Dave Zeltserman - Killer

“I understand that emotions may be running high,” he said, his pale blue eyes scanning the room, “but if any of you make a disturbance you will be taken out in handcuffs and arrested. Do I make myself clear?”

He waited until a couple of members of the crowd nodded before he asked the clerk to call out the parties of Dunn vs March.

The wife and two sons of John Dunn were the plaintiffs in the suit. Dunn was one of the men with Douglas Behrle when I shot up the Datsun they were in. Dunn’s wife was about my age and looked gray and used up, as if there just wasn’t much left of her any more. The two sons were in their late thirties and neither of them seemed like they wanted to be there. My guess was they were being paid to file their suit against me.

The judge looked at me sitting alone at the defendant’s table and asked if I had legal representation.

“Your honor, I’m close to indigent. I don’t have any funds to hire a lawyer.”

Someone in the crowd snickered behind me and commented on how that was a shame. The bailiff took two angry steps forward, and the judge’s eyes shot up as he tried to pick out the guilty party. Only after the room had become deathly still again did he turn back to me.

“What do you mean close to indigent?” he asked.

“I was released from prison three weeks ago after serving fourteen years,” I said. “I have no savings, no bank accounts, and am still getting state assistance, and will continue to for the next five months.”

“Do you have any documentation regarding your state assistance?”

“Yes, your honor.”

The bailiff walked over to me for one of the papers I had taken out of my stack, and he brought it over to the judge who studied it carefully before asking me whether I had a job.

“Yes, your honor. I’m working as a janitor making eight dollars and twenty-five cents an hour. My rent is five hundred and sixty dollars a month, which doesn’t leave me much, if anything, left over.”

The judge turned to the plaintiff’s lawyer. “What’s the point of this action?” he asked. “Do you have any reason to believe that Mr March has assets that the state doesn’t know about?”

The lawyer stood up. He had small dark eyes and a piggish and disingenuous mouth, and I could smell Lombard all over him. “Not exactly, your honor,” he said. “But we do believe Mr March will be selling the book and movie rights to his atrocities.”

The judge accepted that and smiled at me apologetically. “Mr March,” he said, “regardless of your financial situation, you should’ve arranged for legal counsel to represent your interests. This is a civil proceeding, not criminal, and as such the state cannot provide you free legal help.”

A voice spoke out from behind me, “Your honor, Daniel Brest from Brest and Callow. If I could confer with Mr March, my firm may be interested in representing him pro bono.”

I turned to see a man standing three rows behind me. He was smiling pleasantly, but it didn’t quite mask the shrewdness in his eyes. From the way he was dressed he was clearly doing well – I could make out the same style of Cartier watch on his wrist that I had once taken off one of my targets, plus I’d been around enough cheap suits in my time to recognize an expensive number, and his cost some bucks.

The judge asked me if I’d like to take the attorney up on his offer, and I told him I would.

“Fifteen-minute recess then,” the judge said.

The plaintiff’s lawyer didn’t seem happy about this turn of events, nor did he seem surprised, and he kept his mouth shut. Dunn’s widow and two sons sat morosely. If anything they appeared disappointed that they had to be there longer than they hoped for. Daniel Brest came swiftly around the aisle to meet me and offer his hand, and then the bailiff led us to a private conference room. Once we were seated I asked him why he wanted to help me.

“I could feed you the standard boilerplate bullshit,” he said. “That we believe every party in a courtroom deserves legal representation, blah, blah, blah. The truth is we want the publicity this case will give us. Also, we’d like to represent you if you choose someday to sell the rights to your life story.”

“I don’t plan on ever doing that.”

He took a contract from his briefcase and handed it to me, as well as a pen. “In case you ever change your mind,” he said.

The contract was fully made out and gave Brest’s firm exclusive rights to act as my agent in a book, movie or any other media deal, in the event that they successfully represented me in any and all wrongful-death lawsuits filed against me.

“What would be considered successful?” I asked.

“That’s defined in a subclause on the last page. But basically, if we’re able to limit a judgment against you to an aggregate of fifty thousand dollars.”

I didn’t bother saying the obvious, that a fifty-thousand-dollar judgment against me didn’t sound all that successful. I knew what his answer would be – that that amount of money would be peanuts compared to what the rights to my story could bring in. I tried reading the clauses at the end of the contract, but the print was too small for my eyes, and I had to take him at his word. I went back over the section of the contract that spelled out how they would represent me, and tried to figure out if it would preclude my having Sophie as a co-author. From what I could tell, it wouldn’t. “Isn’t twenty-five percent high?” I asked, referring to the percentage that his firm would collect on any payment I received.

“That would be fair given the situation,” he told me, straight-faced, although I guess there was some truth to it. If you’re being extorted, twenty-five percent probably would be fair in most situations. “Besides,” he added, “it would only come into play if you decided to sell the rights, which you’re telling me you won’t.”

He looked on pleasantly while I signed and initialed the contract where he told me to. After I handed it back to him he asked for all the documents that I had. He read through them quickly and looked up at me, puzzled.

“Their attorney, Harwood, has filed five separate wrongful-death actions against you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why wouldn’t he join them into a single lawsuit?”

I shrugged. “They’re not doing this for money.”

Brest gave me an empty smile. “What’s their reason then?”

“Harwood’s probably acting for the Lombard family,” I said. “These lawsuits are being used to keep me in the Boston area, and maybe to be punitive. I’m sure the Lombard family also likes knowing the dates I’m required to be back in Chelsea.”

The way Brest’s eyes glazed while he continued smiling his empty smile, he clearly didn’t put much stock in my explanation for why the different lawsuits hadn’t been grouped into a single action. He noticed the way I was rubbing my temples, and with a knowing wink asked if I was having a migraine.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “More of a constant dull ache.”

“You’re lucky,” he said. “Migraines can be a bitch.”

There was a knock on the door, and the bailiff’s voice warning us that the fifteen-minute recess was over. Once we were back in the courtroom, Brest joined me at my table and informed the judge that he would be representing me, then requested that the case be dismissed since I had confessed to the police back in 1993 to murdering John Dunn and the three-year statute of limitations had long since expired. The plaintiff’s lawyer dryly argued that the contents of my confession had only been released to the public seven months earlier and it wasn’t until then that his clients learned I had murdered their respective loving husband and father.