Steve Martini - Double Tap

When I got the first call in Ruiz’s case, I received a file with some materials. Inside, along with documents was a photograph, an eight-by-ten glossy, black-and-white, a shot of Ruiz in his uniform, garrison cap in hand, standing somewhere on a street, cobblestones and old buildings in the background. He stands there staring directly into the camera lens as if looking right through it. It was as if the figure in that photograph could peer right through me, and could see my soul.

While he stands outside the door, as one of the guards now works to remove the manacles from his hands, what strikes me besides Ruiz’s composure-his apparent self-possessed lack of fear in the face of a capital charge-is the brooding fix of his lifeless eyes. I could be wrong. The hollow gaze I see staring back at me through the glass could be the look of a cold killer. Anything is possible. But that’s not what I see. What I see is the thousand-yard stare, what I have always remembered as Evo’s eyes.

Iintroduce myself.

Ruiz smiles, a little sheepishly, and shakes my hand. But it is his first stated concern that would endear him to most lawyers.

“One question,” he says. “How the hell am I supposed to pay you guys? You do understand I’m out of a job right now?”

Except for his Army pension, which isn’t much at present, Ruiz has no means of support.

“For the moment somebody else is picking up the tab,” I tell him.

“Who?”

“An organization of retired military men. People like yourself. Some of them started businesses and have been quite successful. They set up a trust fund some years ago. Our firm has handled criminal cases for them in the past. We got the call on your case.”

“Kendal told me you would be coming by. You come well recommended.”

“I appreciate that.”

“So, you’ve done cases like this before?”

“You mean paid for out of the fund?”

“I mean a murder case.”

Though he doesn’t say it, what he means is a death case, a trial in which capital punishment could be the ultimate result.

“Yes, I have.”

“I hope you won them all.”

I smile. “I have never had a client executed, except once.”

He looks at me with a somewhat stark expression.

“I never took much pleasure in the result.” I change the subject. “This is my partner, Harry Hinds.”

He shakes Harry’s hand. “Mind if we sit? Ankle chains start to wear on me if I stand too long.”

“Please.”

Ruiz half steps, dragging the chains on the concrete floor toward the stainless-steel table with its welded benches on each side like a metal picnic table. It is bolted to the floor against one wall in the small conference room on the third floor of the jail.

As Ruiz angles himself onto one of the benches, Harry taps on the thick acrylic window in the door. The guard opens it and looks at him through the crack.

“Maybe you could take the ankle chains off our client,” Harry tells him.

The guard shakes his head. “Sorry. Can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Orders.”

“We see clients here all the time. This is the first time-”

“First time for everything.” The guard closes the door in Harry’s face.

Ruiz laughs. “That’s good, you talk to them. Kendal didn’t have any more luck than you just did. Only time they take the chains off is in court. And then there’s six of ‘em in uniform hanging over me like a dark cloud.”

“I’ll talk to the sheriff. If I have to, I’ll get a writ.” Harry makes a note.

“You’re hired.” Ruiz looks at me and smiles. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?”

I don’t, but Harry does. My partner’s fallen off the smokeless wagon again. He offers one to Ruiz, then lights it for him.

Ruiz takes a long drag, sucking the noxious vapor deep into his lungs, then settles back onto the bench seat and blows a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “Startin’ to like you guys already,” he says. “Now, if you could just get me a good-lookin’ woman. .” He takes another drag, holds the smoke for a few seconds, then expels it through his nose. “Good-lookin’, hell,” he says. “‘Bout now anything would look good. Four months in this hole. It’s not that I haven’t been in worse places, you understand. It’s just that in those other places, they did things every once in a while to keep you entertained-break the monotony, so to speak.”

“Where was this?”

“Different places. Other countries. You know what they say: ‘Join the Army, see the world.’ Or is that the Navy?”

“What exactly did they do to entertain you? In these other places?” Harry wants to know.

“Oh. Sometimes they might use your tongue for an ashtray, put out their cigarettes on it. Other times they’d clean your fingernails with a knife.” He holds up his right hand and waves the fingers as if to show us a ring. “Drive it right up in there,” says Ruiz. The nails from the middle two fingers are gone. Just a little cuticle and wrinkled skin remaining. “Then, for a little variation on the theme, they’d wake you in the morning with a good beating, either truncheons or a cane, depending whether they wanted to work on the bottom of your feet or your back and legs. But these assholes”-Ruiz gestures with a slight nod of the head toward the guard outside-“they just leave you in your cell twenty-three hours a day.”

“Some of my other clients claim they beat the crap out of them over here all the time,” says Harry. “If you like, I can talk to the guards, see what I can do.”

Ruiz laughs. “No, thanks. But maybe you can see if you can get me out of here. What are the chances of bail?”

This is not likely. A capital case involving a high-profile victim, a defendant with few contacts in the community, and a penchant for travel. . If Ruiz were to disappear, the judge who sprung him would have a lot of questions to answer. We put the issue of bail on the back burner for now.

He takes another drag, removes the cigarette from his mouth, and looks at it as he inhales the smoke deep into his lungs. “Kendal’s people, none of ‘em smoke,” he says. “Health nuts every one. Gonna live forever, I suppose. Fucking humorless bunch to boot. Don’t know why I miss ‘em so. Bit of a mystery, though.”

“What’s that?” says Harry.

“Why did Kendal quit the case?” he asks. “He pitched it in right after the preliminary hearing. I thought he did a pretty fair job. I mean, he couldn’t have expected to win there, what with all the evidence they had stacked up against us like that.”

“You think they’re out to get you?”

Ruiz is looking at the guard outside the door as I ask the question.

“What, him? No. He’s just doing his job. Working stiff like me. He’s gonna do whatever they tell him. But Kendal pisses me off. No excuse to cut and run. And I thought we hit it off pretty well. Then he ups and quits on me. I wasn’t mad at him for losing the prelim. Hell, anybody could have done that.”

“I trust you’ll cut us the same slack if we lose at trial,” says Harry.

“Your partner’s got a good sense of humor,” he tells me. “You I’m still trying to figure out.”

“According to what I understand, Mr. Kendal had a conflicted calendar. Two other trials coming up,” I tell him.

“Yeah, that was the story he told me, too.” Ruiz is busy bending over, sitting on the bench, adjusting the chains on one ankle, cigarette dangling from his lip as he glances up at me from under hooded lids. “Still, it would be nice to know exactly how they got to him.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Harry wants to know.

“Who’s ‘they’?” says Ruiz. “Who do you think? The government, that’s who.”