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

by Clifford Irving

  "Well, now we're experienced. We learn from mistakes. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Randy's away and it's a dead week for me."

  "Let me think about it. How was your day?" Warren asked.

  She told him in detail; he hadn't realized a court reporter paid that much attention. "You never can predict what a jury will do — this afternoon a guy and a gal got ten years probation for seventy pounds of marijuana. That just cracked me up. Of course they'll be revoked within six months and they'll do the time. They'll skip to Ohio, where they come from, then get caught lighting up a joint on some street corner and the computer will ship them back to Texas. I never make any money on these probation cases — no one ever asks for the record. I told Judge Bingham I want a cocaine bust or a sexual assault."

  "And I'll bet he let you put that in the record."

  She smiled with approval. "He's a sweetheart. I'll miss him."

  Warren looked at his watch. It was nearly ten o'clock. "Let's put the dishes in the machine and go to bed."

  "I thought you'd never ask," Maria said. "Never mind the dishes."

  In bed she was a startled animal. When Warren next looked at his watch it was midnight.

  "No sophomore jinx," Maria said, looking down from where she straddled him.

  "Get off me, Hahn. I need some sleep."

  "You got what you need, Blackburn."

  Grinning, she rolled off him and switched off the lamp. In the darkness, with her curly brown hair pressed against his neck, he traced the length of her own long neck with an unseen fingertip. He felt her heartbeat against his stomach. He was exhausted but he knew he would sleep as he had when he was a boy, before he had married the law. I could get used to this, he thought, just before his eyes closed.

  On Monday, July 24, five days after Judge Parker had granted a continuance of trial in the Quintana case, the two lawyers defending Johnnie Faye Boudreau met for breakfast in Rick Levine's suite of offices in the Old Cotton Exchange Building on Travis Street. They drank black coffee and ate prune Danish. An hour later, through the blue-gray shade of oak trees, they walked past the Old Market Square and the civil courthouse. The criminal courthouse was only a few blocks away.

  Warren lagged behind. "Now that I see you in daylight," Rick said, turning, "I have to tell you that you look like one of my nags after they've finished last in a six-furlong race. Did you know that a horse needs four days to recover from a race? Never mind their legs, they wear their hearts out. It's a cruel sport, like lawyering. I thought you had a few days off. What the hell have you been doing?"

  He had been hunting for a man who wasn't there.

  For five days and nights, with and without Maria, he had prowled the streets of downtown Houston and the Third Ward, talking to every bum and homeless man he met. On that last afternoon in Judge Parker's court, Siva Singh had provided little more in the way of description. A white man of medium height and average build, poorly dressed, scruffy-looking, dark-complected or suntanned more than fair: that was all Warren had to go on, plus the possibility, courtesy of Mai Thi Trunh, that he might be wearing a gray suit or a green cotton sweater. The widow had looked through her late husband's clothes and confirmed Siva Singh's memory; those seemed to be missing. All his shirts that went to the dry cleaners were white button-down oxfords. He wore no other kind.

  Warren had gone to all the missions and soup kitchens, the parks, the crummy bars in Montrose and the Heights, the ice-houses, the Greyhound and Amtrak stations where derelict men and women slept on wooden benches. He had cruised past the Wesleyan Terrace Shopping Center three times a day. He had tried the city's hospitals and the jail. Without luck.

  There was nothing more he could do except do it all over again.

  "Okay," Rick said, "I understand. And now, if it's not too much trouble, try to concentrate on Madame La Farge, our worried client."

  "Why is she worried? We've prepped her till she's sick of it. We've got a great case."

  "Because you've been neglecting her. She called me on Friday to chat. She must have been real desperate. I told her you were thinking about her night and day."

  "I am," Warren said.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  In Judge Bingham's baronial wood-paneled courtroom, the first row of public benches was set aside for the media. Outside, in the crowded hallway, the halogen lights above the TV cameras glared brightly. Reporters thrust microphones at opposing counsel, Johnnie Faye Boudreau, outfitted in the gray shantung suit that she had bought at Neiman-Marcus on the day she had murdered Dan Ho Trunh, assumed a modest position between and just behind her lawyers.

  "Mr. Levine and I expect a short trial, and a verdict of not guilty for the murder of Dr. Ott," Warren said into the microphones.

  "Will Ms. Boudreau testify on her own behalf?"

  "When the time comes, Mr. Levine and I will confer with our client and make the proper decision. Now, if you'll excuse us…"

  The reporters turned to Bob Altschuler, in a flawless black double-breasted suit that hid his growing girth. Headed for a political campaign leading to a judgeship, he was always happy to talk to reporters.

  "I don't represent the state so much as 1 do the victims and the grieving families of the victims. That's a concept we tend to forget about in this day and age. Now, in this particular case…"

  On the way into the courtroom, Johnnie Faye tugged at Warren's arm. "You know, you could have done that with a little more enthusiasm. You could have said you believed I wasn't guilty."

  "That's what we hope the jury will say," Warren replied.

  "Am I going to testify or not?"

  "If it's necessary."

  "So why have you been working my ass off and telling me what to say when I get up there?"

  "Wait." Warren stopped to face her, and made sure Rick heard his words. "I never told you what to say, only how to say it. I told you, if you testify, to tell the truth. Remember that."

  Voir dire began. This was not capital murder: the prospective jurors could be interrogated en bloc in a single panel of sixty.

  Johnnie Faye helped the defense team make their picks. "I don't like that woman in chartreuse, the nurse. She looked at me in a kind of nasty way." And: "That guy in the black windbreaker — he's sympathetic. I can tell. Pick him."

  Rick in each instance argued with her. The nurse was divorced, and nurses dealt with battered women; she would be a fine defense-oriented juror. The man in the windbreaker was a Lutheran; they believed in an eye for an eye.

  Warren said, "Let her have her way. She has good instincts."

  For this trial Bob Altschuler had chosen to work with two young assistant district attorneys, one man and one woman, whom he was grooming for other courts. Both had close-cropped hair and wore glasses, and neither one ever smiled except at each other. "They look mean," Johnnie Faye whispered.

  "They are mean," Rick said. "It's a prerequisite for the job."

  Maria Hahn recorded the proceedings. Whenever she caught Warren's eye, she smiled decorously.

  The jury was chosen by two o'clock the next afternoon, and Judge Bingham then called chief counsel to the bench. On the shelf just below the judge's fingertips, Warren could glimpse stacks of various court documents, a book on how to enlarge your vocabulary, a copy of Fowler's Modern English Usage, and a slim pamphlet on the care and growing of zinnias.

  The judge said, "We can begin now if you like. Get through the opening statements. Or do it tomorrow morning. You two gentlemen decide."

  Altschuler shrugged. "The state is ready."

  "The defense is ready," Warren said.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  That evening he and Maria drove in her car to Tranquility Park. Some homeless men were camped there, sleeping or cooking meager meals under the magnolia trees. Some were gaunt, some seemed well fed. Most had beards and looked like unwashed loggers. Shopping carts were parked under several trees.

  None of them wore any of Dan Ho Trunh's clothing. Warren talked to each man: none h
ad been in the Wesleyan Terrace parking lot in late May when a shot was fired, or at least none admitted to it. Warren watched their eyes carefully as they responded, and he also held a folded ten-dollar bill between two fingers.

  "Let's try Hermann Park," he suggested.

  In the car, Maria said, "You made a good opening speech today. Short and sweet."

  "Did I? I just stated the facts and what we intend to prove."

  "That's what an opening's meant to be. Bob went on forever, nearly put the jury to sleep. He sounded more like he was giving final argument."

  "He's Harris County's answer to the neutron bomb," Warren said. "All the buildings remain standing, but all the people succumb to his commentary."

  "Why didn't you Object?"

  "Our case will speak for itself." He thought for a while. "Which reminds me — what ever happened between you and Bob?"

  "I shouldn't tell you."

  "Then don't."

  "But I will."

  Bob Altschuler had been assigned as chief prosecutor in Judge Bingham's court three years ago, when Maria's son Randy was five. Randy's father was a Dallas homicide detective who had come to Houston to testify in some case. "I hopped into the sack with him a few times," she said, "and woke up pregnant. I was really pissed off. I didn't want this guy as a husband — he was a hunk, nothing more. But I decided I wanted to have the baby. I was thirty-one years old, the timing was right. I'd gone through an awful abortion when I was nineteen. So I had Randy. No regrets. I love that kid."

  With Bob Altschuler it was a sweet affair because it was dangerous; he was top gun in the 342nd and he was married. She was in love with his mind, he with her body.

  Warren could easily understand that.

  "The thing is, he wanted to leave his wife and kids and marry me. He has three daughters, teenagers, very difficult young ladies. Apparently it's hell at home — Hysteria City, rock and roll, locked bathrooms. And the wife's in and out of therapy. I was tempted, because Bob was crazy about me and he really liked Randy. I kept telling him that Randy would get to be a teenager too, but he said boys are different. Anyway, in the end, I wouldn't do it. An affair is one thing, but I didn't really love him and it was breaking up a home. I believe in that stuff. You can't keep trading off. So we broke up. He took it a little hard."

  "That's apparent."

  "Yeah, I guess so. I still like him. He's a terrific lawyer, tough to beat in trial. Now you tell me what happened with you and your wife."

  As best he could, Warren told her.

  Maria said, "I don't get it. She must be nuts. You're a wonderful man."

  "Thank you. Most of the time I don't get it either. Maybe I wasn't always so wonderful."

  "Well, shit happens."

  Was that it? Warren wondered. Lately Charm had invaded his mind only at random moments. He wasn't getting over the hurt of her abandonment, but scar tissue was beginning to form. Knowing Maria had certainly helped. He had spent every other night with her after the night she had cooked the lasagna. They had hunted together for the man who wasn't there. When it had grown too boring or discouraging, he had made a U-turn and driven her home to bed. Once they had gone to a movie, bought popcorn, held hands. Her hands were slender and unusually cool. So shit happens. A simple view of events. Maybe, in the long run, wise. He saw Maria as a simple person, not extraordinary, as he had once seen Charm to be extraordinary. But maybe extraordinary people are too difficult to deal with, certainly to mate with. Too much drama and anxiety along with the stimulation. He didn't view himself as extraordinary; he was just a hardworking lawyer. One day he would have kids, new walls on which to hang his photographs, a new lawn to mow. Maybe he needed an ordinary woman who wanted to please him and whom he could please without doing emotional headstands. He wanted harmony, ease. In court he had his full share of drama, worry, self-torture. Maybe simplicity was the answer.

  He pulled the car into a parking space near the stables in Hermann Park, where he had found and lost Pedro. It was a warm evening but not warm enough to sweat. The lights of the city glimmered through the trees, and he could see the glow of Johnnie Faye's high-rise, the lit windows spaced out at this distance like instrument panels of a jet.

  "You see anyone?" Maria asked.

  "No, but we'll poke around."

  "Speaking of poke, have you ever done it on the grass under a tree at night?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "That's a subject I never joke about. Well, rarely."

  "Have you?"

  "No, but I always wanted to. I've got a beach blanket in the trunk."

  "Can we look for my man first? So I won't be thinking of other things?"

  Maria sighed. "Okay."

  The shed behind the stables was empty, but Warren, using his flashlight, noticed some empty beer bottles and a rolled-up bundle of dirty clothing. The door to the stables was locked. He heard hoofs moving about in straw. Following the beam of the light, he walked across the springy dark grass toward the dressage ring.

  Maria touched his arm. "Someone's there. Two guys, it looks like."

  Warren raised the beam until it outlined two men leaning in repose against the wooden fence surrounding the ring. They were smoking and talking softly. Smoking a joint, he realized, from the sucking sound. As he and Maria drew closer, the tiny red tip vanished behind one of the men's backs.

  A voice said, "Qué pasó?"

  He shone the beam into one of the faces. A Mexican. Then into the other face.

  "Pedro?"

  "Quién es?"

  "Me. The lawyer! The lawyer you ran away from, you bastard! Hector's lawyer! I gave you forty bucks, remember?"

  "Oh, yeah." Pedro turned to his companion. "Es el pinche abogado de Hector. Me queria ir al juez para ayudarle, recuerdes?"

  —Hector's fucking lawyer, who wanted me to go to court to help him.

  "This is your friend Armando?" Warren asked, trying to be a little friendlier now.

  "This is Armando. He don't speak English."

  "So what happened to you, Pedro? I came back to look for you and you were gone."

  "Lost my job, man. Had to go. They feed you at the mission. But I doan like the mission. I come back."

  "Let's get out of here," Warren said. "I'll buy you both a beer."

  He drove them all to a nearby bar and bought a pitcher of Michelob on tap. "Listen, Pedro, and you too, Armando. I need you guys. More important, Hector needs you. His trial's still on. Next week I get to put on my witnesses. My turn, you understand? I get a chance to try and save your friend's life. I need you to get up there and swear that Hector didn't own a pistol. Will you do it? And don't bullshit me. Yes or no."

  They kept looking calmly at Maria's breasts. She was drinking a beer with one arm wrapped around Warren's shoulder. It was chilly in the bar and her nipples were prominent under her white T-shirt.

  "We get in trouble," Pedro said finally.

  Warren said, "You'll get in trouble if you don't stop eyeballing my girlfriend's tits."

  They stopped immediately.

  Warren thought it over. "You mean trouble because you have no papers."

  "That's it."

  "I told you before, they can't ask you about that. I'll protect you. You swear that Hector had no pistol, then you go."

  For a while the two men talked rapidly in Spanish, arguing. Warren waited impatiently.

  "Okay," Pedro said. He nodded at Armando: "But he doan speak English so good as me."

  "If he testifies, the court will provide an interpreter. Where are you guys sleeping these days?"

  Pedro shrugged. "Where we can."

  "If you know a cheap hotel, I'll put you up there for a week. Or, wait — I've got a better idea. You can stay at my place. A nice apartment. Food, beer, all on me. Free. All you have to do is take care of my dog."

  Again they talked rapidly together for a minute. Pedro turned back to Warren.

  "You got a TV?"

  "With cable. Movies day and night. Two
Spanish-speaking channels."

  "VCR?"

  "That too. You can rent Viva Zapata, triple-X rated movies just down the block. Whatever you like. I pay."

  "And we doan get arrested? Doan get kick out?"

  "You have my word. Mi palabra de honor."

  Armando spoke again. Pedro said, "He wants to know if your dog bites."

  "Not unless I tell her to," Warren said.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  Back at his apartment in Ravendale, he said, "Don't use the telephone to call Mexico, I can't afford that." He figured they might do it anyway, but this way they would keep the calls to under ten minutes. And they would probably enjoy getting away with something that hadn't been offered.

  "Hey, you bein' good to us," Pedro said. "We doan fuck with you now."

  He sounded sincere, and Warren changed his mind. "You can call once a day."

  "No telephone where we come from," Pedro explained.

  Maria looked up from her nail-filing. "Why don't you ask them if they've seen the guy you're looking for?"

  Warren gave a description of the man.

  "Lotta guys look like that," Pedro said.

  Warren described the clothes that had been taken from the dry cleaners. Pedro turned to Armando and chattered in his musical Spanish. Armando chattered back. Pedro said, "We know him. We seen him at the mission. Green sweater, gray suit. Sure. He's a fuckin' wino. Name is Jim something. Everyone laugh when he tell his whole name, but I doan get it. Few nights ago he get drunk and somebody steal all his new clothes."

  "When did you see Jim last?" Warren said excitedly, leaning forward across the kitchen table. "Is he there now? Is he at the mission?"

  "No, he come and go. He there one night, then he gone for a long time. Then he come back. Then he go. He sleep all over town. I see him maybe two nights ago."

  "But you know him? You could recognize him?"

  Pedro nodded.

  "Listen," Warren said, "I've got a job for you guys. I'm in court all day on another trial, another case. At night I have to work on it too. I'll pay you to look for this Jim. You find him, you bring him to me — or you hold him and call me and I'll come get him." He stopped for a moment to consider: incentive was the key. "You find him by the weekend I'll give you a hundred bucks each. Find him in the next few days, I'll give you more."