by Ed Gaffney
Apparently, it was time for someone else to talk.
Yet it was not clear that poor Steve Temilow was up to the task. He had managed to keep his back to his client for the entire tirade, but Gomez had failed to dematerialize. Worse, the unpleasant fellow had added a sound track to his heretofore silent performance.
So Temilow did what he did best—he waved a white flag. “Um, Your Honor, if I might attempt to address the court—with deepest personal apologies, of course—for the unusual nature of this situation.”
Judge Klay, however, was not so easily assuaged. “Your apology is not accepted, Mr. Temilow,” she snapped, glaring at the defendant all the while. “I rather think that it is Mr. Gomez that needs to address this court. Mr. Gomez?”
The defendant rose from his seat before speaking. “Yes, Judge?”
“Am I to understand that despite the fact that you stand trial for multiple counts of murder and for conspiracy to commit murder as well as a number of other extremely serious crimes, you wish for me to discharge Mr. Temilow from the case?”
“Well, Your Honor, I don’t know about any discharge. All I want is a new lawyer. This one isn’t doing anything for me. He sounds like all he wants to do is give up, but I didn’t do anything wrong, so I don’t want him representing me.”
The judge took a deep breath. She glanced over the defendant’s head at the jammed courtroom, the reporters, the television camera, even those members of the victims’ families who had made the trip down to see this fiend get exactly what was coming to him. Of course I don’t know exactly what was going on in Rhonda Klay’s mind at that moment, but I would have bet you a stack of pancakes that she was thinking there was no way in the world she was going to be shown up in her courtroom, in front of millions of Americans, on the first day of the slam-dunk trial of a mass-murdering terrorist.
She looked down at some papers that were laid out in front of her on the bench, and then she looked back up at the defendant with her black eyes, a clever smile pinching her narrow face. I knew, right then, that whatever the judge was going to say, it was going to be bad news for Mr. Gomez.
“Very well, sir. Here is my ruling: You are entitled to have an attorney appointed to represent you, and according to the case file, you have had not just one, but three lawyers assigned to your case. And you have chosen to find fault with each one of the three.”
She closed the file, rather melodramatically, I thought, and then decreed: “I find that this is nothing more than a pattern of behavior deliberately designed to delay the trial. You have had ample time to prepare, sir, and ample representation. I will not indulge your behavior any further. Here are your choices, Mr. Gomez. You will either withdraw your request to have Attorney Temilow removed from this case and accept him as your lawyer, or you will proceed without any representation at all, and serve as your own attorney for the remainder of these proceedings.”
It didn’t take a legal expert to analyze that pair of options. There was no way in the world that Juan Gomez, warehouse shipping manager for Pottery World, could possibly defend himself in a multiple-murder trial before Judge Klay. And using Steve Temilow on a case like this was like trying to stop a runaway train with a butterfly net.
But to Gomez’s credit, the man did not back down. “Your Honor, you talk about a choice, but that is no choice at all. I do not want Mr. Temilow as my lawyer, and I do not want to represent myself. All I am asking for is an attorney that will stand up for me here. They are saying I did this terrible thing, but I did not do it. I need someone who will say that to the jury.”
While this exchange took place, Steve Temilow was standing off to the side of the defense table, looking less like the attorney of record, and more like a spectator at a sporting event that had mistakenly walked out onto the field of play.
And the ball was in Judge Klay’s court, so to speak, which she did not like one bit. It came whizzing back at the defendant with quite a bit of attitude. “Sir, you have heard my ruling.” Pulling back the sleeve on her robe, the judge took a look at the watch she was wearing. “If you do not withdraw your request that I discharge Mr. Temilow from the case in the next fifteen seconds, I will discharge him. Consider your decision carefully. You now have…eleven more seconds.”
Also by Ed Gaffney
SUFFERING FOOLS
PREMEDITATED MURDER
Available from Dell
And coming soon
ENEMY COMBATANT
DIARY OF A SERIAL KILLER
A Dell Book / April 2007
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Ed Gaffney
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Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33676-1
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