Flesh and bones jl-7

by Paul Levine

  "Any other acts of violence? Ever see her threaten anyone?"

  "Chrissy? Hey, Jake, listen to me. Chrissy Bernhardt might not be an angel, and she sure as hell has a past, but I've never known her to hurt anyone, with the possible exception of herself. So if she killed her old man, which you and I saw with our very own eyes, she had a damn good reason."

  4

  Am I Getting Warmer?

  I learned how to interview clients from Jimmy Stewart and Jose Ferrer.

  Okay, so maybe watching old movies isn't quite the same as earning an Ivy League law degree or even toting Edward Bennett Williams's briefcase, but we all work with what we've got. So as I exited the Dolphin Expressway-honoring the likes of Griese, Buoniconti, Csonka, and Warfield, not Flipper-I couldn't help playing the scenes.

  Jimmy Stewart is smoking a cigar while interviewing his jailed client, Ben Gazzara, in Anatomy of a Murder.

  "What's your excuse, Lieutenant, for killing Barney Quill?"

  Ben Gazzara paces around the sheriff's office, noodling it. "What excuses are there?" he asks, and right away you know this is a savvy client. Not some blabbermouth, but a thinking man's defendant.

  "How should I know?" Jimmy Stewart answers in his aw-shucks drawl. "You're the one who plugged Quill."

  Ben Gazzara paces some more, then mumbles, half to himself, "I must have been mad."

  "No," Jimmy says. "Bad temper's no excuse."

  You can see the light bulb blink in Gazzara's head.

  "I mean, I must have been crazy… Am I getting warmer?"

  That's the right way to do it. Hint a little, but don't come right out and coach your client.

  The other night, I was watching television with my nephew Kip, a twelve-year-old who doesn't do his homework but has total recall of the newsreel voice-overs from Citizen Kane. Kip had asked me the secret to being a good lawyer. First, I told him, you've got to win your client's confidence by expressing optimism. Then we sat down to watch Jose Ferrer meet his clients in The Caine Mutiny.

  "I don't want to upset you too much," Jose Ferrer tells the nervous defendants, "but you have an excellent chance of being hanged."

  "So what's your excuse for shooting your father?" I asked Christina Bernhardt. I am nothing if not a good student by rote.

  "My excuse?" She shook her head in that way women have of clearing the hair out of their eyes. I always thought it was an unconscious gesture, but maybe they do it only when men are watching.

  "Ms. Bernhardt-"

  "Chrissy," she said, "and I'll call you Jake."

  "Fair enough. Chrissy, what's your legal justification for what would otherwise be cold-blooded murder?"

  "I have my reasons."

  "I'm sure you do. I just hope they constitute a lawful defense."

  "Such as?"

  Good question. Maybe she'd seen Ben Gazzara, too. "Self-defense, defense of others, accident, insanity. For insanity, we'd have to prove that you didn't know right from wrong at the time of the shooting."

  "Right from wrong," she repeated. "Oh, how I know the difference."

  "Let me stop you right there," I said. We were sitting on hard wooden chairs designed by Torquemada in the attorneys' conference room at the Women's Detention Center. Chrissy Bernhardt wore a blue jailhouse smock, matching loose-fitting pants with a drawstring, and the paper slippers they give inmates so they won't bash each other with leather shoes. It was an outfit never seen in Vogue or Elle, but still she looked… well, like she'd stepped out of the pages of a magazine. Her ash-blond hair fell across her shoulders. Her green eyes were clear and bright, no evidence of crying. No makeup, but her skin glowed, a good trick under the fluorescent jail lights where everyone looks jaundiced and some probably are.

  I looked straight into those bright eyes and said, "Before you say anything else, remember this. If you tell me something now, I can't let you testify differently." This is the ethical lawyer's way of telling a client to be circumspect, even when talking to your very own mouthpiece. I won't lie to a judge or let a client do it. But I'm not averse to advising my presumably innocent client to tell me what the hell happened only after I explain what makes a better story in the eyes of the blindfolded lady with the scales.

  "You're charged with first-degree murder," I told her. "It's a capital crime requiring premeditation. There is no question as to identity. You walked into a crowded bar and shot your father, not once, but three times."

  "It would have been four, but I fainted," she said.

  "I think we can rule out accident."

  She gave me a little smile, dimples showing under the prominent cheekbones. "Do you know what Rusty says about you?"

  "Probably that I was a sucker for the play-action fake."

  "He says you're not the brightest lawyer in town, but that you have the biggest heart, and that if you believed in me, you'd bleed for me. I liked that. And I liked the way it felt when you carried me out of the club."

  Through the interior window, a male jail guard watched us. Actually, he watched Chrissy. Most of the women inmates were drug addicts and hookers, plus an occasional poor soul who'd blown away an abusive spouse or lover. Most were not Chrissy Bernhardt.

  "You were unconscious," I said.

  "I was woozy and seeing stars, but I remember feeling your heartbeat against me. You're very strong, and I felt secure, protected in your arms."

  "That was before I dropped you in the police car."

  "Do you remember what you said to me?"

  "Something about not saying a word to anyone until you had a lawyer. Standard advice."

  "Then you brushed a tear from my face and squeezed my hand. You were very gentle and very caring. You had this look. I can't describe it, exactly. Sympathy, sorrow, empathy, and something that said you cared about me, even though you didn't know me."

  I cleared my throat, embarrassed. What had I felt? That she was a beautiful young woman in terrible trouble. A damaged woman in great need. I'd been down that road before and had found only pain. "You did have an effect on me," I said. "Now all I have to do is get the jury to feel the same thing, and maybe we have a shot."

  Yeah, and all Hannibal had to do was cross the Alps, and he still never got to Rome.

  "Why don't I just tell you why I did it," Chrissy said, "then you figure out if I was legally justified?"

  It's not the way Jimmy Stewart would have done it, but I said, "Shoot," and immediately regretted my choice of words.

  "Where do you want me start?"

  I'm no expert on the Bible, but I do remember the first three words of Genesis. "In the beginning," I said.

  "I was a tomboy," Chrissy told me. "Tall and athletic. I'd wrestle with the boys, play football, go tarpon fishing with my father. We had the big house on the ocean in Palm Beach, a weekend place in Islamorada, a ranch outside Ocala. I raced horses, did some jumping events, even played polo." She stopped and let a memory drift by. "When I was fourteen, I started sneaking into the barn with a stableboy who worked for the family. My father caught us and chased him off the property with a pitchfork. Would have killed him if he'd caught him."

  "Tell me about your father."

  "A powerful man. My earliest memories are of his booming voice. He could rattle the windowpanes ordering coffee. He was so… competent at everything, so in charge. I admired him, respected him. Loved him."

  Her eyes grew watery, and a tear trickled down her cheek just as it had when she nailed her beloved father with three. 22 shorts. Unless there was a darker side to powerful, competent, deceased Harry Bernhardt, the jury would be out about fifteen minutes before convicting my lovely and lethal client.

  This time, Chrissy wiped away her own tear and said, "Do you have a cigarette?"

  "No. They don't let you smoke in the jail anymore."

  "Even on Death Row?"

  I like clients with a sense of humor, even gallows humor.

  "All models smoke," she told me. "We spend a lot of time waiting, at castings, at shoots, eve
ryplace. Plus, it's a great way to control weight."

  "Your father," I said, trying to bring her back. "Tell me more."

  And she did.

  Harry Bernhardt grew up poor but ambitious near Indiantown, east of Lake Okeechobee. Chrissy's mother, Emily Castleberry, grew up rich and privileged in Palm Beach, only child of Flagler T. Castleberry, banker, landowner, and sugarcane baron. Young Harry was a bass fishing guide on the lake, and old Flagler fancied himself quite a fisherman. He hired the husky young man, then brought him home to do odd jobs around the mansion.

  When he wasn't pruning the hedges or replacing broken roof tiles, Harry would spend his time surf casting in the waters behind the oceanfront mansion. Which is where young Emily, a tall, slender teenager, would play volleyball and drink rum-and-Cokes with her equally rich Palm Beach friends. Always rebellious, Emily astonished her friends by running off with Harry to Georgia, where they were married by a justice of the peace.

  The young and apparently mismatched couple lived in a hunting cabin for a year before old Flagler forgave them both, offered Harry a job, and established a trust fund that would make Emily a very wealthy young woman. Then he had the good taste to die of a spontaneous aortic aneurysm, leaving Harry to run the businesses, all of which were in Emily's name.

  It was a childless marriage for six years until Christina was born, Emily having had three miscarriages along the way. Christina was an only child, or so it seemed until eight years later when Harry brought home a surprise. He was Guy Bernhardt, a surly seventeen-year-old, the unhappy product of a one-night stand in a fishing shack when Harry had been little more than a child himself. Guy's mother had either run off or had been sent to a state mental hospital, no one knew for sure, and now Guy inherited what had been his father's position at the mansion, handyman and not quite a member of the family.

  "Did you have a happy childhood?" I asked.

  Chrissy gave me an enigmatic smile before answering. "That's the way I always remembered it. I was Daddy's little angel, and he spoiled me. Whatever I wanted, I got. For a long time, he seemed embarrassed about Guy, like just looking at him brought back bad memories, reminded him who he was and where he came from. They weren't close, but then how could they be? Guy was practically grown before they even met. Of course, that changed over the years. Daddy brought Guy into the business, made him start at the bottom, shoveling shit, both literally and figuratively, just like my grandfather had done with him. But Guy is a lot like Daddy. He's not afraid of hard work and has great patience. It took over twenty years, but Guy pretty much runs everything now."

  "And your mother?"

  "So elegant and beautiful. I wanted to be just like her, at least until I went into my rebellious stage. Body piercing, drinking, drugs when I was twelve. Mom died of a heart attack when I was thirteen."

  "I'm sorry."

  "She was so young. She had always been frail, and she drank too much, especially the last two or three years. She was a lonely, unhappy woman."

  "So your father raised you?"

  "He tried. I was pretty wild as a teenager, and it horrified Daddy. He would have locked me in my room if he could."

  There was a knock at the door. Chrissy reached across the table and took my hand. "Are we out of time? I really don't want you to go."

  I took her hand between both of mine. "Relax. There's only a time limit in the movies. I'm your lawyer, and I can stay all day."

  The door opened, and an enormous female jail guard toddled in, carrying a brown paper bag, a set of keys jiggling on her wide belt. She had cocoa skin and dreadlocked hair, and her nametag read "D. Scruggs."

  "Hello, Do-lo," I said. "Chrissy, this is Dolores. If you have any problems-"

  "You just call me, honey," Dolores said, smiling at my client. "One look at you, and I know you're in the wrong place."

  "Thank you. I…"

  Dolores was unloading takeout containers from the paper bag. The small room filled with the aroma of spicy pork.

  "Chinese?" Chrissy asked. "You can order out here?"

  "Jake can," Dolores said. "Anything he wants for his clients."

  "How about bolt cutters with the moo shu?" I suggested.

  "Don't be funning me," Dolores said, then turned to Chrissy. "Jake tell you about the last client he had who sat in that chair?"

  Chrissy looked concerned. "No."

  "Jake always advises his clients to show up in court clean and well dressed, ain't that right?"

  "Do-lo, is this necessary?"

  "So, this sister comes into the arraignment in a fancy suit, sort of avocado-colored, by one of your designers, like a…"

  "Chanel?" Chrissy helped out.

  "Yeah, something like that, with a double strand of pearls, the real thing. And Jake had just pleaded her not guilty to a home burglary, when there's this scream from the gallery. I mean, a woman screams bloody murder. Am I lying, Jake?"

  "Actually, she screamed, 'Thief!' She was the victim, and she ran down the aisle yelling, 'That's my suit, my pearls!' "

  "So, honey," Dolores said, "you be careful when you follow this mouthpiece's advice." Cackling with laughter, she headed out the door.

  After a moment, Chrissy asked, "What was your defense?"

  "The suit looked better on my client," I said.

  "No, seriously."

  "A wise old friend of mine taught me that lawyering is like playing poker. One of the first things you learn in poker is when to fold your cards. We pled guilty."

  "Oh," Chrissy sighed, and I could tell she was wondering about my competence. Why should she be any different from anyone else? I opened the containers and peeled the chopsticks out of their paper. "Dolores seems very fond of you," Chrissy said. Probably wondering just how many of my clients end up in jail.

  "Her name means 'sorrow' in Latin. My same wise old friend told me that. Do-lo put three of her own kids through college and is a foster mom to about a dozen more. Incorrigibles, kids nobody wants. When they get in trouble, which is often, I handle their cases."

  "For free?"

  "For some of Dolores's home-cooked ribs or special considerations for a hungry client."

  Chrissy was already digging into the shredded cabbage and wood mushrooms of the moo shu pork. "God, this is good. Do you know what the food's like in this place?"

  "Yeah, the Donner Party ate better in the winter of 1846."

  We sat a moment in silence before I got us back on track. "Your father would have locked you in your room…"

  "And I would have done anything to get out. Out of the mansion, out of Palm Beach. When a talent scout spotted me on Worth Avenue and said I could be a top model, I told Daddy I was going to Paris, and he yelled, 'You're only sixteen!' So I said, 'Mom married you when she was seventeen.' "

  "Touche."

  "Yeah, but Daddy said he doubted she would have done it if she had a second chance."

  I gobbled a spring roll. "So you went to Europe."

  "I was so-o-o-o naive. I had a book of photos shot by an amateur in Lauderdale. They were laughable, really hideous. Poorly lit, dumb, stilted poses like a kid pretending to be a model, my hair sprayed into place like concrete."

  "Did you get work?"

  "Not at first."

  Chrissy opened a plastic cup of hot tea and took a sip. "I took my book into the office of one of the scouts for a big Parisian agency. They call them rabatteurs, the men who beat the bushes to flush out the prey. Only in this case, instead of rabbits…"

  "Young girls who want to be models."

  "Right. He was right out of Central Casting, a little mustache, a lewd twinkle in his eye, and he wore a white silk scarf in the office. Anyway, he offers me a glass of wine and starts looking through the book. He laughs, says something to himself in French, laughs again. 'Do you know what a go-see is?' he asks me. I tell him, 'Sure, it's when a model takes her pictures to a client to get work.' Then he puts the book in his lap, unbuttons his fly, and lays out his dick, right at the fold. 'Oui, b
ut for you to get work, cherie, a go-see is a go-suck.' "

  "This guy must have gone to prep school with Senator Packwood. What did you do?"

  "I smiled sweetly, reached over, and grabbed the book by each side, then slammed it shut as hard as I could."

  "Good for you!"

  "Yeah, well, my morals didn't hold up as well after I ran out of money and was hungry."

  "Didn't your father help you?"

  "He would have if I'd asked."

  "But you didn't."

  "I didn't even tell him where I was."

  "Why not?"

  She stared off into space. A shadow crossed her face for just a second, and there it was again, that vulnerability and need. I am not a white knight bedecked in armor, mounted on a gallant steed. But if I were, I would have scooped her up, tugged at the reins, and spirited her away to a refuge in a forest of high pines.

  "I didn't know at the time," she said finally, "but I do now."

  Why? I wanted to ask, but sometimes the best questions are left unspoken. I knew Chrissy would get around to it, so I let her tell the story in her own time, in her own way.

  "For the next two years, I was more of a party girl than a model. I went to Milan to build my book and fell in with a fast crowd. Figli di papa, Daddy's boys, Italians with trust funds. Some of them just want a beautiful girl on their arm; most want to fuck you and pass you off to a friend. When I started working, I lived in a models' apartment building the Italians called Principessa Clitoris."

  "Cute."

  "We just called it the Fuck Palace."

  I dragged a piece of pork through the rice and tossed the mixture into my mouth. Outside our enclosed room, three male guards looked in through a window. If there had been a curtain, I would have pulled it. Behind them, a stream of female inmates lined up on their way to the cafeteria. Stringy hair, sallow faces. I wondered what Chrissy would look like after a year behind bars. Or twenty.

  "I did the whole party scene," she said, "licking coke off hundred-dollar bills in rest rooms, skinny-dipping in fountains, parties for Arab sheiks, hanging with the disco droids. Amazingly, I was doing well, professionally at least. The makeup covered the dark circles under my eyes and I had a look that was hot, or so they said. I was traveling, making good money, but my personal life was chaotic and destructive."