“So you contend there is a built-in bias towards the accused,” she says.
“What do you think?” I answer. Always take the offense, if they’re defending they can’t attack. “You read the local papers you’ll see our clients have already been convicted, at least by anyone who’s heard anything about it, which is practically everyone in this state, certainly in this county.”
“And that’s why you asked for the change of venue,” she presses.
“It was one of the reasons.”
“How do you feel about Judge Martinez turning you down?”
“Check with me when it’s over,” I answer.
I watch as the camera comes off me, moving in close on her for a brief wrap-up before cutting back to Brokaw. What she says is this: no member of any biker gang has ever been executed for committing a crime, particularly the crime of murder. The enormity of that is what’s fueling so much interest in us, beyond the case itself. Society wants to burn an outlaw.
Paul turns it off. “Not bad,” he says.
“I came across okay,” I admit. I don’t hide my light under a bushel. “Serious and caring.”
Everyone chuckles. Anything to break this damn tension.
“You were good,” Tommy adds. “Robertson looked worried.”
“Because he has the most to lose,” Paul continues, an important point. In the strictest sense that’s not true; the bikers have the most to lose. But he’s right in the trial sense, lawyer versus lawyer. Everyone figures the prosecution has cards and spades in this one; if they lose and we win they’re dogshit. So the conventional wisdom goes. On the other hand, I’ve won more than my share of cases that didn’t look hopeful, at least when they began. So it’s not like the betting’s going all one way.
The four of us spend a couple more hours together, last-minute practicing for tomorrow’s opening statements. I’ll go last: I’m the star, the
jefe
. Moseby’ll most certainly do his shuck and jive ol’ boy shtick, but he won’t orate, because if he does I’ll level him when it’s my turn. You have to be true to yourself in the courtroom, if you can shoot the moon you go for it, otherwise you play your cards conservatively and don’t go for the bluff, certainly not at the beginning.
Paul and Tommy take off. Mary Lou stays, banging away at the word processor, last-minute polishing on her remarks. She’s never been in this deep before; I know how scary your first murder case can be. I stand at my window, looking out at the dark city. The only lights still on are from bars, where I won’t be tonight. I sit down in my chair, my back to Mary Lou and the room, on automatic pilot, playing my opening in my head.
She finishes her changes, prints them out on the laser printer. It’s quiet for a moment—she’s gone down the hall to Xerox.
I sense her behind me before the actual touch, her hands on my shoulders, massaging them strongly. I tense, then relax. It feels good, comforting, her hands rhythmically stroking.
“You don’t know how much I admire you,” she tells me, digging deep. “Sometimes I get so enthralled watching you in the courtroom I forget I’m on the job.”
“Thanks.” The massage feels wonderful. I have an overwhelming impulse to kiss the palm of her hand, tongue it. I manage to resist. I can smell her, her perfume mingled with her faint body odors, we’ve been on the go for fifteen hours. She’s slipped out of her heels, sways on her stockinged feet.
I’m hard. If there was ever a time in my life I didn’t want that, this is it. I try to think of multiplication tables, batting averages. She continues kneading, her strong thumbs stretching my neck muscles. I want to melt.
She massages my temples. I close my eyes, breathing with the tempo of her moving hands. As I finally start to relax, feeling an ebb in my desire, a hand slips to the side of my neck, an unmistakable caress. The moan almost passes my lips; I manage to stifle it.
Jesus Christ.
She’s
on the make for
me
. Patricia was right; she knew something women know instinctively.
I take the hand from my neck, holding it, standing and turning to her. It’s finally out in the open. This will be the greatest sexual coupling in modern times, if I’ve ever known anything in my life I know this.
“I’m dying to sleep with you, Mary Lou,” I tell her. Dying’s the operative word here, but not in the way she’d understand.
She breaks into a girlish smile, happy and relieved. “Oh, Jesus. I was afraid I was making a complete fool of myself, but I couldn’t help it, so …”
Now I know where they got the expression about knees turning to jelly. I feel like I’m actually going to collapse. All this time fantasizing about her, and she’s been doing the same thing.
“But I can’t do it. Not now.”
She stares quizzically at me.
“We can’t.” I’m starting to get dry, cottonmouth. “We’re working together eighteen hours a day,” I say, pushing the words out before I weaken, “if we’re lovers it clouds the issue. One time with you and I’ll be ruined forever, I’ll be mooning like a schoolboy. It just isn’t professional, Mary Lou.”
What a fucking joke. It’s never stopped me before. Of all times to grow up.
She looks at me like I just got off the five-ten from Mars.
“What’re you talking about?” she says, “it happens all the time.”
“It does?” Suddenly I feel like a seventh-grader.
“Of course.”
“I didn’t know that,” I stammer.
“You never have?”
“No.”
“But you’re a celebrated … cocksman,” she says.
“Maybe. But not where I eat.”
“But it’s unavoidable, Will, you work with people around the clock, sooner or later you’ll find one that turns you on.” She looks right at me, making sure I’m not putting her on, playing a little game. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Shit. I’ve been saving myself for the right one for years, staving off half the senior partners in my firm, and I fall for a virtuous man. Probably the only one left in town; definitely the most unlikely.”
“Sorry,” I tell her. Man, how I am.
“Unprofessional,” she says, as if it’s a foreign word, a language she’s not accustomed to hearing. “Guess I’m not exposed to that kind of thinking these days.”
Jesus, Mary Lou, don’t give up so easily.
“Can I have a raincheck?” This is no act, she’s serious.
“When this trial is over,” I promise her, “if you’re still interested,” I caution.
“I’ll still be interested,” she assures me.
Maybe this is a sign. A good woman finds the inner me attractive.
I walk her to her car, which is parked in the lot across the street. She unlocks the door, turns to me.
“A preview,” she says, planting a quick one flush on my mouth, “so you won’t chicken out about honoring that raincheck.”
“Don’t worry.” Her taste lingers. Virtue doesn’t always have its own rewards.
She drives off, winking her lights at me. I watch her disappear. For the first time in my life I’ve turned down a piece of ass I wanted.
“
IN THE CASE OF
the State of New Mexico versus Jensen, Paterno, Hicks, and Kowalski, Judge Louis Martinez presiding, all rise.”
The butterflies leave my stomach as I stand. We’re in Courtroom A, the biggest courtroom in the state. Classic Southwestern adobe architecture: high-ceilinged, dark wood beams, elaborately carved benches. It’s what a courtroom’s supposed to look like, even more so to me than the neo-Roman and -Greek stuff you find back east. I love participating in trials here; it makes lawyering feel like an elevated profession.
It’s crowded. Every seat is taken, people are standing in the back in violation of the fire regs. Reporters hover, sketch artists got here at the crack of dawn, jockeying for decent seats. There are seven lawyers, the four of us and three from the prosecution side, plus staff, all of us wanting to stake out our position, gain the upper hand.
Martinez gives a little speech. All trials are unique, all trials are important, but this one is a little more unique, a little more important. This is a capital offense involving multiple defendants, any or all of whom may wind up being executed by the state. Which means, he’s telling everyone, this has to be scrupulously tried. No grandstanding, no media histrionics, no F. Lee Bailey-type playing to the mob via the press, using the John Landis case in L.A. a few years ago as an example. He’s not going to impose a gag order on the participants, particularly the lawyers, he says, unless they force him to. That’s fine with me, I think to myself as I listen to him, there’s going to be press coverage coming out the yin-yang before this is over, most of it not in our favor. Robertson and his minions can’t win it on the outside, they’ll have to win it right here, with a tightly sequestered jury; they’ll have to win it on merit if they can. The newspaper and television pundits, those high-and-mighty arbiters of right and wrong, have already concluded we’re stone-cold losers, but that’s peripheral shit, titillating on impact, but ultimately not important.
Moseby delivers the prosecution’s opening remarks. His suit is pressed, he’s clean-shaven, he’s had a haircut. Still, he’s a rube; a cultivated rube, ‘one of us.’ Small-town, a husband and parent, Godfearing, a regular churchgoer like you folks. (I have to stifle a sour laugh when he mentions that; still, I know too well that that kind of cheap crap plays.)
“I am a public servant, pure and simple,” he tells the jury. “I have no ax to grind. I’m here on behalf of the people of New Mexico for one reason—to see that justice is done.”
He talks for over an hour, presenting his case in two basic thrusts: one, he has incontrovertible evidence. An impeccable eye-witness. The indisputable findings of one of the country’s foremost forensic pathologists. Physical evidence that clearly ties the victim to the accused. So forth and so on.
The second, more important part of his argument is an attack on the defendants, which, he’s saying between the lines, is really what this trial’s about. I can’t blame him, I’d do the exact same thing with defendants like these. He throws plenty of red meat, but it’s nothing compared with what he’ll do in final summation. Still, just listening to him, it’s damning. They are outlaws, they hold the rules of civilized people in contempt. That is known, a given. They have no morality, no soul. They’re psychopathic, he tells the jury: they know the difference between right and wrong but they simply don’t give a damn, they have no social or moral obligations, the only thing they care about is their immediate personal gratification. And if that results in suffering or death to some innocent party, too damn bad.
He winds up riding a crest of moral outrage. These four beasts killed in cold blood. They committed murder in a calculated, premeditated way. They caused the victim great suffering, they committed horribly perverted indignities. And they laughed about it.
Moseby concludes by walking to our side of the room and standing in front of our table, close enough to the defendants, Lone Wolf particularly, to touch them.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when this jury brings in its verdict,” he says, staring Lone Wolf right in the eyes, “when this jury of decent,
civilized
men and women bring in the only verdict they can under the evidence: murder in the first degree. Murder punishable by execution.”
My hand’s on Lone Wolf’s wrist under the table, gripping as hard as I can. My heart’s pounding; we’ve warned them over and over that this kind of accusation’s going to be thrown at them, they have to keep their cool. One incident, one outburst, and they might as well plead guilty as charged. And still it’s almost impossible, they only know one way to go: charge straight ahead.
I look at Lone Wolf. His eyes are cold, there’s definitely murder in them. He’s
capable
of killing, that I know.
He relaxes his tension, I let go of his wrist. I’m sweating. He turns to me, his look saying: ‘I can handle this.’
I exhale silently. One hurdle cleared. I’m proud of him. He’s not going to blow it for me.
We go in turn; Tommy, Mary Lou, Paul. Each talking about the specifics of his (or her) own client, each talking about the case, presenting things from different angles, different perspectives. Professional, prepared. Planting little seeds of doubt that hopefully will be full-grown by the time the trial’s over. Reasonable doubt, pushing the boundaries of reasonable doubt. Could they have done it? Maybe. Could someone else have done it? Definitely maybe. We’ll present our witnesses, too, scores of them, who will show that the accused could not, absolutely could not, have committed this crime under the circumstances. Can’t be, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
It’s late afternoon. The sun throws long tendrilly shadows across the room through the floor-to-ceiling south-facing windows. The dust hangs suspended in the serried air, grown thick over the course of the day despite the ubiquitous air-conditioning. It’s my turn, the last opening statement. I stand, ready to give ’em hell.
There’s a commotion in the back. Someone’s opened the door partway. Martinez looks up, annoyed. This isn’t allowed, not in this courtroom, especially not this case, the very first day.
“Bailiff,” he calls.
A marshal quickly approaches the bench, whispers something in the judge’s ear.
I glance over at Moseby. He’s sitting back, at ease. Next to him, Robertson smiles. He’s been here most of the day, he’s going to be spending a lot of time in this courtroom, to let the people know how seriously he takes this case. They’re both too smug, they’ve been let in on the secret, whatever it is. Robertson looks over at me, cocking his head. Fuck
me,
he’s saying, fuck
you
.
“All right,” Martinez instructs the bailiff, “let her in.”
The door swings open. A woman in a wheelchair is being pushed into the courtroom by a deputy sheriff. She’s probably fifty or so, but looks at least a decade older. Country to the bone: lank gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, long veinous hands, pocked with liver spots, the fingers callused, nails cracked, grotesquely twisted into themselves. Brutal, painful arthritis. A plain dumb face devoid of makeup. She’s dressed in black like an Amish spinster, down to her lace-up orthopedic square-heeled shoes.