I was left alone as I walked through the courthouse, and it wasn’t until I reached the courtroom where my hearing was scheduled that I encountered an angry mob waiting for me. There were maybe thirty people there and they erupted at the sight me. They started yelling at me, mostly about what they hoped would happen to me in the near future. One big burly guy who looked like he could’ve been a bouncer at a club made a charge at me. Two of the other people in the crowd were able to get in his way and pull him back, but he kept trying to break free, red-faced and spittle flying off as he yelled at me. I don’t know why he thought I wouldn’t have broken his wrist if he had put a hand on me, but I guess the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
I stood for a moment trying to pick out their individual voices to see if I could recognize the joker who had been calling me on the cell phone, but there was too much noise coming from them for me to be able to do that. Faces in the crowd did seem familiar, and I realized how much some of them resembled the men that I’d taken out, in particular, the thick-bodied bouncer-type who had gone after me. I tried to remember who he had looked so much like, but couldn’t quite pull it out of my memory.
I gave up the effort of trying to match their faces with my past targets, and pushed my way through them so I could get into the courtroom. They followed me in, still shouting at me. The court clerk, a short gnome-like man with a stooped back, looked up, startled by the commotion, and warned them to be quiet or they would be arrested. They didn’t stop until the bailiff took a few menacing steps in their direction while shouting for them to shut up. After that they took their seats, but their faces showed their rage.
I took a seat in the front row. The clerk appeared visibly shaken as he looked over the courtroom. After a few minutes the judge entered the room from his chambers. He was tall and thin and with a pink face and a full head of wavy white hair. The clerk had us all rise as he announced him, and the judge took his time walking to the bench. After he was seated, the clerk approached him for a short conversation, and the judge quickly looked annoyed at what he heard. Clearing his throat, he addressed the court as the clerk had earlier, warning that outbursts would not be tolerated.
“I understand that emotions may be running high,” he said, his pale blue eyes scanning the room, “but if any of you make a disturbance you will be taken out in handcuffs and arrested. Do I make myself clear?”
He waited until a couple of members of the crowd nodded before he asked the clerk to call out the parties of Dunn vs March.
The wife and two sons of John Dunn were the plaintiffs in the suit. Dunn was one of the men with Douglas Behrle when I shot up the Datsun they were in. Dunn’s wife was about my age and looked gray and used up, as if there just wasn’t much left of her any more. The two sons were in their late thirties and neither of them seemed like they wanted to be there. My guess was they were being paid to file their suit against me.
The judge looked at me sitting alone at the defendant’s table and asked if I had legal representation.
“Your honor, I’m close to indigent. I don’t have any funds to hire a lawyer.”
Someone in the crowd snickered behind me and commented on how that was a shame. The bailiff took two angry steps forward, and the judge’s eyes shot up as he tried to pick out the guilty party. Only after the room had become deathly still again did he turn back to me.
“What do you mean close to indigent?” he asked.
“I was released from prison three weeks ago after serving fourteen years,” I said. “I have no savings, no bank accounts, and am still getting state assistance, and will continue to for the next five months.”
“Do you have any documentation regarding your state assistance?”
“Yes, your honor.”
The bailiff walked over to me for one of the papers I had taken out of my stack, and he brought it over to the judge who studied it carefully before asking me whether I had a job.
“Yes, your honor. I’m working as a janitor making eight dollars and twenty-five cents an hour. My rent is five hundred and sixty dollars a month, which doesn’t leave me much, if anything, left over.”
The judge turned to the plaintiff’s lawyer. “What’s the point of this action?” he asked. “Do you have any reason to believe that Mr March has assets that the state doesn’t know about?”
The lawyer stood up. He had small dark eyes and a piggish and disingenuous mouth, and I could smell Lombard all over him. “Not exactly, your honor,” he said. “But we do believe Mr March will be selling the book and movie rights to his atrocities.”
The judge accepted that and smiled at me apologetically. “Mr March,” he said, “regardless of your financial situation, you should’ve arranged for legal counsel to represent your interests. This is a civil proceeding, not criminal, and as such the state cannot provide you free legal help.”
A voice spoke out from behind me, “Your honor, Daniel Brest from Brest and Callow. If I could confer with Mr March, my firm may be interested in representing him pro bono.”
I turned to see a man standing three rows behind me. He was smiling pleasantly, but it didn’t quite mask the shrewdness in his eyes. From the way he was dressed he was clearly doing well – I could make out the same style of Cartier watch on his wrist that I had once taken off one of my targets, plus I’d been around enough cheap suits in my time to recognize an expensive number, and his cost some bucks.
The judge asked me if I’d like to take the attorney up on his offer, and I told him I would.
“Fifteen-minute recess then,” the judge said.
The plaintiff’s lawyer didn’t seem happy about this turn of events, nor did he seem surprised, and he kept his mouth shut. Dunn’s widow and two sons sat morosely. If anything they appeared disappointed that they had to be there longer than they hoped for. Daniel Brest came swiftly around the aisle to meet me and offer his hand, and then the bailiff led us to a private conference room. Once we were seated I asked him why he wanted to help me.
“I could feed you the standard boilerplate bullshit,” he said. “That we believe every party in a courtroom deserves legal representation, blah, blah, blah. The truth is we want the publicity this case will give us. Also, we’d like to represent you if you choose someday to sell the rights to your life story.”
“I don’t plan on ever doing that.”
He took a contract from his briefcase and handed it to me, as well as a pen. “In case you ever change your mind,” he said.
The contract was fully made out and gave Brest’s firm exclusive rights to act as my agent in a book, movie or any other media deal, in the event that they successfully represented me in any and all wrongful-death lawsuits filed against me.
“What would be considered successful?” I asked.
“That’s defined in a subclause on the last page. But basically, if we’re able to limit a judgment against you to an aggregate of fifty thousand dollars.”
I didn’t bother saying the obvious, that a fifty-thousand-dollar judgment against me didn’t sound all that successful. I knew what his answer would be – that that amount of money would be peanuts compared to what the rights to my story could bring in. I tried reading the clauses at the end of the contract, but the print was too small for my eyes, and I had to take him at his word. I went back over the section of the contract that spelled out how they would represent me, and tried to figure out if it would preclude my having Sophie as a co-author. From what I could tell, it wouldn’t. “Isn’t twenty-five percent high?” I asked, referring to the percentage that his firm would collect on any payment I received.