“Judge, I want the people’s objection on the record.”
“You shall have it. Now step back.”
We went back to our tables and the judge turned off the fan and then addressed the jury.
“Ladies and gentlemen, as I was saying, the event you just witnessed has created a situation prejudicial to the defendant. I believe that it will be too difficult for you to divorce yourself from what you just saw as you deliberate on his guilt or innocence of the charges. Therefore, I must declare a mistrial at this time and discharge you with the thanks of this court and the people of California. Deputy Carlyle will escort you back to the assembly room where you may gather your things and go home.”
The jurors seemed unsure of what to do or whether everything was over. Finally, one brave man in the box stood up and soon the others followed. They filed out through a door at the back of the courtroom.
I looked over at Kristina Medina. She sat at the prosecution table with her chin down, defeated. The judge abruptly adjourned court for the day and left the bench. I folded my ruined handkerchief and put it away.
2
My full day had been scheduled for trial. Suddenly released from it, I had no clients to see, no prosecutors to work, and no place to be. I left the courthouse and walked down Temple to First. At the corner there was a trash can. I took out my handkerchief, held it to my lips and spit all the debris from my mouth into it. I then tossed it away.
I took a right on First and saw the Town Cars parked along the sidewalk. There were six of them in line like a funeral procession, their drivers gathered together on the sidewalk, shooting the shit and waiting. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but ever since the movie, a whole contingent of Lincoln lawyers had cropped up and routinely crowded the curbs outside the courthouses of L.A. I was both proud and annoyed. I had heard more than a few times that there were other lawyers out there saying they were the inspiration for the film. On top of that, I had jumped into the wrong Lincoln at least three times in the past month.
This time there would be no mistake. As I headed down the hill I pulled my cell phone and called Earl Briggs, my driver. I could see him up ahead. He answered right away and I told him to pop the trunk. Then I hung up.
I saw the trunk of the third Lincoln in line rise and I had my destination. When I got there I put my briefcase down and then took off my jacket, tie, and shirt. I had a T-shirt on underneath, so I wasn’t stopping traffic. I chose a pale blue oxford from the stack of backup shirts I keep in the trunk, unfolded it, and started pulling it on. Earl came over from the klatch with the other drivers. He had been my driver on and off for nearly a decade. Whenever he ran into trouble he came to me and then worked off my fee by driving. This time it wasn’t his own trouble he was paying for. I handled his mother’s foreclosure defense and got her straightened out without her having to go homeless. That got me about six months’ worth of driving from Earl.
I had draped my ruined shirt over the fender. He picked it up and examined it.
“What, somebody spill a whole thing of Hawaiian Punch on you or something?”
“Something like that. Come on, let’s go.”
“I thought you had court all day.”
“I did too. But things change.”
“Where to, then?”
“Let’s go by Philippe’s first.”
“You got it.”
He got in the front and I jumped in the back. After a quick stop at the sandwich shop on Alameda I had Earl point the car west. The next stop was a place called Menorah Manor, near Park La Brea in the Fairfax District. I said I’d be about an hour and got out with my briefcase. I had tucked my fresh shirt in but didn’t bother clipping my tie back on. I wouldn’t need it.
Menorah Manor was a four-story nursing home on Willoughby east of Fairfax. I signed in at the front desk and took the elevator up to the third floor, where I informed the woman at the nurses’ desk that I had a legal consultation with my client David Siegel and was not to be disturbed in his room. She was a pleasant woman who was used to my frequent visits. She nodded her approval and I went down the hallway to room 334.
I entered and closed the door after putting the do not disturb sign on the outside handle. David “Legal” Siegel was lying in bed, his eyes on the screen of a muted television bolted to the upper wall across from the bed. His thin white hands were on top of a blanket. There was a low hiss from the tube that brought oxygen to his nose. He smiled when he saw me.
“Mickey.”
“Legal, how are you doing today?”
“Same as yesterday. Did you bring anything?”
I pulled the visitor’s chair away from the wall and positioned it so I could sit in his line of vision. At eighty-one years old, he didn’t have a lot of mobility. I opened my briefcase on the bed and turned it so he could reach into it.
“French dip from Philippe the Original. How’s that?”
“Oh, boy,” he said.
Menorah Manor was a kosher joint and I used the legal consultation bit as a way around it. Legal Siegel missed the places he’d eaten at during a near-fifty-year run as a lawyer in downtown. I was happy to bring him the culinary joy. He had been my father’s law partner. He was the strategist, while my father had been the front man, the performer who enacted the strategies in court. After my father died when I was five, Legal stuck around. He took me to my first Dodgers game when I was a kid, sent me to law school when I was older.
A year ago I had come to him after losing the election for district attorney amid scandal and self-destruction. I was looking for life strategy, and Legal Siegel was there for me. In that way, these meetings were legitimate consultations between lawyer and client, only the people at the desk didn’t understand that I was the client.
I helped him unwrap the sandwich and opened the plastic container holding the jus that made the sandwiches from Philippe’s so good. There was also a sliced pickle wrapped in foil.
Legal smiled after his first bite and pumped his skinny arm like he had just won a great victory. I smiled. I was glad to bring him something. He had two sons and a bunch of grandchildren but they never came around except on the holidays. As Legal told me, “They need you until they don’t need you.”
When I was with Legal we talked mostly about cases and he would suggest strategies. He was absolute aces when it came to predicting prosecution plans and case roll outs. It didn’t matter that he had not been in a courtroom in this century or that penal codes had changed since his day. He had baseline experience and always had a play. He called them moves, actually — the double-blind move, the judge’s robes move, and so on. I had come to him during the dark time that followed the election. I wanted to learn about my father and how he had dealt with the adversities of his life. But I ended up learning more about the law and how it was like soft lead. How it could be bent and molded.
“The law is malleable,” Legal Siegel always told me. “It’s pliable.”
I considered him to be part of my team, and that allowed me to discuss my cases with him. He’d throw out his ideas and moves. Sometimes I used them and they worked, sometimes not.
He ate slowly. I had learned that if I gave him a sandwich, he could take an hour to eat it, steadily chewing small bites. Nothing went to waste. He ate everything I brought him.
“The girl in three-thirty died last night,” he said between bites. “A shame.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How old was she?”