Lawyers In Love: In His Own Defense (2 page)
“When do we go to trial?” he asked, resigned to his fate.
Hank glanced at the card in front of the fat Garcia folder he held. “Jury selection’s next Friday.”
“Okay.” Tony wanted to strangle Hank, but he restrained himself. After all, it made no sense to kill the messenger. “Leave the folder here. I’ll spend some time getting to know and love our Manny. Has anyone from the press been sniffing around here about this case?”
“No more than usual. Garcia’s one of the journalists’ favorite folks to smear.”
Tony didn’t doubt that. A more unsavory client he would have to look under rocks to find. “They’re going to love Ms. Granger for going after him on a case she can’t possibly win,” he muttered, not anxious to dwell on what the reporters would say about him when he went to court as Garcia’s defense counsel.
“Do you care?”
“Of course I care. I’m damn good at defending criminal cases, but I’d just as soon not be painted black because some starry-eyed kid just out of law school wants to convict Garcia for everything he’s ever done.”
Tony lifted the folder, then slammed it back on his desk. “Hell, these charges are so flimsy the state attorney’s office was lucky to get an indictment.”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I did my best to get the charges dropped, but the judge didn’t buy my arguments.” Hank sounded as though he expected Tony to take a swing at him. “I can go back, try again to set up a plea bargain.”
“It’s not your fault.” The last thing Tony wanted was to intimidate his young associate. “Just bad luck Tom had left and I hadn’t arrived when Garcia got himself arrested. Don’t worry about it. If this Ms. Granger won’t bend, she’ll just have to learn how it feels to lose. I’ll spend the weekend working on the case.”
There went Tony’s plans, but they really hadn’t mattered all that much. He’d call Gretchen and beg off before she left
Miami
. Just as well. His latest main squeeze was getting too possessive.
He had a new job, a new home. It was high time for him to find new female companionship. He’d never noticed a shortage of sleek, sexy brunettes with legs that wouldn’t stop and tits that made every man stop and look at least twice. Not in
Miami
, and not here, either.
Easy come, easy go, had been Tony’s philosophy about women for longer than he could remember. If his cock got too unruly, he could always take up one of his new neighbors on her standing invitation for a no-strings-attached fuckfest.
“Want me to stay and help?”
Tony frowned. In Hank’s position, he wouldn’t have asked. He’d have dug right in, anxious to accumulate billable hours while he learned the ropes at some partner’s elbow.
He almost told the kid to go on and enjoy his weekend, then changed his mind. “Yeah. See if you can find some precedents, cases where a crime was committed on a defendant’s property ostensibly without his knowledge.”
That search, if Hank was diligent, could result in thousands of dollars rolling merrily onto Garcia’s bill. Tony hadn’t made partner at the relatively tender age of thirty-four by neglecting to consider the firm’s profits.
“Get busy. I’ll expect to find at least a dozen case references on my desk by Monday morning.” He grinned at Hank’s retreating back.
Settling into his dark green leather desk chair, Tony pushed thoughts of fun and games to the back of his mind. He called Gretchen and canceled their plans, then got busy learning all about his new client.
He read the police report again. He’d been right the first time. Nothing in it linked Garcia to the cocaine found in his warehouse except in the most circumstantial way. Just one witness, and he apparently hadn’t seen Manny handling the drug.
The other information in the folder made him frown. Manny might not have had anything to do with the particular bag of coke that had gotten him arrested this time, but Tony’s doubts about even that grew exponentially as he flipped through the file. Tom Ellis had defended Manny Garcia for a colorful variety of crimes that spanned two decades.
Sweet Jesus, but he didn’t want this kind of case to set the tone for his practice in
Tampa
. Garcia might be innocent of the crime for which he was going to trial, but he was far from being the wrongly-accused kind of client who made Tony feel good he had chosen criminal defense as his specialty.
Damn Manny Garcia, damn State Attorney Harper Wells and his political ambitions, and damn the do-good, wet-behind-the-ears woman who apparently thought she was going to make her career by taking a shaky case like this before a jury.
For good measure Tony damned himself, because since making partner in the firm he’d suddenly acquired a need for the public to see him as a white knight. And he was fairly certain that after Manny’s trial the press would be painting him as a skillful shyster willing to get anybody off on any charge, as long as they had the means to pay for his services.
Garcia had occupied his mind too long. He had to get away for a while.
Standing, Tony tossed the file onto the desk and shrugged into the jacket of his khaki suit. As he waited for the elevator to take him to the private level of the parking garage that took up the first four floors of the building, he could hardly wait to strip out of his professional clothes.
He anticipated the run he would take down the man-made beach outside the condo on
Tampa
wasn’t
Miami
, but there was something sensual about the heat and humidity here, something that struck a chord from long ago. Tony liked living on the water’s edge, within walking distance of his office, less than twenty miles from where he was born.
He liked the fact that home now was a far cry from the series of migrant camps on farms east of town where he’d spent most of the first ten years of his life, or the modest foster homes where he’d lived for the next eight.
After graduating from high school, he hadn’t been able to escape to
Gainesville
fast enough. And he’d jumped at the chance of transferring to the firm’s
Miami
office two years after coming back here, law degree in hand.
Now, he’d come full circle. Back to
Tampa
, successful beyond his wildest adolescent dreams. Tony was home, this time to stay.
* * * * *
When Tony got to his condo, he stripped down to skin, stretched, put on some faded shorts, and headed for the beach.
He ran. An easy jog at first, then harder until the hot sand burned his feet and the calm salt air made his lungs burn. Still the idea of defending Manny Garcia stuck in his throat. He jogged by the dock, thought about taking out his boat, but changed his mind. Breathing hard now, he headed home, anticipating a warm shower and a cold brew.
Later Tony stood on the balcony outside his bedroom and watched the lights play on the water, reflecting reds, golds and greens from buildings on nearby
Tiny bubbles tickled his throat as they burst, reminding him of occasions not too many years ago when he’d scrounged for change to buy a can of whatever had been on sale at the corner store. Many times he’d fallen short and done without even one cold brew, much less the cases of designer lager the liquor store had delivered along with booze to stock his bar.
He hadn’t liked not having things. Not at all. Tony would never be poor again if he could help it.
Suddenly he felt guilty for not wanting to defend Manny Garcia. After all, clients like Manny, no matter how despicable, paid and paid well for the services that let Tony enjoy his German beer, his Ferrari, and his waterfront condo. Not to mention
Miss Trial
and the portfolio of blue-chip investments that should keep him forever free from the threat of losing it all.
Tony was a defender, a good one. He reminded himself he truly believed that, guilty as sin or not, every defendant deserved a good defense. The best that money could buy.
Even Manny Garcia.
Chapter Two
Tony tried to keep that thought firmly in mind the following week while he prepared Manny Garcia’s defense, and on Friday when he and Hank went into circuit court to pick a jury.
Every prosecutor should look like her.
Never before had Tony let a thought like that intrude on the crucial task of finding jurors favorably disposed to setting his client free. He couldn’t imagine why his mind wandered now. Kristine Granger looked young, even more conventional than was common for a prosecutor. From the occasional dirty looks she threw his client’s way, he surmised she thought him no better than the palmetto bugs that invaded even the cleanest of
She questioned each prospective juror as though she thought the fate of the world rested on her choosing a jury that would convict Garcia. A sure sign of youth and inexperience. Tony tried to remember how long he’d been at it before realizing he could tell more from observing jurors’ facial expressions than he could by pummeling them with questions.
Certain he already had seated enough sympathetic jurors to ensure his client’s acquittal, he indulged his curiosity and focused his attention on his opponent. Kristine Granger fascinated him, and Tony had no idea why. On the surface, she was not anything he usually looked for in a woman.
She was about five-six. Slender. Pretty. Sexy in an innocent sort of way, even though the drab blue suit she wore would have looked prissy on a nun. Tony scrutinized her from the top of her shining blonde chignon to the scuffed soles of low-heeled navy pumps. Gorgeous deep blue eyes. Good body, curved in all the right proportions, in all the right places. Great legs.
Legs he’d love to feel wrapped around his hips while he pounded his cock into her warm, wet cunt. He got hard, visualizing them going at it on the scarred oak table after he’d swept away the papers strewn in front of him.
He listened, not to the questions she was asking the woman in the jury box, but to the soft, melodious tone of her voice—a soothing sound with none of the strident overtones he’d found indigenous to the species,
prosecutor
.
Mentally erasing the overriding odors he figured had built up in the courtroom over decades of trials and pleadings, Tony tried to discern her scent. He couldn’t. He repressed the urge to get up and move closer, satisfied himself for the moment by imagining she’d smell as sweet as those waxy-looking white flowers that used to bloom in spring outside one of the foster homes where he had lived as a teenager.
She looked soft—as soft as her tone of voice—quite the opposite from the earnest nature of her words. Satiny. Smooth. Touchable in a way the showcase women he favored never were. Yet he imagined she’d be able to match him word for word in conversations that went deeper than gossip and the merits of one wine over another.
Damn it, what had come over him? He willed his untimely erection to subside before he had to stand and question another prospective juror.
“Mr. Landry?”
Tony glanced at the judge, then nodded toward Hank. “Mr. Ehlers will interview this prospective juror, your honor.”
Hank got the elderly man dismissed for cause. In spite of Kristine Granger and the way she distracted him, Tony took over from Hank and interviewed the next prospect on the list, a young Hispanic dockworker who gave him a good feeling. They had their jury.
The fact Ms. Granger had used two of her peremptory challenges to dismiss jurors he himself would have eliminated should have made him chuckle. All it made him do, though, was obsess about this young woman who should not attract him but did.
He couldn’t get her out of his mind. At the boat dock the following day, Kristine Granger kept popping into his head. None of the attractive and attentive young women who flirted and offered to help him swab down
Miss Trial
managed to banish the very conventional-looking young prosecutor from his mind.
And that night when he lay in bed alone and resorted to self-gratification, it was Kristine’s small hands he imagined stroking his aching cock…her soft, pink lips surrounding its head. Her sharp-speaking little tongue licking a drop of lubrication from his slit and begging him to fuck her.
He’d sample every inch of her hot little body, make her come so hard she’d scream. Drizzle honey over her pussy and lick it off drop by drop. Then he’d sink his cock in her hot, sweet cunt, deep and hard. He’d pound into her over and over until he exploded.
Just thinking about fucking her was making the pressure build… “Oh, shit,” he muttered as he grabbed for a handful of tissues just in time to catch his ejaculate and avoid having to change the bed.
Damn it, he didn’t obsess about women. Ever. And coming was coming, whether by his own hand or with a partner. So why was it, Tony wondered on Monday while he showered and got ready to go to court, that he felt cheated for having fucked Ms. Granger only in his mind?