Law of Attraction (3 page)

“All I’m saying is, she’s no angel. She’s got a criminal record that shows she can be violent.”

Anna pulled D’marco’s file out of the cabinet and handed Nick a printout showing Laprea’s criminal history. “She had a couple minor arrests when she was a teenager. No convictions. Then she graduated high school and got a steady job. She’s raising two kids with her mother’s help—but not much help from D’marco. I wouldn’t have a job if everyone in D.C. lived like Laprea Johnson. On the other hand, look at your client’s criminal record.”

Anna held up the thick rap sheet. D’marco had a string of drug-related arrests. He was on probation after serving a year in jail for armed drug dealing. He’d also been arrested for a series of escalating assaults on Laprea—but never convicted.

“Well.” Nick sighed. He kicked clear a spot on the floor, stretched out his long legs, and laced his hands behind his head. “What are we going to do about this?”

Anna liked the way he said “we.” Like they were a team, working to find the answer to a tough problem together. She shook off the thought. There was no “we” here. She and Nick were in as adversarial a position as two people could be. Especially because she felt more invested in cases like Laprea’s, where the woman was a longtime victim of abuse but kept going back to her abuser. Men like D’marco just got more violent. If he wasn’t stopped, D’marco might very well kill Laprea.

“Your client could plead guilty,” she suggested.

“Can’t do that. He’s on probation for that drug case. So if he gets convicted of assault, he’ll get all the backup time in the old drug charge. In effect, he’ll serve six years for a crime that carries less than a year. How ’bout a DSA?”

“He can’t get a Deferred Sentencing Agreement with his record. You know that’s our office policy.”

“I guess we’ll just have to fight it out in court then.” Nick threw his hands up in the air. “Hate to do it—I still remember the trouncing you gave me in Moot Court.”

“Hey, I just graduated from law school a few months ago. You’ve been doing this for two years. It’ll be a fair fight.”

“I
have
learned a few tricks.” His eyes were laughing. What did he know that made him so confident?

Nick sat up suddenly, his attention caught by something on her desk.

“Are those Krispy Kremes?” he asked.

“You want one?” She held out the box and he reached for a chocolate frosted. “I bring snacks to Papering for the police officers. Especially the ones working midnights, who haven’t been home yet in the morning. They’ll wolf down cookies, candy, even week-old pizza. No one touched these, though.”

Nick swallowed a big bite. “Bet it’s the stereotype about cops and doughnuts. Mmm,” he said, licking his fingers. “Their loss.”

She laughed and chose a sugar-glazed.

“Don’t fill up now,” Nick chided. “You’ll spoil your dinner.”

“This
is
my dinner.”

“Oh no, you’re not getting away that easily, Anna Curtis. I asked you to dinner. You said yes. A prosecutor has certain duties of honesty in dealing with defense counsel. Backing out now would be prosecutorial misconduct.”

Anna laughed. “I don’t think people from my office have dinner with people from your office.”

“I’m not trying to make an historic peace accord here.”

“I’m just saying. I’m not sure I should go out with you.”

“We’re not ‘going out.’ I just want to catch up with an old friend.”

She glanced at the clock to have a moment to collect her thoughts. It was just after six; she normally stayed at the office past nine. Having dinner with Nick was probably a bad idea. On a professional level, she was nervous about socializing with a defense attorney. On a personal level, it wasn’t wise to spend any more time with an adversary this attractive. She found it hard enough to trust men who weren’t on the other side of a criminal case.

“There’s no rule that says a prosecutor and a public defender can’t talk over food,” Nick continued. “Anyway, we won’t talk about the case. It’s good to see another HLS grad who chose public interest over a firm, even if we are on opposite sides of the courtroom.”

Anna thought about how quiet the office got after seven o’clock. Nick was right. There was nothing wrong with them having a meal
together.

“What’ve you got in mind?” she asked.

•  •  •

They went to Lauriol Plaza, a popular Mexican restaurant in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood. Crowds of young professionals gathered there, still wearing their suits. Waiters steered trays of margaritas around clusters of people waiting in the bar area.

Anna and Nick scored a table by one of the big windows overlooking 18th Street. Their waiter arrived with chips and salsa and took their order. When he left, Anna scooped salsa onto a warm chip and smiled at Nick. She had spent so many nights alone at the office, immersed in the worst things that happened in the city. She was glad to be out for a change, surrounded by the happy chatter and bustle.

Nick, she noticed, looked a bit less lawyerlike with his suit jacket slung on the back of his chair and his tie loosened. Anna had draped her own suit jacket on her chair; underneath, she wore a sleeveless ivory shell. She noticed Nick’s eyes skimming her bare arms. She looked away and smoothed back her ponytail, suddenly self-conscious.

“So,” Nick said, taking a pull from his Corona. “How does a bright and beautiful lawyer from Michigan end up slaving away for a government wage in D.C.?”

She was more touched that he remembered where she was from than by his flattery. “I was never going back to Flint,” she said. Too many bad memories. “I looked at a few cities and fell in love with D.C.—its American history, and the idealism of the people who follow politics like you might follow sports.”

“But why not go to some fancy law firm? You have something against mahogany desks and six-figure salaries?”

She liked Nick too much to give her half-true stock answer about wanting to be in court instead of reviewing documents in a warehouse. But she wasn’t ready to tell him the real reason yet. She guessed it would shock him.

“I wanted to do something good with my law degree,” she said. She grinned at Nick as the waiter set down their food. “How ’bout you—did you grow up wanting to set criminals free?”

He didn’t seem to take offense. “I like to think that I can see the good in everybody. If I give a voice to someone who might be going down the wrong path, maybe I can help him turn around instead of
harden in prison. But let’s not talk about work. I have a much more important question: How are those fajitas?”

She laughed. The fajitas were great. Their conversation moved to gossip about classmates and funny childhood anecdotes. Nick told her about mischief he and his friends had gotten into at St. Albans, a private school in D.C. Anna reciprocated with tales of the hearty Midwestern things that East Coast people liked to hear. She told him about GM’s annual summer picnic, and how as a nine-year-old she’d gotten in trouble for galloping away on one of the ponies from the pony rides.

“That’s when you needed a defense attorney!” Nick said.

They ordered coffee and kept talking long after their plates were cleared. When the busboys started stacking chairs on the tables, Anna noticed with embarrassment that they were the only diners still there. This was the best time she’d had since moving to this city.

Emerging from the restaurant into the cool winter night, Nick asked if he could walk her home. Telling herself they were just two old law school acquaintances reconnecting—certainly not a conflict of interest—Anna pointed Nick in the direction of her apartment, a few blocks away. Although it was a Monday night, Adams-Morgan was still busy. Groups of suited Capitol Hill staffers, interns in high-heeled boots, and Ethiopian men from the neighborhood all vied with each other for elbow room outside the bars and restaurants.

Anna and Nick walked comfortably side by side, talking and joking. She was surprised by how easily she let her guard down with him. Maybe it was the very fact that she was professionally prohibited from dating Nick that put her at ease. As long as they were on opposite sides of a pending case, he wasn’t an option—so he was safe. In any case, Anna didn’t want the night to end. Too soon, they turned onto Wyoming Avenue, a quiet street lined with trees and stately brick town houses. She pointed to one of the elegant homes.

“It was advertised as an ‘English basement’ apartment,” she explained, pointing down a flight of steps to a subterranean entrance. “I was hoping there’d be fish ’n’ chips.”

“Nope, ‘English basement’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘medieval dungeon.’”

Anna laughed and looked up at him. Although she was five eight, she still needed to tip her head back to meet his gaze. He had beautiful eyes, brown with green and gold flecks. “I had a lot of fun tonight. Thanks for getting me out of the office.”

They stood facing each other, their breaths making cloudy puffs in the cold night air. She found herself leaning forward at the same time he did. Coming to her senses at the last minute, she stepped back and stuck her hand out to shake his. “I’m still not dismissing your case, though.”

Laughing, Nick tried but failed to look hurt. He took her hand and held it for several beats longer than a handshake. “Fair enough, but how about dinner on Friday?”

She pulled her hand away. “I don’t think so.” Her skin tingled where his fingers had touched. She couldn’t hang out with him anymore, that much was clear. “Call me if your client wants to plead guilty.”

“Mm, not gonna happen. But I will call you when our trial is over.”

“Good night, Nick.”

She rushed down the little walk, down the three steps to her front door, and let herself in. When she was safely inside, she turned and looked back. He waved and walked away. She contemplated his receding figure. It was too bad they had a case against each other. She hadn’t felt so attracted to anyone in a long time.

4

A
week later, D’marco Davis sat at a table with his lawyer. D’marco felt calm and relaxed, ready to listen to Nick’s advice. He wasn’t happy to be back in D.C. Jail, no doubt, but unlike some of the younger men there, he wasn’t spooked by his orange jumpsuit, the dull cacophony of other inmates talking outside, or the stale smell of bleach and urine that permeated the facility. He knew how to operate in this world, and he wouldn’t be here long anyway. Not on this domestic bullshit. Nick had gotten him out of far worse.

The two men were sitting inside one of the tiny rooms reserved for attorney-client meetings. A small table and two wobbly chairs were the only furniture. The room would have felt claustrophobic except that all four walls were floor-to-ceiling panels of smudged Plexiglas. Identical Plexiglas rooms flanked both sides, all overlooking the jail’s even less private visiting area. There, a long bench of young men in orange jumpsuits huddled into phones on one side of a wide pane of glass. Women of all ages—girlfriends, mothers, grandmothers—spoke into phones on the other side. A few children sat on their mothers’ laps and sucked their thumbs or knocked on the glass. The men said “I love you” to the women they couldn’t touch.

Nick tossed some paperwork on the table, sat back in his chair, and regarded his client coolly. “Couldn’t you just be nice to Laprea?”

“She cheatin’ on me!” D’marco tried to stoke the righteous fury he’d felt last week. But all he could muster now was sick regret. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. She just pushed him over the edge sometimes.

“So leave her,” Nick said.

“Naw, you don’t understand.” D’marco settled his massive arms on the wobbly metal table. “I love her.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it. Try chocolates next time.”

“Look, I’m sorry, a’ight?” D’marco flashed his most charming grin. “I do better, swear to God.”

“Dammit, D’marco. It’d be hard to do worse.” Nick held up a
probation report. “And you’re still on papers. You just had to keep your nose clean for a year.”

D’marco snorted. “I ain’t kept my nose clean for a year since I been eleven.”

“Yeah, laugh. It’ll be hilarious when you get convicted of this DV case, and they revoke you. You’ll serve the five years left on your drug charge, plus whatever time you get for the assault.”

D’marco paused. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Just like I told you when you got released, not even two months ago.”

“Hunh.” D’marco grunted to appease his lawyer. But he didn’t need a lecture. Nick’s job was to get him off, not tell him how to live his life. “So, what’s the plan?”

Nick sighed and inclined his head toward the bank of visitors. D’marco followed the lawyer’s gaze. A woman was pressing her palm to the glass barrier separating her from her boyfriend; the boyfriend brought his hand against the glass so their fingers matched up. The woman gazed into his eyes, her face full of longing and hope.

“You know how this works,” Nick said grimly. “The surest way out of this is if Laprea drops the charges. She loves you, and a big part of her wants to stand by you. You just need to give her a reason.”

“Should I tell her not to come to court?”

“No, no.” Nick shook his head. “If she reports you, it’ll get you an obstruction charge. Don’t go telling her not to testify, or to lie.” Nick leaned forward and met D’marco’s eyes squarely. “Look, you have to rekindle Laprea’s good feelings toward you. It’ll be harder than before, to do it from jail. But you still have phone privileges.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Just be nice. Remind her why she fell for you in the first place.”

D’marco nodded with respect. The man knew what he was doing. The same old plan, but it had always worked before.

•  •  •

The homes on C Street SE were boxy, two-story brick duplexes across the street from Fort Chaplin Park. The park’s dense trees provided a surprisingly wooded view for homes in the middle of the city. Inside one of the houses, Laprea sat on a couch between her twins, watching Dameka’s favorite movie,
The Little Mermaid,
again. Through the living room window, Laprea could see her mother sitting on the front
porch. Rose was talking to their neighbor Sherry, who sat on her own porch next door. The two old friends waved royally to passersby and gossiped about their neighbors: who had a baby on the way, whose boyfriend had made probation, whose son was back from Iraq. Laprea knew Rose wouldn’t mention her own daughter’s troubles.