by Paul Levine
I take a lot of cases other lawyers turn down. Either the money is short or the odds of winning are long. That’s earned me the name “Last Chance Lassiter.”
I pick up cases here and there. Sometimes I just stand by the elevator on the fourth floor of the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building. Someone who’s headed for an arraignment naked—without a lawyer—will spot me. I’m a big guy in a suit with a briefcase, and I don’t look lost. Maybe they like my broken nose or my decent haircut, or maybe they’re just scared.
“You a lawyer, dude?”
“Best one you can afford . . . dude.”
Money is always a problem. My first question to a potential customer—yeah, I sometimes call them that—is not “Did you do it?” It’s “How much money do you have?” And, yes, I take credit cards. But not a mortgage on a customer’s house. Not because I’d feel lousy about foreclosing. Because I once got burned when the IRS leapfrogged the mortgage I was holding with a lien for unpaid taxes, leaving my client without a house and me without a fee.
Sometimes former customers refer their pals. This puzzles me, because those ex-customers are nearly always in prison. I guess they don’t blame me for losing. After all, they were guilty, and they watched me work my ass off on their behalf.
That’s a fact of the business. Most of my customers are guilty as hell. I only win when the state can’t prove its case or otherwise screws the pooch. I’m a damn good cross-examiner, and I’ve won cases by catching cops in lies. That doesn’t mean my customer wasn’t technically guilty. But if I can eviscerate the state’s witnesses and then work my magic in closing argument, I can get my customer off.
How else can I win? Sometimes the cops will conduct an unconstitutional search, or the prosecutors will fail to turn over exculpatory evidence, or the trial judge will err. On the occasions I win, I receive little gratitude. No Christmas cards or baskets of fruit. Maybe a grumbling complaint about the size of my fee.
The customer sees the stage play, not the work behind it. Writing the script, building the sets, painting the props, and learning the lines. The ingrate couldn’t care less. I’ll never hear from the victorious client again . . . until he’s arrested for something else.
Mostly I lose. Or plead my guy guilty. It’s a dirty little secret, but that’s the deal with most criminal defense lawyers, even the big names who pontificate on the tube. If anyone knew our real winning percentage, they’d cop a quick plea or flee the jurisdiction.
We all want to be heroes to our paying customers. John D. MacDonald, my favorite Florida writer—yeah, I read a bit—once began a book: “There are no hundred percent heroes.” If you ask my customers, they’d probably give me 51 percent. MacDonald also wrote, “If the cards are stacked against you, reshuffle the deck.” Well, I’m tired of holding a pair of deuces or a busted flush. Tired of the grind. Tired of losing. Which is why on this sweaty July day with a sky as gray as an angry ocean, I needed an innocent client.
I was juggling these thoughts while driving north on Dixie Highway toward I-95 on my way to the jail. Victoria Lord had called this morning while I was slicing mangoes for my nephew Kip’s smoothie. Victoria’s law partner and live-in lover, Steve Solomon, had managed to get himself arrested in the shooting death of some Russian club owner on South Beach.
“I don’t like Solomon,” I told her on the phone.
I know. I know. My marketing skills could use work.
“Do you like most of your clients?” she asked.
“Practically none.”
“But you bust your hump and break down doors to win.”
“I hate losing more than I hate the clients.”
“That’s why I’m hiring you. Plus you have street smarts and won’t fall for any of Steve’s bullshit.”
“Has he agreed to this?”
“Not yet.”
“Tell him I’ve punched out clients who lied to me.”
“You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to smack him.”
In front of me, a landscaper’s overloaded Ford pickup was dropping palm fronds and dead ferns all over the highway. I goosed the gas pedal and pulled my ancient Eldorado convertible into the passing lane. “Victoria, do you ever get tired of representing guilty people?”
“Steve swears he’s innocent.”
“And the law presumes he is. But I’m not talking about him. Does it ever get you down? That nearly everyone is guilty.”
She was silent on the phone a moment. Maybe wondering if she’d called the wrong guy. Then she said, “It comes with the territory, Jake. We force the state to meet its burden of proof. If they do it, we haven’t really lost. The system has won.”
“So you really believe the stuff they teach in law school?”
“If I didn’t, how could I go on?”
Exactly, I thought. She hadn’t practiced long enough to lose her religion, the belief in the holiness of the justice system. I didn’t want to be a prick, so I didn’t say, “Give it ten more years, Victoria; then get back to me.”
Instead, I said, “See you and your presumably innocent partner in an hour.”
I knew them both a bit. They lived together on Kumquat, and I’m on Poinciana in Coconut Grove, so we’re practically neighbors. I’d recently seen Solomon tooling around the neighborhood in a jazzy new Corvette with a paint job they call “torch red.” Not my style. I’m also too big to fit comfortably in the driver’s seat. His personalized license plate was “I-OBJECT,” a pretty good summation of his temperament.
Solomon was a herky-jerky guy, always in motion, always gabbing. About six feet tall with dark hair that usually needed trimming. He weighed about as much as one of my buttocks, but he had that wiry strength. I’d seen him jogging down Old Cutler Road, and he kept up an impressive pace. In court, he badgered witnesses, pestered lawyers, and interrupted judges. His files were always a mess, and, basically, he was a pain in the ass. Showy and over the top by my standards, and I’m not exactly the shy and retiring type.
One day, in the Justice Building cafeteria, I joined Solomon at a luncheon table with several other lawyers. He was spouting off about “Solomon’s Laws,” rules he makes up that flout the system.
“If the facts don’t fit the law, bend the facts,” Solomon said, stuffing his face with eggplant Parmesan.
Everybody laughed. Except me. When I was a young lawyer, I represented an old musician named Cadillac Johnson whose song had been stolen by a hot young hip-hop artist. The copyright claim was murky and documents had been destroyed, but I knew in my gut that my guy had written the song several decades earlier.
“It’s a tough case, maybe impossible,” Cadillac told me.
“If your cause is just, no case is impossible,” I said.
Ever since, I’ve tried to live by those words. Problem is, just causes are hard to come by. And, oh yeah, I won a pile of cash for Cadillac’s retirement without bending the facts, though I did punch a guy out.
The first time I saw Victoria Lord, she was in court, and what I noticed was her posture. A tall, slender blonde who stood very straight and spoke with quiet confidence and authority. Tailored business suits and patrician good looks. Her table was neatly arranged with color-coded files that I’m sure were alphabetized and cross-indexed. Highly organized. A real pro at a young age. Maybe overly earnest for my taste. I could be wrong, but she seemed to be one of those anti-gluten, pro-yoga, organic wine bar, Generation-Y echo boomers. A Gwyneth Paltrow type who would name her first daughter Persimmon or whatever.
They’re really different, Solomon and Lord, but as people say, opposites attract. For whatever reason—maybe because they each bring different strengths to the courtroom—they’ve become a damn good trial team.
Traffic slowed to a halt between Seventeenth Avenue and the entrance to I-95. A mattress lay in the middle lane. Typical. At least it wasn’t on fire. I was stuck behind a muddy old Chevy that belched oily smoke. The tag was expired, and I’d bet a hundred bucks the driver had neith
er a license nor insurance. I squeezed my oversize Eldo into the left lane, cutting off a young guy in a white Porsche. He banged his horn, and through the rearview, I saw him shoot me the bird.
Aw, screw you, Porsche Boy. And your designer sunglasses, too.
I’m tired of Miami. For a long time, I’ve felt out of place, a brew-and-burger guy in a pâté-and-chardonnay world.
I got a call a few weeks ago from Clarence Washington, an old Dolphins teammate. After retirement, he picked up a master’s degree and then a doctorate in education. And this from a kid who grew up in the projects. I have a lot of respect for Clarence. Now, he’s headmaster at a boy’s prep school in the green hills of Vermont. And to think I knew him when he tossed a beer keg off a seventh-story balcony into a hotel swimming pool. With a Dolphins cheerleader riding that keg all the way down.
Anyway, Clarence said he needed a new football coach. The guy who had the job had retired after like a hundred years. Apparently, there’s very little pressure coaching a bunch of pampered skinny white boys who play against others of their ilk. It doesn’t really matter if you win, as long as the uniforms don’t get too dirty and the parents’ cocktails are chilled. And you get to wear a sweat suit to work with the crest of the school on the chest.
So Vermont was on my mind as I drove to the stinkhole county jail, stuck in traffic, horns blaring, and the thermometer closing in on ninety-six degrees.
Steve Solomon, you may not know it, but you’re the tipping point. If you’re a lying scumbag murderer, I’m hanging up my shingle and heading north.
Green hills. Autumn leaves. Ben & Jerry’s.
Half an hour later, I pulled off the Dolphin Expressway onto Twelfth Avenue and parked my thirty-year-old convertible, canvas top up, in an open lot.
I walked to the jail, a hot rain falling, as it did practically every day in the summer. But as the fat drops pelted me, I could smell the dewy grass of a manicured playing field on a cool September morning.
#
For more information or to purchase, please visit the BUM RAP AMAZON PAGE.
To preview Paul Levine’s other books, please visit his AUTHOR PAGE.
“SOLOMON vs. LORD” SNEAK PREVIEW
Here’s an excerpt of “Solomon vs. Lord,” the Edgar-nominated series featuring squabbling Miami lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord. For more information, or to purchase, please visit the “Solomon vs. Lord” Amazon Page. To preview the author’s other books, please visit the PAUL LEVINE AUTHOR PAGE.
One
CELL MATES
The man in the holding cell loosened his tie, tossed his rumpled suit coat into a corner, and stretched out on the hard plastic bench. The woman in the facing cell slipped out of her glen plaid jacket, folded it carefully across an arm, and began pacing.
“Relax, Vickie. We’re gonna be here a while,” the man said.
“Victoria,” the woman corrected. Her angry footsteps echoed off the bare concrete floor.
“Wild guess. You’ve never been held in contempt before.”
“You treat it like a badge of honor.”
“A lawyer who’s afraid of jail is like a surgeon who’s afraid of blood,” Steve Solomon said.
“From what I hear, you spend more time behind bars than your clients,” Victoria Lord said.
“Hey, thanks. Great tag line for my radio spots. ‘You do the crime, Steve does the time.’”
“You’re the most unethical lawyer I know.”
“You’re new at this. Give it time.”
“Sleazy son-of-a-bitch,” she muttered, turning away.
“I heard that,” he said.
Nice profile, he thought. Attractive in that polished, cool-as-a-daiquiri way. Long legs, small bust, sculpted jaw, an angular, athletic look. Green eyes spiked with gray and a tousled, honey-blond bird’s nest of hair. Ballsy and sexy, too. He’d never heard “sleazy son-of-a-bitch” sound so seductive.
“If you weren’t so arrogant,” he said, “I could teach you a few courtroom tricks.”
“Save your breath for your inflatable doll.”
“Cheap shot. That was a trial exhibit.”
“Really? People have seen the doll in your car. Fully inflated.”
“It rides shotgun so I can use the car-pool lane.”
She walked toward the cell door. Shadows of the bars pin-striped her face. “I know your record, Solomon. I know all about you.”
“If you’ve been stalking me, I’m gonna get a restraining order.”
“You make a mockery of the law.”
“I make up my own. Solomon’s Laws. Rule Number One: ‘When the law doesn’t work, work the law.’”
“They should lock you up.”
“Actually, they already have.”
“You’re a disgrace to the profession.”
“Aw, c’mon. Where’s your heart, Vickie?”
“Victoria! And I don’t have one. I’m a prosecutor.”
“I’ll bet you think Jean Valjean belonged in prison.”
“He stole the bread, didn’t he?”
“You’d burn witches at the stake.”
“Not until they exhausted all their appeals.” She laughed, a sparkle of electricity.
Damn, she’s good at this.
Fending off his mishegoss, trumping his insults with her own. Something else appealed to him, too. No wedding band and no engagement ring. Ms. Victoria Lord, rookie prosecutor, seemed to be unattached as well as argumentative. Maybe twenty-eight. Seven years younger than him.
“If you need any help around the courthouse,” he said, “I’d be willing to mentor you.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
Touché. But she’d said it with a smile. Maybe this wasn’t so much combat as foreplay. Another parry, another thrust, who knows? The more he thought about it, the more confident he became.
She likes me. She really likes me.
***
I hate him.
I really hate him, Victoria decided.
Dammit, she’d been warned about Solomon. He always tested new prosecutors, baited them into losing their cool, lured them into mistrials. And she wasn’t totally “new.” She’d handled arraignments and preliminary hearings for eight months. And hadn’t she won her first two felony trials? Of course, neither one had involved Steve Slash-and-Burn Solomon.
“You gotta know, the contempt citation is all your fault,” he said from the facing cell.
She wouldn’t give him the pleasure of saying, Why?
Or, How?
Or, Go screw yourself.
“You should never call opposing counsel a ‘shyster and a shark’ in open court,” he continued. “Save it for recess.”
“You called me a ‘persecutor.’”
“A slip of the tongue.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Lose the big words. You’ll confuse the jurors. Judges, too.”
Victoria stopped pacing. It was stifling in the cell, and her feet were killing her. She wanted to pry off her ankle-strapped Prada pumps, but if she stood on this disgustingly sticky floor, she’d have to burn her panty hose. The plaid pencil skirt was uncomfortable, a tad too tight. Now she wished she’d taken the time to let it out before coming to court. Especially after catching Solomon, the pig, staring at her ass.
She saw him now, sprawled on the bench, hands behind his head, like a beach bum in a hammock. He had a dark shock of unruly hair, eyes filled with mischief, and a self-satisfied grin, like he’d just pinned a “Kick Me” note on her fanny. He was so damn infuriating.
She couldn’t wait to get back into the courtroom and convict his lowlife client. But just now, she felt exhausted. The adrenaline rush was ebbing, the lack of sleep was fogging her mind. All those hours practicing in front of the mirror.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you will hear the testimony of Customs and Wildlife Officers . . .”
Maybe she was going about this the wrong way. How many times had she had resea
rched the legal issues, prepped her witnesses, rehearsed her opening statement?
“. . . who will testify that the defendant, Amancio Pedrosa, did unlawfully smuggle contraband, to wit, four parakeets, three parrots, two cockatoos . . .”
And a partridge in a pear tree.
Maybe she’d burned herself out. Maybe that’s why she’d cracked today. Had she looked ridiculous pushing a grocery cart overflowing with boxes to the prosecution table? There was Solomon, holding a single yellow pad, and there she was, weighted down with books, research folders, and color-coded index cards bristling with notes.
Even though she despised Solomon, she did envy his brash confidence. The way he glided across the courtroom, skating to the clerk’s table, flashing an easy smile at the jurors. He was lean and wiry and graceful, comfortable in his own skin. When she rose to speak, she felt stiff and mechanical. All those eyes staring at her, judging her. Would she ever have his self-assurance?
An hour earlier, she hadn’t even realized she was being held in contempt. Judge Gridley never used the word. He just formed a T with his hands and drawled, “Time-out, y’all. This ain’t gonna look good on the instant replay.” It was only then that she remembered that the judge was a part-time college football official.
“Mr. Solomon, you oughta know better,” Judge Gridley continued. “Miss Lord, you’re gonna have to learn. When I say that’s enough bickering, that’s by-God enough. No hitting after the whistle in my courtroom. Bailiff, show these two squabblers to our finest accommodations.”
How humiliating. What would she say to her boss? She remembered Ray Pincher’s “two strikes” orientation lecture: “If you’re held in contempt, you’ll feel blue. If it happens again, you’ll be through.”
But she wouldn’t let it happen again. When they got back into the courtroom, she’d . . .
Shit!
Something was stuck on the velvet toe of her pump.
A sheet of toilet paper!
Grimacing, she scraped it off with the bottom of her other shoe. What else could go wrong?