Эд Макбейн - Beauty and the Beast

“Well, I know, that’s what we’ve got to prove. But if we get that positive ID, we’ll have enough to charge him, and that’s what we’ll do. Would you like to be here, Matthew?”

“I’d like to be here ,” I said. “I like it here , where I am. I like it very much right here .”

Dale blew me a kiss.

“Well, it’s entirely up to you,” Bloom said.

“Don’t ask him anything until I get there,” I said.

“Would I do that?” Bloom said.

“No, but some of those guys in the State’s Attorney’s Office can be very cute.”

“No questions, I promise.”

“And you understand, don’t you, that I’ll advise him to remain silent?”

“Sure. Exactly what I would do.” Bloom paused. “So are you coming down?”

“Yes,” I said, and sighed.

“Thank you, Matthew,” Bloom said, and hung up.

I looked at Dale.

“One of these days,” she said dreamily, “I’m going to buy myself a flesh-colored vibrator.”

Benny Weiss is perhaps the best criminal lawyer in all Calusa. My partner Frank says that this is because Benny himself looks like a criminal. I don’t know what criminals are supposed to look like. I once thumbed through a psychological text in which there was a series of photographs, some of which were of schizophrenics, others of normal people like Frank and me. When these photos were shown to real-life schizophrenics who were asked to pick out the ones they preferred, they invariably picked out the pictures of schizophrenics like themselves. I don’t know what the test was supposed to prove.

But assuming Frank is correct about Benny looking like a criminal, then perhaps this accounts for the great number of criminals who seek his services when they run afoul of the law. I personally think Benny looks like a cocker spaniel. He is a smallish person — five feet eight inches at the outside, I would guess — slight of build, with a narrow face and soulful brown eyes and unruly brown hair that he rakes with his fingers every three or four minutes. He smokes incessantly. In his office that Wednesday morning at 10:30 A.M., he sat alternately smoking and raking his hair. He looked as if he had not slept much the night before. That was because I’d dragged him out of bed at 11:00 P.M. and asked him to meet me downtown, where a man named Luther Jackson — the fisherman who’d been anchored just off the Whisper Key beach on the night Michelle was murdered — had positively identified George Harper as the man he’d seen struggling with her. The identification had been made from a lineup of six men, all of them black, five of them policemen working for the Calusa PD The state’s attorney had questioned — or attempted to question — Harper soon after the identification was made. Both Benny and I had advised him to remain silent.

At nine this morning, I had accompanied Harper to court for what is known as a “first appearance hearing,” normally held on the morning after an arrest, to request bail for him. Ever since last November, when Florida’s Supreme Court had made its new ruling, even a person accused of a capital crime was entitled to bail. The ruling stated that before release on bail could be denied, proof of the crime had to be evident or presumption of the crime had to be great; it was the state’s attorney’s burden to oppose bail by showing that the evidence he possessed was legally sufficient to obtain a verdict of guilty. The court, in its sole discretion, had the right to grant or deny bail.

The County Court judge presiding over the hearing immediately informed me that I would have to take the matter before a Circuit Court judge who would later have trial jurisdiction. The Circuit Court judge hearing me could have set an impossible bail like half a million dollars, but he chose instead to deny bail completely, citing as his reason (not that he needed any) the particularly heinous nature of the crime. George Harper was taken to the Calusa County jail to await the grand jury’s decision as to whether it would indict or dismiss. The grand jury was scheduled to meet on the following Monday, November 23.

“Let me tell you something about the practice of criminal law,” Benny said, and dragged on his cigarette. “Criminal law involves guilt or innocence. You may argue that divorce also... or is that a touchy subject?”

“It is not a touchy subject,” I said.

“In which case, you may argue that divorce — at least in many states of the union — also involves guilt or innocence. But a man or a woman seeking a divorce, even if one or the other of them has broken the sacred vows of marriage...” (and here Benny, a confirmed bachelor, looked heavenward and smiled) “...is in no particular jeopardy, unless one considers onerous alimony a peril.”

“One might consider it a peril,” I said.

“Even so, however guilty one or the other party in a divorce action may be, neither is facing a prison term or death in the electric chair, which is the maximum penalty for first-degree murder in this state, which crime our friend George N. Harper has been charged with. What does the N stand for, do you know?”

“No,” I said.

“Now, Matthew,” Benny said, stubbing out his cigarette, and raking his right hand through his hair as though trying to remove the nicotine stains from his fingers, “I’m sure you’ll recall the Canons of Professional Ethics, which grant to a lawyer the right to undertake a defense regardless of his personal opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused... where did you go to law school?”

“Northwestern,” I said.

“Then I’m sure you’re familiar with the Canons.”

“I’m familiar with them.”

“And the professional right to undertake a defense even if you feel the accused is guilty.”

“Yes.”

“Otherwise, of course, an innocent person might be denied a proper defense, and then our entire judicial system would go to hell in a handbasket, and there’d be no more lawyers and no more law in this equitable land of ours. Where law ends, there tyranny begins, quote, unquote. Oliver Wendell Holmes, I believe.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Benny?”

He took another cigarette from the package on his desk, struck a match, held the flaming end to the tip, and exhaled an enormous cloud of smoke. As an afterthought, he blew out the match. “Now, Matthew,” he said, “if you do take on a client in a criminal case, whether or not you believe he’s guilty, then you are bound — and this is also in the Canons, Matthew — you are bound to present, by all fair and honorable means, every defense the law of the land permits, so that no person will be deprived of life or liberty except by due process. I believe that’s an exact quote, but I have the Canons here if you’d like to check them.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Thank you.”

“What are you saying, Benny?”

“Matthew, I appreciate your getting me out of bed last night, I truly do. I always enjoy going down to the police station at two in the morning—”

“It was only eleven.”

“It felt like two. But no matter, who needs sleep? I also enjoy listening to those assholes from the State’s Attorney’s Office, they really do give me great pleasure, Matthew. But, Matthew, whereas the Canons grant me the right to defend somebody I believe is guilty, they do not impose upon me the obligation to undertake such a defense. I believe George N. Harper is guilty. I have made it a policy over the years never to defend a person I believe is guilty. That’s why I’m such a good criminal lawyer. If I defend only the innocent, how can I help getting so many acquittals?”