When he had stepped out of his building he discovered that the winter sun was the brightest in recorded history and, of course, his sunglasses were nowhere to be found, probably lost under some piece of furniture or other. It was only to be expected, he supposed, that God should turn the screws a little tighter and try to blind him as punishment for the previous night’s drunken revelry.
The taxi speeded up with a lurch as traffic opened up, causing Bratt’s stomach to jump and sending bilious gasses up his throat. He covered his mouth with his hand and willed himself to keep everything down. Throwing up at the bar at closing time had been the ultimate humiliation. The two other times after he got home were just gut-wrenchingly painful. He only hoped he could get through the morning without wearing his insides on his robes.
Finally arrived at the courthouse, Bratt stepped carefully out of the taxi, squinting uselessly against the sun’s searing rays. He slogged his way through the snow, dragging his feet, then headed up the stairs and into the courthouse’s main lobby, where Kouri stood waiting for him. Kouri’s face showed his obvious concern for his boss’s condition. He had received an early-morning phone call from Bratt, sounding like he was at death’s door and asking Kouri to meet him at the courthouse with his robe and vest.
“Mr. Bratt, is it all right if I say you look like shit?”
Bratt could only look weakly at him, too nauseous to reply. Opening his mouth for any reason seemed to be a bit risky just then, so he kept his words to a minimum. He reached out for Kouri’s arm and shuffled like an old man toward the elevators, hoping his legs wouldn’t give out in public.
“You don’t want to take the escalator? The elevator never comes,” Kouri said,
Bratt imagined the dizziness that surely awaited him if he were to watch the courthouse lobby slide past him while he stood on the rising stairs and decided to stick to the slow-moving elevators. He shook his head no, instantly causing it to spin anyway.
Somehow they made it to the elevators and got on with several other people, a few who smiled at Bratt in greeting, while looking somewhat surprised at his haggard appearance. When they got off just one floor up, Bratt felt their eyes following him.
They got to the courtroom door and Kouri held it open. Bratt slowly made his way to the defense bench and saw Nancy sitting across from him, with her eyes glued to a police report on the desk in front of her. This time he was glad she didn’t look up at him as he entered.
Standing off to the side was Parent, engaged in a whispered conversation with none other than Philippe St. Jean. Bratt looked away, feigning indifference to the detective’s presence.
He wasn’t in court yesterday, he told himself. I wonder if he showed up today on his own, or if Parent had ordered him to report on last night’s “meeting.”
Bratt remained standing, leaning on the front of the prisoner’s box, while he waited for Judge Green to take the bench. He didn’t want to sit just yet because that would only mean having to stand up again when the judge entered. If it was at all possible he wanted to limit the number of times he would have to struggle to his feet, unsure that he’d have the strength to rise when called upon to do so.
Just before Green entered, St. Jean turned to Bratt and sneered openly. Parent, on the other hand, didn’t look his way at all, but on his face Bratt could read his disapproval over whatever St. Jean had whispered to him about the night before.
“All rise,” the bailiff called out, getting Bratt’s attention.
Green made his way slowly up the dais and into his seat and Bratt thought that the judge looked the way he felt. Bratt slowly sat down as well, his shaky legs almost giving way at the last moment. His stomach gurgled loudly enough that even Nancy couldn’t stop herself from looking his way. He gave her a sickly smile and received a puzzled frown in reply.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Green began, ignoring Bratt’s audible intestines. “First of all, Mr. Bratt, I’d like to extend my condolences for the passing of your partner yesterday. I’m ashamed to say I was unaware he was in the hospital.”
Bratt nodded in thanks, hoping the pained expression on his face would be attributed solely to his grief.
“You’ll be glad to know that I won’t keep you here too long this morning. I’m sure there are other places you would rather be just now.”
Like a bathroom, Bratt thought, pulling out a kleenex to wipe his sweaty face.
“I reviewed the tape carefully,” Green continued, “and the fact is that over ninety percent of it is nothing more than a running monologue by the detective. A not too subtle and ultimately fruitless attempt to get the accused to make a statement. None of what the detective says is particularly relevant to the issues in this trial, nor do his opinions on the state of the evidence against Mr. Small actually prove anything. So the jury certainly won’t be hearing any of that.
“As for the rest, the few verbal exchanges that took place between the accused and the detective are of no probative value and may even mislead the jury into making the wrong inferences of fact. So those would have to go too.
“As a result, the few individual phrases by the accused that are left, those which I can say with confidence would not infringe on his right to a fair trial, are so disconnected as to be meaningless. I prefer limiting the jury’s exposure to meaningless phrases to what they’ll hear in the lawyers’ final arguments. Therefore, none of the tape will be admitted into evidence.”
Kouri whispered a triumphant “yes” at Bratt’s side, while Bratt himself felt only a slight sense of relief trying to make its way past his stomach cramps.
“I’ll see you gentlemen Monday morning for jury selection. My sympathies again, Mr. Bratt.”
Bratt had to quickly cover his mouth against a burp that tried to escape, earning an understanding look from Green in return. The judge slowly got to his feet and Bratt managed to stand by pushing heavily down on the desk in front of him.
Once Green had left the courtroom Parent came over to where Bratt stood, extended his hand and whispered solemnly, “God rest his soul.”
Bratt’s limp, clammy handshake caused the prosecutor to wince involuntarily in disgust and wipe his hand on his robe as he turned to walk out. Bratt let Parent and the two detectives leave first because he didn’t want them watching him wobble unsteadily out the door. Once he was sure they were far gone he grabbed Kouri’s arm again and was slowly led into the courthouse corridor.
The block and a half walk back to their offices seemed to take an eternity for Bratt, who felt that mother nature had teamed up with his own body against him. Pedestrians stared or smiled cruelly at his obvious discomfort when he had to stop to catch his breath, leaning on a storefront window as he did so. He thought he heard Kouri whisper “march or die.”
What the hell does he mean by that? he wondered, although he felt too sick to get angry.
“It’s the title of a movie,” Kouri said, once again seeming to read his mind. “All these soldiers marching in the desert, day after day…”
Bratt interrupted the movie account by placing a trembling hand to Kouri’s mouth and giving a slight shake of his head. Right then, silence was all he could stand. Leaning against Kouri again, he continued his painful trek to his office.
By late afternoon, after a long nap on the sofa in his office and a couple of mugs of warm tea, Bratt’s body seemed ready to show him some mercy. As for Kalouderis, to whom Bratt would have liked to give a swift kick in the pants for bringing him along on his drinking binge, there was little news. Sylvie, still red-eyed and now dressed in black, told Bratt that she had received a cryptic fax from his drinking partner, stating simply, “Please don’t call.”
Once he began feeling better, Bratt noticed the unhappy faces of the lawyers in his firm. Beyond the passing of the senior partner, there was also a sense of uncertainty about their future. Leblanc, on the morning of his heart attack, had mentioned to some of them the possibility that Bratt would be named a judge. Now the associates found th
emselves contemplating a major shift in the structure of the firm, if not its possible dissolution.
Bratt had given little thought to the future of the firm or of his associates. The proposed seat on the bench, as far as he was concerned, was far from a lock, especially if it was in any way dependent on his handling of the Small trial. Unsure of the path he wanted to take for his own life, he was in no position to advise others on how they should plan their careers.
Kouri knocked lightly on his door at around three that afternoon, then opened the door a crack and peeked in to see if Bratt was conscious. He saw him sitting up at his desk, sipping the tea that Sylvie had made him.
“Feeling better?”
“Yeah, getting there.”
“You really had me worried this morning. I don’t think your body can handle alcohol very well.”
“Thanks for the insight.”
Kouri still stood in the doorway, clearly debating whether to enter or not.
“You can come in, Pete. I won’t break.”
Kouri came in and sat on the sofa, trying to look comfortable. Something was bothering him and it occurred to Bratt that as surviving partner it now fell to him to take on the role of a paternal figure that Leblanc had played so well. Fortunately, the pounding in his head had for the most part subsided, and he was confident that a short talk wouldn’t be fatal.
“What’s on your mind?”
Kouri paused before answering, as if trying to make up his mind whether to go on or not.
“Is it always like this?” he finally asked.
“Ah, good question…What’re you talking about?”
“Law. The practice. Are things always so, I don’t know, ambiguous?”
Bratt thought the choice of words was interesting, and quite appropriate.
“It depends on how much time you spend thinking about things. For some guys, it’s all black and white. They don’t think too much about what they’re doing, and there are few gray areas in their approach to the job. It’s always us against them. Maybe that’s the best way to be: just do your job and leave the bigger questions to priests and philosophers.”
Bratt contemplated his own words, feeling the need to somehow explain, if not defend, his own doubts of late.
“But let me tell you something,” he continued. “When you’re in court, you really can’t have any doubt that that’s exactly what it is: us against them.”
“And when we’re not in court?”
“It’s still us against them, only the ‘them’ includes a lot more people.”
“Like who?”
Bratt knew what Kouri was looking for from him and he thought it was a good idea the young lawyer found it out early in his career.
“Like our own clients.”
Kouri nodded his head, as if he had expected this answer from Bratt.
“That’s the part I’ve been wondering about.”
“Why now?”
“It’s not just now. I’ve been wondering about it for a while. Especially since I’ve seen you talk to Small, or talking about him when he’s not around. You really don’t believe him, do you?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Yeah, I know. What I don’t know is, why not? I mean, am I so naïve?”
“You are naïve. Not about Marlon Small so much as about the nature of our profession. So, here’s rule number one, and if you only remember this rule you’ll be ahead of most new lawyers. When you take on a criminal case, every single person you deal with, every cop, every opposing lawyer, every witness, and absolutely every client you ever take on, will lie to you without hesitation when they think it’s in their best interests to do so. In the game of law you can’t depend on anyone to help you and you can’t trust anyone, especially your client.”
Bratt stopped to catch his breath and squeezed his eyes shut briefly.
Shit, that took a lot out of me, he realized, opening his eyes again and blinking rapidly.
Kouri asked, “Isn’t that pretty cynical?”
“If cynical is the opposite of naïve, then it certainly is.”
“How do you live your life not knowing who to trust?”
“No, no. That’s not what I said. You do know exactly whom you can trust, and that’s yourself. As long as you don’t lose that, you’ll be OK. When you stop trusting yourself, that’s when you’re in trouble, because then you have to rely on your client instead. And that’s never a good sign for a lawyer.”
“Maybe I’m slow, but why would a client lie to his own lawyer? How would he expect the lawyer to properly defend him?”
“Most clients are too dumb to know what’s in their own best interests. If they weren’t so dumb they wouldn’t need a lawyer in the first place, because they wouldn’t get caught.”
“Or maybe they just wouldn’t commit the crime.”
“My point exactly.”
He sipped at his tea, closing his tired eyes again, and both lawyers quietly contemplated what had been said and where the conversation still might go.
Kouri leaned forward. His hands clasped together made him look like he was begging for the truth, although he didn’t look Bratt in the eye when he spoke.
“If you knew, really knew, that a client was innocent, would you do anything at all to save him?”
Bratt lay his head on the back of his chair, eyes still closed, and asked himself, Is he interviewing me for a newspaper exposé, or is he investigating me on behalf of the Bar? What a question! I never expected to be the one having to add salve to his conscience.
“Look, Pete. Every lawyer starts out trying to obey the law to the letter. Nobody graduates law school thinking I’m going to be dishonest, or lie in court. I’m sure that’s exactly how you are, too. Then comes the first day you’re pleading and you realize that you can say the exact same thing in two different ways. The first way sounds bad for your client. The other way, which is still pretty close to the truth, just makes him look a little better. Let’s call it a euphemism.
“So, you tell yourself, ‘hey, quick thinking.’ You’re all happy with yourself for coming up with a way to show your client in a better light. But the fact is there’s a world of difference between the truth and ‘pretty close to the truth.’ You may well be on your way to being a good lawyer. But you’re also on your way to learning how easy it is to bend the truth when it suits you. And each time you plead, you’ll bend it a bit more, and you’ll be amazed how far you can bend it and still think it isn’t broken. The truth, in the right hands, can be a very flexible tool.
“So, if you want to know how far I’d go to defend a client, guilty or not, I don’t have the answer. I’m not sure I’ve reached my limit yet. I’m a little worried about that, to be honest with you. Not knowing how far I’d go, I mean. Does that answer your question?”
Kouri said nothing, but just gazed solemnly at the floor. He took a deep breath, looking like he had just come to an important decision, then he wiped his palms on his pants and stood up.
“Even if we never trust any of our clients, the odds are that some of them are going to tell us the truth.”
“You’re right. Just don’t spend too much time worrying about which one it is. It’ll get in the way of defending them.”
“I think Marlon Small is telling the truth,” Kouri said firmly. He paused, looked briefly at Bratt’s face, then quickly away again before continuing. “I don’t have any problems defending him.”
He turned and walked slowly out of the office. Bratt sipped his tea as he watched him leave, wondering what had brought that on.
Chapter 9
That Thursday morning was the funeral for Jean-Paul Leblanc. Bratt stood at the entrance of Ste. Marie des Anges Church in Outremont, and read his partner’s name, written with white plastic letters on a grooved blackboard behind a pane of glass.
He entered through the heavy double-doors, and saw that the church was full. Over his twenty years in practice, Leblanc had made many friends and near-friends, a
nd the legal community was always ready to come out to remember one of its own.
In the front row of pews instead of Leblanc’s family, who may have been as dead as he was for all anyone knew, the lawyers from his firm sat. Bratt walked down a side aisle, past row upon row of ornate, hand-carved wooden benches, and looked over the assembled mourners, checking who had come, who sat where, who spoke to whom.
It occurred to him that there was a certain hierarchy at funerals. The closer to the front you sat, the closer you could claim to have been to the deceased. He wondered if people showed up at funerals to show not how much the deceased had mattered to them, but rather to display their own importance. By their presence they put themselves among the privileged few that were allowed to claim a special place in the life of the dearly departed. They displayed their grief like a medal of honor, as if to say, “I was his close friend, my feelings matter.” Others could look at them and say, “Look how sad they are. Their loss is so heavy.”
Bratt’s rambling thoughts stopped abruptly as he spotted Jeannie standing next to Kalouderis in the front pew. He suppressed an inappropriately happy smile and walked solemnly toward her. Kalouderis saw him approach and made room for him on the bench.
Bratt briefly worried that she may not want him to sit close by. His moment of fear turned out to have been for naught. Jeannie turned her sad eyes to her father as he approached and gave him a welcoming look. Once he was next to her, she stretched up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He allowed himself a small smile of gratitude, feeling a little less forlorn than he had been since the day Leblanc entered the hospital.
As the priest stepped away from the altar and began reciting the funeral prayers in French, Bratt’s thoughts lingered on his daughter. All his troubles with Small and all the doubts he’d been having about his vocation were linked to the things that Jeannie had said to him and had been aggravated by her absence from his life. He hadn’t been conscious of how much her leaving home had affected him until he saw her again. For all intents and purposes, she was the only family he had left.
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