One Man's Paradise

by Douglas Corleone

  I’m decked out today in an aloha shirt and khakis, my beloved suits sitting idly at home in their closet. Jake assured me that this is the lawyer’s uniform when the lawyer’s not in court. I’m distraught over this, although I’m taking at least some comfort in that my sandals were made by Kenneth Cole.

  When I reach the thirty-third floor, I’m hit with my first surprise. My name is already emblazoned on the gold plate next to our door. I take a deep breath, ready to savor the newness of the experience, somewhat relaxed because my calendar is empty for at least the next few weeks. I can use that time to learn the Hawaiian justice system, to find the courthouses, and buy some new linen suits. I also need to check out a few things on the Internet, such as yawning, for instance, and those bobblehead dolls from the eighties.

  “Aloha, Hoshi.”

  “Aloha, Kevin! Jake’s been waiting for you. He wants to see you about something. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  As Hoshi buzzes Jake on the intercom, I worry my check to him may have bounced. Those goddamn debit cards. I constantly forget to record my purchases when I’m out. And my nine different student loans are all automatically debited at different times of the month, and the amounts constantly change to reflect ever-fluctuating interest rates.

  “Kevin’s here,” she tells him.

  Son of a bitch. It’s too late to run out the door. I haven’t bounced a check in six years. I should never have taken that trip to Cabo San Lucas before I moved here, knowing I wouldn’t have income for a couple of months. It’s too late. He’s telling her to send me right on back to the conference room.

  “Jake’s in the conference room, Kevin. Go right on back.”

  “Mahalo, Hoshi.” That’s Hawaiian for “thank you.” Because I don’t yet know how to say “I’m fucked.”

  As I open the door to the conference room, I’m hit with the glare of the sun and Jake’s broad smile, complete with yellowed teeth. “Come in, come in,” he says. “I’d like you to meet some very good folks.”

  Two figures are seated with their backs to the conference-room door, both shielding their eyes from the glare of the sun. Jake lowers a shaded film over each window so that the glare is gone but the breathtaking view remains. It’s as if the conference room is wearing sunglasses.

  The male is heavyset, with a bald spot the size of a silver dollar on the back of his head. The woman is thin, with tight curly locks, golden all the way through except at the roots. I step around the table, putting on my bullshit smile, assuming they are clients of Jake’s.

  Wrapping his arm around my shoulders, Jake says, “This young man is Kevin Corvelli. He is an excellent trial lawyer from New York. He’s tough, he’s aggressive, and he specializes in violent felonies.”

  One lesson I learned from Milt is to wear my poker face at all times, no matter what the situation. Another lesson I learned is to always act as though I know exactly what is happening, especially when another lawyer might be making a play, even when I don’t have the slightest fucking clue.

  “Kevin, allow me to introduce you to two fellow mainlanders,” says Jake, his hand still resting on my shoulder as if he’s afraid I might run away. “This lovely woman is Gina.”

  Gina stands and holds out her right hand. Her eyes are wet. She’s been crying. Her mascara is smeared around her eyes, making her look like a pretty blond raccoon. I take her hand in mine and manage an “I’m pleased to meet you.” Her hand is wet and black from wiping at the tears and mascara. This is why I don’t shake hands.

  The man stands, all 250 of him. His look makes you think he’s never cried in his entire life. He takes my hand, gripping it like a vise. Another reason I don’t shake.

  “And this, Kevin,” Jake says, “is Gina’s adoring husband. Joseph Gianforte Sr.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  We are in my empty office, Jake and I, while the Gianfortes sit, twiddling their thumbs in the conference room.

  “You have a new client, son,” he says. “Their boy was charged with killing a young girl on Waikiki Beach.”

  “I know,” I spit out. “I read about it.”

  “Good. So you’re pretty much up to speed.”

  “You ambushed me, Jake. I made it abundantly clear to you just yesterday that I’m not handling felonies anymore, especially not murder cases.”

  “And I told you, ‘We’ll see about that.’ ” He grins widely, an I’m-so-fucking-proud-of-myself, shit-eating grin.

  I’m fuming. I want to throw something, but there’s nothing yet in the office to throw. I consider punching the wall, but my last bout with a wall resulted in my wearing a cast for six weeks. And I don’t like drinking with my left hand.

  “It’s a press case, Jake. It’s exactly what I escaped from.”

  “No, son. You escaped from what you perceived as a terrible mistake that you made that happened to get eaten up by the press. Do you really think you’ll be content handling vandalism and shoplifting cases the rest of your life?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “You’re lying, son. Either to me, or to yourself.”

  “Why don’t you take the case, Jake?”

  He chuckles. “I’d rather drink turpentine and piss on a brush fire. I’m too old for this shit.”

  “So you want to sit on the sidelines and root, is that it, Jake? You want to get a taste, but you don’t want to pay for the meal. You want someone else to carry the load. Well, I don’t work for you, Jake. You’re my landlord, that’s all.”

  “Look, son. I’m trying to help you, is all. It’s what people do here on the islands. We help each other. I took your checks for first month’s rent and the security deposit down to the Bank of Hawaii this morning, and when I jokingly asked the teller if they would clear, she said, ‘Barely.’ Now, I don’t give a rat’s ass if you can pay the rent at the office on time every month or not. We can work that out. But you’re a young guy living in paradise, and from the way you were dressed yesterday, I don’t figure you have cheap tastes.

  “That paper sitting there on the conference-room table between the Gianfortes is a retainer agreement on letterhead Hoshi printed up for you on the fly. Under that paper sits a check already made out to you in the amount of fifty grand.”

  “How much?” Yeah, I heard him, but I want to hear it again.

  “Fifty. And that’s just the initial retainer. I’ve explained to them that if there’s a trial, it’s likely gonna cost them six figures. They didn’t flinch. I took the liberty of setting your hourly fee at four seventy-five, both in court and out. I hope that’s okay with you.”

  “Fifty,” I say aloud, because I like the sound.

  “I’ve already made the sale, son. All you have to do is go back in there and close the deal.”

  Jake and I step back into the conference room, apologize for the interruption, and take our seats across from the Gianfortes. I study them, pick them apart like an inspector at the end of an assembly line. Gina is an emotional volcano, ready to erupt at any second. She has on a mask of calm. Still, the lava is there, creeping beneath the surface, I know. Tears well up in her eyes, but she now refuses to let them fall, creating within herself a wall, a dam I suspect only the most ardent cry could penetrate. She’s strong, I can tell that by her face, her look, but mostly because she’d have to be, given the size and scowl of the man sitting beside her.

  He’s a volcano, too, only ready to spew much different emotions than his wife. His eyes are cold, steel bolts fastened into a hard, solid frame. All I read is anger. Anger, I suspect, directed at his son for getting himself into this predicament, at the victim for living and dying, at the police for attempting their jobs, and at me for sitting across from him waiting for my $50,000 check.

  When selecting a jury, I attempt to discern which potential jurors entered the courtroom with their minds already made up. Some people wear it on their faces the way football fans wear face paint to distinguish without questio
n which team has their loyalty. Both of these people sitting across from me have prejudged, in striking contrast, the guilt of their son. If given the opportunity, I doubt I’d put this boy’s own father on his jury.

  “Now,” Jake says, slapping his hands together, “some unfortunate business brings the Gianfortes to the island.” He makes it sound as though their stock portfolio is underachieving. “It seems their son, Joey, has been arrested for a homicide that occurred late Sunday night in Waikiki.” This is all for their benefit, to dismiss the idea that the little meeting we held in my office was called to talk about them behind their backs.

  I play along. “Yes, I’ve been following the matter in the papers.”

  “Good, so you’re up to speed,” Jake says slowly, measuring every word with the precision of a surgeon. “Now, the Gianfortes need an aggressive trial attorney like yourself to represent Joey and give him the very best shot at an acquittal.”

  “You look a little young,” Senior says to me. “How long you been doing this?”

  It’s an irritating question, but one I’m used to, even now at thirty-one, after six years of practicing law. The query is always satisfied by the end of the interview, after I’ve lectured the skeptic for an hour or so on criminal law and procedure and shown that I know my shit. For now, I offer only my standard answer: “Too long.”

  I don’t like Senior and Senior doesn’t like me, and that’s just the way I like it. I start with some preliminaries to calm the storm I sense brewing in Gina’s head. I can hear her silent cry for guidance. I ask her, her and not him, to give me some background on their son: his childhood, education, relationships, work history, criminal history, credit history. Tomorrow, when I meet with Joey, I’ll use this knowledge to gain his trust.

  Gina tells me what most mothers tell me, that her son was a good boy, an angel really, growing up in northern New Jersey. He attended St. James Catholic Grammar School, Bayley-Ellard Catholic High. He played football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring. In the summers he worked the usual eclectic group of student summer jobs: retail clerk at Blockbuster video, waiter at Friendly’s restaurant, security guard at Rockaway Mall.

  They spoiled him so, she admits, but only because he was their only son. His father bought him a brand-new red Chevy Camaro on his seventeenth birthday. Two months later, he crashed it. And his father bought him another, the second one in black.

  Joey maintained a B-plus average at Seton Hall University in South Orange, where he majored in political science and minored in criminal justice. He was accepted into several law schools across the country but insisted on enrolling in one in New York.

  “Law school?” I ask.

  Gina rolls her damp eyes and nods. “That’s where he met her,” she says, the her dripping off the tongue like sour milk.

  The law school is where Joey met Shannon Douglas and where his life altered dramatically. He fell in love with her at orientation, Gina tells me, and his world shrank in ways worlds do when one first falls in love.

  Telling me about Joey’s relationship with Shannon is troubling her, so I stop her midsentence, saving her from living it over today. I tell her I’d prefer to gather my first impression of Shannon from Joey himself, and this eases her, at least somewhat.

  Jake briefly explains to them the procedural process of the Hawaiian justice system, and it is all I can do to keep myself from taking notes. He already promised me he would walk me through local procedure, yet the tinge of fear of the unknown still lingers within.

  Finally, we come to my favorite part. The reason I went to law school. The reason I shadowed Milt for three years. The reason I opened my own law practice. The reason I’m sitting here agreeing to represent an accused killer when I swore to myself I never again would. Finally, we come to the retainer.

  “Seems a little steep, fifty K,” Senior says.

  Of course, there’s no course in law school titled Legal Fees 101, nor are there any courses devoted to reeling in clients or getting them to pay. That would be too practical. But I can tell you all about the Dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids states from favoring local economic interests or unduly burdening interstate commerce. Not interested? Neither was I, which explains my D in constitutional law. No, lawyers learn all about legal fees and finding paying clients on their own, usually the hard way. I was lucky. I learned from the best. I learned from Milt Cashman.

  “Mr. Gianforte,” I say, “I’m going to be blunt. Simply put, your son is charged with first-degree murder.”

  Hearing it aloud elicits a gasp from Gina, her hand fluttering to her heart. Check.

  “This is a very serious charge,” I say, “with very serious consequences if convicted. A term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”

  Senior looks away from me, his eyes dropping down to the table. He’s hunched like a boy just got caught pissing in the confessional. Check.

  “My goal is to have your son acquitted,” I say. “As Mr. Harper here will confirm, that will require a lot of hard work over a long period of time. In addition to my time and Mr. Harper’s time, we’ll need to hire investigators and experts to assist us in picking apart the prosecution’s case.”

  Gina is nodding, nodding like a bobblehead doll. If they still sell them, I’ll buy one and put it on my desk. She’s nodding. Yes, to the acquittal. Yes, to the hard work. Yes, to the amount of time. Yes, yes, to the investigators and experts. Yes, to picking apart the prosecution’s case. Check.

  “Your son’s financial situation,” I say, “may be such that the court will happily appoint him an attorney free of charge. That attorney may not be able to devote as much time and personal attention to your son’s case as a private attorney such as myself, but I’m sure his representation will be adequate. If not, the issue can be raised on appeal after conviction. A court-appointed lawyer will probably at some point suggest a plea bargain, and he may even get your son a decent plea offer, so that Joey will be out of prison in twenty or so years, in which case one or both of you may even live to see your son walk out of prison a free man.”

  Gina is shaking her head. That’s it, Gina, shake it. No, to the court-appointed lawyer. No, to the conviction. No, to the appeal. No, to the plea bargain. No, no, to the twenty or so years. Check.

  “The choice,” I say, “is yours. If you’d like more time . . .”

  “Joseph,” Gina says, “hand him the fucking check.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I’m pacing like a caged animal, walking in the echoes of my own footfalls, trapped in the concrete shoe box they pass off as an attorney-client conference room here at the county jail. I’m suffering physical manifestations from my claustrophobia. If that’s possible. Maybe the pounding headache, the profuse sweating, and the tightness in my chest are purely psychological. I don’t know. Something I’ll have to look up on the Internet when I get back to my apartment. If I get back to my apartment. If these sons of bitches ever produce my client.

  I look at my watch, the fifty-second time in the past forty-eight minutes. I don’t even see the time anymore, it’s just nervous habit. I’ve already complained a half dozen times, and each time I’m told that the jail runs on aloha time. Each time the guard serves me a broad smile and flashes me the shaka, the Hawaiian hand gesture for “hang loose.” Should he shaka me one more time, he’s going to get a dose of his own medicine, a common hand gesture from my culture. The Big Apple’s one-finger salute.

  I’m clawing at my forearm with my half-eaten nails, trying to get the guard from under my skin, when I finally hear a rap at the door. I open the heavy door and I’m met with a face barely resembling that of the man whose picture I saw in the Honolulu Advertiser just yesterday. The man in the photograph looked more human, more alive. The glint in the photograph is missing from his eyes, left behind in his eight-by-ten cell.

  I thank the guard with a quiet mahalo, forgetting myself and the wait I was just put through. My client is
unfettered by handcuffs yet shackled to a smell. He reeks like a vagrant, of body odor mixed with futility, the nauseating stench of utter despair. I wait for a scream of horror, something coinciding with the contorted look of terror on his face. Instead he quietly apologizes for his scent.

  “Don’t concern yourself,” I say. “I knew you were from Jersey when I agreed to take the case.”

  My words elicit a smile, even a light laugh. The ice is smashed into a million little pieces.

  Joey is dressed in the standard prison-issued jumpsuit, which is as befitting for him as a garter belt for a nun. He’s good-looking, or at least was at some time, his face angular and strong, framed by closely cropped brown hair. His eyes are red and puffy, his cheeks sunken and pale. The first seventy-two hours inside are the worst. Then it’s all peaches and cream.

  “So you’re my new lawyer?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “My mother tells me you’re the best.”

  “Only in the western hemisphere.” I hope Hawaii is in the western hemi sphere, or else I just made a bad joke. I’ll have to check that out on the Internet. When I think about it, I’m amazed at how little I actually know for certain.

  I begin as I usually do, asking him questions I already know the answers to, to determine whether I can expect from him the truth, or if he’ll serve me up steaming plates of horseshit at every turn, as criminal clients tend to do.

  My preamble about the attorney-client privilege isn’t necessary, he says. He made it that far in law school. So I get right to the meat of the matter. To the Sunday, bloody Sunday, the day he may never live down.