Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller

by Clifford Irving

  Warren's back was to the club. He flicked the switch on the flash attachment and the red light popped on. Other cars blocked the gauzy glow of the parking-lot lamp. Peering through the camera's viewfinder, he found it more difficult than he had anticipated to focus the bull's-eye on the small blue scratch adorning the Mercedes' fender. He was sweating.

  He clicked off one shot, noted with satisfaction the swift flood of white light, then moved left a pace and did it again.

  How can I prove it was this car? Her car?

  Back off, get all of it in frame. Then one more of the front license plate and the fender. An irrefutable sequence.

  Maria heard the lunatic thump of music as the front door of the club opened and the thin black man and a taller white companion stepped out, bumping shoulders in their haste. Maria reached across to the driver's door and shoved it open. Twice, and loudly, she yelled Warren's name.

  At fifteen feet Warren focused manually. He had nearly the whole car in frame, including the fender and the front plate. He pressed his eye once more against the viewfinder. The car went suddenly dark, obscured. Something tugged at the camera.

  "What is this?"

  Frank Sawyer, in the same black T-shirt and chinos that he had worn to the Astrodome, had one hand clamped around the Pentax lens. Lean and feral like a coyote, he confronted Warren. The dragon tattoo was flexing.

  "The fuck you up to, counselor?"

  The little black man had edged away. Trouble was for Sawyer to take care of. Sawyer stepped into the glow of the overhead lamp, his cold blue eyes austere, accusing, impeaching all possible innocence.

  "Just doing my job, soldier," Warren said, and thought, that was pathetic. He had no excuses prepared. This was a job where if you failed, you failed utterly.

  Muttering, Sawyer tried to yank the camera away, but the strap around Warren's neck prevented it. Warren felt himself being pulled forward awkwardly, and to stop that he shoved Sawyer in the center of the chest with a flat palm.

  Dropping into a crouch, Sawyer hit Warren hard with a boxer's left hand, high on the face, between the cheekbone and ear. The knuckles drove deep into the nerve. The strap around his neck and Sawyer's grip on the lens kept Warren from falling to the concrete. But the world was darkening; he believed he was sinking to lightless depths a mile below the last glimmer of sun, drowning in an ooze of stupidity.

  Frank Sawyer lowered him until he was prone, then tore the camera off his neck and smashed it onto the ground. He did that several times until the camera was reduced to junk.

  Warren knew nothing of this: he heard distant crunches and spectral voices. His next awareness was of someone dragging him by the elbows. He was being lifted. There was an aroma of fruity perfume. He was crawling up into a soft seat. The seat was in his BMW. Maria's voice came from a hundred yards away in a mist.

  "… it's okay, it's okay. For God's sake, take it easy…"

  His mind and eyesight began to clear. Cool air washed over his cheeks. Maria Hahn was driving. They were on a boulevard, not a freeway. His head throbbed as if a drummer were using it for a martial beat. He made a major effort of will and stopped groaning.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To a hospital."

  "I don't need a hospital. An ice pack would do the job."

  "I yelled," Maria said. "You didn't hear me." The camera was gone, she told him. She didn't know what Sawyer had done with it. He had just walked away, back into the club.

  "He took the camera? That's rotten. I owe you a camera." Warren raised his head a little from the seat, saw streetlights whip by and at the same time felt raw pain. He wanted to tell her something that seemed important. It was amazing how the past intruded on the present, but usually too late to take advantage.

  "When I was a little kid," he said, finding the words with difficulty, "my father took me to a farm in Fort Bend County where there was this mule. I ran up to it, thought it was a horse, wanted to ride it. My father pulled me away and said, 'Watch out, son, it's dangerous.' But this old farmer boy said to me, 'Boy, that mule t'weren't gone hurt you. You never could have got close enough to it.'"

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  He bedded down on Maria's living room couch, an insulated bag of ice pressed to the right side of his face. Maybe his cheekbone was broken, but he knew from his visit to Hermann Hospital that you couldn't set a cheekbone. The pain kept him awake, but the wakefulness allowed him to stumble to the kitchen and change the ice every hour or so. He had swallowed two Empirin with codeine and knocked back several shots of Stolichnaya.

  At 4 A.M. he took the icy vodka bottle to bed with him as a companion, pressing it against his forehead when he was not tilting it to his lips.

  His dreams were not pleasant. He was the wheel man in a get away car in front of a bank. It was all in black and white. His pals came running out with the loot. He turned the key, and the engine wouldn't start. In another dream, this one in color, the mule kicked him. In another, an airport scene, Charm was smirking at him. Then she turned her back and walked away through the dusk toward a private plane that was taking her to New York and out of his life forever.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  A small boy stood over him, watching, as Warren opened one glued eye. The living room was shadowed, the blinds drawn, but clearly it was morning. The boy had freckles and curly brown hair and an interested expression.

  He heard Maria Hahn's voice: "Randy, don't bother him. Let him sleep…"

  The boy's face disappeared. Warren's eye closed.

  He awoke again at ten in the morning. In Maria's bathroom mirror he observed that the right side of his face was swollen. With each step or each movement of his head came jolts of affliction. Shadows had bloomed under his eyes and the eyes were pink. The bruise on his cheek was a shiny green edged with purple, the coloring of certain large, vicious Texas bottle flies.

  He walked slowly out of the bathroom. Maria's neck tilted gracefully from a navy blue terry cloth bathrobe. She was barefoot on the kitchen floor.

  "How you feeling?"

  "I've felt better."

  "Looked it too. You hungry?"

  "Yes, please." Coming to terms with what his body was telling him, he decided to abdicate any pretense at control and settle into a natural state of helplessness.

  At the breakfast table she stirred eggs and fried some bacon. The smell made his stomach queasy. He asked, "Where's your son?"

  "Gone over to a friend's house. Will you tell me what this was all about? I think I need to know."

  "I can't do that," he said.

  "Can't, or won't?"

  "Can't. Believe me. I'm sorry."

  Maria took a turn around the kitchen, leaving the bacon to sputter, while she worked at accepting that answer.

  "Okay," she said, "for now. What's your plan?"

  He felt cobwebbed, heavy-legged. He had no plan. He had plenty of misgivings and regrets but no plan. But he tried to focus on one.

  The Fourth of July party had been held yesterday, on Monday. All offices and the Harris County courts were closed today. Jury selection for Quintana would start tomorrow. Doggedly, with suffering brain cells, Warren recalled that he had two tasks scheduled for today. Go to Hermann Park and twist old Pedro's arm to ensure his testimony on Hector Quintana's behalf the following week. Have the photographs of the Mercedes developed, printed, and enlarged.

  That was no longer on the docket. By now Frank Sawyer was probably under orders to grab a wad of sandpaper and bucket of paint and do the job on the car.

  Sorry, Hector, I tried.

  Not good enough. Johnnie Faye Boudreau would dump him as her lawyer. She would go before Judge Bingham tomorrow and tell him she'd lost faith, hadn't realized that her lawyer was so inexperienced. Bingham would grant a continuance until she could find someone else. The story would spread. Warren's grand comeback would be a downfall.

  "My plan," he said to Maria Hahn, "is to dig a cool hole and crawl into it."

  "You can do bette
r than that," Maria said.

  He probably could. And should. And would. He was grateful to Maria. Why was she being so kind to him? He wasn't used to that lately.

  "Just as soon as I finish these eggs. They're delicious. They're wonderful. They're the best eggs I've ever eaten."

  Maria laughed and looked at him with friendly blue eyes.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  At noon, with the July heat building, he drove to the stables at Hermann Park. The shed was empty. The pot with fried crackling grease was gone. A black man was hard at work cleaning a stall in the stables.

  "There were two men here," Warren sad. "Two Mexicans."

  "They gone."

  "When?"

  "Day before I came."

  "When was that?"

  "That was Thursday, Friday."

  "I don't believe this. Where did they go? Does anyone know?"

  The man shrugged.

  Gone. Vanished, like Hector had once vanished, like the scar on the fender of the Mercedes would vanish. Like the case for Hector's defense, already so shitty, would vanish if he couldn't find Pedro. He stamped the turf with frustration. I should have gone last week — should have gone there twice a week to keep Pedro in line. Should have set the Mexican up in a hotel room. Should have given him more money. Should have gone to Johnnie Faye's garage instead of the club, or hired a professional to do the job.

  With sudden malignance, the blood throbbed through the vessels in Warren's head. He felt dizzy and stumbled toward shade, a tree dappled by light, where he leaned against the rough bark for several minutes.

  He drove back to his office on Montrose for the solace of a cold beer and a darkened room and penitent silence. The red light on his message machine was blinking. The first calm voice was that of Arthur Franklin, Charm's divorce lawyer, who asked Warren to return the call at his earliest convenience.

  Okay, Arthur Franklin. Will do.

  The second voice was Johnnie Faye Boudreau's. Call me back today, she commanded. I want to see you. We have a lot to talk about, lawyer buddy.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  Her apartment was on the eighteenth floor of a new-mint brick building overlooking the Texas Medical Center, with a sweeping view of downtown Houston: mirrors of glass and steel backlit by sun. Warren had expected modern decor, but Johnnie Faye's living room was an old lady's, crowded with memorabilia and fussy furniture. Gold-framed photographs stared gloomily from every wall: her mother, father, brothers, other family, herself when young and innocent. Surfaces were covered with knickknacks and bowls, jars, vases, porcelain statuary. There was an antique grandfather clock and one oil painting of a western sunset. The mahogany sideboard and credenza both had bowlegs. The carpet was faded Shiraz, the drapes mauve damask, the TV a big RCA console. A glassed-in bookcase was crammed with more eclectic junk.

  "You can see," Johnnie Faye said, "that I'm a collector."

  She wore gold tasseled slippers and a glittering gold pantsuit that highlighted creamy cleavage and her narrow waist. Settling into an ornate Queen Anne chair, she put her feet up on a hassock. A pitcher of iced tea, two glasses, and a bowl of sliced lemons stood on the little coffee table.

  "Minute I got that phone call supposed to be from Corpus, I knew something was out of line. You got to respect my sixth sense, counselor. And if it wasn't my mama, which I found out quick enough it wasn't, who was it? Somebody wanted to make sure I was there at the club, and deviltry was afoot. But why? That's what I asked myself…" She raised her glass of iced tea in what amounted to a toast to her acuity. "So I sent a guy back here to guard the fort at home, and I told Frankie to keep an eye peeled at the club in case anything odd went down. And it sure did. You look like stepped-on dogshit. But you got what you deserved, you can't complain."

  "Do you have any Bufferin?"

  "I have Bayer and Tylenol and Excedrin and Midol. And I have some good Sonora grass and some real good coke."

  She was a consumer as well as a collector.

  She fetched a tray of assorted medication, and Warren swallowed two aspirin with an iced-tea chaser. Johnnie Faye opened a pretty little green Kashmiri papier-m�ch� box; in it were half a dozen neatly rolled joints and a little cellophane bag of white powder. She took a joint from the pile and got it going with a gold Ronson. When she offered it, he thought, what the hell. This was so crazy anyway.

  The hot smoke tore at his lungs. His fingertips tingled.

  "You're my lawyer," Johnnie Faye said, "and I'm supposed to level with you. But it's a two-way street. So I think I've got a right to know just what there is about my car that makes you want it in your scrapbook. But," she said slyly, "I'm not about to ask you, because you'd lie. And that would piss me off considerably. So keep quiet, counselor, and listen to me."

  It was all so civilized and polite. He was sitting with a woman who had probably murdered three people — three that he knew of. She was serving him afternoon tea and aspirin and he was sharing a joint with her. That's what it meant to be a lawyer. But where did it end?

  "You're still my lawyer," she said, as if she had read his mind. "And I need your advice. If I committed another crime, could they bring that up when I go to trial for what happened to Clyde? Could they ask me if I did it?"

  Warren grew wary, but he was obliged to answer honestly.

  "They can ask you in cross-examination," he replied, like a man on the edge of a chasm, "if they have a reasonable ground to believe you did it. But they're bound by your answer. They can't contradict you or then bring in proof that you committed the other crime."

  "Even a murder?"

  "Yes, even a murder."

  "Even if it's the murder of that Vietnamese guy you think I killed?"

  He felt himself growing pale. So it was true. "Yes," he said.

  "Well, I did it. In self-defense. I had to."

  Warren's heart began to beat out of rhythm. But he said carefully, "You shot him in the Wesleyan Terrace parking lot outside the dry cleaners. You used a .32, and then you shoved it in a Dumpster in some apartment complex."

  Saying nothing, Johnnie Faye took a deep drag, then passed him the joint. Warren shook his head in refusal.

  "Why?" he asked, dumbfounded.

  She told him—

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  Heading back home that day from Lord & Taylor and Neiman's, with her booty and cash to spare, she had a choice of battling the red lights on Westheimer or the traffic on the Southwest Freeway. Johnnie Faye chose the freeway.

  Cars were backed up ahead of her as far as she could see. An accident, she decided, or some beaner's rattly pickup run out of oil in the fast lane. Creeping along at fifteen miles an hour in her Mercedes, she turned up the air-conditioning a notch, lit a Marlboro, and punched in a tape of Led Zeppelin.

  That was when the Ford Fairlane wagon tried to get off the freeway. She didn't blame him for that — it was on her mind too. But he didn't signal, and he clipped her bumper, powered into the right lane in front of a braking semi, and headed for the exit ramp to Wesleyan.

  She cut off two vehicles to catch up to him, but she peeled no paint. At the first red light on Wesleyan she drew parallel and leaned on the horn.

  She yelled, "Hey, pull over, motherfucker! I want to talk to you!"

  Her window was shut and he couldn't hear her. Now she saw him clearly for the first time and realized even if he'd heard her he probably wouldn't have understood a word, because he was a slope: the usual black hair and threatening deadpan look.

  The light flicked to green and he was off again. She hit the accelerator and drilled after him and then, serendipitously, he popped the wagon into the parking lot in front of the dry cleaners. Even as she buzzed down her window Johnnie Faye saw the Indian woman stacking cardboard boxes. This place, she thought, used to be the United States of America. Now it's an Asian dumping ground.

  She began yelling, giving him what-for. Dan Ho Trunh didn't reply, just gazed at her as if she were a freak. His face twisted a little
, although still there was no real expression. But she had seen Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, she knew what these people were capable of. Her brothers had died for these foreign dirtballs.

  He cursed back at her, she told Warren, hissed through his protruding white teeth and reached back toward his pants pocket to take something out of it. Johnnie Faye felt a surge of terror. This was the way your life could end, in a parking lot you didn't know, at the hands of an alien stranger. She twisted the knob of the glove compartment and snatched the .32-caliber Diamondback Colt that lay among the stack of cassette tapes. In one practiced motion she snapped the safety to the Off position.

  The Vietnamese straightened up, and there was something dark in his right hand and it was pointed at her.

  "I guess I screamed," she said to Warren. "But I did to him before he could do to me. The Golden Rule."

  Breathing rapidly, jerkily, heart pounding, thanking the Lord above that she'd been spared, and congratulating herself on having been ready, willing, and able to defend her life, Johnnie Faye burned rubber.

  The Diamondback Colt lay on the seat next to her.

  Loved that little gun, she thought sadly. But it has to go.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  Warren believed that she believed what she was telling him. You had to see it from her point of view, as a jury would be instructed to do. "Murder is a way of working out problems and settling scores," Altschuler had said. An obvious, instant, primitive solution. Only when it was done did her sophisticated self take over to muddy the trail. Warren had never known anyone like this, but he had known such mutants existed.

  He asked, "Did you ever hear of a man named Hector Quintana?"

  "You can't be serious," Johnnie Faye said, frowning. "You must think I came in with the first load of watermelon. Hector Quintana's the name of the guy you're defending in that other case, isn't it? The one where you were appointed by some woman judge?"

  Warren nodded, but he was bewildered at her knowledge. Clearly there was a logical connection that he had missed. Staring at her, he asked, "And what about Quintana?"