Legal Tender (2 page)

“It’s her first time out,” he hissed back. “She made a mistake.”

“No,
you
made a mistake. I told you she isn’t a trial lawyer. She can’t connect with people, she’s too cold. Now hold up an exhibit so we can fight in peace.”

Mark grabbed an exhibit and ducked behind it. “What’s happening with the jury? This is killing us.”

I snuck a peek sideways. Most of the jurors were watching me and Mark by now. I wondered if any recognized me, infamous radical lawyer Bennie Rosato. I could only hope my hair looked less incendiary than usual. “The jury’s wondering whether we’re still sleeping together. Where’s the client, Haupt? He’s the cheese, right?”

“Yeah, Dr. Otto Haupt. Guy with the steel glasses in the front row. How’s he taking it?”

I checked the reaction of the aforementioned, but his expression was a double-breasted blank. “He’s a suit, not a face. And no more excuses for your new girlfriend. Deal with her.”

“What do you want me to do, spank her?”

“You wish.” He’d tried it with me once but I’d laughed myself silly. “Keep her at second-chair. Don’t let her take any more witnesses.”

“She needs to work on her people skills, that’s all.”

“I hate that expression, ‘people skills.’ What does that mean? You either have a heart or you don’t.”

He flashed me a photogenic smile. “Why are you here, Bennie? Do I need to take this shit from you, now? In the middle of trial?”

“It’s the least you can do, I’m about to save your ass. Grab the glass next to that file.” I picked up a pitcher of water from counsel table. It was heavy and cold, and there were even some ice cubes left. Perfect.

“Why am I doing this?” He reached for the glass.

“Don’t you remember Leo Melly, the transvestite who wanted to march in the Columbus Day parade? From the old days, when you fought for things that mattered, like the right to wear puce in broad daylight?”

A glint of recognition flickered through Mark’s gorgeous brown eyes and he hoisted his glass. “Way to go, Bennie. Just don’t mess up the patent application, it’s an original.”

“Brace yourself.” I reached for the glass but it popped out of my outstretched hand and tumbled end over end like a fumbled football.
“Whoooops!”
I squealed, lunging for the glass, but missing it so expertly that I bobbled the pitcher, too. Ice cubes and frigid water gushed out like a mountain waterfall, raced past the errant glass in an icy torrent, and landed with a noisy splash in the middle of Mark’s lap.

“Argh!” Mark shouted, springing to his feet. “Jesus! That’s cold!” Eyes wide, he jumped away from counsel table, crunching the ice cubes in a frantic jig.

“Oh no!” I cried, then dropped the glass pitcher on his foot. “Oh, it slipped!”

“Yeeow!” Mark grabbed his toe. “Jesus H. Christ!”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I flapped my arms like a baby seal and tried to look helpless, which isn’t easy for me. I haven’t been helpless a day in my life.

Meantime, chaos was erupting at the front of the courtroom. A juror in the first row pointed in surprise. The back row, mostly older women, burst into giggles. Eve had turned around, her lipsticked mouth hanging open. Judge Thompson tore off his glasses, his lecture abandoned. “Bailiff! Deputy!” he barked. “Get some paper towels! I won’t have my tables stained!”

“Yes, Your Honor,” said the courtroom deputy, who was already hurrying over with paper towels. He shot me a dirty look as he mopped up the water pooling on counsel table and dripping onto the dark blue rug.

“Can I have a few of those?” Mark asked. He snatched a handful of towels and dabbed his crotch, which triggered another wave of tittering from the jurors in the back.

Judge Thompson sighed audibly. “Let’s break for the morning recess, ladies and gentlemen. Ms. Howard, please escort the jury out, since the deputy is otherwise engaged.”
Crak!
He eased out of his chair and left the dais shaking his head.

“It’s your mess, you clean it up,” snapped the deputy. “Better make sure there’s no water marks.” He dumped the pile of paper towels on the table and walked off toward the court reporter, who was flexing her fingers.

The courtroom emptied quickly, the lawyers laughing and talking as they filed out. Plaintiffs counsel snapped his briefcase shut and left, walking past Dr. Haupt, who lingered by the door, his Teutonic features betraying only the slightest bit of annoyance. My acting had been so good I fooled even him. So be it. It wouldn’t be the first time I looked like a jerk for the cause.

“Thanks a whole lot, Bennie,” Mark said. He swabbed the huge, wet stain spreading like bad news across his crotch.

“Sorry, partner,” I told him, surprised to feel a tiny twinge of regret. Ice cubes melted into the rug, and Eve stepped over them delicately to reach us.

“You okay, honey?” she asked softly, and rubbed Mark’s back with a concern so touching I almost gagged.

“It’s water,” I pointed out. “He’ll live.”

“You could have been more careful,” she said, frowning. “I was just getting into my cross.”

I almost laughed. “Do you really believe this was an accident, child? I dumped the water to—”

“That’s enough, Bennie,” Mark interrupted, holding up a wet paper towel. “I’ll handle this.”

“Oh really.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“You’d better. I have to go, I have a new client. Lots of luck, kids.” I turned to avoid a puddle, then took off, banging through the heavy mahogany doors. As they closed I heard Eve’s laughter, followed by Mark’s. Masculine, heartier.

I remembered his laugh, I remembered it all.

Now what I had to do was forget it.

T
he goose egg made by the initial blow was tinged a virulent pink and a deep gash contorted the teenager’s strawberry blond eyebrow. His left eye had hemorrhaged, the white turned a crimson red, and that side of his face was mottled from bruise and trauma. Luckily, the skin on his forehead wasn’t split, so I guessed the weapon was a billyclub, not a service revolver. Somebody on the force must have liked young Bill Kleeb.

The judge had sent the case to me, since Kleeb and his girlfriend, Eileen Jennings, had filed complaints of police brutality, my expertise. Philadelphia had coughed up $20 million in lawsuits for police misconduct in the past two years, and most of the money went to clients of mine. My cases ran the gamut from police assault, excessive force, and false arrest to the officially “mistaken shooting,” like the grad student who was shot by an off-duty cop because the student was wearing a knit Eagles cap, the same as a robber seen fleeing in the area. The cop, who had been drinking, temporarily forgot that everybody in Philly wears Eagles caps, especially when the team’s in the playoffs.

That case had made headlines, as had the complaints I filed against the 39th District, where a cadre of Philly’s finest confessed to fencing stolen goods and falsifying evidence in drug cases, thereby sending over one hundred people, including a sixty-year-old tailor, to prison for twelve years. No matter that the tailor was innocent. He won two mil from the city, for which he paid my nominal fee and made me a custom suit. I liked my work, it had a purpose. The way I figured it, my hometown didn’t need me to tell it we had a problem in the department, it just needed me to remind it once in a while. For this I charged only a nuisance fee. My fee to be a nuisance.

“Now tell me again, Bill. Why didn’t you ask the cops for a doctor?” I took inane notes during the interview so I wouldn’t stare at his battered face, a part of the job I never got used to. I scribbled on my legal pad,
DOCTOR, DOCTOR, GIMME THE NEWS
.

“I said I didn’t need no doctor. They put ice. It was good enough.” His hair was a greasy blond, and splotchy freckles spread across his small nose and onto a swollen upper lip. Bill had the kind of teeth only poor kids have anymore, irregularly sized and spaced. Amazingly, none had been knocked out during the melee.

“You should have gotten it checked. Anytime you lose consciousness.”

“I’ll remember that.”

I wrote,
I GOT A BAD CASE OF LOVIN
’
YOU
. “How’s your ribs? They all right?”

“Fine.”

“Does it hurt to breathe?”

“Nuh. See?” He blew a cone of cigarette smoke into the air.

“Impressive. No kicks to the stomach? No feet, clubs, anything?”

“I’m fine,” he said crankily, and I began to feel ticked off. Maybe it was the way the morning had gone so far.

“If you’re so fine, Bill, why did you allege the police used excessive force against you? And why do you want to plead not guilty when we have an offer that gets you out of jail free?”

“It’s Eileen, my girl.” He shifted position in his blue prison jumpsuit. “She … uh … wants us to do the same complaint…. Together, like.”

“But it doesn’t make sense for you to plead not guilty. Eileen’s the one who started the trouble, she’s the one with the record.” For smalltime prostitution, but I didn’t need to drive home that point.

“She wants us to be, like, a united front.”

“Well, you’re not. You’re two different people, you have two different situations. That’s why you have separate lawyers. Eileen’s in more trouble than you. She had the weapon.”

“It was only a taser gun.”

“Electricity applied to the chest of an arresting officer. You think that doesn’t count?”

He ran his tongue over his swollen lip. “Eileen, she’s got quite a temper. She’ll be pissed if I don’t go along.”

“So what? Who wears the nose rings in this family?”

Bill winced as he dragged on his Salem. Cigarette smoke and cheap disinfectant thickened the air in the interrogation room. The lattice cage over the door window was furry with dust, and a chewed-up Styrofoam cup lay on its side on the filthy table. I’ve seen this same Styrofoam cup in every precinct in Philly. I think they move it around.

“Take the deal, Bill. If you plead guilty, you walk. If you plead not guilty, you go directly to jail. It’s one of the fine ironies of our criminal justice system.”

He still wouldn’t meet my eye.

“Okay, let’s get off that subject for a minute. Give me some background. You were demonstrating for animal rights when they arrested you. You don’t think Furstmann Dunn should test its vaccine on monkeys, is that the story?”

“They got no right. We got no right. We don’t own them, we’re just bigger.”

“Got it.” Some of us, anyway. I couldn’t help noticing my latest revolutionary was a tad on the short side. “Are you a member of PETA or any other animal rights groups?”

“I don’t need no authority over me.” He sucked on his Salem, holding it down like a lollipop.

“I take it that’s a no.” I wrote,
NO
. “So it’s you and Eileen. Are you two married?”

“We don’t need no authority—”

“Another no,” I said, making a note.
NO
2. “So it’s you and Eileen against the world. Romantic.” I had felt that way with Mark, when I was younger and entirely delusional.

“I guess,” he said lazily, the “I” sounding like “Ah.” I couldn’t place his accent even though I know every Philly accent there is.

“Where you from, Bill? Not from here.”

“Out western PA, out past Altoona. The boonies. I was raised on a farm, that’s how I come to know animals. It was the 4-H ruined me.” He laughed, emitting a residual puff of smoke.

“Did you graduate high school?”

“Yup. Then I booked it to York and worked at the Harley Davidson factory for a while. That’s where I met Eileen. She was workin’ in the lab, Furstmann Dunn’s lab. That’s where they were testing the vaccine. She took pictures of them torturin’ the monkeys. She saw the way they treated ’em. They
abused
’em.”

It didn’t sound like a word that came naturally to him. “Eileen tell you this?”

“They use electrodes, you know.”

“On the monkeys?”

“On minks. For mink coats. Stoles and whatnot.”

“Minks? Why are we talking about minks?”

“I don’t know. It was you brought it up.”

I wrote down
NOT MINKS
. Was he just dumb, or was a conversation with an anarchist necessarily confusing?

“It’s all part of the same thing,” he added. “It’s all wrong.”