Steve Martini: The Enemy Inside

Isaw it in the paper this morning,” says Harry. “Sounds like a barbecue without the tailgate. Driver flambéed behind the wheel in her car. If you like, I’ll take it off your hands, but why would we want the case?” To Harry it sounds like a dog.

I ignore him. “The cops are still trying to identify the victim,” I tell him.

Harry Hinds is my partner of more than twenty years, Madriani amp; Hinds, Attorneys at Law, Coronado near San Diego. Business has been thin of late. For almost two years we had been on the run, hiding out from a Mexican killer named Liquida who was trying to punch holes in us with a stiletto. This is apparently what passes for business in the world of narco-fueled revenge. And the man wasn’t even a client.

For a while, after it ended and Liquida was dead, the papers were full of it. Harry and I, along with Herman Diggs, our investigator, became local celebrities.

Everything was fine until the FBI stepped in. They announced publicly that they were giving us a citizen’s award for cooperation with law enforcement. For a firm of criminal defense lawyers, this was the kiss of death, Satan giving Gabriel a gold star.

Referrals on cases dried up like an Egyptian mummy. Everywhere we went, other lawyers who knew us stopped shaking our hands and began giving us hugs, frisking us to see which of us was wearing the wire. Harry and I are no longer welcome at defense bar luncheons unless we go naked.

“You look like hell,” says Harry.

“Thanks.”

“Just to let you know, a beard does not become you.”

I have not shaved since yesterday morning. “I was up at four this morning meeting with our client at the county lockup in the hospital.”

“You or him?” he asks.

“What?”

“Which one of you was being treated?” says Harry.

“I look that bad?”

He nods.

“Alex Ives, twenty-six, arrested for DUI. A few bruises. No broken bones,” I tell him.

“That still doesn’t answer my question. Why are we taking the case? Is there a fee involved?”

“He’s a friend of Sarah’s,” I tell him.

“Ahh. .” He nods slowly as if to say, “We are now reduced to this.”

Sarah is my daughter. She is mid-twenties going on forty and has a mother complex for troubled souls. She seems to have been born with a divining rod for knowing the naturally correct thing to do in any situation. Not just social etiquette, but what is right. Sarah lacks the gene that afflicts so many of the young with poor judgment. You might call her old-fashioned. I choose to call her wise. For this, I am blessed. For the same reason, when she asks a favor, I would very likely come to question my own judgment if I said no.

“The kid didn’t call me,” I tell Harry. “He called Sarah. Apparently they’ve known each other since high school.”

“So what did he have to say?” says Harry. “This client of ours?”

“Says he’s sorry, and he’s scared.”

“That’s it?”

“The sorry part. The rest hung over him like a vapor. You’d think he’d never seen concrete walls before.” Alex Ives seemed to be dying of sleep deprivation, and still the fear was dripping off him like an icicle. “Said he’d never been arrested before.”

“What else?”

“Apart from that, he can’t remember a thing.”

“Well, at least he remembered that part. Hope he told the cops the same story.” Harry looks at me over the top of his glasses, cheaters that he wears mostly for reading. “You believe him? Or do you think maybe he was just that juiced? If he’s telling the truth, with that kind of memory loss he probably blew a zero-point-three on the Breathalyzer.”

“He was unconscious at the scene. We won’t get the blood alcohol report until this afternoon. Cops said they smelled alcohol on him.”

“And, of course, while they were treating him and he was unconscious, they sank their fangs into his neck and drew blood,” says Harry.

“A passing motorist pulled him from his car and away from the flames. Otherwise we wouldn’t even have him. Everything inside both cars was toast.”

“Thank God for small favors.” Sarcasm is Harry’s middle name.

“It looks like Ives T-boned the other vehicle at an intersection, a dirt road and a two-lane highway east of town out in the desert. Way the hell out, according to the cops. McCain Valley Road.”

“He lives out there?”

“No. He lives in town. A condo in the Gas Lamp District.”

“What was he doing way out there? That’s fifty miles as the crow flies,” says Harry.

I shake my head. “Says he doesn’t know. The last thing he remembers is being at a party up north near Del Mar, about seven thirty last evening, and then nothing.”

“Was he drinking at this party?” says Harry.

“Says he had one drink.”

“How big was the glass? Anybody with him? I mean, to vouch for this one-drink theory.”

I shake my head. “He says he was alone.”

“Let’s see if I’ve got this. . unconscious at the scene, smells of alcohol and the other driver is dead. And now he can’t remember anything, except for the fact that he had only one drink. I’d say we got the wrong client. Why couldn’t Sarah know the cinder in the other car? Her blood kin at least will have a good civil case.” What Harry means is damages against our guy. “Tell me he has insurance and a valid license.” Harry doesn’t want to be stuck fending off a wrongful death case with no coverage while jousting with a prosecutor over hard time for vehicular manslaughter.

I nod. “He has insurance and a license that hasn’t been revoked as far as I know. They ran a rap sheet and found no priors. So he doesn’t look to be a habitual drunk.”

“That could mean that he’s just been lucky up to now.” Harry is the essential cynic.

“He could be lying about what he remembers. Like I say, he’s scared.”

“He should be,” says Harry. “He could be facing anywhere from four to six years in the pen.”

In a death case, prosecutors will invariably push for the upper end. MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, has sensitized district attorneys and judges who have to stand for election to the realities of politics. By the same token, the other party is dead and you can bet the prosecutor who tries the case will be reminding the jury and the judge of this fact at every opportunity.

“Anything by way of an accident report?” says Harry.

“Not out yet,” I tell him.

“What does our client remember about this party he went to?”

“According to Ives, he was invited to the gig by some girl he met at work. The scene was a big house, swimming pool, lots of people, music, an open bar, but he can’t remember the address.”

“Of course not,” says Harry.

“He said he’d recognize the place if he saw it again. The street address was on a note that he had in his wallet. Along with the girl’s name and phone number.”

“So he’d never met this girl before?”

“No. And he can’t remember her name.”

“She must have made a deep impression,” says Harry. “Still, her name will be on the note in the wallet. The cops have it, I assume?” says Harry.

“No. As a matter of fact, they don’t. I checked. They got his watch, some cash he had in his pocket, and a graduation ring from college.”

“That’s it?”

“They figure the wallet must have been lost on the seat of the car, or else he dropped it somewhere. . ”

“So, assuming this note existed, it probably got torched in the fire.” Harry finishes the thought for me. “You can bet the cops will be looking for it. If our boy was falling-down drunk when he left the party, there will be lots of people who saw him, witnesses,” says Harry, “but not for our side. Without the wallet, how did the cops ID him if, as you say, he was unconscious?”