Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘You got it,’ says Lama.

‘What?’

‘Your honor,’ says Jimmy.

Woodruff gives him a look that says, ‘That’s better.’

Lama’s muttering to Cassidy. Denials sputtering like they are out of gas. ‘Our people wouldn’t do this.’

All of them except one, and I am looking at him right now. There is no longer any mystery in my mind as to the source of this news story. Humiliation over the courthouse tape, the loss of the compact as evidence was the last straw. This is classic Lama, time-honored techniques designed to screw one’s opponent. To Jimmy life is one large board game of getting even. Something tells me there is no way Woodruff will ever prove Lama was involved. He would have more layers of insulation on this than the average Eskimo. A dozen people between himself and the reporter, his name or fingerprints on nothing. Under the circumstances the court cannot call the reporter who wrote the story onto the carpet and demand to know his sources. Ostensibly Woodruff has no jurisdiction. The information in the article does not relate to evidence in our case. It is all tangential, intended only to cripple me as counsel. In this Lama has been deft.

Woodruff wrings his hands over the desk, making noises about a mistrial. At this moment, given the holes we have punched in their case, this would be a gift-wrapped package to Cassidy. She now knows our theory of defense. She could shore it up and try the case again.

The judge says he will poll the jury to see how many have read the article, what effect it has had. In the meantime he will craft an instruction. He orders Lama to return after today’s session to report progress on this, his inquiries regarding the story. Jimmy is bowing and scraping. Your typical toady in the face of authority, Lama is vowing to get to the bottom of it.

By five o’clock he’ll be back with iron-clad assurances that nobody in the department was involved, and Woodruff will be left as I am, to harbor empty suspicions without proof.

Lama and Cassidy head out to the courtroom to prepare for the day’s session. Harry follows them. Dana and I huddle in the hallway just beyond the clerk’s station.

‘That bitch,’ she says. I am struck by her language. This is an anger I have not seen in Dana before. Her face is flushed, her hands shaking. She is looking at the wall behind me at this moment, not engaging my eyes. The expletive uttered as if she were talking to herself. As if I were not present.

‘She’s spent months trying to derail the appointment,’ she says. Dana’s talking about her judicial aspirations. Her wrath, it seems, is predicated on something more than her personal loyalty to me. Cassidy in her denials to the court has in her own inimitable way implied that if it was not the local authorities whose indiscretions led to the embarrassing news article, then there is only one other possibility — it had to be Dana or some of her people. She does not take kindly to being played the stooge.

‘Fine. That’s the way they want it,’ she says, ‘we’ll give it to them in spades. A little leveling of the playing field,’ she tells me. ‘When do they swear Jack?’ she asks.

‘This morning,’ I tell her. ‘He’s first up.’

‘Then he’s fair game anytime after that?’

I nod.

‘You’ll have unsealed indictments and public records of conviction, certified copies by noon,’ she says. ‘I’ll see to it that a courier delivers them.’

I thank her for standing up for me, explaining to Woodruff.

‘All in a day’s work,’ she says. But now she tells me there is bad news. Things are not going well in their search for the witness who saw Jack with the man they know as Lyle Simmons in the bar across the river. The guy has completely dropped from sight.

‘Your people haven’t stopped looking?’ I say.

‘No. But I don’t want to mislead you either. The man hasn’t been seen in more than two months. He has strong inducements to stay lost. The unrelated criminal charges,’ she says. ‘If we do find him, it may not be in time.’

‘The man’s a linchpin in my case,’ I tell her.

‘You can make a case on Jack without him. He’s dirty,’ she says. ‘You know it wasn’t his child. The guy was burning with jealousy. He used the death of his wife to try and cut a deal on his sentence. There will be letters to that effect in the file,’ she says. ‘You can draw and quarter him.’

‘I wish you were on the jury,’ I tell her.

‘Their case is hemorrhaging faster than a peptic ulcer,’ she says. ‘The compact which no longer ties your client to the scene, a silencer, all the signs of a hired job. And Mr. Vega with a motive. Sounds like that’s where it’s at,’ she says.

‘It would be that much stronger with a triggerman.’

‘You want it all,’ she says. ‘We’ll try. But you shouldn’t count on it.’ The way she says this makes me think I am being told to make other arrangements, something short of the best evidence. I begin to wonder if this witness of theirs is not dead.

‘Are you free tonight?’ she asks.

‘Except for fatherhood,’ I tell her. ‘Dinner my place?’

She tells me she will bring the wine.

‘Say seven,’ I say.

She smiles. Then a warm and wet peck on the cheek in the dark corridor.

As she turns on her heels and heads down the hall, I see Harry, sitting in a chair in the clerk’s station, taking this all in, his face an etching of paternal disapproval, like some patriarch whose eldest son has just run off with the village trollop.

He is the centerpiece of the state’s case — the grieving widower. Jack is at the front of the courtroom, some last-minute words with Cassidy. Vega as usual is up on his toes, prancing in place like some kid about to wet his pants. He’s been escorted to the stand by Jimmy and one of the minions, who act like two cruisers pushing reporters away.

Vega wears a suit the price of which could support a family for a year, a silk tie and a matching kerchief in the breast pocket, maroon, Jack’s standard colors.

As he talks he cannot keep his gaze off me, darting little slits, sallow cheeks and lips stretched white with tension. I am assembling papers at the counsel table, but I refuse to divert my eyes from him. Jack and I play a game of ocular chicken.

Vega’s is a face not so much of determination as pure meanness. I have seen him turn this on witnesses in legislative committee before unleashing his wrath, usually in defense of some protected interests which has lavished its largess to sweeten Jack’s judgment. Vega is merciless on those without influence, volunteers for consumer groups, or students with a brief for the environment. Under Jack’s rules those without money have no business living in a democracy.

This morning I go back to meet Laurel in the holding cells, a few words of caution before she is led out into the courtroom.

When I see her inside the cell she is putting the final touches on her hair with a brush. It seems she has taken more interest in her personal appearance now that the kids are out of the way, to her view, safe and out of the clutches of Jack.

I tell her that he is outside ready to take the stand, that the jury will be watching her for each telltale sign of a response to everything he says.

‘Anything, a twitch of the nose, a pained expression, and they can read into it. It’s vital that you hold your emotions. There is no telling what he will say.’

This is shorthand for the obvious, that of all the witnesses Jack is the one most likely to embellish on the evidence, to take liberty with the facts where he can.

‘You don’t think he would lie?’ She gives me a stark expression.

For an instant, the very fact that she could ask this with a straight face catches me off guard. Then little cracks in her demeanor, wrinkles around the mouth, and the dam breaks. We both laugh.