The Good Lawyer: A Novel
Read The Good Lawyer: A Novel Online
Authors: Thomas Benigno
This book is a work of fiction. Places, events, and situations in this story are purely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 Thomas Benigno
All rights reserved.
Published by Landview Books
ISBN: 1463604815
ISBN 13: 9781463604813
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62111-313-3
For Angie
“long after…”
“If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”
Charles Dickens
This novel is inspired by a true story.
Contents
I have much to be grateful for and many to be grateful to. This is a first novel. In many respects it is a product of all who have influenced me, good and bad. It is sometimes autobiographical, but if you ask me in person, I will seldom admit it. I have a beautiful mother, like Nick Mannino. To no one more do I owe the sense of decency that guides me, though precariously at times, and for better or worse through this grand scheme of life. Also, there would be no lawyer in me if not for the encouragement (urging) of my stepfather (father), John Benigno (d.1976). I wish I patiently appreciated him more back when. To my children, who drive me crazy from time to time, and I them for sure (does it surprise anyone that one who works on a book for many years is somewhat out of the norm)—you are my pure prizes: intelligent, tough, and soft of heart. Thanks for putting up with me. I love you madly and deeply.
To James Gurrieri, for a lifetime of friendship, and encouragement and support. To my old friend, Gil Clancy, I will always miss you. To my buddy, Ron Ross, for his constant encouragement. To the Benigno and Vasquez families, one and all. To my rediscovered Castagna Family in and around Syracuse, New York. How wonderful to have found you. Your kindness and love have been a cleansing. To the true characters that helped mold the pages of this book and enhance the story line with their integrity and high ideals: the Honorable Alice Schlesinger, the Honorable Joel Blumenfeld; Barry Scheck, All the attorneys of Complex C (1979-1984). To my accountant and good buddy, Al Eigen (the first to read and rave); to my editors Mike Shain and Jeff Kellogg. The novel would read nothing like it does if not for your skill and support. For the affection and encouragement of all my family, friends and clients. You know who you are - my heartfelt thanks.
And to my wife, Angie, my partner through every page and the thousands lost in countless drafts. You made this possible through your patience, devotion and love. This novel you well know is from a heart—that was and will be—always yours.
Long Island, New York
December 16, 2011
In the end it was her virginity that would do her in.
Late afternoon, December 24, 1981.
A verdict was reached a mere thirty minutes after deliberations had begun. Were Christmas not less than a day away I would have figured it for a courthouse record.
Just two and a half years out of law school, this was my seventh trial and, I was hoping, my seventh victory. As I waited in the lingering quiet of the courtroom a virulent chill penetrated the bleak walnut paneled walls, and my eyes locked on the man sitting next to me. Like the bust of a philistine, head held high, his smug expression never wavered, even when he refused probation and sixty days in jail to face trial and a mandatory eight and a third years in state prison. His folded hands rested firmly on the defense table not far from mine. Our flesh tones nearly identical, I was reminded, once again, that we were both Italian American.
Angelo Bonagura made a dashing figure in his brown disco suit and white lapel shirt as he picked up Dina Rios outside a party in the Pelham section of the Bronx. A local boy, his Travolta look was hampered only by a thick mustache that made him look older than his twenty-one years. His ride—a shiny new Trans Am. Dina had just turned eighteen. She accepted this stranger’s offer to take her home.
When he started to drink in sloppy gulps from a pint bottle of rye she asked him to pull over. He ignored her and pulled behind a trailer in the deserted parking lot of an A&P. After popping down the front passenger bucket seat, he turned Dina on her stomach, yanked down her jeans, and raped her.
When she took the stand to testify I reassessed the jury I had carefully selected with the limited peremptory challenges at my disposal. Three were Italian-American. One, a heavyset elderly woman with a cheerful smile and thin shadow of a mustache, couldn’t stop smiling at me while she and the other jurors filed in.
As the panel of four women and eight men struggled to get comfortable in their seats, the assistant District Attorney, his head rigid, eyes starring straight ahead, ignored their entrance. This was his third felony trial. The fingers of his right hand unmasked his nervousness as they fiddled with an evidence bag containing the victim’s panties.
Let’s Party
was emblazoned in silver script across the backside. An adjacent manila folder contained the police reports with the entry: “the complainant suffered no discernible physical injuries.” There were no cuts, no bruises, and no blood, though Dina Rios testified that she was a virgin when she was raped. She failed to add that she had lost her cherry years earlier in a car accident. That she refused to tell her parents or report the rape to the police for over a week didn’t further her cause.
Her parents, natives of Puerto Rico, sat vigilantly behind the railed balustrade in the second row of the courtroom, clutching their daughter seated between them. Years of working in the hot sun were scalded into every deep line on her father’s chiseled complexion. Her mother’s skin was a creamy white. At forty-five years, she was even more beautiful than her daughter, and the daughter was quite beautiful. When the judge addressed the jury I peeked at the young girl’s anxious eyes one last time.
The foreman, a tall man in his fifties, with cropped gray hair and a forehead gleaming with perspiration, loudly read the verdict: “On all counts…not guilty.”
The defendant lunged out of his chair, hands high in victory. The judge promptly ordered him to be seated. Muffled sobs emanated from the mother and daughter. I dared not look back, and quickly moved to have the record sealed.
The clerk, a Bronx courthouse elder seated at a desk beside a wall of dingy oversized casement windows, stamped the court papers with callous ease. I reflexively stiffened as my guilty client hugged me. When he let go my entire body shuddered as the young girl burst forth with an agonizing wail: “He raped me! Rot in hell! Rot in hell you bastard!” She was writhing on the courtroom floor, punching and kicking the dingy parquet wildly. The jury stood agape as she then jumped up, hurdled the balustrade, and raced past me.
I grabbed my client while his mother hunkered nearby, crying and hiding her face in her hands. I jostled them both toward the courtroom doors until they slammed into me and the mother’s thick heel tore into my shoe. I threw my head back and shut my eyes as a stabbing pain coursed through me. But Dina Rios had already scaled the clerk’s hardwood desk and without so much as a momentary pause, a glimmer of consideration, jerked open the nearest casement window and leapt into a blistering snowfall three stories high.
She landed head first on the hood of a parked New York City police car. When her broken body finally lay still, she was face up on the sidewalk, arms outstretched, legs straight—a perverse crucifix image of suffering and forgiveness in a blanket of white and red.
Outside the courthouse, at the bottom of the sloping stone steps that lead from the Supreme Court doors, my client was full of thanks and praise. I weakly shook his hand. His mother kissed me, said something in Italian I didn’t understand then caressed my face with a small clammy hand. Snowflakes settled on my shoulders and hair. The murmuring of a gathering crowd and the squawking of several police car radios could be heard a half block away as an ambulance screeched past us splattering the slush on 161st Street in all directions.