Crossing swords at a lawyers’ conference seemed the easiest way for these two characters to connect. Next, an enterprising young reporter returns from Benghazi and files a story about what she may have found in the burned-out consulate building. When that reporter turns up dead, Madriani and Cooper find themselves launched on a mad chase in search of the killer and the golden boy king.
It’s a legal thriller for the twenty-first century.
From two masters.
Surfing the Panther
So what you’re saying is that you have no sympathy for the victim?”
“As I explained previously, I can’t discuss a pending case,” said Madriani.
“Well, then, let’s go back to the hypothetical,” said Cooper, flashing a smile at him. “I just tried to get you to tip your hand about that big case you’re trying in LA. Give the locals here some pointers. The situation we’ve been given to discuss today has a few similar issues. I’d like to know what you gain by being so vicious about a dead woman.”
“There’s no lack of sympathy, not on my part.”
Cooper ignored his denial. “Why is it so many litigators show no empathy for the female victim? In our hypo, she was a woman excelling in a male-dominated vocation. Or maybe you saw her as someone who was socially undesirable — a parasite, perhaps?”
“Your choice of words, not mine,” said Madriani. He didn’t like being cross-examined. Alexandra Cooper made him feel like a witness on the stand.
“But you agree with that assessment, don’t you? You like blaming the victim.” She knew she had him over a barrel and was pressing hard.
Paul Madriani, a criminal defense lawyer, knew that he’d be making a mistake if he allowed her to mention the case he currently had on trial in LA. Like stepping on the trigger of a land mine. He tried to figure some way to ease off and keep her focused on this exercise.
“Let’s just say that a jury is not likely to view the activities of your hypothetical victim as rising to the level of a holy calling. Can we just agree on that? Fair game?”
“The hypothetical deceased ran a top-tier advertising agency, Paul — a start-up she created with her own guts and brain.”
“She started up more male body parts than one could count, Alex. I’ll give you that,” Madriani said. “She also ran an escort service out of her Park Avenue offices.”
Some laughter from the audience, but none from Alex Cooper whose gaze at the moment consisted of two slits, both directed like lasers at Madriani’s Adam’s apple. To Cooper, a thirty-eight-year-old career prosecutor, head of a pioneering sex crimes unit in New York City, these were fighting words.
“So you think she deserved to die, Paul?”
“As I said earlier, you have to admit that the woman’s death may well have had to do with some of the lowlifes she encountered in the sex trade and nothing to do with my hypothetical client’s business strategies.”
“We have a question from the audience.” The moderator tried to break up the gender brawl with some Q & A.
“What you’re saying,” said Cooper, not quite ready to give up the fight, “is that a woman operating a legitimate portion of her company, perhaps more aggressively than her male competitors, deserves to be sexually assaulted, then bludgeoned—”
“That is not what I said.”
“She deserved the end she got, is that it? Is that the takeaway for the young lawyers here in the audience?”
Cooper and Madriani found themselves pitted against each other as speakers on a criminal-law panel of the New York State Bar Association, debating tactics in capital cases. In today’s session, they were using the example of a businesswoman in both legitimate and illegitimate realms, who’d been brutally sexually assaulted in her Manhattan office. As the defense attorney, Madriani was representing the hypothetical accused — a rival businessman — and his argument was that the deceased had many more unsavory enemies in her secondary “career” who may have killed her. In other words, he was casting aspersions on the dead victim’s character in order to create reasonable doubt for his client. And Alexandra Cooper wasn’t having any of it. Madriani had committed to the engagement months earlier, long before he had a trial date in a similarly high-profile case—People v. Mustaffa—which was supposed to be off-limits for the panel’s discussion since this matter was now pending, though Cooper was doing her best to rile him on it. He had taken the weekend off to fly to New York, and was now beginning to rue the day.
“Is that your pathetic attempt at a defense?” Cooper asked, before he could answer her last question.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Then perhaps you should explain yourself,” said Cooper.
“Paul Madriani never needs to explain himself,” the moderator said. “He’s a master in the well of the courtroom. In fact, Alex, since we’re almost out of time, I suggest you take our visiting dignitary down to the bar and buy the first round. Isn’t that your tradition during jury deliberations?”
“It was nothing personal, Alex,” Madriani added. “It has nothing to do with the victim’s gender.”
Alex was used to having the last word. She tried to interject another comment, but could see that some of the attendees were closing their notebooks, hoping to snag an introduction to the two lawyers before they could escape the conference ballroom.
Madriani was having none of it. “What I mean is that you don’t have the most sympathetic victim in this kind of a situation.”
“Really? You think anyone deserves to die in such a horrific way? Would it be better for you if it was a male victim who had his genitals mutilated?”
“No!” he said. “Well, maybe!”
Laughter from the audience. Right now Madriani was beginning to sense what that might feel like. Cooper offered up a smile, the gender card dropped on the table by a skilled prosecutor, showing him how it’s done. “Can I ask you a question, Ms. Cooper?”
“Be my guest,” said Alex.
“I take it you’re not on special assignment here, undercover so to speak, with the LA District Attorney’s Office, are you?” Lawyers in the audience laughed again.
Cooper just smiled. “Touché! I tried to get you off-mark, Paul, but I couldn’t budge you. Better to have met you here than in the courtroom. And thanks for coming to do this.”
Litigators started moving to the podium in the front of the room. Paul leaned over to Alex as she stuffed her notes into a folder. “The hotel bar in fifteen?”
“No.”
“Don’t be a bad sport.”
“I’m just being a good hostess, Paul. Lose your acolytes and I’ll take you to the best bar in Manhattan. Best steaks, too, knowing how you like to devour red meat.”
Madriani smiled and nodded to accept the invitation.
“I made a seven o’clock reservation at Patroon. It’s a few blocks away. I’ll meet you in the lobby and we can walk over.”
Alex recognized the first man — four or five years with the Legal Aid Society doing defense work — who had lined up in front of Madriani’s place at the table.
“Mr. Madriani,” he said, introducing himself and reaching up to shake hands. “You’re off the record now. I’m just curious to know how you plan to walk the tightrope in your trial, in the Mustaffa case. I’ve got something like that coming up in the fall.”
“Like what?”
“You know. The victim in your case. Carla Spinova.”
Madriani glanced at Cooper as if to say, You started this.
Anyone who saw the news on television knew that Spinova was part of the international paparazzi.
“The victim here probed people’s secrets with her camera. She rooted through their trash for a living, a provocative career to say the least. A good lawyer has got to use that against the prosecution, don’t you think?” said Paul.