Steve Martini - Double Tap

Grudging as it might be, an expression-not quite a smile, but something more like the vacant look on the face of an infant at the instant of relief from passing gas-crosses Harry’s face.

Roy Snider is the chief deputy district attorney and Templeton’s immediate supervisor. He is not loved, either by those in his own office or others outside of it. For that reason he has been lighting incense and praying daily for more than a year that the Governor might give him a reprieve from the hell of the workaday world by naming him to one of two vacancies on the Superior Court. With Harrigan’s appointment, the last of those slots is now filled.

Somehow this seems to tickle Larry Templeton. He stands in the middle of the room, thumbs of both hands tucked into the belt of his suit pants, the wrinkled legs of which look like sharply tapered Bermuda shorts with cuffs. Along with his red bow tie he wears a starched white shirt and a brown herringbone tweed suit, what has become a virtual uniform. I have never seen him in anything other than brown tweed. His chest comes just to the top of Millie’s desk.

Lawrence K. Templeton is a Stanford Law graduate. Editor of the Law Review , he graduated second in his class. Based on his academic record, he was recruited by half of the silk-stocking law firms in the country. In each case he ran into a buzz saw as soon as they realized that he carried a large pillow in order to sit up high enough to make it to the conference table at the interview.

He tried a solo practice for a short time, but it didn’t take. Clients shied away. Then ten years ago someone told him that the district attorney in San Diego was hiring. Templeton filed an application. Given his academic pedigree and the fact that the prosecutor’s office was an equal opportunity employer, they had no choice but to make him an offer. It was either that or face a discrimination suit they couldn’t win in federal court.

At first Templeton was a novelty. All of the secretaries thought he was cute. The local paper did a feature piece on “The Littlest Law Enforcer in Town.” Templeton got his picture on the front page of section two, just above the fold.

But in a world where convictions are like notches on the handle of the fastest gun, he didn’t get what he wanted most: an opportunity to show what he could do, and respect. The people who mattered, the other prosecutors in the office, figured that Templeton would shuffle misdemeanor files until he got bored and quit. Maybe they could send him over to Juvenile, where he could connect with troubled kids, someone their own size to talk to. But it didn’t happen. Fate intervened.

Five months after he was hired, one of the worst flu epidemics in decades swept through Southern California. It ravaged the DA’s office like the plague, laying low more than half of the felony prosecutors, decimating their senior staff. Supervisors were forced to pull people from every division just to meet trial dates. Hires out of law school, kids whose bar results might still smear if you ran your thumb over the print, were trying homicide cases. With blood in the water, defense attorneys refused to waive time. Deal brokers who specialized in plea bargains, lawyers who had never been in front of a jury in their lives, were falling over one another to demand speedy trials for their clients.

When the DA handed a case file to the last man in line, he found Templeton standing behind him. He looked at Templeton, thought about it, and figured, why not dump a dog?

For almost a year the office had been getting hammered in the matter of People v. Bernard Russell Chester . The defendant was a prominent philanthropist, a self-made industrialist accused of killing his wife. Represented by one of the cardinal criminal-defense firms in L.A. and backstopped by an army of experts in forensics, Chester’s lawyers had been picking the DA’s office to pieces with motions and demands for discovery. Filed chiefly because the defendant was rich and the newspapers would have castigated the DA if he’d given Chester a pass, the state’s case was circumstantial: its knees had been broken and, like most of the people in the office, it was now coughing up a lung. In short, it was a loser, no matter who tried it. Templeton drew the file.

For eleven weeks Templeton rode the case like a cowboy on a bucking bronco. At first his antics in court made for rumors around the courthouse. At one point he set up two plastic recycling bins in front of the jury box and laid two twelve-foot boards across the top of them. He then climbed on top and proceeded to pace back and forth like a pirate walking the plank. After the jury stopped laughing, half of them fell in love. Templeton mesmerized them with an opening statement that lasted two days, alternating between a vaudeville act and a Harvard lecture on murder through the dark arts of toxicology. His activities in court drew headlines and feature articles in a dozen major newspapers across the country. When the jury came back with a verdict of guilty on a single count of first-degree murder, it was breaking news on all three networks. Then, in a showstopping penalty phase, Templeton convinced the jury, eight women and four men, that Bernard Russell Chester should be moved onto San Quentin’s death row. Chester would become the wealthiest man ever to be housed there.

With eighteen scalps on his belt, Templeton has yet to lose a capital case. What he has can’t be bottled or bought. Most women would like to take him home in the same way that kids want perpetual puppies and kittens. Templeton eats expert witnesses for lunch. He can lecture most of them on nearly any subject, and he bonds with juries like a precocious child while he slays half of your witnesses with humor and microwaves the rest with a million kilowatts of intellect.

We stand for several seconds in silence, pleasantries and smiles all around. We talk about the weather and the family photos on Millie’s desk. Finally I gin up enough sand to pop the question: Who brought the pink elephant to the party? “So tell me, Larry, you just filling in for the day, right?”

Thumbs still planted firmly under his belt, Templeton puffs out his chest a little and gives me a kind of wicked sideways grin. “And some people will tell you that pigs can fly. But in the real world we believe in facts. And the fact is, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

“ Wonderful,” says Harry. “we have a client who won’t tell us where he was or what he was doing for seven years, who is caught on video in the buff doing push-ups on top of the victim on her office couch. We have an exhibition of fine shooting that, in the absence of a critical piece of evidence or Annie Oakley, could only have been done by that same client. And if that wasn’t enough,” he says, “now we have to try the case against the ‘Death Dwarf.”’

We are back at the office. I am going through phone slips as Harry paces in front of my desk. Included in the stack is a message from Herman Diggs, our investigator in waiting.

“Picture it.” Harry holds out both hands like he is framing a shot. “You’re channel surfing and you tune in to see a lawyer the size of a fireplug shooting questions at witnesses on the stand. Now, I ask you, are you going to keep pushing the remote with your thumb, or settle back on the couch and be entertained?”

The judge in Ruiz’s case has taken under submission the application by two cable stations to broadcast the trial live from a fixed camera in the back of the courtroom. Harry and I fought it tooth and nail, our worst nightmare, especially with Templeton now in place. Harry has visions of the prosecutor doing backflips across the courtroom between witnesses.

“He did oppose the motion?” I ask him.