Proof of Intent

by William J. Coughlin

  “How about I come with you?”

  “Forget it.”

  “I’ll leave the rum here. Huh? What do you say?” She smiled coyly.

  I didn’t feel like negotiating with a drunk, so we walked silently out to my aging Chrysler. Lisa slouched in a small heap next to me, drumming rapidly on her thigh with her fingernails. “Put your seat belt on.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” she said in an ironic tone.

  “And when did you start smoking?”

  “You know what, Dad? The reason I came here is I was hoping to avoid the judgmental bullshit.”

  Despite her promise to leave the rum in the office, she’d brought it with her. I reached over, grabbed it, poured it out the window.

  “Man!” she said. “You had to do that, didn’t you? Mr. Good Parent. Mr. Take Charge.”

  When she was sober, Lisa was a terrific kid. But right now I didn’t like her much. Had I been this impossible back in my drinking days? Undoubtedly. Probably a good deal worse. I am a grandiose drunk. The more I swig, the bigger a man I am, the greater my accomplishments, the smarter I get, the braver, the taller . . . I sneaked a look at my daughter and felt the creeping itch of shame. My fault. Surely this was all my fault.

  It was the hook she would always have in me. As long as I felt like I might be able to reclaim her, make up for my mistakes as a father, she’d always have leverage over me, always have the ability to force me into being softer on her than I probably ought to be.

  I kept my mouth closed and drove.

  When we reached the police station, I said, “Wait here for me.” Why I bothered saying that, I don’t know. Lisa, of course, got out and followed me into the station.

  The lobby of the new Pickeral Point police station has all the latest security features. Outside it’s a bland sandstone box, designed to fit in with the aging Art Deco knock-offs that comprise the city and county government buildings on the square. But inside it’s all modern: cameras, a receptionist behind bulletproof glass, fancy locks that you have to punch secret codes into. The old station had featured an open front counter and doors you could have jimmied with a credit card. So far as I know, nobody had ever invaded the place, nobody had ever come in waving a gun, nobody had ever planted a bomb. Nevertheless: now, Fort Knox.

  “Hi, Regina,” I said to the receptionist.

  Regina was a chatty type. I make a point to keep on her good side because she knows everything that happens in the law enforcement community and isn’t afraid to tell you about it in great detail. “Hi, Charley. Boy, they’re hot at you today.”

  I laughed.

  “They already put Mr. Dane on the bus to the county lockup.”

  “No problem. I’ve got another client. Leon Prouty.”

  “That snakehead boy?”

  “The who?”

  “The snakehead.” When she saw I had no idea what she was talking about, she said, “The midnight landscaper, right?”

  I nodded, and Regina buzzed me through the door back into the innards of the building. Lisa slipped in with me. “I’m with Mr. Sloan,” she said cheerily, as Regina looked ready to object. “I’m Charley’s new paralegal.”

  The duty sergeant eyed me briefly as I came into the booking area, then looked back at the paperwork he was filling out.

  “Hi, Fred,” I said brightly. “Coming to pick up a prisoner. Leon James Prouty.”

  “After that wiseass performance on the TV today?” the duty sergeant said. “You can call me Sergeant Ross.”

  “Aw, come on. They always quote me out of context.”

  The sergeant ignored me for a while, started ticking things off on a pink form. Tick. Tick. Tick. Giving each line a great deal of study.

  “Take your time,” I said.

  Lisa was pacing up and down. Not only a bellicose drunk, it appeared, but a hyper drunk, too.

  The desk sergeant kept pretending to work. The way the room is set up, most of the prisoners are held in a corral behind the desk. If they stand in the right place, they can watch us.

  “Hey!” It was a tall thin boy with dyed blond hair and lots of tattoos. “Mr. Sloan? You getting me out?”

  “Hang on,” I said. “We’ll have you out in a jiff.”

  The sergeant ignored me. Another lawyer came in, Victor Trembly, probably the most despised criminal lawyer this side of Detroit. “Charley, mi amigo!” he said in his usual unctuous tone. “How’s the big star of the small screen?”

  “Victor.” I smiled noncommittally.

  Victor Trembly rapped on the desk with his gaudy Wayne State ring. “How’s she hanging, Fred? Need to pick up a scumbag, excuse me, a client by the name of Roe-shawn Beasleyyyyy.” He pronounced the name in a broad parody of a black accent, winking at me as he drawled.

  “RahShawn Beasley. Right away,” the desk sergeant said. “You got his bond and everything?”

  “Absolutelayyy, mah brothah.”

  The desk sergeant pulled some forms out, set them in front of Trembly, then went back and unlocked the door of the corral. A bedraggled-looking black kid came out.

  “Just sign here, Mr. Beasley,” the desk sergeant said, handing him a clipboard. “Then here, and . . . yeah. Just like you did last time you were here.”

  The kid slouched over to his lawyer.

  “Your personal possessions are in here, Mr. Beasley,” the sergeant said, setting a small cardboard box on the counter.

  “I’ll take that, Fred,” Trembly said. He rummaged around in the box, came out with a couple of gold chains, two gold rings, and a gold tooth cap, then tossed the box back on the counter. “Thank you, Roe-Shawn. These will be applied to my fee. Let’s shuffle on out of here so you can get back to your alleged pharmaceutical sales stand before too much of your daily income has been lost.”

  Trembly and his client left.

  The desk sergeant sat down and went back to his paperwork. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  “Hey! Hey! What about me?” It was my client calling from the bullpen.

  “Sergeant?” I said. “You intend to let my client out of here sometime today?”

  Sergeant Ross looked up at me with a mock-innocent expression on his face. “You still here?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Ross, I’m still here. Still waiting on my client.”

  “Well, see, the thing is, Mr. Sloan, I still have some paperwork to do before his booking is complete. And if I don’t get him booked by . . .” He looked at his watch. “. . . by two-thirty, then he won’t make it to court today and, gosh, I guess we’ll have to send him up to County along with your other client. The one, you may recall, who struck a fellow police officer this morning before pulling his weapon on her? That ring a bell with you?”

  “Now, Fred, it didn’t happen quite like that.”

  “My name is Sergeant Ross.”

  Behind me Lisa was pacing up and down, up and down.

  “Cut me a little slack here, Sarge. That poor guy back there had nothing to do with Miles Dane.”

  “The problem is, you made yourself unpopular around here. Counselor.” The sergeant raised his voice so that all the prisoners in the bullpen could hear him. “And when that happens, all your clients suffer. Maybe your new client would be better served if he hired another lawyer!”

  I raised my hands in surrender. It wasn’t two-thirty yet. “Take your time, Sarge.” The truth was, Fred Ross could do anything he pleased back there. I figured the best strategy was to let him get his licks in, bust my balls a little, and hope he’d relent. If two-thirty started rolling around, then I’d take the gloves off. But there was no point in getting ahead of myself.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. I could see my client watching me with an annoyed expression on his face.

  Sergeant Ross flipped to another pink form. Tick. Tick.

  Lisa continued pacing up and down.

  Tick. Tick. Scribble, scribble. Tick, tick.

  Finally Lisa walked over to the counter. “Hey, ASSHOLE!” she yelled. The veins were sticking up in her neck.<
br />
  The desk sergeant looked at her, wide-eyed.

  “Sweetheart,” I whispered. “Easy. This is not New York City. Around here you have to go along to—”

  “Yes, SERGEANT ASSHOLE, I’m talking to you!” Lisa screamed. She pulled out a cell phone, then yanked her sweater off over her head revealing a ratty T-shirt. She threw her sweater on the ground.

  “Lisa!”

  Lisa pointed at Leon Prouty. “That is my client. Do you see him, you moron functionary bureaucrat?”

  The desk sergeant just stared at her.

  Lisa waved her phone. “This is called a cell phone. I am about to use it to call every TV station in the city of goddamn Detroit. I am going to tell them that you are trying to fuck my client, Mr. Prouty, just because my partner, Mr. Sloan, made you look bad today.”

  She took off her T-shirt, threw it on the floor. Now she was wearing nothing above the waist but a black jogging bra.

  “And just to sweeten the pot, you third-rate pencil-pushing miserable excuse for a cop, I’m going to take off all my goddamn clothes and parade my skinny, naked ass up and down in front of this building. You better damn well believe that the cameras will show up for that. Are you listening, you moronic witless cretin?”

  The stunned desk sergeant looked around for guidance.

  Lisa started punching numbers into the cell phone. “I’m dialing! I’m dialing!”

  “Now, hold on, miss. Just, look, hey . . .” Fred Ross, I happened to know, was Knights of Columbus, a pillar of the church down at St. Luke’s, the whole bit. I don’t think he cared about the TV exposure, but somehow the idea of this nice-looking young woman parading naked up and down in front of the police station offended his sense of propriety and decency.

  “Hold on, miss,” he said. “Hold on. Just, hey, just put your shirt on, we’ll get this whole thing squared away.”

  Back in the bullpen the prisoners were applauding and wolf-whistling. “I want her,” one of them yelled.

  “Yo, yo,” another one yelled. “Yo, lady, come back here, reppasent me!”

  Back in the car, Lisa looked over at me and grinned. “So,” she said, “do I have the job?”

  “I have never been so mortified in my life,” I said.

  Her grin faded, and a shadow of hurt crept into her eyes.

  “For chrissake, Lisa, this isn’t the Bronx. You don’t get things done around here by screaming at people and acting like a maniac.”

  “I got him out, didn’t I?”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested. And what happens next time? After you’ve got everybody in the entire police department pissed off at you?”

  She stared out the window. After a minute I heard a sob break out of her. I looked over and her shoulders were heaving.

  “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she said. “I don’t understand what . . .”

  I reached over, tried to put my hand on her shoulder. She squirmed away. I pulled my hand back. Again that inexplicable sense of shame washed over me, of responsibility for her troubles.

  Murder cases are unpredictable beasts. They can give you a sense of purpose, energize you, fill you up with hope and direction—or they can drag you down and grind you to dust. If I pulled Lisa into this case, I was taking a terrible risk. I wanted to think that she would rise to the challenge. Best-case scenario, the case could help her turn her life around. But with drunks, you never really know. I was in a bind. The case was about to take over my life. If I was going to be able to do anything for Lisa, I’d have to keep her in sight for a while. For all practical purposes, in sight meant in the case.

  “One thing at a time, little one,” I said softly. Little one? My God, where had that come from? I’d called her that when she was just a baby, back when I had still been fitfully trying to be her father on a more or less full-time basis.

  She kept sobbing softly.

  “You came to me because you want my help,” I said. “This is what I can do for you. A job, a place to stay.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I could use your help,” I said. “But if you want to work for me, you do it clean and you do it sober. Period. You find a meeting, you work the program.”

  No answer.

  “Otherwise, go elsewhere.”

  For a long time she didn’t speak. We drove through Pickeral Point, past the salt factory, past the haggard old Masonic Lodge, and through the touristy downtown shopping district. Finally, as we were about to reach the office, she reached over and grabbed my hand where it rested on the steering wheel. She squeezed hard and didn’t let go. My heart leapt like a crazy little bird in my chest.

  Sure, I thought. The case. The case will bring us together. The case will make us better, stronger, closer. Murder trial as family therapy. Why not? But in the back of my mind something was saying that anything that morbidly ironic was probably too good to be true.

  Twelve

  I found Lisa waiting in my living room the next morning. There were livid spots on each pale cheek, and her eyes were puffy. But she was clean, her hair was brushed, and she wore a blue power suit and sensible-looking pumps.

  “How you feel, little one?” I said.

  “Like getting plastered.” She gave me a tight smile. “Look, Dad, I’m sorry I acted like such an idiot yesterday. I get stupid when I drink.”

  “Don’t we all.” I smiled awkwardly back at her. “Look, I guess you know what I’m embroiled in here,” I said after a brief pause. “Miles Dane has just been charged with murder. What’s immediately in front of us is trying to get him out on bail. It’s going to be a tough sell, frankly. In Michigan it’s pretty much out of the question getting bail on a murder charge. But we’ll try anyway. After that we need to start investigating. We need to find out what evidence is out there that incriminates him and what we can do to undermine it. This is going to be a full court press. Lots of pressure, lots of exposure, lots of stress, cameras everywhere. We’re going to be under a microscope. It’ll be like nothing you’ve ever experienced. So let me ask you again. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  She looked out the window for a moment. “Yes,” she said finally. “I think I need this.”

  First I met with Miles Dane at the courthouse in the cramped conference room next to Courtroom B. Despite the fact that it is used almost exclusively for meetings between defense lawyers and their clients, it is relatively pleasant. No concrete block walls, no toothpaste green institutional paint. There’s actually carpet on the floor, and the walls are the same wood paneling as in the courtroom. The only thing that might put you off is that there are no knobs or handles in the doors, and anchored on the floor under one side of the small conference table are two huge steel rings so that prisoners can be shackled to the floor.

  Miles was sitting disconsolately in the chair when the bailiff let me in. He was fully shackled and manacled, and the chain between his ankles was indeed looped through the ring in the floor. He wore the standard county-issue orange jumpsuit and orange plastic sandals with white socks.

  After the bailiff left, I sat down, set my briefcase on the floor. Lisa sat down beside me. I introduced her to Miles, then said, “How you holding up, pal?”

  He shook his head. His eyes were hollow and his dark hair unkempt. “I don’t know. I don’t know. They put me on suicide watch.”

  “Should they be worried about that?”

  Miles sighed. “I just . . . I just feel like, you know, I had this great run in life—and then the man upstairs said, ‘Okay, that’s good enough,’ and jerked the rug out from under me.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you,” I said. “Other than the usual pointless platitudes. Chin up, that sort of thing.” Miles smiled without warmth.

  “Is there anything I can get you? Books, cigarettes, a radio, candy, anything like that?”

  “Just get me out of here.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but frankly I’m not hopeful.” I explained the near impossibility of
his getting out on bail, then opened my briefcase. “There are some issues that I avoided talking about up to this point because I wasn’t sure which way the wind would blow. But at this point, unless you decide to plead guilty or unless somebody else pops up saying they committed the crime, this case will almost certainly go to trial. I hate like hell to have to deal with this issue, but we just have to get it out of the way.”

  “Money,” Miles said.

  I nodded. “First, I’m sure it’s just a clerical thing, but Mrs. Fenton tells me that your retainer check bounced.”

  Miles looked off into the distance, not speaking.

  “Miles?” My eyebrows rose. “Miles, did you knowingly give me a bad check?”

  Miles still didn’t say anything.

  This was unexpected. I had assumed money would not be a problem for a famous writer. “Look, Miles, let me be straight with you here. If I’m going to represent you, we’re going to be working together very closely for a very long time. It is absolutely imperative that there be a bond of complete trust between us. If you’re experiencing financial difficulties, then I need to know that right this minute so we can figure out a strategy for dealing with your situation.”

  Still nothing from Miles.

  “I’m not a charity, Miles. I have two employees. I have rent to pay. On occasion I even like to eat a square meal. I don’t think I should have to explain this to you. Murder trials are terribly expensive. However much of a bargain I like to think it is, my time doesn’t come cheap. Plus there will be expert witnesses. They cost money. Every time I make a flip chart or a blowup of an exhibit for trial, it costs sixty bucks. Every time I FedEx a document? Money. Investigators? Money. Photocopying? Money.”

  Miles put his face in his hands.

  “Miles, modesty aside, I am hands down the best criminal defense attorney in this county. But I cannot give you a good defense on the cheap. It’s that simple.”

  Miles finally looked up at me. “How much are we talking?”

  “Depends on how long it runs, how many experts I need, how much investigation . . .”