. “Maybe one who’s got a history of burglary. You should look at it as a horizon-building experience. You get to see things from the victim’s point of view.”

  Harry gives him the expressive equivalent of spit.

  “You got any ideas might narrow down who broke in? Or why?” says Avery.

  “Probably the same people who followed Paul from the jail last night.”

  Avery gives Harry a look, then says, “Bad people hang out there. Though most of ’em are inside.”

  “No, it wasn’t jail guards followed him,” says Harry. “Car full of Mexicans. At least the car had Mexican plates.”

  “What kinda car?”

  “Older-model Mercedes, SL. I think. You’d have to ask a German mechanic. Those things confuse me. Too many different letters.”

  “Maybe it was a disgruntled client,” says Avery. “You know. A felon with a consumer complaint.”

  “Nobody I know,” I tell him.

  “You tellin’ me all your campers are happy?”

  “I didn’t say that. But it wasn’t a client, present or former. Still, there may be a connection.”

  “What’s that?”

  “With Hale.”

  Now he perks up.

  “Not the father. The daughter,” I tell him.

  Avery’s in the doorway leaning against the jamb, wondering if he really wants to ask. “Why is it I smell the simmering aroma of a cooking defense?” he says. “I know I’m gonna regret it. But I’ll bite. What do these people following you have to do with Hale’s daughter?”

  “They’re looking for her.”

  “Everybody’s looking for her,” says Harry. “The woman’s a virtual map to buried bodies.”

  “She see her old man kill Suade?” says Avery.

  “Only if she was hallucinating,” I tell him.

  “Then we’re not looking for her,” he says.

  “Maybe you should be.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I think maybe she knows more about this thing with Suade than you or I.”

  “What exactly?”

  “Perhaps if I knew, my client wouldn’t be in jail.”

  “Did you get a look at these guys? The ones in the car with the Mexican plates?”

  I can’t be sure whether he believes these people exist or not.

  “Two of them.”

  “And?”

  “One of them had a stocky build. Mexican. Bottle-blond hair turned orange. Hired muscle. The driver had a mustache, dark hair.”

  “Why would they want the daughter?” He may not believe the story, but he’s hooked.

  “For the same reason the feds are beating the bushes as we speak. You should talk to them,” I say.

  “And which feds might these be?” He takes his notebook out, waiting for a name.

  “Bob.”

  He writes it down. Looks up.

  “His friend’s name’s Jack.”

  “These people saving space on their business cards?”

  “That’s all they gave me. But I would check with DEA.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Your client running drugs?”

  “No. But I couldn’t give the same testimonial for his daughter.”

  “I know she has a record. Checked it out,” says Avery. “But even if all of what you’re tellin’ me is true, you got a problem,” says Avery. “What’s it have to do with Suade’s murder?”

  “These people are desperate to find Jonah’s daughter; they might go visit Suade.”

  “Might. Coulda. Maybe. Interesting theory,” he says, “but where’s the evidence? Let me guess. The man, this Ontaveroz, he wants to whack her because she knows all about his business.”

  “How’d you know that?” says Harry.

  “Saw it on TV. Old rerun of Ironside,” says Avery. “What I can’t figure is why these people come looking in your office to find Hale’s daughter.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they think we know where she is.”

  “Maybe Ontaveroz doesn’t know she and her
father are on the outs,” says Harry. “They think Jonah knows where the girl is, he might share that with his lawyers.”

  “Does he? Know where she is?”

  “That’s why he hired us,” I tell him. “To find her.”

  “Why hire a lawyer to find somebody?”

  “Same question we asked him. He wanted to put the legal squeeze on Suade.”

  “He found another way of doing that,” says Avery.

  “Why kill her if he wanted to find his daughter? Doesn’t make any sense you kill your only source of information,” says Harry. “Your man Ryan’s a little obtuse if he hasn’t seen that.”

  “Maybe Hale went to see her, when he got there just lost it,” says Avery. “Or maybe he wasn’t as interested in finding his daughter as he was in keeping Suade quiet. She was making a lotta noise about incest.”

  “He had no reason to talk to her. That’s why he hired me.”

  “Yeah. But you didn’t fare too well,” says Avery. “By the way, you left your prints in Suade’s office.”

  “I was wondering when you were going to get around to that.”

  “We knew, the day after the murder, that you were there,” says Avery. “Brower told us. Why didn’t you mention it?”

  “I knew sooner or later he’d get around to it, or you’d figure it out.”

  “What did you talk about? You and Suade.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Did she know where the daughter and the kid are?”

  “If she did, she wasn’t telling me.”

  “I suppose that’s when you got your glimpse of Suade’s press release. Did she give you a copy, or did you steal it?”

  When I don’t answer, he says, “We know you had it. We know you shared it with Hale in your office. Brower told us. Next time you hold a meeting with one of your clients, you’ll have to remember to keep all the cops out.”

  “That’s before somebody did Suade.”

  “Somebody? I’m guessing she gave you the release,” he says. “Strikes me as the kind might get off twisting a knife into Hale. Show it to him and let him stew for a day, knowing he couldn’t do a thing to stop it. ’Course, in retrospect, it was a mistake. Some might call it fatal. Excuse the pun,” says Avery. “Still you shouldn’t blame yourself, and you oughta thank Brower. You’d be a suspect in a murder case, except he puts you at the scene earlier in the day, before other people saw her alive.”

  “Man’s a prince,” I tell him.

  “And it’s a real interesting concept,” says Avery. He’s turning for the door now. “This Mexican drug dealer. Just one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How you gonna prove he even knew about Suade?”

  SIXTEEN

  * * *

  It’s the biggest problem we have, and the only available defense other than the bald denial that Jonah did it—the information from seemingly reliable sources that the drug dealer Ontaveroz had been looking for Jessica.

  This morning Harry and I are in court. Over our objections, Jonah has waived his right to a preliminary hearing. This allows the state to go to trial by way of a grand jury indictment.

  Still Jonah is adamant. He is insisting on his right to a speedy trial, to take his chances.

  We’ve warned him that he may not like the result. What is driving him is the obsession to be out of jail, so that he can look for Amanda. He doesn’t have a clue as to where he would start, but for some reason, in his mind, the four walls of his cell are now keeping him from Mandy. To make things worse, the judge has denied a rehearing on bail. Harry and I are beginning to feel like oranges in a squeezer.

  The business before us is a pretrial motion. Jonah’s not here. Such motions do not require the attendance of the defendant.

  Murphy is now our investigator of record on the case. He has acquired three articles from Mexican newspapers, all of them in Spanish, that at least allude to the existence of Ontaveroz by name. There are no photographs, but the articles retyped in English by a qualified translator and attached to our brief provide details on a man you wouldn’t want to meet across an ocean, with God on your shoulder, in a two-minute dream.

  Most of the pieces deal with attempts by the Mexican Judicial Police to find him. So far, he is believed to have killed at least three of their agents.

  Ontaveroz is believed to have participated in the murder of a number of business competitors, and at least two political assassinations. Harry says these were probably business, too, like motor-voter laws, only down there they lean out the window—ballots by bullet.

  Harry has prepared subpoenas for the DEA, FBI, and Justice demanding that they produce information, notes, records, anything in writing regarding Jessica’s plea bargain that sent her away to state prison. We are hoping that these may lead to Ontaveroz, at least some reference to the man by name. If Ontaveroz knew about me, my guess is he knew about Suade. The problem is, how do we prove it?

  “So’d ya bring the doughnuts, Mr. Madriani?” Frank Peltro is looking down at me from the bench, face like an Irish bartender, made-to-order smile, everybody’s best friend. The only things that give him away are the eagle eyes under heavy, gray, hooded brows.

  “Not me, Your Honor.”

  “You were supposed to bring the doughnuts,” he says. “I gotta cageful of angry people back there waiting for arraignment. Gotta deal with ’em in ten minutes. No doughnuts, there’s gonna be hell to pay.” All of this with a smile on his face. “So what am I supposed to do?” he asks.

  “Have the guards pass out Quaaludes,” I tell him.

  “That’s no answer,” he says. “They already got those. They want doughnuts.”

  The court reporter is obviously not taking any of this down, not until Peltro gives her the okay. He’s been on the bench long enough to know how to stay out of trouble with the humorless tight asses on the Commission for Judicial Performance.

  “Can I tell ’em you’ll bring doughnuts for lunch?” he says.

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how enlightened and reasonable the court is in the matter pending.”

  “Sounds like a felony to me,” says Peltro. He looks at the DA. Avery is laughing. Ryan is ignoring him.

  “I think you’re in trouble, Mr. Ryan. I need doughnuts for an angry mob. What are you offering?”

  “Nothing,” says Ryan. “I’m fine. I’ve been taping all of this.”

  Peltro laughs deeply, something from the belly. Santa Claus on the bench. “Now I am in trouble. Mr. Bailiff, you can put Mr. Ryan there in the cage. And tell them that he ate their doughnuts.”

  The bailiff doesn’t move, but is laughing, his gut bouncing up and down above his gunbelt.

  Peltro takes one last look at Harry’s brief, points and authorities, now that the fun is over. Then looks down at Harry and me and says, “Who’s gonna argue this mess?”

  I rise, and step to the podium, front and center.

  Peltro nods to the court reporter.

  “I read your brief,” he says. “There’s no need to go through all the arguments. Maybe we should just focus on the problems.”

  This is not a good beginning.

  “As I see it,” he says, “you want to bring in evidence, but you’ve got no evidence.”

  “That’s not exactly true, Your Honor. We do have two federal agents.”

  “Did I miss something?” he says. The judge flipping pages. Looking at the motion, tracing lines of print with his finger. “I thought you couldn’t identify them,” says Peltro.

  “We can’t right now. We’re working on it.”

  “Can you produce them?”

  “Given time, I believe we can.”

  “Your Honor, they’ve refused to waive time. The case
is scheduled for trial.” Ryan is on his feet, sensing where I’m going, demanding a speedy trial and requesting a continuance at the same time.

  “DA makes a point,” says Peltro. “Are you asking for a delay in the start of trial?”

  “Not at this moment, Your Honor.”

  “That doesn’t sound good to me,” says the judge.

  “No,” I tell him.

  “That sounds better. Unless your client waives time, I’m not gonna be allowing any continuances.” He looks down at the bench blotter in front of him, the one with a slice of acetate over it the size of an army blanket. He holds up some pages on the giant calendar underneath it so I can no longer see him. “My next opening . . .” Voice lost behind a wall of paper. “My next, ah, available date for trial’s not till late September,” he says. “And I’m not available then on account of I’m going down to La Paz. Gonna be on the back of a friend’s Grady White with my pole over the stern searching for yellowtail. That means your man’s in the bucket at least five months, maybe more, pending trial.” He drops his calendar, raises those bushy eyebrows. Looks at me over the top of half-moon cheaters. The spectacles make him look even more judicial.

  “My client would reconsider waiving time,” I say, “if we could come to some accommodation on bail.”

  “Why? So’s he could meet me in La Paz?” says Peltro.

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Now Ryan is laughing.

  “We’ve already been through all that,” says the judge. “I don’t think under the circumstances the court can take the risk. Your client wants to look for his granddaughter. I’m sympathetic,” he says. “Got two of ’em myself,” he says. “Don’t know what I’d do if somebody took ’em. But you, yourself, acknowledge there’s a good chance the child could be down in Mexico. So you know where he’s gonna go if I let him out.”

  “He could have gone down there before he was arrested. He didn’t.”

  “He may have second thoughts now,” says Peltro.

  “I’ll guarantee that my client won’t leave the county.”