One to Go

by Mike Pace

  “It’s been a long night. Mind if I go home now?” asked Tom, the weariness in his voice the only authentic element of his performance.

  “Sorry to keep you,” said Castro. “Thanks for your time.”

  They shook hands and Tom left. As soon as he was out the door, he gasped for breath. His heart pounded and he began to tremble. Stop it. He had to hold it together.

  He saw the paramedics loading the black body bag into the back of the ambulance. He did that. He was respon—

  Wait, the bag moved. That’s impossible. The body sat up and the bag unzipped. Gino Battaglia, now with a hole through his head, smiled, except his white teeth were gone, supplanted by blackened stubs. A white worm slithered through the stubs and dropped into the grass. He winked, and when he spoke, it wasn’t Gino’s voice. Instead, the sound was more a high-pitched squeak: Thanks, Tommy. Keep ’em comin’.

  Tom pressed his fist to his mouth to stifle the scream, then looked again; the body bag was as it had been, now fully loaded into the ambulance.

  A hallucination.

  The minute he got into his car, he checked his cell phone, hoping for a message from Chad releasing his daughter in exchange for the soul of Gino Battaglia.

  Nothing.

  He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Three stiff shots of Jack hadn’t helped. He could equivocate about Gino, having bludgeoned an innocent woman to death, deciding to take his own life rather than face life behind bars. All Tom had done was hasten the man’s suicide by a few seconds. But the truth was, Thomas Michael Booker, middle class, above-average intelligence, well educated, generally a nice guy, had murdered Gino Battaglia.

  For the hundredth time, he checked his cell phone. Where the hell were the demon twins? He wanted badly to call Gayle to check on Janie, but both girls needed sleep right now. Besides, what explanation would he offer?

  His mind rushed over the details of the past hours. What was he missing? What clue did he leave? Would the next knock at the door be Castro with a pair of handcuffs? After leaving Gino’s, he’d pulled over behind an abandoned strip mall and burned his bloody latex gloves. He knew he didn’t think of everything, but—damn! The gloves had Gino’s blood on them, and he’d put the gloves in his pockets, which meant his pockets had traces of Gino’s blood. He had to get rid of the jacket; no, that would look suspicious. Castro had seen him in the jacket. Dry-clean. Would dry-cleaning remove the blood? Probably. He’d take it to the dry-cleaners in the morning.

  But wait, even if traces of blood remained, he’d made no attempt to hide the blood on his body, and had, in fact, made sure there was blood on his hands, or Castro would’ve wondered why there was blood on other parts of his clothing, but not on his hands. And if it was okay for him to have the victim’s blood on his hands, it would make sense there would be blood in his jacket pockets. So he would dry-clean the jacket, but do so along with his shirts and suits on his normal day. Normal, that was the key.

  Satisfied, he finally drifted off to sleep.

  He dreamed of Gino, sitting at the kitchen table, looking up at him with that plaintive expression: “You killed me Tom, but that’s not the worst of it. I’m in hell now, for all eternity. I didn’t deserve that, Tom. You should be here instead of me. I took a life, but it was against my will. You willfully murdered me. You should burn—”

  No!

  Thanks, Tommy. Keep ’em comin’.

  Tom woke in a sweat. His phone buzzed. He grabbed it from the night table. On the screen he saw a video of a familiar freckle-faced, seven-year-old wearing a green Frog shirt, kicking a soccer ball in her backyard. A text appeared across the video.

  Angie saved. Thanks for Gino.

  Still owe three.

  CHAPTER 16

  Tom slept until one p.m., then spent the rest of the day in his under-shorts and t-shirt, staring blankly at the TV. Sunday meant football, and the ’Skins were playing the Eagles at home. Ignoring breakfast, he popped open a bag of Cheetos, found a six-pack of beer, and parked himself in his old, red leather recliner. Over the next six hours, the phone rang four times—two calls from Zig and two from Gayle. He ignored them.

  By eight, he’d watched the ’Skins lose and the Ravens win. He’d finished two family-size bags of Cheetos. His fingers, face, hair, undershorts, and the arms of his chair were covered in orange gunk. The six-pack had barely lasted until a last-second Eagles field goal had doomed the ’Skins, and he’d required the assistance of his friend, Mr. Daniel’s, to help him make it through the Ravens’ thrashing of the Packers.

  He was into the second quarter of the Sunday night game—he had no idea who was playing, but could make out that one team wore red and the other team white—when Jess called. Through the blur, he knew enough to avoid talking to any human being in his condition, and elected not to answer.

  When the alarm went off the next morning, he found himself still in the red recliner, covered in orange crumbs and beer stains. He looked to his left—his eyes hurt to move—and saw the fifth of whiskey was half gone. Had it been a new bottle? When he attempted to climb out of the recliner, he stumbled to the floor. The movement triggered a gag reflex and he vomited orange puke onto his rug.

  Okay, that was it. No more booze. He was stopping right then and there. He’d turned to the bottle as a way to dull the pain immediately after his mother’s death. Since then, he knew he’d increased his consumption, and while he certainly wasn’t an alchoholic, he was well aware that sometimes he overindulged.

  No way could he go to work. He did his best to clean up the mess, then stumbled into the kitchen and poured Cheerios directly from the box into his mouth. Hopefully, the dry cereal would soak up the putrid brew in his stomach.

  His eyes caught the flashing “notice” light in the corner of his laptop, signaling a reminder from the firm. Every morning, the light would flash to alert firm personnel of upcoming appointments and events scheduled for the day.

  He clicked on the icon and read the message. Damn. Today was the deadline to give notice of his preference for the next rotation. He was about to click on Corporate, when he saw he also had the option of selecting this round for his pro bono obligation. There were several pro bono options, but the one that caught his eye was a single opening at the Public Defender Service. What better place to find bad guys than in the criminal justice system? And what better way to gain access to said bad guys than as a part of that system? He wanted that slot at PDS. Correction, he needed it; after all, it was a matter of life and deaths.

  He dragged his ass to the shower to begin the slow process of regaining full consciousness and washing sticky Cheetos powder from his hair.

  Edie Rudnick smiled at him from across her desk. In her fifties, Edie looked like everybody’s favorite aunt—round but not fat, silver hair pulled in a bun, and eyes in a constant state of twinkle. She was the most unflappable person Tom had ever met, which came in handy administering a staff of over 500 attorneys, ranging from mildly self-centered to egotistical pricks, plus paralegals, secretaries, mail room personnel, four IT guys, three accountants, and a full-time chef. Unmarried, she’d been with the firm for fifteen years, and she was rumored to have been Bat Masterson’s mistress in the early days.

  “You don’t look so good, Tom. Are you ill?”

  “Maybe a touch of flu. No big deal.”

  “The Irish flu, perhaps?”

  He was screwed. Must be his breath. He’d gargled for ten minutes, but Gayle had always taken perverse pleasure in pointing out that when he drank, alcohol seemed to seep from every pore in his body.

  Edie opened her desk drawer, removed a tin of Altoids mints, and slid them across the desk.

  “When I have that strain of flu, I find these are helpful.”

  He decided right then and there that Edie Rudnick qualified for sainthood. The fact she happened to be Jewish was only a minor impediment. He popped three of the mints into his mouth.

  “Thanks.”

  “So, I’m curious why you
want to do your pro bono obligation now. Most associates do everything they can to put it off.”

  Left unsaid was the reason most associates wanted to put it off—they viewed nonbillable obligations as a distraction, an interruption that had the potential to throw them off their singular upward journey to the promised land—partner.

  “I want to go to WC for my next firm rotation, and I figured knowing something about the criminal system, even at the street level, might be helpful when representing white-collar defendants. So I thought PDS might be a good destination.” Tom froze his facial features, hoping she would buy this explanation.

  She held his stare for a few seconds. He could tell she knew something was askew, but couldn’t quite figure it out. “Very well. Katherine O’Neil gave you high marks for your work in Corporate, so we want to accommodate you.” She handed him a slip of paper. “Report to the PDS administrator this afternoon.”

  “Thanks.” He got up to leave. She pushed the Altoids across the desk.

  “Take the whole tin.”

  After a lunchtime burger with Zig—“grease is the best antidote for a hangover”—Tom took a cab from the restaurant to PDS headquarters on Indiana Avenue where the courthouse, police HQ, prosecutor’s office, and public defender’s office were all conveniently located within a few blocks of each other.

  The ’60s-era building looked to be about twelve or thirteen stories. He entered and was mildly surprised to have to go through airport-style security screening. Guess by definition, PDS clients were the type of folks for whom security screening was devised. The small lobby had a vaulted ceiling, which must’ve been impressive when it was built fifty years earlier. He stepped into the elevator with two other men, each of whom appeared strung out on one of the many illicit substances available in the nation’s capital. He nodded to them.

  “How’s it goin’?”

  Each stared through him as if he weren’t there. When the elevator reached the fourth floor, both got out. As the doors closed, Tom saw a sign reading: DC Drug Intervention Services.

  He rode up one more floor and stepped into a tiny lobby decorated in mauve and cream. No doubt at one time the space had been beautiful, but wall smudges, deep nicks in the floorboards and chair rails, and tiny wallpaper tears testified to years of wear, and more important, budget priorities. He entered through a glass door where a pleasant receptionist led him to the small office of Shannelle Burk. A sign outside her door identified Ms. Burk as CJA Coordinator.

  “Come in, come in. I’m Shanny—we’re all on a first–name basis here, part of the foxhole mentality.” They shook hands. A slim, athletic African-American woman almost as tall as he was, she appeared to be in her mid-thirties. “Have a seat.” She lifted a stack of case files off the office’s single chair and Tom sat down. “We don’t get volunteers from firms like SHM very often, so it’s refreshing to have you join us.”

  “Criminal law has always fascinated me.” Well, not always. Actually, only after he’d recently become a criminal himself. “You mentioned a foxhole mentality.”

  She chuckled. “As you’ll come to learn very quickly, we have an impossible job. We’re required to represent the indigent, which in this town, means 95 percent of everyone who enters the system. Our budget is a sliver of the prosecutor’s budget. Most all of our clients are guilty, but they watch TV and expect a million-dollar defense, and get pissed off when we can’t provide it. We not only have to deal with clients who are, shall we say, unsavory, but we must also deal with their wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and kids and grannies and, in many cases, their gangs and entourages. Throughout it all, we must maintain our professionalism and our belief that everyone deserves a fair trial, or as is much more likely the case, a fair deal.”

  “Sorry I asked.”

  “No, it’s good that you understand from jump what you’re getting into. So how much do you know about criminal law?”

  “Took several courses in law school, but it’s been a while.”

  “We have a pretty good training program here that we jam down your throat in a day. Then it’s on-the-job training.”

  “Not very much to defend a murderer.”

  She looked at him as if he’d just said the most stupid thing in the world. “Mr. Booker, Tom, you won’t be defending any murderers, or handling any felonies, for that matter. That’s the job of our senior staff. You and other outsiders, both those who volunteer and those who’re drafted through the DC Bar, are what we call CJA attorneys, named after the Criminal Justice Act of 1964. You handle traffic cases and misdemeanors, so we have the time to represent those charged with major felonies.”

  Okay, maybe he did say the stupidest thing in the world. “Guess I thought I might be sitting second chair to a senior attorney in a murder case instead of the little stuff.”

  “Look, what you call little stuff is very important. It’s ridding our communities of little stuff that improves quality of life, which then can have a cascading effect on more serious crime.”

  “You sound like a prosecutor.”

  “I was. Many of us have spent time in the US Attorneys’ Office. Best training in the world.” She must’ve read the disappointment on his face. “But don’t worry. Chances are, your little stuff clients will have done some big stuff in their past. Many times the prosecutor will bring misdemeanor charges against someone who they know did the dirty but couldn’t prove it. They’re looking to use the charge as leverage to try to turn the perp and pull in a bigger fish.”

  Okay, that was sounding better. He put on his eager-beaver face. “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”

  “Great.” She stood, signaling the meeting was over. “We assign each of our CJA attorneys to a mentor. You’re assigned to Eva Stoddard. She’s been here three years, which makes her a veteran. You’ll find her in arraignment court.”

  As Tom walked down the hall, he considered that maybe handling misdemeanors was a blessing. Unlike murderers, who’d be locked up and mostly inaccessible, a bad guy charged with a misdemeanor would likely be out on the street.

  Where Tom could kill him.

  CHAPTER 17

  Thirty minutes later Tom rode the escalator down to the C level of the Moultrie Courthouse. The escalator was located in the middle of a huge, airy central lobby that reminded Tom of a shopping mall. Corridors spoking out from the center hall contained well-appointed courtrooms. Strategically located banks of TV monitors gave notice of cases being adjudicated that day—criminal, civil, domestic, and juvenile. A courthouse was a place to deal with conflict, and few of the people bustling through its corridors looked particularly happy. Most everybody was there because something bad happened.

  When he reached the C level, he passed a narrow hallway over which a sign read: “To Holding Cells.” Presumably prisoners were taken there from the DC Jail and held pending their court appearance. He followed the signs, turned right, and found the door to Courtroom, C-10. Two TV monitors outside the door listed the defendants scheduled to appear for arraignment or other pretrial proceedings.

  As he was about to enter, the courtroom doors opened, and a mass of humanity spilled out. From snatches of conversation, Tom concluded the judge had taken a break. No one told him what Eva Stoddard looked like. A short, stocky woman whose age and the era for which her clothes were designed both appeared to be in the ’50s, carried a stack of files as she exited.

  “Excuse me,” asked Tom, “Would you be Eva Stoddard?”

  “Right church, wrong pew. I’m the AUSA”—she saw the blank look on Tom’s face—“The Assistant US Attorney. That’s Eva.”

  She pointed to a tall young woman holding an armful of manila files, leaning against the wall, talking on her cell phone. Maybe a year or two younger than Tom, she had red hair, green eyes, a slim body, and wore a don’t-screw-with-me expression on her face.

  He approached just as she got off the call. “Hi, my name’s Tom Booker. Shanny Burk sent me over.” He extended his hand.


  She shook it briefly. “You CJA?”

  “Guess so. Doin’ a pro bono stint from Smith Hale. Shanny said you’re my training officer.” He offered his most charming boyish smile.

  She ignored it. “Fine.” She spread out the files like a deck of cards. “Pick two.”

  “Uh, don’t think you understand. Today’s my first day. Don’t really know what I’m doing.”

  “Best way to learn to swim is to jump in the deep end. You either swim or drown. Good news here, Booker, is when you screw up, you’ll survive to jump in again tomorrow.”

  “But what if I make a mistake? We’re talking about someone’s freedom.”

  “These are misdemeanors, and this is the District. Our jails are overcrowded, we have murders and rapes happening almost on a daily basis. Drug crime is rampant. Those are big-boy cases you won’t even get close enough to sniff. It’s rare for someone to serve time for a misdemeanor.”

  Tom’s next question was key. “What if you have a felon, let’s say a murderer, who maybe gets off, then gets picked up for speeding?”

  “First of all, traffic matters are prosecuted by the city through the DC Attorney General’s office, not the Feds. See, Booker, the District’s not a state—”

  Okay, acting tough was fine, but sarcasm wasn’t necessary.

  “—and so crimes that in a state would be prosecuted by a state’s attorney are handled here by the Feds, along with federal crime. The exception is what’s commonly referred to in the law as little shit. Traffic’s little shit. Baby misdemeanors are little shit. Little shit’s prosecuted by the DC government. I don’t do little shit. Now, if you got a perp who beat a murder rap, and he gets caught on a misdemeanor threat or simple assault, a judge can take the murder charge into account at sentencing, although they rarely do.”