Depraved Indifference j-3

by Joseph Teller

  "Welcome back," said the presiding judge, the one sitting in the middle. The three of them peered down like vultures from their perches behind the dark mahogany bench that separated them from him. Or maybe it was oak, stained to look like mahogany. Jaywalker bit his lip and fought to concentrate on the business at hand, but it was hard. After two full days of worrying, he still couldn't figure out what he'd done to land himself back here.

  "Good morning, Your Honors." A little show of respect couldn't hurt, he figured.

  "We've received a report," said the presiding judge, "that you were present at the county court arraignment of one Carter Drake. Is that correct?"

  "Yes, Your Honor. I was in the spectator section."

  "Is that so?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The judge raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated parody of disbelief. Then he adjusted his reading glasses and began leafing through what appeared to be a thick set of documents in front of him. But by standing on his tiptoes, Jay walker could see that what the judge was really doing was flipping through the pages of a copy of the New York Post.

  "Tell me," said one of the other judges, "is it your hope to substitute as counsel for Mr. Drake at some point?"

  "It is indeed," said Jaywalker. "But certainly not until my suspension has run its full course." He'd been practicing that statement for a day and a half now, knowing the question would be asked sooner or later. Though the soonness kind of surprised him. Soonification? Soonth? He bit his lip again.

  "So hope springs eternal?" The third judge.

  "Yes."

  "In the two and a half years since your suspension took effect," asked the P.J., "have you engaged in the practice of law-e ven once? "

  Jaywalker could spot a trap from a mile away. It was the sort of question that could have been lifted from his own playbook. All the witness had to do was say no, and the jaws would spring shut on him. Obviously they'd discovered that he'd done something, ev en if he himself couldn't remember what. Still, there was only one way to answer. Jaywalker took a deep breath, fixed the judge's eyes with his own, and said "Absolutely not" in as strong and steady a voice as he could muster.

  "Good," said the P.J. "Do you have a motion?"

  "A motion?"

  "Yes."

  Jaywalker had absolutely no idea what sort of motion the judge had in mind. Early in his career, when a criminal court judge had said, "Let's see your motion," Jaywalker had obliged him with an elaborate demonstration of his pitching motion, the no-men-on-base, full-windup version. That stunt had earned him a fifteen-second outburst of laughter, a standing ovation-and a contempt citation. He was pretty sure the presiding judge didn't have that particular kind of motion in mind. Still, he'd made it clear he expected something.

  "I move that we, uh, adjourn for lunch?"

  "How about," suggested the judge dryly, "a motion to terminate your suspension early?"

  For once, Jaywalker was speechless. It was his turn to raise his eyebrows in disbelief.

  "This court," the judge was saying, "finds that the respondent has, for the past two years and several months, comported himself admirably. He appears to have refrained from practicing law and, except for this recent bit of notoriety, from bringing embarrassment to his profession. Additionally, we have been advised by Justice Travis Hinkley, of the Rockland County Court, that this case will be put on a fast track for trial, and that no applications for lengthy adjournments will be granted. We are well aware of your, shall we say creativity, Mr. Jaywalker. We have no doubt that you're fully capable of coming up with some clever strategy to delay the trial until you're able to practice again. Now that won't be necessary. Your suspension is hereby terminated forthwith, Mr. Jaywalker, and you are reinstated as a member of the bar in good standing. This court is in recess."

  "Thank you," Jaywalker managed to say, but he had to settle for saying it to the three judges' backs. It seemed as though they were every bit as anxious to get out of there as he was.

  So just like that, he was back in the ball game, without so much as a demonstration of his stretch with runners on base or his pick-off move, which had always been pretty good, at least for a righty.

  Didn't they even want to see that?

  10

  DRIVER'S ED

  Under different circumstances, Jaywalker might have spent the rest of the day celebrating his good fortune. But he knew he didn't have that luxury. So as long as he was downtown, he found a camera store with a PASSPORT PHOTOS $5 sign in the window, where he traded a Korean woman a twenty-dollar bill for four one-by-oneinch Polaroid mug shots of himself. ("For five dolla," she explained, "you get only one photo, no good.") Two of the four he took back to the courthouse, where an obliging clerk updated his Attorney Identification Card. No more sneaking around with his homemade private investigator's ID. The other two he took to the legal office of the NYC Department of Corrections, then emerged an hour later with an official Get-Out-of-Jail card. Not that it was valid in Rockland County, technically speaking. But he figured between the two pieces of ID, he'd be able to bypass the All Others line at the New City courthouse. And more important, he'd get to sit down and have a real conversation with Carter Drake in the counsel visit room, rather than having to settle for talking with him over staticky phones, or reading his written statements. Next he called Amanda and told her the news of his reinstatement.

  "That's wonderful, " she said. "Should I fire Mr. Mermelstein?"

  "No," said Jaywalker, "I think we should keep him. You know, as local counsel, if you can afford us both. He knows the players, the court officers, maybe even some of the prospective jurors. And besides…"

  "Besides?"

  "His name can't hurt us."

  "His name?"

  "I'm half-Jewish," said Jaywalker, "but you wouldn't know it from my name. And to an orthodox Jew, Carter Drake the Third might as well have GOY stamped on his forehead."

  "Goy?" said Amanda. She wasn't getting this.

  "Gentile," explained Jaywalker. "Christian. In other words, not a Member of the Tribe. A name like Judah Mermelstein, on the other hand, could go a long way toward diffusing some of that insider-outsider bias."

  "Okay," said Amanda, "if you say so. What else?"

  "What else," said Jaywalker, "is we have to meet, settle on a fee and draw up a retainer agreement." The rules had changed since his suspension had begun. Handshake agreements, once commonplace between criminal defense lawyers and their clients, were no longer permitted. Apparently there'd been too many after-the-fact disputes about who'd agreed to what.

  "Where do you want to meet?" Amanda asked. "My place, or your office?"

  His office? In his haste to renew his credentials, meet with his client and formalize his retainer agreement, Jaywalker had completely forgotten that he was a lawyer without an office. Yet as he thought about it, he decided he kind of liked the ring of it. If there could be Doctors Without Borders, surely there was room on the planet for Lawyers Without Offices, wasn't there?

  "Your place is fine," said Jaywalker.

  That afternoon, Jaywalker put in a call to Nicky Legs. With his brief career as a private investigator suddenly at an end, he figured he was going to need the real thing. And Nicolo LeGrosso, a retired NYPD detective, was definitely the real thing.

  "Hey, howya doon?" said Nicky as soon as he recognized Jaywalker's voice.

  "Good, I think. They gave me my ticket back."

  "No shit? It's been tree yeahs awready?"

  "Something like that," said Jaywalker. "Look, I need some work done on a case."

  "That Rockland County thing?"

  Word traveled fast. "Yeah," said Jaywalker, "that Rockland County thing."

  They met an hour later, over coffee in a midtown luncheonette. Nicky looked good; he'd been playing a lot of golf. "Yaughta take it up," he said.

  Jaywalker wrote out a list of half a dozen things he wanted LeGrosso to do on the case, and pushed the list across the table. Nicky read it without bother
ing to turn it around, nodding six times. Jaywalker had no idea how he could do that. If he tried to read upside down, he'd bring on a migraine, or at least get dizzy.

  "Is this like the last case?" LeGrosso asked. "You know, the ex-hooker with the big bucks? Or am I doon it on the arm?"

  On the arm w as coptalk for out of the goodness of my heart. On several occasions Jaywalker had asked Nicky to do things for defendants who had little or no money- repeat customers who'd fallen on bad times, referrals from friends or family members, and others to whom Jaywalker hadn't been able, for one reason or another, to just say no. And Nicky had always obliged.

  "No," he said, "there's money here. You need something up front?"

  "Nah," said Nicky. "I'm good."

  He met with Amanda that evening, and although she answered the door wearing a man's oxford shirt and, so far as he could tell, nothing else, he made her put on a robe. "Business," he told her.

  "I think I liked it better," she said, "when you weren't a lawyer."

  Jaywalker ignored the remark, sat her down and pulled out a retainer agreement he'd printed out earlier. For fee purposes, it broke the case down into three stages: pretrial investigation and motions; evidentiary hearings; and trial. It was how he'd always charged, though he'd rarely bothered to spell it out in black and white, as the new rules now required. He handed the agreement to Amanda, and waited while she skimmed it.

  "The dollar amounts are blank," she said.

  He nodded. "We have to reach an agreement on what's fair."

  Jaywalker had been toying with the idea of asking for fifty thousand, if the case had to be tried. It would be his largest fee ever, but he knew he'd earn it. Hell, he'd read of cases where lawyers had charged upwards of a million dollars and complained about it not being enough. No doubt they had expensive offices, huge payrolls and vast overheads. He had no office, no payroll and an answering machine. So he was fully prepared to negotiate, and settle for somewhere between twenty-five and thirtyfive thousand, still a pretty good payday.

  "How about an even hundred thousand?" Amanda suggested. "Do you think that would cover you?"

  Cover him?

  Jaywalker did his best imitation of someone thinking, but it was impossible. "Sure," he said, trying to look like a grown-up. It reminded him of a morning thirty years ago, when he'd found out he'd passed the bar exam on the second try. He'd spent the rest of the day walking around with a dumb smile he couldn't wipe off his face. A shit-eating grin, his brother had called it, and Jaywalker had been afraid to ask what that meant. "Sure," he told Amanda again, "I think I can live with that." And fought to keep his hand steady as he inked in the amounts on the retainer agreement. From the way Amanda treated the numbers, he sensed it was nothing but small change to her, or a few months' interest from a bottomless trust fund. But to Jaywalker, it was like winning the lottery.

  Okay, a small lottery.

  "Is business over?" she asked, crossing her legs so that the two sides of her robe fell apart.

  "No," said Jaywalker, trying to look away. "Did Carter phone you from the bar that night?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "And?"

  "And we drove up to get him."

  "We?"

  "I picked up Eric at his father's place," she said. "I figured he could drive Carter's car."

  "You told me he's only seventeen. What does he have, a learner's permit?"

  "Yes, but he's a good driver. Like his father. Too fast, but a good driver."

  In Jaywalker's book, no seventeen-year-old was a good driver. Not even those who had licenses.

  "Anyway," Amanda added, "it was short notice, and I didn't have time to get anyone else."

  "And what happened when you got there?" Jaywalker asked.

  "I waited outside in my car and sent Eric in to get his father. I was pissed at Carter, and I didn't want to have to deal with him, especially if he was drunk. A few minutes later the two of them came out, and they were arguing. Carter said, 'I'm not going to allow Eric to drive.' So Eric got back into my car, and we drove home. Carter was supposed to be following us, but at some point we got separated. I pulled over and waited for him, but he must've gone a different way or something. So I drove Eric to his father's and dropped him off. I told him to call me and let me know when his father got there. And by the time I got home, there was a message from him that Carter had made it, safe and sound."

  "And the next day?" Jaywalker asked.

  "The next day the accident was all over the news. Carter called me to tell me that it must be him the police were looking for. He knew his license plate by heart-I didn't- and he recognized the digits they were broadcasting on all the news reports. He said he was going to call his lawyer. I said okay, good. I figured if he came forward, they'd give him a break. The next I knew was when he called me from jail and told me it had turned into a murder case."

  "So much for the break," said Jaywalker.

  Amanda nodded. "Is business over now? " she asked, uncrossing her legs.

  "Yes," said Jaywalker, who never had succeeded in looking away. "Business is over."

  Afterward, she asked him to stay, but he said no. "You're paying me a shitload of money," he told her. "I've got to start earning it, first thing in the morning."

  "You mean you've been faking it up till now?"

  "No," said Jaywalker. "It's just that not being Carter's lawyer, or anyone's lawyer, for that matter, my hands have been tied."

  He noticed Amanda grinning. "What?" he asked her. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  "I was trying to picture you," she said, her voice dropping an octave, "with your hands tied."

  Jaywalker stood up. "Amanda," he said, "you remember when business was over?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, now pleasure's over." He bent down, kissed her, and said, "Good night."

  The following day was indeed a busy one for Jaywalker. He surrendered his good parking spot and drove up to New City, stopping first at Judah Mermelstein's office. He caught Mermelstein as he was getting ready to go to court.

  "I don't know if you heard," said Jaywalker, "but I wanted to let you know I've been reinstated-"

  "I did hear," said Mermelstein, "and congratulations. You have my permission to substitute as counsel for Carter Drake."

  "Thanks," said Jaywalker, "but if you have no objection, I'd prefer to join you as co-counsel."

  Mermelstein seemed to think about it for a moment before answering. Then he said, "I appreciate the offer, but I think I'm going to decline. This is a pretty tight community we've got up here, in case you haven't noticed. I'd say ninety percent of my clients are orthodox or conservative Jews. My livelihood, and my family's, depends on their goodwill. I've already heard from a number of them that they're, shall we say, uncomfortable with my representing a…" His voice trailed off at that point, leaving Jaywalker to finish his thought for him.

  "…Non-Jew? Gentile? Goy? "

  Mermelstein shook his head slowly, from side to side. "I'm afraid it gets worse than that," he said.

  "How much worse?"

  "Try Hitler? Or Mengele."

  "That's worse," Jaywalker agreed.

  So Judah Mermelstein was bailing out. Not exactly a Profile in Courage. Then again, could Jaywalker really blame him? Was Mermelstein supposed to risk losing his entire practice, and with it his ability to feed his kids, just so he could hang on to a piece of a case with a radioactive client?

  "I'm sorry," Mermelstein said.

  "Me, too," said Jaywalker.

  But as was the case with so many things in the strange world of criminal law, it was a development that had an upside to it. It had been Jaywalker's intention to have Mermelstein second-seat him at trial. If doing so accomplished nothing else, it would send a message to the jurors that here was one of their own, not only willing to sit next to the defendant and whisper back and forth with him from time to time, but maybe even grasp his arm at some point, or lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. Now th
at dynamic was gone. But in its place, Jaywalker was already calculating, the same jurors would now look over at the defense table and see only two people, the accused and his defender. That would provide a nice contrast with the scene at the prosecution table, where Abe Firestone- who rarely if ever had tried cases himself-would no doubt surround himself with several assistant district attorneys, and possibly even an investigator from his office. Sure, Jaywalker knew, jurors find it a lot easier to empathize with people like themselves. But they also tend to like underdogs, outcasts, long shots. And representing long shots was what Jaywalker did best.

  From Mermelstein's office, Jaywalker walked to the courthouse, this time entering via the short line, the one reserved for POLICE OFFICERS, COURT PERSONNEL AND ATTORNEYS ONLY. He proceeded to the clerk's office, where he filled out three copies of a Notice of Appearance, formally declaring that he was the new lawyer for Carter Drake. From there he went to the district attorney's office, stopping at the reception desk.

  "My name is Jaywalker," he told the uniformed trooper, handing him a business card. "I'm substituting as counsel for Carter Drake. I was hoping to introduce myself to Mr. Firestone, if he has a moment."

  The trooper eyed the card, then pressed a button on an intercom. "There's a Mr. Jaywalker here," he said. "Says he's the new lawyer in the Drake case. Wants to meet your boss."