Compelling Evidence

by Steve Martini

  There have been a good number of disappointments since my hasty departure from Potter, Skarpellos. But my return to the general practice of criminal law is, I am glad to say, not among them. While for three years I denied it roundly to those who were sufficiently intimate to make the suggestion, I had in fact grown bored with the stuff of which corporate business law is made, even the white-collar-crime variety to which the firm turned my talents. Though my solo practice may have limited horizons, given the world and its vices, mere is no shortage of clients. The secret, as always, is to ferret out those with the ability to pay, and to get it, as they say, “up front.”

  The Capitol County courthouse isn’t old, but in recent years institutional changes have transformed it into a dour place. The broad marble pavilion leading from the main entrance on Ninth Street has been narrowed by a series of portable stanchions connected by neoprene-covered ropes, all designed to funnel the public through a maze of metal detectors and conveyor-fed security checks. The blond oak panels forming the facade of the public counters has taken on the worn look of years of indiscriminate public use.

  A long line has formed under the scarred wooden sign reading MUNICIPAL COURT—TRAFFIC DIVISION. The queue undulates like some writhing snake as agitated motorists fume and fidget at the inefficiency of it all. Behind the counter the clerks move with a telegraphed indifference, like furless beasts awakening from a deep hibernation. In all, the place has the charm of a bus depot at rush hour.

  I press past a briefcase-toting lawyer scurrying from the building. He is pursued by his casually clad client, a young black man sporting a gold necklace and gaudy pinkie ring. The youth is trying desperately to buttonhole his counsel before the attorney slips from the building and into the abyss of unretumed telephone calls.

  To the casual eye seeing her beside me on the hard wooden bench outside department 13, she is stunning. Her raven hair flows like cascades of billowing dark water around the soft features of her face. Large round eyes sparkle with an azure incandescence. She wears a silk dress that clings to the contours of a body that would shame a cover girl. Tasteful gold earrings and a matching bracelet provide a touch of elegance. And always the saucy pursed lips of an enigmatic smile, as if she is privy to the ultimate inside joke on the human condition—a leel of self-reliance surprising in one who has attained the mere age of twenty-six years.

  Even in her language, here in the confidence of her lawyer, in her choice of words and diction, the carefully erected veil of sophistication is preserved—the mock accent, not quite the queen’s English, but close. It’s an affectation to attract an upper-crust clientele.

  “And what can we expect today?” she asks. You might think we’re on some social outing, as if I’m part of the tea-and-toast set about to introduce her to Lady Di.

  Susan Hawley is a call girl—not a mere hooker, a streetwalker, the kind of woman who looks like death on a soda cracker, with needle tracks on her arms and puncture wounds between each toe. She is better read than I, at least when it comes to the local papers, part of her stockin-trade, the ability to talk intelligently and nod knowingly as prominent names are dropped during upper-crust parties. Susan Hawley, I suspect, is a woman much in demand in the rarefied zone of political nightlife in this city. She is the ultimate ornament to be hung from the arm of important political figures or captains of industry during quiet dinner meetings. In her commercial dealings, hundred-dollar bills appear in considerable quantity in her purse the morning after, like fishes and loaves in the basket after the Sermon on the Mount.

  She’s waiting for an answer to her question.

  “I go in and talk to the judge. Find out what the DA has to offer. Whether they’re willing to deal.”

  I will keep Hawley outside the courtroom as long as possible, away from the prying eyes and off-color jokes of the lawyers who are lined up waiting to have their cases heard by the Coconut in pretrial. It is a kind of Turkish bazaar where prosecutors and defense attorneys convene before the local pasha, in this case a judge of the superior court, to haggle over the price and value of justice—to settle their cases short of a trial, if it is possible.

  “I may be in there awhile. I think it’ll be better if you wait out here in the corridor. I’ll call you if we need to talk.”

  Her look suddenly turns hard, businesslike.

  “I’m not going down on this thing. You do understand? Tell them to dismiss it.” Her words are clipped and cool, unemotional. Her voice carries the resolve of a bank president. It’s an absurd request. Still, she’s serious.

  I laugh, not mocking her, but in amusement. Hawley has been netted by an undercover officer posing as a wealthy out-of-town business mogul; he used a wire to tape-record their negotiations. The case contains not even the remotest hint of entrapment in the sparse dialogue captured on the vice detail’s tape. In an unmistakable voice, she quotes a $1,000 fee for an array of professional services unheralded in the Kama Sutra. She was arrested two minutes later.

  “Susan. I’ve told you before, I’m an attorney not a magician. There are no guarantees or quick fixes in this business.”

  “Talk to the judge,” she says. “He will understand. I’m not entering a plea.” She turns away from me as if it is her final word on the subject.

  “Listen to me.” I muster authority in my tone, a little exercise in client control. “I think we can get the felony charges dropped, if not today, then later before trial. But they’re not going to let you walk. You may as well get that out of your mind right now.”

  It’s the first rule of law practice, never oversell a client. Rising expectations have a habit of feeding upon themselves.

  She snaps her head back toward me. “No way. I mean it. I’m not taking the fall on this thing. Talk to the judge.” She bites these last words off. For the first time the polite veneer and polish are gone. This is how it would be, I sense, if a client were to demand a refund from this lady of business. She composes herself. “Tell him”—she clears her throat and looks me straight in the eye—“tell him mat you want it dismissed, that I want it dismissed. Do you understand? It’s very simple.” Her eyes are filled with fire. These aren’t words of idle expectation. Still, I have no legal basis for such a demand.

  I assure her that no deal can be cut without her final approval. We haggle for several minutes and finally she accepts this. Though she warns me that she will go to trial on anything less man an outright dismissal. We will see. I rise and begin to move toward the courtroom.

  A scruffy character with a three-day growth of beard, wearing frayed blue jeans and a tanktop, shuffles down the corridor behind his lawyer. The man’s attorney pauses to check the calendar pinned on the bulletin board outside the courtroom. His client studies Hawley with a sleepy, lustful gaze as he scratches the head of a blue dragon emblazoned by tattoo on his upper arm. If it were physically possible, I would attest to the fact that I can see waves of rancorous odor rising from his body. His finger slides from his arm to reach the latest itch through a hole in the rear of his jeans.

  As for Hawley, she is oblivious to the man’s wandering eyes. I wonder if she is merely desensitized to years of male leering or if it is simply that the favors of Susan Hawley are without question beyond the price of this scurvy soul.

  Armando Acosta, judge of the superior court, studies the open file on his desk. The premature bald circle on the back of his head shines through threads of fine straight black hair like the tonsure of some medieval monk. He looks up, peering over half-frame spectacles. For the first time since taking this case, I’m becoming convinced that I’ll have to go to trial to defend Susan Hawley. I’m confronted not only by the intransigence of my client but by the presence of Jimmy Lama in the judge’s chambers. He has joined Al Gibbs, the young deputy DA assigned to the case.

  Lama is a thirty-year veteran of the police force, though his rank as a sergeant doesn’t indicate this. He represents everything objectionable in the overbearing, badge-heavy cop. He’s been succes
sfully defended three times, though only Providence knows how, on charges of excessive force and brutality. The last time his collar earned forty-three stitches performing acrobatics through a plate-glass display window. According to Lama, the fifty-six-year-old wino dove through the glass, unaided, in an effort to escape.

  Acosta looks up, impatience written in his eyes. “Please, gentlemen, don’t all speak at once.” The insistent tone in Acosta’s voice is scrupulously refined by years of practiced judicial arrogance.

  I talk before Gibbs can open his mouth. “It’s a case of overcharging, Your Honor. The DA’s trying to bootstrap this thing into a felony on some thin theory of pimping and pandering.”

  Under the law, a prostitute offering her services on the street is chargeable with a misdemeanor, but her pimp can be sentenced to state prison on felony charges. They are trying to nail Hawley on a half-baked assumption that she not only sold herself, but pimped for another woman.

  Gibbs sits fidgeting in his chair, waiting politely for his turn, as if he’s at high tea. I know him; he has a good mind, but no fire in the belly.

  Acosta’s impatience grows and finally he stares openly at Gibbs. “Did you come here for a purpose, counsel, or are we assembled for your entertainment?”

  Gibbs begins to stutter. “Y-Your Honor. The lady was running a bordello out of her apartment. She was caught soliciting payment for sexual intercourse on behalf of another hooker,” he says.

  In fact, this is a gross exaggeration, which I protest to Acosta. Hawley shared an apartment with another woman. She paid the rent and the telephone bills while her co-tenant bought the groceries and paid for the remainder of the utilities. The fact that the phone was in Hawley’s name and was used for incoming calls to hire dates for both women forms the basis for charges that she was pimping for the other woman. I put on the facts like a suit of clothes and verbally pound the table. It’s an explanation that seems to fit well, to the discerning eye of Armando Acosta. He has never been one much for the finer intricacies of the law.

  Acosta’s now shuffling papers on his desk. He speaks in a staccato with a faint Mexican accent, not the intonations of street Spanish, but elegant and precise, as if the next phrase from his lips will hawk the rich qualities of “Corinthian leather.” It is an articulation that, like the judicial bearing, has been learned, for despite his Hispanic surname Acosta does not speak the language. The affected inflections of voice are just another concession to the politics of demography in a state with a rapidly rising Latino population. I have heard the poverty lawyers—the young Hispanics on their steeds tilting at the bastions of the establishment, the ones working for La Raza and the Mexican-American Defense Fund. In their circle, Acosta is known as the “Castilian Coconut,” brown and fuzzy on the outside, but white as driven snow at the core. He worships regularly at the altar of affirmative action, but anyone even vaguely familiar with the jurist knows that he has more in common with the Anglos on the board of directors of the Del Prado Country Club with whom he serves than with the brown grounds-keepers who rake its sand traps and mow its manicured greens.

  But for the moment Acosta is a good judge, of sound discretion. He sides with me.

  He stares at the DA. “Is this true, counsel? Are you trying to leverage this case to a felony, for purposes of plea bargaining? Because if that’s what’s going on here, this court will not countenance it.”

  “No, Your Honor.” Gibbs’s denial is hollow.

  There’s a momentary vacuum as Acosta waits for a further reply. Finally the void is filled, but not by Gibbs. It’s a gravelly voice to the far side of the prosecutor. “Not exactly, Your Honor.” Lama has waded in. “We’re just askin’ for her cooperation,” he says.

  This is a little dance that we’ve been doing now for nearly two months—Lama, Gibbs, and I. It seems that my client is part of a larger group—ladies of the night who franchise their services to lobbyists and others who use the women to influence votes and other public actions. Lama wants their client list. Harry has dubbed mat list “the boink book.” The police have been conducting a white-collar-crime investigation, and the list of clients has become pivotal.

  “She wants our consideration,” says Lama, “me lady’s gotta lay down and roll over.”

  “Excuse me?” says Acosta.

  “Feed us some of the bigger fish,” says Lama.

  “Oh,” says the judge.

  “What the officer’s trying to say,” says Gibbs, “is that the defendant is a key witness. She knows the identities of significant public officials who have partaken of her services in return for votes and other official acts.”

  “So we’re talking bribery?” says Acosta.

  “In a big way.” Lama’s nodding now as if the judge has finally caught on.

  “What would you have me do, officer, package the lady for felony trial just so that you can squeeze her a little, based on this—your bald allegations?” Acosta has a look of wonderment on his face.

  “In a word, yes.” It is Lama at his deadpan best.

  “Your Honor, all we want is her cooperation.” Gibbs tries to put a face on it, tries to silence Lama before he can do more damage.

  “We are prepared to allow her to enter a plea to a single misdemeanor charge of prostitution, in return for her testimony.”

  “I don’t like this,” I say. “If the state has evidence of my client’s complicity in other crimes, I have a right to see it, Your Honor.”

  “You don’t have a right to anything, counsel,” Lama shoots from the lip. “This information is confidential. It’s got nothing to do with the prosecution of your client.”

  “Well, excuse me,” I say, “but I’d like something besides your word for that.”

  Verbally we have stepped around Acosta. I’m now toe to toe with Lama, my words directed down the line past Gibbs, who sits fidgeting in his chair, flustered by the eroding decorum.

  I ask Lama what he’s doing here. I note that he did not make the arrest on my client. “I didn’t know that the police department was acting as a mouthpiece for the DA these days.”

  Gibbs is stung by the remark. He looks at me, an injured expression. Lama begins to rise from his chair.

  “Enough, gentlemen—enough.” Acosta passes his hand over the desk like a prophet trying to calm the waters.

  “My client’s not copping a plea, and she’s certainly not testifying until I know more.”

  Here the Coconut finally takes note of my presence. “Of course, of course, Mr. Madriani is correct.” He smiles. I have given him a way to bring this thing to a head. “If you have a deal, you must, of course, offer it through counsel.”

  “All we want are some names,” says Gibbs. “A little cooperation.”

  “The court can’t give you that, only my client can.” Gibbs has opened the door a crack, and my foot is in it.

  “We can subpoena her.” Lama wallows about like a water buffalo in the mud.

  “And she can take the Fifth,” I say. “You can’t compel her to testify if that testimony will incriminate her—and the last time I looked, it took two to commit an act of prostitution—or bribery.”

  Acosta is growing restive, distracted by something else, some other, deeper concern. I can read it in his eyes, which have wandered from us.

  “Perhaps I should bring my client in here, and we can see if she’s willing to testify, and if so under what conditions.”

  Like an ammonia capsule, my suggestion delivers the Coconut from his comatose state. “No, no, we do not have time for that. I have a crowded docket today.” His hands flail the air, palms out in protest. “Besides, I have learned from long experience that it is best to separate clients and their emotions from the details of plea bargaining and settlement negotiations.”

  It is as I suspected: Susan Hawley has been a busy woman.

  I play me final trump card. “Well, I think it’s only fair to explain that my client has given me precise instructions not to accept any offer short of an o
utright dismissal of all charges. I believe that in return for such an offer she might be persuaded to testify.”

  “Bullshit.” Lama’s on his feet.

  “Maybe. But unless she gets it, you don’t have a witness.”

  “Listen …” He begins to move around Gibbs.

  “Officer, sit down.” Acosta’s in no mood for a brawl. His baritone voice echoes off the walls. “I think we’re going to have to continue this matter on another date.”

  Acosta tells Gibbs to start thinking about immunity for my client. He says that with the crowded court calendar this is not something he wants to see tried in his court. Lama’s fuming. But the Coconut is tired of humoring him. There’s some haggling over calendar conflicts. We settle on a date three weeks off. It’s the first line of defense in any criminal case—delay. I waive time. At this point the last thing Susan Hawley needs is a speedy trial.

  “Counsel!”—Acosta looks at me—“I don’t think there will be any need for you to bring your client to court when we next convene on this matter. There’s no reason to inflict any unnecessary inconvenience.”

  “Certainly, if the court pleases—and there’s no objection from the prosecution.” I look at Gibbs, whose mouth is about to open.

  “Well, the court pleases,” says Acosta, “and there is no objection from the prosecution.” Gibbs’s jaw slacks, his lines usurped by the court. As we rise to leave, Armando Acosta leans back in his chair and arches his spine, an expression of relief etched on his face. I suspect it isn’t the first time Susan Hawley has had this judge by the balls, though the last was unquestionably in more private and provocative surroundings. It would appear that her expectations of dismissal are not idle thoughts after all.

  CHAPTER

  6

  IN the days following Ben’s death, my mind has been playing tag with thoughts of recrimination, of my role in his misery with Talia. The funeral is now past, part of yesterday’s news. Alone in my office I study a copy of the Trib, which lies on my desk next to a tall glass of bourbon. I look at the three-column photo above the fold.