“Bail,” I tell him. “I thought perhaps we could work out an accommodation. Avoid a contentious argument in court.”
I can tell by his look he is not surprised. Still he gives me all the arguments.
“It’s a capital offense, Counselor. Special circumstances. The murder of a witness in another criminal case,” he says.
“The court has discretion,” I tell him.
“And has chosen not to exercise it.”
“You mean the arraignment?”
He nods.
“A summary argument,” I tell him. “There was no real evidence presented.”
He spins in his chair, and takes a book off the credenza from a stack neatly lined between two bookends behind him. A quick glance in the index, and he pages with one thumb.
“I quote,” he says. “Penal Code, Section twelve seventy point five: A defendant charged with a capital offense punishable by death cannot be admitted to bail when the proof of his guilt is evident or the presumption of guilt is great.” He slaps the book closed.
“It’s not,” I tell him.
“How do you know until you’ve seen the evidence?” he says.
He has me on that. The fruits of our first motions for discovery have been received only this morning and are sitting on my desk awaiting review.
“Irrespective of your feelings toward Mr. Acosta, he is a man with considerable contacts in the community, no evidence of flight, even with the swirling rumors in the press. He has a family, a reputation. .”
“Yes. I give you his reputation,” says Kline. Touché.
“You don’t really think he’s going to run?” I say.
“It’s been known to happen. But let’s set all of that aside for the moment, my feelings about your client, whether the court would even accept an argument for bail even if we did acquiesce. Let’s set all of that aside. Just for the moment,” he says.
There is something coming. The odor of sinister thoughts. He studies me like an insect under glass.
“You talked a moment ago,” he says, “about an accommodation.”
“I did?”
“Yes. You said perhaps we could come to some accommodations.” His eyes get round and inquisitive.
“A manner of speech,” I tell him.
“Ah. Then you’re not offering anything in return?”
We are down to it. Ali Baba’s nickel and dime, Coleman Kline’s Casbah of justice.
“Just checking. Wanted to make sure I understood,” he says.
“What can we offer? Certainly he’s not going to cop a plea.”
He shakes his head, makes gestures with his palms open and down low, just off the surface of the desk, evidence that this is the farthest thought from his mind.
“Still.” He speaks before his hands have even hit the desk. “Your client has not been very cooperative,” says Kline. “He did refuse to talk to the police when they tried to interview him.”
“Well. We apologize for the insult,” I tell him. “But I’m sure the cops weren’t stunned by his silence.”
“Perhaps not. But you’d think an innocent man would be anxious to clear himself as a suspect.”
“Oh. So you think he can be cleared?”
“He might have been if he’d talked to us. How can we know all the facts when your man won’t cooperate?”
“I hope you took pains to explain that to the grand jury,” I tell him.
This draws his eyes into little slits. “It’s not I who is sitting here asking for bail,” he says.
“Good point,” I tell him. “And what exactly was it, what kind of information did the police want that might have cleared my client?” I ask.
He finally eases back in his chair, the fingers of both hands steepled under his chin.
“For starters,” he says, “information as to where he was at the time that Brittany Hall was killed.”
He wants to know if we have an alibi. To tell him that we do not would be to give aid and comfort. It is the one thing he cannot get in discovery, anything that is testimonial from our client. Kline has more brass than I would have credited.
“To know that,” I tell him, “we’d have to know the exact time of death.”
“Ah,” he says, smiling. “There’s the rub,” he says.
“How so?”
“For the moment we are able to fix that only within broad parameters.”
“How broad?” I say.
“Within a six-hour period.”
“That’s not broad,” I tell him. “That’s the cosmos.”
“We’re working on it,” he tells me.
I’ll bet. Unless Hall was seen alive by a witness or spoke to someone within a short period before her body was discovered, time of death is a matter of conjecture upon which medical evidence is a vast swearing contest, their experts versus ours.
“Still,” he says, “I would assume that if you had an ironclad alibi you would have given it to us by now?”
This is a fair assumption, but he would rather be certain.
“As the first syllable suggests,” I tell him, “assumptions have a funny way of biting the holder in the ass.”
Absent an alibi, the next best ploy is to keep Kline guessing. Investigators who are trying to exclude an alibi don’t have time to do other damage.
“It seems there is no basis for accommodation,” he says. There is no anger here, just a statement of brutal fact.
“A capital case, we must assume your client to be a flight risk. Certainly a risk to public safety,” he says. “I could not in good conscience agree to bail.”
I start to talk, but he cuts me off.
“It’s been nice,” he tells me. He’s on his feet, walking me to the door.
“You really should reconsider your position in the case,” he says. “At least inform yourself as to Ms. Goya’s motives.”
Suddenly I find his hand inside of mine, bidding me farewell, smoother than I could have imagined. His office door closes and actually hits me in the ass. I am left with the certain assessment that Coleman Kline is not the lawyer simpleton I’d been led to expect.
“The man is angry because his ego has gotten him in over his head,” she says. This is Lenore’s answer to Kline’s assertion of a vendetta.
Tonight she stands in the doorway to my kitchen, the tips of her thick dark hair grazing her shoulders, the whites of her eyes flashing in contrast to her tawny complexion. Her hands are on her hips. Lenore cuts a formidable and enticing figure when she is angry.
“Think about it,” she says. “He was willing to take on Acosta on the misdemeanor because it was low risk, high theater,” she says. “A judge on the hook. Now he has to do the murder case or lose face in the office.”
Lenore tells me that at least three of Kline’s senior deputies, people who were there before the change of regime, are entertaining thoughts of challenging him in the next election. These are civil servants whose job protection carries more armor than a medieval knight. Backing away on the murder case, handing it to subordinates to try, would be an admission by Kline that he is not up to the job.
She retreats far enough into the kitchen to grab the pot of coffee off the counter and is back in the dining room offering refills.
“Besides,” she says, “Kline would say anything to undercut me.”
None of this, of course, answers the charge that her representation of Acosta is motivated by all the wrong instincts. Acosta’s case is taking on all the signs of a feudal bloodletting.
Tonight we are assembled around the table in my dining room, a working dinner which we have just finished, Lenore, Harry, and I. We are sampling liqueurs with coffee. Harry wants to know if he gets paid even if he can’t remember details tomorrow. He has given up the coffee and is now alternating straight shots of creme de menthe and Kahlúa from his cup.
Sarah is playing with Lenore’s two daughters, ages eleven and ten, older girls whom she idolizes. She has reached the age at which her entire lexicon is reduced to a single word: “Cool.” The kids have disappeared into Sarah’s upstairs bedroom as if they had died and gone to heaven, the only evidence of their existence the occasional thumping of feet and laughter overhead.