The Victim (4 page)

She felt the bite of fire, first on her ankles, creeping up her legs. She squirmed and twisted as the skin on her calves and thighs bubbled and popped. The flames consumed the dashboard, the plastic warping, disfiguring. They climbed the door panels and the seat backs.

Enveloped by intense heat, her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes sizzled. Her scalp began to blister.

An errant gust stirred up its fury. The fire clung to her arms and neck, to her shirt, searing skin and fat, muscle and tissue. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out. She could feel her lungs boiling. The flames gnawed her fingers down to charred bone.

She turned to Evan who hadn’t moved. In her fleeting moments of consciousness, she realized that the crash had severed his spine.

His head flung back against the burning upholstery. He opened his mouth in a silent scream as the fire devoured him, vaporizing flesh, peeling back his lips to reveal teeth and jawbone.

CHAPTER 4

January 13, 2014

Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building

Miami, Florida

They all stood as the jury entered the courtroom. The foreperson held the folded verdict form in his hand. When the jurors assumed their seats everybody else did the same.

“
We’re back on the matter of
State of Florida versus Orlando Rivera
,” Judge Vega said. “Note for the record the presence of all parties, as well as the presence of the defendant and the presence of the jury. Mr. Foreperson, has the jury reached a verdict?”

The juror stood, a Hispanic man in his late fifties. “Yes, Your Honor, we have.”

“
Would you please hand the verdict form to the bailiff?”

The bailiff took the verdict form from the foreperson and handed it to the judge. She adjusted her glasses and carefully glanced it over, making sure it was filled out correctly.

“
Okay, I have reviewed the verdict form and I find that it is legally sufficient and has been signed and dated by the foreperson. Madam Clerk, will you please publish the verdict?”

The clerk reached toward the bench and grabbed the verdict form from the judge. She cleared her throat. Anton and his client rose. His heart was racing, just as it had the fifty-five other times he’d been ready to hear the verdict. State or defense, it didn’t matter. His anticipation was the same.

“
In the County Court for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida, in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida. Date—January 13, 2014: As to count one, the charge of driving under the influence, we the jury in the above-entitled cause, find the defendant, Orlando Rivera, not guilty. So say we all, this 13th day of January, 2014.”

Orlando broke down, burying his face into his hands and weeping. His shoulders shuddered as he sobbed loudly. The jurors cast odd stares as they were led out of the courtroom.

“
Mr. Mackey, Mr. Rivera? You may be seated.” Anton and his client sat. “Mr. Rivera, you’ve exercised your constitutional right to a trial by jury. This jury has found you not guilty. I will hereby adjudicate you not guilty. You are forever discharged from this prosecution. Good luck to you, sir.”

Anton clapped Orlando on the shoulder. “Congrats, my man.” He was floating. Nothing on earth came close to the thrill of winning a jury trial. “Dodged a bullet, didn’t we?”

Orlando wiped the tears from his eyes.

“
Jesus is good and He was with us the entire time. I prayed very hard last night and asked Him to give you the skills necessary to show this jury that I was innocent. And Jesus did that! I owe my life to Him, praise His name!”

Anton nodded along, not willing to argue semantics with his client. First and foremost, the jury never found Orlando innocent. They just concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict. Secondly, Anton quietly resented the fact that his client was so quick to thank Jesus for the win. Had they lost, Orlando would have been the first to blame his lawyer.

***

The Law Office of Anton L. Mackey, P.A., occupied one office in suite 2400 of 1200 Brickell Avenue in the heart of Miami’s business district. Tall glass buildings, gleaming with Florida sun, towered over the street, affording tenants pristine views of Biscayne Bay.

Anton pulled his Lexus ES 350 to the valet stand and muttered a half-assed “hello” to the pimply-faced kid in the red vest. He waved to the security guard in the marble lobby and took the elevator up to the twenty-fourth floor.

Jack was waiting with a glass of Scotch when Anton entered the suite. Yessenia, the secretary, was seated at the reception desk, chatting on her headset in Spanish to a prospective client. Since neither Jack nor Anton spoke a word, a secretary who could
habla espa
ñ
ol
was an essential component of any Miami law office.

“
The trialmaster returns!” He shoved a lowball glass into Anton’s hand, clinking with two ice cubes. Jack took his neat but knew that Anton was still warming up to the stuff. “Congratulations, kiddo. You’re on a tear.”

Anton sipped the smoky drink. He preferred margaritas and cold beer but Jack was beginning to turn him on to different whiskies. He didn’t have the discriminating palate of Jack, who designated at least two weeks a year for tours of Scotland’s distilleries. But Anton was learning. The subtle differences between single and blended malts. How to tell a highland from a lowland. A Speyside from an Islay.

Anton smacked his lips. “Glenlivet?”

Jack’s eyes lit up. “He knows his juries and he knows his whiskies. Eighteen year, seventy-five bucks a bottle.”

Giacomo “Jack” Savarese was seventy and had been practicing criminal defense in Miami since he was an assistant public defender back in 1968. A legend in the Miami legal community, his profile skyrocketed during the Mariel boatlift of 1980 when Castro opened the jails and cast the criminals out into the sea. The era of cocaine was ushered in with furious violence. And the old schoolers like Jack Savarese were waiting with open arms to represent the scores of traffickers, coming into their offices with grocery bags full of cash.

Anton had been sharing office space with Jack since he left the State Attorney’s Office in 2009. Four paralegals, a secretary, and two associates scurried down the hallways, all of whom worked solely for Jack. For a few hundred a month, Anton was afforded the use of one office and the conference room for client consultations.

The lobby was a shrine to Jack’s accomplishments. Covers of
Florida Legal Elite
glazed onto plaques in which Jack’s name appeared as one of Florida’s preeminent criminal defense attorneys. Beside them hung framed
Herald
articles
,
depicting four decades of high-profile cases, as well as colorful sketches of Jack in federal court, where photographs were not permitted. The courtroom artists had captured all of Jack’s fury, the way his thick eyebrows would arch when he was deep in the midst of a brutal cross-examination. The way he would point at the witness from the podium. Old timers called it the Jack Attack.

The sketches were all in black lacquer frames with the case style and date written at the bottom. Most of Jack’s big federal trials had taken place in the late eighties and nineties, which was evidenced insofar as the courtroom artist had colored Jack’s hair dark as opposed to the pewter gray it had become over the years.

A more recent sketch was from 2004—the later year clearly delineated by the artist’s use of silver in Jack’s hair—when the Department of Justice furiously went after Osvaldo Garcia, a mentally ill New Mexico drifter charged with the murder of a young Phoenix woman. Jack had been admitted to numerous federal courts across the United States, including the Supreme Court, and took the case after Garcia’s family in Albuquerque called him, having found him by word of mouth.
Who’s the best defense attorney in the country?

The trial lasted two weeks and resulted in a conviction. Mental health issues presented to the jury during the sentencing phase resulted in a recommendation of life over death. However, it was a bitter loss. Every time Jack walked through the lobby, he purposefully looked down or fiddled with his phone. Anything to avoid eye contact with that picture.

“
So.” Jack wrapped an arm around Anton and led him down the hallway. “Tell me about the trial.”

Anton relayed the facts of the case for him, to which Jack nodded along. Anton had briefed Jack on the Orlando Rivera case late Friday afternoon, covering all of his bases as he prepared to go into battle Monday morning. Anton kept the theatrics to a minimum, feeling a bit silly regaling Jack with a DUI victory when the guy had tried almost four hundred serious state and federal cases during his career. He didn’t even take on misdemeanors anymore, sending them down that hall to Anton for a twenty-five percent piece of the fee.

Jack’s paralegals and associates hammered away on their keyboards as they walked passed their open doors. After leaving the State Attorney’s Office, Jack had offered Anton an associate position. $75,000 a year plus benefits with ten-percent of all business he brought in, plus annual bonuses and a fifteen-percent raise each year. For an ASA making $43,000 a year, it was an amazing deal—one his friends, still stuck at the SAO, urged him to accept. Anton declined, opting to rent space from Jack and go out on his own completely. He got a line of credit and built a website, replete with search engine optimization and social media integration. Roughly seventy percent of his business came from his site, the rest from repeat clients, referrals, and whoever couldn’t afford Jack’s fees.

Anton followed Jack into his office, which occupied the corner of the suite. Behind his polished mahogany desk was a sweeping view of Biscayne Bay. A matching mahogany bookcase contained thirty years of
Florida Statutes Annotated
and
West’s Florida Criminal Laws And Rules
, as well as an alphabetized collection of leather-bound
Southern Reporter
and
Federal Supplement
editions. Framed photographs hung on the wall, of Jack shaking hands with several presidents: Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama.

Jack sat down in his red leather wingback chair. “Amazing,” he muttered, commenting on Anton’s story. “So you stuck it to that pompous young prosecutor. Took his theory of prosecution and shoved it right up his ass.”

Jack’s hazel eyes beamed with life, his crow’s feet running deep into his dark skin like cracks on thin ice. He was still a true believer at heart, despite the fortune he had amassed charging five, even six figures for his services. At seventy with several million tucked away and most of his debts paid, he got up every morning to experience the thrill of beating the government at their own game.

“
It’s no murder case, but it’s still nice to win.”

Jack slapped his desk. “Bullshit, kiddo! I don’t care if it’s capital murder or jaywalking! Your client hired you to do exactly what you did. To win! That’s what matters above anything else in this business. Winning. That’s why clients cash out their retirement accounts and refinance their houses and max out their credit cards. Because they’ve fucked up their lives and we’re just the people to make them whole again. Any hack would’ve charged a quarter what you charged this client and taken a plea. You rolled the dice, prepared your case, and you won. And that snot-nosed ASA who wouldn’t negotiate a fair resolution to this case and just got his ass handed to him? That’s the best investment you could’ve made, son. ’Cause when that ASA gets to felonies, he’s gonna remember you. He’s gonna give you what you want because he doesn’t want to lose to Anton Mackey again.”

Anton’s face warmed with pride. At thirty-two, he could sense that he was beginning to carve out a place for himself in Miami’s heavily saturated criminal defense community.

“
I appreciate the kind words.”

Jack checked his Rolex. “It’s almost four. You’d better check in with the wife.” Anton had left the house that morning at seven-thirty. They’d exchanged a few texts throughout the day but nothing alarming. “Things okay on the home front?”