The Attorney

by Steve Martini

  “There was no report,” she says. “Ordinarily I’d have cover. The prosecutor’s office wouldn’t let them beat me up. But I think they know where the information on Suade’s handgun came from.”

  “I didn’t tell them.”

  “I know. Process of elimination,” she says. “And I think Brower probably found out. He knows he’s crossed me. The man is not stupid. He knows it’s do or die. He either gets me, or I get him.”

  “Can’t you talk to him?”

  “About what? When you have disloyalty in a small office, there’s nothing to talk about. He knows that. There’re only two ways for Mr. Brower to go. Either up or out.”

  “You think he’s after your job?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “I’m sorry to have put you in this situation.”

  “You didn’t,” she says. “The die was cast a long time ago.”

  When I look at her for an explanation she just shakes her head, gets up from the table, doesn’t want to get into it, nothing to talk about.

  “What are you going to do about Jonah’s granddaughter?” she asks.

  “What can I do? Keep trying to find her. I’ve got Murphy looking.”

  “Do you think he’ll be able to get a lead?”

  “Maybe through the two federal agents. They’re looking for Jessica. They know she’s in trouble with Ontaveroz. I’m hoping that’ll lead to something. In the meantime, I’ve got a case to try. Which leads me to another question,” I tell her. “What do you know about Brad Davidson? The presiding judge.”

  “Former,” she says. “Former PJ. He was removed on Friday afternoon.”

  This surprises me. Susan can tell by the look on my face as she turns back toward the table.

  “You hadn’t heard?”

  I shake my head.

  “They’ll announce it publicly on Monday,” she says. “The judges voted behind closed doors, secret ballot, so they could all tell him how much they supported him. I’m told that, technically, he’ll resign. He’ll remain on the bench,” she says. “The question is, for how long. He’ll definitely draw opposition in the next election. Somebody from the prosecutor’s office, no doubt. You don’t involve the county in a twenty-million-dollar lawsuit and escape unscathed,” says Susan. She speaks like a woman about to find out. “Davidson might have walked away, except for the public fallout from Suade’s murder. That revived the thing.”

  “But the lawsuit died with her.”

  “The controversy didn’t,” says Susan.

  “What do you know about Davidson, the man?”

  Susan mulls over the subject for a moment in silence, then sits across the table from me again.

  “Former Marine. I think he’s still in the reserves. A certified hard-ass,” says Susan. “Family was largely dysfunctional. Wife was kind of frizzy. The boy kept changing the color of his hair every other day—orange, pink, Day-Glo purple. The child was into counterculture. You can imagine this didn’t go over big with his father, who probably provoked it. Rebellion works that way,” she says. “It put the child in a fix. A squeeze between the mother and the father when they split. Weekends with the old man doing bivouac, then back to Mom who coddled him. The father would buzz-cut the colored hair every chance he got.”

  “Sounds like a nightmare.”

  “For a fourteen-year-old boy,” she says, “it couldn’t be anything but.”

  “This action the judges took. Is there some suspicion Davidson could be involved?”

  “In Suade’s murder?”

  I nod.

  She shakes her head, doesn’t know. “With a bunch of judges, who could tell what’s on their minds? The original secret clan,” says Susan. “Never anything on their lips but a million views on every subject in their heads. And Davidson violated the cardinal rule. He brought controversy on the court. But why are you asking about Davidson if Ontaveroz is your man?”

  “One thing about the practice of criminal law,” I tell her. “You never want to shun a good alternative theory.”

  Like the chasm that divides rich from poor, criminal cases in this county are tried on the other side of the divide, across the fourth-story bridge in the antiquated criminal courts building. Growth in crime is invariably the justification for expanding justice budgets in this state as well as others, though the money always seems to be split in other ways when it finally arrives.

  The county’s Hall of Justice is reserved for civil cases, silk-socked lawyers with their rolling brief-boxes full of documents, and corporate clients in worsted pinstripes, with escalators to carry them to the upper floors.

  Here there are stained-glass windows honoring various states, something discovered in a county basement at the start of construction a few years ago. These have been installed at the head of each escalator as you rise through the first four floors. They are mounted in decorative wood moldings and surrounded by old photos of county judges, some of them in stayed collars, and long since departed, not only from the court, but from this world.

  This morning I have a sense that I am about to visit one of these relics-in-the-making.

  The corridor outside Davidson’s office is a barricade of furniture. A cordovan leather sofa on a piano dolly blocks the hall on one side, while two leather office chairs stacked one atop the other finish off the labyrinth on the other. I have to squeeze sideways between them to get through. Beyond the door, down the hall is a table, and on top of it are two round files, office trash cans of teak, and cardboard boxes with no tops, an assortment of personal objects inside each, ashtrays and a commemorative gavel sticking out of one of them. There is a stack of framed degrees and licenses, the remnants from a wall of respect next to the boxes.

  The door is partway open, the frosted glass panel on the top is lettered on the inside in gold paint, the words PRESIDING JUDGE. Underneath, the letters idson are being scraped off the glass by a man in white overalls.

  I stick my head through the door. There’s no one at the clerk’s desk, so I look at the guy on his knees behind the door.

  “Is the judge in?”

  The workman doesn’t answer, but gestures with his head toward chambers down a little corridor in back of the clerk’s desk.

  There’s no one stopping me, so I walk in. I can hear a voice inside. I wander in that direction. As I round the clerk’s station, I can see the door to the judge’s chamber is open. I stop at the open door and look in.

  A tall man, graying close-cropped hair, his head well above the high back of the executive leather chair, is seated facing away from me talking on the phone as I stand in the doorway.

  “Jim, listen, I don’t blame anybody. I know you are. I know. I know. There’s no need to explain. They did what they had to do. And I appreciate your call. I do. Yes, we’ll have to get together for a drink. . . . Tonight I’m busy. . . . When this settles down.”

  Behind him a cardboard box, half full of items, is the only thing on the otherwise-bare surface of the desk. There’s a signed baseball on a trophy pedestal sticking out of the top. The rough lettering on the white baseball makes it look as if it might have been signed by kids.

  Except for a set of codes on the shelves to my left, and a single item in an ornate framed walnut case on the far wall, the room feels naked, stripped down.

  “I don’t know for sure. They’re supposed to tell me this afternoon. I think they’re putting me in department fourteen. But it’s probably temporary. From there, I don’t know.”

  I don’t want to be eavesdropping, so I rap the back of my knuckles down low on the surface of the open door.

  He spins around in the chair to look at me. Thin gray eyebrows, hollow cheeks, and a long face, punctuated by a pencil-thin mustache, the Great Santini, only taller and leaner. It’s a face with character, most of it stern. H
e holds up a hand as if to beckon me to hold on a second.

  “Jim, listen, I’m gonna have to go. Somebody just walked in. No, listen, there’s no need to talk to anybody. But I’m glad you called. And say hello to Joyce for me. Take care.” He hangs up, turns his attention to me.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Sorry to bother you. Your clerk wasn’t outside. The man at the door said you were in.”

  “I’m sort of between clerks right now,” he says. “You look familiar. I’ve seen you around the courthouse.”

  “My name’s Paul Madriani. I do criminal defense. You might say I’m new to town. From up north.”

  “Where up north?”

  “Capital City.”

  “I used to testify on a lot of legislation up there,” he says. “No need to stand in the doorway. Come on in. I’d offer you a chair, but they’re both out in the hall along with my couch.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Usually this doesn’t happen until election time.” He’s busy in one of the drawers of the desk, until he looks up and sees my questioning expression.

  “Musical chairs,” he says. “You don’t want to be the one with furniture out in the hall when the tune stops. They’re moving me to one of the closets downstairs. As soon as they find one small enough, with a naked lightbulb.” He looks at his watch. “The movers were supposed to be here at ten. They’re running late. I have a feeling everything’s gonna be running late with the new regime,” he says.

  “I won’t take much of your time. I wanted to introduce myself.”

  “Last week that might have done you some good,” he says. “As of today, I’m just one of the drone bees.”

  “It’s the drones that hear the cases,” I tell him.

  “A criminal lawyer with diplomacy,” he says. “You’ll go far.”

  He starts working through one of the open drawers on the other side of his desk. A stapler, a little plastic tray of paper clips and pencils. He lifts these out and carefully sets them into the open box so as not to spill anything.

  “You don’t mind if I work while we talk?” he says. “I’d like to be out of here before noon. The new tenant is coming in, and I’d like to be gone. Judge Mosher. Do you know her?”

  “I can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “You could stick around, kiss her ring,” he says. “I’d introduce you, but I’m not sure I’d be doing you any favors.”

  “Actually, it’s you I wanted to see.”

  His brow furrows.

  “I represent Jonah Hale.”

  He is poker-faced, says nothing, but I can tell by the eyes that the brain has shifted into another gear.

  “So you got a piece of the Suade murder?” he says. “I heard there were two lawyers.”

  “My partner and I.”

  “Why do you want to see me?”

  I try to edge into it as delicately as I can.

  “It’s the task of every lawyer in a case,” I tell him. “Investigating the facts, gathering information.”

  “What kind of information?” He stops fishing in the drawer for a moment and gives me his undivided attention.

  “I’m told you’re one of the few members on the court with firsthand knowledge of Zolanda Suade.”

  He says nothing, simply stares at me, a wicked smile under the hairy pencil.

  “If you mean I threw her ass in jail?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “You should learn to be more direct,” says Davidson. “On the subject of Zolanda Suade I have no comment. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s pending litigation.”

  “I’m told she provided cover that allowed your wife to disappear with your son.”

  He gives me a quizzical look. Something sideways, an animal hearing a strange sound.

  “Just being direct,” I tell him.

  He gets out of his chair to see if there’s anyone in the corridor outside, like a stenographer taking notes or his successor with a tape recorder. Then he quietly closes the door.

  He stands ten inches from my face, then lifts one flap of my coat. I realize he’s looking to see if I’m wired.

  Satisfied, he steps back a few inches, studies me a second, weighing if he should speak. Venom gets the better of him.

  “You can talk to anybody who knows me. They’ll tell you I have a good number of faults,” he says. “I suffer from arrogance, a bad temper, and impatience, but hypocrisy is not numbered among my character flaws. I shed no tears when Suade was killed. The woman was pathologic. She had absolute contempt for the law and everything and anyone associated with it. As far as she was concerned, she was the law—judge, jury, and jailer. And if your client shot her, he did the world an immeasurable favor. Now that’s all I have to say on the subject, and if you repeat it to anyone, I’ll deny it.”

  “It sounds like you knew her well.”

  He looks at me. Our eyes lock. “I wish I’d never met her,” he says, then turns his back and walks to the desk.

  There’s a knock on the door. A second later it opens, some guy in overalls pushing a furniture dolly.

  I step across the room, out of the way. Davidson reaches his chair and turns to catch me gazing at the object in the walnut case, hanging on the wall.

  “It’s a commemorative gold cup,” he says. “Forty-five automatic. A gift from my officers when I left the Corps. And in case you’re wondering, it’s the wrong caliber.”

  “I know.” He can’t help but notice the disappointment in my voice.

  Two movers now picking up boxes, stacking them on the dolly, eunuchs to a cryptic conversation.

  “It was good to meet you.” I’m headed for the door, almost there when he pipes up.

  “By the way,” he says. “I wouldn’t want you wasting your time. That evening, I had a speaking engagement. A group of lawyers up in Orange County.” He’s talking about the day Suade was murdered. “I left court early, in the middle of the afternoon, to beat the traffic,” he says, “and I had a passenger. A deputy district attorney.” He arches his eyebrows as he says this. “Stan Chased. You might want to check with him.”

  “I’m sure there’s no need to do that.”

  Davidson has told me what I needed to know. He is hot, has a temper, a mountain of motive, and what appears to be a titanium-clad alibi.

  EIGHTEEN

  * * *

  Courtrooms in America are laid out with an eye toward turning defendants into furniture. The counsel table for the prosecution is parked, as it is today, right next to the jury box so that the DA can pass winks and nods to jurors without fear of getting a kink in his neck.

  Harry and I, with Jonah at the far end, are seated at the defense table, ten yards away, clear on the other side of the room. Between the two sets of lawyers is a rostrum nearly as tall as a man and twice as wide. Erected in the gap between the two contending teams of lawyers, this podium stands directly in line with the judge’s bench so that even if Jonah wanted to look down the line to make eye contact with jurors, he couldn’t.

  It’s like seats under the bleachers at a basketball game, except that here, Harry says you can’t even grab an occasional glance up a passing skirt. While Jonah may have a jury of his peers, in this setting so would the chair he is sitting in.

  The panel of twelve, tried and true, has already been seated, with five alternates down from six. One of them begged off two days after opening arguments for reasons of health.

  We have nine women, three men. Two of them work for the phone company, which seems to be disproportionately represented on nearly every jury I have ever seen. Whether it’s civic pride, or that they get paid time-and-a-half for jury service I’ve never figured out.

  Several of the jurors are older. This could be an advantage, given the facts
. There is no way that prosecutors can avoid the issue of Amanda, Jonah’s granddaughter, and the inference that Suade played a part in her disappearance. This is key to their theory of motive in the murder.

  On the other side, behind the prosecution table, directly behind the railing, sits the widower Harold Morgan, Suade’s husband. He is tall, slender, urbane, with gray hair parted on the left and a bow tie. He looks the part of some Ivy League think-tanker, only here he has the explosive potential of cordite, sitting as he does in a sea of reporters. I have seen him outside in the hall, holding forth in front of the cameras, calmly intoning that all he seeks is justice.

  When asked whether he would favor the death penalty if Jonah is convicted, Morgan looked at the reporter, and said he would have to defer judgment on the question until he sees the evidence.

  Mary Hale sits one row behind us, up close to the railing on our side so that on occasion Jonah can turn and talk to her during breaks. She is worried about his health. There have been some spikes in his blood pressure over the last week. The doctor is now seeing him nearly every day, monitoring his pressure and his medication.

  Though Jonah is depressed, we have one advantage in the social skirmish to win empathy with the jury. It is Jonah’s affable nature. He tends to smile at the world, all the jurors as they come and go from the jury box, at the older women, and the young checkout girl from Vons, the car salesman from auto row, and the schoolteacher from the South Bay as well as the man who does bookkeeping for a large commercial nursery out in La Mesa. Some of them actually smile back.

  This last, the bookkeeper, is a concern. Ryan fought hard to keep him on the panel, and by the time the accountant popped up we had used up our peremptory challenges and were shooting blanks.

  People with ledgerlike minds can be a problem when it comes to weighing evidence. They like things that add up at the bottom of every column. Unfortunately, the facts in a criminal trial, like most of the true mysteries of life, are seldom that neat. When chaos happens meticulous minds tend to impose their own sense of order, filling in gaps of reasonable doubt with assumptions based on probability. Scientists, engineers, and mathematicians are seen to be high risks for the defense. Give them a problem and they are trained to solve it, sometimes bending jury instructions along the way.