At home that evening he warmed up last night's chicken gumbo in the microwave, fed Oobie a mix of Purina Chow and raw ground chuck and corn oil, then spread the papers on the living room couch. He read the file a second time, until midnight, then went to bed. Charm hadn't come home: of late she had her own social life, a gang of friends from the TV station, a separate schedule.
She was there in the morning, asleep beside him, blond hair tangled on the pillow. He studied her face. He had loved it for eight years and knew it down to the tiny scar where the branch of a blueberry bush had hooked the corner of her mouth when she was thirteen. Warren understood that at first we love the illusion of perfection. Later we come to love imperfections, because they signal vulnerability: and what we love, we yearn to protect.
He wanted to talk to her. The oath of confidentiality, he believed, did not extend to man and wife. And she had always helped him to see more clearly. She looked pale, puffy around the eyes. But she treasured her sleep in the morning, and he didn't wake her.
Running with Oobie along the bayou, heels pounding the concrete in stoic rhythm, he came to a decision. Working with Scoot on the Ott case was the major leagues, and he had earned the chance without even realizing it. He had lost self-esteem, had toiled like a humble peasant in the fields of the law, and finally it had paid off. He was going to do a good job. Going to prevail.
But he couldn't live a divided life. Two murder trials were one too many. Get rid of Quintana, he concluded. Be an intelligent lawyer and face facts. Stop being sorry for the poor bastard — he's guilty. Plead him out, fast.
The next day in Judge Bingham's court, Warren was registered as co-attorney of record for the defendant in The State of Texas v. Johnnie Faye Boudreau. He shook hands with a dark-suited Bob Altschuler, whose grip was like that of a heavyweight wrestler trying for an armlock.
"Congratulations," the prosecutor rumbled. "Let's sit down and cut a deal. You know this woman's a fucking mad serial killer — you know that, for Christ's sake, don't you? She's out of her tree! I gather you think I'm a cross between Pontius Pilate and Attila the Hun, but, my boy, I know what I'm talking about here. She's got the morals of a rat. She's a cannibal, a homicidal maniac!" He refused to let go of Warren's hand; he needed a captive audience. "She owns that nightclub — this corporation in Louisiana is just a shell with some fucking Cajun second cousin fronting for her. It won't come up in court, but she knocked off Ott's wife and the guy who did it for her and the guy who knocked off that guy, and we think that back in '82 just on the spur of the moment she offed some Korean kid who worked in her club as a chef's assistant and gave her some back talk when she wouldn't give him a raise — told her she was crazy. You think I'm kidding? I know. And God alone knows who else before that. With this broad, murder is a way of working out problems and settling scores. You want to do a service to society, help me put her away, at least until she's too old to do more damage. Tell your partner I'll settle for fifty years."
Warren sighed. "Are you finished? Can I go?"
"You think I'd lie to you?"
"You might have a tendency to exaggerate."
"You don't believe any of it?"
"It's not for me to believe or disbelieve," Warren said. "It's for you to prove it. Do your job and stop wasting my time." He managed to shake his hand loose from Altschuler's, but his fingers were bright red and the bones ached.
He walked briskly up the stairs to Judge Parker's court. The jury box was full of lawyers waiting for appointments. Three days ago, Warren thought, I'd have been with them.
He drew Nancy Goodpaster off into a private corner of the hallway. Deals were cut everywhere, some even in the courthouse toilets.
"Cards on the table, Nancy. What will you give if Hector Quintana pleads out?"
"Is that what he wants?"
"He says he didn't do it. Whether it's true or not, I need something to offer him."
"What do you want, Warren?"
Now that she thinks she can whip the case through the docket and get a pat on the back from Lou Parker, she calls me by my first name. He pretended to think for a while.
"Reduce the charge to vanilla murder. Twenty years. Drop the charges of armed robbery and possession of a weapon."
"You're wasting my time, counselor." Nancy Goodpaster looked at her gold wristwatch. But Warren knew she had nowhere more important to go.
"The Siva Singh I.D. won't stand up."
"I think it will."
"It was dark in that parking lot outside the dry cleaners. I checked it out. No decent street light. There are a thousand guys who have black hair and wear shirts and trousers on a summer night. I don't think Singh really saw the man's face."
"She claims she did."
"Nancy, what makes it a capital is the assumption of robbery. So tell me — what did Quintana do with the hundred and fifty bucks from Trunh's wallet? He didn't have it on him when he robbed the Circle K. Even if he threw the wallet into a trash can, he didn't throw the money away with it, did he? Who'd believe that? You can't make capital murder stick." He waited a moment. "You want to settle this, don't you?"
"Naturally."
"Then give a little. Give with a good heart."
"Fifty years."
"My man will never buy it. He has no record. He's had jobs, he's not a vagrant. He's a simple Mexican campesino. A wife and kids back home — his father gave him a donkey for a wedding present. He's not a murderer."
"He killed, that makes him a murderer."
"You know what I'm talking about."
"And it doesn't make any difference. Murderers have wives and kids. I knew one used to rescue lame dogs from the pound. I remember one who raised pet squirrels. So now I know one who has a donkey. Jesus, Warren…" She sighed. "You feel sorry for him, that's all. Another poor slob, like that guy in the Kmart case. Well, maybe if he were my client, I'd feel sorry for him too."
Good. He was getting somewhere. She had a heart. He liked her for it.
"And if Quintana gets up there on the witness stand," Warren said, "the jury's going to feel sorry for him too. He's not surly, he's not mean, he's not a bad man. He's got pride and dignity and it all shows. A jury will never go for the capital. And if they find him guilty of the lesser offense, they'll give him considerably less than life."
"Forty years," Goodpaster said. "My final offer."
"You're a hard woman."
"No, I'm doing my job. Like you're doing yours." She seemed upset at the accusation.
"You'll drop the charge of armed robbery?"
"I'll think about it, Warren. Now I have to go. Have a nice weekend."
Warren sighed. He hoped he was masking his feeling of triumph. He was saving a man's life.
===OO=OOO=OO===
In his office late the following Monday afternoon, Scoot Shepard asked, "You know the statute on self-defense?"
Warren nodded, frowning. "And I know there was a provision engrafted in the penal code back in '74 that calls for 'the duty to retreat.'"
"You're on target." In one hand Scoot held a cigarette, in the other a glass of bourbon on the rocks. Whenever the sun threatened to dip below the yardarm, Scoot switched from Lone Star to Wild Turkey.
"Seems to me," Warren said, "that one question a prosecutor might ask a jury to focus on is this: if Clyde Ott was drunk and abusive that night, why did Johnnie Faye Boudreau even enter the house with him? Why did she go upstairs? And when she first came downstairs from the bedroom, why didn't she just go out the door before he blocked her path? Did she retreat sufficiently? And if Clyde had fractured her cheekbone once before and she believed him to be violent — why was she still seeing him? If her story's true, he once said in front of two witnesses that he would kill her. That's superficially good for us, but it's got a flip side. The state will say that's why she carried the gun in her handbag on a dinner date. They'll call it premeditation."
"True, true." Scoot smiled delicately. "Of course that all depends on how the lady tell
s it when she testifies. It boils down to credibility. Don't fret too much about 'the duty to retreat.' All those Yankee lawyers come to practice here when oil was up at thirty-five dollars a barrel, they rammed that down the throat of the state legislature. They were looking to bring Texas into the twentieth century, so to speak, juristically. Pissing against the wind. This is still Texas. People pack guns and everybody thinks he's the fucking second cousin of Wyatt Earp. Bravery and loyalty and honor and duty — we're eaten up with that stuff. No man has to back down in the face of a threat. That's the basis of self-defense, regardless of what the law says about a goddam duty to retreat."
Warren remembered that Texas had the longest history of frontier warfare of any state in the Union. Its citizens were tied to guns and blood and the Alamo, backs always against the wall. He also remembered the Texas paramour statute that held it was not an offense to kill your wife's lover. It had been stricken from the books about twenty years ago, but the law still stated that if you heard from a reliable source that somebody was out to get you, you had the right to arm yourself, go forth, and seek an explanation.
"Let me tell you a story," Scoot continued. "My first murder case, nearly forty years ago. My client, a guy named Whitey Garcia, walked in and shot his wife and her boyfriend to death while they sat calmly drinking a beer in a bar in the Third Ward. Purely intentionally. He walked up to them and asked his wife what she was doing. The other guy, whose name was Ramos, butted in and said, 'She ain't doin' nothin'.' Whitey whipped out a nine-millimeter pistol and shot him in the stomach. His wife jumped up, screamed, ran across the bar. He shot her in the back. Then he shot Mr. Ramos again in the head. Stuck the gun back in his belt and marched out of the bar.
"The state was offering Whitey Garcia sixty years in prison to a plea of guilty of the murder of his wife. They didn't care about Ramos. We turned it down and I tried the case to a jury. They found Whitey guilty. Gave him ten years pen time, came over and shook his hand and told him they'd done the best they could for him, and if he just hadn't gone so danged far as to kill his wife, they'd have let him go."
Scoot refilled his glass from the quart bottle of Wild Turkey.
"What I'm saying is, you have no duty to retreat. Now, some great advances have been made in recent years regarding the rights of the fairer sex. Equal opportunity, equal wages, no goosing in the office, and so forth. My theory of defense is this: in our enlightened age, why should a Texas woman have to retreat any more than a man should? Especially when the son of a bitch needed killing. I want to sell that theory to the jury and walk my client right out of Dwight Bingham's courtroom, just like Whitey Garcia walked out of the bar."
A women's rights case. Dear Jesus, hear my plea. Warren clucked his tongue. If anyone could do it, Scoot could.
He said to the older lawyer, "You think Johnnie Faye's story is true?"
"Hard to say. So far it's all I've got to work with. I want you to talk to her, then go nosing around and talk to anyone else you have to. And then talk to her again until she's sick of the sound of your voice. Find out where we can be hurt. When I go before that jury, I don't want any unpleasant surprises."
"When do I meet her?"
Scoot looked at his Rolex. "In about two hours. We're all going to the Dome for the Astro game — you and me and Johnnie Faye and her new boyfriend. Her idea, her treat. Baseball bores the crap out of me. But between innings, you can get to know the lady."
Warren reached for the telephone. "I just have to make a phone call and break a dinner date." While he punched out the number he said, "Scoot, if we pick any Spanish-speaking people for the jury, I wouldn't have Johnnie Faye get up there and tell them her favorite Mexican song."
"Why, what is it?"
"According to the file, 'No Vale Nada La Vida.'"
Scoot looked puzzled.
Warren laughed coldly. "You don't know what that means?"
"Can't say as I do."
"It means, life is worth nothing."
===OO=OOO=OO===
Driving home to change, Warren avoided the crowded freeway and took a route along Main Street and Holcombe past the old site of the Shamrock. He would be at Braes Bayou by seven-fifteen, at the Astrodome by eight. When he turned the corner into the cul-de-sac leading to his house, he saw Charm's Mazda RX-7 in the driveway. It meant she had driven home immediately after work. She was not expecting him; he had told her he was meeting the Levines for dinner. Charm was invited too. "I doubt I can make it," she had said, "but if I can, I'll call Shepard's office."
In the hazy evening heat Warren saw that Charm and a man he didn't know were standing by a car parked farther up the street on the same side as the house. Charm's back was to him, her legs spread slightly, her skirt taut. She wore a pale blue suit — the $1600 one from Lord & Taylor, he recalled. The door of the car was open and the man was leaning on it, gesturing emphatically. Warren touched the brake of the BMW.
The man put his hand on Charm's shoulder, seemed to squeeze it. Then he placed his palm on her cheek and kept it there a few moments. Charm bowed her head slightly.
In their gestures there was an eloquence which Warren understood at once.
Slowly he braked to a stop next to another car about fifty feet away from them. The cul-de-sac prevented him from driving past — his house was near the end of it. He could make a U-turn and leave, or back up to the avenue, but they would notice that. And he couldn't bring himself to embarrass them by wheeling the car into the driveway. He waited, the air-conditioning vibrating gently, until finally the man stopped talking, bent to kiss Charm briefly on the lips, and ducked into his car.
He drove past Warren with not even a glance. Hands tight on the wheel, Warren stared at him as the car moved by. He saw a suntanned man of about forty with a mustache. The word paramour formed in his mind. He was aware that his lips, dry as bone, had pulled back over his teeth in a grimace.
Charm turned and walked quickly, heels clicking down the driveway, into the house. From his car Warren saw but didn't hear the front door close behind her. Yet he could imagine the sound as clearly as if he had heard it: the sounds of doors closing in your own home are so familiar, so personal.
Farther up the block, children shouted at each other. Roller skates rasped on concrete. Warren parked at the outer edge of his driveway.
Go in? Slink away? Go out and get drunk?
He wanted to shout in anger. He had a sudden yen for a cigarette and realized he had never lost the craving. He felt disgusted with himself. The heat of the moribund evening pressed against his forehead.
It was still his home. His clothes were there, and he needed them. He slipped his keys out of the ignition, got out of the car, unlocked his front door, and stepped into the cool hallway that led to the living room. Oobie stumbled up to him, wagging her tail violently.
I wish you could talk, Oobie. I'd ask you a lot of questions.
Charm was seated in a rocker at the pine kitchen table, drinking a glass of cold white wine. The creaking of the rocker was the only sound as she looked up with blurred eyes. There was a certain wild look too, and an anger equal to his. Anger masks fear, he realized.
"I saw you out there," he said. "I was in my car."
She stared at him in silence.
Warren's heart fluttered but everything else felt numb. "Can we talk in the bedroom, Charm? I have to change."
With what Warren perceived as counterfeit obedience, she followed him, carrying her glass of wine, and Oobie trailed behind, tail tucked hard between her legs. Oobie knew. Charm sat on the edge of the king-size bed while Warren took off his suit and folded the edges of his trousers properly into the press of the wooden hanger. The numbness was gone but now there was a ringing in his ears. I don't know what to say or do, he thought. It's up to her.
"Okay," Charm said at last, sighing.
"What's okay?"
He began the hunt for his baseball cap, stuffed somewhere among sweats and old tennis shoes and torn T-shirts with vari
ous logos.
"He's a man I've been seeing," she said quietly.
"Seeing?"
"Having an affair with."
He found the black Astro cap and decided to put it on his head right then and there. Each of his hands felt like twenty-five-pound weights, and he kept fumbling stupidly with the brim, aware that he was breathing as in a workout at the gym.
When he turned around, Charm said, "You look silly."
He was wearing a white shirt, red Jockey shorts, and the Astro cap.
"That's because I feel silly," he explained, while he felt the blood hum through his veins.
"What are you going to do?" Charm asked. "What's the traditional response down here when you find out your wife's having an affair? Do you beat her up? Stomp on her with your cowboy boots? Yell and walk out the door in what y'all call a mother huff?"
Her eyes had misted with tears.
"We do that sometimes," Warren said, "and sometimes we go out and hunt the son of a bitch down and shoot him between the eyes."
"Wonderful," Charm muttered.
"Just tell me about it."
Was she relieved that he wasn't yelling? That he seemed in control of himself? He couldn't tell. She didn't seem quite there.
"You want to know his name? All the salacious details?
How long, how often? You want to know if he's better or worse than you in bed? Is that it?"
"Please, Charm."
After a silence she said, "Just what is it that you want to know?"
That forced him to think and clarified something, and he said gently, "How you feel. What you're going to do now."
She cried for about five minutes.
He was used to that; she was a woman with deep emotions and a short fuse on her tear ducts, and sometimes she couldn't stop: like when the sewage had backed up and overflowed the downstairs toilet into the living room, or the time her immediate boss down at the station tried to take away her interview segment. Her father was a cold fish and had never really loved her — that was a recurrent theme. She hated Houston weather, the humidity of the five-month-long summer was unbearable. She was pre-period. Men didn't understand women and never would. Her oldest sister needed a mastectomy. These and other traumas brought riverine tears. The sobs made her throat hoarse.
Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller Page 8
