Legal Tender (3 page)

“Bill, can I give you some advice?” I try to run the lives of all of my clients, to redeem the job I’m doing with my own. “If I were going to protest animal experimentation, I wouldn’t pick on Furstmann Dunn, because they’re working on an AIDS vaccine. People want to cure AIDS, even if it takes a few chimps to do it. Why don’t you go after the fur companies instead? Then people can get behind you, agree with you.”

He shook his head. “Eileen, she don’t care if people agree with us or not. She wants to put a stop to it. It was her idea to call the TV stations and the radio.”

“You did make quite a commotion, didn’t you?” I said, feeling an unaccountable tingle of pride. They’d had everybody there, even the national TV news. Part of the fussing was a spontaneous counterdemonstration by a group of gay men. A tough issue, but I was undefeated in not judging my clients’ politics. I didn’t defend what they said, just their right to say it without a nightstick to the noggin.

“Got a whole lotta press, too. Eileen liked that.” Bill took another drag on his cigarette.

“You shouldn’t have resisted arrest. They had a whole squad there, and it was just two of you. You don’t strike me as fighter.” I glanced at Bill’s arms; white, thin, flabby.

“Nuh, I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He smiled crookedly.

I bet he wasn’t much of either, but I found myself liking him. I flipped through the file in front of me, which was almost empty. Bill had no priors, even in the counties, which was why the D.A. had offered me such a sweet deal. The poor kid had thrown one punch his whole life, and it had landed him here. “I don’t get it,” I said, closing the file folder. “Why did you hit the cop?”

“Because he was beatin’ on Eileen. I was tryin’ to get him off her. He twisted her arm, so she’d go down, like.” His eyes flared. “All she did was holler on him.”

“Except for the taser, remember? She threatened the cop with it, and the CEO of the company. She trapped the man in his Mercedes.”

“Okay, so she was trying to give him a dose of his own medicine. It coulda been worse. She wanted to blow him up in that fancy car of his.”

“Blow who up? The CEO of Furstmann?” My chest tightened. I’d never gotten used to murder cases, even when my legal argument was sound, so I gave that work up a long time ago. “Bill, did Eileen say she wanted to kill the CEO of Furstmann? Did she mean it?”

“She’s tough, Eileen is.” He looked down at his cigarette. “That’s why she don’t want to plead guilty to the charges. Make ’em prove we done wrong. Go to jail, like a protest. Maybe do a hunger strike.”

I set down my ballpoint. “Bill, answer me. Did you talk about killing the CEO with Eileen?”

He looked away, avoiding my eye. “She said she wanted to, and I told her not to. She said she wouldn’t do nuthin’ ’less we talked about it first.”

“Would she tell her lawyer she wanted to kill the CEO?”

“Dunno.”

I leaned across the table. “Not good enough, Bill. The murder of a CEO, with you as an accomplice, you could get the death penalty. The D.A. here asks for death in every murder case, she wants to prove her manhood. You understand what I’m saying?”

He stabbed his cigarette into the logjam in the tin ashtray.

“Killing that CEO wouldn’t solve anything, no matter what your girlfriend says. There are twenty other suits waiting to take his place. They got the same cars, they got the same degrees. They line ’em up, they call ’em vice presidents. You’re smart enough to know that, right, Bill?”

He nodded, stubbing out the smoldering butt.

“I want you to promise you won’t do anything that stupid, not on my watch. Look at me, Bill. Tell me you’re not that stupid.”

His good eye met mine. “I’m not.”

“No. Say it after me, ‘I’m not that stupid.’”

“I’m not that stupid.” He half smiled and a yellow eyetooth peeked out.

“Excellent. Now you’re going into that courtroom this morning and you’re going to plead guilty, you with me? I got you the best deal going, and you’re gonna take it.”

“I can’t. Eileen—”

“Forget about Eileen. You’d be a fool to do what she wants. She’ll take you both down, not just her, and you’re my lookout. You’re the one I’m worried about.”

He shook his head and sighed. “You got kids, lady?”

“Yeah, I got kids, Bill. You.”

I
nside, Philadelphia’s new Criminal Justice Center looks nothing like a courthouse. Playful bronze stars, curlicues, and squiggles are inlaid into the lobby floor, and it says
SANDY BEACH
—
SEA GULLS
—
SALT AIR
—
COOL BREEZE
—
DANDELIONS
—
MOSSY BANKS
in a continuous loop in the hallways outside the courtrooms.
ARSON
—
PROSTITUTION
—
COLD-BLOODED MURDER
would be more appropriate to a criminal court, but reality can be no fun at all.

In the swank arraignment courtroom, on the black designer pews, the pushers sit with the crackheads, the pimps sit with the hookers, and the lawyers sit with the clients. Nobody but me sees any parallels here, I’m pretty sure. I sat at the counsel table next to a nervous Bill Kleeb, watching Judge John Muranno climb the few steps to the gleaming walnut dais and settle into his leather chair between flags of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Muranno, a short, stout judge with a bulbous nose, wore his permanently martyred expression, which earned him the nickname Pope John.

“Mr. William Seifert Kleeb, are you present in this courtroom?” Pope John intoned, though Bill was plainly sitting before him. It was the opening call-and-response of the colloquy, a mass written by lawyers and judges to safeguard the defendant’s constitutional rights, so we could either plead him out or try him, where he would be convicted if he was poor or black and especially if he was both.

“I’m here,” Bill said, half rising. I shoved him up the rest of the way.

“Mr. Kleeb, is this your signature?” Pope John waved the written form.

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Did you review this form with your counsel?”

“Yes.”

“Are you presently under the influence of drugs or alcohol?”

“Nu-uh.”

“Are you presently under the influence of any type of medication?”

“Uh, no.”

“Have any threats or promises been made to you to induce you to sign this paper?”

“No.”

Pope John proceeded to recite the charges against Bill, and I watched the reaction of an increasingly restless Eileen Jennings. She was five foot two, with long matte-black hair and a killer body, even with one arm in a sling. She fidgeted in her chair at the other defense table. Her eyes were dark and round, with a gaze that didn’t rest anywhere too long, but was always roving. They narrowed as Bill answered Pope John’s final questions. She’d been around enough courtrooms to know what came next.

“Do I understand correctly, Mr. Kleeb, that you are pleading guilty to the charges against you?”

“Yes, sir,” Bill answered.

“No, he isn’t!” Eileen shrieked, springing from her chair. Her public defender, a harried-looking young man with a nascent beard, yanked her back down by her good arm and tried to calm her. I touched Bill’s elbow to steady him, and he kept his eyes straight ahead the way I’d told him to. The gallery started talking among themselves and there was some laughter.

Pope John continued as if nothing untoward was happening, since it wasn’t in the missal. “Mr. Kleeb, do you make this plea freely, willingly, and of your own volition?”

“Uh, yes,” Bill said, more quietly than before, and Eileen jumped to her feet again. Every vein in her neck bulged as she struggled in her lawyer’s grasp.

“Bill, what the fuck are you doing!” she screamed. Two bailiffs hurried over and it took all three men to push her back into her chair, and she cursed as one jostled her broken arm. The gallery grew noisier and the same man in the back laughed crazily.

Pope John cleared his throat. “If there is another disruption of these proceedings, the Court will be compelled to place the defendant in restraints.”

“That won’t be necessary, Your Honor,” said the public defender. Eileen began stage-whispering to him frantically, even as the bailiffs stood above her.

“Mr. Kleeb,” the judge continued, talking over the noise, “the Court accepts your plea. You are released on your own recognizance. I see from your case file you have not been here before, and I do not expect the Court will see you here again. Thank you, Mr. Kleeb.”

“Yes, sir.” Bill eased into his seat, without looking at Eileen or me. His forehead was damp and his hands clasped together as if he were still cuffed.

“Miss Eileen Jennings, are you present in this courtroom?” Judge Muranno was saying.

“I plead not guilty!” Eileen cried, rising again, and this time her lawyer gave up. They obviously had no rapport, so I guessed she hadn’t told him about the CEO. “I had the right to protest the torture of those animals and those
fuckin’ pigs
beat me, Your Honor! They broke my fuckin’ arm and they beat me up! They had themselves a fine time!”

The faces of the arresting uniforms remained impassive as they sat in the row behind us, chrome badges lined up on their blue shirts. I knew most of them, and only two would’ve kicked the shit out of Eileen for fun. Noticeably absent was the cop she had tazed into a hospital stay. I heard he’d be out in a day and was considering a counterclaim.

“Miss Jennings,” Judge Muranno asked, “are you represented by counsel?”

“No, I have a public defender,” she said, and her lawyer winced. He looked all of twenty-three, since the P.D.’s office got them out of law school and burned them out fast. Each P.D. handled as many as thirty-five cases a day and often didn’t get the file until showtime.

“You are represented by counsel,” Pope John said, and read the charges, taking Eileen through another version of the liturgy and turning the other cheek at each insolent response. He accepted Eileen’s not guilty plea, set a trial date that everybody knew was illusory, and banged the gavel,
Amen
, for the bailiffs to take her to State Road.

Eileen didn’t look back but Bill watched her leave, and as soon as the door closed behind her, he stood up like a shot. “I have to go,” he said, his voice trembling. He kept his face turned away as he shook my hand.

“You did the right thing,” I said, but he didn’t respond, just turned and hurried past the bar of the court. “Bill?” I called after him, but he bolted out the courtroom door in front of Eileen’s lawyer, who held a stack of red accordion files under a pinstriped arm. I grabbed my briefcase and hustled after the public defender, catching up with him in a hallway that thronged with the disenfranchised, waiting to be arraigned.
SANDY BEACHES
, my ass.

“Are you really Bennie Rosato?” the P.D. asked, as I fell in stride beside him.

“No, she’s even taller. You’ve got quite a handful in there.”

“I’ll say.” He threaded his way through the crowd, turning his shoulders sideways. “Congratulations on that verdict, I followed it in the papers. Man, ten cops on one guy, up in the Northeast. The Police Advisory Board is a joke, isn’t it?”

“Listen, about Jennings—”

“I’d been wanting to meet you. I remember when you came to speak at my law school. Last year, at Seton Hall?”

I pushed past a fragrant circle of hookers. “Have you talked to Jennings at any length?”

“Jennings?”

“Eileen Jennings, your client.”

“She’s not my file, I’m just filling in.”

“Whose file is she?”

“Abrams, he’s on trial.” He checked his watch. “Shit. I was supposed to be upstairs ten minutes ago.”

“I want you to know I think Eileen Jennings is dangerous.”

“Are you kidding?” He dodged a herd of cops. “She was all talk, no action.”

“But what about the taser?”

“Hah! The chief wants me to cop it from the evidence room for the Christmas party.”

A family passed between us with toddlers in tow, and I waited to ask, “Do you know if she has a gun, or any explosives?”

“This isn’t my file.”

I grabbed his arm. “You got the
file
, so take some responsibility. You have to find out if she’s really dangerous. Do you understand?”