Daughter's Keeper (19 page)

He clenched his jaw and toed off his Italian loafers, careful not to scuff the polished shoe backs. While the officer dug through his briefcase, looking for a weapon the metal detector might have missed, Izaya watched Amanda Steele step into the elevator and disappear.

***

The night of Olivia's release from Martinez, Elaine had presented her with a list of lawyers. Arthur had, after swearing them to secrecy, asked a few of the older partners in his firm to whom they referred clients whose troubles with the IRS demanded the services of a criminal defense attorney. Olivia had refused even to take the piece of paper on which Arthur had jotted down, in his lapidarian block printing, the names and phone numbers of the recommended lawyers.

“But why not?” Elaine said. “Why not hire the best attorney you can find?”

Olivia had pretended it was because she could not afford one of Arthur's hot shots that she was sticking with her public defender, but that wasn't really true. She might have taken Elaine up on her offer of a loan to pay for a private attorney, but she didn't want to leave Izaya. She liked him and she trusted him. And if it drove Arthur and her mother crazy that her lawyer was young and black, well, so much the ­better.

The next morning, Olivia took BART to downtown Oakland to talk to Izaya and check in with pretrial services. She met with Miss Watts-Thompson first and did an adequate job, she felt, of containing her loathing for the woman. She received her drug-testing instructions without too obvious a display of disgust, and made arrangements to call in once a week. Then she took the elevator up to the Office of the Federal Public Defender.

Izaya's office was small but bright, its walls hung with diplomas and a framed poster of a grim-faced Mumia Abu-Jamal. A bright purple motorcycle helmet was tossed on a bookshelf, and draped over the desk chair was a black leather jacket that looked so soft and supple that Olivia had to fight the urge to stroke it.

Olivia looked around the office and pointed at the poster. “I went to a Mumia vigil at Sproul Plaza once.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know, protesting his death sentence. I don't think he killed that cop.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “You must not, either. I mean, you've got a Free Mumia poster on your wall.”

Izaya leaned far back in his chair and threw his feet up on the desk. “I don't know if he killed the cop. But even if he did, he ­doesn't deserve to fry. No one does. What protest did you go to?”

“Excuse me?”

“Go on, have a seat.” She perched on the edge of a chair ­covered in a brightly colored
kinte
cloth. “Which Mumia vigil did you go to?” he asked.

She thought. “Six years ago, maybe? In, like, May or June? Right before the end of the school year. Peter Coyote, that actor, spoke. They read a letter from Jesse Jackson, and one from Mumia, too.”

Izaya smiled. “I was there.”

“You were?”

“Yup. I did my third year of law school at Boalt. On the Harvard-Berkeley exchange program. I was in the Black Students Association, and we organized that demonstration.”

She smiled, and, for no reason that she could figure out, blushed. “Wow. Funny coincidence,” she mumbled.

“Small world,” he said. “So, how you doing?”

“Okay.”

“I was glad your mother came through for you.”

Olivia shrugged.

“You must be relieved to be out,” he said.

She nodded and began picking at the fraying fabric at the knee of her jeans.

Izaya heaved his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Martinez sucks, huh?” he said.

Olivia nodded again, not trusting herself to speak without crying.

“How long were you in for? Four days?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was a hollow whisper.

“I'll bet it felt like four years.”

Izaya handed her a box of Kleenex, and as if on cue, tears began falling down Olivia's cheeks. Big, fat, baby tears. She wiped her eyes helplessly and gulped.

“God, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I'm crying.”

“You're crying because this
sucks
. You were in jail, and you're facing the possibility of a lot more time there. Of course you're crying.”

Olivia felt her stomach twist. “Do you really think I'm going to have to go back to jail?”

“Olivia,” Izaya sighed. “This is the part of my job that I hate the most.”

“Oh no,” she said, and buried her face in her hands. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes until her vision filled with an entire solar system of yellow and orange stars. It took a moment for her to realize that she'd given herself a piercing headache. She put down her hands and said, “Just tell me what's going on.”

“The prosecutor filed the indictment.”

Anxiety settled on her chest, and her lungs strained under its leadened weight. “What does that mean?” she whispered.

“That means Amanda Steele won't dismiss the case.”

“But didn't you tell her that I wasn't involved?”

Izaya rested his elbows on the desk and looked at her intently. “I'm so sorry, Olivia. I did everything I could.”

“But why? Why are they prosecuting
me
? I wasn't even part of it!”

Izaya frowned. “The DEA has you on tape talking to the informant. They have photographs of you at the pickup. Steele's under the impression that you facilitated the deal.”

“That's a lie!” Olivia yelled. Then she blushed. “I mean, yes, I was in the car, but I didn't talk to any informants. And I didn't facilitate anything.”

Izaya reached out. She felt the pads of his cool dry fingers pat the back of her hand. She looked up at his face, and noticed, not for the first time, how handsome he was. She was disgusted with herself—what was wrong with her? Why did she care what her lawyer looked like when he'd just told her that the prosecutor was trying to send her to jail? She slipped her hand out from under his.

“Look, Olivia, I know that it was all Jorge's idea. But there are some things we need to discuss. Hard things. This is a federal case, and the federal sentencing laws are absolutely insane when it comes to drugs.”

“But I didn't do anything!”

“You and I both agree on that, and I'm confident that we'll be able to convince a jury to see things our way, but I want to make sure you understand everything that could happen, no matter how unlikely. You follow me?”

“I guess.”

“The law that really has us by the short hairs here is the law of conspiracy. That law basically says that you don't need to commit a crime to be subject to criminal penalties, you just have to
agree
to commit a crime, or even just
talk
about committing a crime. Once you have that agreement, that discussion, you're as liable as if you had committed the actual crime.”

“That's ridiculous,” Olivia sputtered. “You mean that if you and I talk about killing someone, we can get prosecuted for murder whether or not we kill the guy?”

“Basically, yes. It's a bit more complicated—we would actually have to commit an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”

Olivia wrinkled her brow. “Overt act?”

“That means do something that moves the conspiracy along.”

The throttlehold of fear that had gripped her began to subside, and she felt herself regain some of her composure. “Well, then we're fine. I didn't do anything like that.”

“You might have. An overt act doesn't have to be anything illegal. It could be taking a phone message. Or simply going along for a ride. You took a couple of phone messages, didn't you?”

The bit of self-possession she had managed to muster slipped away. “But I didn't talk about drugs, or
anything
,” she wailed.

“Olivia, this is really important, and I don't want you to say anything right now, okay? If you knew that the phone call referred to a drug deal, and if you passed the information on to your boyfriend, then that would be considered an overt act. Riding along when you knew your boyfriend was doing the deal could be considered an overt act as well.”

Olivia opened her mouth to tell him that it couldn't possibly matter that she knew about the drugs, because she didn't help in any way—on the contrary, she hadn't wanted Jorge to do the deal at all. But Izaya raised his hand, “Don't say anything, okay? We're going to take this one step at a time. First, I want to explain something about my ethical obligation to you. As a criminal defense lawyer, I owe you my absolute loyalty, with a few huge exceptions. I can't help you commit a crime, I can't keep silent if I know you're about to commit a crime, and I can't put perjured testimony on the witness stand. Do you know what that means?”

“I think so.”

“Let me explain it anyway. If, for example, I know that you were aware that Jorge was doing a drug deal, and you passed him important information knowing what he was going to use it for, I could not let you testify that you didn't know what was going on, that you were just an innocent bystander.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if
I
know you did something, then
you
can't testify to the opposite.”

“And if you don't know?”

“I'm allowed to put you on the stand to tell your story, as long as I don't
know
you're lying.”

Olivia suddenly got it. “Okay,” she said. “But none of that matters as long as I'm telling the truth.”

“Right.”

“And I am telling the truth.”

He smiled. “I know that. I've just got to make sure you understand how it all works. You want a Coke?” He bent over and pulled a six-pack of soda out of the small fridge tucked under the credenza behind his desk. Olivia realized for the first time that her lips were dry and parched.

“I'd love one,” she said.

He pried one out of the plastic ring, picked up a napkin from a pile on his desk, and wiped off the top of the can. Then he popped it open and handed it to her. “I want to talk for a moment about the worst-case scenario,” he said.

She took a deep swallow and, suppressing a burp, nodded. The soda felt deliciously cold and smooth in her mouth, and she felt the turmoil in her stomach abate.

“First of all, I want you to understand that I'm easily as good if not a better lawyer than Amanda Steele. I'm not saying that to brag, but because it's true. It's true, but it doesn't matter. The ­government's lawyers always have the upper hand. That's because they decide what crime to charge, and in federal court, the charge is everything. The charge determines the sentence.”

“What does that mean?” Olivia asked.

“It used to be that a judge could look at a defendant and make a sentencing decision based on how much time he thought the defendant deserved to serve. But all that changed under the federal sentencing guidelines. They are not guidelines at all. They are hard and fast rules under which judges completely lost their sentencing discretion. Nowadays, a judge's sole role in a federal case is to apply a series of mathematical equations to come up with the sentence required by a specific charge. A machine could do it.”

“And the prosecutor decides the charges,” she said. She took another swallow of soda and set the can on the table, not trusting her shaking hands to hold it.

“Exactly. Most of those fools are right out of law school. They have, like, zero real life experience. Of all the people in the system, they're the least likely to know what the hell they're doing. And depending on how they charge a case, a defendant could be looking at probation or at a long time in jail.”

“So how did she charge my case?”

“Let's say that we lose at trial or you plead guilty…” Olivia began to protest, but Izaya raised his hand to her and said, “I know you have no intention of doing that. Let's just talk ­hypothetically. If that were to happen, you would be subject to the mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. Do you know anything about those?”

“No.”

“Well, like I said, the judge has absolutely no discretion. The sentence is tied to the quantity of drugs at issue in the indictment. In this case, the indictment alleges fifty-five grams of methamphetamine. The mandatory minimum sentence for that amount is ten years.”

Olivia gasped, “Ten years?”

Izaya nodded. “Ten years for a first-time offender. Twenty if you've got a prior. Now, we might, in your case, be able to argue that since you were so tangentially involved, you should be eligible for something called the safety valve. That would allow the judge to sentence you for slightly less time. He'd still have to go by the sentencing guidelines, which are pretty brutal, but he wouldn't be forced to sentence you to ten years, and we could then argue for a downward departure, meaning a lower sentence based on any number of things. The safety valve is available to individuals without a criminal record.”

“But I
do
have a record,” Olivia said, her voice flat.

“Those offenses shouldn't count against you.”

“Well, what are we talking about, then? With the safety valve?”

He shook his head. “It's hard to predict. Maybe five years. Give or take. It really depends on which judge we draw at your arraignment next week. A liberal judge might allow us a downward departure. A more conservative judge might not.”

Five years. Five years in that horrible place, with that vile smell, and the constant, acid wash of fear. She wouldn't survive. She would end up killing herself, if someone else didn't do it for her.

Izaya was still speaking.

“I'm sorry, what did you say?” Olivia asked.

“I said that the other thing about the safety valve is that some judges are apt to give it only to defendants who plead guilty. They won't use it if you go to trial.”