Bad Lawyer (10 page)

Some people are inspired by competition, but I’ve always needed out-and-out enemies. I suppose it runs in the family, because I can clearly remember my Grampa Itzy describing himself as a “belligerent Jew.”

“Do I look like a turtle I should pull in my head?” he’d asked his ten-year-old grandson. “Am I a chicken I should hold out my neck for the butcher’s knife?”

The questions had been strictly rhetorical, but the message, which I’d already adopted, was that you define yourself by your choice of enemies, and by your victories over them. That was why I’d made a career of battling with police, prosecutors, judges, the New York State Bar Association … anyone or anything that stood between my client and acquittal.

Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting across from Priscilla Sweet, puzzling over the sudden change in her expression. That sardonic twist I was used to seeing at the corner of her mouth was gone and her eyes had shed their cold glitter.

“Problem here?” I asked. “You don’t look so good.”

“I took PC this morning.”

PC is prison shorthand for protective custody. In theory, it’s an option for prisoners threatened by other prisoners. In practice, it means twenty-three hours a day in a six-by-ten foot cell.

“Somebody’s after you?”

Priscilla shrugged, lit a cigarette. “It’s a racial thing. I should have seen it coming.” She glanced down at her lap for a moment, then sucked in a deep breath. “Look, Sid, my mother’s not coming up with any bail money. She’d have to use her house for collateral and the way she sees it, I fucked up too many times in the past for her to take the risk. Me, I can’t say as I really blame her, but what it means is we have to go for a speedy trial. I’m doing hard time now.”

I stood up and began to pace. A speedy trial benefited me in two very important ways. First, it’d be a lot easier to hold the media’s interest for six months than for the standard eighteen. Second, and more importantly, if I went forward with all due constitutional speed, we might actually get a jury verdict before being evicted from our offices and our apartment. But there were drawbacks as well.

“Look, Priscilla, a quick trial is fine for O.J. Simpson. Or anybody else with enough money to hire an army of lawyers, paralegals, and investigators. That’s not the case here.” Not unless I let the pressure build, then squeezed Thelma.

Priscilla took my hand and held it against her cheek. Her eyes were brimming. “My whole life has been hell. My father …” She choked back the next words. “I just can’t take any more. That’s what it boils down to. I sit in that cell, listen to the psychos on the block. They rant and rave all day; at night, they scream.” As she went on, her mouth firmed and her eyes narrowed slightly. “And what I think is that if I stay in isolation long enough, I’ll be screaming, too.”

“I know how you feel, but …”

She let my hand drop and pulled away. “It’s no good, Sid. I want you to represent me, but if you can’t get me to trial within six months, I’ll have to find somebody else.” Her eyes were cold again. Cold and flat. “Christ knows I don’t want to.”

I turned away for a moment. Priscilla had put me in my place and I didn’t want her to catch a glimpse of my wounded vanity. “You have a right to a trial within six months. If you want me to go forward, of course I’ll do it.” I walked over to the cubicle’s window, stared at the bored corrections officer perched on his stool. “Meanwhile, you’re being indicted today,” I said without turning around. “You could be arraigned as early as Friday. The court will expect me to make a request for bail and what I need to know is if you made all your appearances.”

“On my other busts?”

“Yeah.”

“Every one.”

“That’s good, Priscilla. Makes you look like an honest mutt.”

She came over to me, linked her arm through mine. “Don’t be mad at me, Sid. You know I love you.”

I remember her breast pushing against the back of my arm, a sudden rush of excitement that rippled down through the hairs on my chest and belly as I led her back to the table. “I had a conversation with your boss,” I said without removing my arm, “and your coworkers. Those people over there in Maspeth, they’re on your side and they’re gonna make great witnesses. Even if the prosecutor picks up on the fact that you were sleeping with your boss. And the fact that he’s married.”

Her customary half-smirk blossomed into a pair of fetching dimples. They looked a good deal better on her than they did on her mother.

“I hadn’t been with a man in almost four years.” She shook her head. “At the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal.”

“You want to tell a jury that a married man is no more than a roll in the hay for you?” I flicked my ashes onto the floor. “You know, I’m tempted to ask you how long Byron lived after you shot him and whether or not you tried to get help, but I’m not going to do it. No, I think it’s something you should think about. I mean it’s possible that you were in shock, right? The explosion must have been unbelievably loud in that small room, especially for someone unfamiliar with handguns. Or maybe you tried to call, maybe 911 was busy.” I took a notebook out of my briefcase, laid it on the table, dropped a pen onto the notebook. “You can tell me the
whole
story after the arraignment, but for now I’ll settle for a list of unfriendly witnesses. Byron’s friends, the people he did business with, anybody likely to advance the prosecution’s case.”

Priscilla tapped a blunt nail on the edge of the table. “I don’t want you to hate me.” She was staring up, her eyes as gray (and as opaque) as the surface of a calm lake on a cloudy day. “I know I’m not a good citizen—I’m not trying to get away from that—but I don’t want
you
to hate me.”

W
ITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, PRISCILLA’S
demand for a speedy trial, which I carried home and presented to Caleb and Julie that evening, had us hopping like laboratory rats on an electrified grid. I was used to this mode, had been through it any number of times in the past, but for my associates, who’d joined me when I was already on the decline, the experience was entirely new. What it meant, in terms of their personal lives, was that they wouldn’t have any personal lives. It was that simple and I put the reality to them with enough force to prevent any misinterpretation.

It was seven o’clock, half an hour after the start of the Knicks game which I hadn’t turned on, when Caleb came into the apartment and we sat down to dinner. Halfway through, I pointed to the skeletal remains of a baked chicken and said, “Best enjoy this. You may not see another home-cooked meal until the trial’s over. Starting tomorrow, we meet in the office every night, report progress, plan our next moves. We’ll always be two steps behind, always in crisis. By the time we get a verdict, you’ll think you’ve been through a war.” I remember being so consumed with self-love that I actually tapped the edge of my plate with a fork before delivering the punch line. “And what you should think about, when you’re so tired you can’t focus your attention long enough to wipe your ass, is how you’ll feel if you
lose
the war.”

Caleb and Julie looked at each other for a moment, then burst into applause.

“‘Into the Valley of Death,’” Julie quoted.

“If those six hundred were lawyers,” Caleb announced, “then I’m personally rooting for the cannon to the right and left.”

“You can laugh if you want,” I said, “but you won’t be laughing if your personal failures result in Priscilla Sweet’s passing the next twenty-five years in a maximum security prison.”

I pushed the remains of my dinner to one side and got down to business, presenting Caleb with Priscilla’s list of hostile witnesses and a curt order to check them out.

“You want what, boss? Rap sheets, interviews …”

“Both.”

“You know I gotta buy the rap sheets.” He glanced at the list. “Number of people you got down, we’re lookin’ at a grand. At least.”

“Thelma’s check’ll clear in a couple of days.”

Julie waved a stripped chicken wing in my direction. “Don’t forget, we’ve got rent to pay on both places. Not to mention the note on the furniture.”

“Thank you for sharing that,” I said. “Let’s hope you’re paying as much attention to the solutions as you are to the problems.”

It was Julie’s task to prepare rough drafts of the various written documents we’d file within fifteen days after Priscilla’s arraignment. These included a demand letter asking for the prosecution’s witness list as well as police reports, autopsy results, and forensic analyses.

The process is called discovery and every accused citizen is theoretically entitled to this material as soon as it’s available. In practice, the prosecution stalls, claiming the paperwork has not been completed and/or compiled (a lie that virtually all New York judges accept without question), until after the trial, or the hearing in which the evidence is to be presented actually begins. The overwhelming majority of defendants, represented by Legal Aid attorneys, are allowed no more than a
pro forma
objection. I, on the other hand, had Phoebe Morris. And what I hoped would become an army of outraged feminists.

In addition to the demand letter, Julie was drafting several pre-trial motions requesting that all of the evidence found inside Priscilla Sweet’s apartment be excluded. Our theory was simple enough. First, the cops who responded to the 911 call entered the premises without benefit of a warrant, thus violating the Payton Rule. As a result, every subsequent action was in violation of the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, as well as Article 1, Section 6 of the New York State Constitution. Second, even if the 911 call had been specific enough to justify the initial entry by the responding patrolmen, the detectives had no right to search a suitcase in the back of a closet without first obtaining a search warrant.

There would be a Mapp hearing on these issues just before the actual trial, at which time I would have an opportunity to call and examine witnesses. Meanwhile, it was important to submit a motion that cited every conceivable legal argument because we had no idea what evidence, besides the coke and the gun, the prosecution intended to present.

“I found the doctor,” Caleb said as he stacked the dinner plates, “who treated Priscilla four years ago, after Byron attacked her in a joint called Pentangles Bar and Grill. He’s still at Bellevue. Dr. Grace says that he has no specific memory of Priscilla Sweet and doesn’t feel he has to testify. I found the social worker, Miriam Farber, too. The one who talked Priscilla into prosecuting Byron. It was Farber who took the photos that eventually sent Byron to Rikers.”

I leaned back to light a cigarette. As I’d cooked dinner, cleaning up was not my chore. “Don’t worry about Grace, Caleb. He’ll change his mind when he’s served with a subpoena. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Caleb said. “Something I heard this afternoon. I don’t know how good it is, but there’s a rumor going around that Byron’s blood-alcohol level was .42 when his wife pulled the trigger. That maybe he was too drunk to be a threat.”

“What about cocaine? He have cocaine in his system?”

“Don’t know.” Caleb got up, took a dish towel, began to dry the dishes. “We’re talkin’ about a rumor, boss. And what I’m gonna do, as I go along, is ask about Byron’s capacity. See if he could hold his booze.”

I slid my chair away from the table, stood up, and cleared my throat. “You guys wanna hold off for a minute. I have a little speech to make.” Folding my arms across my chest, I waited for their full attention. “Julie, yesterday you asked me what I wanted from this case. Besides enough new business to pay the rent. Well, what I’ve decided to do is form a corporation, distribute the shares a third to each of us. Then I’m going to sign a personal services contract binding myself to the corporation for the next ten years. You hear what I’m saying? It’s not about the money. It’s about us and what we’ve done together.” Thoroughly embarrassed, I huffed and puffed for a moment, then added, “If it wasn’t for the two of you, the best I could hope to be, at this point in my life, is dead.”

Caleb was first to react. He walked across the kitchen, dragged me into a bear hug, kissed me on both cheeks. “Partner,” he said, stepping away, “you’re the greatest. Ain’t that right, Julie?”

“Yeah.” She was standing by the sink, holding a soapy dish. I remember the soap running along her fingers, onto her wrist, dripping to the floor. “Sid’s the greatest, all right.” She crossed the kitchen to place a wet hand against my cheek. “But it’s not like we didn’t already know it.”

I put my arm around her waist, drew her to me, held her for a long moment before pulling away. There was no sexual element to our hug. Julie was my sister, my family; I would protect her with my life, protect her as I’d never protected my parents, my wife, my son. There was something wrong with that, and I knew it. I knew it and I didn’t care.

A few minutes later, we acknowledged the fact that our new partnership wouldn’t be worth much if we didn’t get Priscilla acquitted by returning to work. I went into my bedroom-office in search of my Rolodex. I’d been hoping to leave the forensic evidence (assuming it was admitted) unchallenged. After all, we weren’t going to argue that somebody else pulled the trigger. But if Byron, in fact, had a .42 blood-alcohol and the prosecution was, in fact, going to contend that he was comatose when shot, we’d have to offer some evidence to the contrary. Evidence that could only come through an expert witness.

I thumbed through the Rolodex until I came to the number of Dr. Kim Park. Park, a naturalized citizen by way of Seoul, Korea, was a forensic pathologist with impeccable credentials and a love of the spotlight. He was small, almost elfin, with sharp, animated features that projected passionate belief in his own testimony. Jurors loved him.

In my prime, I’d used Park several times and what I remembered most about him, as I punched out his Chicago phone number, was that he liked four-star hotels as much as he liked testifying in a courtroom packed with reporters. I was calling him at the small office he maintained in his home and, given his workaholic reputation, wasn’t surprised when he picked up on the second ring.