“Who?’
“She won’t tell me yet,” Justin interjected. “I’m working on her. It may take some time, but I’m confident that I will eventually find out.”
“That’s just what I got none of—time. It’s less than six weeks now.” Charlie was rocking faster.
“Look, Charlie, I do have an idea.”
“What?”
“It’s a gamble, but we’ve got no choice.”
The rocking stopped. “What?”
Abe leaned over and whispered through the holes in the glass into Charlie’s ear. “Charlie, you’re gonna have to stop taking your medicine for a while.”
Charlie looked bewildered. “If I stop, I’ll go crazy again. Do you want me to go crazy?”
“Yes, I do,” Abe said somberly. “Try to follow me.”
Charlie listened as Abe tried to explain the idea he had gotten from Haskel’s refusal to take his medicine.
“They can’t execute you under New Jersey law if you’re crazy—if you’re legally insane. And without your medicine, you are legally insane, psychotic. You don’t have to help them kill you. You don’t have to help them keep you sane so that they can execute you. Just stop taking the medicine.”
“They’ll force me to take it.”
“They may try, but we’ll take them to court. Under New Jersey law, they can’t force you to take medicine unless you are dangerous to others or yourself.”
“When I don’t take the medicine I try to kill myself. I bang my head against the wall.”
“They can protect you by putting you in a padded cell. It’s worth a shot. It will certainly buy me time.”
Justin remained silent. He was doubtful, both about the likelihood of succeeding and about the ethical implications of a lawyer advising his client to stop taking his medicine. In the airplane on the way to the prison, Abe had told Justin about a Texas case in which a death row inmate had stopped taking antipsychotic medicine and a judge had postponed his scheduled execution. “If it worked in Texas, it could certainly work in New Jersey.”
“That may be true,” Justin replied. “But what about the ethics of advising a client to stop taking his medicine? He might kill himself.”
“There are different rules on death row. This is about saving life, not covering our asses. We’ve got to take some risks here.”
Charlie was even more frightened now. “You don’t know what it feels like to be crazy. When I stop taking the medicine, I’m really out of control. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just want to die. I don’t want to feel like that.”
“It must be terrible,” Abe agreed. “Sadly, we’ve got no choice. You’ve got to stop taking the pills if you want to stay alive.”
Charlie looked at Abe tearfully. “I think I understand. If I don’t want them to kill me,” he said, pointing to the guard who was standing outside, “then I have to want to kill myself.”
Charlie understood. So did Abe and Justin—to the extent anyone could understand this theater of the absurd. It was a bizarre twist in the macabre dance of death row justice.
Soon enough the interview was over. Before the guards took Charlie away, he gave Abe a thumbs-up sign. “You’re my man. Do right by me, Mr. Ringel.”
“I’ll try, Charlie. I sure to God will try,” Abe said as he looked back at the man he had just condemned to a potentially suicidal insanity.
Chapter Six
Back in the parking lot of the prison, Abe retrieved his portable cellular phone and called the office.
“Am I glad you called, Abe,” Gayle said, her voice crackling through the static. “Rendi is desperate to reach you before you see Joe.”
“Where is she?” Abe asked. Rendi, in addition to being Abe’s on-again-off-again lover, was also a top-notch investigator who was working with them on the Campbell case.
“She’s waiting for you in front of Campbell’s apartment building. Figured she couldn’t miss you that way.”
“What does she have?”
“She doesn’t want me to talk about it on the cellular phone.”
“I thought we bought one of those secure ones—the kind that scramble.”
“We did. But still…”
“That good?”
“Or bad!”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. She’ll explain.”
“What’s up?” Justin asked as Abe pocketed his Motorola flip-top.
“We’re meeting Rendi in New York City.”
Justin could barely squelch a groan. “She couldn’t tell you what it was over the phone?” He hated when Abe included Rendi—a nonlawyer—in their legal strategy, believing that it reflected Abe’s lack of faith in him. However, that wasn’t true in this instance. Abe knew that his always hyper investigator had a feel for the hot buttons in any case. Whatever made her rush to New York was guaranteed to be important. Rendi didn’t usually overreact.
“You know how I feel about Rendi’s instincts, Justin. We’ve been over this before.”
Justin closed his car window and sighed. “I know, I know, she’s an intuitive genius.”
“It’s true. Look, I don’t use her for legal maneuvers. That’s what I count on you for. But when it comes to understanding people, Rendi is the best. The fact is Rendi can walk into a roomful of partying strangers and in seconds figure out who’s having an affair with whom, who hates whom, who’s sucking up to whom, and who’s stabbing whom in the back. That’s intuition. You can’t learn that in law school.”
“Listen, Abe, if we need mental CAT scans, I suggest we call Mass. General.”
Abe pinched Justin’s cheek playfully. “Come on, boychick, smile. We’ve got the hottest case in the country right now, and we can’t lose it. So what have we got to worry about?”
“She just gets to me—”
“That’s Rendi’s stock in trade. That’s what we hire her for.”
Rendi was waiting for them, her jeans and pullover blending perfectly with the merchandise showcased in the window of the Gap store that occupied the ground floor of Campbell’s apartment building. As Abe looked at Rendi from inside the car, he reflected on the woman who had come to mean so much to all of his different lives.
He had first met Rendi ten years ago, and at the time he wouldn’t have been able to guess if she were twenty-eight or forty. Dark-skinned, with a European face, she was a strange and mysterious woman of indeterminate ethnicity, culture, and age. “I have no native language,” she was fond of saying, “because I have no home.” In fact, he knew Rendi spoke eleven languages, each with a slight accent. It wasn’t until much later that Abe would discover she had been born in Algeria, moved to Israel as a child, worked for the Mossad, where she’d acquired her skills as an investigator, and was closer to thirty-five than twenty-eight.
For all his fascination, however, their relationship was a troubled one. Though Hannah had been dead for nine years, Abe still felt a strong sense of guilt about his wife’s death. He and Rendi had engaged in a one-night foray a week or so before Hannah had been killed in the crash. It had tortured Abe, who frequently indulged in the self-lacerating belief that Hannah might have been distracted by her suspicions when she’d driven the car into the tree. The indiscretion had made both Abe and Rendi feel so terrible that it had been several years before they could begin to explore their own feelings for each other. Even now their relationship was rocky, and Abe had not yet been able to commit himself to her.
“Abe, look, a spot. Grab it.”
The reality of parking in Manhattan brought Abe back to the present as he backed the rental car into the metered space between two trucks right in front of Campbell’s building on Broadway between Eighty-sixth and Eighty-seventh Streets.
“Let’s walk down to Zabar’s and grab a bagel,” Abe suggested, grabbing Rendi’s arm.
“Forget eating, Abe, you don’t have time.”
It was so like Rendi to rush headlong into a conversation that Abe had to suppress his smile. Every part
of her lovely frame was infused with nervous energy. In fact, it was impossible to relax around her. And the last thing Rendi ever wanted anyone to do around her was relax.
Naturally Justin had to react. “What’s the matter, Rendi, the Campbell case isn’t making us crazy enough for you?”
Rendi ignored Justin and motioned the two men around the corner to Eighty-seventh Street.
“This won’t take long. I did not want to do this over the telephone. And I thought if you were going to see Campbell, you might want to give him a sense of how urgent this matter is. So I brought you the original instead of faxing you a copy.” She opened her attaché case and pulled out a piece of paper that Abe recognized as a printout of the police report.
“Listen to this. When I got this it read just like your basic report: ‘The complaining witness acknowledges that she initially consented to perpetrator’s advances, including cunnilingus, blah, blah.’ Now listen: ‘Perpetrator then’—here’s the part that got me—‘made reference to a sexual harassment complaint she had filed against a former boss, which involved oral sex.’ Then the report goes on, ‘Witness insisted that perp stop and leave. Perp ignored her expressed lack of consent and proceeded to force intercourse.’
“Here’s another little goody: ‘Small microabrasion on vagina consistent with forced intercourse according to examining Dr. Mary Stiller.’”
“Yeah, but that could be related to a few things,” Justin commented.
“Something’s not right here. You guys told me that Campbell had seemed surprised to learn about Jennifer Dowling’s sexual harassment complaint when you told him after the game. Now it looks like he knew about it earlier.”
“There could be a few explanations,” Abe said. “My clients frequently hold information back for a while until they trust me. It’s been my experience that criminal defendants—even innocent ones—often lie about details of the case that may be embarrassing to them or that they believe may hurt their defense. Then when they see the hard evidence, they begin to get with the program.”
“Still, how would he know about it?” Justin asked. “Did she tell him?”
“And if she did tell him, why didn’t he tell us? And why did he cover up that he knew about it since that fact would help him?” Rendi handed the report to Abe as she spoke.
“Maybe she’s not telling the truth,” Abe said.
“Abe, take the stars out of your eyes, at least for a minute,” Rendi cautioned. “Something’s not right. I have a funny feeling about this report.”
“Funny feelings don’t usually make a good underpinning for a defense—or a prosecution.” Abe heard how caustic he sounded, but he couldn’t help it. Rendi was always good at popping holes in his balloons—too good. “Listen, I really appreciate your dashing down here like this. As usual, you’re right on the spot. Now, if we’re going to make that meeting before Campbell leaves for Cleveland, Justin and I have to go. Where’s your car?”
“In a lot. You are paying my expenses.”
“I’ll walk you. Justin, wait for me here.”
They walked in step together, though Abe had to push it to keep up with Rendi’s brisk pace. Rendi seemed to grow slimmer and taller as Abe thickened a bit around the middle. It was her discipline about working out, he was sure. “Listen, you know I’m not going to let this slide, Rendi. I just don’t want to be confrontational. Campbell is a good client for us.”
They walked in silence. Rendi did not try to force the Campbell issue. She was quiet, which was unusual for her. In fact, she seemed distracted. “What’s on your mind?” Abe asked.
“Nothing, really. You know… the Campbell case.”
“There’s never nothing on your mind, Rendi. Now tell me the real reason you drove this report from Cambridge to New York.”
“I wanted to show it to you in person—and, I missed you.”
Abe was surprised. This was unlike Rendi, whom he considered to be without a vulnerable bone or soft streak in her limber body. Rendi was all muscle and heat and courage.
“I haven’t seen you since you took on the Campbell case,” she went on.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s been two days.”
“Two days can be a long time or a short time, depending.”
“You sound like Haskel.”
“I consider that a great compliment.”
“It is.” He ruffled her hair. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Ciao.”
When Abe returned to Justin, the younger man did not hide his annoyance at having been abandoned on the streets of New York. Abe tried to mollify him: placing an arm around his shoulder, he asked Justin’s advice as to how to confront Campbell with the apparent inconsistency. “I don’t want Campbell to think we’re calling him a liar. This is one client we don’t want to lose. I’ve got to get him to trust us with the truth. An innocent defendant can really get hung out to dry if he starts prevaricating.”
“For a start, don’t use the word prevaricate with Joe. He strikes me as the kind of guy who would prefer to be called a liar than a prevaricator.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s either. He’s probably just scared.”
Joe greeted them at the door of his spacious penthouse apartment, which—to Abe’s surprise—was full of books, magazines, fine lithographs on the wall, and classical CDs. Joe led them through the living room to a den that was dominated by a large computer, with a laser printer, a modem/fax, and all sorts of programs and instruction books. It looked like the apartment of a young assistant professor in Cambridge.
Campbell saw Abe’s look as he took in the room. “Surprised?” he asked, smiling. “Did you expect to see girlie pictures and sports magazines?”
Abe was visibly embarrassed. “Well, I certainly didn’t expect to see an intellectual’s pad. You’re a more complex man than you seem.”
“You can’t tell a man by his books and art, although I do read a lot, and I love to do research on my computer. You can find out anything, you know,” Joe said, handing Abe a printout of about forty law cases. “This is your won-and-lost record over the last ten years. Pretty impressive, especially if you discount the past few months.”
“It’s getting harder to win these days,” Abe said, then added casually, “Joe… before I forget, I’d like you to take a look at this.” He handed Campbell the entire police report, so as not to alert him to his specific concern.
Joe read the report carefully, making some notes as he read. When he finished he said calmly: “There are some falsehoods in this report, though a good deal of it appears to be accurate. I guess that rape is in the eye of the beholder. I didn’t force myself on her, that’s clear to me. She did consent to cunnilingus. In fact, she invited it. I didn’t force her to do anything against her will.”
Abe waited for Joe to mention the earlier harassment complaint. When he didn’t, he put the question directly. “What about the harassment complaint? You didn’t indicate last night that you knew about it.”
“I did know about it, I just didn’t use it in the way the report says I did. She told me about her previous problems with men, and I tried to be sympathetic. That’s when she got a little weird, but she never said no. To the contrary, she seemed to want to get it over with, like I did. If that’s rape, then I’ve raped and been raped by several women over the years.”
“No, that’s not rape—at least not according to the law. My daughter’s feminism group may have a different idea, but legally that’s just mutually lousy sex, which I bet you now wish you hadn’t gone through with.”
“You’re darn right. I can get all the lousy sex I want, every night of the week. Why would I endanger my freedom—my entire career—to get more of something I have unlimited amounts of?”
“Not a very good defense, Joe,” Abe said, smiling. “Most of my guilty clients risk the things they have limited quantities of—namely, their freedom and reputation—to get a little bit more of what they have unlimited amounts of, generally money.�
�� He was thinking of the dozens of wealthy clients he had represented who had risked, and sometimes experienced, imprisonment for a couple of extra bucks. As Emma had put it when she’d heard about one rich client’s indictment: “Why did she have to cheat people? Did she need yet another Porsche?” Somehow, Abe mused, people with everything seemed to have a psychological compulsion for even more. It was a bizarre reality.
“To tell you the truth,” Joe continued, “I went through with it as much for her as for me. She took some emotional risks, being as forward as she was. She actually propositioned me, though I would surely have asked her if she hadn’t. And she had been through some tough times with that previous business. If I had said no, I really would have hurt her. Or at least that’s what I thought at the time.”
“All right, that sounds plausible—at least to me. Now back to the sexual harassment suit. When and how did you first learn about it?”
“Do I have to tell you, Abe? It’s embarrassing.”
“Yes, you’ve got to tell me, Joe. I’m your lawyer. I’ve got to know everything.”
“I’d really rather not get into that, if you don’t mind. I don’t think it has anything to do with the case, and it makes me uncomfortable to talk about it.”
“Joe, you’ve got to tell me. It may turn out to be important to the case, especially if the prosecutor digs it up. I don’t want to be blindsided.”
“If I tell you,” Joe replied, “will it be entirely confidential? Do I have your promise that you will never disclose it to anyone?”
“Look, Joe, there are clear rules of confidentiality and clear exceptions in the Code of Professional Responsibility. I live both by the rules and by the exceptions.”
“If I tell you what you want to know, will that be within the rule or the exception?”
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