by Ray Garton
Adam’s heart skipped a beat and he shot to his feet. “What?”
“I am not finished.”
He remained standing. Thought, False alarm, false alarm, please let it be a false alarm.
“These things are going to happen,” she went on. “I anticipate them and deal with them. I prevent them if I can, exploit them to my client’s benefit if I cannot. I control all outgoing information. No one gets photographs, video, or audio of my client unless I approve. My client talks to no one unless I say so. And then my client talks only as I instruct and says only what I tell him to say. I create and maintain an image for my client from the moment I take on the case until it is finished. I determine what the public thinks of my client. I create an image in their minds and a feeling in their guts.”
“What does public opinion have to do with this?” Adam asked abruptly. “They’re just people on the street, they don’t have anything to do with this. It’s the jury that decides—”
Horowitz raised her voice just enough to shut him up. “That jury is chosen from people on the street. They are the ones who will decide whether or not you go to death row, get to be everybody’s favorite love-doll in prison for the rest of your life, or get to go home and eat Doritos in front of the television.” She leaned back and put out her cigarette in a large round marble ashtray on the desk. Lowered her voice as she continued. “I get to them first and shape their opinion early. And opinion has everything to do with this, Adam. What do you think the law is? A list of rules? Speed limits? Tax deadlines? Those things do not make up the law. They have nothing to do with it. Law is opinion, Adam. Our opinions. The opinions of others. A businessman compliments his secretary every day. Her clothes, her hairstyle, her perfume. It is the businessman’s opinion that he is being nice, making his secretary feel good about herself. But it is his secretary’s opinion that she is being sexually harassed, and she takes it to a judge. It is the judge’s opinion that there is sufficient reason to examine the woman’s opinion with a trial. Several people are chosen, based on the opinions of the legal representatives on each side of the case, to decide whose opinion they like better, the secretary’s or the businessman’s. If someone does not like their opinion, they go through the whole process all over again. Opinions, nothing but opinions. What is the pinnacle of success for a law student? Become an attorney, eventually a judge, then get appointed to the Supreme Court. And what do Supreme Court justices do? They write opinions.”
Adam sat on the front edge of the chair again, careful not to let it suck him backward into its gullet. Horowitz was making sense. He did not want her to make sense. He wanted to dismiss her glibly, rudely, to go home and take a nap and wake up to find it was all a dream, to find that there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.
Horowitz uncrossed her ankles, dropped from the edge of the desk. “You are in big trouble, Adam. Like it or not, opinions are all you have. That is why Mr. Menkin called me. Because I know how to control opinions. He managed to track me down in the Caribbean, where I was just starting my first vacation in eight years.” She leaned back against the desk and folded her arms again with a sigh.
Adam’s anger was growing. He did not want to listen to another word the smug, stubby woman had to say. All he wanted to do was sleep. And never wake up again.
“Are you trying to make me feel guilty for interrupting your vacation?” he asked.
“Not at all. I am trying to decide if you are worth interrupting my vacation. So far, I would have to say that you are not.” Horowitz pushed away from the desk and walked slowly in a wide circle around Adam. “You have no grasp of your situation. You do not comprehend the depth of the trouble you are in. If you do not know how desperately you need me...then as far as you are concerned, you do not need me at all. In which case you are a waste of my time. Of course, that might change. It is very likely, in fact. You are still in a state of shock. Not only have you lost your family, but you witnessed the death of your friend.”
“It wasn’t a death!” Adam shouted, turning in the chair toward her. He lost his balance on the edge and slid back into the chair’s waiting maw. “He didn’t have a fucking stroke, he wasn’t hit by a bus! He was murdered!”
“I am very sorry about what happened today, Adam. I can only imagine the pain you must be in. I cannot erase it or bring back your friend. Should I decide to represent you, however, I can promise that the police officers who did it will be ruined. Utterly and completely. They will pray for someone to do to them what they did to your friend.” She stood before him, hands joined behind her now. “If we play our cards right, they might even do it to themselves.”
It was a pleasant thought, driving the police officers who had shot Carter to shoot themselves. But Adam knew it was nothing more than a sales pitch. Rona Horowitz was known as one of the best, but she could not be that good. No one was that good.
“When did you last eat?” Horowitz asked, going back behind her desk.
He thought about it. Could not remember. “I don’t know.”
“How about a burger? A cold sandwich, perhaps?”
Adam shrugged.
She picked up the telephone awkwardly, touched a button, did not appear accustomed to using it as she put it to her ear. “I will order.”
After ordering a roast beef sandwich and a chef’s salad, Horowitz told Adam to make himself comfortable on the sofa, then left the office. Rog was waiting in the outer office, where she had banished him before talking to Adam.
He could hear them speaking in hushed tones beyond the closed door as he crossed the office to the sofa. It was worse than the leather chair. The fat cream cushions were feather-soft. His knees rose as his middle sank into the sofa. He put a sneakered foot on the edge of the glass-topped coffee table with blonde-wood frame. Leaned his head back, let his eyelids drop. He opened them again immediately.
The whole day had been a nightmare from which he had been unable to wake. Like a nightmare, it had lapses in logic, gaps in which details blurred or were blacked out completely. Confusion hummed inside his head, and every time he closed his eyes, he saw Carter’s blood splatter the concrete, saw him drop from the poolhouse roof. Heard his neck break.
Adam had cried until his chest ached and his stomach was sick. He had sobbed and blubbered enough to make the two winos and six or eight Neanderthalian guys in the holding cell decide to leave him alone. He did not know how long he had been behind bars. He had dreaded the possibility of going to jail, but once in the cell, he’d hardly noticed it, remembered very little of the experience. Mostly the smell of urine, a residual whiff of which still hovered around him.
Everything had seemed to move so fast, and yet time felt frozen in place. He remembered standing in front of a judge. His skull had been crumbling under the throbbing weight of a headache he was certain would kill him. His voice had cracked when he said, “Not guilty,” when Rog cued him with an inconspicuous nudge. During that time, he’d heard “one million dollars” mentioned a few times. Some discussion about whether or not Adam was a flight risk. But his heart was screaming too loudly for him to absorb anything.
He had ended up in a hospital room. Or perhaps it had been an examination room in a doctor’s office, he was not certain. A silver-haired doctor who smelled of pipe tobacco had examined Adam. A nurse had given him a shot and his brain had melted. It had not yet congealed and reclaimed its proper shape. The doctor prescribed some happy pills and Rog stopped by an all-night drug store to pick them up on their way to Horowitz’s office.
Adam did not know how long Horowitz was gone. Maybe he had dozed on the sofa. It did not occur to him to look around the office for a clock.
When Horowitz returned, she carried a brown grocery bag by its rolled-up top. Stopped at her desk to pick up the folder.
“My assistant just arrived,” she said. “He is going to make coffee. Please take your foot off the coffee table and do not put it there again.” She pulled an ottoman over to the coffee table
and sat across from Adam, put the folder on the floor. From the grocery bag, she removed a small white bag and set it on the table. “This is yours.” Then a square Styrofoam container with a plastic fork taped to the lid. She detached the fork, opened the container, tore off the lid and tossed it aside. A small packet of dressing and two packets of saltine crackers were tucked into the corner of the chef’s salad. “If you are anything like most people in your situation, you have not eaten all day. Your blood sugar is low. You feel tired and irritable. I need you to be able to think clearly and listen carefully to everything I say. So even if you do not feel particularly hungry, I would appreciate it if you would humor me and eat.”
Adam struggled forward in the sofa and reluctantly opened the white bag. Removed a small bag of potato chips, a stack of napkins, and his sandwich rolled up in butcher paper. He smelled the cold beef as he unwrapped it, and his stomach stirred.
Horowitz tore off a corner of the dressing packet with her teeth, plucked it off her tongue with finger- and thumb-tips. Squeezed the dressing onto her salad. “By the way, I was not serious earlier, when I insisted you prove your innocence.”
“I thought proving my innocence was your job.”
“No, it is the prosecution’s job to prove. It is my job to shed doubt on the prosecution’s case. I need prove nothing. But that is in the future. We should not get ahead of ourselves.” She crumbled two saltine crackers in their cellophane packet, then opened it and scattered the crumbs over her salad. “The tragic gunplay involved in your arrest will buy you a lot. But it will not save your neck. I will need more than that to save your neck.”
Adam said, “You don’t believe I’m innocent.” It was not a question.
Horowitz closed her eyes a moment, sighed. “We need to make something very clear. I told you the law was made up of opinions? Well, for the duration of this process, the only opinions that matter are everyone else’s. Ours are insignificant right now and we need to set them aside. It does not matter whether or not you like me, and it does not matter whether or not I believe you are innocent. For the purposes of our meeting here, I do not care if you have killed more people than Stalin. I am interested only in finding something about your case that will allow me to use the existing system to keep you off death row and out of prison. If I find that something and become your attorney, I will be paid handsomely. My exposure will go through the roof. I will be able to increase my legal and public-speaking fees, and my book advances will experience a sudden weight gain. Consider that the next time you wonder what I think.”
She took a bite of salad. Lettuce crunched between her teeth. “You are familiar with my work, yes?” she asked.
“I’ve seen you on television,” he said. “I haven’t exactly followed your career. I hardly ever watch Court TV.” He bit into half of the thick sandwich and hunger exploded in his stomach. The roast beef was tender and delicious.
“You know I successfully defended Stephen Allen Grange.”
Adam remembered the name. One of the early school shootings. Grange, a junior at a Wisconsin high school, had opened fire in the cafeteria at lunchtime with a 9mm automatic pistol, killing twelve and injuring at least twice that many. He had been held back a year and was nearly eighteen, so it was decided to try him as an adult. Luckily for Grange, his mother’s brother was one of the biggest, richest, most powerful producers in Hollywood. Uncle Bigshot had hired Rona Horowitz to defend his nephew. Adam remembered none of the details, except that Grange was found guilty but insane and put into a mental facility, where most likely he would spend the rest of his life. It was considered quite a victory for the defense, because Grange had avoided execution.
Adam had always assumed it was concern for his sister and nephew that had motivated the producer to pay for the boy’s defense, that he had hired Horowitz to keep his nephew off death row. After listening to Horowitz, he was not so sure. He remembered only one brief mention of the producer’s connection to the killer and the fact that he was paying the boy’s legal fees. It had been in an article in Premiere...or had it been Entertainment Weekly? Other than that, the producer had been left out of all the trial’s press coverage, which had been extensive, and no significant public association ever developed between him and the young mass murderer. Maybe his motives in hiring Horowitz had been self-serving after all.
Adam recalled some of her other clients—a rap singer charged with murder, a studio executive accused of drug dealing, a fading television star whose girlfriend’s suicide looked suspicious—but Grange had brought Horowitz the most attention. Adam imagined her fees and advances had tripled after that case. He wondered how much they would go up if she succeeded with him.
He did not respond until he had chewed up a couple bites of his sandwich. “Yes, I remember that. Why? Are you trying to impress me? I thought our opinions don’t count.”
“They do not, and I am not trying to impress you. Just trying to make a point. Grange was easy. He was not caught on videotape.”
Adam stopped chewing. “Videotape?” he asked around a mouthful of roast beef. “What videotape?”
She held up a small, cautioning hand. “Don’t panic. Chew your food. Just listen.”
A tall, slender, dark-haired man in his mid-twenties entered the room carrying a wooden tray. It held a brown pitcher of coffee, two mugs and spoons, packets of sugar, artificial sweetener, a small pitcher of cream. He placed the tray on the coffee table and stood. He wore a long-sleeve powder-blue shirt, a black-and-red tie, black pants. The shadow of oncoming whiskers darkened the lower half of his narrow, pale face. “Can I get you anything else?” he asked. He had a deep, rich voice, but spoke softly.
“That will be all for now, Lamont,” she said.
Lamont? Adam thought. Some parents are just plain evil.
As Lamont headed out of the office, Horowitz said, “There will be press. Shave, and carry a clean razor with you at all times, just in case. Until further notice.” When he was out of earshot, she shook her head with pity. “His facial hair grows faster than the federal deficit.”
She poured coffee into one robin’s-egg-blue mug, poised the pitcher over the other and looked at Adam. He nodded, she poured. Stirred some cream into her coffee, sipped it. “Now, listen. Two days after your father’s yacht exploded, the FBI raided a compound in the desert.”
Adam ducked his head to bite into the sandwich again. It was not hard to separate himself from what she was saying. He had already separated himself from everything. His feelings of guilt had shifted since Carter’s death. Diz’s house in the desert and Adam’s reason for going there now seemed distant and insignificant.
“This compound was the location of a great deal of ongoing criminal activity,” Horowitz continued. She put the folder on the coffee table and opened it, flipped a few pages aside. “Eighteen underage boys were found on the premises, all of whom were there to be sold as prostitutes, and/or photographed and/or videotaped while engaging in sexual acts with adults and/or other minors. Agents discovered large amounts of drugs, guns, ammunition, and explosives. The weapons and explosives ranged from the most common and inexpensive to the most sophisticated and destructive. It was quite an operation, run by a man and woman. Waldo Cunningham and Cecelia Noofer, although they have several identities. Working individually and together, they have criminal records that go back decades. They have been arrested before, and they will be arrested again. People like Waldo Cunningham and Cecelia Noofer are a penny a gross. The only thing to be accomplished by arresting them is to slow them down, maybe stop their activities for a little while. Normally, not a terribly significant collar. Except this time, child pornography was involved.”
After only four bites of her salad, she slid it aside. Produced another beige cigarette, this one from her pocket, and lit it with a tiny onyx lighter. Pulled an ashtray toward her over the tabletop. The smoke from her cigarette smelled like burning tires. “Child pornography is currently a very hot crime,” she continued. “The Inter
net has heightened awareness of it. It gets ratings, it sells papers, and politicians love to denounce it. It gets votes. The federal agents assigned to the case quickly established from business records taken from the desert compound that Mr. Cunningham and Miss Noofer had been doing business with some very famous people.”
Adam remembered Mr. C.’s warning: I go down, everybody goes down.
“There was no discretion used in keeping the books,” Horowitz said. “They were filled with the names of politicians, a couple televangelists, and many from the film, television, and music industries.” She inhaled a mouthful of smoke, blew it out.
“Do you expect me to be surprised?” Adam asked.
“There is more. Apparently, Mr. Cunningham did not like the looks of his situation after being arrested. His attorney informed the feds that Mr. Cunningham had important information regarding a recent prominent death that was not an accident.”
Adam thought he already knew everything she was going to tell him, but that caught him by surprise. Suddenly, the roast beef sandwich was not so delicious.
Horowitz held the cigarette over the ashtray, tapped it a couple times with her index finger. “Mr. Cunningham offered to share that information with the authorities in exchange for some serious leniency. Urgent meetings ensued. Some kind of deal was struck, but the specifics have not been released. They are irrelevant, anyway. The important thing is that Mr. Cunningham identified you and your friend Carter. He said you had hired his son Nathaniel, a/k/a Diz, to blow up your father’s yacht.”
How had Mr. Cunningham found out? Surely Diz would not have told him. Or would he? Perhaps they sat down each evening and discussed the day’s business. That seemed unlikely after what Diz had said about his dad. But how else would Mr. Cunningham have found out?
