Mark Gimenez - The Abduction

Wally had played and replayed Friday night in his head, trying to figure out why his ID of Jennings didn’t feel right: He’s standing with the team at the concession stand after the game, getting down on his cherry snow cone… Gracie comes running past, heading around back

… The man, blond hair, blue eyes, black cap, plaid shirt, walks up and says, “I’m Gracie’s uncle. Her mother, my sister, sent me to get her. Her grandma had a stroke. Where’s she at?” Wally answers, “Around back.” “That way?” the man says, and he points with his right hand, his fingers…

The intercom buzzed with another drive-through customer. Wally extended his right arm and with his right index finger he flicked on the transmit button and said, “You want refried beans with that?”

And he froze.

“That’s it!”

Vic Neal, a sixth-year associate recently relocated to the Dallas office of Crane McWhorter, a prestigious 1,900-lawyer Wall Street firm, gazed upon his newest client curled up in a fetal position on the cot in the jail cell and facing the concrete wall.

“Jennings,” the guard said. “Your lawyer’s here.”

Jennings didn’t move. The guard shrugged, opened the cell door, allowed Vic entry, and then closed and locked the door behind him. Vic pulled the metal chair over near the cot, sat down, placed his briefcase in his lap, opened it, and removed a yellow pad and a pen. He closed the briefcase and wrote at the top of the pad: Gary Jennings/State of Texas v. Gary Jennings/99999.9909. The client’s name, the client matter, and the client billing number, in this case the firm’s marketing number. It was a habit ingrained from his first day at the firm; a Crane McWhorter lawyer didn’t take a crap without writing down a client billing number first.

Of course, this client would never get a bill. The firm had taken this case pro bono: for the good. For the good of Crane McWhorter’s marketing program, that is. A high-profile death penalty case guaranteed invaluable publicity for the firm and the lawyer handling the case. As Old Man McWhorter had said on more than one occasion, “Clients can’t hire you unless they know you.” And as the number of lawyers trolling for clients from D.C. to L.A. had reached three-million-plus, the need to get known had reached epidemic proportions among the learned members of the bar.

So now you can’t turn around and not bump into a lawyer trying to get known. In the name of marketing, lawyers insinuate themselves into and onto every city council, county commission, civic committee, charity, church, club, conflict, crisis, controversy, commotion, corridor of power, or cause celebre. Vic Neal had chosen causes celebres, in particular, death penalty cases; he had recently transferred to the Dallas office because Texas was executing prisoners faster than Saddam Hussein in his heyday. When the call had come tonight, he had jumped at the opportunity to represent a sexual predator facing death by lethal injection.

Crane McWhorter, on the advice of its marketing consultant, had begun accepting death penalty cases a year after Vic had joined the firm. At first, the firm took only appeals, the sanitized version of the crime. Reading the transcript of a gruesome murder trial was considerably less painful than reading a legal thriller, and the firm’s Ivy League-educated lawyers didn’t have to personally meet face-to-face with a stone-cold killer. Appeals courts address only legal technicalities, not whether the defendants were actually guilty, which of course they always were. But, to the firm’s dismay, appeals cases generated minimal publicity, not all that surprising since the cases were argued a year or two after the verdict, long after the victim had faded from the public’s short attention span. The time to reap the full publicity value of a vicious murder was at trial, when emotions and media interest ran the highest. So the firm began taking cases at the trial stage.

Vic had tried his first death penalty case four years ago and his sixth last summer, a black man accused of raping and murdering a white woman in Marfa, Texas-in godforsaken West Texas. The trial had lasted ten days: ten days of hundred-degree heat, ten days of popping Tums after Tex-Mex and chicken-fried lunches, ten days of media briefings on the Presidio County Courthouse steps after each day’s testimony, dozens of reporters and TV cameras-even the BBC-all focused on Vic Neal, defender of the oppressed.

He had especially enjoyed the BBC reports, whose correspondent had always said something like: “Ian Smythe reporting from Marfa, Texas, a desolate spot in a vast desert frontier known as West Texas, a dusty locale whose only claim to fame is that Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson filmed the American movie Giant here in 1955. Now, fifty years later, another American drama is being played out here in a Presidio County courtroom, starring a dashing young American lawyer from New York, Vic Neal, fighting to prevent the State of Texas from executing yet another impoverished black man…” That case had made Vic Neal a “prominent” trial lawyer. The defendant- what was his name? — had been convicted and executed last year. Which was surely the fate of this defendant.

“Gary.” No response. “Gary, I’m Vic Neal, your lawyer. The court appointed me.”

Jennings slowly rolled over and sat up.

“Shit, what happened to your face? The cops beat you up?”

Jennings shook his head.

“The FBI? That’s even better.”

Another shake of his head. “The mother,” he said.

“The mother? Elizabeth Brice kicked your… did that to you?”

A nod of the head. “She kneed me in the balls, too.”

“Ouch.”

Vic knew of Elizabeth Brice-white-collar defense, tough as nails, foul-mouthed, great body. Criminal defense was man’s work and she fit right in.

“Well, guess we can’t make anything of that.” Vic thumbed through his notes. “Did you really have stock options worth a million bucks?”

Jennings nodded.

“And you threw that away to have sex with your boss’s ten-year-old daughter? Well, I suppose we could plead insanity.”

A little gallows humor to break the ice. Vic chuckled; Jennings didn’t.

“Our goal, Gary, is to keep you off death row. To do that you must show remorse. Juries like that. And you can start showing some remorse by telling the police what you did with the girl’s body.”

“I didn’t take the girl!”

Vic leaned back in the chair and sighed. How many times had he heard that? Every death penalty defendant he had represented was utterly and completely innocent- I was framed! — right up to the moment they strapped him to the gurney and inserted the needle, then he’s begging God to forgive him for brutally killing a family of four because he wanted a new stereo.

“You know, Gary, if you lie to your lawyer, I can’t help you. Understand, this case isn’t a question of acquittal or conviction, it’s a question of life or death. Your life or your death. Life without parole would be a great victory, given the overwhelming evidence against you.”

“I want a lie-detector test!”

“Well, yeah, Gary, you could do that. And when you fail and the D.A. tells the world you failed, you will absolutely get the death penalty because every juror will know you’re guilty before the trial even starts. We won’t have a chance for any sympathy from even one juror to get you a life sentence.”

“But I didn’t do it! I was framed! Why don’t you find who put that picture in my truck, and her jersey, and made those calls? I’m innocent!”

“Her blood in your truck, but you’re innocent?”

“Gracie’s blood?”

Vic nodded. “FBI confirmed it’s hers with DNA tests. Media’s already got hold of it, but it’ll be officially announced tomorrow morning, right before your arraignment. So don’t even think about bail. This is home sweet home, pal.”