I spent interminable days in the sadly misnamed Justice Building, a seven-story structure attached to the county jail by an overhead tunnel, an umbilical cord through which prisoners were force-fed into the so-called justice system.
We get the idea from books and television that the courthouse is a theater, the trial a play. The better analogy is a huge tent with a three-ring circus inside. The judge is the ringmaster, wielding his chair, cracking his whip, forcing the lions onto their haunches in mock-serious poses of respect. We rise when the judge enters and exits, and we beg for permission before we speak. The judge feeds us when we are good, chastises us when we are bad, and either way we bow our heads in meek gratitude.
In any given courtroom on any given Monday morning, the performers are not preparing for O. J. Simpson or the Menendez brothers. Not a trial of the century or even of the week. Hundreds of everyday cases flow along the conveyor belt of justice, dozens of bored inspectors picking them off, tossing them into this box or that for handling.
The system, both civil and criminal, intervenes when society has broken down. A wrong has been committed, or at least alleged. Offended at this breach of order, the system devises ways to make the offender pay, with either money or liberty. Like watching sausages or laws being made, observing the grist being milled in the courthouse is not an appetizing sight.
If we could peel off the outer wall of the Justice Building, as Hurricane Andrew did to several condos just south of here, we would see a beehive buzzing with activity. Defendants stream into courtrooms from their holding cells; dark-suited lawyers slouch against the bar, whispering their deals or their golf scores; cops bleary-eyes from the graveyard shift sip coffee in the corridors, their holsters emptied in respect to this place of constitutional reverence; robed judges in their high chairs listen as the endless flow of humanity streams by them: victims, witnesses, defendants, and the prosecutors and defense lawyers, engaged in an obligatory conspiracy to dispose of cases with dismissals, plea bargains, and reduced sentences, lest the entire system crunch to a halt.
In a dozen governmental offices, other anonymous functionaries push the paper and store the bytes that record the comings and goings of a world run amok. Stenographers, probation officers, bailiffs,
translators, clerks, plus the girlfriends, mothers, and wives of the defendants themselves, bit players in the sagas that unfold under the pretentious and misleading sign that adorns each courtroom: WE WHO LABOR HERE SEEK ONLY TRUTH.
If we moved our camera close to the shaved-off walls, if our microphone picked up the whispers and cries, what would we see, what would see hear? The rap of a guard's nightstick on the holding cell's bars, the muttered curses of the inmates, the whining entreaty to a prosecutor of a defense lawyer ("No way we agree to three years min-man") refusing to accept the consequences of a plea with a minimum mandatory sentence, the mechanical drone of the judge accepting a guilty plea, finding a defendant "alert and intelligent," which, if true, would probably preclude his being there in the first place.
I have spent too much time in this building, too much time listening to the presumably innocent, hearing fanciful tales of alibis, of being in the wrong car at the wrong time, of guns that fire without triggers being pulled, of lying cops, thieving partners, and cheating wives. My clients are the put upon, the wrongfully accused, victims themselves, and they have an excuse for everything.
Now I had a client I desperately wanted to believe, wanted to help.
But did I? Could I?
19
I was doing what I always do the day before trial, trying to figure out what I'd forgotten to do. I thumbed through the pleadings, skimmed the deposition summaries, looked for the tenth time at the state's exhibit list, and sketched out some ideas for my opening statement. I was so lost in the file that I didn't notice Cindy slip into my office until she dropped a three-page faxed document under my nose.
"Just came in from the state attorney's office," she said.
I took a look. "What the hell's Abe doing?"
On cue, the phone rang on the private line. I picked it up, and Abe Socolow barked his name. Life is like that sometimes. But this was no coincidence.
"Jake, you're gonna get a supplemental witness list, if you haven't already," he said.
"I'm looking at it right now," I told him. "What bullshit! It's the eve of trial."
"Only two new names, and I'll make them available for depo during recesses," he said quickly.
I scanned the document. Two witnesses I'd never heard of, one with a Rome address, the other Hampshire, England. "Who the hell are Luciano Faviola and Martin Kent?"
"Ex-boyfriends of your client. Four years ago, she ran over Kent in his own Jaguar, or at least tried to. Pulled a gun on him, too, but never fired. Faviola she tried to kill with a handgun two years ago in Italy. Fired twice, missed both times."
"So what?" I said, angry at Abe, but twice as angry at Chrissy for not telling me. "I punched out a tight end for the Jets. You gonna bring that up, too?"
"Under the Williams rule, Jake, we've got a pattern of misconduct."
"The hell you do! This isn't a case where a wife killed five husbands in a row with arsenic in the omelets. This is a bullshit attempt to prejudice the jury with irrelevant facts, if they're facts at all."
"It's all true. I'll get you the police reports by courier."
I wanted to say a few choice expletives to my old buddy Abe, but Cindy was signaling me that I was wanted on another line.
It was Guy Bernhardt. Something had come up. Something important. Could I get there right away?
I had never been in Guy Bernhardt's den. Oh, I had looked into the den through the jalousie windows. Now I peeked out the window into the rosebushes and Spanish bayonet shrubs where I had once lurked. Sensing Bernhardt's glance, I looked guiltily back at the boar's head mounted on the wall.
"You like to hunt?" I asked pleasantly.
"No, that was Pop's hobby. Nailed that one up in the forest north of Sopchoppy. Big bastard had already gutted two hounds." Guy winked at me. "The boar, that is. Not my pop."
Dr. Lawrence Schein sat on a leather sofa next to me, holding a glass of bourbon, idly swirling the ice cubes around in his glass.
"Those antlers came off a buck Pop shot up in Montana," Guy said, pointing at the buck on the other wall. "Me, I never cared much for guns or killing living things. I'm a grower. I create life."
"Like a god," Lawrence Schein said. His loopy smile was the giveaway. He'd been putting away bourbon long before I arrived.
"You're a man who likes a beer, aren't you?" Guy asked, looking my way.
"Sometimes two or three," I answered.
He bent down at the bar, opened a little refrigerator, and pulled out a large green bottle with a porcelain stopper. "Grolsch, right?"
"How'd you know?"
He laughed. "I do my research."
Guy brought my beer and settled down on the sofa with his own bourbon, straight up. No mango daiquiris tonight. Bourbon and beer for the menfolk. He was chewing on a unlit cigar, a fat Bolivar from Havana. I recognized the Belicosos Finos, a 52-gauge number my teammates and I used to smoke Sunday nights after victories. Hell, after losses, too. Overhead, the paddle fan swished through the air. Outside, the trees were bare, stripped of their fruit, and bedding down for the coming winter.
"Did you two ask me down here to help me pick a jury or just to have a drink?"
"Neither one, actually," Guy Bernhardt said, fiddling with the stitching on his pale gray guayabera. "Larry wants to share some new evidence with you."