The Good Lawyer: A Novel (5 page)

Chapter 6

E
leanor Wellington Vernou came from a long line of filthy rich southern aristocrats: her father a direct descendant of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard who fled France in 1815, only to hide in a thinly settled region outside Atlanta, his coffers stuffed with the fallen empire’s fortunes; her mother, a direct descendant of the very General Wellington who led the British army to the crushing defeat of those Imperial troops at Waterloo.

We met on May 11, 1979, at a fifties dance in lower Manhattan’s Cardozo Law School, and danced to Mancini’s
Moon River
.

She was about to graduate NYU law and had been offered, but had yet to accept, a position as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, one of the city’s top career appointments in criminal law. My heart jumped at the prospect of her staying in New York after graduation then dropped, along with my stomach, as I realized come June, I might never see her again.

We said goodbye that night on a cold and gusty corner of Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. Eleanor hailed a cab, wrote her number on my palm then jumped in. We met once again before graduation—for dinner on Long Island. She drove out to meet me. Afterward we got in my Malibu, and headed to Jones Beach, where we strolled along the shoreline and talked for hours.

Like starry eyed children, we cataloged our hopes and dreams to one another—young magnanimous fools.

At one point I caught her looking at me intensely. The moonlight on her hair traced a shadow across her mouth and neck. The moment was perfect for a kiss, a first kiss. I moved my lips closer to hers.

Her hand gently covered my mouth. “We can’t, Nick. I’m engaged.”

I felt as if I’d been punched in the chest. She grabbed my hand, patted it then pulled me close.

We hugged.

An invisible ship’s horn cut through the night sky.

I have no idea how long we stood there. All I remember is we barely spoke from stepping off the beach to parting back at the restaurant.

In June we graduated law school, Eleanor from N.Y.U., and I from Cardozo. She left for Georgia the next day. I went home to Long Island.

We didn’t see each other again until late August, in that summer of ’79, when over her parents’ protestations she accepted the position of Assistant District Attorney in lower Manhattan.

Law School behind me, my best friend Joey, the fireworks king of Marine Park, basted me with a thousand dollar graduation gift. Having been hired in May by Legal Aid, the only wrinkle—and prerequisite to my continued employment—was passing, as the personnel director’s letter put it, “that little quiz in late July”. I chose the cheapest bar review course available in the metropolitan area and went through the motions of reading the materials and watching lectures on video on the myriad areas of New York Law. All I had to do was pass.

On the last weekend in July, just a few days before my twenty-fifth birthday, I took the bar exam. By mid-September I was working in the Bronx, thrown headfirst into the fray, in court every day, and loving it.

Legal Aid lawyers and assistant District Attorneys waiting for the bar results, were permitted to practice law under a special Appellate Division Student Practice Order applicable only to the lower Criminal Court. The honor and prestige attached to representing indicted felons would have to wait, and although I wasn’t patient by nature, I made the best of it. I was young. It was my first full time job. And it was all new to me. I treated each case as though it was my first, and my last. I loved the challenge, the responsibility, the overload of Legal Aid cases, the daily rout of arguments, pleas, and victories. And I got more cases dismissed (or so I thought), or adjourned in contemplation of dismissal, than any of my Legal Aid colleagues. But I couldn’t wait to get my hands on those felony cases.

On November 23, 1979, I received a letter from the State Board of Law Examiners. I flunked the bar.

Eleanor called the next day from Georgia, tentative and sympathetic. When she’d contacted the Appellate Division to check on her own results, she also inquired about mine—said I was her husband. Eleanor had passed, and I was genuinely pleased to hear it. I told her she ought to be celebrating with her friends and family, even her fiancé, not consoling yours truly.

Two weeks later she enrolled me in the best and most expensive bar review course available, and she paid the tuition, in full and up front, so there was no backing out. I could pay her back in dinners when I passed, she said.

And pass I did, later that May.

When I broke the news to Mom she grabbed me in her arms and together we did the tarantella around the dining room table, into the living room, down the back steps, and into the yard. The Cassidys next door thought we were nuts.

A few months later Eleanor broke off her engagement, and the following weekend we went out on our first “real date”. It was under Broadway’s glittering
Grease
marquee that we kissed for the first time.

And I had never felt more in love.

Chapter 7

A
fter the double shift the day before, I didn’t get into the office until 10 A.M. Brenda, from the secretarial pool, who acted like I was her sole responsibility, promptly put a call through from Eleanor.

“If I didn’t know you better,” Eleanor said, “you might give a girl cause to wonder. What is it with you and these sex cases? Robbers, burglars, car thieves, murderers: they don’t appeal to you?”

“Legal Aid doesn’t take murder cases.”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

“I wasn’t going to take any more except”—I took a long deep breath—“this guy’s never been arrested before. He’ll get convicted on the publicity alone. And I don’t know why but…I actually think he may be innocent. Besides, he at least deserves a good lawyer.”

“Of course he does. But why does it have to be you?”

“Just got lucky, I guess.” I promised to call later.

There was a gentle knock on my office door. Brenda stuck her head in. “Shiela and Doug are waiting, and it ain’t good, Nick.”

“Give me a minute.”

Brenda rolled her eyes.

As secretaries went, Brenda was more than I could have ever hoped for. This was no Park Avenue law firm, and I wasn’t exactly the crème de la crème of Harvard or Yale’s elitist law review. The Legal Aid Society was a nonprofit organization. As such it was a training ground for lawyers and unionized support staff. Newly hired attorneys were lucky to get their choice of borough, no less secretary. When some lower level administrative pundit decided that Brenda should sit at the desk outside my office, we both got lucky. Brenda and I got along great.

Brenda was my age and black, dark black. As tall as me at five foot nine, she had a girth that gave her a matronly, almost motherly appearance. Brenda looked after me—and for one wet-behind-the-ears lawyer—she was a true find.

Brenda had no man in her life, but she had a daughter, seven years old. Her name was Jasmine. And she had leukemia.

Although she would have her bad days, and nights, aging Brenda in multiples as the long term prognosis dimmed, at the time, she was attending school regularly, her white blood cell count was in check, and amid hope and prayer, little Jasmine was holding her own.

Since a grilling was on the menu this morning, I was in no hurry to throw myself on the fire. I sent Brenda into Sheila’s office to stall. My daily tribulations were Brenda’s welcome distractions. Besides, it would give me some time to think.

I slowly looked around the room.

On the walls hung three movie posters covered in plastic and backed by cardboard:
Casablanca
,
Gone with the Wind
, and
Rebel Without a Cause
. Each I carefully selected for reasons at the time not entirely clear to me.

In the quiet I detected the scampering of a mouse across the top of the ceiling tiles. A heavier succession of rat paws followed, quicker and louder. As I got up to leave there was a faint squeal. The sound of singular helplessness sickened me. I grabbed my coffee cup, added some milk from the tiny refrigerator by Brenda’s desk, and headed for Sheila’s office.

The Criminal Defense Division of the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx occupied four floors in a building known as Executive Towers, located on the corner of 165th Street and the Grand Concourse, only six blocks from Yankee Stadium. Therein four complexes of attorneys were housed, each comprising about fifteen lawyers, and each headed by a supervisor and an assistant supervisor.

My office, which I shared with no one (an only child’s dream come true), was considered the worst in all of Bronx Legal Aid. Located on the fourth floor, it was right beside the borough chief’s, and right down the hall from the watchful eyes of both my complex supervisors.

Sheila Schoenfeld, under five feet and pushing forty, was head of Complex C. She had a bent Streisand nose and an equally charming smile. Intensely dedicated to getting the best results possible for every client of every lawyer in her charge, it wasn’t long before I realized that I was damn blessed to be one of those lawyers.

Sheila
was the best of the best of us.

New York City Legal Aid attorneys were the only unionized attorneys in the country. Consequently, it was almost impossible to fire one once they’d made it through the one-year probation period. Thus, some lawyers became “dead wood,” devoid of desire, creativity, and the requisite concern to do the job well. Unwilling or unable to find work elsewhere, these lawyers became The Legal Aid Society’s permanent and antiquated fixtures.

Despite my early arrogance and prevailing egotism, Sheila liked me, and had been mentoring me from the start.

“It’s not enough to be smart, even brilliant,” she’d once told me. “Quick, clever, and tough retorts are fine, but if you don’t know the law, the cases, the principles, and aren’t able to argue both sides of every issue, every time, you have no business calling yourself a trial lawyer. These are not civil money cases or the petty squabbles of matrimonial law over who gets the pots and pans. People’s liberty is at stake here, and many, given the opportunities we’ve had, and maybe the second chance you give them, can turn their lives around. You can do some good here. You have the talent. Just set aside that ego of yours, and get crackin’.”

Sheila was a straight shooter, and I valued her counsel immensely.

Douglas Krackow, the assistant supervisor and second in charge of Complex C, lived by the motto: “No matter what, the end justifies the means!” Krackow smiled slightly as I entered Sheila’s office. The smile told me that although he wasn’t with me, he wasn’t against me either.

“Your court clearing scheme was a hoax on the Court, and everyone else for that matter,” Sheila said, in a tone a hundred times gentler than I expected. “The president of a neighborhood watchdog group you also sent packing, called me first thing this morning. He was angry as hell over missing the arraignment of this, and I quote ‘atrocity committed by a school employee’.”

“That’s exactly why I wanted him and the rest of the mob out of there. One reporter did stay and covered the arraignment though.”

“Vinny Repolla?” asked Krackow.

I nodded.

“Well, he spelled your name right,” Krackow said. “Says in this
Newsday
article you argued ‘valiantly’—he made quote marks with his fingers—‘for your client.’ Fortunately, it doesn’t mention anything about the courtroom being cleared.”

A wave of relief swept over me.

Krackow went on. “The fact that it did get reported, if only by a Long Island paper, takes
some
of the heat off you.”

“From now on,” Sheila said, “no more screwing with the press without first consulting with me.”

“You got it.”

“You did OK on the arraignment,” Sheila admitted offhandedly.

“Then I can keep the case?”

“For now. We’ll talk more before he gets arraigned in Supreme.”

“Good enough.” I tried to contain my exuberance.

“Now go be a good lawyer. I’ve got work to do too. And here.” She handed me a phone message slip. It was from Shula Hirsch, Guevara’s supervisor at P.S. 92.
Call late this afternoon.

As Krackow and I left Sheila’s office, he put out his palm for a low-five and I complied as we parted.

I spent the remainder of the morning sizing up my calendar for the week and outlining two discovery motions for misdemeanor cases I wasn’t sure would wind up in a plea before motion time expired—the odds in favor of a guilty plea to a lesser offense being greater than a hundred to one on misdemeanor charges in Criminal Court. Most lawyers in the office wouldn’t waste their time with such paperwork. But I’d vowed early on to take no chances, so my case files were often replete with motion papers—that ended up nowhere.

Then I turned to the Guevara case.

Were these three kids really lying? And if so, why? Why did three boys, nine and ten years old, suddenly get together and conspire, of all things, acts of sodomy, and worse, against a teacher’s aid kind enough to take them on class trips and invite them to his apartment to play video games?