David ed. - Face Off (2014) Anthology

He tipped the piece over. Stared into the narrow coffinlike space where he was certain the treasure he sought had once been stashed. Where now there was nothing.

Malachai Samuels held the statue in his hands and stared into the abyss. For a moment, even though it was nigh on impossible, he thought he heard the Buddha laughing. Or maybe it was merely Davenport Talmage, still hoarding his list of lost Memory Tools from beyond the grave. Forever his to hide, and Malachai’s to seek.

STEVE MARTINI

VS. LINDA FAIRSTEIN

F act:In 1922, Howard Carter, then an itinerant archaeologist who had been combing the Valley of the Kings, discovered one of the largest treasure troves in history. Carter, on a single-minded quest for nearly two decades, unearthed the tomb of the boy king, the pharaoh Tutankhamen. He found subterranean caverns filled with priceless artifacts, hundreds of items of hammered gold, precious gems, and entire chariots crafted from exotic woods. Among those objects was a priceless figurine, a statuette of the boy king perched on the back of a black panther. The cat, carved from ebony, was molded from exotic resins, its formula known only to the ancient Egyptians.

Fact:For nearly ninety years the priceless artifacts from Carter’s find, including the panther and its golden king, resided in the Egyptian Museum at Cairo. Then, in early February 2011, in what became known as the Arab Spring, civil unrest gave way to looting. The museum was breeched and among the items taken was the statuette of the boy king atop the black cat.

Fact:On September 11, 2012, a marauding band of terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, torching the structure and killing four Americans including the U.S. ambassador. For weeks the burned-out structure languished, largely unguarded, with documents, some of them highly classified, strewn about in the abandoned wreckage.

Got your interest?

For two talented writers like Steve Martini and Linda Fairstein, this was all they needed to start a story.

Paul Madriani is the protagonist of twelve best-selling novels by Steve Martini, a former journalist and California lawyer. Linda Fairstein was a lawyer, too, a prosecutor for thirty years, and the head of the Sex Crimes Unit of the New York County District Attorney’s Office. Wily prosecutor Alexandra Cooper is her creation. So far there have been fifteen novels featuring Cooper.

Crossing swords at a lawyers’ conference seemed the easiest way for these two characters to connect. Next, an enterprising young reporter returns from Benghazi and files a story about what she may have found in the burned-out consulate building. When that reporter turns up dead, Madriani and Cooper find themselves launched on a mad chase in search of the killer and the golden boy king.

It’s a legal thriller for the twenty-first century.

From two masters.

Surfing the Panther

SO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS that you have no sympathy for the victim?”

“As I explained previously, I can’t discuss a pending case,” said Madriani.

“Well, then, let’s go back to the hypothetical,” said Cooper, flashing a smile at him. “I just tried to get you to tip your hand about that big case you’re trying in LA. Give the locals here some pointers. The situation we’ve been given to discuss today has a few similar issues. I’d like to know what you gain by being so vicious about a dead woman.”

“There’s no lack of sympathy, not on my part.”

Cooper ignored his denial. “Why is it so many litigators show no empathy for the female victim? In our hypo, she was a woman excelling in a male-dominated vocation. Or maybe you saw her as someone who was socially undesirable—a parasite, perhaps?”

“Your choice of words, not mine,” said Madriani. He didn’t like being cross-examined. Alexandra Cooper made him feel like a witness on the stand.

“But you agree with that assessment, don’t you? You like blaming the victim.” She knew she had him over a barrel and was pressing hard.

Paul Madriani, a criminal defense lawyer, knew that he’d be making a mistake if he allowed her to mention the case he currently had on trial in LA. Like stepping on the trigger of a land mine. He tried to figure some way to ease off and keep her focused on this exercise.

“Let’s just say that a jury is not likely to view the activities of your hypothetical victim as rising to the level of a holy calling. Can we just agree on that? Fair game?”

“The hypothetical deceased ran a top-tier advertising agency, Paul—a start-up she created with her own guts and brain.”

“She started up more male body parts than one could count, Alex. I’ll give you that,” Madriani said. “She also ran an escort service out of her Park Avenue offices.”

Some laughter from the audience, but none from Alex Cooper whose gaze at the moment consisted of two slits, both directed like lasers at Madriani’s Adam’s apple. To Cooper, a thirty-eight-year-old career prosecutor, head of a pioneering sex crimes unit in New York City, these were fighting words.

“So you think she deserved to die, Paul?”

“As I said earlier, you have to admit that the woman’s death may well have had to do with some of the lowlifes she encountered in the sex trade and nothing to do with my hypothetical client’s business strategies.”

“We have a question from the audience.” The moderator tried to break up the gender brawl with some Q & A.

“What you’re saying,” said Cooper, not quite ready to give up the fight, “is that a woman operating a legitimate portion of her company, perhaps more aggressively than her male competitors, deserves to be sexually assaulted, then bludgeoned—”

“That is not what I said.”

“She deserved the end she got, is that it? Is that the takeaway for the young lawyers here in the audience?”

Cooper and Madriani found themselves pitted against each other as speakers on a criminal-law panel of the New York State Bar Association, debating tactics in capital cases. In today’s session, they were using the example of a businesswoman in both legitimate and illegitimate realms, who’d been brutally sexually assaulted in her Manhattan office. As the defense attorney, Madriani was representing the hypothetical accused—a rival businessman—and his argument was that the deceased had many more unsavory enemies in her secondary “career” who may have killed her. In other words, he was casting aspersions on the dead victim’s character in order to create reasonable doubt for his client. And Alexandra Cooper wasn’t having any of it. Madriani had committed to the engagement months earlier, long before he had a trial date in a similarly high-profile case— People v. Mustaffa —which was supposed to be off-limits for the panel’s discussion since this matter was now pending, though Cooper was doing her best to rile him on it. He had taken the weekend off to fly to New York, and was now beginning to rue the day.

“Is that your pathetic attempt at a defense?” Cooper asked, before he could answer her last question.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“Then perhaps you should explain yourself,” said Cooper.

“Paul Madriani never needs to explain himself,” the moderator said. “He’s a master in the well of the courtroom. In fact, Alex, since we’re almost out of time, I suggest you take our visiting dignitary down to the bar and buy the first round. Isn’t that your tradition during jury deliberations?”

“It was nothing personal, Alex,” Madriani added. “It has nothing to do with the victim’s gender.”

Alex was used to having the last word. She tried to interject another comment, but could see that some of the attendees were closing their notebooks, hoping to snag an introduction to the two lawyers before they could escape the conference ballroom.