Bad Lawyer (4 page)

“She tell you what happened?”

“She told me as much as I need to know, at least for now.” I crossed my legs, unbuttoned my jacket. “What I wanna do today is explain self-defense and the law, let you think about it for a while before you tell me exactly what happened.
Comprende
?”

Her smile was understanding in the extreme, the knowing grimace of a woman who’d been there often enough to have the drill memorized.

“Your mother tells me your old man liked to use his hands. That right?”

“That’s right.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Can you prove it? You ever go to the cops, get an order of protection? You got witnesses?”

“All of the above.”

“Good, now here’s the reality. According to the law, you had an obligation to retreat. If you shot your husband
as
he was attacking you, and you can prove it …”

“I thought proving was up to the prosecution.”

“That’s the theory, Priscilla. But in the absence of independent witnesses, the only way to prove self-defense is to have you testify. And if you testify, the judge will instruct the jury that you have a vested interest in the outcome of the case and therefore your testimony should be carefully scrutinized. You get the picture?”

She let her arms drop into her lap and crossed her legs, apparently unconcerned with the possibility of prison. “Thank God for O.J. Simpson.”

I winked at her, flashed a genuine smile. “O.J. made it a lot easier for battered women,” I admitted, “but acquittal’s still not a given. Let me explain the rest of it. The law expects you to take advantage of any reasonable opportunity to retreat. That means if you shot your husband
after
an attack, when you could have gotten out, you’re technically guilty of a homicide, though not necessarily murder. If that’s the case, my defense will be two-fold: battered wife syndrome combined with ‘give the woman a medal for ridding the planet of this scumbag.’”

That brought a peal of laughter. “I think we’re gonna get along,” she said.

“If we do, it’ll be a first for me.” I paused to retrieve the camera. “Because I’m not here to make friends.”

“You’re here to take pictures?”

I pointed to her eye. “I want to document the damage before it disappears.”

She rose, stepped back away from the window and the guard on the other side, unzipped her city-issued orange jumpsuit, and let it fall to her waist. There were (again, fading) bruises on her ribs, chest, and thighs.

“Something else you might want to think about,” I said as I focused the camera, “I don’t believe we’ll get a doctor to say those bruises are forty-eight hours old.” She started to respond, but I waved her off. “Something else to think about,” I insisted, “before we get to the nuts and bolts.” I stood up, prepared to leave. “At the arraignment, who represented you?”

“A Legal Aid lawyer named Rothstein. Carol Rothstein. You know her?”

I shook my head. “How ’bout the cops? You give them a statement?”

She answered me with a sneer.

T
HE PAY PHONES IN
the reception area were taken up by mutt relatives trying to arrange some kind of justice for their loved ones, so I drove to a diner on 21st Street between the Triboro and 59th Street Bridges to make my phone calls. Once upon a time, when I was flying high, I’d gotten the owner’s daughter off on a drug possession charge. The search of her vehicle having been blatantly unconstitutional (at least by 1982 standards), the effort on my part had been minimal, but Georgie Petrarkis had been impressed enough to spring for the occasional coffee and danish when I happened by.

“Counselor, how are you doing?” He was standing behind the register, a thick, swarthy man with an enormous fleshy nose.

“In a rush, Georgie.” I flipped a sawbuck on the counter and he handed me a roll of quarters. There was a time when I had a calling card. Not to mention a cellular phone. “Anything fresh out of the oven?”

“Anna-Marie,” he called to his wife, “for the counselor, coffee and an almond horn.”

I walked back to the pay phones, dropped in the obligatory quarters, punched out my office number. “Julie,” I said when she answered on the second ring, “it’s Sid.”

“Really?”

“Get hold of Caleb …”

“He’s sitting right here. You wanna talk to him?”

“No, I don’t have the time. Tell him to poke around, see what his cop friends have on our client. Her name’s Priscilla Sweet. Also get her yellow sheet, the victim’s, too. His name is Byron Sweet.”

“That’s it?” Somehow, Julia always found my sense of urgency amusing. Probably because I spent most of my waking life in a panic. Meanwhile, I slept like a baby while she spent the wee hours watching C-SPAN rebroadcasts.

“Yeah, I’ll be back to the office as soon as I can.” I hesitated, not wanting to get anyone’s hopes up, then softened. “It could be we have something big here. Assuming we play it right and don’t run out of money. You do a credit check on the mother?”

“I’ll have it in an hour or so. If I can scrape the two hundred together.”

I hung up the phone, shoved another quarter into the slot, dialed Legal Aid in Manhattan. After only two wrong connections, I found Carol Rothstein at her desk. She seemed a little disappointed when I told her I was taking over Ms. Sweet’s defense, though she must have been expecting it. “The state’s case,” she told me, “is being prepared by an A.D.A. named Buscetta.”

Though I rang off without comment, the name, Carlo Buscetta, warmed my frozen heart. (Not to the point of melting, mind you, just enough to start a colony of bacteria growing on the surface.) Buscetta had a reputation as the hardest hard-ass in the D.A.’s office. I’d been up against him three times, losing once. On that occasion, when the clerk read the verdict, he’d tossed my client (a run-of-the-mill thief, by the way) a triumphant glare that reeked of pure lust.

Buscetta wasn’t in his office, so I introduced myself to one of his sycophants and left the number on the pay phone. Then I called a
Newsday
reporter named Phoebe Morris on her cellular phone. She answered on the fourth ring, took my number, said she’d call back in ten minutes.

I returned to the counter, unbuttoned my jacket, shifted my little .32 automatic (which had remained in the glove compartment of the car while I was inside the Rikers jail) to the left before sitting down. My carry permit had come by way of a threatening client who’d escaped from a Corrections Department bus on his way to Attica. As it turned out, the client headed north after his escape, trying for Canada and not a piece of my hide, but I’d held onto the permit afterwards. That was because the gun made me feel powerful.

A few minutes later, the phone rang in the back. I caught it on the third ring.

“Kaplan.”

“Buscetta. You called me.”

Carlo Buscetta was reputed to hate all defense lawyers, and Jewish defense lawyers especially. I’d never been able to resist needling him about our respective ethnicities. “Hey,
paisan,
how goes it?”

“I’m very busy,
Sid
ney.” He put a heavy emphasis on the first syllable of my name, put a little sneer into it, too.

“Carlo, don’t be a
putz,
we’re gonna be up against it again. With Priscilla Sweet. It’ll be just like the good old days.”

“Duly noted. Is that all?”

“That means she talks to nobody. No prosecutors, no cops without me being present. You get that,
boychick
?” When he didn’t answer, I pushed ahead with the main point. “Personally, I can’t believe the D.A. wants to prosecute this poor, battered woman. Carlo, she’s been beaten to within an inch of her life.”

He laughed, apparently familiar with Ms. Sweet’s physical condition. “Forget about it, Sidney. The victim was sitting down when she blew him away.”

“She told you that?” I held my breath, waiting for the axe to fall. In this business, everybody lies to everybody.

“I can’t talk about …”

“First you say my client made a statement, which she denies, then you say you can’t
talk
about it?” My voice was up a full octave.

He sighed. “Your client did not make a statement. And that’s all I have to say at this time.”

“Good, call me when you’re ready to cut a deal.”

“Oh, I can make you an offer right now.”

It was my turn to sigh. His tone was much too confident. “Let’s hear it.”

“If your client pleads to the top count, we’ll forget about the quarter pound of cocaine we found in her apartment.”

“You’re saying the cocaine was in plain view?” The cocaine which neither Priscilla, nor her sainted mother, had bothered to mention.

“Let me know if your client wants the deal,
Sid
ney.”

I finished my coffee at the counter, raised the cup for a refill, shoved a chunk of warm pastry into my mouth. Anna-Marie was coming toward me with the carafe when the phone rang again.

“Kaplan.”

“Sid? It’s Phoebe Morris.”

“Phoebe.” I dry-swallowed a mass of almond paste the size of a golf ball. “How are you?”

“Busy. What’s up?”

Phoebe Morris didn’t like me and wasn’t afraid to tell me so. Perhaps because she knew I wouldn’t be offended. Her dislike did not, of course, affect our business relationship. In the past, I’d leaked information to her whenever I had a media-worthy client.

“I’m representing Priscilla Sweet.”

She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Oh, yes, I recall. The woman who killed her husband.”

“The
battered
woman who killed her husband,” I corrected. “With a
documented
history, proof of which I am prepared to supply at a later date.”

“The cops are saying she was a drug dealer, that she has a record.”

“Look, she had a troubled life. I mean what are we saying here, Phoebe? If you’re not a good citizen it’s okay for your husband to kick your ass?”

That was the angle I hoped Phoebe Morris would play up: justice for
all
women, even dope dealers.

“Her husband was black,” I continued. “Maybe we oughta condemn her for that alone. You know, if she spread her legs for one of
them,
she’s capable of anything.”

“Enough, Sid, I get the point.”

“There’s lots of people out there, Phoebe, who are gonna be thinking along those very prejudiced lines. If liberals like yourself refuse to demand justice for Priscilla Sweet, she’ll be all but convicted before the trial begins.”

She paused briefly, then, apparently unimpressed by my rhetoric, said, “Let’s stay in touch.”

An hour and a half later, I was back in my Union Square offices, whining about the cocaine charge and my lying client while Julie sat behind her desk, typing away at a computer keyboard. More than likely, she was simply waiting me out, knowing I’d run down sooner or later. In this case, with other things on my hand, it was sooner. “All right,” I finally said, “so what’d you get on mama?”

“What I got, in addition to the information you wanted, was a bill for two hundred dollars payable immediately in cash.” She backed her chair away from the desk and swiveled toward me. “Right now, this minute, we don’t have enough money for Chinese takeout.”

“The old lady gave me a check for five large. It goes in the bank on Monday.”

“Today’s Friday, Sid. In case nobody told you. That check you got won’t clear until Wednesday, at the earliest.”

I stopped pacing and sat down again. Time to face the reality of the flesh. “Go over to the Slipper, see Benny. Tell him I’ll make good the end of next week.”

“How much?”

“Make it five bills.”

“That’s six coming back, right?”

“If the check doesn’t clear until Thursday, it’s seven,” I corrected. “So what’s the story on Barrow? She got any money?”

“Not to speak of.” Her mouth expanded into a narrow smile. “A five thousand dollar CD, which you know about, a few thousand dollars in a money market, a few hundred more in a checking account. No stocks, no bonds.”

“What about property?”

“Oh, you mean the house?”

I had to return Julie’s smile, despite myself. Julie loved to set me up, to put a pin to my very swollen head. “C’mon, Julie, don’t bust what little balls I have left.”

“Barrow owns and lives in a single-family home on 73rd Avenue just off 164th Street in Queens. Been there since 1959. Judging from the assessed valuation, I’d say it’s worth maybe $260,000.”

“And the mortgage? How much does she owe?”

“
Nada
, Sid. As in not a goddamned penny.”

O
N THE MORNING AFTER
my consultation with Priscilla Sweet, I popped out of bed full of piss and vinegar. The piss went quickly, preceding a thorough brushing, washing, and blow-drying, but the vinegar remained. For the first time in years, I was ready and eager for the battle, a realization that seized me as I peered into the fogged mirror. I had a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair, my pride and joy, and I slowly ran a comb through it, watched the hairs unroll momentarily, then twist back into their customary curl.

“Priscilla, my sweet,” I muttered as I put the comb into my back pocket, “will you be my guardian angel? Or just another beckoning siren?”

Siren or not, I was, like Ulysses, determined to hear Priscilla’s tune. To that effect, I carefully trimmed the forest of hairs growing inside my ears, adding those in my nostrils for good measure. Just in case I needed to smell a rat.

I came out into the living a room a few minutes later, whistling tunelessly. Julie was bent over a prayer plant by the window, snipping dried leaves with a tiny pair of scissors.

“Morning, Sid,” she called without turning around. “What’s for breakfast?”

“First things first.” Breakfast before coffee is not a possibility for me. “Is Caleb back yet?”

Julie turned and glanced at the clock on the wall, a Regulator knock-off she’d picked up at a Canal Street flea market. “It’s not even eight o’clock. The tour’s just ending.” When Caleb needed favors from ex-buddies still on the force, he liked to catch them as they came off the late tour, figuring they’d be too tired to argue. “I wouldn’t look for Caleb before nine.”