States of Grace

by Mandy Miller

Chapter 7

  I get off the bus across the street from the headquarters of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, a concrete bunker west of downtown, conveniently located in the backyard of the most drug-infested area in the city. Satellite dishes like praying mantises loom down from the roof, antennae angled in every direction to capture radio communications from forty square miles. Across the street sits the Dixie Court Homes, the city’s largest public housing project. Next door, a fried chicken restaurant which shares space with a check cashing/payday loans store. Much like bank robbers rob banks because that’s where the money is, the city put police HQ here because this is where the criminals are.

  Immediately, the soles of my shoes adhere to the blacktop, tacky thanks to the relentless summer heat.

  “Shit.”

  I high step toward the entrance like a majorette, a cumbersome task given Oscar’s lack of responsiveness. I named the damn thing after Oscar Pistorius, the blade runner turned murderer, in a fit of dark humor. I’d hoped we’d become fast friends. But so far, we’re only reluctant acquaintances, like college roommates with nothing in common, forced upon each other by circumstance. Still, it’s only been six months since the amputation, although it feels longer given the countless hours I’ve spent in physical therapy and endless days and nights with phantom limb pain.

  I hesitate outside the entrance. My last visit here was the night Detective Frank Reilly took the wheels off my party wagon for good. I’ll never know for sure, but I’m convinced Reilly set me up as payback, given I was persona non grata for getting Vinnie exonerated. I don’t have any hard evidence that Reilly and his crew were staking me out, waiting for me to get in my car outside the Ragin’ Cajun on Mardi Gras last year. Hell, maybe my luck bucket just ran dry. Or maybe it was a coincidence that they were there. Then again, it’s not coincidence when they’re actually out to get you. Either way, at least I’m alive to carry a grudge.

  I check my phone for messages. Maybe a potential new client or two? Would be nice. But no. The only message is from yesterday. The voicemail from Detective Sonny Sorenson that brings me here. I have to say, his message surprised the hell out of me. He said he wanted to talk to me about Zoe Slim’s case, fill me in, whatever that means. We may have once been more than friends, but he’s still a cop, not to mention Reilly’s partner. Maybe he wants to hustle me into a plea deal. Bait me enough to convince me Zoe’s case is a loser and that going to trial would be a career-ending mistake. As if I haven’t already committed one of those. That’s what ASA Locke would have done—“save us all the trouble of a trial.” Maybe not in so many words, but that’ll be Sonny’s message. As if trials are not to be wasted on the guilty. A ludicrous irony, but one grounded in the fact that the criminal justice system would collapse if every defendant insisted on their constitutional right to a jury of their peers.

  And then there is the fact that Zoe’s looking mighty guilty given the gun with her prints plastered all over it. So, maybe a plea’s something I should think about.

  Maybe the reason Sonny called me down here has nothing to do with the case. An excuse to see me again? That might not be so bad, would it? Shoot. Yes, it would. I can barely take care of myself. The last thing I need is romance.

  “I’m here to see Detective Sorenson,” I say into a speaker mounted in the bulletproof glass wall separating the desk officer from the waiting area.

  “Got an appointment?” asks the young blonde officer, a twenty-something who, without the stiff navy-blue polyester uniform, would turn a head or two at Mickey’s, the cop bar on Andrews Avenue.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Name?” she asks, with the put-upon sigh of someone who believes they deserve better than taking names. I can’t blame her. If I were one of the few women who make it through the academy, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to sit in a window playing receptionist while the boys get to have all the fun out on the streets.

  “Locke. Attorney Grace Locke,” I say, the “attorney” part awkward in my mouth.

  “Take a seat.”

  There are only two other people in the waiting room who, by the pissed-off looks on their faces, seem to have been here a long time. One is a wizened old gal in fluffy pink bedroom slippers, the other a large Latino dude in a wife beater, arms crossed over a beer belly, a tattoo of a snake crawling up his neck. The gal is generating a shuffling sound by moving her slippers back and forth on the filthy linoleum floor. The man lets out a coño every few minutes.

  I perch on a metal chair in a corner, one turned away from the entrance—just in case Reilly walks in. It’s bolted to the floor. Why? To avoid it from being used as a projectile? Certainly no one in their right mind would want to steal the damn thing.

  And again, I’m waiting. For what seems like hours, although I suspect it’s my anxiety talking. Cops parade in and out through a security door with a shrill buzzer that jolts me out of my seat each time it sounds. I’m tempted to make a run for it. If they have a solid case against Zoe, I’ll hear about it sooner rather than later. And if not, if they’ve got squat, they’ll make it seem like they’ve got something, just to yank my chain.

  Pink Slippers and Wife Beater give up and leave.

  And still I wait.

  As I’m about to leave, the security door buzzes open and Sonny Sorenson appears. He’s dressed in standard detective attire—open-neck shirt and dress pants, gold shield on a lanyard around his neck, Glock on his hip.

  He waves me over. “Grace, come on in.”

  “Sonny, yeah, hi,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. First rule for defense lawyers is the same as for jilted lovers. Never act needy. Be cool, but I blow that one right out of the box by spilling the contents of my purse onto the floor I’d wager last saw a mop during the Clinton administration—phone clattering out, lipstick rolling away, wallet, hairbrush, and Nicorette gum in a pile.

  How I’d love a cigarette right about now. But I gave those up too, right along with everything else that used to make me happy.

  Sonny holds the door, eyes crinkling up at the edges, seemingly amused at my scramble to retrieve my things.

  “Good to see you again, Detective,” I say, smoothing my hair.

  “It’s Sonny, remember?” His eyes lock onto mine. They’re bluer than I remember.

  And I do remember. We met when he was in narcotics and the arresting officer on several of my drug prosecutions. Later, he was partnered with Reilly in homicide division, the same cop who railroaded Vinnie, slapped the cuffs on my wrists and tossed me into the back of a patrol car like a sack of potatoes. A jury bought Reilly’s good-cop routine and found him not guilty of falsifying evidence and witness tampering and sent him right him back to serving and protecting. His three co-conspirators, however, are still locked up in the same prison where Vinnie lost three years of his life, an injustice that enrages me still.

  Sonny shepherds me through a rabbit warren of cubicles and along a hallway lined with interview rooms, the same corridor Reilly led me down in handcuffs, his beefy paws prodding me along in front of him like livestock.

  Sonny stops at the last door on the left and stands back for me to enter.

  The very same room.

  “It’s been too long.”

  Same padded walls, same two-way mirror. Same knot in my gut. “Yeah, how long is too long?”

  He motions for me to take a seat. I choose the chair facing the door, the cop’s usual position.

  “Reilly’s still your partner? At least that’s what the arrest report for Zoe Slim says.”

  Sonny’s reels back. “Whoa there. What, no time for small talk? Like hello, how’ve you been, Sonny?”

  He drops into the seat opposite, reaching back over his shoulder to close the door. “And here I was, thinking we were friends.”

  “‘Were’ would be the operative word in that statement.” I immediately regret the sarcasm. I should know better. Sonny’s always been on the up-and-up. He has to be given his dubious pedigree. His father was Sal �
��Sideburns” Saladino, an old-time made guy in the Miami crew via the Bronx. Until he was executed by the Russians looking to take over his action. He took a bullet to the head and was found in the trunk of his Cadillac Seville on Sunny Isles Beach when Sonny was in high school. That left Sondra, Sonny’s Swedish mother, to raise him. Sonny took his mother’s maiden name to escape the stigma. He was first in his class at the police academy, and his stellar arrest and conviction record got him promoted to detective early. Sonny’s intolerance for crime would make Eliot Ness seem like a slacker.

  “To be clear, I had nothing to do with the Vicanti fiasco.”

  “I never said you did. But if I were you, I’d watch your back. I’m going to be watching mine this time around. The Slim case is big for me, and I’m not going to let him screw me or my client over.”

  He tips his chair up onto its hind legs. “If it makes you feel any better, Reilly’s off today.”

  “Maybe that makes you feel better. Not likely he’d take kindly to your consorting with the enemy.”

  “I don’t know what Frank did or didn’t do, and I don’t want to know. But he’s a good partner.”

  “Whatever you say, Detective.”

  “Jesus, enough already. I always respected your work. The least you can do is give me the same courtesy. We made a good team. Put some real bad guys away, didn’t we?”

  “That’s ancient history. Let’s cut to the chase. Why’d you ask me here?”

  He drops the chair back on all fours. “To give you a heads up on some preliminary information we’ve got on the Sinclair murder.”

  “Right. Because cops always want to help defense lawyers.”

  “None of us need to be wasting our time.”

  “And there it is, the inevitable efficiency argument.”

  “Please. I’m not your enemy here. I heard you caught this case, and I just wanted to bring you up to speed. You can do whatever you want with what I tell you, but you might find it interesting, helpful, whatever.”

  I raise my hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. Let’s hear it.”

  He flips open a folder with the tip of a pen. “We found a gun at the school. A Glock 19, silencer attached. Covered in your client’s prints.”

  “Old news. Saw it on TV. What else you got?”

  “The Glock was found in your client’s locker. It had been fired recently.”

  I resist the urge to flinch.

  “The ballistics on the slugs taken from the victim’s body match the weapon.”

  I bite my upper lip.

  “And the serial number on the weapon came back. The Glock is licensed to one Anton Slim.”

  Guilt is one thing, but no plausible defense is another. “Shit.”

  He laces his hands behind his head. “That’s it. That’s all I got for now.”

  He’s right, even if he is trying to pressure me. This loser’s going to plead out early and I’ll walk away with nothing. No big payday, no media exposure.

  “Yep. Your client’s in deep shit. Didn’t want you going out on a limb your first big case back without the actual facts.”

  “Your facts,” I say, but with a grin.

  “Shoe on the other foot now? How’s it feel?” Sonny says, matching my grin with one of his own.

  “Why is it everyone thinks it’s so hard for me to do my job?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” I say, pulling up my pant leg. “And a bad choice of metaphor, by the way.”

  His jaw drops. “I know we talked about it, but—”

  “My only regret is that I didn’t do it a long time ago. Before I took the first damn pain pill. The war didn’t kill me, but that junk would have.”

  “And how is it?”

  “What? Learning to walk again? Or not being whole?”

  He presses his lips together, eyes full of pity, a common reaction and one I’m retraining my mind to interpret as an admission of an inability to comprehend the horror.

  “It’s coming along. Doc cleared me to run, if you can believe that. It’s only been a few months.”

  “You always were one tough mother, Grace.”

  Another bad metaphor. This time he should know better, but I let it pass.

  He slaps the file shut. “I’m sure you’ll get the rest in discovery from the ASA soon enough.”

  “That means there’s more bad news?”

  “One man’s bad news, is—”

  “Is another’s ticket to walk a teenager to death row. Lucky me.”

  “I don’t remember you as such a bleeding heart, Ms. Locke.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I think you’re dribbling out the key evidence, before I have the chance to see the whole picture, to get me to fold my tent and go home. Open and shut case. Nice and easy for you.”

  He clasps his hands in front of him. “Do whatever you want with the information. Ignore it, file it away, forget it, but whatever you do or think, this case is not going away. The chief’s holding a press conference with the state attorney today. They are going to announce the State will be seeking the death penalty.”

  I blurt out the words, “She’s a kid!”

  “A kid who killed an innocent man.”

  I stifle a groan.

  “One last thing, but you didn’t hear it from me. You might want to ask your client about the text messages.”

  I resist the urge to curse. “What text messages? There was no mention of texts in the arrest report.”

  Digital nails in Zoe’s coffin. Text messages and social media. No two things simplify cops’ lives more.

  “What you’re saying without saying it is, I’m screwed.”

  “See you in court, Counselor.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “And by the way, that leg looks good on you,” he adds with a wide smile. “You’ll be back out there running hard in no time.”

  At the bus stop, I shade my eyes, the squalor of the ghetto all around me incandescent in the bright-white light of morning. I reach into my purse for my sunglasses, but they’re gone. They must still be on the floor of the waiting area. Or maybe Pink Slippers is wearing them, or maybe even Wife Beater.

  Chapter 8

  Bail hearings always were a circus, and nothing has changed. It’s been more than a year, but as I look around the cramped, dank room buried in the bowels of the courthouse, it’s evident life has gone on without me. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t have. That the judge’s robe would be anything other than black, and that the smell emanating from the jury box full of inmates anything other than putrid. It makes no logical sense, but the sameness, despite my absence, strikes a hard blow.

  Maybe it’s just that I used to believe I was indispensable to the mission of putting bad men and often worse women behind bars. ASA Grace Kelly Locke, rabid crime fighter, a top cog in the machinery of justice. All illusions. The legal juggernaut has lumbered along just fine, and I feel small, brought to heel not only by my own mistakes, but also because, as it turns out, mere mortals are inherently flawed custodians of justice. The best that we can do is pretend otherwise for as long as we can.

  The moment I push through the gate separating the gallery and the well of the courtroom, a manic pen restricted to attorneys and staff, the stench hits me, forcing my breakfast egg sandwich and black coffee back up my gullet. Clearly, my nostalgia for all that I pissed away has overshadowed my memory of the aroma of the arena, which is as hideous as ever.

  I survey the malodorous in-custody inmates, the majority of whom sport orange jumpsuits emblazoned with the acronym BCJ—Broward County Jail. The rest wear the rumpled street clothes in which they were arrested, a sleepless night curled up on the concrete floor of an overcrowded holding cell having taken its toll on whatever cleanliness they once had.

  But I have to admit, I have missed all of this. The grit. The in-your-face harsh reality. As distasteful as the criminal law may be to many lawyers—especially ones like me from fancy law schools who tend to prefer clean hands a
nd deep corporate pockets—a criminal lawyer is all I’ve ever wanted to be. Upon graduation from Columbia, intent on being a voice for the victims of crime, I accepted a position at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, but bowed to familial pressure and rescinded my acceptance, going to work at a Wall Street law firm instead. “Do you want to deal with that population every day? You’ll do much more good doing pro bono work on the side for whatever cause you wish,” was my father’s pitch. It took 9-11 to scuttle his plan.

  I pause for a moment on the periphery of the ruckus to take it all in. Two of the three rings of the circus are in action. In ring one, the ASA du jour marches back and forth in front of the prosecution’s table trying to look like he knows what he’s doing, his too-long pant legs mopping the floor. The second ring, the defense bar, a pulsing bevy of shiny suits and loud ties, a testament to their willingness, or perhaps, desire, to be classified as trouble-makers. Most are men, only a couple are women, dressed in pantsuits like the men, but their style more Brooks Brothers, less Italian flash. The presiding judge has yet to take the bench, yet the wheels of whatever justice he will dispense are being greased by the wheeling and dealing between State and defense like rug merchants in a bazaar, trading time for crimes.

  The third ring, the bench, the elevated centerpiece, stands empty, except for the clerk to the judge’s right hand, a squat woman barely visible behind a mountain of files. The files will be almost empty at this point. All the judge will have to go on today is the probable cause affidavit, a few illegible biased lines of scrawl to justify the arrest of the accused. Bottom line, do the charges have at least one rickety leg to stand on, just like me?

  I stash my briefcase under the defense table because every inch of the surface is occupied by the assistant public defender’s stuff, boxes and boxes of files for the majority of the cases that will be heard, those of defendants who can’t afford a “real lawyer,” indigent nomenclature for high-priced sharks. Rich defendants have already posted the standard bond and are back home, cocktails in hand, leaving their less well-heeled counterparts in shackles, hoping against common sense that they’ll get released on their own recognizance, or that some long-suffering relative or friend will put up whatever little of value they own as collateral for a bond.