A Case of Redemption (9 page)

“What did you know about his relationship with Roxanne?” I asked.

“Not much more than anybody else. You know, none of my business, right?”

“So you don't know if they had broken up?” Nina asked.

“Do you tell the owner of your company every time you break up with a boyfriend?” Brooks waited a beat. “Same thing in our business. I only know what I've read in the papers, and I know enough never to believe what I read in the papers.”

A very large man walked over to us. A bodyguard, no doubt. He whispered something in Brooks's ear.

Brooks stood, a silent statement that this meeting was over. “I'm afraid that's all the time I have this evening,” he said. “Thank you for coming down here to talk with me. Both of you. As I told you, I'll be away for the holidays but will be back in my office right after the New Year, in case I can be of any further assistance.”

Oneil must have been watching us, because within seconds he was in front of us. “Excuse me, Mr. Brooks, but are you ready to resume play?”

“I'm afraid I'm done for the evening, Oneil. These two just wore me out.” He gave Nina a wink, and me a smile. “But let me ask you this, my friend: What's the biggest tip you ever got?”

“A thousand dollars, sir,” Oneil said.

“Here's an early Christmas present for you, then.”

Brooks reached into his suit-jacket pocket and pulled out two of the yellow chips. Two thousand dollars. He tossed them to Oneil.

“And the next time you see that guy who gave you a thousand, you tell him that Matt Brooks says he's a cheap bastard. You got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Oneil said. “And thank you very much, Mr. Brooks.”

Having uttered his exit line, Brooks walked away. I followed him with my eyes as he strode across the casino floor. He stopped intermittently to shake some hands, but didn't look back at us.

When I turned back to the table, I was met by Oneil's ear-to-ear grin. He was fingering the chips between his thumb and forefinger, almost as if they were Aladdin's lamp and by rubbing them, more good luck would come his way.

“So, who was the cheap bastard who tipped you only a thousand dollars?” I asked when I was confident Brooks was too far away to hear me.

“Mr. Brooks, last night,” Oneil said, still grinning.

N
ina had previously joked that one advantage of working out of the apartment was I could show up in my pajamas, but I decided that part of my new lawyer life meant I needed to dress the part, even if it was only for Nina. I didn't take it to the extreme of putting on a tie, but a suit and dress shirt did the trick of making me feel like a professional.

So when I woke up the morning after our trip to Atlantic City, the first thing I did was make coffee. Then I showered and got dressed, just like a respectable citizen. I even ran out for milk and Sweet'N Low and made it back before Nina arrived.

The noise level in the helicopter on the ride home didn't allow for much conversation, and with Matt Brooks's personal pilot sitting just inches from us, that was more reason to not even try. We arrived back in the city at close to eleven, both of us tired, and so we decided to sleep on what we'd heard and talk about it in the morning.

The one thing I did upon returning home, however, was scour the internet looking for a picture of L.D. that showed his scars. Even if I'd known what bullet scars looked like, it wouldn't have mattered; given that he was so covered in tattoos, any scars would have been well hidden.

Apparently our time of reflection had yielded different conclusions about what Brooks's disclosure meant. Even before she'd taken a sip of the coffee I'd just handed her, Nina started telling me how she thought what Brooks had told us was really good news.

“The way I see it, one of the biggest obstacles we had in this case
was that everybody thinks L.D.'s the kind of guy who would do something like this,” she said. “And the reason they think that is because of his supposed background as a true-life gangster, which, in turn, causes everyone to assume that his lyrics are autobiographical, and that leads directly to them thinking that ‘A-Rod' is a promise to kill Roxanne. But if it's made up, all of that goes away. He's not a natural-born killer; he's just some kid from the suburbs who's never been in trouble with the law before. You know, we can also play up the Brianna angle, show him as a good father, maybe.”

I'd thought of this as well, and it made a lot of sense. At the same time, Brooks's disclosure bothered me, for reasons that Nina hadn't addressed.

“Why do you think L.D. didn't tell us about all this himself?” I asked.

“I guess for the same reason that Brooks said: he's worried it'll end his career.”

“So it doesn't bother you that the guy lied to us?”

She smiled at me, but it wasn't the captivating one I'd seen before. This smile suggested only that I was being naive.

“I don't believe he's a murderer, Dan, but that doesn't mean I think he's an altar boy. And when good facts are handed to you, I prefer not to look them in the mouth. This is a good development. It's even better than that. It's a veritable cause for celebration. Our client's not a thug, and the crazy rantings in his songs don't describe his real-life experiences. So is that technically a lie? Sure. But that's also the music industry, I think.”

I felt as if I was about to take the first step down a very slippery slope—believing our client when he proclaimed his innocence, even while we knew he'd lied to us about other things. It's a road I'd traveled down before, and I'd vowed not to take that path again.

“Once we file our notice of appearance, there'll likely be no getting out for us,” I said. “One counsel switch a judge will let go, but two and they think the defendant is trying to delay.”

Nina didn't respond, at least not at first. She took a long sip of coffee, as if she was waiting for me to say something else.

When I didn't, she said, “If you want out, that's your call.”

“I frankly expected a much harder sell from you than that.”

“Like I said to you the other day, there are lots of reasons to take this case, one of them being that he's innocent. But that's not the only one. And even though I believe him, you need to have your own reasons, because I don't want you to have any regrets about doing this. Life's too short for that, right?”

I couldn't help but wonder whether Nina intentionally used that phrasing to invoke Sarah and Alexa, but decided that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and not everything has a deeper meaning. Which brought me back to why I was taking the case in the first place. Whether he was called Legally Dead or Calvin Mayberry, he was still my best, maybe last, chance to put my life back on track.

And so, at exactly 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, Nina hit the send button, which transmitted our official notice to the court system that the law firm of Sorensen and Harrington would substitute for Marcus Jackson as counsel of record for Nelson Patterson.

As I expected, within minutes the feeding frenzy began. My phone was buzzing nonstop, and by the time I checked my BlackBerry at 3:10, I'd received more than a hundred emails. I let the calls go directly to voice mail and looked at enough of the email messages to assume they'd all be exactly the same—the sender identified him- or herself and the news agency at which he or she was employed, and requested an interview, either on or off the record.

I didn't respond to any of them. Although sometimes playing the press is to a defendant's advantage, it usually doesn't work that way. At least not beyond a single statement proclaiming your client's innocence, which is what I'd be doing in court the next day, when we made our first in-person appearance in the case.

So instead of getting back to any of the reporters, I reached out to
someone who really did matter—the assistant district attorney handling the case, Lisa Kaplan.

Assistant district attorneys usually answer their own phones because, by and large, they don't have secretarial support. The more annoying ADAs made a point of always letting calls go to voice mail so that they were never caught unprepared. At least Lisa Kaplan wasn't one of them, I thought, when she answered on the first ring.

Before dialing her number, I'd googled her, but because Lisa Kaplan is a common name, I couldn't tell if any of the thousands of hits was the one I needed on the other end of the phone. When I changed the search to “Lisa Kaplan ADA,” all Google retrieved was two appellate briefs she filed ten years ago. As a result, I had no idea about the usual things you know about your adversary—age, pedigree, reputation. The fact that she was handling a high-profile murder case, however, most likely meant she was a veteran of the District Attorney's office and very, very good.

Nina was sitting next to me at my dining room table for this call. I told her I'd put Kaplan on speakerphone after I introduced myself.

“Hello. My name is Daniel Sorensen. I just entered a notice of appearance on behalf of Nelson Patterson.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Sorensen?” Kaplan said in an all-business tone.

“I called to introduce myself and my partner, Nina Harrington. She's actually here beside me, so, with your permission, I'd like to put you on speaker.” Kaplan didn't respond, which I interpreted to be tacit consent. “Ms. Kaplan, you're now on speakerphone.” I expected her to say that I should call her Lisa, but she didn't. “Let me introduce you to my partner, Nina Harrington.”

“Hi,” Nina said enthusiastically into the speaker.

“What can I do for the two of you?” Kaplan said in a monotone, sounding like she had much better things to do than talk to the likes of us.

“We're going to ask the court for a reduction in bail,” I said in what Alexa used to refer to as my “lawyer voice.”

“Good for you,” she said. “Now, is there anything
I
can help you with?”

“We'd like to examine the crime scene,” I said.

“Fine. Tell me when and we'll meet you there.”

“No. We'd like to do it unsupervised.”

“I'm sorry, Counselor, but that's not going to happen. We have concerns about the integrity of the evidence.”

I started to explain why her presence infringed on my client's rights and was about to cite case law that supported our position, when Kaplan began talking over me.

“There's no need, Mr. Sorensen. I know you're trying to represent your client, but I'm very busy at the moment and I've already told you no. So if you want a different answer, it's going to have to come from Judge Pielmeier, because I'm not going to give it to you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really have to go.”

She hung up without saying good-bye.

After Kaplan, I tried Marcus Jackson's office again. But Jackson's receptionist repeated the same mantra I'd been hearing for the past three days—
Mr. Jackson is very busy, but I'll be sure to give him the message and he'll contact you as soon as he's got some available time
.

The time had come for me to take a stronger stand.

“Please convey to Mr. Jackson that, while I know he's a busy man, he also has a fiduciary duty to his former client. We have a court appearance before Judge Pielmeier tomorrow, and if I haven't met with Mr. Jackson prior to then, I'll have no choice but to raise the issue with the judge.”

“I'll give Mr. Jackson your message,” the receptionist said, sounding unfazed by my threat.

But it must have worked, because she called back at four thirty.

“I was able to get ahold of Mr. Jackson,” she said, acting as if he was somewhere in the rain forest, rather than—as was far more
likely—sitting in the office right next to her. “He is able to make some time available this afternoon, from five to five fifteen.”

“He's going to give me fifteen minutes, and only if I drop everything and run over there right now?” I asked, straining to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

“I can only tell you what he told me,” she said. “Are you available at five? If you're not, I'm supposed to give that slot to someone else.”

T
o say that Marcus Jackson was a well-known criminal-defense attorney would be akin to saying that McDonald's is a popular restaurant. For many in trouble with the law, especially African-American celebrities, he wasn't just on the short list of lawyers to consider—he
was
the list. That he was African-American himself had something to do with it, but there was no denying that he was magical in front of a jury.

Jackson practiced out of a town house in Greenwich Village. It was untraditional, but he had reached a point in his career when he could show up to court naked and have it described as just another aspect of the out-of-the-box thinking that got him results.

The parlor-floor reception area looked like Santa's workshop. Not only did a sixteen-foot tree sit in the center of the room, but there was actually fake snow on the ground and a model train set running a continuous loop around a Christmas village. The receptionist, a beautiful young African-American woman, even wore a green felt hat and pointy elf ears.

Nina and I arrived at 4:55, and we were left to cool our heels for another forty-five minutes. Apparently Jackson's five-to-five-fifteen window of availability was not as set in stone as we'd been led to believe.

At 5:40, Jackson's assistant, another gorgeous African-American woman in an elf hat and ears, told us he was ready for us. We followed her up a sweeping marble staircase to the town house's second floor.

Jackson's personal office was probably more than fifty feet long. It
had two roaring fireplaces, one opposite his desk under the window, the other anchoring the seating area near the door.

At first I didn't notice the woman seated in front of the fire. When I did, the yellow legal pad in her lap was a dead giveaway that she was his associate, and like everyone we'd encountered thus far at the firm, she, too, was African-American, and a woman, and beautiful. Fortunately for her, the elf getup was apparently not part of the dress code for attorneys. She was the first professionally attired person we'd encountered, and that included Jackson himself, who was wearing a silver suit, a shirt-and-tie combination of fifteen different colors, and a Rolex encrusted with diamonds.