by David Ellis
“Over these three evenings, I’ll teach you how to fight. Not like in the movies, and not for black belts, but in real life. And I’ll teach you how to think, if you’re attacked. But you only fight if the attacker is in a position to harm you. The key is never to allow that to happen. That’s what tonight is about. Awareness. Awareness in your home, awareness on the street, awareness in the car.” She paced, ticking off points in her hand.
“Someone in a uniform comes to the door and wants to use the phone, don’t let him in. Tell him you’ll make the call for him and he can wait outside. Don’t advertise your name, or your address, on anything you wear or carry. Check every part of your car—even the backseat and underneath—before you get in. If you’re at a bar, keep your drink with you, and if a stranger gives you a drink, don’t drink it.” She stopped. “We’ll cover all sorts of things like that tonight. I’ll teach you how to answer the phone. How to turn a corner. How to carry a bag. Nothing challenging. Nothing that’s hard to remember. Understand that attackers are looking for an easy target. If you make it tough for them, they’ll move on.”
She would cover other details tonight that hit closer to home. Don’t get drunk and lose control. Don’t go to a party where you don’t know anyone, in a city where you don’t know anyone. She would show them how to convert their fear and shame into discipline and focus and, later, solace and confidence. They would practice her tips until they were part of their lives, part of a routine, and someday, maybe, the cries that lay dormant deep within them, that haunted them in the still of the night, someday those cries might dissipate. Shelly would try to convince herself as much as them.
9
Help
IT STARTED ABOUT four years ago and ended last year. Shelly had filed a sexual harassment claim against a school on the city’s north side. A teacher had engaged in sexual relations with Shelly’s client, a fifteen-year-old student. The teacher was an attractive, thirty-seven-year-old woman in the midst of a harsh divorce. She had seduced the boy, had met him on and off school grounds, had been foolish enough to write him love letters, things like, Do you think I’m sexy? I think you’re so hot. She had regressed to a high school mindset herself.
Shelly settled with the teacher, who had little more than a small liability policy through the teachers’ union, but went to trial against the school. The school was looking at damages in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, so they hired Paul Riley to defend them. Paul Riley of Shaker, Riley & Flemming. Paul Riley, who had been the top assistant prosecutor in the city, who had sent the infamous Terry Burgos, murderer of multiple college students, to the gas chamber. Paul Riley, who defended the murderer of a prominent doctor in Highland Woods in a crazy case a few years back and got an acquittal. Paul Riley, who had represented Jon Soliday, the top aide to the Democratic nominee for governor in 2000, in the latter stages of a murder trial that had much to do with the election of the Republican candidate, Attorney General Langdon Trotter, to the governor’s mansion to continue the G.O.P. domination of that office.
Paul Riley, who represented everything she disliked about the law, had beaten her butt in the sexual harassment case, a jury verdict for the defense. An arrogant man who had the jury eating out of his hand, who developed a folksy style, a humble-country-lawyer thing that made him look reasonable when he suggested that the school could not possibly have known that one of its teachers would undergo such a transformation from respected language arts teacher to sexually ravenous predator.
Your problem was the boy, Paul had informed Shelly after the verdict, in a phone call to congratulate her on a well-fought trial. Harder to accept that a woman can rape a boy, especially a big, strong kid like that.
He was being kind, in her estimation. The truth was that Paul Riley had simply whipped her butt. And now she needed the best. She needed to do whatever she could for Alex. She knew Alex had money, but not the kind of money Riley would command. On the other hand, this was a hot case, a cop killing, heavily covered in the press. That might be payment enough for someone like Riley.
“Michelle!” Paul said, as his assistant led Shelly into his office. The firm was located in a lakefront building, with a lobby spacious enough to land a plane, state-of-the-art architecture, a faux waterfall, modern furniture. Walking through it, Shelly momentarily paid respect to something she would never know: the billable hour.
His office fit the bill, in the corner facing north and east, capturing the lake and the developments along it in floor-to-ceiling windows. There was little in the way of cabinets—presumably the assistants and paralegals held on to the files. One long shelf ran along the east wall to hold Paul’s awards and memorabilia, some of it impressive, some of it morbid. A knife was laminated to a plaque with the inscription, People v. Burgos. Presumably the knife used to slit the throat of one of the many victims. Pictures on the walls featuring Riley with various officials, including one with the current governor, Langdon Trotter. Behind his desk, on the wall, was an artist’s sketch of Paul Riley questioning a witness in the prosecution of Terry Burgos, with the subtitle “The Alibi.” She remembered the issue in general terms. Burgos had apparently tried to create an alibi for the murders of the young women and used his boss, a university professor who owned a printing company, as corroboration. But Burgos’s plan was foiled when his alibi was exposed, when it was revealed that he had doctored the time sheets. The prosecution—Paul Riley, that is—had used the aborted alibi as proof of Burgos’s consciousness of guilt, which meant he did not fit the state’s legal definition of insanity.
Paul came from around his desk and showed her to the beautiful wine-colored couch against the south wall. This office was big enough for casual furniture. This office was, in fact, approximately half the size of Shelly’s studio apartment.
“Good to see you,” he said. “How’s my favorite public-interest lawyer?”
The question annoyed her about ten different ways, including the condescension she imagined, the fact that they hadn’t gotten along at all during the trial, and the fact that he was greeting her so casually when she’d scheduled an urgent appointment. He was showing her his cool even in an emergency.
“You’ve grown your hair out,” he observed. “It looks very nice.”
“I think I need your help, Paul,” she managed.
Paul, sitting next to her on the couch, nodded, pursed his lips, kept them from a smile. He was physically fit for an older man, looked comfortable in an expensive suit. His face was long and lined, well-proportioned, deep smile lines around his mouth and eyes. His hair was expensively coiffed and sprayed into place. “I imagine it must be important, if you’re asking me.”
Shelly did not conceal her reaction but kept silent.
Paul laughed, genuinely amused. “What I mean by that is, I wouldn’t expect to be on your referral list under ordinary circumstances. I assume that you must feel some compulsion if you’re calling me. You’re probably swallowing a lot right now.”
“Would you like me to tell you why I’m here, or not?” she asked.
He swept a hand. “The suspense is killing me.”
Shelly sighed. Paul quickly touched her arm. “I’m sorry, Michelle. I’m operating under the impression that you don’t care for me much, so I had to play with you a little. I apologize. This is important to you, obviously. Please, tell me how I can help.”
Okay, he had met her halfway. “Paul, I have a client who is charged with killing a police officer.”
“Recently,” Paul said. “Day or two ago.”
“Right.”
“Sure.” Paul’s tongue ran against his cheek. Calculating.
“His name is Alex Baniewicz. He’s a good kid—I mean, he has potential—” She swept back her hair, tucked it behind her ears. “He’s basically a good kid. He also sells drugs once in a while. Apparently, the officer was chasing him and Alex killed him in a shoot-out.”
Paul fingered a cuff. He wore a thick, heavily starched white shirt with gleam
ing silver cuff links, a gorgeous orange-and-blue tie. The guy had lawyer written all over him. Shelly was suddenly conscious of her blue jeans and sweater.
“You’ve talked to him?” Paul asked.
“Yeah.”
“What’s he say? Did he do it?”
“He didn’t tell me. But I think so, yeah.”
Paul nodded. “Has he talked to them?”
“No. And I’ve told him not to.”
“Great. Good. What do they have? Eyes? A weapon?”
Eyes. The same thing Detective Montes said. “Both of those,” she said. “They caught up with Alex about fifteen minutes later. They found the blood on his clothes. They have at least one eyewitness—another cop. I’m told they’re scouring the area for more witnesses. They have a weapon and drugs at the scene.”
Paul shook his head with a purpose. He seemed to do everything with a purpose, though Shelly had to concede that he made it look casual. “How old?”
“He’s sixteen,” she said. “So it’s death-eligible. In more ways than one.” Homicide of a police officer, by itself, made it a capital offense, not to mention that it was murder in the course of another felony, possession of narcotics. The United States Supreme Court had ruled that fifteen-year-olds were too young to be sentenced to death, but a child of sixteen could be executed. Which meant that Alex Baniewicz was eligible for the death penalty.
“And Elliot will seek death,” Paul agreed. “For shooting a cop? No question.”
Elliot Raycroft, he meant. The county attorney for the jurisdiction, which included the mammoth city and some of the surrounding suburbs.
Shelly nodded.
Paul touched her arm again. He was a very touchy sort. “Sorry, it sounds like you’re invested in this boy. But we need to know that going in.”
“I understand. I want you to be blunt.”
“Then I’ll be even more blunt, Michelle.”
“Shelly,” she said.
“Shelly?” He had spent the entire sexual harassment case calling her by her formal name.
“Shelly.”
Paul seemed to recognize that he’d been left out of the club. He could probably figure the criteria for admission. “Okay—Shelly. If your guy hasn’t told you whether he did it, do yourself a favor and don’t ask him again. Not yet. Find out what the police have first. You can even ask him what he thinks they have. But don’t ask him whether he did it.”
“Sure.” She inhaled. Advice she didn’t need. “Paul, I was hoping you’d take this case.”
He let out a small laugh, a chuckle, implying that this was a major hurdle. He grimaced, while his eyes hit the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “I’m pretty tight.” He looked at Shelly. “What is the financial situation?”
“About as tight as your schedule.”
Paul rubbed his hands together, studied them. “I make four hundred dollars an hour.”
Shelly drew back. “I make four hundred dollars a week.”
“Surely not.”
She waved. She was exaggerating but not by that much. “Obviously, Alex can’t pay that.”
“Find out what he has, Shelly.”
She held her look on him. She understood rationally, but could not accept emotionally, that his representation might actually depend on how much money he would make.
“This is a for-profit operation,” he added, the closest he would come to apologizing.
“I’ll find out,” she said, quickly shaking his hand and leaving.
“Shelly,” he called to her. “Take a little more advice from me?”
She dropped her arms, closed her eyes. “Sure.”
“Sometimes kids—people—go bad. You don’t understand why. It doesn’t make sense. You do what you can to help them. And when you’re done, when you’ve done your best, you go to bed at night, and you sleep. Because after you’ve done your best, there’s nothing else you can do.”
They have to let you help, she thought. She thanked him and headed for the elevator.
10
Schemes
ALEX BANIEWICZ HAD been transferred from the police station to the adult detention center on the southwest side, which would be his permanent pretrial home, confined in a special juvenile section for those under eighteen held for adult crimes. Shelly was not informed of the transfer until she reached the police station, so she didn’t reach Alex until lunchtime.
She caught Ronnie on the way out. He was more dressed up than when she met him last night, now in a button-down shirt and slacks, hair well-combed. His eyes were bloodshot and he was crying. She figured he stifled his sobbing until he was out of Alex’s presence. She had caught him at the release point.
She put her hands on his shoulders. “We’ll figure something out for him. You need to keep up your strength, Ronnie.”
Ronnie swallowed hard and straightened himself. “I’ll be fine. Just tell me what to do and I’ll help. I’ll do anything.”
“Great. I may need that. I’ll talk to you soon.” She realized, after she left him, that Ronnie was supposed to be in school right now. Come to think of it, she was supposed to be at work, too.
She sat with Alex in a holding room. The table, to which Alex’s hands were shackled, was a thick piece of wood on metal legs. The chairs were a hard plastic and bolted to the floor. For some reason, the walls were a pale orange. She wondered who would have made that choice, then wondered why she was even thinking about that. It was amazing how the mind worked, how random thoughts entered the radar screen even during difficult moments like this.
“You and Ronnie have a nice talk?” she asked. Alex gave her a look, as if she had said something challenging. Maybe she had. It was probably the wrong way to start, under the circumstances, but she had less information than anyone and knew that had to change.
“Well, I had a nice talk,” she added. “With the F.B.I.”
Her client looked exhausted. His skin had a yellowish tint that gave the impression of illness. His eyes were sunken, surrounded by dark rings to the point that he almost appeared to be wearing makeup. His reaction to her words was slow, two unfocused eyes eventually meeting Shelly’s. She tried to shake the thought that she might lose this kid before it was over.
“I wish you’d told me when it happened,” she said. “Instead of shutting me out.”
Alex coughed quietly.
“This cop—Miroballi—you knew him.”
Alex nodded.
“He was coming after you, Alex?”
He stretched his arms—with some effort, considering his hands were shackled to the table—and cracked his knuckles. “That’s what they’re saying?”
“They seem to think it’s a possibility, yes. Alex, if you shot him because you thought he was going to shoot you, you acted in self-defense. You know that, right?”
“You said if I shot him.”
“Right. If you shot him.”
God, did he look awful. His hair showed no attempt at order, matted in some spots and sticking up in the back like he’d just awoken. His face was sweaty and unshaven. He ran his tongue against his cheek and stared, with some newfound intensity, at the table.
“The feds are worried about us blowing their operation,” Shelly said.
Alex reacted with a humorless laugh.
“Why don’t we talk about that?” Shelly suggested. “When the feds arrested you.”
His shoulders hunched, his eyes closed, Alex answered quietly. “I—don’t really know. I have my place where I keep—you know.”
The large quantity of cocaine, he meant. Broken down into packets of one gram each.
Buy in bulk, he had told her. Cut down on visits to my supplier.
True, she’d responded. But then they catch you with a bigger stash.
They won’t catch me.
On its face, his scheme made some sense. He would buy a large quantity of drugs and keep it hidden in the trunk of a beaten-down Chevy he’d bought for a couple hundred dollars. To keep the car off the street, he
’d rented a parking space in an alley a couple of blocks from his home. He never drove the car. So there was no chance he would be pulled over by the police, or that the car would be ticketed or towed. Each Friday, he visited the car and removed a small quantity of cocaine to sell to the bankers at work.
“They were all over me,” he explained. “I closed the trunk and didn’t even make it out of the alley. A guy walked up to me and whispered to me. He tells me he’s F.B.I. He points to a black car down the street and he tells me not to run. He takes me to the car and it’s all over.”
“How much did you have on you?”
“At the time? Four grams. I was going to take it to work. It was a Friday.”
“They were waiting for you.” Shelly could imagine how it happened. “They were looking at the cop as a suspect and they found you with him. They followed you, sat on you for a while, and then busted you.”
“That seems to be how it happened,” he agreed. “They whisked me away in that black car of theirs and took me to some building. Bunch of them stayed back and—well, they found the whole load.”
Seventy-four grams, to be precise. “They didn’t want to publicize their catch,” she added.
“I guess not.”
“So what did they say to you?”
His face played, almost into a smile. “They were very interested in what I did with that cocaine. Who I sold it to, who I got it from.” He looked at her. “They were very interested in a certain cop, too.”
“Raymond Miroballi,” she said. The cop he shot. She stirred at the mention of the name. There was so much to learn. “Tell me about him. How you met him.”
“Miro came to me.” Alex shrugged. “I figure he got my name from Todo.”
“Todo,” she repeated. “This is the guy who supplied you.”
He nodded. “Eddie Todavia. Used to go to high school with me. Anyway. So this cop—Miro—he comes to me one day and says he knows what I’m up to. Says he knows Todo is selling me drugs, and he knows what I’m doing with them. He says it’s cool with him, he’s not looking to bust me. He just wants a piece. A ‘taste,’ he says to me.”
