The Good Lawyer: A Novel (2 page)

One hour later, alone in my office, with the wind howling outside and the snow continuing to fall, I could still hear the young girl’s screams.

I wept quietly into my hands.

Chapter 1

T
wo months after the suicide of Dina Rios, I was on my way to my first night arraignment. I thought I had finally put it all behind me. But I was young, and I was wrong.

The Bronx Criminal Courthouse, a four-story concrete block building, occupied the entire block along 161st Street between Sherman and Sheridan Avenues in the apoplectic heart of the South Bronx. Across Sheridan murky brown two-story mixed-use buildings lined the block. Their burnt red brick belied their busy retail storefronts with overhead apartments converted to office space occupied almost entirely by criminal defense lawyers—private practitioners on court-appointed lists anxiously awaiting the court clerk’s call or a walk—in with a wad of cash and an ATM card with easy access to next month’s rent.

On the other side of the Courthouse, across Sherman, was a parking lot reserved for municipal employees. Judges and assistant District Attorneys parked in a secured lot under the building.

Across 161st Street, a vacant lot leveled by the winter’s dead weeds encompassed an entire city block. On its corner sat the wreckage of an abandoned diner, its metallic shine lost to decades of urban blight and indifference, its interior only partly visible through twisted metal net shutters.

Inside the Courthouse a cold hard floor led to a short set of descending stairs. Straight ahead, were two standard department store escalators—the up and down just a handshake away in the center of a coal-colored marble floor.

I squeezed past 50 or 60 people gathered outside the locked courtroom doors of AR 1 and hurried into the clerk’s office. Mine was a familiar face and no one questioned my passage. After stepping through a maze of desks, filing cabinets and court personnel, I pushed through the back door and entered the rear left corner of the courtroom.

Three Legal Aid attorneys were assigned to each arraignment session. Day sessions ran from 9:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. The evening shift began at 6:00 P. M. and usually lasted until one in the morning. All those arrested and charged with crimes committed in Bronx County, including those charged with felonies yet to be indicted by a grand jury, appeared in front of a judge for the first time at their arraignment in the Bronx Criminal Court.

Eddie, the steadfast Legal Aid clerk, was seated up front, facing the judge’s bench, stapling complaints, arrest records and Pre-Trial Services bail evaluations to file folders.

In his early thirties, Eddie Lopez easily wore twenty more pounds than his five foot ten inch build comfortably allowed. With a neatly cropped beard and mustache, his bushy black hair dangled over his forehead, but not low enough to cover his eyes, which were fixed on his hands as they pieced together the court papers.

Eddie looked up from behind a file folder as I approached.

“Eddie, what’s that stink?”

“One of the defendants must have thrown up in detention. The court officer went to get some ammonia.”

“You sure it’s not you? Your mama’s spicy cooking maybe?”

He smirked. “I haven’t been eating my mother’s cooking for years, but you’re gonna want to run home to yours after you see what’s in the basket.”

The arraignment basket held the finished case files ready for attorney review prior to entering detention, where criminal defendants waited in jail cells to meet their lawyers.

“What makes you think I’m going to take it?”

“Don’t you take all the sicko sex cases?”

My voice rose a few octaves. “No, I don’t, but maybe if another Legal Aid lawyer would pick even just one up, I wouldn’t have to. And one of us might actually get a defendant who’s innocent.”

Eddie winced. I picked up the file that he had referred to earlier, looked at the complaint, then the defendant’s arrest record.

“See, here’s a guy twenty-four years old, charged with kidnapping and molesting three boys. Never been arrested before in his life. Doesn’t it make you wonder when suddenly at the age of twenty-four a man decides to molest three boys?” On the middle of Eddie’s desk I spotted the blaring cover of the
New York Post
…

SCHOOL AIDE FINGERED FOR SEX ATTACK ON 3 KIDS

I tucked the file under my arm, and headed for the holding cells.

Chapter 2

I
was accosted with the stench of puke and piss and immediately became nauseous. Even with fifty or so arraignment sessions under my belt, I still hadn’t gotten used to it.

I was standing in a prison vestibule, a locked cell gate before me.

“On the door!” I yelled.

In his mid-fifties, Corrections Officer Hurtado shuffled up to the gate with the placid regularity of a parking attendant, and spoke in kind.

“Hey Nick! What d’ ya say?” Hurtado keyed open the barred door. Corrections usually had the scoop on the numbers being processed through central booking that were “in the system” and likely candidates for an evening’s appearance in AR 1. “Wha’d ya got?”

“Guevara,” I said.

“Yeah, got him in this morning. The D.A. told us to push him through. What’d this guy do that’s so special?”

“I hope it’s what he didn’t do.”

“Whatever,” Hurtado muttered, as he locked the heavy iron gate behind me. “He’s here and he’s been asking for a lawyer for the last hour and a half.”

A female corrections’ officer sat behind a desk hunched over a logbook and a telephone at the end of a narrow cinder block hallway. Off to the left, past two small cells reserved for segregated prisoners, was the interview area. Three tables stood in a row against a concrete wall. Chairs were scattered about. I took a seat at the middle table facing the corridor where Guevara would turn down to meet me.

He appeared less than a minute later dressed in a red and white shirt and blue corduroy pants, seeming quite clean and neat for a guy who’s been in jail all day. No messy hair. No five o’clock shadow. With a nervous manner he stuck out his hand.

I shook it. And it was dead calm.

I always believed you could tell something about a man, his mood, his attitude, from his handshake. But Guevara was indiscernible. In the brief moment our hands met, I felt as if mine had been swallowed by a baseball mitt. Not a catcher’s, fat and warm. But a first baseman’s glove, long fingered and absent the stuffing necessary to prevent you from receiving a good sting when the ball slapped into your palm.

I placed my card on the table between us as he sat down. “My name is Nick Mannino. I’m an attorney with the Legal Aid Society. I’ll be representing you at your arraignment tonight.”

Guevara spoke quickly, calmer now than he first appeared. “I didn’t do this. I love kids. I work with them every day. I’ve taken them to the Bronx Zoo on field trips. Parents trust me with their children.” His voice got louder as he began to ramble. “I don’t know why they’re saying these things about me! One of the kid’s mothers is crazy! She’s a drug addict! A lunatic!”

I explained the charges: several B felonies, including kidnapping and physically sodomizing three boys—Rafael Hernandez, Carlos Hernandez, and Jose Chavez—no more than nine and ten years old.

“Rafael and Carlos are brothers,” Guevara interrupted. “They’ve been to my apartment many times. I’ve got video games and pinball machines for them to play. Their mother was grateful I got them off the street. The other boy, Jose, came to my apartment only once. He’s a wild kid, always getting into trouble. His mother has all kinds of boyfriends.” He shook his head then looked up again. Our eyes met. His darted back down.

“Peter. These boys say you tied them up.” His brow furrowed. I paused to change direction, but didn’t. “It’s my job to read these charges to you. So bear with me. They also say you sodomized them—anally and orally.”

“That’s crazy! I would never do such a thing! Jose’s mother, that crazy bitch, is behind this! When the kid came to my apartment he wouldn’t behave himself. I took him home and told him not to come back.” Guevara ran his fingers roughly through his hair. “Speak to the teachers at P.S. 92. They’ll tell you. I’m great with children. I have letters in my file from mothers who have written to the principal about me.” He took three deep breaths and appeared to be on the verge of hyperventilating. “Speak to Shula Hirsch. She’s in charge of Special Education. I work closely with her.” He spoke with a strained calm. Teardrops formed in the corners of his eyes. “Can you get me out of here? Will I be going home tonight?”

I flipped through the court papers. “I’ll do my best. You’ve never been arrested before. Do you think anyone is out there in court for you?”

“No. I have no family. Maybe someone from work—from P.S. 92. I go to Bronx Community College at night, been taking courses in education for the past two years. I’m supposed to finish up in the fall.” A tear ran in a straight line off the side of his nose.

“I need you to tell me the whole truth Peter. Whether you’re innocent or guilty I took an oath to defend you to the best of my ability. Anything you tell me is strictly confidential. I can’t tell anyone not hired to assist in your defense a damn thing. If I did, I could lose my license to practice law. Besides, the information could never be used against you in court. It’s called attorney-client privilege, and it is the strongest privilege under the law.” His eyes were riveted on me. I went on. “The more I know, the better prepared I’ll be to defend you. If the D.A. knows something I don’t, that I’m not ready to deal with, you’re the one who’s going to pay for it, not me. Even if you’re dead guilty, it’s my job to defend you, and see you get out of here. The only way you can help me help you is by answering my questions honestly and completely.”

The tears dried as Guevara spoke of his childhood and relayed a disturbing case history.

His mother, a drug addict, had abandoned him at the age of two. The city Welfare System placed him in a string of orphanages and foster homes but failed to place him permanently. Adoptive parents, even foster parents, didn’t want older children. A teenage boy—no less a Hispanic teenage boy—hadn’t a chance in hell of finding a family.

I took copious notes as he went on to describe his early adolescent years—orphanage life—a loosely run military barracks, episodes of harsh but erratic discipline, crime between juveniles so unspeakable that they would be easily termed evil if committed by adults. His deadpan manner surprised me.

He referred to himself as a bright child, a loner, full of hopes and dreams—and nightmares. He spoke of three years at St. Joseph’s Orphanage in the Catskills, remarking how he admired the priests there, their devotion to the children, their unselfishness, their kindness. Something he had not experienced in other placements before. “The orphanage though, wasn’t without its demons,” he remarked.

Even though the priests would sleep in the same quarters with the younger and weaker boys for their protection, they could not monitor the boys twenty-four hours a day, everywhere on the grounds. In a break period before lunch, the boys would take turns going to the lavatory in groups of five or six, to wash up after the morning’s exercise and go to the bathroom as needed. These lavatory periods were largely unsupervised.

One December morning an eleven-year old Guevara was cornered by four older boys who grabbed his arms, bent him over a sink, and stuffed half a roll of toilet paper in his mouth.

They raked down his pants and underwear and were seconds away from sodomizing him, when a young priest burst through the door and pulled them away.

The priest, who was just twenty-one years old at the time and had been assigned to the orphanage only weeks before, was almost as shaken by the occurrence as young Guevara.

The two often spoke about it afterwards. The priest seemed genuinely concerned that Guevara not be emotionally scarred by the attack.

“We’re still friends to this day,” Guevara said. Then without pause he declared himself to be a Roman Catholic, nodding at me as if seeking some common ground.

Aside from the family wedding or funeral, I hadn’t attended mass since early high school. I had done my time: eight straight years of Sunday mass, Tuesday novenas, and weekly confessions at Saint Francis of Assisi, Brooklyn, New York—grades one through eight. Besides, Mom prayed enough for the two of us.

Guevara stated that he had no girlfriend “at the time”, but dated frequently. And although this would have been the perfect time to end the interview, I let him talk himself out, which I never let a defendant do, having learned early on the judicious practice of poor man’s counsel—spend only the time necessary to do your best job under the circumstances, and not a minute more.

Guevara though, had struck a chord.

Chapter 3

I
had daydreamed about a case like this maybe a hundred times before, and the daydream was almost always the same: I’m the most famous criminal defense lawyer this country has ever known, brilliant beyond my years, unbeatable in any courtroom. I’m entering a courthouse (probably in some small southern town) to deliver the final summation in a grueling trial. I’ve turned the tide of public opinion that from the start was squarely bent on hanging my client. The charge is murder in the first degree. My client, of course, is innocent. I alone believe in him. I alone can save him from an almost certain conviction and execution. With the world watching I deliver the summation of my life. The jury quickly finds my client “not guilty”. Soon after the verdict the real murderer is caught and confesses. Nick Mannino is a national hero. Little children all over the country want to become criminal defense lawyers. There’s talk of naming a candy bar after me. And then I float, with gratifying gentleness, back down to earth, and the implacable strains of reality grip me whole.