Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) (3 page)

CHAPTER 5

MELANIE BROOKS

J
ust a few weeks prior to the ball, before ever I entered the blighted realm of politics, my career was neck-deep in the crapper. To say my legal business just then was fallow was to insult fields all across the Midwest. My roster of clients had deserted me, my billable hours had dwindled, my practice was going south so fast it was already playing shuffleboard in Boca. You can blame it on the recession; I surely did.

The legal world is as riven by caste as the most hidebound outpost in the Hindu Kush. There are the top dwellers in their office towers, cruising the lush feeding grounds of the high-powered corporate world. These denizens of Big Law are slow and fat on the proteins of their prey, but I learned long ago that you underestimate their predatory viciousness at your own peril. In the depths of the Great Recession, with their feeding grounds thinned, they were forced to dive lower to satisfy their insatiable hunger, snatching smaller fish from the mouths of second-order predators. And so these lower-level meat eaters, lesser firms with lesser reputations but no less hunger, plunged ever deeper to grab what scraps remained, reducing their fees and taking clients and cases from the jaws of even lesser firms. And so on, and so forth, and so it went.

As a lawyer, I was a cheerful bottom-feeder, used to crawling through the muck of society, surviving on what leavings had fallen from the flashing jaws of those above. My practice was a desolate territory of bounced checks, lying clients, and lost causes, but it was mine, and within its bounds I could find enough scraps to hammer out a living. Imagine my surprise, then, when amidst this debris of failure that I called home, I sighted in the distance other suited carnivores sifting through the garbage. First one, and then four, and then scores, flashing me abashed smiles before they went back to foraging what before had been exclusively mine.

And so it was that, like a Jewish peddler in the Old West, I found myself calling out my wares as I traveled from courtroom to courtroom:
“Plea agreements, motions to suppress, trials of any stripe, DUIs half-price.”
Let me assure you, begging for work in the criminal courts is not why you lock yourself in the law library for three years and bury yourself in debt. What you’re after is a cushy job in some huge law firm with an expense account, a handcrafted suit of the finest New Zealand wool, and a silken-haired secretary named Mimi with hips that knew what they were all about. What you’re after is everything and a cigar. But there I was, sitting in some random courtroom, hoping to put a pitiable amount of change in my pocket, which meant what I had was squat.

“Do you have a case before me today, Mr. Carl?” said old Judge Winston. Ruddy-faced and arrogant, he had spied me sitting in his courtroom as he scuttled in, sans robe, to speak with his clerk.

“No, Your Honor.”

“Just here for a hope?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, from what I understand, our defendant this afternoon is well represented, so you might try fishing in another pond.”

“Thank you for the advice, sir.”

“And don’t look so hungry all the time,” said the good judge. “It makes my stomach twitch.”

If it wasn’t for the humiliation, I might have laughed along with the rest of those in the courtroom as I slunk out the door, but the humiliation was real and my feigned chuckle died like a butchered frog in my throat. It is one thing for your career to hit an all-time low, it is quite another for it to become such a public jibe that judges feel free to crack jokes, and smarmy assistant district attorneys, with their steady government paychecks, laugh with impunity.

I fled Judge Winston’s courtroom and slumped red-eyed and desperate in the hallway, wondering about the opportunities for rug salesmen in the city:
“How about a lovely Berber for your rec room? It is such a sturdy weave.”

“Victor? Victor Carl? Is that you?”

I pulled myself out of Carpet City and saw a woman calling to me whom I was sure I had never seen before. Dressed in scarlet, she was thin and sharp with long legs, spiked heels, and a look in her eye that was hard and predatory both. You know the look, you can see it in Realtors and exotic dancers on the prowl. And she was flat-out gorgeous, model gorgeous. If I had seen her before, I would have remembered her absolutely, yet even as she approached, with golden bangles jangling, her sharp chin and raised cheekbones drew a blank.

“It’s me all right,” I said.

“How are you doing, dearheart? It’s been so long.”

“It certainly has.”

“You look . . . good.”

“That’s a lie,” I said. “But you, you look fabulous.”

Her hard smile turned girlish. “Why, thank you, Victor. That’s so sweet of you.”

“So how have you been?”

“Just marvy, I must say. And you?”

“Dandy. Dandy randy roo.”

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said.

“Not a whit.”

“I guess I should be flattered. I’m Melanie. Melanie Brooks. From law school.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

I tilted my chin and looked closer and, yes, there she was, something soft and earnest encased within that hard, stunning exterior. “Melanie?”

“Present and accounted for,” she said, laughing.

“Melanie, my God, look at you.”

“The new me,” she said, posing for just a moment. “All pressed and pleated. Do you like?”

“Oh my, yes. What the hell happened?”

“Life.”

“Well, I must say, it’s been a darn sight better to you than it has to me.”

Melanie Brooks was in my study group our first year of law school. She was pudgy and somber, quite serious and committed to the cause, with her tight mouth and Angela Davis afro. More than anything, she was sincere, tooth-achingly sincere. Every case was analyzed for its sociopolitical implications, every discussion was about race or class or the rape of the poor, or about rape itself. Save the homeless, save the whales, equal pay for equal work, civil rights, gay rights, dolphin rights. No beef because of the methane; no eggs because of the cages; no McDonald’s out of sheer principle. I can still hear her preaching in our group as I tried just to get through Torts.
“You can make a difference. We all can. Life is all about making a difference.”
She was the best of us in many ways, yet her sincerity always felt like a nail being rubbed across your eyeball. That was what made it so hard to recognize her in this red-clad predator-eyed incarnation with the straightened hair and glossed lips. Yes, physically she had changed, thinned and hardened and polished up in a way I could never have imagined, but even more than that, her sincerity had somehow been battered to death like a baby seal.

“I’ve read all about your exploits in the papers, Victor. I’d say congratulations are in order. You’ve made a name for yourself like you always wanted.”

“Notoriety is not the same as success.”

“Oh, give it time.”

“I’ve given it plenty of time.”

“Good things are on the way, I’ve no doubt. I’d love to catch up and chat about the old times but I’m due in court with”—she opened her bag, took out a document, gave it a quick scan—“Judge Winston, apparently. I have a criminal matter.”

She pulled me aside and nodded toward a man in a long leather jacket standing a bit down the hallway. He was tall and bearded, stick-thin and mournful, and he stared at me with pale eyes as cold and flat as winter slate.

“Colin Frost,” said Melanie. “The poor man is up on a heroin rap and we’ve got a motion to suppress, but I have no idea what I’m doing. I hate making a fool of myself in court, and I was so hoping someone would cover it for me, but here I am.”

“It doesn’t matter who covers it. Clarence Darrow would be at a loss in Judge Winston’s courtroom. He’s an old-line puss, and death on defendants.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Go down with dignity. What are you doing in the criminal courts anyway? I thought you went to Legal Aid after graduation.”

“I did—landlord-tenant, welfare, child custody cases—but eventually I found something a little more suited to my personality.”

“A big firm?”

“Not that big. I’ll tell you about it sometime, but right now I have this thing I don’t want to do.” She started looking up and down the hallway as if she were Diogenes with his lantern. “Do you happen to know someone with a clue about criminal matters who might be able to cover this for me?”

“Without preparation?”

“It won’t take much. We’d be willing to pay.”

“P-pay?” I said, trying to slow the stutter of desperation that had slipped onto my tongue. I made a show of checking my Timex. “You know, Melanie, if I push some things around, I could maybe squeeze an appearance before Judge Winston into my schedule.”

“Really, Victor? You would do that for me?”

I tried to hide the wolf in my smile. “Old friends.”

“That is so decent of you.”

“That’s me, decent to the core.”

“Now tell me, how much do you charge?”

I cocked an eye, made a quick calculation of the level of my bank account, divided by my greed, multiplied by the square root of my desperation. “What about seventy-five an hour?”

“Victor,” she said sternly, like I had been caught at something.

“Is that too much?”

“We’re professionals, we deserve to get paid commensurate with our training and experience. I won’t allow you to take a penny less than two-fifty an hour for this.”

I looked at her for a moment, wondering what had happened to Melanie Brooks, but I didn’t look too long. Gift horses are rare enough in this world as it is; I don’t give a crap about the condition of their teeth. “If you insist.”

“Oh, I do. Let me talk it over with Colin first to make sure it’s okay with him, and then we’ll brief you on the case.”

CHAPTER 6

SELMA

I
t was with a sense of vindication that I found myself back in Judge Winston’s courtroom with an actual honest-to-God paying client.

Commonwealth v. Frost
—as common a case as ever there was. Colin Frost had been driving recklessly, weaving across the road with a busted taillight, when State Trooper Trumbull pulled his vehicle to the side. Out of the car, my client, his eyelids so heavy they were bricks, nodded off during questioning. Trumbull subsequently found drug paraphernalia in the front seat and enough scag in Colin Frost’s pocket to charge him with possession with intent to distribute. At issue today was a motion to suppress the evidence by claiming the stop-and-search was unreasonable and illegal under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

I didn’t yet know how Melanie ended up with a dog case like Colin Frost’s defense, or why she was so eager to palm it off on me, but truthfully, I didn’t much care. All I really cared about was the two-fifty per I had been promised. If I had my druthers, it would be a long hearing, but that was unlikely. Judge Winston was a former prosecutor who thought the Fourth Amendment was tacked on to the Constitution by some bleeding-heart liberal do-gooder out to destroy the moral framework of the country. The case was doomed to a quick death, I figured, even with the strange piece of magic Melanie had slipped into my pocket outside the courtroom. But even so, I could feel the tingle of the magic’s power in my bones.

Before any hearing, I always like to get a sense of my audience; a trial is nothing if not theater. Melanie was sitting in the back, by the door, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, which was hard with that body and all that red. Along with Melanie, scattered about, were the usual assortment of courtroom characters, old guys passing their retirements, lawyers killing time before their next appearances, clots of folk who looked like they were lost.

There was one woman I couldn’t help but notice, even as I tried not to stare. Pale and quiet, with copper hair and green eyes heavily mascaraed and set wide apart, she was unaccountably lovely, without any of Melanie’s newfound real-estate-agent hardness. There was a moment when Colin Frost turned and nodded at her and I saw the connection and felt a stab of disappointment. Lucky bastard, although something was driving him to the needle and, with those wide green eyes, she seemed a likely possibility.

And then I saw a sight that gave me pause.

He was sitting toward the front of the peanut gallery, his thinning hair awry, the knot of his tie thick, his jacket ragged, with a bulge at the inside pocket. He leaned back with his arms over both sides of the bench, nodded at the prosecutor, scrunched his face, sniffed in a way that caused his whole body to heave, sucked his teeth.

Reading over what I have just written, I realize I’ve made him sound like a two-bit thug. He might have been two-bit, but he was not a thug. A thug I could handle—I had been threatened over the years by the lunkiest thugs in the city—but the sniffer was something far more dangerous. I had seen his ugly mug on the television, talking inside baseball about this election or that vote, spilling the dish on the city’s most prominent politicians. Harvey Sloane was the political reporter for the
Philadelphia Daily News
, filling the tabloid with all the city’s dirty little secrets. I looked at Sloane, looked at Melanie, looked back at Sloane.

“I’ve been advised by a reliable source,” Melanie had said to me privately before we entered the courtroom, speaking in a voice as confidential as a kiss, “that if the judge starts giving us any trouble, any trouble at all, we’re supposed to just mention Selma.”

“Selma?”

“That’s right.”

“And that should take care of everything? Like some sort of magic spell?”

“Exactly.”

“And what is your reliable source?”

“Victor, I’m surprised at you. Some sources are a matter of privilege. But the authority, I can tell you, is impeccable.”

“Selma.”

“Trust me here, Victor.”

“What kind of shady business have you fallen into, Melanie?”

She only smiled in response, a dark, clever smile that never would have flitted across her lips in her sincere youth. What had happened to Melanie Brooks?

“So it’s Selma,” I said.

“Yes, it is.”

“Are we talking the city or a woman’s name?”

“Does it matter?”

And now I was thinking about Selma as I saw Sloane sitting there. What could be about to happen in the courtroom that would tickle the fancy of a hack political reporter? And was whatever prompted his presence the same thing that had prompted Melanie Brooks to dump this case on the nearest dupe? I wondered at it all for a bit, but not too long a bit. If I am destined in this life to be a dupe, and I have learned over the years that I am, at least this time I’d be a well-paid one.

“Oyez, oyez,” called out the clerk. I turned around just as Judge Winston clambered into the courtroom and up to the bench, like a grumpy old man heedlessly wading through a sea of pigeons.

When he lifted his head and noticed me standing at the defense table, an unpleasant shock washed across his face. “Mr. Carl, what in the blazes are you doing back in my courtroom?”

“I’m here to represent Mr. Frost.”

The judge looked at Assistant District Attorney Fedders, the very ADA who had snickered at me in that same courtroom just a few minutes before. Fedders shrugged back at him.

“I thought Mr. Frost was represented by a”—the judge looked at the file—“a Ms. Brooks, from the firm of Ronin and McCall.”

“Ms. Brooks asked me to handle the case,” I said, “based on my long experience in criminal matters. I have filed my notice of appearance with the clerk.”

The clerk stood and handed the judge my notice. He looked it over, still puzzled. “Is it acceptable to you, Mr. Frost,” he said, “to drop down and have Mr. Carl as your counsel?”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” said Frost.

“I don’t know how you pulled this off, Mr. Carl,” said the judge, “and I’m not happy about it. You better not pull off anything else in my courtroom.”

“My shirt is well tucked, sir.”

“Now as I understand it, we have a frivolous motion to exclude the drugs and drug paraphernalia that are the basis of this case, is that right?”

“I object, Your Honor, I believe our case is—”

“Spare me your outrage, Mr. Carl. Are you handling this on an hourly basis?”

“My fee arrangement is—”

“That means yes. All right, Mr. Fedders,” the judge said to the prosecutor. “I’m sure Mr. Carl has more important places to be than my courtroom—they’re giving out free cheese this afternoon by the homeless shelter. Let’s get him on his way. Call your witness.”