“She’s already getting big time.”
“I’m also going to be asking time for you,” she said. “Or at least sanctions. You knew or should have known that—”
Shaharazad emerged before Oakley could finish. She handed a transcript to the judge. Was there steam coming off the pages?
“It does say unsupervised your honor,” Shaharazad said.
Time for me to fire first. “Your honor, since she was not required to be on supervised probation, she didn’t need to report, so there can indeed be no probation violation for failure to report.”
The judge looked over the page one more time, then checked his computer just to make sure.
“This matter is dismissed,” the judge ordered and pointed his gavel at Innosense as if firing a thirty-eight magnum. “The defendant is released from custody!”
“You saved my life,” Innosense said, as the guard took off her handcuffs. She unbuttoned the top buttons of her orange jumpsuit right there in the courtroom before a guard stopped her at the third button.
“He saved your life,” I said, pointing to Marley.
She nodded at him. Marley nodded back.
“I still lost everything because I had to spend time in jail, and I’m still gonna file a disciplinary complaint against you.”
“Stand in line,” I wanted to say, “I don’t tell the cartel you were the worst drug dealer ever, or your manager at the strip club you were the worst stripper ever; so, don’t mess with my livelihood.”
I didn’t say that, of course. I just smiled and said, “Do what you want, but you got out because of us.”
• • •
“We make a pretty good team,” I said as Marley and I walked out of the courtroom in triumph. The wind had stopped for the moment. The T on Tucumcari Mountain must stand for triumph.
“We do,” he said. “I’m liking home school on the road.”
“Homeschooling on the range,” I sang.
“Where the deer and the antelope play,” he joined in.
“And seldom is heard, a discouraging word.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. He pointed at Innosense who was now leaving the courthouse in street clothes, nearly tripping over her very high heels. “She’s uttering some discouraging words about you right now.”
The wind started blowing again the minute we got into the car. My engine strained under the force and took a direct hit from a tumbleweed.
On the way out, we took a wrong turn. Instead of heading toward the freeway, we ended up on a road that dead-ended by the high school. A water tower cylinder announced that this was the home of the Tucumcari Rattlers. A big purple rattlesnake coiled around the tower.
“No one from Tucumcari will mess with us now,” I said. “You know why?”
I pointed to the Tucumcari Rattlers water tower. “Professional courtesy.”
The purple rattlesnake might as well be the sign that the song was talking about, So are you willing to go from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tohatchi via Tonapah for justice?
“I’m willin,’” he said.
I stiffened. How did he know the next line to the song I was singing in my head?
As I stared at the purple rattler, I put my hand on my son’s shoulder and envisioned a great partnership—Rattlesnake Lawyer & Son or should it just be Rattlesnake & Son? With my psychic son, the breakdown docket would never break down. Think of what we could do together—no more getting doug-ed by the DA, finding the missing piece of evidence that breaks the case wide open, and of course the big surprise that saves the day in closing argument.
Maybe that attorney-author guy could write about our adventures. Who knows, maybe we could even sell it as a television series.
We had to get past y ex-wife first. Hopefully, we were driving home to Albuquerque and not to his mother in T or C.
“Call your mom,” I said.
Marley called on my phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. “Dad won a case,” he said. “I’m loving it here. Can I stay another day?”
I don’t know if I would call it a win, but I didn’t argue. He handed the phone to me. I was more nervous than I had been facing a redneck judge with the power of contempt.
“One more day,” she said. “Dan, you should have known your client was on unsupervised probation, but you made it right. Good job.”
“Do I have to win cases to get custody of my son? Well, to get joint custody of my son?”
“We’ll see. You might as well keep him another night. Things are crazy down here and he’s probably better off with you right now.”
Better off with me right now? I was ecstatic. Did the purple rattlesnake on the water tower just rattle?
Chapter 14
Red or Green, that is the Question
It was still afternoon when we returned to my office downtown a few hours later. Marley had insisted that I check the mail over at the prison post office, and sure enough, there were some pleadings for the trial tomorrow.
“Can I help you prepare for trial?”
“Of course. The file’s in F.”
Marley had trouble opening the second file drawer in the Steelcase cabinet, so I had to open it myself. F didn’t stand for “failure,” at least not yet. This client had the strange name of Felix Feliz. What was it with me and clients with strange names? Feliz was in on yet another “possession of pill” case, that weird designer drug Crotaladone. However, it wasn’t quite Crotaladone, but a counterfeit. Apparently, there was a big issue from the previous lawyer about whether possessing counterfeit Crotaladone was a crime. The issue was more chemical than legal.
I had picked up the case on the breakdown docket after that attorney had overdosed a few months ago, although it was unknown whether real or counterfeit Crotaladone did the job on him. I had received the massive file intact and had never opened it. The accordion file promptly exploded at my touch, and I dumped the papers on my desk.
Perhaps Marley could sense the death, he made it a point not to touch any of the paperwork.
“Is Felix his first name or his last?” Marley asked.
“Felix is his first name. Feliz is his last name. Like ‘Feliz Navidad.’”
He looked at me blankly.
“‘Feliz Navidad?’ The song they play at every mall in New Mexico at Christmas. Are you sure your mother is Luna Cruz from Crater, New Mexico?”
He looked hurt when I said that. I didn’t want to dwell on it, so I had him look at the discovery—the case files on the computer—and read it to me.
"He said he had a prescription for the pills," Marley said.
"It was forged to make it look like it came from an Australian doctor. The client was also found with a firearm, which is illegal if you're a felon. At arraignment, he told the judge 'I got a prescription for the pills.' Without missing a beat, the judge said 'But did you have a prescription for the firearm?'"
Marley laughed, slightly confused. "You can get a prescription for a firearm?"
I tried to call the client in Dona Ana County Detention Center, but no one at the jail picked up. No one at any jail ever picked up. No big deal. I could wing this case without talking to my client, right?
“Do you do a power-point presentation?” he asked.
“No, I just scribble a few notes on a yellow pad.”
“You haven’t put anything down for your opening statement.”
I had written opening on a page that was still conspicuously blank while all the other pages were filled. “I’m tired of doing the ‘look both ways when you’re crossing the street schtick’ for showing beyond a reasonable doubt,” I said, describing an old defense lawyer’s standard ploy. “Can you think of other examples I could use in trial?”
He thought for a second. “If there is any loose end, anything without a logical explanation, it’s magic. Magic is r
easonable doubt.”
Magic is reasonable doubt. I loved it and wrote it down on the yellow pad. I would use that tomorrow, if I could.
Dew and Denise had been mock trial champions, Marley didn’t know the letter of the law as well as they did, but someday he could be better than both. He was a human lie-detector and had the ability to understand evidence just by touching it with his fingertips. His ability to tell the future, even in glimpses, couldn’t hurt either.
“What’s going to happen in this case?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If I don’t have personal contact, I don’t get a real feel for the case.”
“What do you mean ‘feel’ for the case?”
“Sometimes I feel things before they happen and know what to do. Sometimes I don’t.”
I realized that Marley had refrained from touching the file or any of the paperwork. That couldn’t be a good sign. Almost as if he didn’t want to know what was going to happen.
• • •
I took Marley for a sunset hike in the Sandia foothills and then dinner nearby at Garduno’s, as upscale New Mexican cuisine as New Mexico cuisine could upscale. It featured sixteen-dollar and ninety-five cent lobster enchiladas with real lobster, blue corn, and Hatch green chile. Somehow, he made it through dinner without spilling. With chips, salsa, blue corn green chile enchiladas, and now some sopapillas, he probably was now officially over ninety pounds.
“Green chile is addictive,” he said.
“New Mexico’s official state question is ‘Red or Green?’”
“Green!” he said without hesitation.
“Good answer.”
We walked out to the parking lot, the sound of trucks on the interstate whizzing by. If I compared the lights of Albuquerque to a galaxy, we were right on the bicep of one of the spiral arms. I felt at home. I felt at home with my son. I hoped I wouldn’t lose him again.
Chapter 15
Exit Zero
It was another trip before dawn and I wore a full suit, just to be ready. Denise must have packed Marley another suit, and this gray one fit him perfectly.
Amazingly, Marley tied his orange tie in a double Windsor after only three tries. It took me a moment, though, to realize that he had stolen one of mine. He looked like a congressional page on a summer internship. It took me two times to tie my gray tie and I had to tuck it into my pants, so I shouldn’t gloat. Even his shoes were tied in double-knots, while mine were loose.
Marley fell asleep in the car and was clearly having bad dreams that grew worse as we drove away from home. I patted him on the shoulder and he calmed down in his slumbers.
With every mile, I practiced my opening and closing about “magic is reasonable doubt.” I was going to make my son proud.
We passed Lemitar, Exit 156, the place that billed itself as the promised land. For the next 156 miles, Marley slept too soundly for me to wake him. I felt a strange sensation as I passed the Upham exit, Exit 32, the way to the spaceport from points south. I felt the car vibrate and then a tidal wave passed through my blood stream. When I looked to the east, I saw that a rocket had just lifted off at the spaceport. I hated to imagine a rocket explosion.
No matter, Marley slept right through it as if dead to the world.
There was still that construction and traffic all through Las Cruces and again had to take Exit 0, which took me back around the west side of town on Interstate 10 and then I cut back to the courthouse. Marley finally jolted awake right as we pulled into the courthouse parking lot.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Something’s wrong,” he said.
“Don’t say that you have a bad feeling about this,” I said. “It’s probably because you’re starting school on Friday down here.”
“I hope that’s all it is.”
• • •
The courthouse in Las Cruces is a modern one-story building that could have been a high-tech Silicon Valley call center grafted onto the two storied bricks of the old Las Cruces High School. The combined building, the awkward mix of old and new, felt like a bad marriage. There was nothing courthouse-y about it.
The winding line of prospective jurors stretched all the way to the parking lot. Las Cruces was the only courthouse in New Mexico that made people wait outside until court opened exactly at eight. Everyone—lawyers, criminals, jurors, and staff then had to all pass through a security check point, so there was always a line as people had to take off their belts. No cuts or exceptions on removing belts for lawyers of course, especially if these folks were prospective jurors who could rule against them.
Sure enough, there was yet another handwritten sign posted on the door about court being closed sometime in September due to the statewide computer retrofitting. Maybe Dew was the smart one, going into computers instead of law. Who knew, maybe computers would replace lawyers someday and Dew would be at the forefront of that movement.
As the sun rose, it quickly became hot. Marley grew “oodgey,” as we waited in the security line. Were they doing anal probes after you took your belt off today? Time to be a dad. I placed my hand firmly on his shoulder.
I echoed his mom. “Buck up,” I said. He managed to calm down. Even better, he didn’t buzz when he took off his belt and passed through the metal detector.
Belts back on through most of the loops, we hurried into courtroom six, which was bigger than I expected, and lighter because of a skylight. Still, there were no windows, so it felt cramped. The judge, Judge Most, was nicknamed the Most Interesting Judge in the World because he was a dead ringer for the man in the old Dos Equus ads, right down to his mellifluous voice.
The hallway was crowded, but the courtroom was worse. There were nearly a hundred potential jurors in the jury pool, twice the usual amount for a case like this. The numbered seats on the benches must have been designed for anorexics; they were even smaller than airline seats on a discount airline. Many of the jurors stood, instead of squeezing into the seats. I didn’t see my client in the room, so I went out and checked the hall again.
To make things worse, as I came through the doorway the second time, I accidentally brushed against the wall and turned the light switch off—as well as the air conditioning. The room was in perfect darkness and stuffy as hell. It took a few awkward attempts to fix my efforts.
The light on, I could see Team Felix, the Feliz family pretending they were jurors by sitting in the numbered seats.
“Where’s Felix?” his mother, a heavy-set woman, asked me from seat number one. “Aren’t they transporting him from jail?”
“I’ll check with the transport,” I said, and walked to the far side of the courtroom. The bailiff removed the family from the seats. I could hear their grumbling.
The transport officer checked the sheet. There was no Felix Feliz or Feliz Felix in custody. Even though the family was there, I called out for Feliz in the courtroom.
“He’s not here,” his mother said. “Maybe he’s outside.”
“Felix?” I yelled down the long hallway. “Feliz?”
No answer.
“Where is he?”
Marley used my phone to check various court and legal websites that I gave him. Electronics seemed to work better for him. Still, it took a few moments to figure out what had happened. Felix Feliz had been in custody when I had called, when no jail staff had picked up the phone. His girlfriend (well, one of his girlfriends) had bonded him out that morning and they had decided to skip across the Mexican border, forty-five miles away.
Feliz and friend were gone over the Rio, and probably weren’t coming back.
I went back into the courtroom. All one hundred jurors had now scrunched into the tiny benches.
The DA at the state’s table was Native American powerhouse prosecutor Jane Dark. Today she wore a turquoise power suit and was as cold and hard as the ston
e. Thankfully, she didn’t recognize Marley. She did recognize me.
“We are ready to go, Mr. Shepard,” she said. “My experts just flew in from Australia.”
“Australia?”
“That’s where the counterfeit Crotaladone is made in the lab, and these are the leading experts on identifying each of the various types that violate the controlled substances act.”
“How many experts?”
“Five. You didn’t stipulate to their testimony regarding counterfeit Crotaladone, so I had them flown in on the taxpayer’s dime, and we’re putting them up at the Hotel Encanto.”
Two, four, six, eight, I don’t want to stipulate. So much for my going through the alphabet. I had missed that correspondence. I started to do some math in my head, air fare from Australia, five people staying at the most expensive hotel between Albuquerque and El Paso. Would they share rooms, or each have five separate rooms? The historic Hotel Encanto was not a chain so they certainly wouldn’t be able to use points. How many nights? One or two each? No big deal, I would just ask for a continuance.
Judge Most entered the courtroom and saw the empty space next to me. “Where’s the defendant?” he asked.
“We’re still working on that,” I said. I sent Marley out of the courtroom with my phone.
Judge Most called us into his office, outside the presence of the jurors. Marley stayed in the hallway, which was a good thing. I didn’t want him to see me beg for a judge’s mercy.
Inside the judge’s large office, in the old high school part of the building. I felt like I was in the vice principal’s office. The judge had a view to the Organ Mountains, and a gigantic poster of Caldera Academy with a purple banner that read “Vamenos Conquistadores!” He took off his oversized robe to reveal a purple button-down with a purple tie. He glanced at the court reporter. Shaharazad again. Her hair now was buzzed like a Marine buzz cut. It wasn’t a bad look; her eyes really stood out.
“State v. Felix Feliz,” he said and then gave a case number. I recognized his baritone; he had been the narrator for the Caldera video. He had to have known the video was a fraud, especially since the poster made Caldera look like a castle, yet he did it anyway. Was he an alumnus, the father of a student, on the board? Or perhaps all the above?
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