Escape.
Pretend the past three years of Aristotelian logic and Socratic debate had never happened at all.
Now I have tea at my fingertips-all I have to do is snap them and some scantily clad nymph pours me a cup-and all the food I want (oh, yeah, that’s the thing they don’t tell you: never eat the food), and it doesn’t matter.
I’m still digging through tomes, trying to find something to get my client off. He’s not so hypothetical any more. Although I am going to have to impress a few people.
People I don’t really want to impress.
People who may not be people at all.
I only caught the case because I didn’t escape quickly enough from Judge Lewandowski’s courtroom. I’d been there to argue against remand for a repeater, even though I knew all of Chicagoland would be better off if he went to prison for life.
That’s what I do. I defend the defenseless. At least, that’s what I tell the newspapers when they ask, or that schmo at a cocktail party who thinks he’ll get the better of a seasoned public defender.
Mostly I do it because I like to argue, and I like to win against impossible odds. I’m not one of the liberal-hippie types who gravitates to the PD’s office to save the planet; I’m not even sure I believe everyone is entitled to a fair trial.
What I do believe is that everyone is entitled to the best defense I can provide-given that I have hundreds of other active cases, only twenty-four hours in my day, and no real budget to hire a legal assistant.
Which was actually what I was thinking about as I slipped into the bench two rows back from the defense table to repack my briefcase before heading down to the hot dog carts on California Avenue.
“John Lundgren.”
Hearing my name intoned by the judge after my case had already been gaveled closed was not a good sign. I looked up so fast my notes almost slipped off my lap. I caught them but lost the briefcase. It thudded against the gray tile floor.
“Yes, Judge,” I said, standing up, even though my entire day’s work was lying in a mess around me.
The judge was peering at me through her half-glasses. She looked tired and disgusted all at the same time. “You’ll represent Mr. Palmer.”
I glanced around, trying to figure out what I’d missed. The courtroom was filled with attorneys waiting for their cases to be called, a few witnesses and even fewer victims, and a couple of defendants who had probably made a previous case’s bail.
“Now,” the judge said.
The one place I hadn’t looked was the defense table. A scruffy man with long black hair stood behind it, his shoulders hunched forward. He wore a trench coat covered with soot, burn marks, and not a few holes.
I slid out of my bench, leaving my briefcase on the floor and grabbing only a yellow legal pad, knowing that no one else would pick up my mess. Unlike TV lawyers, real lawyers are so overwhelmed they don’t dig through each other’s briefcases, hoping for the one nugget of information that will make or break the trial of the century.
Not that I’d ever handled a client involved in the trial of the century. Or even one involved in the trial of the year.
“You must be Mr. Palmer,” I said as I dropped my legal pad on the defense table.
Palmer didn’t even look at me. His face was covered in soot and a three-day beard. He smelled like gasoline and smoke.
I didn’t even have to guess what he was charged with. It was as obvious as the stench of his clothes.
The prosecutor-some new twit who looked like he was wearing his father’s suit-rustled his papers together. “Mr. Richard Palmer is charged with arson in the first degree, attempted arson in the second degree, and sixteen counts of murder in the first degree.”
“Mr. Lundgren, how does your client plead?”
I looked at my client, but he didn’t look at me. The smell was so overwhelming, my eyes were watering.
“Mr. Lundgren?”
“Mr. Palmer?” I said softly. “What do you want to plead?”
Palmer kept his head down.
“Mr. Lundgren,” the judge said, “I asked you a question.”
Well, Palmer wasn’t talking. I wasn’t even sure he was present and accounted for. But if he was like 99.9% of my clients, his plea would be simple, no matter what the evidence against him.
“Not guilty, Your Honor,” I said.
“See?” she muttered. “That wasn’t hard, now was it? Bail, counselor?”
She was looking at the young prosecutor. His hands were shaking.
“Since Mr. Palmer is accused of burning down one of the largest mansions on the Gold Coast, your honor, and killing all sixteen people inside, we’re asking for remand.”
He made it sound like they’d ask for more if they could get it.
I opened my mouth, but the judge brought down her gavel so hard it sounded like a gunshot.
“Remand,” she said. “Next case.”
And with that, I became responsible for Richard Mark Harrison Palmer the Third.
Or at least, for his legal defense.
Every last bit of it.
It took hours before I could get to the Cook County Jail to see my brand-new client. By then, he was in prison blues. Someone had washed his face, and, surprisingly, there were no burns beneath all that soot.
I’d represented arsonists before, many of whom smelled just as Palmer had when he was brought to court, and they were always covered with burns or shiny puckered burn scars.
They were also bug-eyed crazy. Something about staring at fire made their eyes revolve in their skulls-rather like the eyes of someone who’d taken too much LSD over too long a period of time.
But this guy didn’t look crazy. He didn’t give off the crazy vibe either, the one that always made me stand near the door so that I could pound it for a guard and then get the hell out of the way if I needed to.
Palmer sat at the scratched table, his head down, his hands folded before him. His hair was wet and he smelled faintly of industrial soap.
“Mr. Palmer.” I sat down across from him, set my briefcase on the table, and snapped the top open so that it stood like a shield between us. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m John Lundgren, your court-appointed public defender.”
“I don’t need you.” His voice was deep, his accent so purely Chicago that the sentence sounded more like a mushy version of I doon need yoo.
“I’m afraid you do, Mr. Palmer. You charged with some serious capital crimes, and it was pretty clear that Judge Lewandowski doesn’t believe you can handle it on your own. So she assigned me-”
“And I’m unassigning you. Go away.” He looked up as he said that, and I was stunned to see intelligence in his blood-shot brown eyes.
I sighed. I always hated clients who argued with me, clients who believed they knew more about the legal system than I did.
Or worse, clients who somehow believed they could go up against Chicago ’s finest prosecutors all by themselves.
“I’m not charging you, Mr. Palmer,” I said. “The county pays my salary to represent people who can’t afford their own attorney.”
“I don’t want an attorney,” he said.
I sighed again. It was always a nightmare to go before the judge-any judge-and say that my indigent client wants me off the case in favor of his own counsel. Usually I’d have to sit in anyway, advise the stupid client on matters of the law (or, as I’d privately say, matters on which he was screwing up royally).
“It’s better to have one,” I said, “especially when you’re facing sixteen counts of premeditated murder. You want to tell me what happened?”
Usually that ploy worked. The client forgot his belligerence and wanted to brag. Or to defend himself. Or make excuses.
A lot of my colleagues never wanted to know what the client believed he did, but I always figured the more information I had, the better. That way, I wouldn’t get blindsided by my own client’s idiocy in the middle of trial.