MD02 - Incriminating Evidence

by Sheldon Siegel

  “He became a gun control advocate when he figured out he could get his name in the papers.”

  “After his predecessor, I would have thought you’d be happy about having a law-and-order guy.” The man who occupied the DA’s office immediately before Skipper had a background in social work. The cops thought he was soft.

  Roosevelt points a finger at me and says, “Skipper isn’t a prosecutor—he’s a politician. He won’t take on the close cases. He won’t back up the cops. He’s been running for governor since the day he was elected DA.” He scowls as he adds, “I don’t have much time. The room service waiter found them. The victim was handcuffed to the bedposts, face covered with tape. Skipper was asleep in the chair by the TV”

  “It doesn’t mean he killed him.”

  He cocks his head. Sometimes I get a little ahead of myself. He’s doing me a favor. I shut up. “They found a roll of duct tape in his room,” he says. “It looks like it’s a match for the tape used to cover the guy’s face.”

  “It could have been planted.”

  He gives me the “oh, come on” look.

  “Have they been able to identify the victim?” I ask.

  He looks at the picture of Willie Mays on the wall above our table. “Not yet.” He’s been a cop for four decades. He’s seen everything. Even so, it’s clear this case bothers him. “He was a kid,” he says. “Maybe nineteen, twenty years old. We’re guessing he was a prostitute. If you believe Skipper, the victim beamed himself in and handcuffed and suffocated himself. It doesn’t add up.”

  I ask him if they found anything else.

  He says the FETs are still collecting evidence. “We’re testing for prints. We’ve placed him at the scene. He had no credible explanation, so we went ahead and made the arrest.”

  I give him a skeptical look.

  “Look,” he says, “you find a guy in a hotel room with a dead hooker. He has no explanation, plausible or otherwise. He claims somebody must have brought the body into his room in the middle of the night. He says he didn’t see anything. What would you have done?”

  “I don’t know.” I would have made the arrest.

  There are over twelve thousand felony arrests in San Francisco each year. Formal charges are filed in about half of those cases. Fewer than one percent of the arrests ever go to trial. The DA has forty-eight hours to file charges or turn him loose.

  “Thanks for your help, Roosevelt,” I say. He promises to call me if he hears anything.

  When I get back to the office, Rosie’s niece Rolanda, our secretary, office manager, computer technician and law clerk, hands me a stack of phone messages. She just started her second year of law school at Hastings. I can’t wait for her to graduate so we can make her managing partner, a role she is already performing for the most part. I’m not much for administrative details, although Rosie gets me to do my time sheets every day under penalty of death. Rolanda is a petite woman in her late twenties. Her father is Rosie’s older brother, Tony. “You looked good on the news,” she says.

  “Thanks. Could you page Pete? We’re going to need him.” My younger brother used to be a cop. He got into trouble a few years ago when he and some of his cohorts got a little heavy-handed when they broke up a gang fight. It cost him his badge. He’s still bitter about it. Now he’s a PI. I use him as the lead investigator on many of my cases. He’s going through a tough time. He and his wife split up about a year ago. Their divorce was just finalized. He’s bitter about that, too. I feel for him. I’ve survived an acrimonious divorce. It doesn’t help that I introduced him to his ex-wife.

  Rolanda hands me the phone. “He’s holding,” she says.

  “Mick,” Pete says, “you need some help with Skipper’s case?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He says he has to take a few more pictures of a man who is going to pay a lot of alimony to his soon-to-be ex-wife. If you live in San Francisco and you decide to cheat on your spouse, you would be well advised to keep a close eye out for Pete.

  I walk into Rosie’s office. She’s on the phone. “No,” she says, “he hasn’t come back from the Hall of Justice.” A small white lie. “I’ll have him call you.” She hangs up and looks at me. “Turner Stanford. He says he’s issuing a blanket denial of any wrongdoing by Skipper. He expects you to do the same.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. Any other messages?”

  “Ann called. She expects you to get the charges dropped by the close of business tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I say with a grin.

  “I knew you would. Did you find out anything from Roosevelt?”

  “Not much.” I pause and say, “I may need a little help with the case. Are you busy for the next six or eight months?”

  “I’ll check my calendar,” she tells me.

  4

  FERNANDEZ AND DALEY

  “Fernandez and Daley specializes in criminal defense in federal and state courts. The firm offers personalized service at competitive rates. For immediate assistance twenty-four hours a day, dial 1-800-CRIM-LAW.”

  —SAN FRANCISCO YELLOW PAGES.

  When I worked at Simpson and Gates, we had a conference room that was about a hundred feet long and housed a polished rosewood table and eighty chairs. At Fernandez and Daley, our “conference room” consists of two card tables pushed together in the middle of the exercise mats in the old martial arts studio. Rosie and I are sitting there on folding chairs at five o’clock the same day. Bruce Lee glares at me from a faded poster.

  Our third lawyer, Carolyn O’Malley, walks in through the doorway from the old women’s locker room. “You two look like something the cat brought in,” she chortles. I’ve known her since we were kids. As with most aspects of my life, we have some baggage. We dated for a couple of years when we were in college. We almost got married. Almost is the operative word. We split up when Carolyn decided to go to law school in L.A. More precisely, Carolyn broke up with me. Although I concluded long ago that our relationship was little more than a youthful infatuation, she was, in fact, the first woman who ever broke my heart. When Carolyn came to work for us, Rosie expressed some concerns that I still had feelings for her. I reassured her that I had no intention of trying to reheat that soufflé. Carolyn has been divorced twice and is the single mother of a rebellious teenage son. Still, I do wonder sometimes how things would have worked out if we had stayed together.

  “We have a new case,” Rosie begins.

  Carolyn’s green eyes light up. She’s a small woman, five one and barely a hundred pounds, but she has unlimited energy. “We aren’t really going to represent Skipper, are we?” she asks.

  “Looks like it,” I say.

  She smiles. “This is too good. Maybe we can get him a plea bargain for the death penalty.”

  Rosie chuckles. “It looks like we may need to refresh your memory on the role of the criminal defense attorney,” she says.

  “I’m a pretty quick study,” Carolyn replies. She turns to me and says, “You seem to have stumbled into another big case.”

  “Marketing,” I deadpan. “I told you those coupons in the Sunday paper would pay off big someday.”

  I look around the table: my ex-wife, my ex-girlfriend and me. We aren’t a law firm—we’re a support group. Somebody will probably name a 12-step program after us.

  “Let’s get started,” I say. I describe my conversations with Skipper and Roosevelt. “The arraignment is at ten o’clock on Thursday.”

  “What do we know about the victim?” Rosie asks. You always start with the victim.

  “We don’t even know his name. Just a kid. May have been a prostitute.”

  Rosie is perplexed. “Does this seem a little odd to you?” she asks. “Let’s assume for a minute the victim was, in fact, a male prostitute. What was he doing in Skipper’s room?”

  Dead silence.

  After a moment, Rosie looks at me and says, “Let me try again. I know this group i
s about as PC as they come, so forgive me for saying this bluntly. Is Skipper gay?”

  I expect everybody to shout in unison the line from the old Seinfeld episode, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”

  I look to Bruce Lee for guidance. He remains silent. “As far as I know,” I say, “Skipper is straight. It’s possible that there may be sides to his personality that we don’t know anything about.”

  Carolyn snaps, “I’m only familiar with the side that’s a pig.”

  At least we’re starting on an even keel. I steal a glance at Rosie, who says, “Just so we avoid any surprises, it might be a good idea to confirm that he does, in fact, like women.”

  “Oh, he definitely likes women,” Carolyn says. “At least when I was sleeping with him, he seemed to be enjoying himself.”

  Oh Christ.

  I clear my throat. “When was this?”

  “Last year,” Carolyn says. She has a knack for dating men who are unsuited for her. I give her a sideways look and she adds, “He asked me, okay? I said yes. For the record, he was a perfect gentleman.”

  Well, as perfect as a gentleman can be when he’s cheating on his wife.

  Rosie whispers something to Carolyn, who wiggles her fingers and says, “Not bad.” Then she reconsiders and adds, “Pretty good.” I surmise that they are discussing our client’s sexual prowess and perhaps technique.

  “Are you still seeing him?” I ask.

  “No. It happened just twice.” Carolyn acknowledges it was a mistake but then adds, “We’re adults, Mike.”

  “I recognize that.”

  “You don’t expect me to apologize, do you?”

  “Nope. It’s none of my business.” I don’t want to get into a discussion of whether her relationship with Skipper had anything to do with the fact that he fired her. Carolyn had told us it was the result of office politics. I’m beginning to understand what she meant.

  “Damn right it’s none of your business,” she says. “Before we get too far down the garden path here, I’d like to raise a fundamental issue. With all the baggage, maybe it isn’t such a good idea that we accept this case.” She then adds, “You have some history with him, too.”

  This is true. It doesn’t seem like a particularly opportune time to revisit Skipper’s role in getting my petard hoisted from Simpson and Gates.

  Rosie takes all of this in without saying a word. Then she folds her hands and addresses Carolyn. “In fairness, Mike expressed some of the same reservations that you did. I can also tell you Skipper has agreed to give us a one-hundred-thousand-dollar retainer that would look very nice on our bottom line.”

  Carolyn glances at me.

  “Look,” Rosie continues, “this case will be good for the reputation of our firm. But I’m not going to take it on if you don’t want to do it. Everybody in this room has some history with Skipper.”

  “Not you, too,” I say.

  She gives me the “get real” expression and casts a judgmental eye at Carolyn. “I don’t sleep with married men. Besides, he’s not my type. And, if you must know, he asked me only once. I turned him down.”

  Is there anybody he hasn’t propositioned?

  Rosie looks at each of us in turn. “I’m going to let you decide,” she says. “If you say yes, we’ll take the case. Otherwise, we won’t. Let me know.” She heads toward the door.

  Carolyn and I sit in silence. Her jaw tightens. I couldn’t read her mind years ago. There’s no reason to believe I’ll be able to do so now.

  I say, “We don’t have to take this on.”

  Her chin juts forward. “Is it true you didn’t want to represent him?”

  “I’m not crazy about it, but I still think we should do it.”

  “I have a problem with it.”

  “Don’t you think he’s entitled to representation?” I ask.

  “This isn’t a legal issue. This is personal. He treated me like dirt. Then he fired me.”

  “You could have filed a claim.”

  “Get a clue. We might have settled five years later.” She points her finger at me. “I agree that he’s entitled to a lawyer, but it doesn’t have to be me. Why should I do it?”

  “Maybe because it’s the right thing to do?”

  Rosie isn’t the only one in our office who invokes guilt from time to time.

  Carolyn throws up her hands. “You and Rosie decide. It’s your firm. If you want to do it, I’ll help you. I’ll do the research. I’ll do whatever you want. But I won’t talk to the bastard.”

  “If you’re uncomfortable because of your past relationship with him, we don’t have to do it.”

  “The fact that I slept with him has nothing to do with this,” she says. “It was two meaningless dates.”

  I’m not entirely convinced, but I don’t respond.

  “My problem,” she continues, “is that he has no respect for anybody. I wasn’t the only person he treated badly.”

  I ask her what she wants to do.

  She pauses to consider. “Look,” she says, “we’ve represented assholes before, right?”

  “All the time.” I’m pleased by her attempts to be conciliatory. More important, if I can’t persuade Carolyn to help us with this case, Rosie will kill me.

  “Are you guys getting tight on money again?”

  “Yep.”

  “I won’t have to spend any time with Skipper, will I?”

  “Nope. And I’ll make him promise he won’t hit on you again until after the trial is over.”

  I get just the hint of a grin. “All right. I’m in.”

  I can’t begin to imagine how much more successful we might be if we didn’t have to do an hour of group therapy every time we wanted to bring in a new client.

  “Was I too hard on Carolyn?” Rosie asks later that night. We’re watching the news with the sound off in her bedroom in her rented bungalow across the street from the Twin Cities Little League Field in Larkspur, a modest suburb just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. I live two blocks away in an apartment behind the fire station. We’ll never be able to afford a house without a subsidy from the California state lottery. On the other hand, the neighborhood is safe and the public schools are good. Parenthood imposes certain constraints upon your domestic choices. Grace is asleep.

  “What would you do if I said yes?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she says with a smile. “I was just asking.”

  I lean over and peck her on the cheek. About a year ago, we agreed that all of our partners’ meetings would be held in her bed. As a result, we tend to dispose of firm issues quickly and then we get down to serious business. I took a fairly substantial bath last year when it was time to decide my compensation. In the vernacular of our daughter, you might say I got “pantsed.” It was worth it. We impose a moratorium on the recreational aspects of our partners’ meetings in the all-too-infrequent circumstances where either of us is involved in a serious relationship with someone else. At our stage in life, a serious relationship is defined as one that lasts longer than two weeks. We have not been required to call a cease-fire for about a year, since Rosie broke up with her last boyfriend. While we’re both willing to admit that the current state of our domestic situation is somewhat less than optimal, everyone gets lonely. Rosie says that sleeping with your ex-husband beats sleeping alone, but not by much.

  “That’s why you’re such an effective managing partner,” I say. “You got us to do exactly what you wanted, and you let us think we were making the decision ourselves.”

  “It’s all in my new book,” she says. “Management by Guilt.”

  “It’s going to be a best-seller.”

  She brushes her lips against mine. Her warm breath smells like Merlot. I have been kissed by fewer women than your average forty-seven-year-old. In my limited experience, Rosie is still the best. “You seem to have found a hot case,” she says. “How do you do it?”

  “Networking. It’s all going into my new book on rain-maki
ng for lawyers. I think I’ll call it Networking—A Way of Life.”

  Her eyes gleam. “It’s going to be a best-seller, too. Mind if I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “When you were a priest, people used to come to you to make confessions, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you used to do marriage counseling, too, right?”

  I see where this is going. “Occasionally.”

  “What made you think you were the least bit qualified to dispense advice to married people? You weren’t even allowed to do it.”

  I grin. “I trust this is a rhetorical question.”

  “Indeed.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Now let me ask you one that isn’t rhetorical.”

  “Okay.”

  “Pretend you’re still a priest. A divorced couple comes to you and says they’re still sleeping together. They still love each other, but they can’t figure out a way to live together. What would you tell them?”

  I try to dodge the question. “I would tell them that their situation isn’t ideal.”

  “I could tell them that much. Would you tell them to stop?”

  “Not necessarily. It depends on the circumstances.”

  “That’s still an evasion.”

  “Yes it is. I don’t give that kind of advice anymore. I got out of that line of work.”

  She won’t let it go. “What if they ask you for a real answer?”

  I pause to consider and say, “I would tell them they should take as much time as they need to work out their feelings for each other. I certainly would say they shouldn’t rule out the possibility of a reconciliation.”

  “Now, that’s a pretty good answer.”

  “I was a pretty good priest.” I was also a very sad priest. I loved it at first. I thought I was helping people and making a difference. Then I became frustrated by church politics. I spent more time by myself. I became lonely. The loneliness led to sadness, the sadness led to depression. I was a wreck. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t provide any guidance or comfort to anyone. I was just going through the motions. Finally, I got some counseling. Luckily, a forward-looking colleague convinced me it was okay to get out before the depression consumed me.