Lion Plays Rough (4 page)

Chapter 8

At 9:00
am
I called the Oakland DA's office and asked for the prosecutor on Jamil's case. The receptionist put me through to the voice mail of Christopher Fowler. I left a message identifying myself as Jamil's lawyer. A series of photographs documenting a conspiracy between a man named Damon Watson and Detective Eric Campbell had come into my possession, I said. “I'm hoping to give you the courtesy of reviewing this evidence in the privacy of your office rather than having to see it on the evening news,” I said. “Please call me back.”

The phone on my desk rang twenty minutes later. “Mr. Maxwell, this is Kip Fowler.”

“Thanks for returning my call.”

“I'd like to have a look at whatever you've got. How's ten
am
?”

I checked my watch. “That's fine. One thing. I'd like my client to be present.”

There was a pause. I was sure Fowler would object. But he said, “Fine. Better make it eleven, then. Give them time to fish him out.”

At ten forty-five I drove around the lake to the courthouse. I passed my briefcase through the screening device, walked through the metal detector, and took the elevator up to 9. After I told the receptionist who I was, she lifted the phone and spoke into it. A moment later a tall, pencil-thin man with glasses and a silver crew cut appeared and shook my hand. “Mr. Maxwell. Your client hasn't arrived, but he should be here shortly. Why don't we go on back.”

He led me down a hallway past several rows of cubicles into a conference room with a table much too large for the space and a view of the lake. Sesame seeds were scattered across the tabletop, and a trio of dried-out-looking bagels sat on a plastic tray beside a half-excavated carton of cream cheese.

“Do you have an A/V system, or shall we just use the display on my laptop?”

“No money for high-tech conference rooms, I'm afraid. We spend too much prosecuting criminals.”

“That's something we can agree on.”

“If we stopped doing our jobs, where would that leave you? The public defenders are always lecturing me on the folly of the drug war, overly zealous prosecution of petty offenses, that sort of thing, and with some credibility. They're in the same boat we're in. None of us is getting paid by the hour. It's the private defense attorneys who take the system to the bank.”

“That's how I came to be wearing these diamond cufflinks.”

He glanced sharply at my wrists, then a slow smile spread across his face. “Well, you're young yet. But you'll catch on.”

I was opening my laptop at the head of the conference table when the door opened and a woman came in. She was tall, with long, dark hair and pale skin—Japanese Irish, I knew. Her name was Cassidy Akida, and we'd been in law school together.

Fowler introduced her. “We've met,” I said.

“Ms. Akida will be prosecuting you.”

“I thought you were handling this.”

“I'm handling the case against your client. Ms. Akida will be prosecuting you. You've passed the bar, Mr. Maxwell, so you must be aware of Penal Code Section 632.”

Cassidy had a thick bound copy of the California Penal Code under her arm. Opening it, she read aloud,
“
‘Every person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, eavesdrops upon or records the confidential communication, shall be punished by a fine and imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year. Except as proof in an action or prosecution for violation of this section, no evidence obtained as a result of eavesdropping upon or recording a confidential communication in violation of this section shall be admissible in any judicial, administrative, legislative, or other proceeding.
'
”

I listened with the admiration I reserve for audacious acts. She did it well. I'd have preferred she were reading something else, like maybe Cleopatra's final soliloquy. I'd have preferred that she were almost anything but a prosecutor.

“Excellent,” I said. “Maybe a slightly heavier stress on
imprisonment.
The word ‘and' is important. Also of significance is ‘amplifying or recording device.' Ditto ‘eavesdrops.' None of that applies to cameras.”

“Ms. Akida?” Fowler prompted.

She had a case printed out, passages highlighted. Again she read, “
People v. Gibbons
, 215 Cal. App. 3d 1204, First District, 1989. ‘In other contexts, communication has been recognized to include not only oral or written communication but communication by conduct as well. We acknowledge that certain terms used in the privacy act, such as “eavesdropping,” “amplifying device,” and “telephone,” might suggest a narrow definition of communication, synonymous with conversation. However, Penal Code Section 630 expressly states the intent of the Legislature to protect the right of privacy of the people of this state. Consistent with the express declaration of intent and in the absence of any express statutory limitations, we find that “communication” as used in the privacy act is not limited to conversations or oral communications but rather encompasses any communication, regardless of its form, where any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto.
'
”

“You still wish to proceed, Mr. Maxwell?” Fowler asked.

“Sure. That's the case about the guy who secretly filmed the girls having sex with him, right? You want to prosecute me for taking pictures on public land, in the open air, of a cop and a murder suspect? Go ahead. Let's have a jury trial.”

Fowler smiled indulgently. “Now that we've called your attention to the statute, you must realize that no illegally obtained evidence can be used in court on your client's behalf.”

“California's wiretapping statutes predate Proposition Eight, which we both know makes any evidence not excluded by the federal constitution or California's hearsay rules admissible. You guys are the ones who usually catch the benefit of that, but this time it works in my favor. The pictures come in.”

His face tightened. “We'll see. In any case, they'll come in against you, too.” He nodded to Cassidy.

“Prosecuting criminal defense attorneys for blowing the whistle on the Oakland Police Department should make for great press. I'll have those cufflinks before you know it.”

It was Cassidy who spoke. “If you still have a law license, that is.”

If I'd broken the law, I would subject myself to discipline by the bar and the possible loss or suspension of my license. But I was certain that in this case the law
and
the ethical regulations were on my side.

I began packing up. “You've played this one wrong, Kip. You can catch the pictures showing the meeting between Detective Campbell and Damon Watson on the news. You can see along with the rest of the world what a conspiracy to frame an innocent man for murder looks like.”

I slammed shut my laptop. Fowler made soothing motions. Cassidy was smirking.

A knock on the door. Fowler answered it. Three deputies stood in the hallway with a man in orange between them. A big, slouching guy with fuzzy cornrows and a potbelly. His hands and feet were chained to his waist.

“Finally,” I said. “I'd like a moment alone with my client.”

Fowler glanced questioningly at the lead deputy, a husky man with a moustache. “No can do,” the deputy said. “Not here. This is an unsecured area. You want to go down to the holding cell and meet him in an interview room we can arrange that. Up here, the escort will remain with the prisoner.”

The man, Jamil, was frowning at me. “What do you mean, your client?”

Jamil's voice over the phone had been brash, but now it was high and whining, with a faint lisp.

I turned to Fowler with a sickening plunge. “Take this man back downstairs and bring up Jamil Robinson.”

One of the deputies reached down and checked the prisoner's jail bracelet. “Jamil Robinson.” He read off the number and looked up at me.

Jamil looked from one deputy to the other. “You told me I was going to meet my lawyer,” he protested querulously.
“This guy ain't her. I ain't talking to some lawyer you picked out.”

“You hired me,” I said. “We spoke on the phone. Remember? Your sister visited my office.”

“My sister?” he said, his voice rising with indignation. “My sister? Man, my sister dead.”

There was no blood left in my face. My mind was occupied with visualizing the path I'd taken to get here, the long walk I would have to retrace before I was out of this place and alone with my shame.

“Who's your lawyer?” Fowler asked.

“Nikki, man. Nikki Matson.”

Not the name I'd wanted to hear. Amid the Bay Area criminal defense community, there was no lawyer more feared for savagery and vindictiveness.

Fowler turned to me
.
“You see this man is represented.” To the deputies he said, “Take him back to Santa Rita.
”
To Cassidy, “Get Ms. Matson on the phone.” To me, “You can bet Nikki will have your bar card.”

“Come on, Kip,” I said when the deputies and Jamil Robinson— t
he real Jamil Robinson—had gone out of the room. “I was set up. Someone claiming to be Jamil Robinson called my office, and a woman claiming to be his sister paid me a visit. Obviously neither of these people was who they claimed.”

Fowler seemed unable to decide whether to believe me. Cassidy looked skeptical. “You took the case without ever meeting the client,” Fowler said.

“I was set up,” I repeated. “Plain and simple.”

They were unlikely to see it that way, and neither was Nikki. I could only hope that she'd be interested enough by what was in the pictures to overlook my apparent attempt to poach her client.

Cassidy stepped out into the hall with her phone. Fowler and I didn't say anything. We were in the soup, and it was my fault. A moment later Cassidy reappeared and said, “Nikki Matson is on her way. She's pissed.”

Fowler's face puckered. “You're not going anywhere,” he told me, though I hadn't moved. “I'm sure as hell not going to answer for dragging Nikki's client out of jail and over here without his lawyer present. Jesus,” he said, and he grabbed a chair and threw himself down in it, probably realizing that his case was devolving into a fiasco.

I went to the head of the conference table and set up my laptop again. Whoever had hired me had lied outrageously, but the pictures were real. Jamil had been framed, and my employers wanted the world to know about it.

What I was about to do was worth ten grand to someone. Later, the question would be to whom and why. Now, all I cared about was salvaging what was left of my career.

Fowler was paged and went out. I heard Nikki as soon as she was through the secured entrance. “Where is he?” she stormed in her deep smoker's voice. Her anger preceded her, rattling the plaster. “What did you do, set him up with a dummy lawyer and put a wire on him? Where have you hidden him? Probably in a cell with a snitch, now that your plan has failed. Why even bother with a snitch? Take it from me, Kip. It's much simpler just to write out a statement and forge his signature. It's more direct and there are fewer witnesses to bite you in the ass.”

They came through the door. Fowler's face was flushed and his lips were thin with anger. “Ha!” Nikki pointed a long purple fingernail at me. “You're dead. Boy, you are
so
dead. Nobody fucks with my clients. Did you think you could snatch him away from me? Is that what you were planning? Is that how this latest crop of attorneys does business? Well, it's the last business you'll find in this town. My clients are loyal. They don't jump ship.”

She was a huge woman, just under six feet and well over three hundred pounds, wearing a steel-gray suit and coming to a halt like a battleship docking. Instantly she focused on me, glaring malevolently.

“I was set up,” I told her. She made a noise of disgust.

“Get out of here. Go on home,” she said. She had her briefcase open and was taking papers out. It appeared, amazingly, that she already had a motion drawn up, though it had not been twenty minutes since Cassidy called her. She slid a copy toward Fowler. “This is being filed as we speak. Consider yourself served. That's a motion for sanctions and for a protective order. I'm going to ask that the judge admonish you, fine you, and hold you in contempt for willfully violating Mr. Robinson's Sixth Amendment rights by initiating contact out of my presence.”

Fowler had a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He fingered the motion, then pushed it aside. “Mr. Maxwell represented himself to me as Mr. Robinson's attorney. He requested this meeting and demanded that Mr. Robinson be present. He claimed to have evidence of a conspiracy between Detective Eric Campbell and Damon Watson to frame your client for murder. And now you know everything I know about this mess.”

“If that's the case, then these pictures are potentially exculpatory evidence. I demand that you turn them over to me at once.” Nikki pounded the table, looking at Fowler with her jaw set and amusement in her eyes.

“I would be happy to, but they aren't yet in my possession. Mr. Maxwell has been trying to decide whether to show the pictures to us and expose himself to prosecution under Section 632, or crawl back under whatever rock he crawled out from.”

“Oh, nonsense. You think the pictures will disappear if you prosecute someone for making them? Only if it's not as bad as you think. Otherwise it's a murder case, not an eavesdropping case. And you
must
think it's bad, or we wouldn't be here.”

“Murder and conspiracy,” I said.

She ignored me. They all did.

“Let's see them,” Fowler said, turning to me. “Time to put the cards on the table.”