by JF Freedman
I’m ready to leave—I have a ton of other cases to deal with today. “Think about that offer,” I throw at him as my parting shot. “You could do a lot worse.”
“I’ll think about it,” he says by rote. “You gonna dress up nice?”
“What?”
“What you gonna be wearing in the courtroom,” he says patiently, as if he has to explain the basic facts of life to me. “Nice skirt and blouse. Stockings, quality shoes. Not this bag-lady shit you see some of them lesbian female lawyers wearing.” He tosses his head as if he has lice, which he might. I’ll remind him to take a shower and shampoo the night before we go to court. Whether his keepers will let him is anyone’s guess, it’s always chaotic in this place, and screwing prisoners over is considered great sport.
“I might not have no money,” he says defensively, “but I want the jury to see that my lawyer has class. So they know I have class,” he declares, sitting up straight in his plastic chair.
If we weren’t separated by the thick Plexiglas wall, I’d slap this moron upside his head. The last thing a lawyer wants, especially a woman lawyer, is to present a less-than-dignified image to a jury.
“I won’t embarrass you,” I tell him coolly. I jam his file into my bag—this session is over, mercifully. “Think about that offer,” I warn him again. “Pride goeth before a fall.”
Reggie stares at me, slack-jawed and uncomprehending, as I stand up. The deputy who escorted him down here immediately hoists him out of his chair and begins shuffling him back to his cell before I’ve taken two steps toward the door on my side. I don’t look back, but I can feel Reggie staring at me as I retreat.
The rest of my morning is spent jumping from one courtroom, lobby, and cubicle to another: conferences with prosecutors and judges, setting future trial dates, pretrial hearings with other clients (unlike Reggie, they can read the writing on the wall and will plead out), general court-calendar stuff. There are dozens of courthouses scattered all over Los Angeles County. I work in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, on Temple Street in downtown L.A., which was named after the first woman admitted to the bar in California and a founder of the modern public defender system, back in the nineteenth century; she is a role model for all those women, like me, who have followed in her footsteps. It is the central office, and the largest. The courtrooms, officially known as departments, are spread out among several floors of the twenty-one-story building, which is also where our main offices—those of the public defenders as well as the main offices of the district attorneys—are located. Just as the central jail houses more prisoners than any other in the country, this building has one of the largest collections of courthouses. We’re Los Angeles—everything we do is supersized.
The Los Angeles County Public Defender’s office is the oldest and largest public defender’s office in the world. We have over 1,000 employees: 650 lawyers, 80 investigators, 50 paralegals, 20 psychiatric social workers, a handful of Spanish interpreters, other support staff. We also hire additional interpreters, as needed, for other foreign-language defendants. Last year, sixty-eight different languages were spoken in one or another of the Los Angeles County courtrooms.
We handle an incredible number of cases. In a normal year we’ll defend about 350,000 misdemeanors and 90,000 felonies. It makes for a heavy caseload—the average is twelve to fifteen new cases a month, with twenty to thirty cases outstanding at any given time. All of our work is criminal law; we don’t do civil cases. It’s a lot of work, and we’re always hopping.
It’s twelve-thirty; I break for lunch. I usually eat lunch at my desk. It’s the only free time I have during the day. Most of my colleagues can’t wait to flee the building at lunchtime, and occasionally I’ll join a group, but I need my solitary time. I function perfectly well in most social situations, but at heart I’m most comfortable when I’m by myself. My jagged and ultimately violent relationship with my mother reinforced that part of my personality, but I’m convinced I was hardwired from birth to be a loner. I understand that nurture has an important place in one’s personal history, but I’m from the school that believes nature trumps everything.
Today I’m feasting on chicken salad with real mayonnaise, macaroni salad, and buffalo mozzarella with fresh tomatoes swimming in olive oil. I prepare my meals at night before I go to bed, pack the food in individual plastic containers, and store them in the community refrigerator down the hall from my office. There are a lot of groceries stacked up here on my desk, and I don’t stint on the portions. If I have a break in the afternoon, I’ll often grab a milkshake from the coffee bar on the eighth floor. People who see me put all this food away marvel at how I can eat so much and not gain weight.
It’s a piece of cake, I tell them: when you’re running fifty miles a week you burn more calories than your body can possibly consume. Upon hearing my explanation, they nod sagely, then change the subject—everyone wants to lose weight, but that’s too rigorous for most folks.
“Damn, that smells good,” Joe Blevins exclaims as his head pops into my doorway. Joe is my boss, one of the senior deputies in the office in charge of assigning cases. “How much garlic do you use in that dressing?” he asks, sniffing the air.
The reek he’s inhaling comes from the olive oil on the tomatoes and cheese. I douse it liberally with garlic, for health reasons and to keep the werewolves and vampires and malodorous clients at bay. It’s an old family tradition, which I initiated last year.
“Forty cloves,” I tell him.
He laughs. “Seriously?” People aren’t always sure if I’m joking.
“Actually, three,” I confess. “But I do have a pea soup recipe that calls for forty cloves. From a restaurant in Guerneville, up in Sonoma.”
“With their crappy weather, they need forty cloves,” he remarks. Joe’s a dyed-in-the-wool Southern Californian, for whom everything north of Santa Barbara is enemy territory. You should hear him curse out Barry Bonds when Vin Scully is broadcasting a Giants-Dodgers game on the radio. The entire building shakes.
He sniffs again. “Does all that garlic help you run faster?” He knows I’m in serious training.
“No,” I answer, “but it keeps my pursuers at a safe distance.”
“You don’t have any courtroom appearances the rest of the day, I take it.”
“Actually, I do have one, but there will be nary a scent on my breath,” I promise him. I always gargle after eating garlicky food, as a courtesy to my coworkers. I wish the smokers, some of whom have really foul halitosis, would reciprocate, but few of them do.
“Now you have two,” Joe says, handing me a thin manila folder. “An arraignment, this afternoon.” He explains: “One of Lorrie Patuni’s kids got sick at school and she had to pick him up. Since you have a window, you can pinch-hit for her, if you don’t mind.”
Lorrie is one of the younger lawyers in the department; she handles arraignments. Arraignment presentation, the first appearance a defendant makes before a judge after being arrested, is one of the ways we break in new lawyers. The only time an experienced member of the staff does one is in unexpected circumstances like this. After defendants plead out, almost always not guilty, they are assigned the lawyer who will be with them for the remainder of their case. Selection is random—new case files, comprising a police report, rap sheet (if there is one), and the charges, show up in your mailbox, or they’ll be left on your desk, sometimes half a dozen at once. New assignments can be aggravating, because everyone feels like they’re overworked, and everyone is always complaining about the heavy caseload. The average number of active files for a senior PD is about thirty cases. The exception is murder cases. No one has more than two or three murder cases pending, because if one does go to trial, that’s all you work on; others on the staff have to pick up the rest of your work, so the system tries not to overburden any particular member. Sometimes, however, the distribution isn’t always equitable.
“No problem,” I tell him about pinch-hitting for
Lorrie, who’s a sweetheart when she isn’t stressed by juggling being a mother to three young children and a full-time professional. We’re a collegial group—we try to help out each other. When you work for the government, your salary is set by number of years in service and department rank, not by how many cases you handle or win. It makes for a less ego-driven environment than the private sector, which is one reason I’m still here. “Where is it?”
“Department 83, Judge Rosen,” Joe tells me.
Judge Rosen’s first name is Judith. You call her Judge Judy at your peril. Other than that, she’s okay—competent, fair, and not too impatient.
“What’s the charge?” I ask, tossing the folder onto my cluttered desktop. I’ll look at it later; I don’t mix lunch with work.
“Grand theft. Sony hi-def televisions. Plasma, top of the line. It’s in the arrest report, which I trust you’ll read before your initial meet and greet.”
“I could use a new TV,” I banter back. Joe’s an easy boss to work for; he isn’t full of himself. “Think there’s any spares?”
“You mean after the boys in blue took their piece off the top?” he replies. “Chat up the arresting officers; maybe you can cut a deal. Eyes wide shut.”
“I’m on the wrong side of the aisle, Chief. As you always remind us.”
“All cats are gray in the dark,” he tells me with no wit at all. Meaning, we’re all part of the same system, even though we like to pretend we aren’t. Joe has been a public defender for decades. His cynicism is deeply ingrained.
“It’s bright daylight out,” I reply, cocking a thumb at my window, where the half-drawn Venetian blinds are dissecting the piercing sunlight into long shadowy strips across the room. You can count on me to take the other side of almost any argument and mount a stout defense.
“For you, it is.” Joe raps a knuckle on the thin file. “For this chump and the rest of his tribe, it’s always lights out.”
I’m ahead of schedule, so I duck into the eighth-floor coffee bar to get a milkshake. I normally go with chocolate, but today I decide to be daring and try strawberry. The strawberry is sweeter, and I want an extra dose of sugar to knock down the garlic residue that’s still percolating in my stomach. I need to cut my salad dressing recipe back to two cloves.
“Did you hear the news?” a man asks from behind me.
I turn. It’s my nocturnal friend, LAPD detective Luis Cordova. Last night, when I saw him on his lonely vigil, he was wearing jeans, a black pocket T-shirt, scruffy New Balance running shoes, the same brand as mine, which is why I noticed them. Today, on the job, he’s dressed in a charcoal-gray blazer, white dress shirt fresh out of the dry cleaner’s box, the collar and cuffs stiff with starch, dark slacks with a sharp crease. His cordovan dress shoes are spit-shined. I’d lay odds he was in the military when he was younger; a lot of Latino men go that route out of high school, then segue into police work. Probably the marines, he gives off that “the few, the proud,” vibe. To me, it’s macho bullshit. But I’m a woman, and Anglo. He and I breathe the same air, but we live in different worlds. This building, and what it represents, is our lone common denominator.
“What news?” I ask him, not tuned in. I take a sip of my milkshake. Yummy! It’s wonderful what you can get away with when you’re running eight to ten miles a day, six days a week.
“We found another victim.”
A cold tremor runs down my back. I put the milkshake cup on a nearby table so I won’t spill any of it, because my hands are shaking. “Same MO as the others?”
He gives me a tight nod. “Close enough.”
“Where?” I ask. I’m both repulsed and wired, the way you feel when you’re driving on the freeway and pass a bad car wreck. You don’t want to look, but you can’t help yourself. Human tragedy can be both ugly and compelling. “When?”
“A mile from where I saw you last night.” His voice is a deep, rumbling baritone. Big and strong, like the rest of him. “Off Gretna Green. The medical examiners don’t know when yet. Last night, sometime. The body was only found a few hours ago.”
“Who knows?”
“Almost no one, yet. I’m telling you because …”
Because I was there. Inwardly, I shudder.
“We’re keeping it under wraps until we can notify the family,” he continues. “We haven’t been able to get in touch with her husband yet; he’s on the road and we don’t want to tell him over the phone, especially if he’s driving. After that, there will be a news conference.” He grunts. “White women murdered by a serial killer. This is going to be a disaster.”
Less than a mile from where I was running through the streets, alone. Jesus.
A good cop can read minds, and bend them. Luis Cordova is a very good cop. “It could have been you.”
My reply is firm. “But it wasn’t.”
I’m not a victim. I haven’t been a victim for more than twenty years, and I have vowed never to be one again. Besides, this man doesn’t know me. I’m one of thousands of faces who have passed in front of him over the years; ditto him for me. Until last night, we had never had a real conversation. He’s a cop, I’m a defense lawyer. We work the opposite sides of the street.
“There’s one thing you won’t have to worry about for the rest of the month,” Cordova tells me.
I don’t want to rise to the bait, but I can’t help myself. “What’s that?”
“Assuming it’s the same psychotic bastard who killed all three, and that the pattern stays the same, he has his victim for this month. You’re safe for the next thirty days.” He gives me a sad-eyed look, as if we’re friends and he really cares.
“After that, you had better run in the daytime,” he cautions me. “Or carry protection when you go out at night.”
THREE
THE NEW PRISONER’S NAME is Roberto Salazar. Like over 90 percent of people arrested each year in Los Angeles, he can’t afford a private lawyer, so we were assigned to defend him.
Salazar is in his mid-thirties, handsome in an androgynous way, like Mick Jagger back in the day, or Johnny Depp. His eyes are fawnlike, Bambi as a young stag. He looks as if he could be part Anglo—his eyes are hazel-green, not brown, and his nose and lips are northern European thin. This is not uncommon in Los Angeles, where the different races have been intermingling for generations, going back to the Spanish land-grant families.
Salazar is dressed in a forest-green, short-sleeved khaki shirt, matching pants with shiny knees, well-scuffed work boots. It’s the uniform you see on thousands of gardeners all over the Southland. His ingratiating smile doesn’t convince either of us—this man is scared shitless.
I’m interviewing him in the small room off Judge Rosen’s courtroom that’s set up for client-lawyer meetings. In fifteen minutes, Salazar goes up before the judge. A formal copy of the complaint will be entered, he’ll plead not guilty, and a date will be set for his bail hearing. It’s all boilerplate; we’ll be in and out of court in less than five minutes.
“Breaking and entering, grand theft, transporting stolen property,” I read, flipping through the pages in his folder, which I did get to skim, barely. “Those are serious charges and, I’m sorry to say, it looks as if they caught you red-handed, Mr. Salazar. These televisions match the serial numbers of a load that was stolen out of a Best Buy shipping container down in San Pedro, the day before yesterday.” San Pedro is the hub of the Port of Los Angeles, the largest shipping depot in the United States. The incidence of robbery is astronomical, in the billions of dollars.
I put the folder aside. “You don’t happen to have any paperwork for these televisions, do you?” I ask Salazar.
He stares at the floor. “No.” His voice is soft, barely audible. It doesn’t matter that I can hardly hear him; I knew the answer already.
He’s shaking his head from side to side as I’m reciting the damning bill of particulars. “I didn’t steal them,” he declares. His English is almost without accent, just a touch of Latino inflection. We won�
��t need to converse through an interpreter, which is always an impediment. “I swear it,” he tells me. “Get me a Bible. I’ll swear on it.”
In a situation like this, where the evidence against the accused is strong, you assume he is lying, but you have to hear him out. “So what happened?” I ask. “They just jumped into your truck all by themselves?”
He stares at me balefully. He isn’t in the mood for humor. “No, they did not jump into my truck. I loaded them in. Me and Armando.” He looks at me again with a combination of fear, anger, and, yes, contempt. For how I’m disrespecting him.
I take a mental step back. You’re patronizing him, I chastise myself. It’s easy to slide into cynicism—witness Joe, my boss, and lots of other lawyers in this building, probably the majority. Most of them are good men and women who don’t think of themselves as cynics at all, but realists. I’m not that tough skinned yet. Will I ever be? Maybe, if I stay the course and put in my thirty years, like old-man Sam, my office mate. Right now, my uncynical inner voice is reminding me that I am this man’s advocate, his only voice in a system that has been designed to crush him. You have to give him your best effort, even if the outcome, like most, is preordained.
“Who is Armando?” I ask. I pick up the file and leaf through the few pages. “I don’t see any Armando in here. Was he arrested along with you?”
He shakes his head. “He wasn’t there.”
Of course not. “Okay. Tell me what happened. Try not to leave anything out.” I glance at my watch. It’s a TAG Heuer, an expensive athlete’s timepiece. My boyfriend gave it to me last Christmas, when he realized I was serious about running a marathon. It’s too heavy to actually run with, but it’s a lovely piece of wrist candy. “You have ten minutes before we see the judge,” I notify my client, “so make it crisp.”
My first surprise: Salazar has never been arrested, not even for stealing a pack of bubble gum from the neighborhood candy store as a kid. That’s shocking, given where he comes from: the area east of the L.A. River, where Boyle Heights meets East Los Angeles, one of the toughest neighborhoods in L.A. County; his ethnicity, Latino; and the basic life for minority men on the gang-infested streets of our wonderful city. I didn’t see anything incriminating in his file, but I’d only had time to give it a cursory look-over.