Judgment at Santa Monica

by E. J. Copperman

  ‘That wasn’t it,’ Patrick said. ‘Well, yes, it is that, but the reason I found your argument so effective was completely about a side issue.’

  Was this some sort of strange business meeting? I knew there wasn’t a pre-nup in place because Patrick had ended the engagement before I could write one. ‘A side issue?’ I asked. There was a strange, somewhat unsettling smile on Angie’s face. I braced myself without knowing why.

  ‘Yes,’ Patrick answered. ‘I broke off my engagement because I realized that I’m actually in love with you.’

  Then he continued on his way while I gaped at him, got into his Tesla and drove away.

  I had to admit, it was a really good exit line.

  PART TWO

  ‘Lovers’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Four months later, the nightmare trial was real.

  Madelyn Forsythe’s appeal hearing was possibly the most sloppily presided legal proceeding I’d ever seen. Judge Colin Klemperer sat at his bench and didn’t even try to conceal the contempt he was obviously feeling for my client, who sat at the defense table looking like a kitten confronting a grizzly bear. It wasn’t so much fear as total bewilderment.

  ‘The defendant offered sexual favors to an unknown internet acquaintance she’d met on a site for people seeking such transactions and she made a reference to payment,’ Longabaugh told the judge. ‘I don’t see how that’s anything but the solicitation of sex for money.’

  I was already on my feet. ‘Your Honor, it’s anything but clear that such a transaction was being discussed. My client thought she was on a simple dating site and – given her recent divorce – was seeking someone to meet and flirt with. Never was money even vaguely suggested as payment for sex and never did so much as one cent change hands. These charges never should have been brought, let alone a conviction handed down. We are requesting simple relief from what was clearly an unjust and unwarranted verdict.’

  Klemperer looked at me and shook his head with something approaching disgust. ‘Ms Moss, how long have you been an attorney?’

  So this was going to get personal. Exactly what you never want. ‘Eight years, Your Honor.’ Don’t try to defend yourself; just answer the question. You know a snide comment is coming and you’ll just have to take the shot and rebound from it.

  ‘In that time, did you never learn the meaning of the word appeal?’ Oh good. He was going to school me on the basics of the law.

  ‘I believe I understand the concept,’ I said, hoping I could keep this little display short and get back to the absurd charges against my client.

  ‘I’m not certain of that,’ Klemperer responded. Judges aren’t supposed to sneer but that wasn’t stopping him. ‘We are not here to consider the validity of the original charges or to once again argue the merits, as you see them, of the case. We’re here because you filed a brief that suggested there were irregularities in the original trial. This is an appeal, not a retrial. So let’s keep the proceeding focused on the problems you had with the trial that took place four months ago, please.’

  My problem with the first trial was that the charges were stupid and the verdict a miscarriage of justice. The fact that the judge allowed testimony he shouldn’t have or that the jury had seven divorced men, three of whom had slipped Maddie their business cards after a day in court, constituted icing on the cake here. But, hey. Tell the man what’ll get you where you want to go.

  ‘Of course, Your Honor.’ I sat down and let Longabaugh rant on some more and waited for my turn.

  Maddie leaned over to me at one point. ‘This isn’t going well.’

  ‘Wait for our turn,’ I told her, not in the least confident that it would go better.

  ‘The prosecution rests,’ Longabaugh said after his latest smug diatribe, and walked back to his table.

  Klemperer looked at me. ‘If you can put forward your case for appeal, Ms Moss, without trying to present new evidence.’ Again, a dig suggesting I didn’t know what an appeal was.

  I had requested a panel of three judges to hear the appeal, which is indeed supposed to focus strictly on the way the original trial was conducted and any errors or misjudgments that could have swayed the verdict in the wrong direction. My reasoning was that all three judges couldn’t be biased against a) women generally and b), for some reason, Maddie Forsythe specifically. I needed irregularities that had taken place at trial and I had plenty of those. But having sat through four hours of Judge Klemperer I was coming to the conclusion that a change in strategy might be in order.

  ‘Your Honor, the defense’s case is based on the premise that errors in the trial at the municipal level were deciding factors in the verdict, which we believe was clearly unjust. I have a long list of those errors and evidence to review, including taped testimony from the trial and the transcripts of the internet conversation that took place between the defendant and the arresting officer, who was operating under a false identity in a sting operation. We contend that the execution of that police exercise compromised the defendant and that the municipal trial did not adequately take that into account.’

  What I was really saying was: The cop was being a jerk and tried to trap Maddie, who was just out for a quick giggle, and the judge and jury in the first trial were obviously bought off by her enemies in the LAPD, which for reasons I still didn’t understand were holding a grudge against her. But you have to sound legal and intelligent when you say stuff like that in court.

  ‘It’s all in your brief, Ms Moss. What sort of evidence do you wish to offer that does not fall outside the bounds of this sort of proceeding?’ Klemperer could have been lighting a pipe while saying that – it would have fit his tone and his image – but there is no smoking in Los Angeles courtrooms.

  ‘My point here, Your Honor, is that the evidence we intend to present might take considerably longer than the time the court has to hear it today.’

  ‘We can be here again tomorrow, Ms Moss. The courts are open on Thursdays, too.’ That drew the desired titter from the small group of spectators, most of whom were there for upcoming cases on the court calendar and were probably not pleased to hear that I’d be taking so much time their presence here today was unnecessary. They’d have to ask for another day off from work.

  Unless my plan worked.

  ‘Of course the courts are open tomorrow, but if Your Honor will check the schedule, you’ll see that I have already been granted time off in order to appear in Judge Hawthorne’s court on another matter. I applied for that time two months ago.’

  Klemperer was frantically pushing on the screen of his iPad. And he clearly didn’t care much for what he found. ‘That is noted on the schedule, Ms Moss, but I don’t understand why you can’t simply have another associate from your firm handle this case. In fact, I don’t understand why you appeared here at all today.’

  I had anticipated that question. ‘Your Honor, my client has been adamant about having me represent her in this matter. And I did request a continuance in this matter to place it after my other trial, but it was denied.’ And you were the one who denied it, so you should have read all the documents pertinent to this case before you did, right?

  Klemperer looked sour but nodded. ‘Yes, I see that,’ he said, as if it weren’t entirely his fault to begin with. He took off the reading glasses he used to view the tablet. ‘How long did you say you are anticipating your case will continue, Ms Moss?’

  ‘I would think about six hours, Your Honor.’ If I spoke really slowly and asked for a bathroom break every fifteen minutes, it might go three hours. But he didn’t need to know that.

  He wasn’t an idiot, though; he looked surprised. ‘That long?’

  ‘There are a lot of issues to discuss and I want to be thorough in the defense of my client,’ I said. ‘I believe it would be a serious miscarriage of justice if her conviction was upheld and I intend to make every possible argument to keep that from happening.’ Klemperer was well known for wanting to get out on the links as soon as he could
after court, even in this stifling weather. The longer I said it would take, the better.

  He sat back in his cushy chair. It squeaked. The judge seemed to consider his options in some detail and then leaned forward again. ‘Ms Moss, in the interest of efficiency in this court, I believe we are best served by continuing this case until such time as you can make yourself available here without reservation. And I would advise you to make it more clear when you have a conflict that another member of your firm is unable to handle the case.’

  If he wanted it to be my fault, I was OK with that, as long as I got what I wanted. And it looked as if I was going to get exactly what I wanted. ‘I’ll be sure to do that. My apologies, Your Honor.’ I sat down.

  Wow. This was going to be even easier than I’d imagined.

  The judge banged his gavel and Maddie looked at me, seeming confused. ‘What just happened?’ she asked.

  ‘We were just granted a continuance. That means the trial won’t continue until after I’m done with Cynthia Sutton’s case.

  ‘Why is that good?’ Maddie asked me as we started up the aisle. Longabaugh glared at me, probably out of habit.

  ‘It gives me time to get us a new judge,’ I told her.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘You’re not in love with me, Patrick.’ It was the third time I’d said it today and would probably not be the last. The man had been going on about this for four months.

  Four. Months.

  Now, don’t get me wrong: Patrick McNabb was a very attractive man and I knew I loved him as a friend. He could be kindhearted and generous very much to a fault. He had real feelings and didn’t mind sharing them. He was also very good at his job and from everything I’d ever been told a joy to work with.

  But he wasn’t in love with me and he really needed to understand that.

  We were sitting at lunch with Angie, now a fixture at Patrick’s side, and Cynthia, plus Cynthia’s ‘spiritual advisor’, a middle-aged woman named Chrys (short for Chrysanthemum), who wore a gray ponytail and was helping Cynthia get through this ordeal emotionally and, for reasons I have never understood, Emily the former fiancée, recently returned from an extended business trip during which she had studied for and passed her exam to be a real-estate broker rather than simply an agent. It had taken her months. I’m told it takes most people a few weeks, and they don’t have to go away on a retreat to manage it. I’m just saying. She mostly scowled, not always at me.

  I was trying to help Cynthia get through it legally, and preferably to avoid being convicted of killing her mother-in-law Wendy Bryan. But the previous four months had not led us to the clearest legal path in the history of jurisprudence. The man who’d shot at Patrick and me outside the coffee shop had been arrested, identified as one Albert Pentergast (aka Al Romano, Abe Poston and Andy DeFelise) and then summarily released under justifications that Trench would describe only as ‘unusual’. So he’d been no help, which I had never expected him to be. Albert’s mishegas seemed more bound to Maddie Forsythe’s appeal than Cynthia’s trial. But the attacks had stopped, and at least nobody had tried to kill me in four months. So that was certainly refreshing.

  Circumstantial evidence – and that’s all it was – had piled up that seemed to implicate Cynthia in the crime. We’d found very little to prove she hadn’t killed Wendy with a TeeVee. Which never didn’t sound weird.

  The most pressing problem was that the trial was scheduled for the next day. I should have been at my office preparing an opening statement and hoping against hope that Nate Garrigan would call with game-changing information. (Granted, Nate could call me here too, but I really felt like I should have been in my office.)

  But Patrick, being Patrick, had insisted we gather to commemorate the eve of our great victory (as he saw it). Patrick believes in the power of congeniality because it has gotten him quite far in life, but my faith in the concept was at best a little shaky.

  ‘I understand if you’re not in love with me,’ Patrick responded, ‘but I object – that’s a legal term, you know – to your telling me how I feel.’

  Under normal circumstances, having this conversation among other people would have been excruciating for me. But after the first six weeks or so of Patrick’s current delusion it had become almost routine. He’d bring this up with Angie present, with Cynthia present, with Emily present (she didn’t look pleased), with colleagues of mine (even Jon, who had returned to work only two weeks ago and was walking a little stiffly with a cane but was otherwise OK) present, once even when I was on a phone call with my mother, who’d told me to marry the man immediately. I’d grown a scab over my mortification and didn’t even feel it anymore.

  ‘I’m saying this fits the pattern you have established for yourself and you need to recognize it,’ I told him for the four hundred and fifth time. ‘You attribute any feeling you have toward a woman as romantic love and you stay fixated on it until it’s reciprocated, at which time you get bored and decide to move on. You’re too good a friend for me to let you do that, Patrick.’

  Cynthia, having known Patrick longer than anyone at the table, pointed a breadstick at him. ‘She’s got you down,’ she said, nodding toward me. ‘That’s exactly what you do, Pat.’

  ‘So what do you think I should do about it?’ Patrick asked his sister.

  ‘Marry her.’ Then she grinned at me and took a big bite of the breadstick. Cynthia, a woman in a business that had an unhealthy fixation on the physical looks of its women especially, didn’t mind eating. It was one of the reasons I’d come to like her.

  ‘You’re not helping,’ I told her. ‘But the reason we’re here, if I recall, is to work on the opening of the trial tomorrow.’

  Angie, her eyes stuck on the iPad Patrick had given her and which she carried absolutely everywhere she went, nodded. ‘Court is at ten in the morning,’ she said, as if I wasn’t aware of that. ‘Judge Phyllis M. Hawthorne presiding.’

  ‘Does it help that we have a female judge?’ Cynthia asked.

  ‘I think it’s a wash,’ I told her. I’d ordered the gnocchi and was now regretting it. That was a heavy lunch. I should have ordered a salad. I should have bought a salad from the place down the street from my office. I should be in my office now. ‘I mean, it’s good because you’re a female defendant and the judge will hopefully not be biased against women, but on the other hand the victim was a woman too and, from what I know about Judge Hawthorne, she’s going to be pretty fair-minded anyway.’

  There was what I perceived as a slightly awkward silence at the table, which lasted only a moment. ‘Actually, I was asking Chrys,’ Cynthia said. ‘She has certain abilities to understand vibrations coming from the universe.’

  I went to college for four years and majored in political science because there was no such thing as ‘pre-law’. Then I went to law school for another three years. I clerked for a state Supreme Court justice. I spent seven years as an assistant county prosecutor in New Jersey sending criminals to prison. Now I was employed by a prestigious law firm in a major city, drawing a nice but not extravagant salary and slowly building what I thought was a decent reputation in the Los Angeles legal community. And I was being shouted down by vibrations coming from the universe.

  Sometimes it barely feels worthwhile getting out of bed in the morning.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. I tried not to clench my teeth, but they appeared to have a mind of their own. It was all I could do to keep my head from vibrating.

  ‘I believe in the judge,’ Chrys said. ‘The judge has a kind and just heart and he will rule fairly.’

  ‘The judge is a woman,’ I pointed out again. Nobody seemed to notice except Angie, who gave me a light kick under the table. I was not supposed to sully the reputation of the spiritual advisor. I’d have to sit Angie down tonight and remind her where she was from.

  ‘Since we all know that our dear Cynthia here did not commit the crime of which she was accused, we can rest assured that she will not be convicted, but there are d
angers in the process that must be avoided,’ Chrys went on.

  ‘Dangers?’ It was Patrick, and not the accused, who seemed most disturbed by the suggestion. ‘What kind of dangers?’

  Chrys, who was so slight a woman that she seemed more rumor than human, still commanded attention easily and with authority. ‘Obstacles,’ she intoned with serious gravitas. ‘Hidden traps. A man with an agenda. A woman whose past threatens your future. And most insidious of all, a friend who is really an enemy.’

  That was either the plot of the next Star Wars movie or literally every legal drama ever written. It was so general that you could honestly apply it to any situation and find ways that it fit. It was like an online daily horoscope. Gemini: Things will go well until they take a turn. No kidding.

  So it was really disturbing to see my client, her brother, who was a good friend of mine, his onetime fiancée (her I didn’t care about so much) and my closest friend in the world take what Chrys had said seriously. No. Gravely.

  ‘That’s frightening,’ Cynthia said. ‘A friend of mine will turn on me during the trial? Who could it be?’ If we were at a long table and all pointed in the same direction for no reason, it could have been Leonardo’s The Last Supper.

  ‘It must be referring to your husband,’ Patrick asserted. ‘There’s no doubt that he’ll be a snake in the grass; he always has been.’

  I had in fact scheduled a meeting with Michael Bryan for this very afternoon when I discovered his name was not on the prosecution’s witness list. That was a serious omission, one that was either troubling or encouraging. Could Michael present evidence that would seriously boost my case? I should probably leave this lunch right now and go prep for that meeting, I thought.

  I could handle anything that was going to come up in the courtroom if I had the confidence of my client and knew that she was going to trust me to do whatever it would take to ensure her freedom. If you have a client who doesn’t believe in you … well, that’s why I keep a file of business cards and contacts in my phone of other lawyers who might better serve the client. Because going into battle with a client who thinks you don’t know what you’re doing pretty much always ends in the verdict going the way you didn’t want.