by Dave Daren
Chapter 1
At some point in my career, it occurred to me that I didn’t get nervous before trials anymore. At the very least, I must not have seemed nervous. As I pushed open the door to the paralegal’s office, Vicki Park did not deem it necessary to wish me well, review any information with me, or ask how I felt about today.
Instead, Vicki simply shoved a CD case into my hand.
The CD had “Trial for that REALLY STUPID song with the dumb beep-bop chorus” scrawled across it. The handwriting was delicate and feminine, almost cursive but not quite.
“I didn’t go to law school to make mix tapes, Henry,” she reminded me. She was only sort of kidding. Vicki had been a paralegal for Sanchez & Associates for a couple years, and it was obviously a concerted effort not to complain constantly about still not being a lawyer.
“Well, I appreciate it, if that helps,” I offered.
She fixed me with a pointed stare as if to let me know that it didn’t, but then I gave her my “Henry Irving Charm Smile,” and her face turned a few shades redder. She opened her mouth to say something, but my phone blared from my suit pocket and cut her off.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
I fished my phone out with my free hand. The name Moondust Irving flashed up on the screen, and I instinctively turned to show Vicki.
“It’s my dad.”
“You have your dad saved under his real name?” Vicki observed. “And his real name is Moondust?”
“You should hear the rest of my family’s names.” I smirked and pocketed the phone again.
“You’re not going to answer it?” She frowned.
“My family’s a bunch of… uh… creative types,” I tried to explain.
“We live in Los Angeles.”
“Not Los Angeles creative,” I amended. “Like, paints-protest-murals-of-genitalia creative. Except for my sister, Harmony. She’s cool. Her genitalia murals are tasteful.”
“Well, at least her name’s almost normal.” Vicki shuffled through some files on her desk, but she glanced up at me periodically to make sure I knew she was listening. Her black hair hung loose past her shoulders, and her big, brown eyes seemed to emphasize each moment she gave me her full attention. She was beautiful, with a fiesty Korean-American personality, and we’d flirted plenty, but I’d always hesitated to take our relationship any further because of our working relationship.
“What makes her more artistically advanced than the rest of them?”
“Nothing really,” I told her. “She’s just the only one who didn’t treat me like a pariah for not following their artsy weirdo footsteps. I don’t think the rest of them have forgiven me for going to law school and not getting some theater degree at Julliard.”
“As if you would’ve gotten into Julliard,” she scoffed.
“I did get into Julliard.”
“What?” she exclaimed.
“I thought you knew that,” I laughed. “We’ve been working together for a few years.”
“Uhhh, no,” she sighed. “You almost never talk about yourself, Henry. Why didn’t you go to Julli--”
“It wasn’t for me,” I shrugged simply.
“We represent actors with six-figure salaries, and you could’ve been one of them? Are you insane? What seemed more appealing to you about being a lawyer?”
“I just wanted to be a lawyer,” I admitted. “I like the law, I like helping people, and I’m good at it. Oh, I also like money, and lawyers tend to make more than the average actor.” I winked at her, and she smirked as she shook her head.
“Still,” she began, “I’ve seen you in a trial, you definitely have the chops. You could have been a great act--”
“I’ve got to get to trial,” I interjected with a smirk. “Thanks for the disc. Hope you had fun jamming to it all night.”
“I hate you!” she added cheerfully.
“That’s not the professionalism a lawyer would embody,” I retorted as I playfully slapped her on the arm with the CD case. Vicki was twenty-five, a fully fledged adult by most standards, yet as I turned to leave, I was fairly certain she stuck her tongue out at me.
Sunlight streamed through the too-tall and too-wide windows as I breezed through the law firm. Sanchez & Associates made sure to look rich and prosperous to all the rich and prosperous clients we hoped to rope in. Entertainment law tended to bring in rich people haggling over the wording of a contract. Low stakes, lots of money.
It wasn’t a bad life, and I was very good at what I did.
A half an hour later, I pulled my BMW into the parking lot of the courthouse and walked inside.
The Burbank Courthouse was a simple building where primarily civil suits took place. Like most civil courthouses, it wasn’t a particularly comforting or welcoming place. The interior design did little to soothe the frayed nerves of those who found themselves defending their salary there.
I found my client, Bentley Parker, waiting for me in the corridor by the courtroom. He was part of some sort of famous electro-synth-core band, but instead of his usual spiked green and pink florescent haircut, he wore an expensive three piece suit, and his brown colored hair was carefully combed.
“Hey, Mr. Parker,” I greeted him. “Good to see you.”
“Are you sure we’re going to win?” he asked quietly, lines of worry crowded on his forehead.
“I always win.” I smiled at him. “That’s why you are paying me, remember?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I just--”
“Don’t worry,” I said as I patted him on the shoulder. “All you have to do is sit there and look pretty while I do my thing.”
“Okay,” he exhaled nervously. “Thanks, Henry. I would have gone crazy without your--”
“It’s what I do,” I interrupted. “I play the courtroom like you play your keyboard. Let’s do this.”
I entered the courtroom with Bentley, and we took our seats beyond the bar. My junior associate, Kendrick Adams, was already sitting in his spot, and he let out a sigh of relief when he saw Bentley and me.
“Cutting it close, Henry?” he asked. “Did you get the CD?”
“Yep,” I said as I placed it on the table.
“What is that?” Bentley asked.
“That’s today’s Excalibur,” Ken explained. “And it’s going to smite our enemies with all the power of King Arthur’s court.”
“You sound like my brother,” I scoffed.
“You have a brother?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He loves knights and dragons and stuff like that. Almost as much as he likes talking about the oppression of the man.”
“All rise,” the bailiff cut in.
Kendrick, Bentley, and I stood as Judge Dalton entered the room. He was a stately, dignified gentleman, pretty much what all law students picture in their head when they imagine a judge. As the silent courtroom waited for permission to be seated, my phone started buzzing in my suit pocket. I guessed it was my father, and I tapped the device through my coat to turn it off again.
“Everyone sit down,” the judge said, and we followed his orders. Then he rattled off the details of the trial to the jury for a few minutes before he set his eyes on me and raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead and call your first defense witness.”
“I’d like to call the plaintiff, Hayden Allen, to the stand,” I said.
Hayden took his seat at the stand. He seemed a bit dismayed, the scrappy indie wannabe suing the effortlessly successful star.
“My client, Bentley Parker,” I began, “has been accused of stealing the intellectual property of Hayden Allen. According to Mr. Allen, Bentley has, without express agreement or accreditation, stolen the melody of Hayden’s meagerly selling song and added it to Bentley’s platinum-selling single.”
I smiled
as my gaze swept the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m sure you’re familiar with the songs in question today, but, as the purpose of these trials is to review evidence, I think it would be useful to reexamine the music in question before we proceed.”
A clunky little radio was set-up in the courtroom. I retrieved Vicki’s CD from the table and popped open the case.
“Objection,” the prosecutor interrupted. “Your Honor, this is a trial, not a jam session.”
I expected as much in the way of protest, and I had a response prepared. “Your Honor, if I asked that each jury member whistle the measures of music in question from memory, they would all provide a different response. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page before this goes any further.”
He gave me an expressionless, lingering look for several seconds too long for my liking. “Objection overruled,” Judge Dalton finally announced.
I nodded and finished loading the CD into the bulky, old-fashioned radio.
“Now, members of the court, I present to you, Just Another Friday Night by Hayden Allen’s band.” I hit play, and a simple progression of notes rang out of the courtroom, a string of chords in quick succession with a melody of electronic noises behind it.
“Mr. Allen, can you please confirm that this is your song?” I asked him.
“Yes, this is my song,” Hayden stated as he nodded confidently.
“Wonderful, thank you. Next, we will play Bentley’s-- Wait a moment.” I made a big show of freezing and examining the clunky radio. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve appeared to have played the wrong track.”
“Ladies and gentlemen of the court, I ask that you please accept my sincere regrets for wasting your time.” I feigned an earnest apology, putting that theater degree I almost pursued once to good use. “This next track is actually Mr. Allen’s original song, which my client is being accused of stealing. Hold on a moment. I’ll get to the correct song.”
I skipped to the next track. Another quick succession of chords and synth sounds, barely indistinguishable from the last long. Out of the corner of my eye, barely perceptible, I saw Hayden Allen’s face fall.
“Oh, uh, sorry…” Hayden Allen backtracked. “I didn’t hear the…uh…the bass before. This one’s my song. And the first one was the song from Bentley’s band.”
“You’re sure, Mr. Allen?” I coaxed him.
“I’m positive,” he said, and I saw his counsel cringe at this admission.
“Fair enough,” I nodded. I made eye contact with Kendrick for a moment, and saw that he was doing a poor job of containing a boastful smirk.
It was going just as I had planned.
“Thank you, Mr. Allen. I believe that concludes my-- Oh, wait a minute.” I squinted at the radio again as I turned my body so that the judge and jury could see my intense scrutiny.
The opposing counsel dragged a hand down his face. I resisted grinning at him.
“Well, again I’m sorry about this mix-up, folks,” I said as I pretended to check the back of the CD case. Although I already had the information committed to memory, Vicki had actually put a tracklist there. She’d also added the year each song was released to the end of each track. Her attention to detail was a nice touch. “It seems this isn’t either Mr. Allen or Mr. Parker’s song. This is a song from 2004, an all-female Foo Fighters synth-cover band named the ‘Fem Fighters,’ but you can see where the confusion may have stemmed from.”
Some of the jury chuckled.
“Maybe it’ll be the next one,” I said. I skipped to the next track. An uncannily similar song started up. Followed by another, and another, and another…
At the end of the CD, it literally seemed like steam was going to burst from the plaintiff’s attorney’s ears. Hayden Allen looked mortified.
“I’m very sorry for all that confusion,” I told Hayden. “That was a lot of information coming at me at once, but since you would be the expert at your own work, Mr. Allen, please tell me, and everyone here in court today, which of these songs can be attributed to you.”
Hayden balked. “I… I…”
“Sorry, I’ll restate the question,” I offered. “Of the songs that I played for you, which one was the song you wrote, and which is the song that my client allegedly stole?”
Hayden opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. He didn’t know, and the jury and Judge Dalton knew it.
“Defense, take your seat,” Judge Dalton said. “I think you’ve made your point.”
I nodded to the judge and took my place back between Kendrick and Bentley.
“Great job, boss,” Kendrick muttered to me as I sat down.
“Damn, Henry,” Bentley whispered. “They said you were the best, and they were right.”
“It’s what I do, Bentley.” I almost wanted to feel some sort of anticipation for the conclusion of the trial, but I’d been doing this for a few years now, and I wasn’t surprised when the jury foreperson finally stood up to say that the defendant was not liable to pay royalties to the plaintiff.
I had won, again.
Back in the corridor of the courtroom, Bentley stuck around to thank Kendrick and me.
“You are awesome,” Bentley said as he shook our hands.
“Tell everyone you know,” Kendrick said, “Henry Irving can’t be beaten.”
“Thanks for the business, Bentley,” I said as I elbowed Ken in the ribs. He exclaimed in pain, feigning serious injury.
“I’m suing!” he cried dramatically, and Bentley and I laughed.
“Thanks again.” Bentley smiled broadly at the pair of us. He turned, exited the courthouse, and strolled back into his life of making music and touring.
“So do you think he actually stole the song?” Kendrick asked once he was out of earshot.
“I have no reason to think so,” I shrugged. “It’s the same four chords all those other songs used. If he heard it once, and it got stuck in his head, Hayden doesn’t really have the means to prove that.”
“Man, I’m sure glad we’re in entertainment law,” Ken reflected. “Imagine if we had actual murderers and ne’er-do-wells to defend. I’d much rather deal with outdated nu-metal artists, sexy pop stars, and washed up film stars.”
“Yeah, I’ve got no desire to do an actual felony case,” I agreed. “If something goes wrong, that’s a person’s life in our hands.”
“And they could kill you,” he added. “Disappointing a murderer doesn’t seem ideal. Disappointing a musician probably just warrants an angry, disparaging song about you.”
“I’m sure the fact that the actors and musicians usually have much more money than murderers didn’t cross your mind.”
“Of course not, I’m in this for the greater good.” He blinked at me innocently.
We both startled as my phone went off again with a buzz in my suit pocket.
“Someone really wants to get ahold of you,” Kendrick noted.
I checked the phone screen. “Moondust Irving” flashed on screen again. I didn’t know why I expected differently, but I found myself groaning loudly at the discovery.
“That’s a crazy-awesome name,” Kendrick noted as he peeked over my shoulder to read my screen.
“That’s my dad,” I told him, unsure whether I was correcting him or agreeing with him.
“Well, you don’t have an excuse to hang up on him now.” He patted me on the back. “Tell him the good news. You won the case! You’re the hero of the hour!”
“They’re more into artsy stuff. They don’t really get things like this. I don’t think they’d care about--”
The phone rang again, and Kendrick shook his head.
“He really wants to get a hold of you. You got anything else you want me to do today, boss? Or can I take the rest of it off?”
“We did a lot of work on this case, so take the rest of the day,” I said.
“Great,” he said. “I’m going to go spend my salary on something new and shiny. Or something with red hair a
nd long legs. Byeee.”
“See ya.” I shook my head at my associate as he retreated, and then I pressed on the button to take my dad’s call.
“Henry?” I heard his voice before I could say anything.
“Dad, hi, sorry. I was in court, and I didn’t have--”
“Henry, I don’t care about that right now,” he cut me off.
I grimaced. I was ready to give him a piece of my mind, to tell him that his and the rest of my family’s constant lack of support was not only annoying but could have been detrimental to how I viewed the idea of family values for the rest of my life.
But before I could get into any of that, my dad continued.
“It’s your sister,” he said. “She’s in jail. She’s been accused of killing someone.”
Chapter 2
I tapped my foot impatiently as I waited for my family to pick me up from Sedona Airport. The sun still wasn’t up yet, but my anxiety kept me from being totally exhausted. I’d rushed out of LA on the next flight I could catch to Sedona, and the short flight had only highlighted how different the two cities were.
For one, looking up at the Sedona sky, I could see the stars, a striking departure from the blanket of close-enough-to-black that the Los Angeles sky had offered. Even from my limited view from the sidewalk next to the airport, I could see that the roads were far less congested, and nature was largely untampered with all around me. It being nearly four in the morning probably helped, but that wasn’t something that ever seemed to help in LA.
I almost felt a swell of nostalgia for the place. It was rather beautiful when you really looked at it.
And then, my dad pulled up in an eyesore of an ancient Volkswagen Bus. Not even a charming little Beetle, but an entire ridiculous bus that took up my entire line of vision when it parked directly in front of me. It was painted with designs that seemed like someone had done a quick internet search of hippie-related clip art and then slapped on a bunch of stickers for politicians from fringe political parties who hadn’t run for office in years.
The members of my family who were not currently jailed ambled out of the car to greet me. My mother slid out of the passenger seat first. She sported a flowing dress that billowed when she rushed forward. Her greying brown hair hung loose and wavy all the way down to her waist, and it seemed to move as one entity as she trotted up to greet me.
