Double Reverse

by Tim Green

  "--an that's why Trane got's a woman for his lawyer, a famous woman, a defense lawyer comin to the aid of the innocent be they black or be they white."

  Madison leaned toward Chris's ear and whispered, "You couldn't have written that part of it any better." "--the female phenom Madison McCall!" Madison came out of the room amid not applause but more jostling and shouting among the media battling for space.

  "Thank you Mr. Dobbins," she said sternly. "I am here to inform you that, yes, I will be handling this case for Mr. Jones. I would ask you not to solicit comment from him, but to direct your questions from this point further at me--"

  The place erupted with reporters bawling questions. Madison held up her hands. During the melee, she wondered if she shouldn't push the Zeus shoe off the podium. It was sitting right there in front of her like a ridiculous prop. She wrestled with the notion until it was quiet again and too late.

  "If you interrupt me again," she warned the reporters, "my part of this press conference is over. Now, as I said, I will handle your questions only at press conferences. As we proceed towards trial I will call these conferences only as I see fit. I have this statement to make right now . . ."

  Madison took an index card out of her inside pocket and tucked the edge of it under the sneaker. She glanced at it, then looked up at the crowded room.

  "I urge you, as responsible members of your profession, to remember that Mr. Jones is innocent. It is our intention to prove that in a court of law. Until that time, it is your duty and mine as responsible members of this society to remember that we have embraced the presumption of innocence. This is what separates us from the injustice of the death squads that have and still do plague many of the societies in the history of man. This is an important right that I do not intend to let people forget. I hope you will do the same."

  Madison left the podium amid a thunderstorm of questions. She presumed that would be it, but Dobbins was back at the mike immediately giving them more.

  "Now!" he shouted. "My man himself is gonna come up here an' tell you the way it is! The truth! My man Trane!"

  Madison was already through the doorway before she realized what was happening.

  "Oh no," she said, going for her client until Dobbins's enormous bodyguard fdled the doorway to block her path.

  "Excuse me," she said, poking at a slab of fat in his back. He ignored her. It was too late anyway. Trane was in front of them all holding up the shoe with Dobbins nodding like a puppet beside him.

  "I ain't no killer!" Trane said to them forcefully, and then after a dramatic pause and much more quietly, "But these shoes now . . . These shoes is killer."

  Another storm of questions came crashing down on them, and Zee stepped aside. Madison bumped straight into Trane with Dobbins pushing from behind. They all got back through the door that Zee slammed in the faces of some of the more aggressive cameramen.

  "What the hell was that all about!" Madison demanded, her fists clenched and her arms thrust down at her sides.

  "You handle the legal stuff," Dobbins said to her wickedly. "I'll handle the marketin'. We got a lot invested in these shoes, babe. Just 'cause the white man is ready fo a lynchin don't mean we aim to stop sellin. When this whole thing shakes out an my man here is proved innocent, then you go home. We got too much invested. You do yo' job, an I do mine."

  Madison didn't know how to respond, and it didn't matter. Dobbins and Trane moved past her and Zee shielded them as if by instinct. They were gone before she could utter another word. On the other side of the door the news crews were still clamoring among themselves. Madison looked at Chris. He shook his head.

  "What the hell," she said.

  "Let's go get something to eat," he told her.

  "What are we doing here?" she said morosely.

  "You know how the players we work for are always talking about the shit side of playing in the NFL? Well, this is the shit side of being their agents."

  Chapter 30

  Madison had to stay in L. A. overnight. She missed Cody's win over West Lake Hills's archrival, Sam Houston High, and didn't stand a chance to see Jo-Jo play Saturday morning either. Gary Le Fleur, the DA, had been unavailable by the time Madison got hold of him on Friday afternoon. Instead he suggested they meet Saturday morning after his round of golf with the mayor. Madison wasn't in any position to bargain. At least, she reasoned, she would have the day at home Sunday, then a day to strategize with Chris in the office on Monday before flying back to L. A. for their next meeting with Trane.

  Gary Le Fleur was a short, handsome man with curly black hair and a Roman nose. His muscular forearms and face were deeply tanned, and a small gold cross hung in the open front of his olive golf shirt. They found him sitting alone at one of a battalion of tables dressed out in green-and-white-striped umbrellas overlooking the water in front of the first tee. As they crossed the wide stone veranda Le Fleur splashed some Perrier over a wedge of lemon resting in a small glass of ice. He took a hurried sip before rising to greet them.

  "Have you eaten?" he asked politely.

  They hadn't, and Le Fleur had a waitress bring them menu cards. Chris used the opportunity to ask the DA to get him a special permit to carry his gun in California during his investigation.

  "I never got over being a cop," Chris said with a friendly grin.

  For Le Fleur it was no problem. Their talk took a casual turn. They might have been old law-school classmates caught up in a nostalgic tendency to debate the most recent events in the legal world. For a time Madison actually enjoyed quietly arguing over the recent Supreme Court ruling on the procedural limits of death penalty appeals. The air and the shade and the occasional distant pleasantries between golfers were soothing. The scent of lilies permeated the veranda.

  But after she ordered a curried chicken salad, Madison cleared her throat and said, "So when do you foresee giving me a preliminary exam, Gary?"

  Le Fleur poked at the lemon in his drink with a cocktail straw. A hint of a smile danced at the corners of his mouth. "I'm not even thinking about a prelim because I should have a grand jury indictment for you by the end of the week."

  "You're going right to grand jury?" Madison said, unable to contain her surprise. "You don't even know if you have probable cause for the arrest."

  "I'll tell you everything you need to know right now," the DA said somberly, laying down his straw and leaning his forearms on the table's edge. "Your client has a history of violence, especially toward women. I've got a friend of the deceased who says he beat her on a regular basis. By his own admission he had a confrontation with the victim on the night of the murder where more than a dozen witnesses heard him threaten her. He had motive. He had opportunity. The only alibi he's got is the word of Conrad Dobbins, whose credibility as a witness is laughable."

  The DA let those words hang for a moment.

  "Then, we've got his golf club with her blood on it and him tossing it into the harbor. After being questioned by the police on the morning after the killing, he drove directly to San Pedro with the murder weapon in the trunk of his car. I think you and I should be talking about pleas, not probable cause. We aren't going to make the same mistake they did with O. J. We're going to try this in Beverly Hills where the murder took place and where the defendant lives. His jury of peers is going to look a lot different than the other guy's did. The city of Los Angeles has no intention of going through that same kind of legal humiliation again."

  Madison absorbed what he was saying without any visible reaction. There was no doubt that the history of that infamous case was going to affect the politics in this one. Attorneys' careers were ruined in that one, political aspirations dashed. Sure, there were some book deals and some short-lived TV contracts for the prosecutors involved. They got their fifteen minutes of fame and then some. But the shame of losing that case with the defendant's blood and the victims' blood all over the place was something no real attorney could put a price on. It didn't take clairvoyance to know that every move
Le Fleur made would be benchmarked against what happened in that case five years before.

  "You've also searched my client's home," Madison said.

  "Yes, we have."

  "And I presume you haven't found anything else?"

  "No."

  "So how do you explain my client's having caved this girl's skull in with a golf club and not having a single drop of blood on his clothes or shoes? That doesn't sound good."

  "He got rid of it somewhere."

  "But when you arrested him he was wearing the same clothes he had on the night of the ball. You've got the wrong man, Gary. "Vbu should rethink this grand jury until you can answer that question a little better."

  Le Fleur pursed his lips and shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't know where the bloodstains are. We're still looking. But the club is all I need."

  "It seems likely, even probable to me," Madison countered, "that someone could easily have gotten hold of Trane's club, killed the girl, then planted it back in the trunk of his car."

  "Yeah, that all sounds good," Le Fleur said, "but you can't explain that club away without someone else having his hands on the keys to Trane's car. That club was in the trunk, and there's no sign of anyone using anything but a key to get it open . . ."

  These weren't the only flaws Madison saw in the DA's case, but they were the obvious ones that he'd be thinking about anyway. She wanted to raise them now, not to warn him of her strategy but to plant even the smallest seed of doubt in his mind. Madison knew that in some cases even the smallest detail could end up tilting the balance. Self-doubt was a detail, and not a small one.

  "I'd hate to be in your shoes on this one," she said, baiting him even further. "The mayor probably reminded you this morning that you have to win this case to keep everyone from sinking. Am I right?"

  She felt certain that's what would have transpired on this very golf course only hours ago. She could envision the mayor, an increasingly popular conservative icon with his own newsletter, talking tough about amoral professional athletes like Trane and how they needed to be put in their proper place: jail.

  "The mayor, like myself, wants justice. Your client has a history of violence towards women. There's a clear pattern."

  "I'll fight that admission."

  "I'm sure you will, but California law is pretty clear on it. It'll go in."

  "I presume you'll give me all the police reports?"

  "Of course."

  "I'd like their notebooks as well."

  Le Fleur nodded his head and said, "I'm going to give you everything and then some. I'll have Lieutenant Brinson collect any notes from his men. I'll have those and every other document I've got copied by my secretary and available for you first thing on Tuesday. Don't worry. I wouldn't try to hide anything even if I had it, but I don't. . . The last thing I want is to have this thing turned over on appeal."

  Madison let out a small laugh. "That's quite a presumption, that I'll have anything to appeal."

  The DA tilted his head and raised one eyebrow as if to say he couldn't help it.

  Madison pressed her mouth shut. There was really nowhere else to go. "So that's it?" she asked.

  "That's it," Le Fleur replied. "Motive, opportunity, murder weapon, history. That's all I need not only for an indictment, but a conviction. People are fed up. They're fed up with athletes bludgeoning and abusing young women because they think they're above the law."

  The DA suddenly turned bitter. "The timing of this case is in my favor, Madison," he said, twisting his mouth the way people will when they find a long black hair in their food. "It's time for the pendulum to swing back. This whole thing with Zeus Shoes, it makes me sick. We've got a young woman who was brutally murdered and your client is using it to sell shoes . . ."

  Madison just looked at him impassively.

  "I'm sorry," he said, raising his hand and running it quickly through his hair. "I didn't mean to vent like that."

  Madison just looked at him coolly and said without rancor, "That's all right. While I'm on the opposite side of the aisle on this, I certainly understand your emotions."

  Le Fleur nodded and stood to go. "I'm going to leave you to your lunch," he said. "Please, eat. You're my guests. I don't mean to be rude, but I've lost my appetite. I'll be in contact with you early next week. My hope is to convene the grand jury on Thursday and arraign your client on formal charges on Friday."

  He shook both their hands and disappeared down the stone steps and around the corner.

  "How about that?" Madison said when he was gone from sight.

  Chris looked at her and shrugged. "The man's under some serious pressure."

  Their food came.

  "No sense in letting it go to waste," Chris said. He lifted a french fry from Madison's plate and bit it off at his fingertips. "Win, lose, or draw, this case is exactly what we needed . . . It's not ruining my appetite."

  Chapter 31

  Kurt Lunden sucked a long fat line of cocaine into his head through his nose. When the mirror was cleaned off he returned it to the top drawer of his desk. He needed some euphoria.

  He pushed the intercom button on his phone and said, "Put him through . . ."

  "Chu, what the fuck is going on? You told me you could deliver the units, and I need the fucking units!"

  "Mister Lunden. I'm quite sorry, Mister Lunden. I got bad union trouble in Java. Bad union trouble, Mister Lunden. Bad bad."

  "Chu, I got bad fucking trouble of my own. I got trouble out the ass. I don't give a shit about trouble. You give the fucking trouble to somebody else. You got union trouble? You get some people to talk sense to those union fucks. Talk sense. Use whatever you have to, Chu, goddammit; that's why you're there."

  "You wanna use Lee Fung, Mister Lunden? You want Lee Fung to ... to take care of union people, Mister Lunden? You tell me no Lee Fung unless I talk to you. You want Lee Fung?"

  Lunden twisted the end of his mustache and chewed on his lower lip, thinking. Fung's name alone cut right through the cocaine and got him feeling shitty again. Fung was into the kind of shit that kept Amnesty International in business, but Lunden wasn't worried about his tactics. It was his price. If Fung caught wind of how much was at stake, he'd want a share of it. Unless Lunden could pull a move, which maybe he could do.

  "feah, call Lee Fung. Offer him a hundred thousand dollars and go to a million, but don't go too fast. If he thinks we're desperate he'll want part of the action. Can you get it done for a million, Chu?"

  There was a delay on the other end of the line. Lunden knew it was more than the overseas connection.

  "Okay, I get it done, Mister Lunden."

  "Chu," Lunden said, "you get me those units by the end of the month and you got a million coming to you, too. You got that, Chu? The end of the month."

  Lunden put down the phone and looked at his watch. Dobbins was late. He was tempted to make himself unavailable to the son of a bitch. He couldn't do him any good anymore anyway. What was done was done. This thing would play itself out. The key would be selling the stock off at the right time before the orders outran the supply and the whole thing caved in on them. The other key would be not to let any of the other major shareholders know what was going to happen. If everyone bailed out, the SEC and the Justice Department would be all over his ass, and it didn't do you any good to make three hundred million dollars if you couldn't spend it.

  The intercom buzzed and his secretary told him Dobbins had arrived.

  "Send him in."

  Lunden wiped his nose with the back of his hand, sniffed, and stood as his secretary led the agent and his bodyguard into the room.

  "Gentlemen, sit down, sit down," Lunden said, motioning to the black leather couch and taking a low matching chair opposite them. He slouched and grinned like an evil child who'd gotten away with a bad deed. He was dressed as always in a faded polo shirt, white pants, and Docksides with no socks, and he wore a rumpled captain's cap on his head. Lunden didn't believe in fancy expensive clothe
s. Real power was being able to dress comfortably no matter how it looked.

  "Carmen," he said to the secretary before she'd left the room, "bring me those numbers from Wall Street." To Dobbins he said with a smile, "Conrad, everything we hoped for is happening. I wanted to tell you about it in person. This morning we broke ten dollars a share and we're still climbing. We're the hottest stock on the street right now. I'm targeting forty before I start to sell any of mine off, but I want you to know where you are so you can do as you like . . ."

  Carmen returned with a folder and handed it to Lunden. He took out the top page and held it at arm's length.

  "Right now you could sell your options for eight million dollars," he said, looking over the top of the page to see what kind of effect that had on the agent. "And that's just your personal stock. Trane's is the same. The clients you invested in have each made three hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars for every ten thousand they invested. You're looking like a pretty good financial adviser, Conrad."

  Dobbins's grin was so wide that Lunden thought he saw the color of the agent's burnt orange suit reflected off his teeth. Dobbins licked his lips and said, "What's the maximum upside? I mean, I wanna know when to cash out."

  "I think the media will keep Trane on the front page until about a week after he's indicted. After that, it will start to fade. Now, that doesn't mean the stock will fall, but it might. It will peak and valley along with the media attention. Right now everyone's talking not only about Trane, but Zeus Shoes. It won't stay like that forever. But when he goes to trial? There'll be another blitz."

  "What you think's gonna happen if Trane is innocent?"