A Cure for Night

by Justin Peacock

  "You can see pretty much all of it from where you're standing," Paul said. "But sure."

  Paul walked me over to the far wall, which featured a large window looking out toward Manhattan. Much of the view was blocked by another building, but I could see a sliver of the East River and a random section of Lower Manhattan skyscrapers.

  "I should've known that fighting for justice was a pussy magnet," Paul said.

  "Owning a loft in Dumbo is a pussy magnet," I said. "Barely getting by pleading people out on misdemeanors, not so much."

  "Melanie's totally into you," Paul said.

  "Did she come here with Ted?" I asked.

  Paul shook his head. "Ted's been skulking around her tonight, but I don't think he's much in your way. A librarian would find Ted boring. You, on the other hand, she thinks, have soul."

  "I played along because I didn't see any other way to play it," I protested. "But it's not like I could actually fool anyone into thinking I'm an idealist. Maybe for an hour or so."

  "How long do you need to seal the deal?" Paul asked.

  "With Melanie?" I said. "Presumably more than an hour."

  "She's not that kind of girl, sure, or at least she isn't going to admit she is by leaving a party filled with work people with some guy she just met. But ten will get you twenty that you can get her phone number before you leave here tonight."

  "Ten will get me twenty, huh? Deal," I said as I looked around Paul's spacious apartment. "So this is what five-plus years of being a corporate whore buys you."

  "I've never denied that I could be bought," Paul said. "The best you could ever say about me was that I don't come particularly cheap."

  IT TOOK me about an hour to catch Melanie alone, by which time I'd had the opportunity to fortify myself with a couple of bracingly strong vodka tonics. I noticed her coming out of Paul's bathroom and walked over quickly to intercept her.

  I told myself that I'd know in the first second Melanie saw me coming whether or not this was a good idea. To my relief, the smile she gave me seemed genuine. "So tell the truth," I said. "Are you actually surviving at Walker? I promise not to tell."

  "It's been totally fine for what it is," Melanie said. "But I do hope one day to make the leap like you did. I mean, for me it wouldn't be a public defender gig, but something like that. You know, something that matters."

  My guess was that I was only a year or two older than Melanie, but she was making me feel cynical and old. Her idealizing of the grubby, thankless work that I did seemed profoundly naive to me, although I remembered the way young lawyers at corporate law firms romanticized any other way of practicing law. "It's safe to say that it doesn't always feel like what I do matters," I replied.

  "I probably shouldn't ask—" Melanie said, before cutting herself off.

  I had no idea what she'd been about to say, but I figured whatever it was, I wanted her to ask it. "What?" I said, tilting my head, doing everything I could to appear welcoming.

  "I was just thinking—I feel bad that this is even where my mind would go—but I was just wondering, what's it like to give the money up?"

  I shrugged off a flash of disappointment; I'd expected something more personal. "It totally fucking sucks to give the money up," I said with a smile. "Actually, though, honestly, I find that I just get used to whatever amount of money I have and live accordingly."

  "That's awesome," Melanie said. "You've just, like, gotten totally clear, haven't you?"

  I wasn't entirely sure what she meant by this, but decided that asking her to explain might dampen the mood. Melanie touched my shoulder. "Listen," she said. "I think I could use another drink."

  I made the slight mistake of glancing down at my own drink, which was conspicuously full. "Sure," I said, turning toward Paul's kitchen.

  "Actually, I was thinking . . . it's just that if we stay here, I'm going to have to keep making bullshit talk with people from the office, you know. We might not get a chance to really talk about stuff."

  I was out of practice at these things, but had enough game left to be able to hit the softballs. "We could get a drink somewhere else," I said.

  "Sure," Melanie said, playing it like it was actually my idea. I told myself it was like riding a bicycle.

  "Let me just tell Paul I'm heading out for a while," I said, phrasing it that way to get back at her a little, hopefully reclaim some of the power by suggesting I might be returning to the party. "I'll meet you over by the door."

  "Why don't you meet me at the elevator?" Melanie said. I remembered what Paul had said earlier, about how Melanie wouldn't contemplate leaving a party full of her coworkers with me. It seemed he'd underestimated her, but she was savvy enough to camouflage it.

  I dragged Paul out of a conversation with a couple of people I didn't recognize. "What's a cool bar around here?" I asked.

  "My liquor's not good enough for you?"

  "Just tell me."

  "Why?"

  "Because you totally owe me twenty bucks," I said.

  PART

  TWO

  14

  MYRA AND I had been waiting on the prosecutors in the Tate case, ADAs O'Bannon and Williams, for twenty minutes. It seemed a point of pride with ADAs to always keep defense lawyers waiting; perhaps it was taught as part of their orientation.

  "What's making us wait like this get them?" I asked.

  "They just want us to know how much they dislike us," Myra replied.

  Finally ADA Williams arrived and gestured for us to follow her to a conference room. She was a tall black woman in her early thirties, willowy and aloof, her suit jacket buttoned up. Nobody bothered with small talk; Williams didn't even offer a token apology.

  The conference room she led us to was cramped and viewless, merely functional and seldom cleaned. O'Bannon was not there. Myra hissed out a sigh, making a point of showing her annoyance. I guessed she was doing this deliberately, that she was perfectly capable of hiding her irritation if she thought it would benefit her case.

  "Ted knows you're here," Williams said, a touch of apology in her voice. "I'm sure he'll be right along."

  "He's known we were here for half an hour," Myra said.

  "He's probably on his way," Williams said.

  O'Bannon walked in on cue. A squat bulldog of a man, with a full head of gray hair and a face like drooping clay, he stood a couple of inches shorter than Williams. He wore a white dress shirt that was fraying slightly at the collar, and a striped tie. He was the only one of us not wearing a suit jacket. I took this as a deliberate gesture, an indication that he didn't deem us worthy of such formalities.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting," O'Bannon said, not putting any effort into it, taking a seat at the head of the table, dropping down a Redweld folder onto the table in front of him.

  "Next time I'll tie some bells around my ankles so you'll know I'm here," Myra said.

  "I'd appreciate that," O'Bannon deadpanned. "Now, what can I do for you?"

  "You can explain to me how come the photo array shown to Yolanda Miller wasn't part of the Rosario material turned over to us," Myra said, a tightness in her voice as she spoke.

  I hadn't known what to expect in response, but what I saw on both ADAs' faces was confusion.

  "What photo array?" O'Bannon said after a moment.

  "Yolanda Miller told us that Detective Spanner showed her photos prior to the lineup, and that she didn't pick anybody out. I'd say that qualifies as Rosario material, wouldn't you?"

  "I don't know anything about this," O'Bannon said. "The only ID I know about is the lineup." He turned to Williams. "Are you aware of any photo array?" he asked her. Williams shook her head.

  O'Bannon turned back to Myra. "Are you sure you understood Ms. Miller correctly?"

  "I'm absolutely positive," Myra said. "How could you not know about a failed ID procedure with your star witness?"

  "I'll look into it and get back to you."

  "I'd imagine so, and quickly too, I might add," Myra said. "We'r
e moving for a Wade hearing to challenge Miller's ID, and we need a copy of the photo array as an exhibit."

  "We'll certainly act quickly to verify whether or not a photo array was shown to Ms. Miller," O'Bannon said.

  "If we get Yolanda's ID tossed your case goes right down the toilet with it," Myra said. "You want to put anything on the table before the hearing?"

  "Here's the thing with that," O'Bannon said. "Even if there was an earlier ID procedure, you're not going to get the lineup ID tossed. And I haven't come across a notice of alibi floating across my desk. Which means this is something like a slam dunk, as far as we're concerned."

  "This is more like a half-court shot," Myra said. "Other than the alleged eyewitness testimony, which is in jeopardy of getting thrown out, and which will at least take a big hit on cross now, you don't have any direct evidence at all. No physical evidence, no murder weapon, no confession. You can't tell me there's nothing on the table."

  "What I'm willing to put on the table is he allocutes to murder two, we agree to twenty to life."

  "Murder two is the top count he's facing," Myra protested. "And a conviction after trial gets twenty-five to life."

  "Be that as it may," O'Bannon said. "That's the best on offer."

  "The only reason for that would be—" Myra cut herself off, glancing quickly at Williams, who was looking nowhere.

  "You were saying?" O'Bannon asked.

  "You're really not going to make an offer here?" Myra asked.

  "I don't believe that's quite what I said," O'Bannon said. "I believe I did make an offer, and it was twenty to life."

  "This is the kind of case your office pleads out on man one all the time and you know it," Myra said. "What's the difference here? I mean, other than that you got a poor black defendant accused of killing a white college student?"

  "I certainly didn't say that," O'Bannon said, standing, though he wouldn't look at us any more than Williams would. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm due in court."

  IT WAS a short walk cutting across the bottom edge of Cadman Plaza from their office on Jay Street to ours on Pierrepont. Myra had stormed out of the DA's office, with me trailing in her wake. I caught up with her when she stopped to light a cigarette. "Those fuckers," she said once we were outside in the heat. "No way they don't put a decent offer on the table if it was Devin Wallace who'd been killed instead of Seth Lipton."

  "Does that really surprise you?" I asked.

  "Just because something doesn't surprise me doesn't mean it doesn't piss me off."

  "Doesn't it?"

  Myra gave me the look she had that I still couldn't read—I didn't know if she was pretending to be annoyed with me or actually was. "It means we're probably going to trial on this one," she said.

  "That's good," I said. "For me, I mean."

  "Not if you like sleeping, it's not," Myra replied. "We've got to start ramping up our investigation with an eye to whether we can actually win this."

  "I'm ready when you are."

  "You seem like you put some Kahlúa in your coffee this morning."

  "I'm in a good mood is all," I said. "Don't worry, I'm sure it won't last."

  "How was your party on Saturday?"

  I hadn't expected Myra to bring it up; other than on the drive back from Sing Sing, we'd never talked about our lives outside of work. "It was good," I said. "You know, how the other half lives."

  In truth, it'd been more than good. Melanie and I had ended up spending a couple of hours at a bar in Dumbo, then stumbled into a taxi together and gone back to my place. I hadn't been with a woman since Beth had died over a year ago, and I hadn't let myself acknowledge the extent to which I'd missed sex until the prospect of having it had suddenly reappeared in my life.

  I thought I'd acquitted myself rather well. While my lack of recent practice probably hadn't done my technique any favors, it had again imbued me with the raw enthusiasm of my high school years, something that Melanie appeared to appreciate. We'd made a late night of it, not falling asleep until after four a.m., then made love again upon awakening before going for a leisurely brunch at Melt.

  I knew strategically that I should probably wait a few days to call her, but I decided to call as soon as I got back from the meeting at the DA's office, establish my bona fides as not playing games. This was every bit as strategic a decision as not calling would be, but dating in New York was as much a matter of tactics as was practicing law.

  As soon as Melanie came on the phone I knew that something was wrong. She sounded guarded, tense. I told myself she was probably just busy, distracted by some memo she was in the middle of writing. After a couple of minutes of desultory small talk I decided I should just bring the conversation to a close.

  "Anyway," I said, "just wanted to say hi. I thought maybe we could get a drink or something later in the week."

  The ensuing silence said it all. I closed my eyes, waiting for her to speak. I knew what was coming before it came.

  "Listen, Joel," Melanie finally said, "I was talking to Ted this morning, and he told me."

  "He told you what?" I couldn't resist saying.

  "You know," Melanie said. "About the thing with the girl here, and how you got fired and all that."

  "I didn't get fired," I protested weakly. This was literally true, although it wasn't true in any other way.

  "Whatever," Melanie said. "You know what I'm talking about."

  "I'm just saying I quit. I wrote a resignation letter and everything."

  "I mean Jesus, Joel," Melanie said. "You're like some kind of junkie?"

  "I'm not a junkie," I said. "I was never a junkie."

  "You told me you left the firm to go be a public defender. I feel a little misled."

  "I didn't say anything to you that wasn't true," I said.

  "I don't think . . . I mean, I just started working here—it would obviously be incredibly awkward."

  "I thought you didn't care about that sort of thing," I said miserably. I didn't really know why I was putting up a fight; it was just brute instinct and pride—I clearly wasn't going to win.

  "When did I ever say that?" Melanie asked.

  15

  NO SOONER had I hung up with Melanie than Myra came knocking on my door, saying she'd just gotten off the phone with Midwood Sports after confirming that Malik Taylor was working that day. We left immediately, Myra driving us out. I didn't feel much like talking and spent the drive staring out the window, brooding about Melanie's rejection. We parked on Bedford, on the outskirts of Brooklyn College, then walked back onto Flatbush's commercial strip.

  Myra led the way into the store, which was overly bright with fluorescent light, Jay-Z blaring. The teenage girl behind the register regarded us warily as we approached the counter.

  "You need help finding something?" she asked.

  "Someone, actually. We're looking for Malik Taylor."

  "He's in the back," the girl said, picking up the phone and dialing a four-digit number. I was surprised that she didn't ask us who we were or what we wanted first. "Yo, Malik? Some folks out front be looking for you." The girl paused, listening, and then glanced back up at us. "They ain't say. They dressed all serious and shit, though. You forget to pay your taxes?"

  After some more back-and-forth the girl hung up and told us that Malik would be out in a minute. I followed Myra to a spot away from the register, near a selection of running shoes, where nobody seemed to be around.

  It was less than a minute later that a young black man came out from a rear door and headed over to the counter. The girl pointed in our direction and Malik turned, hesitating when he didn't recognize us. He was compact, stocky, his heavy face accentuated by a beard. Perhaps the beard was to make him look older; it didn't otherwise seem to fit. After a moment he headed over to us.

  "What's up?" Malik asked.

  "We need to have a conversation," Myra said.

  "About what?" Malik asked nervously, looking away from her and toward me.

  "We need
to talk about Devin Wallace."

  Just hearing Devin's name made Malik wince. "Yo, I'm working here."

  "Fine," Myra said. "We can talk out on the street."

  Now Malik wouldn't look at us. "What's this about anyway, yo? It don't got nothin' to do with me."

  "So you want to talk here instead, do you?" Myra said, raising her voice loud enough that a couple of customers glanced over. "Fine with me."

  "Awright, awright. I can't just walk on out. I'll meet y'all outside in five minutes' time."

  "You're not going to go out some back door on us, are you, Malik?" Myra said.

  "Yo, what I say? Five minutes."

  "Go do what you gotta do," Myra said.

  BACK ON the street, I asked Myra why she was so confident Malik would really come out to talk to us.

  Myra shrugged, taking a deep drag on her freshly lit cigarette. "I'm not," she said, exhaling smoke as she spoke. "Tell you the truth, probably the best thing that could happen to us is he sneaks out the back, runs like hell, and is never seen again."

  "So that we can make him out as a suspect?"

  "Fuckin' A."

  I nodded, turning it over in my mind. While she was never exactly a shrinking violet, I'd never seen Myra as aggressive as she'd just been with Malik. I'd thought for a second that she was actually a little out of control, but I realized that wasn't it at all, that she was deliberately trying to scare or provoke him. I was enjoying watching Myra work on the street.

  "Who do you think he thinks we are?"

  "I assume cops."

  "We don't look much like cops."

  "If he asks, I'll tell; if he doesn't, I won't."

  It took almost ten minutes, but Malik did come out. After five minutes had passed I'd asked if we should go back in, but Myra had just shrugged without looking at me. It was hot to be outside in a suit, the sun glaring down at us. If either the heat or Malik's delay bothered Myra she didn't show it.

  When Malik did arrive Myra gave him a big grin. "Here we are," she said, putting her hand on Malik's back and walking him down Flatbush to the next corner, turning onto the quieter side street. I trailed behind them, nobody talking.