Bad Lawyer (6 page)

My problem was that I’d already pulled out all the stops; I’d cursed his stupidity, screamed in his face, banged my chair on the floor. His response: “Hey, somethin’ could happen. You don’t know the fuckin’ future.”

I decided to meet with my clients that afternoon, to ferret out their respective prosecutors on Monday morning. If I couldn’t talk Mister Shaughnessy into a sane course of action, I’d do everything I could to have his trial postponed until after Priscilla Sweet had been judged. As for the other two, I intended to make an appearance at their sentencings (hopefully in the same courtroom on the same day), wish them good luck, and be on my way to bigger and better things.

Two hours later, I strolled into the kitchen to find Caleb busy with his lunch. He had a plate of cold cuts—ham, swiss, and turkey—spread before him, another plate with slices of onion, tomato, and hot pepper to his left. A basket of heated rolls in the middle of the table steamed lightly.

“You ready for lunch, boss?”

“It’s a little early for me. You didn’t make fresh coffee by any chance?”

“Your favorite: chocolate, raspberry, almond supreme.”

I shuddered. “I take it this is Julie’s work?”

“My work, Julie’s orders. Siddown.” He got up, filled a mug with coffee, and set it in front of me. “Try holding your nose,” he instructed.

Being, at heart, a charitable man, I waited until Caleb constructed his sandwich, blessed it, and brought it to his mouth before raising the essential question.

“That cop, Rodriguez, he was first on the scene, right?”

Caleb nodded, then bit into his sandwich. His eyelids drooped slightly and his nostrils flared as he began to chew.

“Rodriguez say anything about cocaine?”

“Uh-uh.”

“You ask?”

He looked at me for a moment, then bit into his sandwich again. “Man told me he went through the rooms, made sure there wasn’t no killer hidin’ in the closet, then went into the hall and waited for the suits.”

“Caleb, did you
ask
him if he saw the cocaine?”

“It’s too early to get nervous, boss.” He laid his sandwich on the plate. “And what Officer Rodriguez saw don’t amount to a hill of shit. If the sergeant running the case, Sergeant what’s-his-name …”

“Shawn McLearry …”

“Yeah, if Sergeant McLearry says he found the coke in plain view, Rodriguez won’t be the one to call him a liar.” Caleb jabbed a dripping sandwich in my direction and smiled. “That ain’t the way the job works.”

I nodded agreement and settled down to my coffee. Though cops ordinarily need a warrant to conduct a search, an exception allows them to seize evidence of a crime if said evidence is lying in plain view and they have a legitimate reason for being there. Looking through the rooms for a perpetrator or other victims was, of course, legitimate police business.

A few minutes later, Julie came into the apartment. I heard her shake out her raincoat in the hallway, then slam and lock the door. “I hate gray days,” she called as she walked into the kitchen. Drops of rain glistened in her hair. “You see this?” She dropped a soggy
Newsday
in my lap.

I thumbed through it quickly, finding Phoebe Morris’s column on page five. It ran under the headline,
Justice For The Undeserving?
, and first examined several cases in which poor women with a criminal background and a proven history of abuse had been convicted of murdering their husbands, then contrasted their treatment with that of several middle-class women who’d either been exonerated by a jury or never been charged. Priscilla Sweet’s name, along with a detailed history of her criminal activities, appeared near the end of the column.

“Does the fact,” Phoebe concluded, “that Priscilla Sweet doesn’t live in a Long Island bedroom community, that she doesn’t have 1.5 children, or attend PTA meetings or church socials, mean that she has lost the right to defend herself? The question begs an answer.”

I passed the newspaper to Caleb, then turned to Julie. “Phoebe took me at my word.”

“I guess there’s something about you that inspires trust.” Julie picked up a roll and deftly split it. “Looks like the other side’s been busy, too.”

Julie was referring to Priscilla’s criminal background which Phoebe Morris could only have gotten from the prosecution or the cops.

“Anyway,” Julie continued, “the photos came out okay.” She tossed an envelope onto the table. “Your client looks good in yellow-green.”

I laid the prints on the table and examined them closely. The fading bruises, especially one on the right side of her back which looked like an enormous birthmark, were still prominent.

“Did you make an appointment with Ms. Morris?” I asked.

“I’m meeting her this afternoon. She seemed eager.”

I nodded my appreciation. “Caleb, whatta ya say we get ready to visit our client?”

Caleb dropped the photos and began to make another sandwich. “For the ride,” he explained. As if explanations were necessary.

I
T TOOK A GOOD
part of the afternoon, not to convince Owen Shaughnessy that a trial would be a disaster, but to uncover the reason why he was determined to remain at Rikers. Owen, it seemed, was in love with another prisoner, a prostitute-junkie named Mario Cassano, and was prepared to risk ten years of his life in order to spend a few additional months with his paramour. Or, at least, he was willing until Caleb explained (for the fourth or fifth time) that if Owen took the state’s offer, he’d do his time at a minimum security joint. If he went to trial and lost, on the other hand, the length of his sentence would guarantee incarceration at a maximum security prison.

“Southport,” Caleb intoned, “Green Haven, Clinton, Attica.”

“But I love him,” Owen replied.

“Southport,” Caleb repeated, “Green Haven, Clinton, Attica.”

From Owen Shaughnessy, Caleb and I made our way to the reception desk at the Rose Singer Jail, where I submitted to a search of my briefcase. I didn’t know the officer who fumbled through my papers—a man named Robinson, according to his nameplate—but as he took the twenty I’d tucked behind the inside strap, I figured we’d get along. Sure enough, it being late in the afternoon and most of the visitors departed, twenty minutes later I was saying hello to my client.

“Sidney.” Her greeting was as self-contained as her bland expression, but the intelligence in her cold sharp eyes betrayed her concern. She’d been expecting me all afternoon. “I thought you weren’t coming.” Her gaze jumped from me to Caleb.

“Priscilla,” I said rather formally, “this is my investigator, Caleb Talbot.” I waited for them to exchange a nod before continuing. “Caleb is going to be important to your defense. He’s the one who’ll be out there contacting witnesses to your husband’s abuse. I brought him here so the two of you could start working on a list of names. Meanwhile, I’ve got a phone call to make. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I half-ran to the only unused pay phone in the waiting room, dropped in a quarter, and punched out my own number. Julie answered on the third ring.

“Julie, did you see Phoebe Morris yet?”

“No. She called earlier, said she’d be tied up most of the afternoon. I’m meeting her in a couple of hours.”

“Good, good. Now, look, I want you to make sure you give her photos that show Priscilla’s Rikers Island jumpsuit. At some point, I might have to prove the pictures were taken after Priscilla shot her husband.”

“Sid, we got a problem here?”

“No, no. But I’m sure Carlo’s gonna stall us on getting a doctor in to see our client. Once the bruises fade …” I didn’t bother with the rest of it. “By the way, Caleb pulled off one of his miracles. Owen Shaughnessy decided to plead guilty. It’s a good story. I’ll tell you about it when I get home.” I paused for a moment, afraid to ask the next question, afraid of Julie’s answer. It was funny, in a way, and ridiculous. After decades of driving people out of my life, the only thing I really feared was solitude. “You gonna be home tonight?”

“Yeah, Sid, I’ll be around.” Her voice was suffused with understanding. Reminding me of how much I hated to be understood, and of how much I’d opened myself up to her, how hard it was for me to be known.

“Great. Well, I’m going back to my client. Be nice to Phoebe.”

But I didn’t return immediately. Instead, I lit a cigarette and watched the parade of the wretched while I thought about my life with Julie and Caleb.

Some time before, I’d come to realize that our asexual
menage à trois
couldn’t last. It couldn’t last precisely because it was asexual. Sooner or later, the way I saw it, one of us would develop a relationship that satisfied emotionally while stimulating sexually and that would be the end of that.

One day at a time. That’s the credo of the recovering addict, and that’s the way I was trying to play it with Julie and Caleb. This despite knowing how much it would hurt to lose either. I’d had affairs from time to time, but the women I chose had refused to accept my lifestyle, a decision for which I was mostly grateful and didn’t blame them in the least.

It was Caleb, of course, who’d developed the most rational solution to the basic problem, a solution named Ettamae Harris. Ettamae, a widow with two grown children, lived uptown, in Harlem. She was as thin as Caleb was fat and she loved to cook, virtues that went to the core of Caleb’s personal need. They spent most weekends and occasional weeknights together, making love on Saturday night, going to church services on Sunday morning.

We had Ettamae to dinner in our apartment from time to time, and I can vividly recall a Sunday afternoon when she’d brought along two of her grandchildren. Ray and Jake, twins and toddlers, had pulled Caleb down to the floor and used him for a beach ball. A very willing beach ball who’d obviously played the role many times before. But that was the thing about Caleb. You took away the booze, he was a nice, slightly nerdy guy. He didn’t have to
play
the good cop, because he
was
the good cop.

Julie was in an entirely different position, not surprising when you consider that Caleb and I had spent our lives abusing while she’d spent hers being abused. In Julie’s world, sex had always been about exploitation, power, and money. She did have occasional partners, always women, but these encounters were much closer to one night stands than genuine relationships. And, I suspect, more depressing than satisfying, even on the most physical level.

We never spoke openly about any of this; our messages were always disguised. Caleb returning on Sunday evening with one of Etta’s pecan pies; Julie’s worried gaze when I indulged my bad temper (trust me, a common occurrence); my own stubborn refusal to think of myself as anything but us.

I put out my cigarette and walked back to the interview room. Caleb was writing in a small notebook, his left hand moving awkwardly over the page while Priscilla recited a list of names, dates, and places. I sat down without speaking and took the opportunity to observe my client. On the previous day, I’d mentioned the need of witnesses to Byron’s abuse, so I’d expected a certain amount of preparation, but Priscilla’s organized presentation, delivered with no sign of emotion, indicated that she’d spent a lot more than twenty-four hours getting ready. Priscilla not only named individuals, supplying exact dates when possible, approximations when she wasn’t sure, she delivered capsule evaluations of each person named.

Evidence of premeditation? Of a guilty mind? The truth was that guilt or innocence (except as pronounced by a jury) didn’t particularly interest me. What I wondered, as I sat there watching my client light one cigarette after another, was if sending me a message was part of her calculations. Maybe she wanted me to know she’d been thinking about violent death for a long time, that she was prepared. The cops had undoubtedly pressed her for some kind of a statement, but Priscilla hadn’t risen to whatever bait they’d dangled. And she hadn’t left a quarter pound of cocaine laying out where the cops could find it, either.

Ten minutes later, after Caleb folded his notebook and stuck it inside his jacket, it was finally my turn.

“I’m sitting here,” I said with a casual wave of my hand, “listening to you recite your tale of woe and I gotta give it to you. Any doubt I might have had about your husband abusing you has been permanently erased.” I smiled, leaned forward in the chair, let my smile dissolve. “So why’d you take him back?”

Priscilla dropped her elbow to the top of the table, laid her chin in her palm. “You gave my mother a very hard time this morning,” she said.

“That’s what mothers are for.”

She laughed, the sound oddly musical in the small room. “Maybe so,” she conceded. “But if she has a heart attack, we’ve lost an important witness.”

“Priscilla, your mother’s as tough as you are.” I meant the remark to be disarming, but Priscilla took it quite seriously.

“I hope you’re right,” she said, “but there’s something you need to understand. I love my mother and I don’t want her to be hurt any more than she’s already hurt.”

More than pleased, I nodded agreement. The closer Priscilla to her mother, the more likely Thelma to take out a little mortgage when we were desperate for cash. “So, why’d you take him back, Priscilla? This scumbag who beat your ass from morning till night.”

Instead of answering, she glanced through the window at a female corrections officer seated on a stool outside. The guard, severely overweight, was staring off into space.

“I don’t think she has the answer,” I said.

“Patience, Sid.” Priscilla slid her chair a little closer to the table and opened my briefcase. She picked up a yellow pad and a pen with her right hand, looked up at me, then dropped a small key into the case. I started to ask her how she managed to hang onto the key through successive strip-searches by the cops and the D.O.C., but the question would have been strictly rhetorical. There was only one way it could have been accomplished: she must have swallowed it, crapped it out, then retrieved it. Drug smugglers use the same technique.

Priscilla pulled the pad close to her, wrote
Citibank 1st Ave and 15th Street Box 2071.