Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller

by Clifford Irving

  "I knew Clyde Ott," Scoot said. "We met now and then at dinner parties, and one of my nephews spent some time in the Underhill Clinic to get rid of a little cocaine habit. Before Clyde married Sharon he'd fucked more women in Harris County than the whole Houston Astro infield put together. Marriage didn't stop him. When he got to be a wealthy entrepreneur he still kept up his gynecological practice — he liked pussy and that was the fastest way to meet it. But his main squeeze in recent years was Johnnie Faye Boudreau. You saw her in the courtroom. Quite a woman. She runs a topless bar out on the strip behind the Galeria. Maybe she owns it, maybe she doesn't — who really knows? Won a couple of beauty contests when she was younger, then became a model, then a dancer. Couple of brothers got killed in Vietnam — she talks about them all the time. Married twice, no kids. First husband, musician of some kind, she divorced on grounds of nonsupport. Second husband was a drug dealer and ex-con. She divorced him after he got sentenced to a thirty-year bit over in Austin. That was just after she took up with Clyde Ott."

  Almost two years ago, on a sunny October morning, Clyde's wife, Sharon Underhill Ott, was shot down in a parking lot on her way to an aerobics class. A high-powered rifle had done the killing. A man in a black Lincoln town car was seen speeding away from the scene. Clyde Ott was in San Diego at the time, at a medical convention. Johnnie Faye Boudreau was visiting her mother down in Corpus Christi. Airtight alibis.

  "Johnnie Faye had another part-time boyfriend then," Scoot said, "called Dink, because his real name was David Inkman. He was an assistant manager at her club, an ex-Marine. Did some time up at Huntsville for assault and battery. Dink drove a black Lincoln town car. Naturally, considering the close relationship between Clyde and Johnnie Faye, Dink fell under suspicion. But he had an alibi too. A couple of hookers swore he'd got drunk with them the night before, slept over at their house and stayed till noon. They swore his Lincoln was parked in their garage. HPD never could pick up a tire tread in the parking lot to match Dink's white-walls, and they never did find the murder weapon. Case closed."

  Warren remembered photographs in all the papers of the grieving widower. After he had inherited the bulk of Sharon's $35 million estate Dr. Clyde Ott had donated $5 million of it to the Texas Medical Center.

  Scoot popped another can of Lone Star.

  "Dink — Inkman — had a little rundown wood frame house in Montrose. About three months after Sharon Ott was killed, Dink was shotgunned to death in the driveway of his home from a passing pickup. They had to scrape him off the concrete with a fucking trowel."

  Warren blew out his breath. "You're saying—"

  "Not me. Others did. Said that Johnnie Faye was behind it all, that she wanted to marry Clyde Ott, and the first thing she had to do was get rid of her husband, which was easy — there was a story made the rounds that she'd told the law where he was picking up the dope in Austin — and then Clyde's wife, which was hard. And then after Dink had done that for her out of the blackness of his loyal heart, she had to get rid of Dink too. They said there were a lot of ex-cons she'd done favors for. The theory was she'd hump these guys and supply them with dope, and then when she had them under her thumb she'd ask them for a little favor. Promise to pay them something, and payment would come later, if there was a later. Around the time of the Inkman murder there was another guy she was dicking around with, a guy named Bobbie Ronzini who also worked for her at the club. Ronzini fell under suspicion but the cops couldn't prove anything. Then he vanished. Maybe into a hole in the ground. No one knows. I'm just giving you some background," Scoot said graciously.

  "I never heard about the Inkman murder," Warren admitted.

  "Why would you? After Washington, D.C., and Detroit, Houston's the murder capital of the western world. May even beat out Beirut. The newspapers can pick and choose."

  And they did. Dan Ho Trunh's death had merited half a paragraph on a back page of the Post, and the Chronicle had completely ignored it.

  "So now we come to the Ott case," Scoot resumed. "But here we know that Johnnie Faye Boudreau pulled the trigger. She admitted it. Called HPD to tell them. Of course, Clyde's stepdaughter was in the house when it happened, so it would have been a tricky business for Johnnie Faye to cut and run."

  She had shot Clyde Ott twice with a .22-caliber pistol, her own gun, which she normally carried in her handbag. She had a permit; at her club, Ecstasy, she had to deal with some bad people.

  "Now, I can see in your face that you want to know how come I'm talking to you." Scoot Shepard leaned back in his tall leather chair, while cigarette smoke spiraled lazily toward the air-conditioning vents. It was a high-profile case, Scoot said. Seemingly straightforward, like most self-defense cases, but it had its pitfalls. Bob Altschuler, the prosecutor, was a first-rate trial lawyer and a skilled headline-grabber. He had won forty-nine cases in a row and had a particular interest in making it fifty; he wanted to run for judge next fall. The D.A.'s office had manpower and the full resources of a bureaucracy. Against that, Scoot couldn't handle the case alone. There was law to research, potential witnesses to be hunted down and interviewed. The two younger lawyers working in his office, who would normally assist him, were tied up for months with major litigation — an antitrust case: trials in state and federal courts with hundreds of witnesses.

  "You had a bad break," Scoot said to Warren. "Lou Parker screwed you. You've been doing a lot of shit since then, but I've been watching you for years and I think you're a damned fine lawyer. If you're free, I'm asking you to sit second chair with me in Boudreau." Scoot lit a fresh Camel from the butt end of the old one. "I knew your father, but you're smart enough to realize this isn't charity — I can't afford to be charitable when I need good help. Johnnie Faye's given me a retainer of $75,000 and I'm billing her monthly at $350 an hour. I'll pay you twenty grand up front against your hourly rate, whatever it is. Trial's set for July 24. I'll give you one or two witnesses to handle. You might have fun. You might learn something. How about it? Is that a deal?"

  Warren never hesitated.

  The media would clamor to talk to Scoot, not the lawyer who sat second chair. But if Scoot trusted him, others would; if Scoot praised him, the world would listen; and if Scoot won, some of the glory would rub off. It was a real step to a comeback, to work with style, in the right company. Significantly better than struggling for a homeless Mexican who refused to see that he was doomed.

  "Deal," Warren said, and extended his hand across the desk. Scoot shook it firmly.

  A woman had probably killed her lover's wife and then at least one hired assassin, and now had admitted to doing in her lover in self-defense. It wasn't capital murder because it hadn't been committed in the course of another felony and there were no other special circumstances. The law required that she have legal counsel and further required that her counsel do the utmost to have her acquitted. Failing that, to plead with a jury for leniency. There were no scruples involved — it didn't matter whether she was guilty or not. It was an adversary system: the state would try to put her away for life, the defense would fight to walk her out of the courtroom. Without a competent and enthusiastic defense, the state would have its way whether she was guilty or not. The system would collapse.

  Warren asked, "What's the theory of the defense?"

  Scoot said, "You know the story of the Harvard graduate comes to Texas a while back and says to his rancher uncle, 'Unk, how come you can get heavier punishment here for stealing a cow than for killing a man?' Unk says, 'Look out the window. See those cows out to pasture? See any of them look like they need stealing?' "

  Warren smiled, even though he knew the story.

  "The defense is the oldest in Texas," Scoot said. "The son of a bitch needed killing. A little hard to do these days now that so many Yankees moved down here, but you can still try it to a jury. I'd listen."

  Warren set down his can of Lone Star. "Kind of depends on what they think of our client, doesn't it?"

  Scoot nodded appreciatively.
"And you saw her, didn't you? You want to keep that can of beer real cold, you can't do better than lay it right next to Johnnie Faye Boudreau's heart. So there's a little work we have to do. Take this home and read it."

  He handed Warren a copy of the thick file marked Texas v. Boudreau.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  A gray scum of clouds floated above the city. In his cottage office Warren turned the air-conditioning up a notch against the afternoon heat, settled down behind his desk and opened the file.

  On Sunday evening, May 7 (according to the secretary's transcript of Johnnie Faye Boudreau's first interviews with Scoot Shepard), the defendant had been invited by Dr. Clyde Ott to dinner at the Hacienda, a Tex-Mex restaurant just off I-10. It was one of Johnnie Faye's favorites, a big place with several dining rooms and two-foot-thick adobe walls. There were strolling mariachis.

  "I love Mexican music by candlelight," she told Scoot. "And I love a good spicy guacamole and then beef fajitas with onions all sizzling and golden brown. If my breath smells, I usually say, 'Sweetie, I'll make it up to you some other way.'"

  She whistled the musicians to their table and had them play "Las Mañanitas" and "No Vale Nada La Vida," her favorite Mexican song. She tipped them well. Before dinner Clyde had a couple of drinks, and during dinner a few more, and there was no telling what he'd sipped before he got there.

  "Mixing booze and dope will hasten you to an early grave," Johnnie Faye explained. "One way or the other … as it turned out."

  Clyde drank, she said, and he sniffed cocaine, which he usually possessed in extravagant quantities. He was the sort of drunk who never fell down or slurred his words; he just got mean. Last Christmas he had hit her with a clenched fist, a right cross to the schnozz. She had been sitting on the leather sofa in his TV room, trying to talk to him and sort out the mess of their lives, and somehow he had taken offense at whatever she'd said, and crossed the room in that bearlike waddle of his and let fly before she knew what was happening. Pow! There was blood all over her silk blouse.

  Was he contrite?

  "If you ask that, Mr. Shepard, you didn't know Clyde."

  He kept on yelling and threatening to kill her. She had to muscle her way out of his house and get to the emergency room at Hermann Hospital. She thought her nose was broken, but it turned out there was a hairline fracture of the cheekbone. Still a tiny depression there, where before it had been perfectly round and smooth.

  Clyde had beat up on his wife, Sharon, too and one of his other girlfriends, a cocktail waitress at the Grand Hotel. Knocked out three of her teeth, had to pay her $25,000 plus the dental bill just to shut her up. And he'd threatened Johnnie Faye more than once. Raised his fist and said, in front of two friends they were having dinner with, "You bitch, I could kill you."

  She wanted to marry him, that was a fact. Love is a funny thing — you don't always pick the most upstanding person to lavish it on. His being that rich had nothing to do with it, although she wouldn't pretend that his money stood in the way of her affection. "But I'm a working gal," she told her lawyer. "Always have been. I've got enough money of my own. My independence is very dear to me."

  She and Clyde had begun their affair when he was still married; that was no secret. Clyde and Sharon slept in separate bedrooms in their twenty-five-room house in River Oaks. If he could get a divorce and not lose his clinics in the process, absolutely, he'd marry Johnnie Faye. He was crazy about her. She was terrific in bed, she indulged all his fantasies the way no one had ever done, she was the most exciting woman he had ever known. He said that often, when he was sober.

  Then Sharon was shot down outside her aerobics class in her brand-new pink designer sweatsuit. Shot down by some mad killer, the kind that seems to pop up every season in the Sunbelt. Maybe he mistook her for someone else. We'll never find out.

  Clyde didn't mourn her. He was a louse but no hypocrite. He was shocked, of course, and he stayed out of public places for a month or so and gave all that money to the Texas Medical Center to help cure cancer. Then he went skiing in Tahoe, and when he came back he stepped out into the world again. Now he could marry Johnnie Faye.

  But he didn't.

  "It upset me. I can't lie about that — it goddam upset me."

  She didn't mean that he shouldn't go through some kind of decent social mourning period. Although, as she often said, get the gusto while you can. She put it to him: "Are we or aren't we going to do it, and when?"

  "Well…"

  "'Well' is not an answer, Clyde."

  "I need some time."

  "Time to make the decision or time before we get married?"

  "Both, I guess, sweetheart."

  That pissed her off. She never could get Clyde to tell her what really was the problem, because he was naturally closemouthed like men tend to be, afraid to reveal his deep self (as if she wouldn't be sympathetic, wouldn't stroke him and guide him toward the light), and because most of the time his brain wasn't functioning properly as the cells were being destroyed at a prodigious rate by single-malt scotch and Colombian coke.

  "Let's have a quiet dinner," she said. "No friends. And we'll talk about getting married. We'll make a timetable we can live with."

  That was the purpose of their dinner at the Hacienda on the evening of May 7. They arrived about nine o'clock. But Clyde got drunk and nasty. Accusations flew across the table over the fajitas and sizzling onions. "Take me home," she said, before the espresso came.

  By home she meant her apartment, but Clyde had other ideas. Drunk or stoned or sober, he couldn't get enough of her, although in the first two instances his capability seldom matched his desire. She drove and they made it to the house on River Oaks Boulevard without incident. Parked the Porsche in the garage. Went up to the bedroom.

  Why did she go, Scoot asked, if he'd turned mean?

  Well, sometimes sex was a way of resolving problems, of purging the hate. Or whatever it was that made him mean. And she was a little drunk too, not thinking straight.

  But when he couldn't get it up, when she had tried every trick she knew and he bellowed with frustration and then began calling her names again, she climbed out of bed and got dressed. "I can't take this anymore, Clyde. I'm not here on this earth to be your target. I'm leaving you."

  Usually when she said that he became contrite, begged her to give him yet another chance. But not that night. He yelled, "I'm sick and tired of your threats!" and slapped her in the face.

  In his black silk pajama bottoms he followed her downstairs to the living room. He was a big man, six feet tall and two hundred twenty pounds, with thick shoulders and a gut. At Texas Christian he had been a wrestler in the light-heavyweight class. He waddled when he walked, but he was quick enough. In the living room he maneuvered himself between Johnnie Faye and the hallway that led to the front door. His eyes were bloodshot. He was gasping: for a moment she thought he was going to have some kind of fit. He raised his fist and she backed across the carpet toward the fireplace.

  Resting against one of the andirons was a poker; Johnnie Faye snatched it up to defend herself. Clyde twisted it out of her hand like a twig. Stumbling across the room, she positioned herself behind a white Italian sofa, with bookcases at her back. She kept screaming at him, "In God's name, what have I done?" She hoped her screaming would wake his stepdaughter, Lorna, visiting from Dallas and occupying one of the guest suites. But the house was huge, the walls were double-insulated brick.

  In her handbag she had the compact .22 she always carried. Never had fired it except years ago on a range north of town. She fumbled among the keys and loose Kleenexes and makeup, then pointed the pistol at him. Not aiming, just pointing.

  He started to amble across the room.

  "Clyde," she said clearly, "if you come near me, I'll shoot you."

  His response was to lift the poker like a baseball bat. She yelled, "Don't!" — but the drunken fool kept coming. And in her panic she pulled the trigger. The .22, when it was manufactured in 1928, had be
en a semiautomatic pistol, automatically ejecting the cartridge case of a fired round and loading the next cartridge from the magazine into the chamber. But long ago some previous owner had filed down the sear, the pivoted internal piece that held the hammer cocked, thus making the pistol fully automatic. She'd forgotten about that, she said. That was the tragic part. She couldn't stop it from firing three shots.

  Believe it or not, he still took a swing at her with the poker. When she raised her head cautiously she saw him tumbling onto the white sofa. He was probably dead when he took the swing, because although one bullet missed, one of the other two had hit him between the eyes and the other in the chest.

  There was an old saying in Texas: God made men, Smith & Wesson made them equal.

  Scoot asked, What about the safety?

  She must have released it without thinking when she grabbed the gun out of her handbag.

  And did she know it was illegal to file down that sear?

  "I didn't do it," she explained.

  She didn't scream. Clyde lay on his knees, head pillowed on the sofa, one arm dangling to the carpet. She never touched the body. She became aware that the TV was on in the next room. Probably Lorna had left it on. She walked in there and turned it off in the middle of a Johnny Carson monologue.

  From the telephone in the TV room she dialed 911, gave her name and the address in River Oaks, and said, "I just killed a man. He was about to assault me, and I shot him. Please come and help…"

  She told a briefer version of that tale to the Homicide detectives when they arrived at the house. A copy of her statement was in the file. She was always consistent in the details. If there's no one to contradict her, Warren thought, we'll win this case. Can't lose unless Scoot goes to sleep in the courtroom, and that had never happened.