THE FOURTH WATCH (5 page)

"Arthur Andreason, please."

"One moment, sir," the voice said, and just
like that I was listening to the elevator

music they piped into the holding tank of
telephone limbo.

In truth it was only a short wait. “Mr.
Andreason's office, may I help you?

"Yeah, I need a two bit shyster to screw an
insurance company for me, can you

guys help me out?"

"You've come to the right place, Mr. Knight,
but our fee is a hair above two bits."

I laughed out loud. ''How are you,
Martha?"

"I'm fine, Mr. Knight. How
are
you
doing?'
It was the type of question, delivered just so, that I had been
asked for quite some time now by people who know me well, but speak
to me only occasionally.

''I'm good, thanks," I told her. ''Is the
great man in?"

"No, he just stepped out to meet with a
client, but he is coming back and I know he wants to talk to you.
Can he reach you at home later?"

"Sure."

"Very good then. I'll let him know you
called."

"Thanks, Martha."

''Take care of yourself, Mr.
Knight."

I clicked off the phone and leaned on the deck
railing, drawing on my beer and scanning the opposite shore of the
lake. The leaves on the branches of the trees along the banks cast
shadows on the coves. My eyes played there as my mind wandered.
Then I had another thought and clicked on the phone again and
dialed another number.

''Police Department, this call is recorded,"
said a dispatcher, answering on the first ring.

"Deputy Chief Genetassio, please," I
said.

"One minute plea ... " he said, putting me on
hold before even completing his sentence. There was no sweet
elevator music here. The Spartan budget of the city police
department did not allow for such amenities.

Mateo Gennatassio was one of four Deputy
Police Chiefs in the city. His responsibilities included, among
other things, the homicide division. Not that Red Whorley's death
was classified as a homicide. But Carolyn Whorley had told the
police that she thought her father had been murdered, the press had
been clamoring around and Big Red was rich and famous. I knew Matte
Genetassio and figured the Chief would probably put something this
high profile on his plate.

"Chiefs office, Sergeant Wallings."

"Hi Carl, Mike Knight."

"Hey Counselor how are ya?"

''I'm well, how's things with you all, how's
your dad doin'?"

Carl Wallings, now sixty years old, had spent
thirty-eight years on the force and now ran the administrative
business of the chiefs office. After a career that had
taken

him into every dirty crevice in the city, he
had finally been dragged off the streets and plunked down in front
of a desk three years ago. At first he’d hated it and threatened to
retire if they didn't give him a beat and a partner, and send him
back out to do what he did best - patrol the neighborhoods and keep
the peace. But what would he do? Sit in his apartment and stare at
soap opera's. His marriage had failed years ago. Cops have a pretty
high divorce rate. It's not hard to understand why. Night after
night Mrs. Cop lays awake at home with the kids sleeping in the
next room and prays that the phone won't ring. The Mr. is off
crawling behind a pump gun, through some garbage littered ally in a
flack-jacket, on a drug raid where the odds were good that the
perps would have more firepower then the police. The Mrs. sees all
this stuff on T.V. so its not like he can lie to her about the
danger of it all. Day after night after week after month it goes
on, and when the shift ends, the blue line assembles at a gin-mill
to pound a few back and breathe a sigh of relief. As the years go
by the wife gets a little more buggy-eyed and straggly-haired and
jumpy, until she can't stand it anymore. She wants him to quit and
the fights start, so he drinks more and stays out later with his
buddies and it all spirals out of control. The job, in the end was
all he had. So Carl shut his mouth and sat at his desk on the
fringes of the action. His Dad was eighty-four years old and
getting a little feeble-minded, but you could still find him most
Saturdays prowling the neighborhood in the shotgun seat of a black
and white with Carl at the wheel.

"He's doin' great, thanks for
asking."

"That's good, Carl, say hello to him for me.
Listen, is Matte around?"

"Yeah, but he's in with the Chief, can I have
him call you?"

"Sure." I gave him the number. ''Thanks,
Carl."

"Bye Counselor."

Nobody is ever there when I call
them.

I went back inside, grabbed another beer from
the fridge, picked my briefcase up off the chair where I'd left it
coming in. I headed into the dining room, which had become my home
office. At one end was a blank section of table where I could sit
and spread out some files. At the other end were my laptop, printer
and another telephone, mostly for the purpose of connecting to the
Internet. I took out a yellow legal pad covered with notes, a dozen
blank, legal sized manila files and two other dog-eared folders I
had worked on the day before in court.

Yesterday had been a "duty day" for me in my
role as ''bar advocate." A duty day happens approximately three
times every two months in the life of a court appointed lawyer and
it is his or her main source of business. On that day you camp out
in the courtroom, and every alleged criminal who is indigent within
the meaning of the statute, and entitled to an attorney by law, is
assigned to you. It's how you get your clients. The routine works
pretty much like this:

At or about nine o'clock the clerk of the
court announces the first call of the list. This is the roster of
the courts business and first is usually those events that are
scheduled for pre-trial hearing. This is the defendant's second
time in court. Theoretically, what has happened since the first
time the defendant was in court, is that the District Attorney's
office has turned over any and all police reports relating to the
charges, witness names and statements, and all the evidence they
have on the case, exculpatory or otherwise, to the defendant's
attorney. The probation department has turned over a copy of the
defendant's criminal record, if any. The defense attorney has
reviewed it all, picked up his assignment, spoken with the
witnesses, met with the client and drafted any preliminary motions
he wanted the court to consider. He has also held a pre-trial
conference with the prosecuting attorney to determine if there is
any chance of settling the case on a plea, and if not, prepared a
pre-trial conference report indicating what if any discovery issues
remained outstanding, and agreed upon a date for compliance. In
reality what has happened since the defendants first appearance
is...well...nothing.

At arraignment the court officer
gave the defense attorney's card to the defendant and told him to
call his lawyer prior to his next court date. The DAs office has
not turned over the police report or anything else to anyone. The
defendant's record has not been produced, and the defense attorney
hasn't spoken to the DA
or
his client. He wouldn't be able to pick his
client out of a line up. When the clerk calls the defendant's name,
his lawyer will jump to his feet and quickly scan the courtroom to
see if anyone else stands up. If someone who could be the defendant
gets to his feet, the defense attorney will say something along the
lines of: "Your honor, Mr. Jones is present," as if he knew it all
along, “if we could have a second call so that the district
attorney and I can conclude our conference, we may be able to
dispose of this matter today.”

To which the judge will announce: "Second
call." The defense attorney will then wave the bewildered defendant
back to his seat. At the break, between first and second call of
the list, the defense attorney will meet with the Assistant
District Attorney assigned to the case and determine if a plea can
be worked out. The defendant sits in the hallway waiting to hear
what the lawyers have decided his fate will be. If the defendant is
not in court when called, the defense attorney will stand up and
declare: "Judge I haven't seen or heard from Mr. Jones since my
last appearance in this matter," in response to which the Judge
will growl: "Default, fifty dollar assessment and warrant."
Translated, what this means, is the defendant is now charged with
another offense, that of not showing up for court, that he is being
charged fifty bucks for the cost of doing the paperwork on him and
that a warrant has been issued for his arrest. The defense attorney
usually says: "Thank you, your Honor," and closes his meager file,
later sending the state a bill for his services.

When the call of the pretrial list is
complete, the clerk will call the new arraignments. It is from this
batch of citizens that the duty attorney will get his first crop of
assignments. These are individuals who have either been summonsed
into court on private complaints or were arrested overnight and
released to report to court the next day. During this call the
court will enter a not guilty plea on the defendant's behalf and,
if he or she is eligible, appoint an attorney. Several times during
this call of the list the court officer will tell the Judge that a
defendant is in custody. This means that he or she is being held
somewhere else, and will be coming in from that location. It could
be a town or city police station, the state police barracks, the
house of correction or state prison, the women’s pen at Framingham,
or a medical or mental health facility. They are automatically
given a second call, and when they arrive, they will be caged in
the holding pens off of the courtroom. The duty attorney will then
confer with them and prepare for a bail hearing to determine if,
and under what circumstances, they should be released pending their
next court appearance. At the bail hearing the defense attorney
will be assigned to the case or assigned for 'bail only' purposes.
In either case, talking to the defendant in his cell, as
distasteful as it can sometimes be, will result in a billing event,
so duty lawyers are usually delighted to hear that the cages are
packed to overflowing with alleged law breakers. Needless to say,
at the end of a duty day the lawyer can walk away with a briefcase
full of new clients.

Yesterday I did just that, and just now I was
sitting down to sort them out and open files on each one of
them.

Unlike many of my brethren, I will lose my
mind if I don't introduce at least some level of order to the cases
I am assigned. As a result I try to talk to each person assigned to
me on the day of arraignment and drag as many police reports and
records as I can out of the DA. I have a standard form that I use
which allows me to quickly gather some essential information in
note form, and I try to collect copies of whatever paperwork the
court officers are holding with regard to those clients that are
held. The next day (or as close to it as is possible) I open files
on each client, organize the information and itemize my billing.
Now at least I have something to work with, even if I don't get
around to doing much else before pretrial.

I picked up ten new clients during duty day
and worked three other cases that were for bail only. On a folder
tab I wrote the first clients name, organized the paperwork that I
had on him and read through it. It was a domestic assault and
battery where it was alleged that my client, a black male aged 32
years, came home drunk from a bar down the street from his
apartment and found his children alone watching television. When he
inquired, the children reported to him that their mother had gone
next door to her sister's for a moment. My client, outraged that
his wife would leave his children unattended, roared next door and
in full view of the sister, began cuffing his wife around. The
sister called the cops and my guy admitted everything. First
belligerently, as in: "What I'm gonna do? Bitch left my children
alone!" Then again the next morning when hung over and feeling like
an asshole, he apologized his way to a certain conviction. I almost
laughed, until I thought of those little kids sitting there in
their PJ's, in the flickering light of a television show, clutching
together in fear as their drunken father beat their
mother.

On the inside cover of the folder I noted my
time for billing purposes, putting the date and then listing
activities and time spent associated with them. Lock-up interview
.5hrs; DA negotiations, .25 hrs; review police report and CORl
record, .5hrs, bail hearing, .25hrs, and so on. Then I grabbed the
next case. This one was a charge of operating a motor vehicle while
under the influence of intoxicating liquor (an OUI). In this case
it was alleged that my client was found by the cops behind the
wheel of her car, which was up against the porch of a house one
hundred and thirty feet off the road. I sighed and shook my head
and read through the facts and printed her name on a folder tab and
filled out the inside cover. What a cast of characters I'd won for
myself yesterday.

I spent the next two hours reading through
police reports, organizing data and opening files, including a file
on my premature answering machine caller, whose crime was alleged
to be open, gross and lewd behavior, to wit: pissing in a bus
station trash can. When I was finished, I read through the two
cases I had on for pre-trial hearing the next morning. In one case
my client was going to plead guilty to operating a motor vehicle
without a license, and to taking the police on a wild car chase
when they tried to pull him over for speeding. In return for his
guilty plea he was going to get a six-month jail sentence
concurrent with a two-year sentence he was presently serving at the
state prison in Concord. He had, in fact, escaped from a prison
transport, which was why he was reluctant to stop for the police
when they tried to pull him over. Needless to say, this case was
the least of his problems and everyone knew it, and wanted to get
him off the court's docket.