"What's your client in for?" Melanie asked.
"Felony murder," I said, keeping it deadpan, deciding to just go with the role that this conversation was assigning me.
"That sounds pretty intense."
"The prison is," I said. "The client wasn't."
"He's not scary?" Ted asked.
"Not in the least."
"You don't sit there thinking about how he's a murderer?" Ted pressed.
"He's not a murderer," I said.
"I thought you said he was in for murder."
"I did," I said. "But that doesn't mean he did it."
"Somebody must have thought so," Ted said.
"He was convicted, sure," I said. "And if your point is that our
jury system is foolproof, well then I guess you got me there."
"You really believe he's innocent?" Melanie said.
"I'm pretty much sure of it."
"Why'd he get convicted then?" Ted asked.
"Because the police got him to confess."
"He confessed to a murder that he didn't commit?" Ted said skeptically.
"It happens more often than you'd think," I said. "Fourteen hours
in the box with homicide cops isn't exactly a Socratic dialogue. Actually it
sort of is a Socratic dialogue, only with threats taking the place of dialectic
and prison taking the place of enlightenment."
"That's horrible," Melanie said. "Do you think you're going to be
able to get him out?"
"You never know."
"So, Joel," Paul interjected, "aren't you just amazed by my
apartment?" "You want to give me the tour?"
"You can see pretty much all of it from where you're standing," Paul said.
"But sure."
Paul walked me over to the far wall, which featured a large window looking out toward Manhattan. Much of the view was blocked by another building, but I could see a sliver of the East River and a random section of Lower Manhattan skyscrapers.
"I should've known that fighting for justice was a pussy magnet," Paul said.
"Owning a loft in Dumbo is a pussy magnet," I said. "Barely
getting by pleading people out on misdemeanors, not so much."
"Melanie's totally into you," Paul said.
"Did she come here with Ted?" I asked.
Paul shook his head. "Ted's been skulking around her tonight, but
I don't think he's much in your way. A librarian would find Ted boring. You, on
the other hand, she thinks, have soul."
"I played along because I didn't see any other way to play it," I protested.
"But it's not like I could actually fool anyone into thinking I'm an idealist.
Maybe for an hour or so."
"How long do you need to seal the deal?" Paul asked.
"With Melanie?" I said. "Presumably more than an hour."
"She's not that kind of girl, sure, or at least she isn't going to
admit she is by leaving a party filled with work people with some guy she just
met. But ten will get you twenty that you can get her phone number before you
leave here tonight."
"Ten will get me twenty, huh? Deal," I said as I looked around Paul's spacious apartment.
"So this is what five-plus years of being a corporate whore buys you."
"I've never denied that I could be bought," Paul said. "The best
you could ever say about me was that I don't come particularly cheap."
IT TOOK
me about an hour to catch Melanie alone, by which time I'd had the opportunity to fortify myself with a couple of bracingly strong vodka tonics. I noticed her coming out of Paul's bathroom and walked over quickly to intercept her.
I told myself that I'd know in the first second Melanie saw me coming whether or not this was a good idea. To my relief, the smile she gave me seemed genuine.
"So tell the truth," I said. "Are you actually surviving at Walker? I promise
not to tell."
"It's been totally fine for what it is," Melanie said. "But I do
hope one day to make the leap like you did. I mean, for me it wouldn't be a
public defender gig, but something like that. You know, something that matters."
My guess was that I was only a year or two older than Melanie, but she was making me feel cynical and old. Her idealizing of the grubby, thankless work that I did seemed profoundly naive to me, although I remembered the way young lawyers at corporate law firms romanticized any other way of practicing law.
"It's safe to say that it doesn't always feel like what I do matters," I replied.
"I probably shouldn't ask—" Melanie said, before cutting herself off.
I had no idea what she'd been about to say, but I figured whatever it was, I wanted her to ask it.
"What?" I said, tilting my head, doing everything I could to appear welcoming.
"I was just thinking—I feel bad that this is even where my mind
would go—but I was just wondering, what's it like to give the money up?"
I shrugged off a flash of disappointment; I'd expected something more personal.
"It totally fucking sucks to give the money up," I said with a smile. "Actually,
though, honestly, I find that I just get used to whatever amount of money I have
and live accordingly."
"That's awesome," Melanie said. "You've just, like, gotten totally
clear, haven't you?"
I wasn't entirely sure what she meant by this, but decided that asking her to explain might dampen the mood. Melanie touched my shoulder.
"Listen," she said. "I think I could use another drink."
I made the slight mistake of glancing down at my own drink, which was conspicuously full.
"Sure," I said, turning toward Paul's kitchen.
"Actually, I was thinking . . . it's just that if we stay here,
I'm going to have to keep making bullshit talk with people from the office, you
know. We might not get a chance to really talk about stuff."
I was out of practice at these things, but had enough game left to be able to hit the softballs.
"We could get a drink somewhere else," I said.
"Sure," Melanie said, playing it like it was actually my idea. I told myself it was like riding a bicycle.
"Let me just tell Paul I'm heading out for a while," I said, phrasing it that way to get back at her a little, hopefully reclaim some of the power by suggesting I might be returning to the party.
"I'll meet you over by the door."
"Why don't you meet me at the elevator?" Melanie said. I remembered what Paul had said earlier, about how Melanie wouldn't contemplate leaving a party full of her coworkers with me. It seemed he'd underestimated her, but she was savvy enough to camouflage it.
I dragged Paul out of a conversation with a couple of people I didn't recognize.
"What's a cool bar around here?" I asked.
"My liquor's not good enough for you?"
"Just tell me."
"Why?"
"Because you totally owe me twenty bucks," I said.
PART
TWO
14
M
YRA AND
I had been waiting on the prosecutors in the Tate case, ADAs O'Bannon and Williams, for twenty minutes. It seemed a point of pride with ADAs to always keep defense lawyers waiting; perhaps it was taught as part of their orientation.
"What's making us wait like this get them?" I asked.
"They just want us to know how much they dislike us," Myra replied.
Finally ADA Williams arrived and gestured for us to follow her to a conference room. She was a tall black woman in her early thirties, willowy and aloof, her suit jacket buttoned up. Nobody bothered with small talk; Williams didn't even offer a token apology.
The conference room she led us to was cramped and viewless, merely functional and seldom cleaned. O'Bannon was not there. Myra hissed out a sigh, making a point of showing her annoyance. I guessed she was doing this deliberately, that she was perfectly capable of hiding her irritation if she thought it would benefit her case.
"Ted knows you're here," Williams said, a touch of apology in her voice.
"I'm sure he'll be right along."
"He's known we were here for half an hour," Myra said.
"He's probably on his way," Williams said.
O'Bannon walked in on cue. A squat bulldog of a man, with a full head of gray hair and a face like drooping clay, he stood a couple of inches shorter than Williams. He wore a white dress shirt that was fraying slightly at the collar, and a striped tie. He was the only one of us not wearing a suit jacket. I took this as a deliberate gesture, an indication that he didn't deem us worthy of such formalities.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," O'Bannon said, not putting any effort into it, taking a seat at the head of the table, dropping down a Redweld folder onto the table in front of him.
"Next time I'll tie some bells around my ankles so you'll know I'm here," Myra said.
"I'd appreciate that," O'Bannon deadpanned. "Now, what can I do
for you?"
"You can explain to me how come the photo array shown to Yolanda Miller wasn't part of the
Rosario
material turned over to us," Myra said, a tightness in her voice as she spoke.
I hadn't known what to expect in response, but what I saw on both ADAs' faces was confusion.
"What photo array?" O'Bannon said after a moment.
"Yolanda Miller told us that Detective Spanner showed her photos prior to the lineup, and that she didn't pick anybody out. I'd say that qualifies as
Rosario
material, wouldn't you?"
"I don't know anything about this," O'Bannon said. "The only ID I know about is the lineup." He turned to Williams.
"Are you aware of any photo array?" he asked her. Williams shook her head.
O'Bannon turned back to Myra. "Are you sure you understood Ms.
Miller correctly?"
"I'm absolutely positive," Myra said. "How could you not know
about a failed ID procedure with your star witness?"
"I'll look into it and get back to you."
"I'd imagine so, and quickly too, I might add," Myra said. "We're moving for a
Wade
hearing to challenge Miller's ID, and we need a copy of the photo array as an
exhibit."
"We'll certainly act quickly to verify whether or not a photo array was shown to Ms. Miller," O'Bannon said.
"If we get Yolanda's ID tossed your case goes right down the toilet with it," Myra said.
"You want to put anything on the table before the hearing?"
"Here's the thing with that," O'Bannon said. "Even if there was an
earlier ID procedure, you're not going to get the lineup ID tossed. And I
haven't come across a notice of alibi floating across my desk. Which means this
is something like a slam dunk, as far as we're concerned."
"This is more like a half-court shot," Myra said. "Other than the
alleged eyewitness testimony, which is in jeopardy of getting thrown out, and
which will at least take a big hit on cross now, you don't have any direct
evidence at all. No physical evidence, no murder weapon, no confession. You
can't tell me there's nothing on the table."
"What I'm willing to put on the table is he allocutes to murder
two, we agree to twenty to life."
"Murder two is the top count he's facing," Myra protested. "And a
conviction after trial gets twenty-five to life."
"Be that as it may," O'Bannon said. "That's the best on offer."
"The only reason for that would be—" Myra cut herself off, glancing quickly at Williams, who was looking nowhere.
"You were saying?" O'Bannon asked.
"You're really not going to make an offer here?" Myra asked.
"I don't believe that's quite what I said," O'Bannon said. "I
believe I did make an offer, and it was twenty to life."
"This is the kind of case your office pleads out on man one all the time and you know it," Myra said.
"What's the difference here? I mean, other than that you got a poor black
defendant accused of killing a white college student?"
"I certainly didn't say that," O'Bannon said, standing, though he wouldn't look at us any more than Williams would.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm due in court."
IT WAS
a short walk cutting across the bottom edge of Cadman Plaza from their office on Jay Street to ours on Pierrepont. Myra had stormed out of the DA's office, with me trailing in her wake. I caught up with her when she stopped to light a cigarette.
"Those fuckers," she said once we were outside in the heat. "No way they don't
put a decent offer on the table if it was Devin Wallace who'd been killed
instead of Seth Lipton."
"Does that really surprise you?" I asked.
"Just because something doesn't surprise me doesn't mean it
doesn't piss me off."
"Doesn't it?"
Myra gave me the look she had that I still couldn't read—I didn't know if she was pretending to be annoyed with me or actually was.
"It means we're probably going to trial on this one," she said.
"That's good," I said. "For me, I mean."
"Not if you like sleeping, it's not," Myra replied. "We've got to
start ramping up our investigation with an eye to whether we can actually win
this."
"I'm ready when you are."
"You seem like you put some Kahlúa in your coffee this morning."
"I'm in a good mood is all," I said. "Don't worry, I'm sure it
won't last."
"How was your party on Saturday?"
I hadn't expected Myra to bring it up; other than on the drive back from Sing Sing, we'd never talked about our lives outside of work.
"It was good," I said. "You know, how the other half lives."
In truth, it'd been more than good. Melanie and I had ended up spending a couple of hours at a bar in Dumbo, then stumbled into a taxi together and gone back to my place. I hadn't been with a woman since Beth had died over a year ago, and I hadn't let myself acknowledge the extent to which I'd missed sex until the prospect of having it had suddenly reappeared in my life.
I thought I'd acquitted myself rather well. While my lack of recent practice probably hadn't done my technique any favors, it had again imbued me with the raw enthusiasm of my high school years, something that Melanie appeared to appreciate. We'd made a late night of it, not falling asleep until after four a.m., then made love again upon awakening before going for a leisurely brunch at Melt.
I knew strategically that I should probably wait a few days to call her, but I decided to call as soon as I got back from the meeting at the DA's office, establish my bona fides as not playing games. This was every bit as strategic a decision as not calling would be, but dating in New York was as much a matter of tactics as was practicing law.
As soon as Melanie came on the phone I knew that something was wrong. She sounded guarded, tense. I told myself she was probably just busy, distracted by some memo she was in the middle of writing. After a couple of minutes of desultory small talk I decided I should just bring the conversation to a close.
"Anyway," I said, "just wanted to say hi. I thought maybe we could
get a drink or something later in the week."
The ensuing silence said it all. I closed my eyes, waiting for her to speak. I knew what was coming before it came.
"Listen, Joel," Melanie finally said, "I was talking to Ted this
morning, and he told me."
"He told you what?" I couldn't resist saying.
"You know," Melanie said. "About the thing with the girl here, and
how you got fired and all that."
"I didn't get fired," I protested weakly. This was literally true, although it wasn't true in any other way.
"Whatever," Melanie said. "You know what I'm talking about."
"I'm just saying I quit. I wrote a resignation letter and
everything."
"I mean Jesus, Joel," Melanie said. "You're like some kind of
junkie?"
"I'm not a junkie," I said. "I was never a junkie."
"You told me you left the firm to go be a public defender. I feel
a little misled."
"I didn't say anything to you that wasn't true," I said.
"I don't think . . . I mean, I just started working here—it would
obviously be incredibly awkward."
"I thought you didn't care about that sort of thing," I said miserably. I didn't really know why I was putting up a fight; it was just brute instinct and pride—I clearly wasn't going to win.
"When did I ever say that?" Melanie asked.