Lisa Scottoline - Legal Tender

“I’m here,” Bill said, half rising. I shoved him up the rest of the way.

“Mr. Kleeb, is this your signature?” Pope John waved the written form.

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Did you review this form with your counsel?”

“Yes.”

“Are you presently under the influence of drugs or alcohol?”

“Nu-uh.”

“Are you presently under the influence of any type of medication?”

“Uh, no.”

“Have any threats or promises been made to you to induce you to sign this paper?”

“No.”

Pope John proceeded to recite the charges against Bill, and I watched the reaction of an increasingly restless Eileen Jennings. She was five foot two, with long matte-black hair and a killer body, even with one arm in a sling. She fidgeted in her chair at the other defense table. Her eyes were dark and round, with a gaze that didn’t rest anywhere too long, but was always roving. They narrowed as Bill answered Pope John’s final questions. She’d been around enough courtrooms to know what came next.

“Do I understand correctly, Mr. Kleeb, that you are pleading guilty to the charges against you?”

“Yes, sir,” Bill answered.

“No, he isn’t!” Eileen shrieked, springing from her chair. Her public defender, a harried-looking young man with a nascent beard, yanked her back down by her good arm and tried to calm her. I touched Bill’s elbow to steady him, and he kept his eyes straight ahead the way I’d told him to. The gallery started talking among themselves and there was some laughter.

Pope John continued as if nothing untoward was happening, since it wasn’t in the missal. “Mr. Kleeb, do you make this plea freely, willingly, and of your own volition?”

“Uh, yes,” Bill said, more quietly than before, and Eileen jumped to her feet again. Every vein in her neck bulged as she struggled in her lawyer’s grasp.

“Bill, what the fuck are you doing!” she screamed. Two bailiffs hurried over and it took all three men to push her back into her chair, and she cursed as one jostled her broken arm. The gallery grew noisier and the same man in the back laughed crazily.

Pope John cleared his throat. “If there is another disruption of these proceedings, the Court will be compelled to place the defendant in restraints.”

“That won’t be necessary, Your Honor,” said the public defender. Eileen began stage-whispering to him frantically, even as the bailiffs stood above her.

“Mr. Kleeb,” the judge continued, talking over the noise, “the Court accepts your plea. You are released on your own recognizance. I see from your case file you have not been here before, and I do not expect the Court will see you here again. Thank you, Mr. Kleeb.”

“Yes, sir.” Bill eased into his seat, without looking at Eileen or me. His forehead was damp and his hands clasped together as if he were still cuffed.

“Miss Eileen Jennings, are you present in this courtroom?” Judge Muranno was saying.

“I plead not guilty!” Eileen cried, rising again, and this time her lawyer gave up. They obviously had no rapport, so I guessed she hadn’t told him about the CEO. “I had the right to protest the torture of those animals and those fuckin’ pigs beat me, Your Honor! They broke my fuckin’ arm and they beat me up! They had themselves a fine time!”

The faces of the arresting uniforms remained impassive as they sat in the row behind us, chrome badges lined up on their blue shirts. I knew most of them, and only two would’ve kicked the shit out of Eileen for fun. Noticeably absent was the cop she had tazed into a hospital stay. I heard he’d be out in a day and was considering a counterclaim.

“Miss Jennings,” Judge Muranno asked, “are you represented by counsel?”

“No, I have a public defender,” she said, and her lawyer winced. He looked all of twenty-three, since the P.D.’s office got them out of law school and burned them out fast. Each P.D. handled as many as thirty-five cases a day and often didn’t get the file until showtime.

“You are represented by counsel,” Pope John said, and read the charges, taking Eileen through another version of the liturgy and turning the other cheek at each insolent response. He accepted Eileen’s not guilty plea, set a trial date that everybody knew was illusory, and banged the gavel, Amen , for the bailiffs to take her to State Road.

Eileen didn’t look back but Bill watched her leave, and as soon as the door closed behind her, he stood up like a shot. “I have to go,” he said, his voice trembling. He kept his face turned away as he shook my hand.

“You did the right thing,” I said, but he didn’t respond, just turned and hurried past the bar of the court. “Bill?” I called after him, but he bolted out the courtroom door in front of Eileen’s lawyer, who held a stack of red accordion files under a pinstriped arm. I grabbed my briefcase and hustled after the public defender, catching up with him in a hallway that thronged with the disenfranchised, waiting to be arraigned.SANDY BEACHES, my ass.

“Are you really Bennie Rosato?” the P.D. asked, as I fell in stride beside him.

“No, she’s even taller. You’ve got quite a handful in there.”

“I’ll say.” He threaded his way through the crowd, turning his shoulders sideways. “Congratulations on that verdict, I followed it in the papers. Man, ten cops on one guy, up in the Northeast. The Police Advisory Board is a joke, isn’t it?”

“Listen, about Jennings-”

“I’d been wanting to meet you. I remember when you came to speak at my law school. Last year, at Seton Hall?”

I pushed past a fragrant circle of hookers. “Have you talked to Jennings at any length?”

“Jennings?”

“Eileen Jennings, your client.”

“She’s not my file, I’m just filling in.”

“Whose file is she?”

“Abrams, he’s on trial.” He checked his watch. “Shit. I was supposed to be upstairs ten minutes ago.”

“I want you to know I think Eileen Jennings is dangerous.”

“Are you kidding?” He dodged a herd of cops. “She was all talk, no action.”

“But what about the taser?”

“Hah! The chief wants me to cop it from the evidence room for the Christmas party.”

A family passed between us with toddlers in tow, and I waited to ask, “Do you know if she has a gun, or any explosives?”

“This isn’t my file.”

I grabbed his arm. “You got the file , so take some responsibility. You have to find out if she’s really dangerous. Do you understand?”

“I’ll make a note, okay?” He wrenched his arm free and hustled off, disillusioned and disappearing into the mob at the elevator bank.

I stood there and let the crowd flow around me. The P.D. wouldn’t make any note. Even if he did, it would get lost in the sea of notes, in the sea of files. The files, of course, were people. Black and white, crazy and sane, tall and short, even the ones shuffling around me at this very minute. Most of them on a first-name basis with handguns, child abuse, knives, crack addiction, and boxcutters. They were flooding in, choking the hallways and corridors, people that were downgraded to files and finally to statistics, the life bled from them, and the humanity.

For a second I felt stunned, thinking there was nothing I could do about it, no matter how hard I tried. Not even if I was right about Eileen, not even if I was wrong. Because there were twenty others waiting to take her place, itching to take aim. They lined ’em up, like the vice presidents. And they would be met with equal and opposite force, one that had arms as well as the law. There was a war on, truly, a pitched battle. And as clearly as I perceived it, I still didn’t know which side I was on. I was in the middle, at sea.