Gravewriter (7 page)

Martin breathed deep, looked up into those Pacific blue eyes, and replied, “You are so full of shit, you should be pumped clean twice a year.”

Ethan's hands covered his heart. “Marty!”

“Why do you need a deal so bad?” Martin glared up at him. “Is it because the Yankees are at Fenway this week?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Or maybe you're afraid of this case.”

Ethan's face wrinkled. “What rubbish,” he said, his tone hardening. He folded his arms, leaned against the wall, and gave Martin a blank face. “You won a minor skirmish in pretrial—because of your motion, I can't mention the hack job your guy did on that other junkie. Big deal.”

“Nothing connected Peter to
that
body—no blood, no evidence, no nothing,” Martin reminded him. “That's why I won the motion to suppress, remember?”

“It's hardly going to matter, with the case I've assembled,” Dillingham said. He gave an awkward grin that might have been intended as a menacing grimace. “I will swat that bug Peter Shadd with a polo mallet.”

Martin smiled. Was there anything funnier than blue-blooded bravado?

“You're scared,” Martin said with a snicker. “Everybody knows you hired a pollster to test the electorate for a run for governor. How's your name recognition? Did you top the magic fifty percent barrier? You obviously can't afford a loss in court before the election.
Especially with this case—like you said, it's a slam dunk.” He needled Ethan with a cheerful grin.

“Okay, you've been right all along,” Ethan said dryly. “I have Yankees tickets.”

Martin laughed. He had gotten to the unflappable Ethan Dillingham. For a defense lawyer, that was difficult—and fun. “Put your tickets on eBay,” he said, “because we're going to trial.”

Ethan dropped the soft sell, put a finger in Martin's chest, and seethed. “I'll hang life without parole on that skinny son of a bitch.”

Hiking up his pants, Martin rose to his tiptoes and leveled his eyes with Ethan's craterous chin dimple. The hair on Martin's neck rose to attention. He said, “Not if I beat you.”

Ethan stared back, unblinking. He chuckled, just making the noise; there was no humor behind it. He said, “You think you can get him off?” and then paused, as if the question was not really rhetorical. When Martin said nothing, Ethan continued: “Nobody cares about this case—this was scumbag-on-scumbag crime. Garrett Nickel is dead and that's a blessing. We ought to give Peter Shadd a medal before we lock him away and weld shut the door. Two predators thinning their own ranks. Who gives a goddamn?”

Ethan laughed again through his nose; this time, it seemed he really did see some humor. “But I guess that's why they call you Saint Smothers—the patron lawyer of hopeless causes. You want to take this case to trial? Fine!” The word landed wet on Martin's face. “It's
your
reputation, what there is of it.…” He banged a fist on the chrome lever and brought water rushing into Martin's urinal. “You're free to flush it.”

Martin watched the water pool around the disinfectant cake.

“Forgive me,” Ethan added bitterly on his way out, “if I neglect to shake your hand at this moment.”

Peter Shadd sat on the lower bunk, feet tucked against his bonyass, knees drawn up to his face, arms tightly wrapped around his legs. He rocked gently from side to side. His back was to a concrete wall streaked with black scuff marks from where somebody had tried to kick his way out of the holding cell. The top bunk blocked the bleak yellow light of the ceiling bulb and threw a sheet of shadow over Peter. He was in his court clothes, Martin was relieved to see: black denim jeans that looked dressier than they really were, a white cotton dress shirt—the long sleeves hid the needle scars—and sparkling maroon leather loafers. Martin frowned. He could see Peter's ankles where the pants rode up his legs. No socks. Some knucklehead juror might take that as a sign of disrespect.

Martin stepped into the cell. The door boomed shut. He had trained himself not to flinch at the noise, but he still felt a flutter whenever he heard his freedom being crushed, however briefly, in a steel door.

Peter stared a moment at Martin. The young convict's round brown eyes bulged from his face, as if one size too big for their sockets. Martin sighed. With those insect eyes, the sunken chest with two points of rib cage jabbing knifelike from under his shirt, those drawn cheeks that told a history of street fights through fading scars, and the long, hooked fingers that moved in a meticulous, buglike way that was graceful and creepy at the same time, Peter looked like a madman's dim-witted henchman.

That's how the jury would have to see him. A dimwit, a follower, a lamb.

Peter looked away, buried his face between his knees, and hugged his legs so hard that his skinny arms shook.

Martin watched Peter rock on the bunk. He said, “The jury can't see you this way.”

You look too fucking guilty.

“I'll pull it together, man.” Peter's voice was low and smooth, like
the third-shift DJ on a slow-blues station; it was a fat man's voice, too deep and textured for such a thin face.

Martin stepped to the bunk, taking notice of the sharp click of his shoes on the unpainted concrete floor. He had worn his one pair of
real leather
cap-toe dress oxfords—his trial shoes, bought in secret with money he had cleverly laundered within his own household.

He sat next to Peter, leaned back, and stared at the underside of the upper bunk. After a minute of silence, he said: “Remember I told you they would offer a plea?”

“Don't want no deal.”

“That's what I told them.” Martin reached out an index finger to test if the little black spider under the upper bunk was alive. It reared back from his touch. He told Peter, “Their offer is a little better than I had expected.”

“Unless it's an apology and a blow job, I ain't interested.”

“Manslaughter. Thirty years, with a free pass on your escape.”

Peter reared away from Martin, as the spider had. “What's that?” he cried. “Thirty? I already got thirteen.”

“You're parole-eligible after doing one-third.”

“ ‘Eligible'?” He looked away briefly, doing math. “Shoot, my parole officer ain't been
born
yet.” Peter gaped at him. “Are you telling me to take it?”

Martin couldn't look at him. He turned away. “I'm telling you what they told me to tell you.”

“What they told you to tell me?” Peter echoed. “Christ! Who's in charge of my case? You or them?”

“You're in charge, Peter—you. I just present the options.”

“It's a shit deal, man.”

The spider rappelled silently from the top bunk on an invisible web.

Martin spun around on the bunk, put his leather shoes to the wall, and lay on his back, his face directly below the spider. It levitated eighteen inches above his nose.

Peter warned, “He's gonna land on your head, man.”

Martin blew gently at the spider and sent it swaying. “This case,” he said, “is a son of a bitch. I can't tell you how it's going to go.”

“It's all circumstantial, man.”

“These spiders aren't poisonous, are they?”

“If they are, can I get a mistrial?” Peter said. “On the grounds that my attorney was too busy fighting paralysis to present my arguments.”

Martin chuckled. “Ethan Dillingham doesn't need DNA to win a conviction,” he said. “He's a master of drawing a logical picture from circumstantial evidence. The opportunity, the motive, the gunpowder residue on your hands—he'll make a good show. He's a prick in real life, but the jury won't know that. They'll like him.”

The spider sank another six inches and held there. Martin could make out the teeny hairs on its legs.

“How come you never asked me if I was guilty or not?” Peter said.

Martin's stomach tightened.
Not this conversation, not now.
Their discussion was protected by attorney-client privilege, but Martin's conscience was not—and it was too late to pull out of the case if Peter admitted something.

“I never ask that question,” Martin said. He shot Peter a glance. They skinny young con had stopped rocking. He was rubbing his chin and studying Martin's face. “I wouldn't expect the truth, regardless,” Martin explained. “Everybody in this county jug is innocent, right?”

“What if somebody was to tell you he was guilty of something?”

Don't say it, Peter.

“I'd have to quit as his lawyer.”

Peter laughed and clapped his hands once. “You saying you never defended a guilty person in your life?”

“I assume,” Martin said as the spider slowly dropped toward his face, “in a philosophical sense, that all my clients are guilty. That doesn't matter to me—every accused person deserves an intelligent
and vigorous defense. But I can't argue that they're innocent if they tell me they're not.”

“That spider's gonna bite you, man.”

“This is a tough case to win, Peter. I'd say it's a long shot.”

Peter laughed. “He's gonna wrap you up in a big cocoon. Then he'll eat like the King of the Spiders for the next hundred years.”

“You could do life.”

“Versus what?” Peter said. “Another thirty years?”

“I know, it seems like eternity now, but—”

“Fuck the thirty years, man,” Peter shouted. He banged a fist on the thin foam mattress and sent up a puff of dust. He sighed, disgusted, and then suddenly spun around, put his feet to the wall, as Martin had, and lay on his back, mimicking his lawyer. Both men stared up at the top bunk.

“All I want,” Peter said in a calm voice, “is for you to defend me as good as you would somebody with money. I'll take my chances with that.”

He held out his hand for Martin, who took it and shook.

Martin closed his eyes. It hurt that a man with no money would think he couldn't afford a fair shake. “There are rich people in jail, too,” he said.

“I never met one.”

Martin looked at him. Peter had relaxed. He was far more presentable without the tension in his face. Maybe the jury could be taught to see a glint of innocence in Peter's bulging eyes. Martin drew from his pocket a pair of round glasses with silver rims. “Wear these at all times in front of the jury,” he ordered.

Peter hesitated a moment and then took the glasses. He put them on and looked around to test his vision.

“Nothing but plain glass,” Martin said. “They make you look as smart as you really are.” And the size of the lenses distracted from Peter's bug eyes.

The spider sank lower. Martin pulled out his own eyeglass case, opened it, and held it below the spider for a gentle touchdown. He closed the case with the spider inside and slipped it back in his pocket.

“You taking him home?” Peter asked, astonished.

“I get inmates out of jail any way I can.”

T
he caller on the line, a woman with a sultry voice, wanted to tell i Rhode Island and most of southern Massachusetts, including the Cape and the islands—if the weather was just right and the WGLX signal was carrying well—that radio host Pastor Abraham Guy was an inspiration, so why the heck didn't he run for political office?

“Like governor?” Adam, the producer, suggested.

“Oooh, he'd be the best governor ever,” she said. “Can you get me on the air with him?”

“Maybe,” Adam said, chuckling to himself. Pastor Guy would hang up on his own mother to speak to
this
fan. He got her name and hometown and put her on hold.

He typed, “Line 2 … Jennifer … Pawtuxet Village … wants to say you'd be a good gov.”

Adam transmitted the message from his computer in the control room to the flat-screen monitor eight feet away in the broadcast booth.

Through the window that insulated the broadcast from the noise
of producing the show, Adam saw Pastor Guy glance to the screen and then break into a broad smile. The pastor glanced to Adam and nodded, then craned his neck to look past Adam and give the thumbs-up to Victor Henshaw, his political consultant, in the waiting room.

Adam watched Victor through a glass wall. He didn't know what to make of the guy, and he couldn't imagine how he had hooked up with Pastor Guy. The pastor was a gregarious, rabble-rousing former stockbroker who had become a preacher at age thirty, and who now, as he approached fifty-five, was violently fanning the rumors he was going to run for governor. Victor Henshaw was everything Pastor Guy was not: young, muscled, tight-lipped, and brooding. As far as Adam could see, Victor had done nothing for the past month but sit quietly through Pastor Guy's shows, listen to the audio feed in the waiting room, and make notes in a leather binder.

Adam noticed another man in the waiting room, a stranger, about fifty, dressed in a gray sports jacket and jeans. He sat patiently with his legs crossed, his nose in this week's
Time.
There was a manila envelope on his lap. He was waiting for somebody. But who? The man casually checked his watch. Adam reflexively checked the clock. Sheesh! They were running out of time. He grabbed the cassette with Pastor Guy's exit music and set it on the counter, then slipped on his headphones so he could hear the action in the booth.

The on-air listener was rambling about the horror of bare breasts in R-rated movies.

The pastor flushed the caller, interrupting. “Thank you, Jim on the car phone. That gives us a lot to think about.”

Pastor Guy paused to give his unseen audience a moment to re-focus its attention on him.

Then he said, “Let's switch gears now to Jennifer in Pawtuxet Village, who wants to talk politics.” He gave the hearty “heh-heh” chuckle that was his trademark, and added, “A subject of deep interest
to all Rhode Islanders who give a darn about the shoddy manner in which their state is being run. Jennifer? You're next on GLX, your Galaxy AM talk station.”