Steve Martini - Double Tap

“Gimme a break.”

“I don’t know. Putting Ruiz on to ID the gun or its parts would not be my first choice.”

We hustle up the stairs to the loading dock. The janitor is waiting for us at the door. He uses a mop that he holds up for a second or two in front of the lens of the security camera that is aimed at the door. He blinds it momentarily as Harry and I scurry through and into the stairwell a few feet away.

We head up to the criminal court department. On four we hit the gauntlet, the print press and the electronic set who have gained access by leaving most of their equipment outside. Hobbled like this, they can only act as megaphones for what we say, repeating it and describing what they saw for the cameras when they get outside.

“Mr. Madriani, will you oppose the motion for cameras in the courtroom? What is your position on the people’s right to know?”

“Let ‘em buy a ticket and take a seat,” says Harry.

“Is that your position? Does that mean you’ll oppose the motion?” They close in around us. One of them pushes a notebook in Harry’s face, making like he’s taking notes, trying to herd Harry in another direction. This is a mistake.

“Mr. Hinds. Could y-” In mid-syllable the guy groans. He turns a shade of scarlet, something close to the color of a cardinal’s cap. Then he disappears, bent over, lost somewhere in the crowd.

While the brief box contains useful points and authorities, it’s the sharp corners on the container that Harry appreciates. In tight clinches he can deliver these with the underhanded subtlety of a pitcher throwing a high-speed softball. No one would notice except the victim. Dropping the old eight-pound laptop into the box was, for Harry, like loading lead shot in a leather sap.

A couple of the reporters, two of the women, are now distracted, trying to help their colleague, who is doubled over, notebook and pen to his crotch.

“Are you okay?” One of the women is slapping the guy on the back like maybe something is caught in his throat.

This has created an opening. Harry slips through and is behind me again, up close in my ear. “The man seems to be at a loss for words.” He pushes me from behind. “Maybe I should get in front.”

“No.” Visions of writhing bodies covering the corridor outside the courtroom, film at five.

We continue to push our way through toward the courtroom. It has been open warfare with most of the press since Harry and I issued subpoenas for certain items, reporters’ notes of interviews with the cops and some videotape taken outside of Chapman’s house the night of the murder and the following day as crime-scene techs processed the place. The public may have a right to know, but as far as most of the reporters are concerned, the squiggles in their notebooks and the raw file footage captured by their film crews is inviolate. We have noticed that in their coverage they have started taking it out on Ruiz: graphic stories of the murder and reports of rumors as to an affair between the victim and the defendant that may have resulted in stalking.

Harry and I push our way along, doing our best to ignore the questions.

One of the bailiffs outside the courtroom door wades in from the other side. “Come on, out of the way. Let ‘em through. Come on, folks, you’re just making it hard on everybody. Keep it up, the judge is gonna chase you out of the courthouse. I’m telling you.” He finally parts the waters, enough for Harry and me to squeeze through. We clear the door and the bailiff closes it behind us.

Inside is hushed silence. The courtroom lights are on but the bench is empty. The clerk is back at her desk in the anteroom just outside the judge’s chambers. I can hear her talking, then a deeper, male voice. This is followed by a lot of laughter.

We make our way through the railing at the bar and toward the sound of the voices. Halfway there, a figure breaks the light in the doorway at the end of the hall. I recognize the profile, the bald head and the bow tie, the perpetual smile and the laughter, as he bounces past the opening like a ball. Peripheral vision being what it is, he notices our movement and an instant later comes back into the doorway for a better look.

“Speak of the devil. Mention Madriani’s name and he appears like smoke. Genie out of a bottle,” he says.

“That can’t be Larry Templeton!”

“Who else do you know who can substitute for a doorstop?” he asks me.

Bald as a cue ball but sporting a goatee, Templeton’s facial features and appearance, if pressed into service, could easily provide a good facsimile of a death mask of Lenin. This would be striking in and of itself if it weren’t for his height, which tips the ruler at four-feet-six inches. He suffers from a condition known as hypochondroplasia, a form of short-limb dwarfism.

My partner is into it with him before he gets to the door. “Larry, you shouldn’t belittle yourself like that.”

“Is that you, Hinds? What did you say?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you said. What you mean is that I should allow some needy defense lawyer to belittle me.”

“Well, now that you mention it. .” says Harry. We get to the door and they both laugh.

Millie, the judge’s clerk, is sitting behind her desk, smiling at the road show. The judge’s door is closed.

“Are we late?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Where’s Harrigan?”

“Mr. Templeton was just telling me,” she says.

Curt Harrigan is the deputy prosecutor who has drawn Ruiz’s case file. To this point he has been accommodating, hiding only half of the cards in the deck up his sleeve.

“So you haven’t heard?” says Templeton.

“Heard what?”

Larry is always at his best when he has something you don’t. This morning he savors it.

“Alas, fair Harrigan is no more. He has been removed from the realm of the living. Lifted into the heavens on the arms of nymphs and the wings of angels.”

“He’s dead?” says Harry.

“Not dead but deified, like Caesar’s horse. It seems the Governor appointed him to the Superior Court at ten o’clock this morning. He no longer wishes to be seen with mere mortals, fearful that this might taint his appearance of neutrality.”

“Neutrality?” says Harry.

“I said appearance .” Templeton is quick.

“Why not just arm him with a needle so he can do lethal injections from the bench?” Harry is no longer kidding: his blood is getting up.

“It’s a thought,” says Templeton. “We’ll work on it.”

“Or, better yet, they could sell tickets and let Harrigan cut out the defendant’s heart with a stone knife. Right from the bench, like an Aztec priest,” says Harry.

“Can I put that in the suggestion box?” Templeton winks at him.

“Why bother?” says Harry. “The DA’s Association probably already has it drafted as an initiative for the next election.”

“Down, Harry.” Templeton gestures as if cracking a mythical whip to keep him at bay.

“Screw you,” says Harry. “Your office is taking over the courts.”

“Who’s counting?” says Templeton.

“I am,” says Harry.

“And I understand completely. I would be upset too.” Templeton’s hands, small as a child’s, are now joined, fingers threaded together, eyes downcast as if in remorse. Because of his size and disproportions, large head, short legs, and a torso that seems to fit neither, his every movement seems exaggerated like the choreography in an old silent movie.

“Yeah, right,” says Harry.

“Still, as black as this funnel cloud may be,” says Templeton, “there is a little sliver of silver in its slipstream. Even for you.”

“And what’s that?”

“Back at the office,” says Templeton. “The Governor’s press release is still smoking, burning a hole through the top of Snider’s desk.”