Steve Martini - Compelling Evidence

“You look like shit,” he says. This is Harry Hinds, undiluted, straightforward.

I give him a shrug.

“What drags you out at this early hour?” he says.

“A pretrial with ‘the Coconut,’” I tell him.

Harry, it seems, is praying for a few dark courtrooms this day, banking on a shortage of judges to avoid a drunk-driving trial, a case in which he has no plausible defense. To Harry it is just another challenge.

The light changes. We cross the street and sidle up the steps past the modern bronze statue centered in the reflecting pool. Its fountain has long since ceased to work, the funding for its repairs no doubt siphoned by the county’s board of supes for some long-forgotten social program. Some art aficionado has hung a crude cardboard sign, written in Magic Marker, from the twisted sculpture:

SPEED KILLS

We make small talk. He tells me about his case, as is the compulsion of every lawyer. He has a sixty-year-old woman, well liked in the community, a school bus driver, the soul of discretion and honesty according to Harry. This paragon blew a.19 on the Breathalyzer-twice the legal limit of alcohol in her bloodstream-when the cops pulled her over late at night in the family car.

Harry’s bitching about the DA, who won’t reduce the charge to some unrelated offense so she can keep her bus driver’s certificate.

“A real tight ass,” he says.

This is Harry’s description of Duane Nelson, the district attorney. Nelson, who was appointed by the supervisors to fill a vacancy following Sam Jennings’s retirement a year ago, has been making serious noise about eliminating all plea bargains.

“If he has his way,” says Harry, “the county will end up building a dozen new jails and adding a thousand judges to the court. The local economy will collapse,” he says. “Half the working population will be serving perpetual jury duty and the other half will be behind bars.”

Harry tells me about the jury he’s hoping for if forced to trial-“Just a few open-minded types on the panel,” he says.

“I know the kind,” I say. “A jury that drinks its lunch.”

“Never!” He says this with a little mock indignation in his voice. “Just a few philosophers. Deep thinkers,” he tells me.

To Harry these are people who would stand in the fast lane of the freeway with mirrors to signal the mother ship. People who might buy his bullshit-theory of a defense.

In all of this there is not a hint of shame in Harry’s voice. He would defend the devil himself in the squared-off combat of jury trial. It is only the high stakes that he now shies away from.

He stops for a moment to check the directory by the stairs.

“Keep movin’ the damn courtrooms on me,” he mumbles. “Can’t even keep the master calendar in one place.”

“They know you’re comin’, Harry,” I say. “Just tryin’ to hide. Can you blame ’em?”

“Hell, I don’t know what they’re afraid of.” He laughs.

“Probably two years of jury selection, if the case is as bad as it sounds.”

He ignores this.

I wish him luck. He wanders off down the stairs, his worn bell-shaped briefcase-weighted down with reference books and frayed pages filled with familiar case citations-bouncing off his knee. It is the nice thing about specializing in the way of Harry Hinds. You can carry your library in a box.

There have been a good number of disappointments since my hasty departure from Potter, Skarpellos. But my return to the general practice of criminal law is, I am glad to say, not among them. While for three years I denied it roundly to those who were sufficiently intimate to make the suggestion, I had in fact grown bored with the stuff of which corporate business law is made, even the white-collar-crime variety to which the firm turned my talents. Though my solo practice may have limited horizons, given the world and its vices, mere is no shortage of clients. The secret, as always, is to ferret out those with the ability to pay, and to get it, as they say, “up front.”

The Capitol County courthouse isn’t old, but in recent years institutional changes have transformed it into a dour place. The broad marble pavilion leading from the main entrance on Ninth Street has been narrowed by a series of portable stanchions connected by neoprene-covered ropes, all designed to funnel the public through a maze of metal detectors and conveyor-fed security checks. The blond oak panels forming the facade of the public counters has taken on the worn look of years of indiscriminate public use.

A long line has formed under the scarred wooden sign reading MUNICIPAL COURT-TRAFFIC DIVISION. The queue undulates like some writhing snake as agitated motorists fume and fidget at the inefficiency of it all. Behind the counter the clerks move with a telegraphed indifference, like furless beasts awakening from a deep hibernation. In all, the place has the charm of a bus depot at rush hour.

I press past a briefcase-toting lawyer scurrying from the building. He is pursued by his casually clad client, a young black man sporting a gold necklace and gaudy pinkie ring. The youth is trying desperately to buttonhole his counsel before the attorney slips from the building and into the abyss of unretumed telephone calls.

To the casual eye seeing her beside me on the hard wooden bench outside department 13, she is stunning. Her raven hair flows like cascades of billowing dark water around the soft features of her face. Large round eyes sparkle with an azure incandescence. She wears a silk dress that clings to the contours of a body that would shame a cover girl. Tasteful gold earrings and a matching bracelet provide a touch of elegance. And always the saucy pursed lips of an enigmatic smile, as if she is privy to the ultimate inside joke on the human condition-a leel of self-reliance surprising in one who has attained the mere age of twenty-six years.

Even in her language, here in the confidence of her lawyer, in her choice of words and diction, the carefully erected veil of sophistication is preserved-the mock accent, not quite the queen’s English, but close. It’s an affectation to attract an upper-crust clientele.

“And what can we expect today?” she asks. You might think we’re on some social outing, as if I’m part of the tea-and-toast set about to introduce her to Lady Di.

Susan Hawley is a call girl-not a mere hooker, a streetwalker, the kind of woman who looks like death on a soda cracker, with needle tracks on her arms and puncture wounds between each toe. She is better read than I, at least when it comes to the local papers, part of her stock-in-trade, the ability to talk intelligently and nod knowingly as prominent names are dropped during upper-crust parties. Susan Hawley, I suspect, is a woman much in demand in the rarefied zone of political nightlife in this city. She is the ultimate ornament to be hung from the arm of important political figures or captains of industry during quiet dinner meetings. In her commercial dealings, hundred-dollar bills appear in considerable quantity in her purse the morning after, like fishes and loaves in the basket after the Sermon on the Mount.

She’s waiting for an answer to her question.

“I go in and talk to the judge. Find out what the DA has to offer. Whether they’re willing to deal.”

I will keep Hawley outside the courtroom as long as possible, away from the prying eyes and off-color jokes of the lawyers who are lined up waiting to have their cases heard by the Coconut in pretrial. It is a kind of Turkish bazaar where prosecutors and defense attorneys convene before the local pasha, in this case a judge of the superior court, to haggle over the price and value of justice-to settle their cases short of a trial, if it is possible.

“I may be in there awhile. I think it’ll be better if you wait out here in the corridor. I’ll call you if we need to talk.”