The Attorney

by Steve Martini

  It takes nearly ten minutes before someone opens a door somewhere in the back. The cross-ventilation begins driving the smoke from the dark cavern.

  The music continues to blare, the strobes lighting up the smoke like sheet lightning in a hurricane. As Mexican police enter the building, they hold us at gunpoint while they search us for weapons, then quickly usher us from the building while they continue their sweep. I am left the heartless task of peeling Amanda from her mother’s lifeless form.

  Carrying the child up the stairs, I lose sight of Susan for an instant. When I turn to look, she is on her knees again, as if she has fallen over one of the bodies, the smoking corpse of one of the gunmen. She pushes herself away from it as if repulsed, then flees up the stairs as if trying to escape a nightmare.

  The gunshots outside were the Mexican judicial police. Like the cavalry, they arrived in the nick of time. With them are two more familiar faces: the agents that Murphy introduced me to that day at the restaurant in San Diego, Jack and Bob.

  As we stand outside, watching smoke vent from the disco and crowds form behind police lines, it is Jack who tells me that they had been tracking Ontaveroz for days. They had followed him to Cabo, and were only moments behind when the ether-fueled fireball erupted from the mouth of the disco.

  The agent wags a finger at me, tells me to follow him, so I do, toward a line of blanket-covered figures laid out on the ground like cordwood inside the wall of the courtyard.

  The agent calling himself Bob reaches down and pulls back the blanket on one of the bodies sprawled on the ground. The dead man is lying on his back, hands at his sides.

  “Meet Esteban Ontaveroz,” says the agent. “Along with two of his enforcers. Not counting the ones you toasted inside.”

  One of the shrouded bodies on the ground is Jessica Hale.

  The fire department arrives and douses the last flames, some charred beams over the doorway, where the heat of the blast ignited the wood.

  The Mexican authorities have already questioned Susan and me. We made no mention of our plan to kidnap the child, only to find her. They seem satisfied. Susan showed them the certified copy of the order of custody from her purse. With that, her credentials, and a good word from the DEA agents they released us to the custody of the American consul. For the Mexican police, though two of their own are dead, it is a law enforcement fiesta. They have killed one of the most notorious drug kingpins in the country. The Mexican media will no doubt be eating it up.

  Five hours later, we are back in San Diego, Amanda in tow. Mary meets us at the airport, and the scene that follows would dissolve a heart of stone.

  Tuesday morning, I’m back in court. Jonah is still in the hospital, though his spirits seem to be carrying him toward recovery. With Amanda home, he now has something to live for. She has already visited him twice in the hospital, and yesterday he was sitting up.

  Jonah has confirmed what he blurted out seconds before he collapsed that day in court: that he dropped Jeffers’s pistol over the side months before Suade’s murder. He’d gotten rid of it, he says, because he didn’t want it on board, or at his house. Amanda was constantly having friends over, and Jonah had begun to worry about accidents, kids and their curiosity.

  Today Harry and I try taking the first step toward ending the nightmare of the trial. We make an offer of proof.

  Ryan is furious, claiming that the evidence and my witnesses were never disclosed.

  But Peltro allows the offer, relying on his earlier order that if I can show some connection to Ontaveroz I can use him in my defense. The offer of proof is in effect a motion to allow evidence, and can be conducted without the presence of the defendant. All the while Peltro is keeping the jurors locked up, sequestered in a hotel at night and confined in the jury room during the day. How long he can do this is uncertain.

  He asks me about Jonah’s health. I tell him I don’t know; I’ll have to confer with the doctors.

  Ryan has a serious problem. It is the evidence surrounding the unfolding events in Cabo. While Jessica may be dead, there is no denying that Ontaveroz was stalking her. The Drug Enforcement Administration will not allow either of its two undercover agents to testify. But they have produced a Mexican official, a member of a special unit, an untouchable of the federal Mexican judicial police, who has hunted Ontaveroz with dogged persistence for more than two years.

  Lieutenant Ernesto Lopez Santez is an eighteen-year veteran of Mexico’s drug wars. He is a tall, slender man, with a long, narrow face, jet-black hair, and intense dark eyes. He speaks very fast, Spanish tripping off his tongue while the interpreter struggles to keep up, before Lopez decides that his English, while not perfect, may be better for our purposes.

  “Where did you learn your English, Lieutenant?”

  “Escuela. School,” he says. “In Jalisco.”

  The purpose of the offer of proof is to determine whether the defense may produce evidence that Ontaveroz had both motive and an opportunity to kill Suade.

  “Can you tell us where you were on Saturday evening, the eighteenth—that is, three days ago?”

  “Your Honor,” says Ryan. “This is irrelevant.”

  “That’s what we’re here to decide,” says Peltro. “Go ahead.” He motions to Lopez that he may answer.

  “I was in Cabo San Lucas.”

  “And were you on duty?”

  “Jess.”

  “Can you tell the court what happened that night?”

  “There was a shoot-out, at a restaurant. Several drug dealers were killed,” he says. “And two officers.”

  “Can you tell us how many assailants, criminals, there were that evening?”

  “Jess. Cin—” He corrects himself. “Five of them,” he says. “Maybe more.”

  “Five of them were killed?”

  “Jess. Dat is correct.”

  “Did you identify one of these men, one of the ones who was killed as Esteban José Ontaveroz?”

  “Jess.”

  “And was he wanted in Mexico?”

  He looks at me as if perhaps he doesn’t understand something about the question.

  “¿Fugitivo?” The interpreter helps him out.

  “Oh, sí. Jess. Ontaveroz was a fugitive.”

  “If I showed you a photograph of this man, Esteban Ontaveroz, would you recognize him?”

  “Maybe,” he says.

  On the podium in front of me I have a folder. Inside are several prints of the same photograph, made only hours before. I pass two of these to the bailiff, one for the witness and another for the judge, then hand one to Ryan, who begins to study it closely.

  “This is an enlarged photograph,” I tell the witness.

  He looks at it, and nods.

  “Have you seen this photograph before?”

  “No.”

  “There are several people in the frame. I would ask you to concentrate on the man in the dark jacket in the background. The one with the mustache.”

  “Where did you get this?” he asks me.

  I ignore the question. “Do you recognize that man?”

  “Jess.” His eyebrows go up.

  “Can you tell the court who he is?”

  “It es Esteban Ontaveroz.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Jess.”

  “Your Honor.” I look at Peltro. “We have a witness who will testify that that photograph was taken on the docks at Spanish Landing here in San Diego on the morning of the day that Zolanda Suade was murdered.”

  Jonah’s drunk friend with the camera, the one who wanted one last shot with the fish, had taken perhaps the most important photograph of Jonah’s life. I had seen prints when they came to Mary’s house two days after Jonah was arrested. The police had subpoenaed these as evidence of the marlin a
nd had introduced them into evidence. But I did not make the connection until I saw the bodies lined up in the patio outside the disco. I asked to see the body of Ontaveroz. I wanted to look at the man who had haunted my client and killed Joaquin Murphy.

  It wasn’t until I came back and looked at the photograph with a magnifying glass that I made the connection. Ontaveroz was indeed tracking Jonah, hoping Jessica would show up.

  “Additionally . . .” I start to pass out other copies of the photograph; these are not enlarged or cropped, so that the entire frame is shown.

  “Your Honor, you can see the defendant, Jonah Hale, standing near the marlin, the blood from which has already been introduced into evidence by the state. We have photographic experts who can testify,” I say, “that Ontaveroz was no more than ten feet from the marlin when this shot was taken, and that the only way off that dock was past the fish, which took up almost the entire width of the dock.”

  “Counsel’s reaching,” says Ryan. “Is there any blood on Ontaveroz in that picture?” He directs this to the court, but doesn’t get an answer.

  Whether this would be sufficient for the blood to get into the Mexican’s car or not, Ryan now has a problem. Ontaveroz has been placed in proximity to the physical evidence. It is an explanation for the seemingly inexplicable, the stuff of which reasonable doubt is made.

  The press is in the front row, taking it all down, jotting their notes, scratching on paper.

  But I am not done. There is another, seemingly gratuitous piece of evidence, something that I could not have even hoped for a week ago.

  “Lieutenant Lopez, did you or your men have an opportunity to search the dead assailants at the scene in Cabo San Lucas?”

  He nods. “Jess.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Guns. Drugs. Mostly cocaine,” he says.

  “Specifically with reference to one of the dead gunmen found inside the disco, besides firearms and drugs, did you find anything else?”

  “We found a cigar,” he says.

  With this, there is a perceptible hum of anticipation from the courtroom.

  “Do you have that cigar with you?” I ask him.

  “Jess.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his coat, and when his hand comes out, it is holding a small silver metal cylinder, the same kind that held the cigar delivered to the cops by John Brower.

  “Your Honor, we have a witness, an expert, who is prepared to testify that the cigar in that tube is a Montecristo A, and that the seal on the tube has never been removed. That cigar is identical to the partially smoked cigar stub found at the scene of Zolanda Suade’s murder.”

  With this the hum of voices in the courtroom turns into a roar.

  “Your Honor. Your Honor.” Ryan trying to get the judge’s attention. “We demand an opportunity to test that cigar,” says Ryan.

  Commotion in the courtroom, a tumult of voices. Peltro slams his gavel. He looks down at the witness. I have to read the judge’s lips to comprehend what is being said because of the noise. “You found this on the dead gunman in Cabo?”

  I think this is what he has said, and the witness nods.

  I’m not sure the court reporter has picked this up, but it doesn’t matter.

  “Counsel in my chambers,” says Peltro. “The court is in recess.”

  “Your Honor, they can’t explain how that fish’s blood got in their car.” Ryan is talking about the Mexican’s vehicle. “Do they have the car?”

  “We don’t need the car,” I tell him. “What do you want, a picture of Ontaveroz shooting Suade?”

  “I’ll bet you could get me one in an hour,” he says.

  “Are you questioning the authenticity of the photograph?” Peltro is looking at Ryan. The problem the prosecutor has is that the state has already made the photograph of the marlin hoisted on the dock a part of its case. The figure who is enhanced in the enlargement is clearly visible in the original.

  “No,” says Ryan. “There’s still no evidence of blood on the man,” he adds.

  “You couldn’t walk on that dock without getting it on you,” I tell the judge.

  Peltro holds up both hands, a motion for us both to shut up.

  “We have a problem here,” he says. “The defendant, at least for the moment, is unable to continue with the trial. The question is how long we should wait.” Peltro wants to sidestep the issues of evidence and get to more practical matters.

  Ryan starts to see the handwriting on the wall. His case is now in shambles. Peltro is unwilling to hold the jury indefinitely, and the judge is looking for some middle ground.

  “Even if I buy your argument on the blood,” says Peltro, “what about the cigar?” He turns this on Ryan.

  “We want to test that cigar,” says Ryan. As soon as he says it, he knows he shouldn’t have.

  “It’s still sealed in its damned container,” says Peltro. He’s got the cigar sitting on his desk in the center of the big green blotter where we can all see it. “You really think you’re gonna find it’s not the same brand?”

  In the face of such skepticism, Ryan has no answer.

  “You can test the cigar, but I’m telling you right now that unless you’ve got conclusive evidence to the contrary, this is coming in,” he says. He taps the cigar in front of him. “And as for the picture, that’s already in.”

  I sit in the chair across from Peltro’s desk, smiling.

  If I could reach over and grab the little cylinder with Lopez’s cigar in it right now, I might be tempted to take it out and light it up.

  “That is,” says Peltro, “unless you want me to declare a mistrial?” He is offering Ryan an alternative, something to save face.

  I sit up straight in my chair, not expecting this.

  “And you,” he says. He looks at me. “Your client doesn’t need the continuing stress of this trial, so don’t give me any garbage about the need to clear his good name. Unless they changed the law since I got out of law school, you can’t defame the dead, and that’s what he’s gonna be if you drag this out any longer.”

  I don’t say a word but settle back in my chair. Something tells me he is right. I can sandbag Ryan, probably kick the crap out of him if the trial goes forward, but Jonah might not live to see the end of it.

  By morning the newspapers will be filled with it: the shooting in Mexico, another violent gun battle with the drug lords. Only this one will have a local angle, a connection to the murder of Zolanda Suade. Ryan’s case is over, and he knows it.

  “If we have a mistrial,” he says, “it has to be predicated solely on the inability of the defendant to continue with the trial.” Ryan has already bought into it, scrambling for political cover. This way Jonah can’t sue him, and he has a ready answer for the press. He didn’t lose the case. In light of the evidence, he merely chose not to recharge it.

  Peltro agrees. He looks at me. I would rather have an outright dismissal, but the judge cannot do that, and I know it.

  “Then we’re agreed,” he says. “Let’s go out and put it on the record.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  * * *

  Tonight I am waiting for Susan at Casa Bandini in Old Town, sipping a margarita and listening to the strains of mariachi as they serenade a young couple across the courtyard, forty feet away.

  The doctors have released Jonah from the hospital. They continue to monitor his condition, but it is believed that he has suffered only minor damage to some muscle tissue in the heart. He is home with Mary and Amanda, trying to put their lives back together.

  The other night I sat with them for an hour and told them of the last moments in their daughter’s life, the final glimpse of an existence that seemed so wasted. I watched Jonah’s face as the tears washed down his cheeks, and explained to him that in the end it was an act of love that
had cost his daughter her life.

  The world may judge her for the thousand missteps of her youth, but that night in the disco she ran for a reason more primal than mere survival; she ran to put distance between death and her daughter. Jessica may have taken the child for reasons of spite, but in the end she surrendered her, and her own life, out of love.

  The local papers are filled with the news of Ontaveroz. Jonah may be free as the result of a mistrial, but there is no way the state will ever retry him. The press has connected all the dots in its own inimitable fashion, some of them in the wrong places—the accepted assumption being that the Mexican not only killed Suade, but Murphy and Jason Crow as well. The cigar on the body of the gunman in the disco was the clincher—the cigar Susan dropped on him on the way out.

  It took me a while to piece it together. A rare brand, the same cigar, it was too much of a coincidence, until I realized that the cops had never collected the one Jonah had given to her. I suspect that it was in the bottom of her purse, still in its little metal container, the way Jonah had handed it to her that day in my office.

  In the urgency of the moment I had seen her fall over the smoldering body. I was wrong. Susan saw the opportunity to torpedo Ryan and his case, and she took it.

  It is not something that, even if I wished to, I could prove. With all the fingers that have now handled the cigar container, Lopez, God knows how many Mexican cops, and Peltro, the chances of collecting anything that even resembles one of Susan’s clear fingerprints would be on the order of a miracle.

  What I do know is that without that cigar I might not have been able to convince Peltro to admit the evidence, or open the gate for a mistrial.

  The cigar was Susan’s way of giving Amanda her life back, removing the cloud from Jonah’s head. She was playing God. Jonah had given it to her, and now she was giving it back, in her own way. It was her path to redemption, because it was Susan in the car with Suade the night she was killed.

  It has been a week since Peltro declared the mistrial. That afternoon, Ryan stood on the steps of the courthouse and announced that his office would not be recharging Jonah, that the interests of justice had been served.