Paul Levine - Trial and Error

“Anything? Tattoos. A limp. Three arms?”

Nash seemed to think about it. The effort slackened his lips and opened his mouth, as if he’d suffered a stroke. “One guy was real muscular, the other more wiry. And he had a scar on his forearm.”

“Which arm?”

“Don’t remember. And it wasn’t a scar exactly. More like a chunk missing with scar tissue built up. Like a bullet might have grazed him.”

“Either guy say anything?”

“Not to me.”

“To Sanders, then?”

Nash shrugged again. A lazy slacker shrug. “Only thing I remember, right before we put the Jet Skis in the water, Sanders said something about the wind picking up, asked if the Gulf Stream would be rough. One of the guys told him not to worry about it.”

“Were those his exact words? ‘Don’t worry about it’?”

“More like, ‘Stop worrying. You do your job, we’ll do ours.’”

“Why would you cross the Stream? If you were gonna release the dolphins, you had lots of open water without going that far.”

“I never thought about it. Me and Passion weren’t going along for the ride. We were gonna ditch the Jet Skis under the Rickenbacker, then pick up her car.”

“So you never asked Sanders why he was going to all the trouble to gather up the dolphins, take them somewhere, and set them free again?”

“I just figured Sanders wanted to release them on the Great Bahama Bank. You know, where there’s a lot of fish to eat.”

“Why not just take them to Red Lobster?”

“Okay, so maybe I didn’t think this through. Maybe I didn’t plan it right.”

“You didn’t plan it at all. Sanders did. Maybe with Passion’s help.”

Nash looked shocked, as if he’d never thought of that, either.

“My nephew thinks you weren’t setting the dolphins free. You were kidnapping them.”

“No frigging way! I believe animals have certain inalienable rights. You know that.”

He seemed genuinely offended and sounded believable. A believable schmuck. He’d let Sanders, someone he barely knew, take over the job. He didn’t know the guys who worked for Sanders, and his own girlfriend had disappeared and never contacted him. Now Sanders was dead, and through an odd quirk in the law, Nash faced life in prison, even if he’d done nothing more violent than break a lock on a channel gate.

Nash was technically guilty of felony murder. But Steve was starting to feel sorry for him. He’d been used and didn’t even know it. The guy was a lost puppy, and Steve had no leash to bring him home.

Steve wanted to find the two guys on the missing boat. He wanted to find Passion, the missing girlfriend. He wanted to find a peaceful solution for the Middle East. But right now, he had none of those things.

“You believe me, don’t you, Solomon?”

“Yeah.”

“’Cause I’m telling you the truth, dammit.”

“Okay, got it.”

“But I’m still in big trouble, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So what are we gonna do? In court, I mean?”

“Until I come up with something better, the hammer defense.”

“Huh?”

“Classic legal strategy, Nash. If the law is on your side, hammer the law. If the facts are on your side, hammer the facts. If neither is on your side, hammer the table.”

Steve knows he has a weak case, Victoria thought. Why else would he file a frivolous motion seeking sanctions against the state for discovery violations? She had turned over all the evidence. She’d filed her witness and exhibit lists, and the full police reports, not just the portions containing Nash’s statements, as required. She’d made witnesses available for depositions. She’d filed a notice of “similar fact evidence” that she intended to introduce involving Nash’s participation in other animal liberation raids.

But Steve, in his gunslinger mode, had filed a vituperative motion. He’d accused her of “trial by ambush,” of “secreting essential exculpatory evidence,” of “wanton breach of the Brady rule,” and other nonsense. He sought dismissal of the charges for “wholesale violation of the letter and spirit of Rule 3.220.”

At least he got the rule number right.

Now Victoria walked briskly down the fourth-floor corridor of the Justice Building, the heels of her brown suede pumps click ing on the scarred tile. She carried a soft leather briefcase, and her quick pace made it appear she was late for court. Instead of twenty minutes early.

“A purposeful stride. Chin up.”

Her favorite law professor, a woman in her seventies, had told Victoria that.

“Walk like a man, think like a woman, and strike like a tiger.”

Long before she became a professor, Sylvia Massey had worked her way up to managing partner of a deep-carpet New York law firm. It had not been an easy path. When Sylvia was a young associate, she’d been called “Honey” by the head of litigation and even worse by the female secretaries, who fiercely resented her.

“Dress as if you’re going to court. Not a disco.”

Victoria smiled to herself as she passed a pair of female public defenders sashaying down the corridor in short skirts and blouses opened two buttons too low. One of the women wore black fishnet stockings; the other’s legs were bare.

“If you want to pick up men, go to a bar. If you want to win in court, look, act, and speak like a professional.”

Old school. It made sense to Victoria. Today she wore a Coeli brown plaid jacket, belted at the waist, and a matching A-line skirt that fell below the knees. She had legs long enough for the A-line and a waist flat enough for the jacket. She looked back at the two young public defenders trailing in her wake. One chewed gum with an open mouth. The other had used a mahogany lip liner the width of a highway stripe.

What’s next? Bare midriffs?

Oh, Jesus. Walking toward her was one of the paralegals from the Probation Department. A Britney Spears wannabe in a red spaghetti-strap blouse that stopped three inches above her navel. Spandex black Capri pants and fuschia flip-flops that smacked the tile as she hurried toward the Probation office.

Victoria entered Judge Gridley’s courtroom. Empty, except for the bailiff. Elwood Reed was snoozing in a cushioned chair at the side of the bench. He was a stooped, lean, slow-moving man who got to his feet only twice a day-once when announcing His Honor’s entrance and once his exit-and would be jobless if he were not the judge’s cousin by marriage.

Victoria settled at the prosecution table and opened her partitioned briefcase. She pulled out her pleadings binder, evidence folder, research files, a yellow legal pad, a paperback version of the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, and five pens of different colors.

She waited, the only sounds the bailiff snoring and the air-conditioning humming. Steve would be late, of course. He’d whip on his tie while exiting the elevator. He’d shave with the Norelco as he waltzed down the corridor. He’d say “Howdy” to cronies, debate college football with uniformed cops, compliment a judge’s assistant on her new hairdo, scope out the hallways and rest rooms for any unrepresented felons who looked prosperous enough to pay a small retainer, and in general just be…Steve.

The door to the corridor opened.

This is a first. Steve, early?

But it wasn’t her lover, partner…and opponent. It was State Attorney Ray Pincher, scowling. “We need to talk, Ms. Lord.” He shot a look at the sleeping bailiff, then motioned toward the closed door of the jury room. “In there.”

“It’s not appropriate for us to discuss the case.” She sounded a little stiff, even to herself, but it was true. Once Pincher was “conflicted out”-admitted he was related to the defendant-he had to stay out. Lawyers call it a “Chinese wall,” a barrier to keep the person with the conflict of interest away from the case.