Lion Plays Rough (2 page)

He'd raised me after our mother's death and our father's incarceration. Now it often seemed that the wheel had come full circle, Teddy dependent on me and me the one in practice with Jeanie, who'd once been Teddy's law partner as well as his wife. I'd had to beg her for this chance, and ever since she'd hired me I'd focused all my attention on showing her she'd made the right decision.

If by some miracle I managed to win the Scarsdale case, doors would open for me. I could start thinking about getting out from under Jeanie's wing, opening my own practice, choosing my clients. I was ready—or I thought I was. All I had to do was prove it.

Chapter 3

The phone rang as I was polishing my black shoes. It was 8:00
pm
and I was still at the office. I almost didn't pick up.

The operator asked if I would accept a collect call. I told her I would. Jail calls were always collect. “Leo Maxwell?”

“That's right.” I held the phone against my shoulder as I rubbed the cloth over the toe of the left shoe.

“The criminal defense attorney Leo Maxwell? Teddy Maxwell's brother?” The voice could have belonged to a black man or a white man. It could have been a white man trying to sound black, but that didn't occur to me until later.

“He's not practicing anymore. Are you an old client of his?”

“Nah, but I need a lawyer. Guy in here told me about you.”

I steadied the phone between my shoulder and ear. “Yeah? Who?”

“Just a guy here in Santa Rita.”

I didn't have any clients currently in Santa Rita Jail. I wiped my hands. “I've got a pretty full caseload right now. Why don't you give me your name and jail number and tell me what you're charged with. Just the charge.”

“Robinson, Jamil.”

“Jail number?”

He gave it to me.

I prodded him again for the charge. “Nah, you got to hear the whole story. And it says here on the wall that these calls are recorded. No way can I tell you what I need over the phone. This is some sensitive shit.”

“Fine. I probably don't have any time to take on a new client right now in any case. Good luck with finding yourself a lawyer, Mr. Robinson.”

I was about to hang up when he said, “My sister's on her way to see you. She'll tell you what you need to know. She's the one who gave me your card, dawg. You met her this morning.”

“I'm still going to need to know what the charge is.”

“My sister will tell you all about it. You at 580 Grand?”

“That's what it says on the card. You going to tell me the charge?”

“You make up your mind. There's plenty of lawyers in the book.”

~ ~ ~

Less than ten minutes later the phone rang again. “Mr. Maxwell? This is Lavinia Martin. We met this morning. I'm here on behalf of my brother, Jamil Robinson. Are you going to keep me standing on the sidewalk at this hour, or shall I come upstairs?”

“I'll buzz you in.”

She'd changed clothes since I saw her. Now she wore a navy-blue suit over a blouse with a plunging neckline.

“You don't waste time,” I said. “You got your checkbook along?”

Her hand lay on mine. “I'm sorry about what happened this morning, and I'm sorry if I seemed preoccupied, Mr. Maxwell. It's just that my brother—”

She broke off, seemingly overcome. I cleared the mess off the extra chair in my office and she sat. “I pride myself on not being an overly emotional person. Jamil—”

I got the box of tissues from the drawer, but she ignored it, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Take your time.”

Finally she opened her eyes and let her hand drop from her face. Her eyes were perfectly clear, a striking auburn brown, a shade lighter than her freckled skin. It was as if she'd wadded up the emotional part of herself and thrown it away.

“I suppose I should begin by telling you that my brother has a lengthy criminal record.” She spoke slowly. “Most recently he did two years for robbery.”

“Two years isn't so long.”

“Daddy's a man of the cloth. He had work lined up for Jamil when he was released. Nothing glamorous. Janitor work. It wasn't good enough for Jamil. He'd met some men in prison, and some friends of theirs gave him a job when he got out. Security work, supposedly.”

“Daddy,” I repeated.

She went on. “Jamil was pulled over on San Pablo last night. The police searched the car and found a gun.”

“The DA's office will violate him in about half a minute if he's on parole. If he'd been an ordinary citizen, and wasn't drunk or high or doing anything else obviously illegal, we might have a chance, but the cops can search a parolee anytime, anywhere. They don't even need a reason.”

“My brother and I both realize that a return to prison probably can't be avoided. The question is how long and whether he'll be getting out. You see, according to Jamil, the gun they found in the car was used two weeks ago for a murder. Sooner or later the police are bound to discover this weapon's provenance and charge my brother with that crime.”

“Provenance.” I gave her a hard look, feeling a pulse of excitement at the thought of a murder case. There was no way to keep her from telling the police everything Jamil had told her. “You'd better start at the beginning.”

She leaned forward. “The murdered man was a local businessman. Some say in reality the head of a syndicate of drug dealers and shakedown artists. Maybe you heard about it.”

“I only know what everyone in this city knows,” I said. “That the real issue is the white establishment's inability to stomach black economic independence. That we can't hear about a black man dying violently without thinking he must have done something to deserve it.”

I'd heard about the murder she'd mentioned, of course. It bore all the marks of an internal struggle for control over Oakland's drug trade, which is how the killing had been reported in the papers for about a day and a half, before they moved on to the next one.

“I suppose you think that because you've represented black men in court you can talk about our community like you're some kind of insider, someone who knows how it is.”

I wasn't going to rise to the bait. “This afternoon you were driving a convertible in Marin County, but I actually live in this town.”

“And I don't?”

“In the hills, maybe. But the hills aren't Oakland. You've got a gun in your purse and you're still afraid to stand alone on Grand Avenue after dark—yet you come in here on your high horse.”

She paused, then sighed. “It's true that I've left my roots behind. I was right to get out when I had the chance. My husband doesn't know anything about what I'm trying to do for Jamil. And I'd prefer to keep it that way.”

“Don't look so excited when you mention your husband,” I said.

“Mr. Maxwell, I'm not here to discuss my personal life.”

“Let's knock it off, then. Either you finish telling me what your brother told you, or there's the door. Before I decide whether to take your brother's case, I have to know everything. Because if he was dumb enough to confess to his sister, I don't want anything to do with him.”

“This is confidential?”

“Anything that incriminates your brother would be confidential between you and me, yes. But I'd be free to divulge anything else you tell me, even if it hurts or embarrasses you. If you told me that the gun in the car was yours, for example—I'd hang you with it. You see, if your brother becomes my client, I'll smear anyone I can if I think it might put him in the clear. That includes you, your preacher father, your little dog.”

“I see.”

“How does Jamil know it was the gun used in the execution?”

“He knows.”

“How?”

“He does,” Lavinia said. “And I believe him.”

“He knows because he's the one who pulled the trigger, and he was stupid enough to hold on to the gun.” I put down my pen. “I'm sorry if I sound callous, but wanting Jamil to be innocent won't make it so. That gun isn't motive or opportunity. It's not eyewitness testimony. It's only evidence. It's only the murder weapon. It's only enough to convict your brother and send him to prison for twenty years.”

Her tone now was icy. “You haven't given me a chance to explain.”

I waited, and so did she, both of us hanging, as if she wanted me to beg to hear what she had to say. And I did want to hear it. But I was willing to wait. Finally she broke the tension by running a hand through her hair. Her lips parted, and I noticed the space between her top front teeth. She hadn't worn perfume this morning, but she was wearing it now, a blend of cinnamon and eucalyptus and roses.

She took a breath and let it out. “Jamil was pulled over at ten thirty. The officers put him in the back of the squad car. After twenty minutes an unmarked car pulled up, and this detective got out. Detective Campbell. He searched the vehicle while the officers stood off. Campbell found the gun.”

“You're saying he planted it?”

Instead of answering she opened her purse and took out an unsealed envelope filled with cash, placing it on the desk. “Your retainer.”

If the bills were all hundreds like the bill on top, there were several thousand dollars. I pushed it away. “This isn't the way we do things around here.”

She made no move to take it back. “We need someone with courage to break this case open. More courage than most of the lawyers I spoke to over the phone this afternoon.”

I looked down at the envelope. Maybe I could find a way to make this good with Jeanie. “That much money will buy you some courage. The question is how much. It'll cost a lot more than that to take a case like this to trial.”

“Oh, there isn't going to be a trial. My brother's a good soldier. He's confused, and he's scared, and he hates the police, but if someone tells him to confess, he'll do it. Men like my brother, they either live by the rules of the street or they die by them. And right now he's scared.”

She stopped, staring hard at me. “
Please.
My brother needs a lawyer.”

Caught by the intensity of her gaze, I told her I'd look into the case.

When she left, I realized I'd forgotten about the bicycle tire.

Chapter 4

After counting the money—an even ten thousand—I taped the envelope closed and sat with my hands folded across it, lost in thought. Then, locking it in the safe, I turned out the lights and left.

Our building was across from the lake. The other offices were occupied by criminal and divorce lawyers, an insurance agent, a drug-testing agency, a fingerprinting business, and a bodyguard company that marketed its services to gospel singers and celebrity preachers. On the ground floor were a boutique clothing store and a casket outlet.

The string of lights around Lake Merritt wavered in the rippling water. Just up Grand the theater marquee told me what to think of the president. I trudged up Elwood onto Santa Clara, turned right onto Vernon, then left onto Moss. Our condo building stood about halfway down the quiet street.

When I got upstairs, Teddy was on the couch in the front room watching
Shawshank
. He'd remembered to heat up a TV dinner, and he'd eaten half of it; once a glutton, now he rarely finished a serving. He'd dropped eight inches from his waistline. The headshot diet, we called it, but he was still huskier than I was. I popped popcorn and joined him.

“Home from the salt mines,” he said. “You crack the case?” It was what he always said when I came in. Since the shooting he'd become almost affectless, no longer subject to the mood swings that once had put such distance between us. His passivity grated on me more than his moods used to.

“I may have gotten us a new client. Guy got pulled over last night with the murder gun from a major drug hit in his car.”

“The cops had a—?”

“Warrant? No. Someone tipped them off. I haven't talked to the client yet. Potential client. His sister came to see me. What he told her is that he got pulled over by a couple of officers in a patrol car. They had him wait until this homicide cop showed up. Campbell. He searched the car and found the gun.”

“Huh.”
Teddy was watching the screen. “You going to see the guy?”

“Yeah, but I'm not sure when. The sister told me he'd be calling me from jail in the morning.”

“And he's claiming the detective planted the gun.
”
The crease in Teddy's brow deepened. It was a story so outlandish that it might as well be a lie, a story that all but disqualified Jamil from taking the stand in his own defense, the kind of story that would force any defense attorney to consider putting on a false case even if he knew his client was telling the truth.

I should have considered all this before, but it wouldn't have mattered.

Teddy was still frowning. He unlocked his eyes from the TV and jammed his fist into the popcorn bag. “The sister told you this gun-planting story?”

“That's right.”

“So maybe she got it mixed up. Maybe he never told her anything about a gun being planted. Maybe he was just holding it for someone.”

Teddy pushed popcorn into his mouth, his eyes going back to the screen.

I'd lost him, but not before I saw where his thoughts were leading. His words called to mind a key ethical principle for the criminal defense lawyer, a principle that dictates that as long as a lawyer is not absolutely sure a client is lying, the lawyer is obliged to let the client testify and help him tell whatever story he wishes.

To put it bluntly: if I want to preserve my client's ability to lie, I must take care not to know the truth.

It followed, therefore, that I must not allow Jamil to tell me the story he'd told his sister, not until I'd had a chance to show him how unworkable it was, and to make him see that no jury would believe that a detective had planted that gun.

I'd seen
Shawshank
dozens of times, but I stayed up to watch Andy and Red's reunion. Later I lay awake, but I wasn't thinking about Scarsdale. Instead I was rehearsing how I would convince Jeanie to let me take Jamil's case.