Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (30 page)

“
It ain’t true,” he said.
“I was a delinquent before I met you.

“
With all this pretrial
publicity, maybe I should ask for a change of venue.”

“
Yeah, like to
Samoa.”

I needed help. Granny could
only do so much. Charlie Riggs wrote me inspirational letters with
moral support. Britt Montero called from the
Miami Daily News
, either to wish me
well or to get an exclusive interview, I couldn’t tell which. We
went out a couple of times years ago, but Britt always found triple
homicides more interesting than my description of a bull rush past
the offensive tackle.

At the moment I needed a lawyer more than
friendly chitchat. So when Kip headed back for his bus, his eyes
wet as I hugged him good-bye, I used the jail phone to make a
collect call to an old friend and sometimes adversary.

***

H. T. Patterson was in Aspen the next day
and had a bond request filed the day after that. The state attorney
worked up a sweat arguing against any bond, but the judge set it at
a cool million dollars. Granny and Doc Charlie Riggs pledged all
their assets, as did I, but we were still short, and not even close
at that. One more phone call and Gina Florio came up with the rest,
only her name was Gina de la Torre now, married for the time being
to Carlos de la Torre, sugar baron. When I knew her, she was a
Dolphin Doll, shaking her booty for fifteen bucks a game, and we
lived together for a while, but that’s another story. Thanks to
Gina, we had enough collateral to spring me, and as long as I
showed up at trial, they’d get their money back, minus ten percent
which I promised to repay, even if it was out of my prison salary.
I was ordered not to leave the county or attempt any contact with
Ms. Baroso, or bond would be revoked.

The day I got out, I assembled my team.
Granny, Kip, H. T. Patterson, and I met at the Woody Creek Tavern.
Granny had bourbon, H.T. an iced tea, and Kip and I split a Coors,
the world’s most overrated beer.

“
You sure you want me to
try the case?” H.T. asked. He was wearing a blue denim suit with
red piping and red leather cowboy boots so new he must have bought
them at the Denver airport. He looked like a very short and very
black John Wayne.

“
Why wouldn’t I? You’re a
real lawyer. You got bond issued in the blink of an
eye.”

“
I merely pointed out your
clean record of never having been convicted of a felony, though you
do seem to have a history of contempt citations and occasional
misdemeanor assault. But the fact remains that I am not…shall we
say, demographically correct for this case?”

“
Why?”

“
This ain’t exactly Malcolm
X country. You’re not likely to get even one dark complexion on the
jury, unless it’s pasted on at the tanning salon.”

“
I don’t care. I need you.
I’m facing a lifetime of sleeping with a cork up my
ass—”

“
But you’re innocent,”
Granny interrupted. I didn’t correct her.

“
Guilt or innocence isn’t
always black or white,” I said in my lecture tone I must have
learned from Doc Riggs. “It’s more of a continuum. Somewhere in the
middle is not-so-guilty bucking up against not-so-innocent. The
state has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Apparently,
they can prove I fired a nail through Cimarron’s brain. Hell, I
can’t even deny it, ‘cause I don’t remember. But it was justifiable
if I was acting in self-defense. The problem is that Jo Jo Baroso
is going to weave a web for the jury that makes me the attacker.
That’s why I need you, H.T.”

“
You think I can break
her?”

“
I don’t know, but you’re a
great lawyer. Hell, when we oppose each other, you always convince
me you’re right.”

“
Jake, I’ve never known you
so accommodating and amiable, so considerate and cooperative as
when you’re under indictment. In any event, I thank you for the
gracious compliment.”

“
I mean it. You remind me
of Bum Philips’s line about Don Shula. ‘He can beat your’n with
his’n or his’n with your’n.’ H.T., I’d take you on either side of a
case.”

“
Well then, let’s get to
work,” Patterson said. “Start by telling me everything that
happened that night. Take it slowly, try to remember every word
spoken, every move made. Don’t leave out anything, no matter how
seemingly insignificant. I’ll take notes, but you might want to
write everything down yourself. It helps jog the memory.” He looked
at Granny and Kip. “You two will have to take a walk.”

“
No,” I told him. “They
stay.”

“
The privilege, Jake. We
lose it if—”

“
I know, I know, and I
don’t care. They stay.”

So I rehashed it, everything I could
remember. Jo Jo Baroso’s pleas for me not to come to the barn, my
trotting out there anyway like a good little puppy.

“
Women!” Granny huffed.
“Following a woman will get you in Dutch every time.”

I told Patterson of Jo Jo’s puffy eyes and
bruised face, and then Cimarron dropping in. “At first, we sparred,
mostly. He slung me into the walls a few times to see whether my
head was harder than his lumber. Then he dropped me into a pile of
horseshit. Once he chased Kip out, it was just the two of us.”

“
And Ms. Baroso,” H.T.
reminded me.

“
Yeah, and Ms. Baroso. At
first she was in the loft, but she came down to join the
fun.”

Patterson turned to my nephew. “And where
did you go, young man?”

“
Out toward the main house,
along a stone path. I was yelling for help, but there wasn’t anyone
around. I came back when I heard the nail gun. It’s so loud, I
thought it was a real gun.”

“
It is,” Patterson said. He
thumbed through some documents the state gave him in pretrial
discovery. “Powered by a .27-caliber charge, it can drive a
carbon-steel nail through solid concrete.”

“
Or a mushy brain,” I
added.

Patterson gave me a raised eyebrow.

“
I wasn’t trying to kill
him,” I said.

Now he arched both eyebrows.

“
Okay, I went there meaning
to do him some serious harm, but after Jo Jo accused me of
assaulting her, I realized she was lying about being beaten by
Cimarron. That took the stuffing out of me. But by then, I didn’t
have a choice. Cimarron wanted to maim me and was doing a pretty
good job. At first, I just wanted to defend myself, so I went into
a Wing Chun defense because Cimarron was bigger than
me.”

“
Just like Bruce Lee did to
Chuck Norris in
Return of the
Dragon
,” Kip added, helpfully.

“
What gets me,” I said, “is
how Jo Jo played me for a fool. I thought her brother was a great
con artist, but you should have seen her. She fooled me, and then
she fooled Cimarron. She had me hating him, and then had him hating
me, and when he hates ...”

I let it drift off, realizing he isn’t
hating anymore.

“
Why would she have done
it?” Patterson asked. “What’s her motive?”

“
I’ve been lying awake
nights on that one. Only thing I can figure out is that she wanted
me dead.”

“
What makes you say
that?”

“
Are you kidding, H.T.? She
set me up so Cimarron would kill me.”

“
But that isn’t what
happened, is it?”

“
No,
I
killed him. So?”

“
So what makes you think
that is not precisely what Ms. Baroso intended?”

CHAPTER 21

ACCURATE LIES

Summer became fall, and the aspen trees
turned their shimmering gold. Football season began, and locals at
a basement sports bar saluted the Broncos’ early success, all the
while bitching about how they would fold in the playoffs.

Trial was set for the first week of
December. Patterson had completed his pretrial discovery and
arranged his documents in color-coded files. Unlike Florida,
Colorado law did not give us the right to take pretrial
depositions, a severe handicap in trying to peck away at a criminal
case. Although we didn’t have a chance to cross-examine their
witnesses before the trial, we knew what they would say on direct
examination. The state gave us their sworn statements and grand
jury testimony, and so far, no one, including Josefina Jovita
Baroso, had a kind word to say about me.

I was in a daze.

I tried to focus on the trial but felt like
I was swimming through Jell-O.

My concentration was off.
My nerves were shot. I consumed too much Grolsch, and when that
left me without a buzz, I switched to Finlandia straight out of the
freezer.
Kippis
,
as they say in Helsinki, which made me think of Eva-Lisa Haavikko,
a good woman who died needlessly, but that, too, is another
story.

Occasionally, I came up with slightly
inebriated ideas for my defense, and I shared them all with H.T.
Patterson. Sometimes, just after Jay Leno didn’t put me to sleep, I
called Patterson with strategy for impeaching Jo Jo’s testimony.
With the two-hour time difference, it was two-thirty a.m. or so in
Miami, and I would awaken H.T. from a sound sleep, but he never
complained.

“
You interrupted a dream,”
he mumbled groggily one early morning.

“
That some day all men will
be brothers?” I inquired.

“
No, that Gwendolyn was
taking me to her bosom.”

“
Gwendolyn, from Jamaica?
Judge Ferguson’s secretary?”

“
One and the same, a woman
of charm and grace, intelligence and beauty, righteousness and
rectitude.”

“
So what’s she doing with
you, Henry Thackery?”

“
She’s not, my felonious
friend. It was, after all, a dream.”

Lawyers hate for clients to call them at
home. There is always an emergency that, in the client’s mind,
cannot wait until morning. By the harsh light of day, the crisis
will be shown to have existed solely in the client’s mind. But H.
T. Patterson tolerated my late-night calls because he was a friend.
And he understood. No, check that. He nearly understood. Until you
are asked to rise in the courtroom and identify yourself as the
defendant, you cannot understand. Send in the clichés, which are
clichés, after all, because they are true: A lawyer is a
mouthpiece, a hired gun; have briefcase, will travel; have mouth,
will argue; another day, another dollar.

But if you’re the defendant, it is
different. It is real, and it is forever. Win, lose, or draw, the
lawyer will walk out of the courthouse and enjoy supper with family
and friends. The day may end for the defendant with the echo of a
steel door clanking shut with absolute finality.

***

A chill bit through the air. It rained and
became colder, and the trees lost their leaves. Snow began to fall.
H. T. Patterson had flown up for a pretrial conference with the
judge, and Granny asked him to stay for Thanksgiving dinner. Granny
cooked a turkey with chestnut stuffing, wild rice with bacon and
brandy, and corn pudding. She baked a pumpkin pie and an apple pie,
there being a scarcity of mangoes and Key limes in the Rocky
Mountains. She prowled through the kitchen of her double-wide, more
cantankerous than usual, grumbling about the altitude as she tried
to bake honey wheat bread.

“
Yeast rises quicker here
than a skeeter draws blood. Ye gods, I’ll never get used to this.
Water boils at a lower temperature, so you got to boil longer,
increase heat for baking, use more liquids but decrease the baking
powder and sweeteners. What a damn fool place.”

The bread turned out to be soggy, and Granny
said to hell with it, we could have eggnog with bourbon if we
wanted. I told her to skip the first half of the recipe.

After the last slice of pumpkin pie, served
hot with vanilla ice cream, and ample quantities of liquid
refreshment, my lawyer and I took a walk. Snow flurries whipped
around our bare heads as we trudged along a muddy trail that would
soon be used for cross-country skiing. In the distance, the
snow-covered peak of Mount Sopris rose high above the valley.

“
Jake, you ever represent
any lawyers?”

“
Sure, a few.” It is a
matter of some pride to be a lawyer’s lawyer.

“
What kind of cases?”
Patterson asked.

“
The usual. Divorce,
disbarment, money laundering.”

“
How were your clients to
work with?”

That made me laugh. “You know lawyers.
Always wanting to be in control. Terrible witnesses, either
arrogant or condescending, and they always talk too much.”

“
All in all, tough
clients?”

“
The worst, H.T. They
confuse their roles. They’re sitting in the second chair, wishing
it’s the first.”

“
I see.”

He studied me through a blur of snowflakes.
A hardy jogger in shorts and a windbreaker chugged by us.

“
I get it, H.T. You want me
to stay out of the way. Hey, don’t worry. I’ll be the perfect
client. I won’t sneer at the prosecutor or wink at the
stenographer. I won’t chew gum in court or toss paper airplanes at
the jury. I’ll write you discreet little notes on my legal pad and
sit quietly while the wheels of justice turn ever so
slowly.”