Rogue Divorce Lawyer

by Dale E. Manolakas

  His fight to get the case dismissed today would be an uphill battle. The big plus was having a female judge. Kurt knew women, knew how to legally distinguish disadvantageous cases, and knew how to pound on every helpful analogous case. He would spoon the “right” law to her laced with sugar—his looks, his smile, his charm.

  * * *

  As Skip waited for the ritualized rendering of his verdict, he eyed the courtroom walls.

  During the week-long circus, Skip, a seasoned construction worker, had distracted himself by catching every corner the contractor had cut building the new courthouse—the pride of San Bernardino. The paneling was inferior engineered wood.

  He glanced back at the cheap, hollow doors now guarded by the young bull of a sheriff, cross-armed and ominous. The sheriff pinned him down with his look—a look he recognized. Skip deferred, eyes down—part of his survival training in jail.

  Then, he caught his mother’s worried smile—the corners of her lips forced upward. He tried to mirror her façade but failed. Their hopeless eyes, ravaged by anguish and love, locked fleetingly and then skirted away; hers into her purse for a tissue for the moment closing in on them—the verdict—his scanning the onlookers.

  He saw Kim’s parents scowling at him, ensconced where they had been every day directly behind that A.D.A. Ortega and her assistant Davis—today with more family. They held hands and looked at the jury with hope—hopeless hope because Kim was gone and even the hand of justice could not resurrect her.

  Three rows behind them, Skip saw a middle-aged hefty man, ruddy-faced with the Rudolph-red nose of a drinker. Skip recognized him, but couldn’t place the face.

  “Pay attention.” Finley put his hand on Skip’s shoulder.

  * * *

  Skip jerked away but faced front as commanded. He didn’t trust this bespectacled little ass and never had. Skip may have done right by Kim and settled for a construction paycheck with a couple of kids, but he wasn’t stupid. He had gotten stellar grades his two years at Cal State Fullerton. He knew he was being railroaded.

  “It’s guilty,” Skip whispered to his public pretender.

  “You can’t read a jury.”

  “I can.”

  “Besides, we can always appeal.”

  “Appeal? Sure.”

  The word “appeal” screamed hell through Skip’s mind. The hell of each day in jail with the smells, the noise, and the men who were worse than his father.

  “Sure. We have specialists on appellate panels that are great.”

  “Like you?” Skip bore a hole into the young man’s lying eyes.

  “They’re good. They’re experts.”

  “Bitch,” Skip muttered glancing at Ortega.

  “What?”

  “Not you.” Skip needed him for sentencing. “That A.D.A. She knows I’m innocent.”

  * * *

  Skip glared at the backside of Ortega’s head as she mentored her young female counterpart at their table. Ortega had used every trick in her arsenal to get him. She wanted a win.

  Skip wasn’t here today for killing Kim. He was here because they needed a show for the center ring of their circus.

  So what that the A.D.A. proved he beat his boys with a belt to teach them life’s lessons? His father and his father’s father had done the same.

  So what if she proved he was a wife beater? What man wouldn’t want Kim’s screeching mouth to stop? He brought home a paycheck and it’s not like he hit her with his fist all the time. He had learned from his father not to hit them too hard—they break. And then, who would make dinner? He had ignored that rule sometimes, but ever so infrequently. Kim could still do her duties with one broken arm.

  So what if Kim filed for divorce? She had wanted him back.

  So what that Kim’s parents never liked him? Their self-righteous asses squatted every day behind Ortega, scowling at him. He had never been good enough for their precious daughter—after all, her father was a “big” San Bernardino businessman with a couple of strip malls and some HUD housing. To Skip, he was scum—a slumlord and an opportunist.

  Skip was scared and angry. He had played nice and paid his temporary support ordered by the court like clockwork. He had turned over a new leaf. He was trying to get back in his house and back in her bed. He was almost there before she showed up with a broken neck. He had wanted to tell the jury about the new him, but the hotshot next to him had talked him out of it.

  * * *

  Skip suddenly placed the face of the hefty red-nosed man. He twisted and locked eyes with him. It was his wife’s divorce lawyer.

  “That fucker’s here again.”

  “Who?” Finley asked, startled.

  “That asshole who got Kim her temporary support. Her divorce lawyer. The asshole that made me have supervised visits with my own sons.”

  Gary leaned left out of Skip’s sight line.

  Finley said, “So what? Turn around.”

  “Kim was trying to switch to some woman divorce lawyer.”

  “Not happening now. Face front.”

  Skip followed the command but remembered that Kim’s lawyer’s hands were all over her at the court hearings.

  Sitting in the middle of the courtroom gallery on the prosecutorial side, Detective Gonzalez studied Gary hiding from Skip. He had investigated enough murder cases that the exchange set off an alarm in the back of his mind. He jotted a couple of sentences in his investigator’s notebook just as a rumble of anticipation rose from the gallery.

  Judge Lilly had closed Skip’s file.

  “Order.” The judge brought her gavel down.

  This time her single rap quelled the courtroom’s unsettled anticipation. There was a proper, quiet respect for the process, the law, and her—the wielder of the gavel.

  Besides, the audience wanted the verdict. The price? Silence.

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  Copyrighted Material

  Chapter 22

  “Jury foreperson, please stand. Have you arrived at a verdict?”

  The large woman, who tried but failed to hide her bulk in a vertically striped dress, stood. “We have, your Honor.”

  “Bailiff.”

  The bailiff retrieved the verdict from the jury foreperson. She handed it up to the black robe reaching over; the impatient captain of the trial. The she-judge was experienced, soft-spoken, and exercised her power with an enthusiasm approaching lust. A.D.A. Ortega studied the Judge Lilly’s face as she unfolded and silently read the verdict form. There was no “tell.”

  “Foreperson. What a crock of shit. That bitch is going to screw me,” Skip said.

  “Be quiet.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  All eyes watched the judge’s poker face, framed with a blond blunt cut just above her two-caret diamond studs. The elevated bench was validated by the United States and the California Bear flags on each side, and the California state seal hanging like a halo over the judge’s head.

  “Fucking women. This pack of females has been after me since the first day of the trial,” Skip whispered.

  “I said quiet,” Finley hissed.

  “Bailiff, please return the verdict to the jury foreperson.”

  The bailiff did so.

  “Members of the jury, how do you find?”

  The jury foreperson read from the single sheet in front of her.

  “On the charge of second-degree murder, we the jury find the defendant guilty.

  * * *

  The word “guilty” was all Skip heard. The she-judge proceeded with the ritual—the findings, the counts, the rigmarole, the blabbing. Crap. All crap. The words beat into Skip’s head like a bad rap song. Sweat beaded under his thick brown hair and on his forehead. His dark blue eyes stared straight ahead, masking his panic as the judge droned on and on.

  “I’m not going to prison,” Skip blurted. “I didn’t do it.”

  “Shut up,” Finley warned.

  “I’m not paying for this.” Skip stood tall with his six-foot-plus muscled, co
nstruction-honed body

  “Skip, sit down. We’ll appeal.”

  To his credit, his inexperienced public defender got up and grabbed Skip’s arm.

  “I didn’t do it,” Skip yelled, pushing Finley over the bar into the first row of people and their screams. “I didn’t do it.”

  The jury cowered. The foreperson gasped and ducked to the floor knocking her chair over.

  Skip snarled and glowered. The bailiff protected the she-judge with her body as she unceremoniously stashed Judge Lilly under her own bench. This judge, who had wielded her power from the bench, now hid under it.

  A.D.A. Ortega and her mentee Davis screamed and stood to run, but there was nowhere to go.

  * * *

  Skip jumped through the swinging gates down the center aisle toward the double doors—and freedom. He charged with the strength of the righteous—a man fighting for his life—an innocent man condemned.

  He sprinted forward shoving through hysterical humanity and stumbling over the fallen. The human uproar reverberated in his head and drowned his protestations of innocence.

  “I didn’t do it,” Skip yelled again and again and again.

  * * *

  The collective courtroom roared, men and women together. There were no heroes amongst them, except for Detective Gonzalez. Unfortunately, the churning gallery hemmed him in so tightly he couldn’t move, much less draw his gun. He watched the scene unfold, helpless to act, his frustration seething.

  Others in the gallery crouched to the floor. Some froze in their seats—mostly women. A wave of people retreated to the cheap paneling at the back and crushed each other into it.

  Skip’s mother and Gary were swept along with them. Three men tripped over each other in the center of the aisle and crawled to get between the seats already blocked by squatters. Skip jumped over them on his way to the door.

  Kurt, the lawyer in the suit Skip had envied, made it to the door behind other quick male survivalists. Gary shoved Skip’s mother aside and hovered behind Kurt. But the sheriff—his standard issue Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm pistol drawn—blocked their exit.

  Skip charged at the sheriff for his freedom.

  “Stop. Halt. Down on the floor.” The sheriff’s hand shook as he fumbled for his gun.

  Skip saw his chance in the sheriff’s fumble—the fumble that filled him with hope and more surging adrenaline. He ignored the shouted orders and lunged forward as the tightly packed humanity at the door accordioned itself backward. The suit and Gary were stuck, unable to retreat behind this cowering cluster.

  Time seemed to slow as Skip put his head down and shoulder forward, charging the sheriff just as he had in his non-illustrious high school football career. He hit the sheriff like a missile, hard and fast. But the sheriff’s bulletproof vest blasted pain through Skip’s old football shoulder injury. Ignoring that, he grabbed the now-unholstered gun and pointed it at the sheriff.

  But he couldn’t shoot it, not even to get out the door.

  In Skip’s moment of hesitation, the sheriff grabbed Skip’s hand gripping the gun. The two did a vertical dance with the gun pointed at the ceiling and then at the crowd. It discharged twice as the densely peopled room crescendoed with screams.

  Kurt and Gary were stuck, embedded like the others who had tried to make it out the door. A woman crushed between the panicked humanity and the cheap paneled wall near the front row fell like a rag doll as a bullet pierced her heart.

  * * *

  Skip felt the power of death and a bloodlust for revenge. He squeezed his finger on the trigger again and again as he and the sheriff continued their deadly twirl. Especially deadly because the sheriff’s Smith & Wesson Para 40 had sixteen bullets in its magazine in addition to the one in its chamber.

  A man landed bleeding and lifeless near A.D.A. Ortega and her assistant Davis. Another bullet immediately hit Ortega in the head. The woman Skip believed was an unfair viper fell before him. He didn’t know if his death bullet had been true.

  “No, no, no,” Davis screamed looking at Ortega’s exposed brains near her on the floor. “Help. Help.”

  Davis got to her knees to try to do something, anything as Ortega’s blood oozed into a pool.

  “Get down.” A man grabbed Davis and pulled her flat on the floor just as another bullet buzzed by their heads.

  Skip and the sheriff, two equally matched males, twisted like a tornado up the aisle, bullets flying. Their muscles strained and the veins popped out on their necks. They were in a fight for their lives.

  Bullets went wild as the fight escalated. Two more bystanders were grazed: a woman who had stuffed herself down onto the floor between the rows of seats, and a man compacted into the near the side wall unable to move.

  * * *

  With the judge safe, the female bailiff drew her gun, but instead of diving into the carnage, chose to wait for a clear shot at Skip. The Sheriff’s head moved clear for a moment as Skip’s mind clouded over and the dance slowed just enough for the female bailiff to get Skip in her sights.

  She hesitated and then shot four times straight and true. Even if the bullets made it through Skip’s body, she knew the velocity would be slowed enough to ensure her colleague’s protection with his bulletproof vest. The convicted male’s back was broad, unprotected, and an easy target.

  * * *

  Skip’s body jerked with each impact. He lost his footing as his spine severed. He collapsed to the linoleum floor near the door.

  The crowd gasped. Women screamed.

  As Skip’s life evacuated, he looked for his mother, but instead saw that divorce lawyer’s jowly face looking down at him.

  Skip had fought like a man who was innocent because he was.

  As his life faded Skip thought, It was that man. He … he … he killed Kim.

  Skip lifted his hand and pointed up at the divorce lawyer.

  “Gun,” a female shouted

  The wall of people pushed back again, flesh on flesh, their mouths parroting “gun.”

  “It’s him,” a wisp of breath oozed from Skip’s parted lips.

  No one heard. No one saw.

  Skip’s hand wavered weakly over the crowd from man to man, woman to woman and then fell.

  With that last fruitless gesture, he was gone. Skip had his freedom —freedom from prison and men like his father. Slowly his heart stopped. There was no blood left to pump. It covered the floor.

  He never knew that the unrelenting A.D.A. Ortega had died before him.

  * * *

  Gary slipped out of the door before order was restored along with Kurt and a few others.

  Gary was ecstatic as he breathed in the unusually warm April air. Ecstatic he had escaped the flying bullets and ecstatic his divorce-law gravy train with his ever-growing string of unhappily compliant women would thrive. Skip’s death marked a renewal of Gary’s life as it was before. His confidence soared as he glanced back to see the courthouse doors sealed off.

  “Careful, buddy,” Kurt said as he tried to sidestepped Gary.

  “Sorry.” Gary had pool-balled into Kurt, another escapee from the courtroom.

  Gary noted this escapee wore a Charvet striped silk tie hanging on a crisp white shirt. Gary recognized the man and the tie from the courtroom. A Charvet had been a birthday gift from his spendthrift wife. Gary had returned it.

  “My fault,” Kurt said.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just heading out.” Gary said as he lifted his belt over his broadcloth blue shirt and straightened his rayon tie.

  “Me too. I guess we barely escaped in time.”

  Gary didn’t answer the man-he-would-never-be. He just scurried to his car in the dollar parking lot—with mister G.Q. strutting off to the expensive one.

  As Gary drove away, he saw Detective Gonzalez on the courthouse steps, scanning from left to right. He had missed Gary.

  Where the hell had Stockton gone? Gonzalez thought as he returned to the courtroom, to hel
p get witness statements.

  * * *

  San Bernardino police cars sped up to the courthouse, sirens blaring. The cops jumped out in full gear, guns in hand with fingers pressed to the triggers. They corralled everyone still exiting the courthouse. The group’s afternoon would be wasted giving repetitive statements of obvious facts about an assailant already dead.

  Kurt waited in his car to make sure the courthouse was closed down before he left. He saw the opposing counsel in his case wrangled on the steps with the other non-escapees. The courthouse was finally cordoned off.

  He left, not wanting to get called back and forced to burn billable hours waiting to be interviewed with the rest of the unlucky cattle.

  * * *

  Back in the courtroom, Judge Lilly was escorted to her chambers shaken and crying. The bailiff restored order. The paramedic ritual began.

  Naturally, the courthouse stood closed for business of any kind, including Kurt’s hearing.

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  Copyrighted Material

  Chapter 23

  Kurt BMW’ed back to his Los Angeles high-rise office built on the historical Nob Hill half a century before. A hill filled with turn-of-the-century gingerbread homes razed and replaced with concrete edifices with views to the ocean and the Hollywood sign on a clear day—rare in L. A.

  Kurt drove slowly and carefully even though mid-day traffic was light. His adrenaline had dissipated, but his mind kept replaying the courthouse massacre.

  “Shit.” Kurt slowed down. “I was damn lucky.”

  * * *

  Despite the desensitization of his generation to erratic, bloody senseless deaths, this afternoon was different. It was personal with real blood, real deaths, and real fear for his own life. The visual, even bereft of a movie score’s cues, was more than Kurt could handle.