The Good Lawyer: A Novel (17 page)
Read The Good Lawyer: A Novel Online
Authors: Thomas Benigno
Raines’ written report would be typed and on my desk the next morning. I was more than pleased with his handling of the interviews. Going to the bathroom to snoop around and eyeball the apartment I thought was especially clever. Opening the medicine cabinet was downright unscrupulous, but no less than any good detective would have done investigating a crime. Look first. Explain later.
S
heila was in the library eating something that looked Chinese out of a Tupperware container. I filled her in on the investigation results.
She cued right in on the two beds in the only bedroom of the Chavez apartment, and suggested we investigate Sandra’s boyfriend and also the codefendant in her robbery case. Maybe one or both had a record of sex crimes. If so, Sandra Chavez would be better advised to stick to playing Lotto, because she won’t be making any money on this case.
As an afterthought Sheila mentioned that Guevara had called her first thing that morning expressing concerns about my availability to diligently work on his defense. He had seen my name in the papers as attorney for Oscar Jefferson.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that you are not overworked and probably would not be keeping the Jefferson case anyway.”
“Well thanks, and no thanks.”
“Nick, your fragile ego notwithstanding, you are not keeping the Jefferson case if he gets charged with murder. That is final. We’re a non-profit organization for Christ’s sake. Let the court appoint counsel. Let the state foot the bill.”
It was unlike Sheila to shun a case because of publicity or politics. And since when had Sheila cared who paid for what. It was always the client’s best interests that mattered to her. Then it occurred to me: this was one client she wanted no part of.
“What if he’s innocent?” I asked. “You would let an innocent man roll the dice with the barrel pick of appointed counsel? If we had capital punishment, you’d be signing his death warrant.”
Sheila bit her fork, and I could tell she was choosing her words carefully. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll personally ask the Administrative Judge to see to it that that Spiderman rapist of yours gets an effective court appointed attorney.” Her manner lightened. “And what makes you think he might be innocent?”
“A lot of things. But most of all the polygraph results I expect to get at any moment.”
Sheila looked amused. She could accept my belief in my client’s innocence, but with less than three years experience I had no business taking a case that generated such widespread publicity. And a double murder besides.
Sheila’s secretary, Louisa yelled into the conference room. Arthur Cantwell was on the phone. Sheila and I looked at one another.
I bolted from the room.
“Mr. Oscar Jefferson is totally and completely innocent of any rapes or murders,” Cantwell blurted as I got on the line.
“Arthur, I love you!” I said. “But are you sure?”
“I’ve never been so sure. I tested him for an hour and a half. No way he beat my machine. He seems like a decent guy, Nick. Not too bright. But a decent human being. I hope this helps.”
“Thank you, Arthur.”
I was both relieved and afraid—relieved that I had gotten the answer I wanted, afraid all the more for my innocent client. I ran back to the library. “The son-of-a-bitch is innocent!”
Sheila smiled. “Maybe you can convince the prosecutor to hold off on any further indictments. You might want to consent to the blood and hair sample testing.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I do get paid to review your cases after arraignment, remember.”
“Nick! Telephone!” It was Louisa again.
“Take a message please!” I was desperate for Sheila’s input.
Louisa yelled back. “It’s Cantwell again!”
I ran to the phone. “Yes, Arthur.”
“You know Nick, despite the
in camera
order, it’s hard to keep secret a polygraph test at Rikers Island, especially when I have to take my machine through four checkpoints before I even get to the prisoner.”
“So Corrections knows. What’s the difference? He passed.”
“Yeah, but I don’t usually tell the defendant the results either way, particularly if he’s imprisoned. This way no cop, detective or snitch in corrections can figure them out. Since I don’t tell if someone fails, I don’t tell if they pass either. In this case though your excitement, the publicity, and Jefferson being nothing what I suspected…”
“Arthur, I have no problem with you telling him.”
“But I think he’s in danger.”
“From whom?”
“The guards. I don’t have to tell you that they can easily get him alone, unguarded and unseen. It’s my business to read people. And these guys scared the shit out of me.”
K
renwinkle’s clerk said he’d left for the day. I asked him to transfer me to Arnold Benton’s chambers. I neither seen nor spoken to Benton since the Guevara arraignment. He picked up the phone before I even heard the ring.
I explained Cantwell’s concerns without revealing the test results. He suggested I order a suicide watch as the quickest and easiest way to keep Jefferson segregated from the rest of the inmate population. He’d make the call right away. I thanked him, hung up, and called Vinny Repolla. He’d owe me and big-time on this one.
He was out in the field. I left him an urgent message to call me.
At 2 P.M. I ran to Supreme for a sentencing. Repolla still hadn’t called. I was crazed with anticipation over telling him the news, and fully expected it to land on the front page of every edition of
Newsday
the next morning. When I hadn’t heard from him by 5 P.M., I left him another message and headed home.
After dinner I called him a third time then hung up in a huff. I gazed in frustration out the rear kitchen window. The sun was hovering low in the sky like a ball of orange flame, half under the horizon. Gray and blue clouds poured from it like pretty poison. I jerked as the phone rang.
It was Vinny.
“Where the hell have you been? I beeped you three or four times.”
“Sorry, Nick. I was at the mayor’s office—another stab at city corruption. Seems half the waterfront leases in all five boroughs are connected to mob run corporations.”
I thought of Uncle Rocco. “Vinny, Oscar Jefferson—”
“I heard. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? He passed with flying colors!”
“Nick…Jefferson was found dead about two hours ago. The AP wire says he removed the window bars from the fourth floor lavatory at Rikers then jumped. Did you know he was on a suicide watch?”
I froze, stupefied, as if my brain were no longer connected to my body, the receiver in my hand, the receiver at my waist. I could hear Repolla faintly calling my name as I stared blankly at the flowery kitchen wallpaper.
Then, with animal ferocity I smashed the receiver down until the base of the phone went crashing to the floor—pieces of plastic, wire, and metal everywhere.
A
lmost all of Complex C turned out for the funeral service of Brenda’s daughter. Sheila and Peter came together in one car. I drove alone in my Malibu.
The morning papers headlined Jefferson’s death. All but
Newsday
called it a suicide. Under the headline “
But He Passed A Lie Detector
,” Repolla noted the “coincidental” lack of supervision that permitted such a tragedy in a case sorely lacking in evidence, anticipating, with appropriate sarcasm, nothing short of a full investigation into the incident and a continued search for the real Spiderman rapist-killer.
Before I’d left for the funeral I had drafted a consent-order (more in the language of a demand) to have samples of Jefferson’s blood and hair preserved for testing.
I wanted Jefferson exonerated, post mortem or not, even more than I wanted the real killer found. I was on my way to a child’s funeral, yet all I could think about was the death of an accused rapist and murderer who’d been
my
ultimate responsibility from the moment I’d taken on his representation, however warped my reason for doing so. With no family or friends left behind, I was the only voice he had left—his last chance to be heard.
* * *
Legal Aid’s lawyers, secretaries and clerks sat in the middle of the church. Brenda’s family and friends, none of whom I knew or recognized, sat in the first three rows. They numbered about forty. Several empty wooden pews separated the two groups, allowing those Brenda worked with to give deference to those truly close to the child, who shared a deeper more intimate grief.
Thoughts of Oscar Jefferson left me the moment I saw the open casket at the foot of the altar. Jasmine rested there like a pristine offering, between a huge golden crucifix candelabra and a cherrywood pulpit, and I wondered if anyone realized that this was the first day of spring.
The reverend’s voice echoed harmoniously off the walls and wood beam cathedral ceiling. It was a voice that spoke little of loss and sorrow, and more of joy and celebration. He was a large man and wore a purple robe that hung down to his knees in front and back. He was dark black, and his bright eyes and beaming smile flashed like a beacon over his portly frame. At first I thought this Bible-Belt preacher would phony up the solemn occasion with blazing rhetoric and preachy storytelling. But when he called Brenda by name, and spoke of the suffering of both mother and daughter, it was clear he had been there to witness and comfort in those last awful moments.
Toward the end he walked over to Brenda and held out his outstretched arms. Brenda was sitting low in her pew and crying into a lace handkerchief while an older woman in a blue bonnet hat held her.
But upon gripping the reverend’s hands Brenda stood up as if mesmerized, and her crying stopped.
When their prayer concluded, the reverend told Brenda and all those in attendance that her beautiful daughter was with God in a place more wonderful than any of us could imagine. Then he released Brenda’s hands, and she sat back down with amazing grace and composure.
Those in the first three rows—family and friends—formed a single line and passed the coffin, stopping for a prayer, a touch, a final kiss.
Then those of us at Legal Aid who weren’t uncomfortable with the religious custom of the open casket, drifted up. The sound of crying got louder the closer I got to the altar and the coffin.
The last time I’d seen Jasmine she was in pigtails and smiling a thank you for two Hershey kisses I put in her hands. My eyes got watery as I knelt on a red cushion beside the casket.
Jasmine’s head was wrapped in a pure white kerchief—her hair lost to intensive chemotherapy. She wore a white satin dress, her ankles and neck covered with ruffles and creamy lace. On her feet were shiny white shoes with gold buckles. I marveled at how the sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows and glinted off those buckles, sending beams of light bouncing in all directions.
I said a Hail Mary to myself, made the sign of the cross, then looked at Jasmine’s face and returned to my seat, imagining wonderfully, foolishly, that I had kissed her cheek and brought her back to sweet life.
When everyone had settled back in their pews, two deacons rolled the coffin directly in front of Brenda for one last parting moment between mother and child.
As the coffin’s casters came to a stop, Brenda let go an agonizing wail.
Flailing her hands and arms in the air, still holding the handkerchief, stomping her feet on the church floor, she screamed and cried, “Why!”, until collapsing into the arms of the woman seated next to her.
Friends and family surrounded her, as the rest of us sat there, helpless witnesses, agape in stunned silence.
I had never felt so close to someone else’s pain and sorrow. I prayed that I would never have to feel that way again.
I envisioned the young Puerto Rican girl from my December trial dead on the Bronx sidewalk, her parents helpless to stop her rage and despair. I thought too of Oscar Jefferson, and felt not only a peculiar sadness, but more—the dangerous mix of anger and frustration.
Brenda and Jasmine had taught me something I should have known instinctively—that it is the worst thing, the absolutely very worst thing, to lose your child to suffering and death.
Having never been to a child’s funeral I thought my despondency would disappear upon my return to the case files that littered my desk. But no sooner did I pick up one, then another, and my workday pace resumed. And I was lost again, in a momentum that would take me everywhere, and nowhere.
I
dialed Father Kerres’ number. A few weeks had passed since he’d promised to stop-by the office on his way to Yankee Stadium.
He reluctantly agreed to meet me at 1 P.M. outside the stadium ticket office.
It was a warm day for March, by New York standards, and I walked in the sunlight to help counter the cool Grand Concourse winds.