Steve Martini - Undue Influence

We drop down the elevator in the building. I step out and get my first glimpse of them. A van with a dish on top parked out front. Then two more down the block. I wonder if maybe there’s a fire in one of the high-rises. Then, as I step out onto the street, I get a microphone in the face.

‘Mr. Madriani, what can you tell us about the bombing?’

Another guy with a pen and pad. ‘Are you being charged? Are you talking to authorities?’

‘How long have you been under investigation?’

Harry is looking at me. ‘Holy shit.’

We grab the doors, step back inside, close them, and turn the lock. We’re getting a lot of glare from the strobes on the cameras bouncing off the glass of the door. A horde is now moving in.

One of the more enterprising souls is pulling on the handles, rattling the heavy door in its frame.

Harry’s got my elbow, dragging me toward a door down the hall. The way to the garage. We get in his car, and as we come up the ramp to the street there is another throng.

‘I should have put you in the fucking trunk,’ he says. ‘Hang on.’

He nearly runs some guy down who is so burdened with batteries and lights he cannot move.

‘So much for a one-day story,’ he says. ‘Any more theories?’

I look back over my shoulder out the rear window, and a few of them are running for their cars. A woman reporter with her camera crew is hoofing it down the street, figuring I am due in court and it’s only three blocks.

Harry asks me what I think Dana will do about all this.

‘I’m hoping she’ll vouch for me with Woodruff. Tell him what happened, that I was merely interviewing a client. That I’m not a suspect.’

‘You’ve been bitten by the love bug,’ he says. ‘She is probably the leaker.’

When I look over at him I see a lot of wrinkles and furrows, advice to the lovelorn from Harry. He is talking about Dana like he suspects she has lifted her leg, making me the leakee.

‘Why would she? She has nothing to gain.’

‘Birds of a feather,’ he says.

‘You mean Cassidy?’

‘I mean estrogen’s thicker than water,’ he says. ‘There are some of them who get off just tubing some poor slob.’ The ‘them’ Harry is talking about is the other half of humanity, the vast fairer sex. ‘Maybe you didn’t scratch the right itch the last time you got it on.’ Harry’s getting personal now. ‘I warned you,’ he says. ‘Two female prosecutors.’

Harry thinks the enmity in the workplace toward males is something genetic, like the encoding on the X chromosome, that there will be no peace until women are sent home. He’s still blinking, wondering how a gender that makes up more than half of the species acquired all the perks of minority status and got its head under the tent of affirmative action.

‘There are rules in this stuff, like the canon of ethics,’ he says. ‘We all know the first one: “Thou shalt not dip thy quill in the company ink.” ’

I remind him that Dana doesn’t work for us.

The second, he says: ‘ “Beware of false prosecutors who come to you in the night in sheep’s clothing or slinky garb, for they are ravening wolves,” ’ he says. To Harry there is little that is sacred.

I give him a smile but don’t say anything.

‘Sure, laugh,’ he says. ‘But it ain’t me running down the street who’s being chased by Tabloid Mary,’ he says. ‘It’s your ass that’s in the flames. Burnt offerings to the god of yellow journalism,’ says Harry.

In the distance a half block away I can hear some asshole shouting, ‘There he is!’ The patter of feet, heels on concrete, like a stampede of hookers ahead of the paddy wagon.

We’re making for the sanctuary of court, across the intersection between the parking lot and the courthouse, against a light that says DON’T WALK. We are nearly hit by a car. We run up the ramp to the back door.

It takes us a couple of minutes to negotiate the metal detector. It is here that the first camera crew catches us. Harry is panting, out of breath, busy putting his belt with its metal buckle back through the loops in his pants. Pictures at five. We move away. They try to follow. The guard is pointing to the conveyor belt and telling them to unstrap for inspection.

Harry turns around and gives them the finger. Their lights still on, film still whirring. ‘See you assholes upstairs,’ he says. ‘And leave the fucking cameras and mikes outside, in the hall,’ he tells them. Harry Hinds on public relations.

He sees the look on my face. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘They gotta bleep out all the bad stuff.’ Harry’s never heard of lip-reading.

We look like two brush salesmen toting sample cases as we finally make it to the elevator. Harry’s is filled with exhibits and pieces of evidence for our case. My own has lined-out questions for examination, in the case of today, for Jack Vega, who is due up in the state’s case — if I am not suspended from the practice before then.

When we arrive at the clerk’s station behind the courtroom, Dana is already inside with Woodruff. The clerk knocks on the door and we are told to wait a couple of minutes. Morgan Cassidy has been summoned by the judge and is on her way. Woodruff apparently is concerned by appearances of ex parte communications. He doesn’t want one of the lawyers inside behind closed doors without opposing counsel being present.

Two minutes later Cassidy breezes into the office, followed by Jimmy Lama. She walks past us like we are not there, nothing but an imperious look. Lama’s expression is dour, like maybe he’s not looking forward to this meeting.

The clerk opens the door and we all press into chambers. Woodruff is seated behind a large mahogany desk. Dana has one of the two stuffed club chairs across from him. Her briefcase is in her lap.

‘Your honor, if I could explain.’ I don’t waste any time. ‘I take it you’ve seen the morning paper?’

Woodruff has his hand up. ‘I’ve seen it and I’ve talked to Ms. Colby. She’s already told me what happened,’ he says. ‘An inaccurate news story,’ he says. ‘Right now I’m more concerned about how it got in the paper.’ He means whether there is some ulterior motive for this, and whether it takes its inspiration from the trial.

Woodruff may have the bushy eyebrows and the genteel twinkle of Walter Cronkite, but this morning he is a mean face, all of it aimed at Morgan Cassidy. There has been no love lost between her and the judge.

‘What can you tell us about this, Ms. Cassidy?’

‘Not a thing, your honor. You don’t think-’

‘Well, it didn’t come from our shop,’ says Dana.

Cassidy gives her a look to kill.

Harry’s smiling. The other side of the gender conspiracy — a catfight.

‘How about your people?’ Dana’s looking at Jimmy Lama.

His Adam’s apple comes halfway up, and then does a jackknife. A lot of nervous eyeing of the judge. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘I thought the postal investigation was a federal affair?’

‘We called in the local bomb squad, and forensic support,’ says Dana.

‘Maybe we should get whoever headed it up over here,’ says Woodruff.

‘No need. They’re here already,’ says Dana. ‘Lieutenant Lama was local liaison.’

With this Jimmy is seven shades of purple, a lot of fidgeting and nervous glances, more than a few of them in my direction. Lama on the carpet. Woodruff demanding answers. Who had access to information? The fingerprint reports?

‘It didn’t come from our side,’ says Jimmy. Absolute denials which he undercuts a moment later with assurances that he’ll check it out and get back to the judge.

‘By this afternoon,’ says Woodruff.