Bad Lawyer (3 page)

At the end of each session we joined hands to form a ring and begged some obscure, beneficent (and almost certainly Christian) deity for the strength to get through the night.

The question that leaps out is simple enough: Why didn’t I just leave, especially during those first few months when the urge for cocaine had me terrified by my own dreams? The simplest answer is that I was afraid of the world, that within the Institute (we referred to it, one and all, as the
Institution)
I felt safe. At least I knew from which direction the blows would come. But beyond that, as I recovered my physical strength and my bad attitude, I realized that the pure will to survive (which precluded the use of any mind-altering substance) was reasserting itself. If I remained in the Institution, it would grow; if I left, it would shrink, perhaps die.

Eventually, when the staff pronounced me fit to entertain, Julie and Caleb came to see me. I had no other visitors. My son phoned from time to time, but I had little to say to him. David was a good boy, a graduate student in archeology at UCLA who neither smoked nor drank. His calls reeked of perfunctory obligation, as if he, too, realized that we had no common ground, not even that of his childhood.

It was Julie who provided me with the last piece of the addiction puzzle. We were in the dayroom, the two of us, and I was sitting by the window in a deep funk. After eight months of voluntary incarceration I’d come to the point where I didn’t give a damn about sobriety
or
drugs. My general mood flicked, almost from moment to moment, between unfocused rage and profound despair.

“Sid, you look like shit.” Julie was quite slender, with prominent bones that remained somehow delicate, as if the contours of her brow, cheeks and jaw had been shaded in by an artist.

I remember shrugging my shoulders, unable to summon the energy for actual speech.

“What it is,” she said after a minute, “is grief. You’re in mourning.” She lit two cigarettes, put one in my hand. “And it’ll never go away. That’s the important part, Sid. The grieving will never end because your lover isn’t dead and buried. She’s right across the street, in the parks, the bars, even the supermarkets.”

I turned to face her. “You’re talking resurrection here? Reanimation?”

“No, Sid, not resurrection. Possession. Possession and death.”

I came out of the Institution in 1995, older, wiser, and destitute. Caleb and Julie, both working for other lawyers, met me at the door and took me into the apartment they shared on East 25th Street. I believe, at the time, I was bewildered by the arrangement; there was no physical relationship, and the exact nature of the emotional transactions, somehow eluded me. Then one night I dreamed that Julie and Caleb had left me, that I made one sarcastic remark too many and they’d packed their bags and walked away.

I leaped out of the bed, my body soaked with sweat, and charged into the hallway, getting as far as Julie’s door before coming to myself. Julie slept with her door cracked open, a sop to her fear of entrapment, and I could clearly see the long line of her body under the sheets. Still, I waited, my fingers resting on the brass knob, until her chest rose and fell, until I was sure I still had her with me.

I went into the living room and sat on a hump-backed chair by the window and began to sob uncontrollably. A moment later, I felt a presence and turned to find Caleb kneeling beside the chair. Behind him, Julie stood in the doorway, one hand raised to her lips. Their eyes were invisible in the darkness, but I didn’t need a lamp to read the message. I was home and that was all there was to it. I’d found my ghosts.

T
HE MINUTE I LAID
eyes on the old woman, I knew she was going to lie to me. Posed there in my office, she gave me a long moment to absorb the extent of her misery. To admire the mousey hair dribbling over the back of her collar, the dark pouches beneath her swollen eyes. Her narrow lips were greasy with dark red lipstick, the only sign of color in her white-on-gray face.

“Mr. Kaplan?” She wore a faded cloth coat (threadbare, naturally) buttoned up to her throat and she clutched it with her right hand like it was the only thing between her bony frame and the wicked January wind. “My name is Thelma Barrow.”

“Call me Sid. And take a seat, Mrs. Barrow.”

“Please, my …”

First, she was going to tell me how her little buddykins was sitting (right now, even as we speak) in the Tombs, or in Rikers, or the Brooklyn House of Detention, how his miserable mutt existence (not to mention his sexual identity) was being threatened by the element dwelling therein. Then she was going to ask me to please save the darling boy who’d once suckled at her milk-swollen breasts.

“… my little girl has been arrested and I don’t know what to do.”

For once, I didn’t mind getting it wrong. A little girl instead of a little boy. It made the sexual identity part much more interesting.

“Is this the first time?” I looked at her looking at me through small, almost perfectly round eyes. “That your daughter’s been arrested I mean.”

For a minute I thought she was going to show me how angry the question made her. Then she sighed and clutched her purse to her belly. “No,” she admitted, “not the first time. But now it’s different. Now it’s murder.”

“Murder?”

“Second degree murder, yes.”

Once she’d gotten it out, revealed the family shame, she seemed to relax a little, but her sharp knees were still pressed together, her torso rigid against the back of the chair. Personally, I thought it was a nice touch, the stiff upper lip and the wet swollen eyes. Tough love personified.

“All right, Mrs. Barrow, I’m going to ask you some questions and I want you to give me short, clear answers. Right to the point, okay?”

“I understand,” she said, her mouth tightening down.

“Good, what’s your daughter’s name?”

“Priscilla Sweet. I call her Prissy.”

“When was she arrested?”

“Two days ago. She …”

“Please don’t volunteer anything.” I slid my chair back a few feet, stood up and began to pace. “Where are they holding her?”

“Rikers Island.”

“No bail?”

That brought a single tear. It ran along the left side of her nose, then caught a deep groove running from her nostril to the outside of her mouth. “No.” She shook her head.

“Her priors, what were they for?”

“Drugs.” She glanced to the left and shrugged. “Of course.”

“And the sentences?”

“Probation twice, then two years in prison.”

“The victim, the person she’s alleged to have killed, did she know this individual?”

“Her husband, Byron.” She snatched her bag up into her chest and pursed her lips as if about to spit. “The black bastard.”

Knowing full well that within a week or two I’d be the
Jew lawyer
(that is, if I hadn’t already earned the appellation), I grunted my appreciation of her comment and hardened my heart.

“How long were they married, Mrs. Barrow? Prissy and Byron?”

“Ten years.” Her lips tightened. “He beat her, Mr. Kaplan. He got her into the drugs.”

“I believe you, Thelma. Now tell me, were there any witnesses to the alleged homicide?”

“No, they were by themselves in their apartment when it …” She was back to the suffering senior. “… when it happened.”

“The cops arrest her at the scene?”

A nod, then another tear.

“What about children?”

She looked up at me, shook her head. “None. Thank God.”

I thought of Caleb, with his ebony skin and goggle eyes, how much he wanted to have children, what a good father he’d make. “The husband, Mrs. Barrow, he ever been arrested?”

That brought a short, bitter laugh.

“And your daughter, she have any bruises? I mean right now.”

“Prissy’s got an eye like
this.
”

I stopped pacing and sat behind my desk. It was time for the lie. I rubbed the ball of my thumb in a slow circle across the tips of my middle and fore fingers. “Money,” I said, “the root of all freedom.”

“I’m not a rich woman.” The standard opening line. “I’ve been working all my life. I’m a widow.”

“Mrs. Barrow, let me be frank. If you want it pro bono, try Legal Aid. Everything else costs money. Especially me.”

“Well,” she said, after a moment’s reflection, “I have five thousand dollars in the bank.”

I stared at her for a moment, until her expression hardened and I was sure five grand was all I was going to get. For now.

“That’ll be a start,” I said, knowing I couldn’t do a decent job for ten times that amount. “If you’ll write me a check, I’ll be down to see your daughter this afternoon.”

“The money’s in a certificate of deposit. I’d have to pay a penalty.”

“You want me to wait until it matures?” When she didn’t respond, I continued. “Today’s Friday. Postdate the check and I’ll make the deposit on Monday.”

She frowned, but her hands went down into her purse. “You’re willing to trust me until Monday? I’m surprised.” Her small mouth lifted into a coy smile.

“You look like an honest woman.” Meanwhile, the law provided for triple damages on a bad check and I was fully prepared to sue for every penny if it bounced. That’s how broke I was.

I opened my once-elegant attaché case, tossed in some paperwork, added a tiny 35mm camera loaded with high-speed film. “Wait here, Mrs. Barrow. My secretary will be in to get some basic information. Names, addresses, phone numbers, like that. I’ll call you in the morning.”

She stared up at me, her expression wary, but didn’t say anything as I left the room, closing the door behind me. Julie was sitting on the edge of her desk in my outer office. She looked at me expectantly.

“Get her signature on a retainer agreement,” I said, “then have Caleb check her vitals. Mortgages, bank accounts … You know the drill.”

The jail on Rikers Island was the sole reason I owned a car. Stuck out in the East River between Queens and the Bronx, it could only be reached via a bridge at the foot of Hazen Street in Astoria, an impossibly long subway-bus ride from my office in Manhattan. When I first broke into the business, back in the late ’60s, Rikers Island housed fewer than five thousand prisoners. Now it held more than twenty thousand and the city fathers, despite a stunning drop in the crime rate, were expecting a twenty percent increase in the coming decade.

Rikers was a place of limitless misery and violence, a hell on earth for everyone, including (and especially) the men and women who worked there. Lawyers often referred to the Rikers complex as the House of Pain; suffering ran through it like flu virus through a fourth grade classroom. Usually, that was good for business, the misery, violence, suffering, and pain, but in this case it was going to present me with a problem. It would be a long time before Priscilla Sweet got her day in court and I needed to know if she could deal with incarceration. There are no activities for detainees; those who can’t make bail remain in their cells or in open housing units day after day after day. Many take the first plea bargain offered by the state, preferring a New York prison to a long series of empty days punctuated by the occasional sexual assault. If little white Prissy was among this group, I needed to know it before I spent her mama’s five grand.

I caught a break at the reception area of the Rose Singer Center, the women’s jail. A black corrections officer named McCoy was working the desk. McCoy was sharp-eyed and polite to a fault, a veteran’s veteran who’d been around long enough to know the difference between honest and dishonest graft.

“Officer McCoy,” I said, slapping my unzipped case on the desk, “how goes it?”

He glanced at his watch. “Slowly, Kaplan. Very, very slowly.” Opening my case for inspection, he deftly palmed the twenty tucked beneath a small strap. “Who’s the lucky victim?”

“Woman named Priscilla Sweet.”

“No kidding?” McCoy raised an eyebrow. “Looks like you got yourself a celebrity. Made the
Post
and the
News.
”

I started to ask him what the papers were saying, then changed my mind, figuring I could count on him for anything but an unbiased report. “You know, I’m in a bit of a hurry here, being as it’s getting on to five o’clock.” That was part of what the twenty was all about.

“No problem. I’ll have her down in fifteen minutes.” He held up my camera. “What’s this?”

“The mother claims the daughter’s bruised and I need to take a few pictures.” That was the other part of the twenty. Theoretically, I was supposed to get permission to shoot pictures or have a doctor examine my client. Permission that could be easily postponed until all visible trace of Ms. Sweet’s injuries disappeared.

McCoy nodded thoughtfully and picked up the phone. “Fifteen minutes,” he repeated.

Thirty minutes later he called my name. “Kaplan,” he said, his voice indifferent, “room eight.”

One look at Priscilla Sweet erased any concern I had for her fragility. Despite a fading bruise that covered half her face and a swollen right brow, eyes as gray and hard as a sheet of stainless steel met and held my own as I came through the door. “You bring any cigarettes?” she asked.

I laid my briefcase on the table, opened the snaps, took out an untouched pack of Winstons, tossed them over. She snapped the cellophane off and popped one into her mouth. “Appreciate it,” she said when I offered a light. “I won’t get my commissary till tomorrow.”

She leaned back in the chair and let her head fall back slightly as she filled her lungs with smoke. I watched her carefully, thinking how little she resembled her mother. Priscilla Sweet’s eyes were narrow and set far apart, her mouth was full and generous, her nose was small and sharp at the tip.

“You know who I am?” I asked.

“Sid Kaplan,” she responded promptly. “I asked for you.”

“That right?”

“You represented a buddy of mine, about seven years ago. Guy named Peter Howard.” She raised her eyes to meet mine. “He did okay.”

I nodded thoughtfully, just as if I actually remembered Peter Howard. “I spoke to your mother briefly, Priscilla, and I’m going to speak to the A.D.A. as soon as we’re finished here.”