Amanda announced herself by tapping on Frank’s doorjamb. He looked up from the draft of the legal memo on which he was working.
“What’s the reason for the smile that’s plastered across your puss?” Frank asked.
Amanda plopped herself down on one of the two client chairs that stood on the other side of Frank’s desk.
“Why do you think I was given this?” Amanda asked, tossing the retainer check toward Frank. He stared at the check for a moment. Then he whistled. Amanda’s smile widened.
“Did you win the lottery?” he asked.
“Sort of. I’ve just been hired to defend the case of the century.”
“Enough already,” Frank said, unable to contain a grin. “Out with it. What case is big enough to warrant this type of retainer?”
“Charlie Marsh is returning home to stand trial for the murder of Arnold Pope Jr.”
Frank stopped smiling. “You’re kidding!”
“I’m dead serious. He’s on his way back to the States from Africa as we speak. World News magazine is going to put him up in New York until I can arrange for his surrender.”
“How is he paying you?”
Amanda told her father about the book deal and Martha Brice’s expectations regarding World News’ exclusive coverage of the case. When his daughter finished, Frank frowned.
“I don’t like this business with the reporter.”
“Me either, but I can control him, and Brice agreed to my restrictions.”
“Or said she did. From what you’ve told me, she’s the type who will promise the world and not mean a word of it. She’ll count on you not being able to give up a half million dollars once it’s in your account. When she has you involved she’ll push the envelope.”
“Or try to. I made it clear that Charlie is my client, not she. And I hope you know I can handle the Martha Brices of this world.”
“That I do, but it won’t be easy, and you’ve never been involved in a media circus like the one you’re about to encounter. It can be intoxicating. How many world-class lawyers have you seen turn into fools as soon as they were given a chance to pontificate on national television?”
“Point taken, but you forget that I’ll have a wise old mentor to guide me while I’m on my journey along the yellow brick road. I’m sure I can count on you to pour a bucket of cold water on me if I start acting like a jackass.”
Frank smiled. He’d have the bucket ready, but-knowing his daughter as he did-he doubted he’d ever have to use it.
“I have two requests, Dad,” Amanda said. “Can you fill me in on the Pope case? I read the papers and saw some of it while you were trying it, and we talked a little, but that was twelve years ago and I could do with a refresher course.”
“You want me to do that now?”
“Give it a shot.”
“I don’t know if I can, off the top of my head. Look, I do have to finish this memo. So why don’t we order in and talk in the conference room at lunch? I’ll have the file brought up from storage. That will give me time to think.”
“Fair enough.”
“You said you had two requests. What the second?”
“It dawned on me that we might have a conflict problem. I haven’t talked to the bar yet, but I’ll be representing a codefendant of someone you represented. She can’t be charged again, but I can still imagine problems. So, I wondered if you would get Sally Pope to sign a waiver.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Frank said, his face displaying none of the emotions that the thought of seeing Sally Pope evoked.
Frank and Amanda talked for a while more. Then Frank told her that he needed to get back to his memo and she went to her office. Frank did have to finish the memo but he really wanted time alone to deal with the possibility that he would have to see Sally Pope again. She’d been out of his life for a long time but there were still scars.
Frank leaned back in his chair and stared out of his window at the green hills that towered over downtown Portland. The sky was clear and blue and dotted with white clouds; a tranquil scene that was at odds with the emotions boiling up inside him. Thinking about Sally Pope was painful, so Frank turned his attention to Charlie Marsh. Frank’s client may have been Sally Pope but the trial had always been about Marsh, and Charlie’s story began with the prison standoff.
PART II. State of Oregon v. Sally Pope 1996-1997
CHAPTER 10
Minutes before Crazy Freddy Clayton started his hare-brained attempt to escape from the state prison, he and Charlie Marsh were working on a writ of habeas corpus at a table in the rickety wooden stacks that held the prison library’s woefully inadequate collection of legal texts. The cellmates were best friends and a truly odd couple. They were dressed in identical prison Levi’s and blue work shirts, and they were both a shade under six feet but that was where the similarities ended.
Charlie had blond hair and no tattoos. Freddy had shaved his head and resembled an art gallery when naked. Charlie was looking at parole in a few weeks on a three-year sentence for credit card fraud. Crazy Freddy was serving consecutive twenty-year terms for attempted murder and armed robbery and would be using a walker by the time he left the prison. Charlie had pumped a little iron since beginning his incarceration but the muscle he’d added to his slender frame was difficult to discern. During his many incarcerations, Freddy had developed bulging, well-defined lats, abs, pecs, and biceps by following a workout regime that bordered on the psychotic. Crazy Freddy was psychotic so the effort hadn’t cost him much.
While Freddy lived for violence, Charlie was a pacifist for practical reasons; he was a coward who had lost almost every fight in which he’d been involved. In fact, if it weren’t for Freddy, Charlie would have been one of the most picked-on boys in school and someone’s bitch in the prison. But Freddy had grown up next door to Charlie and they’d been best friends since elementary school. Charlie hid Freddy in his house whenever Clayton’s drunken father went on a rampage, and he’d helped Freddy-who was not too bright-with his schoolwork from day one. Freddy reciprocated by beating the crap out of anyone who dared to pick on his friend. It was amazing, but Freddy-a true paranoid-trusted Charlie. When he found out Charlie was headed for his lockup, he’d made certain that the inmates knew that his pal was off-limits and he had arranged to bunk with him.
Like most sociopaths, Freddy was convinced that he was highly intelligent and he was constantly coming up with “brilliant” ideas for overturning his convictions. These were the kind of ideas that never held up under close scrutiny, but Freddy rarely had his ideas scrutinized, because no one had the courage to argue with him. Debate was useless anyway, since Freddy would pound his critic into pulp when Freddy grew frustrated over his inability to understand the critic’s logic. Charlie never suggested directly that his friend’s ideas were stupid. Freddy had never touched him in anger during all the years they’d been pals, but it was always better to play it safe where Freddy was concerned.
“I’m not finding anything,” Charlie said. He’d been reading cases in which the courts overturned convictions because of incompetence of counsel.
“Look harder. There’s gotta be something about it in them books.”
“I don’t know, Freddy,” Charlie said cautiously. “I just don’t see the Supreme Court overturning your conviction because the guy peed a lot.”
“Listen, man, you ever have to go real bad?”
“Sure.”
“How well are you thinking when you got to go real bad?”
“It is distracting.”
“That’s my point. The motherfucker was peeing at every recess, and those court sessions were long. How the fuck is he gonna be concentrating on my case when he has to pee so bad? When that snitch motherfucker Jermaine was testifying against me, my lawyer was twitching and wiggling around so much I thought he was gonna fall off his motherfucking chair. I bet he didn’t hear a word that lying motherfucker said. Now that’s motherfucking incompetence, ain’t it?”