Steve Martini - Compelling Evidence

Her look suddenly turns hard, businesslike.

“I’m not going down on this thing. You do understand? Tell them to dismiss it.” Her words are clipped and cool, unemotional. Her voice carries the resolve of a bank president. It’s an absurd request. Still, she’s serious.

I laugh, not mocking her, but in amusement. Hawley has been netted by an undercover officer posing as a wealthy out-of-town business mogul; he used a wire to tape-record their negotiations. The case contains not even the remotest hint of entrapment in the sparse dialogue captured on the vice detail’s tape. In an unmistakable voice, she quotes a $1,000 fee for an array of professional services unheralded in the Kama Sutra. She was arrested two minutes later.

“Susan. I’ve told you before, I’m an attorney not a magician. There are no guarantees or quick fixes in this business.”

“Talk to the judge,” she says. “He will understand. I’m not entering a plea.” She turns away from me as if it is her final word on the subject.

“Listen to me.” I muster authority in my tone, a little exercise in client control. “I think we can get the felony charges dropped, if not today, then later before trial. But they’re not going to let you walk. You may as well get that out of your mind right now.”

It’s the first rule of law practice, never oversell a client. Rising expectations have a habit of feeding upon themselves.

She snaps her head back toward me. “No way. I mean it. I’m not taking the fall on this thing. Talk to the judge.” She bites these last words off. For the first time the polite veneer and polish are gone. This is how it would be, I sense, if a client were to demand a refund from this lady of business. She composes herself. “Tell him”-she clears her throat and looks me straight in the eye-“tell him mat you want it dismissed, that I want it dismissed. Do you understand? It’s very simple.” Her eyes are filled with fire. These aren’t words of idle expectation. Still, I have no legal basis for such a demand.

I assure her that no deal can be cut without her final approval. We haggle for several minutes and finally she accepts this. Though she warns me that she will go to trial on anything less man an outright dismissal. We will see. I rise and begin to move toward the courtroom.

A scruffy character with a three-day growth of beard, wearing frayed blue jeans and a tanktop, shuffles down the corridor behind his lawyer. The man’s attorney pauses to check the calendar pinned on the bulletin board outside the courtroom. His client studies Hawley with a sleepy, lustful gaze as he scratches the head of a blue dragon emblazoned by tattoo on his upper arm. If it were physically possible, I would attest to the fact that I can see waves of rancorous odor rising from his body. His finger slides from his arm to reach the latest itch through a hole in the rear of his jeans.

As for Hawley, she is oblivious to the man’s wandering eyes. I wonder if she is merely desensitized to years of male leering or if it is simply that the favors of Susan Hawley are without question beyond the price of this scurvy soul.

Armando Acosta, judge of the superior court, studies the open file on his desk. The premature bald circle on the back of his head shines through threads of fine straight black hair like the tonsure of some medieval monk. He looks up, peering over half-frame spectacles. For the first time since taking this case, I’m becoming convinced that I’ll have to go to trial to defend Susan Hawley. I’m confronted not only by the intransigence of my client but by the presence of Jimmy Lama in the judge’s chambers. He has joined Al Gibbs, the young deputy DA assigned to the case.

Lama is a thirty-year veteran of the police force, though his rank as a sergeant doesn’t indicate this. He represents everything objectionable in the overbearing, badge-heavy cop. He’s been successfully defended three times, though only Providence knows how, on charges of excessive force and brutality. The last time his collar earned forty-three stitches performing acrobatics through a plate-glass display window. According to Lama, the fifty-six-year-old wino dove through the glass, unaided, in an effort to escape.

Acosta looks up, impatience written in his eyes. “Please, gentlemen, don’t all speak at once.” The insistent tone in Acosta’s voice is scrupulously refined by years of practiced judicial arrogance.

I talk before Gibbs can open his mouth. “It’s a case of overcharging, Your Honor. The DA’s trying to bootstrap this thing into a felony on some thin theory of pimping and pandering.”

Under the law, a prostitute offering her services on the street is chargeable with a misdemeanor, but her pimp can be sentenced to state prison on felony charges. They are trying to nail Hawley on a half-baked assumption that she not only sold herself, but pimped for another woman.

Gibbs sits fidgeting in his chair, waiting politely for his turn, as if he’s at high tea. I know him; he has a good mind, but no fire in the belly.

Acosta’s impatience grows and finally he stares openly at Gibbs. “Did you come here for a purpose, counsel, or are we assembled for your entertainment?”

Gibbs begins to stutter. “Y-Your Honor. The lady was running a bordello out of her apartment. She was caught soliciting payment for sexual intercourse on behalf of another hooker,” he says.

In fact, this is a gross exaggeration, which I protest to Acosta. Hawley shared an apartment with another woman. She paid the rent and the telephone bills while her co-tenant bought the groceries and paid for the remainder of the utilities. The fact that the phone was in Hawley’s name and was used for incoming calls to hire dates for both women forms the basis for charges that she was pimping for the other woman. I put on the facts like a suit of clothes and verbally pound the table. It’s an explanation that seems to fit well, to the discerning eye of Armando Acosta. He has never been one much for the finer intricacies of the law.

Acosta’s now shuffling papers on his desk. He speaks in a staccato with a faint Mexican accent, not the intonations of street Spanish, but elegant and precise, as if the next phrase from his lips will hawk the rich qualities of “Corinthian leather.” It is an articulation that, like the judicial bearing, has been learned, for despite his Hispanic surname Acosta does not speak the language. The affected inflections of voice are just another concession to the politics of demography in a state with a rapidly rising Latino population. I have heard the poverty lawyers-the young Hispanics on their steeds tilting at the bastions of the establishment, the ones working for La Raza and the Mexican-American Defense Fund. In their circle, Acosta is known as the “Castilian Coconut,” brown and fuzzy on the outside, but white as driven snow at the core. He worships regularly at the altar of affirmative action, but anyone even vaguely familiar with the jurist knows that he has more in common with the Anglos on the board of directors of the Del Prado Country Club with whom he serves than with the brown grounds-keepers who rake its sand traps and mow its manicured greens.

But for the moment Acosta is a good judge, of sound discretion. He sides with me.

He stares at the DA. “Is this true, counsel? Are you trying to leverage this case to a felony, for purposes of plea bargaining? Because if that’s what’s going on here, this court will not countenance it.”

“No, Your Honor.” Gibbs’s denial is hollow.

There’s a momentary vacuum as Acosta waits for a further reply. Finally the void is filled, but not by Gibbs. It’s a gravelly voice to the far side of the prosecutor. “Not exactly, Your Honor.” Lama has waded in. “We’re just askin’ for her cooperation,” he says.