David ed. - Face Off (2014) Anthology

Madriani was having none of it. “What I mean is that you don’t have the most sympathetic victim in this kind of a situation.”

“Really? You think anyone deserves to die in such a horrific way? Would it be better for you if it was a male victim who had his genitals mutilated?”

“No!” he said. “Well, maybe!”

Laughter from the audience. Right now Madriani was beginning to sense what that might feel like. Cooper offered up a smile, the gender card dropped on the table by a skilled prosecutor, showing him how it’s done. “Can I ask you a question, Ms. Cooper?”

“Be my guest,” said Alex.

“I take it you’re not on special assignment here, undercover so to speak, with the LA District Attorney’s Office, are you?” Lawyers in the audience laughed again.

Cooper just smiled. “Touché! I tried to get you off-mark, Paul, but I couldn’t budge you. Better to have met you here than in the courtroom. And thanks for coming to do this.”

Litigators started moving to the podium in the front of the room. Paul leaned over to Alex as she stuffed her notes into a folder. “The hotel bar in fifteen?”

“No.”

“Don’t be a bad sport.”

“I’m just being a good hostess, Paul. Lose your acolytes and I’ll take you to the best bar in Manhattan. Best steaks, too, knowing how you like to devour red meat.”

Madriani smiled and nodded to accept the invitation.

“I made a seven o’clock reservation at Patroon. It’s a few blocks away. I’ll meet you in the lobby and we can walk over.”

Alex recognized the first man—four or five years with the Legal Aid Society doing defense work—who had lined up in front of Madriani’s place at the table.

“Mr. Madriani,” he said, introducing himself and reaching up to shake hands. “You’re off the record now. I’m just curious to know how you plan to walk the tightrope in your trial, in the Mustaffa case. I’ve got something like that coming up in the fall.”

“Like what?”

“You know. The victim in your case. Carla Spinova.”

Madriani glanced at Cooper as if to say, You started this.

Anyone who saw the news on television knew that Spinova was part of the international paparazzi.

“The victim here probed people’s secrets with her camera. She rooted through their trash for a living, a provocative career to say the least. A good lawyer has got to use that against the prosecution, don’t you think?” said Paul.

“Oh, really?” Alex asked, resisting the wiser choice of walking away from the discussion. “According to the medical examiner, if I recall correctly, Spinova’s vagina was ripped in four places by a weapon with a sharp serrated edge.”

“Stick to the hypothetical,” Madriani said. “I’m in front of a judge in LA who’d sooner drop the hammer on me for violating a gag order than parse words after reading my comments in the newspaper.”

“Either way,” Cooper said, “a woman who lived on the margins is dead, and you’re the one representing her killer.”

“If there was a global ranking for those who invaded other people’s privacy with a camera, Carla Spinova surely would have been seeded no lower than one or two on that list,” Madriani said, lowering his head so that only Alex and the young man in front of him could hear him. “It’s not like there’s a shortage of potential suspects, people who harbored a great deal of ill will toward her. Other dudes who might have done it.”

“So you’re not just blaming the victim. You’re throwing up some red herrings?”

Madriani nodded and thanked the lawyer for his question, then turned to Alex. “I’m ready for that cocktail, before I get myself in trouble talking about Mustaffa.”

“You deserve it. And if I were prosecuting your case, Paul, I’d make do with the photographs from the ME’s postmortem and take my chances with your high-profile client,” Cooper said.

Ibid Mustaffa was indeed Madriani’s client, and at the moment the skilled attorney figured that God might be on his side. He only had a thousand or so prosecutors in the LA County DA’s Office to worry about. The fates had saved him from Alexandra Cooper.

· · ·

On their way out, Madriani greeted a few acquaintances and answered some generic questions about trial strategy. The last straggler asked whether his Southern California firm was hiring. Madriani laughed and waved the young woman off. “Try me again in a year.”

Cooper was waiting near the exit. Before Madriani could reach her, he was intercepted by a man who’d been seated in the rear of the audience.

“Excuse me, Mr. Madriani, but I was wondering whether you think the victim’s death might have had anything to do with her recent trip to North Africa?”

The man spoke with a slight British accent, as if he might have been schooled in the UK, but was not born there. He wore a white linen suit and held a Panama hat in one hand, something out of a Bogart movie— Casablanca —a throwback to the forties. And the victim he was referencing was not the hypothetical ad maven/madam of the mock trial.

“I’m sure you heard me say I’m not here to comment on Mr. Mustaffa’s case.” Madriani knew about Carla Spinova’s trip. He and his investigators had checked it out and found nothing significant to tie it to her death.

“But you know she was killed on the eve of her return to Africa,” the man said, running a hand around the brim of his hat.

“And your point is?” said the lawyer.

“Whether that could have anything to do with her murder.”

“Not that we’re aware of,” Madriani said, assuming the man with whom he was speaking was also a lawyer. “Unless you know something I don’t.”

The man shrugged a shoulder and sat down in the near-empty room.

Madriani felt an ice-cold finger on the back of his neck. He turned around to face Alex Cooper.

“I’m getting thirsty, Paul.”

“I hear you.”

“I see why you’re so formidable in the courtroom. And I hope I didn’t come down too heavily, but they told me they wanted the program to have a little heat.”

“Heat is one thing. Hell is another.”

She laughed.

“Just make sure the judge in Mustaffa doesn’t get a transcript.”

“Not to worry. I can always call the DA out there if he puts up a stink. He’s a good friend, and I’m the one who tried to make you go rogue. It’s the least I can do after taking advantage like that.”

They headed down the escalator and walked out onto Lexington Avenue, with Alex leading the way to the upscale eatery on Forty-sixth Street.

“Thanks.”

“Of course,” she countered with a grin, “it would help if I knew what you were up to as well.”

“Damn. Are you always on the meter, Alex?”

“Totally off the record. It will all be on the airwaves after you open on Monday. What’s the story?”

Paul Madriani was too smart to tip his hand to a prosecutor—a smart one—whom he’d just met hours ago.

“Ibid Mustaffa’s a taxi driver in West Los Angeles. Out of work. And Carla Spinova was a Russian émigré who carved notches in her camera case by taking titillating pictures of notables, often in scant attire and at times in compromising situations. She was raped and murdered. That’s the People’s case.”

“And that’s the part I know, Paul. Everyone does.”

Spinova had invaded the private grounds of numerous palaces and royal abodes in the UK so many times that security forces were beginning to think she had a complete set of the Beefeaters’ keys. She was known as the woman who always got her shot. That was, until the night she got her throat slit.

“That’s all I’ve got to say about it, Alex.”