A Case of Redemption

by Adam Mitzner

  She pulled a red accordion folder out of her briefcase. Within it she had arranged the key documents, each separated by a manila file folder. She handed L.D. the one with the tab marked “Juvie Records.”

  “Any idea who this is?” I asked.

  L.D. studied the picture. After a few seconds of reflection he said, “Beats the hell out of me. Ain’t me, though.”

  “I take it that Calvin Merriwether has no priors?”

  “Always made honor roll, man,” L.D. said with a smile.

  “And you really have no idea who this other Nelson Patterson is?” Nina asked.

  “Already told you. Never heard a him.”

  I knew from Nina’s body language, the way her arms were folded across her chest, that she wasn’t buying it. “This is an awfully big coincidence,” she said. “Out of nowhere, the police just happen to pull the rap sheet of some guy named Nelson Patterson who was involved in a shooting just like the one Matt Brooks made up, at around the same general time frame, and this guy was about the same age as L.D. would have been then. And the real Nelson Patterson, this guy in the mug shot, he’s never come forward and said that he’s the guy who was shot and left for legally dead? I mean, c’mon.”

  “It’s not that far-fetched,” I said. “I bet you that somebody in Brooks’s organization, or maybe even him personally, knew of this Nelson Patterson’s story, and that’s why they offered it up to L.D. Maybe they paid the real Nelson Patterson off, and that’s why he’s never come forward. Or maybe they knew he was dead. You know, there was this character in a Paul Newman movie called The Hustler named Minnesota Fats, who was this pool hustler. Totally fiction. But then this real-life guy, who was a real good pool player, and happened to be overweight, started calling himself Minnesota Fats, and soon enough, people just assumed that he was the guy the movie was based on. He made millions because people thought he was that character. I don’t even think the guy was from Minnesota.”

  She nodded, the nonverbal equivalent of “I hear you.”

  “But,” I continued, “no matter what the explanation, we’re still left with something of an ethical dilemma here, L.D. Do we tell Lisa Kaplan that she’s got the wrong Nelson Patterson? Do we tell her that your name isn’t Nelson Patterson?”

  “No,” he said vehemently. “No fucking way.”

  “Did you legally change your name?” I asked, and then rattled off a few more questions before giving him the opportunity to answer the first one. “What’s your driver’s license say? Social Security card? What name do you file your taxes under?”

  “Whoa,” he said with a laugh. “Brooks handled all that shit for me. Maybe I signed some forms, but I don’t know anything about that stuff. I got no license and I never made any money, so there was never no taxes needed to be filed.”

  “I don’t think we have to do anything about the name,” Nina said. “Isn’t it on them if they call him the wrong name?”

  She was right, but only to a point. “Maybe in the first instance,” I said, “but it’s definitely going to be an issue if L.D. testifies. The first thing they say is ‘Please state your name for the record.’ What name is he going to give? And if he says Nelson Patterson, isn’t that a lie, and won’t we be guilty of suborning perjury?”

  “It’s the name I go by, man,” L.D. said. “It fuckin’ is who I am. And after all this shit is over, Imma go back to being Legally Dead. There ain’t no life for me as Calvin Merriwether. The truth is, I rather be in here as Legally Dead than out there as Calvin Merriwether.”

  I looked over at Nina to see if she had anything further she wanted to add. Her expression registered that she was as concerned as me. She looked like she was smelling something bad, which in a way she was.

  Recognizing that we weren’t going anywhere on this, I said, “Among the other evidence the prosecution provided us with were a few pubic hairs in Roxanne’s bed. There was no DNA material on the hairs, so they couldn’t do the analysis you see on TV where they definitively determine whose hair it is, but they’re from a Caucasian, which rules you out.”

  “But it could very well be Roxanne’s hair,” Nina quickly added.

  “We’ve hired an expert,” I began to explain, “a guy named Marty Popofsky. He’s fresh out of the medical examiner’s office and he’ll do some analysis of the hair. We’re hoping he’ll give us an opinion as to whether the pubic hairs really belonged to Roxanne.”

  L.D. looked like he was somewhere else for the moment. Try as I might, I had no idea what was running through his head. Did he prefer that the alleged love of his life be cheating on him if it helped prove he was innocent of murder? Did he already know about her infidelity, and was that why he’d killed her? Or was he hoping that it all wasn’t true, and that she had been faithful to him up to the end?

  “What if they’re not hers?” he asked in a weak voice. “Can you find out whose they are?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If we had someone’s pubic hair to compare it to, we might be able to get an opinion out of our expert about the likelihood of a match. You have any idea who?”

  “Nah,” he said flatly. “I’d be the last fucking dude to know.”

  “We’re going to do our best to find out who this other guy might be,” I said. “But you need to know going in that it’s a risky proposition for us. There’s definitely an upside to it. If there was someone else Roxanne was romantically involved with, we can point to that person as another suspect. And because we’d be the ones finding this other guy, and not the prosecution, we’ll be able to score some points there, too.”

  “But,” Nina chimed in, “it’ll help the prosecution, too, because it brings a jealousy angle into it that they don’t have right now. It basically gives them motive on a silver platter.”

  “How can that be if I didn’t know there was another guy?”

  I was tempted to laugh, although I knew he was being sincere. Why defendants think that because they say it, everyone believes it’s true, I’ll never know.

  “L.D., no matter what you say, the prosecution will claim that you did know. It’ll be your word against theirs.”

  “I don’t know shit about some other guy,” L.D. said.

  “I hear you, L.D.,” I said. “I do.”

  I turned to Nina, who offered a subtle shrug. The pubic hair subject exhausted, it was time to get to the most serious issue.

  “Okay, let’s move on. So . . . we also met with Marcus Jackson,” I said without emotion, and then waited a beat to see if L.D. would provide some indication that he knew what we’d been told. He didn’t so much as flinch, however.

  “He told us that you confessed to killing Roxanne,” Nina said in a similarly emotionless tone.

  Legally Dead’s response was a hearty laugh. It couldn’t have been more misplaced.

  “Do you find this funny?” I asked.

  “If you believe him, then yeah, I find that pretty fuckin’ hilarious. I’ve already told you guys, I didn’t kill her. So that pretty much means I didn’t confess, don’t it?”

  “With all respect, L.D., you also told us that your name was Nelson Patterson, and that wasn’t true. So we’re kind of in a gray area about how much to believe what you tell us.”

  “That’s not the same fucking thing and you know it,” he said with a flash of anger. “I wanted you guys because I thought you believed in me. If you don’t, then fuck you both.”

  “L.D . . . . I think I need to give you what is a pretty standard speech in the criminal defense business. It goes something like this: as your counsel, we have an ethical duty to represent you zealously without regard to whether you’re innocent or guilty—”

  He held out his hand like a traffic cop, telling me to stop.

  In a calmer voice, he said, “I know what you’re going to say. I do. But I need you to hear me. I didn’t kill Roxanne.” I started to say something, but he interrupted me again. “Please, let me finish.” I nodded that the floor remained his. “I know you’re gonna
give me that lawyer bullshit that you don’t care if I’m guilty because you got a job to do. But what I’m sayin’ is that I want you to care. I’m innocent and I need you to believe me. If I can’t get you two to believe in me, some jury sure won’t.”

  “Any idea why Marcus Jackson would lie to us?” Nina said this sharply, almost too much so, given L.D.’s heartfelt denial.

  “No” was all he said.

  “How’d you find Marcus Jackson, anyway?” I asked.

  “Brooks got him for me. Like day one. I told him, I don’t need no lawyer, but he said the boyfriend was always prime suspect, and with ‘A-Rod’ . . . well, I could see how it was gonna look, right?”

  I took a deep measure of L.D. For a reason I couldn’t quite comprehend, I believed him. The “A-Rod” song, the whole Calvin Merriwether thing, even Jackson telling us that he’d confessed, didn’t change my view. I honestly believed that he was innocent of this crime.

  Then again, I’d truly believed in Darrius Macy’s innocence, and so my radar on this sort of thing was hardly what one would call foolproof.

  19

  At four o’clock Christmas Day, I was with Nina in her brother’s living room along with Rich’s wife, Deb, who had been Sarah’s best friend, drinking a seltzer. Rich had offered me a glass of the same twenty-year-old Johnnie Walker Blue I’d had at their Christmas party a little more than a week before, but I declined. In part, that was because I didn’t want to give Nina an excuse to renege on her promise of a later scotch, but also because I couldn’t deny the benefits of my new sobriety. I hadn’t had a drink since agreeing to take on L.D., and I could feel my mind and body beginning to respond.

  Rich was going on and on about some deal he’d been working on, and from what I could glean from drifting in and out of his story, the client was a manufacturer of automotive parts acquiring over a hundred fast-food restaurant franchises in the Midwest, with the idea being that there would be a business synergy through drive-in services. Or something like that.

  He must have noticed we were all glazing over a bit because he said, “I think it’s time for someone else to tell a boring work story. Nina? Dan?”

  “I don’t know,” Nina said with obvious sarcasm, “how could we possibly follow your story about the burgers and carburetors clause with our boring, front-page-of-every-newspaper-in-the-country murder trial?”

  “Just make it short and it might not be too painful,” Rich said, and then he laughed.

  Nina caught my eye, as if to ask which one of us would accommodate Rich’s request, but before either of us said anything, cries of “Mommy, Mommy!” were heard, followed by Mia running into the living room. She was wearing a red velvet dress, with a white bow holding her soft curls off her face.

  Just the sight of Mia made my heart lurch. I instinctively reached for my glass, only to realize it was filled with seltzer. God, I wish I’d said yes to that scotch.

  “I’m hungry!” Mia said, with the urgency only a second grader can muster. “When are we going to eat?!”

  “As soon as your grandparents get here, sweetie,” Rich answered.

  “When will that be?!” she demanded.

  “Very soon,” Deb assured her. “Mia, say hello to your aunt Nina. And do you remember Mommy and Daddy’s friend Dan?”

  Mia looked at me with inquisitive eyes. “Hi, Mia,” I said, an octave higher than my normal voice. “You look so pretty. Is that a new Christmas dress?”

  She nodded. “You’re Alexa’s daddy, right?”

  I hesitated, not sure what tense to use. “Yes, I am.”

  “I miss Alexa.”

  “Me, too,” I said, trying as best I could not to allow myself to tear up, at least not until Mia couldn’t witness it.

  “I’m sorry she died.”

  “Thank you for saying that. I am, too, Mia.”

  “Mommy says that I’m not going to die. Because Alexa died in an accident, and accidents don’t happen to girls who are friends with a girl who died in an accident. So if one friend dies, the other one never dies until she’s really old, like a grandma.”

  Rich’s ears were turning red with embarrassment, and he started to say something to shoo Mia away, but I talked over him. “That’s right, Mia. You’re not going to die like Alexa. You’re going to get to grow up, and so you’re very lucky.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t want to die.”

  Mia turned and ran back into her room. Deb quickly followed, presumably to read her the riot act.

  “Oh, God. I’m so sorry,” Rich said.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, aware that I’d finally lost the battle to be tear-free. “She’s really beautiful. Enjoy her.”

  I was about to tell Rich I’d reconsidered about the scotch, when Nina leaned over and whispered in my ear, “That was lovely, you know.” Then her fingers brushed across the top of my hand, as if to emphasize the point.

  Just the touch of her hand caused my nerves to settle, and a sense of calm slowly returned. When I looked back to her, she flashed that smile of hers, and for the first time in a long time, I actually felt a semblance of peace.

  • • •

  Dinner was nothing if not a true feast. Acorn squash soup, endive salad, rack of lamb, and more side dishes than I’d ever seen. Mia dictated the choice of topics, so they ranged from playing what she called the animal game—which was Twenty Questions, except instead of the answer being an animal, vegetable, or mineral, it was always an animal—to the type of pet we all wished we could be.

  When everyone was sated, Deb directed us to adjourn to the living room while the table was being reset for dessert. Rich’s father tried to get Rich to turn on football without being overt in the request (“Do you think the Auburn game is over?”) as Mia tugged on his arm to play Polly Pockets.

  “Not now, sweetie,” Rich said.

  “How about if Nina and I play Polly with you?” I said.

  “What are pully sockets?” Nina whispered to me.

  I smiled at her. The gap between parents and nonparents was wide indeed.

  “Not pully sockets. Polly Pockets. They’re these tiny dolls with rubber clothing. If we’re lucky, she’ll have Littlest Pet Shop, too.”

  I reached down to pull Nina up from the sofa. As it always had before, her hand felt warm in mine.

  Mia’s room reminded me of Alexa’s, an unruly mixture of high-end furniture, an overindulgence of toys and stuffed animals, and the chaos of a child’s imagination. Her bed had cat sheets that I remembered from the Pottery Barn Kids catalogue, and most of the artwork on the walls was Mia’s. In the corner was the requisite bookshelf stuffed with the board books that Rich and Deb had read to her before she could even open her eyes, while open on the desk was the third installment of the Harry Potter series, The Prisoner of Azkaban, which was bookmarked somewhere toward the middle.

  “Are you reading this, Mia?” I asked, pointing to the Potter book.

  “Yeah. Sometimes Mommy and Daddy read it with me. If I don’t know some of the words.”

  I felt myself become choked up. Alexa had never gotten that far in her reading. She was able to read, but not a long book like Harry Potter. I couldn’t help but think about how much I wanted to read to her again, and then told myself to stop it. There was just no point in thinking like that.

  “So, do the Pollys have names?” I asked, plopping down on the floor next to Mia, in front of a large wooden dollhouse that appeared to be their home.

  “I call them all Polly. This one is Red Polly because she has red hair,” Mia explained while thrusting a red-haired figure in front of my face. “And this one is Brown Polly because her skin is brown. You can be her.”

  Mia created an elaborate backstory in which Red Polly was the mother of Brown Polly, and they were also apparently singers and had lots of pets. Nina’s role was to make the animal noises for their “pets,” although Mia was careful to explain to Nina that the pets were not actually Polly Pockets but came from Calico Critters
.

  “Mommy, Mommy,” I said in a high-pitched voice intended to sound like a child’s. “I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be scared, my little baby,” Mia said, maneuvering her doll closer to the one in my hand. “Your mommy is here and I’ll protect you.”

  It continued on like that for about ten minutes. As we each played our parts, I could see Nina looking at me with a mixture of awe and surprise. It was as if I’d revealed fluency in some obscure foreign language, like Mandarin Chinese, but in this case it was little-girlese.

  “I’m sorry to break up all your fun,” Rich said, “but dessert is on the table.”

  Dessert was chocolate fondue and homemade cookies. Everything was delicious, but as it wound down, I whispered to Nina, “I think I’m about ready for that scotch.”

  “Right behind you,” she murmured.

  “Thank you so much,” Nina said, rising from the table. “Everything was just perfect, but I’m afraid Dan and I need to go.”

  “So soon?” Deb said.

  “Yeah, I’m really sorry, but we have a meeting first thing tomorrow morning with an important witness, and we need to finish prepping.” A lie, which she delivered with an impressive degree of conviction. “So, duty calls.”

  “I can vouch for my partner on this one,” I said, although even to my ear, I sounded less sincere than Nina had. “We really do have to be going.”

  After our escape, Nina and I walked south down Madison Avenue for a few blocks before I suggested we get a drink at the Mark Hotel. I knew from experience that hotel bars are always open, even on Christmas, and I was not disappointed.

  We took up residence in a corner booth. It was one of those tables with banquette seating, and so the place settings were catty-corner, directing us to sit next to each other.

  The room was barely lit. It was so dark, in fact, that I had to tilt the drink menu against the candle on the table to ascertain the different varieties of scotch.

  When the waiter came over, Nina said, “Two glasses of your best scotch.”

  He looked at me to confirm, and I was glad to have spent the time reading the menu. “Thank you, but we’ll just go with the Macallan twelve.”