Undue Influence (43 page)

“Hello Paul?” A voice, a million miles away, like something through a tube, familiar. It is Harry. “What the hell time is it?” I say.

“Five-thirty,” he tells me. “Sorry to get you out of bed.”

“It’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping well. What is it?” I’m wiping perspiration from my forehead, sleep from my eyes. “Have you seen the morning paper?” he says.

“No. Why?”

“I think you better take a look. And do yourself a favor,” he says.

“Sit down before you open it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Somebody has inserted a blade, at the sixth cervical vertebra, about eight inches in.”

“To who?” I ask.

“To you, my friend. Second lead, page one, above the fold,” he tells me.

““Local Defense Attorney Linked to Postal Bombing.’ ”

“Oh, shit.” I sit, still trying to chase visions of dread from my sleepravaged brain. My mind at this moment begins to swim, struggling to sort the real fears from the imagined. “I don’t get it,” I say. “The feds already questioned me.”

“It doesn’t say anything about that. Just that your fingerprints were found all over the place after the bombing, and that certain employees saw you talking to the dead postal worker moments before the blast.

Somebody’s doing a number,” he says. “I think you better get yourself together. I’ll meet you at the office.” Harry hangs up. I start to forage for clothes, my mind racing to assess the damage that this will do to Laurel’s case, a trial in midstream, scandal affecting her lawyer.

Then I pick up the phone and dial Mrs. Bailey. I will need coverage with Sarah. I am abusing the old lady’s good nature, but as always she is there for my daughter, more than I can say for myself. She will be over in ten minutes. I’m in my underwear, buttoning up my pants, when I dial again. This time it is a groggy feline voice at the other end, something sultry from sleep. “Hello. It’s Paul. I need some help,” I tell her.

“What is it?”

“Somebody’s tagged me with the bombing. In this morning’s paper.”

“What. Who would ”

“I don’t have time to talk. I need your help. There’s a judge who’s going to be taking a long hard look at me this morning. An explanation from some authoritative source could go a long way,” I tell her. “I don’t understand,” she says.

“Neither do I.”

Silence on the other end. “Sure. Whatever I can do. Where can I meet you?” asks Dana. We set a time, the county courthouse, and I hang up.

For nearly two hours we assess damage while walking the floor at the office, Harry and I. As the arching light of dawn turns to day, I can see the incandescent lights as they dim on the Capitol dome five blocks away. We reread the story, first silently, then out loud to each other, looking for nuances we may have missed. We explore the possible sources.

Harry is thinking Jack. By now he would have gotten word that he is the centerpiece of my case. He is well connected with the press. But Harry hasn’t told me how Jack would get the information that my prints were found at the scene, with the wraps thrown around a pending investigation. The staff reporter on the byline is not a name I have heard before. It is the stuff of which scandal is made. Attributions to “highly placed but unnamed sources close to the investigation.” It does not say, in so many words, that I am a suspect, but in the interests of a good story buries me in a mud slide of inference and innuendo. If this were the Inquisition, they would be pouring hot lead in my ear by morning as a means of leading me to the Lord and coaxing my confession.

What makes this most baffling is that I have come clean with the
FBI
, hours of questioning behind closed doors. They know precisely what I was doing talking with Marcie Reed. All I can figure is some enterprising reporter who got his hands on only half of the story. The problem as we see it, and Harry sums it up quickly, is that the jurors in Laurel’s case are not shielded from this news. It would not be covered by the court’s gag order, there being no obvious link between the bombing and Melanie’s murder. Left as it is, the jury, seeing my name coupled with the events at the post office, would not be believing much that I say in Laurel’s defense, the case of one felon pleading the cause of another.

“He can’t mask it, but maybe he can take the tinge off. An instruction to the jury.” Harry’s talking about Judge Woodruff. We have called four times in the last hour. He’s not yet in chambers, though by now he has no doubt read his morning paper. “It’s probably just a one-day story,” I say. “By tomorrow it’ll be old news, off the front page, explained and corrected.”

“You sound like the fucking founding fathers,” says Harry.

“An innocent’s notion of the First Amendment,” he tells me.

This from a man who spends his life reading the newspaper.

“Hang on to your nuts,” he says. “They don’t call it the press for nothing.”

“They got the facts wrong. They’ll fix it.” I say.

“Like the man said, fifteen minutes of fame,” says Harry. “You get yours by flashlight up the kazoo.” I tell him to relax. I try the judge on the phone. Now the clerk’s not answering. We can’t wait any longer, so we decide to walk the few blocks to the courthouse. We can die of anxiety there as well as here. Besides, by now Dana should be on her way over.

We drop down the elevator in the building. I step out and get my first glimpse of them. A van with a dish on top parked out front. Then two more down the block. I wonder if maybe there’s a fire in one of the high-rises. Then, as I step out onto the street, I get a microphone in the face. “Mr. Madriani, what can you tell us about the bombing?”

Another guy with a pen and pad. “Are you being charged? Are you talking to authorities?”

“How long have you been under investigation?”

Harry is looking at me. “Holy shit.” We grab the doors, step back inside, close them, and turn the lock.

We’re getting a lot of glare from the strobes on the cameras bouncing off the glass of the door. A horde is now moving in. One of the more enterprising souls is pulling on the handles, rattling the heavy door in its frame. Harry’s got my elbow, dragging me toward a door down the hall. The way to the garage. We get in his car, and coming up the ramp to the street there is another throng. “I should have put you in the fucking trunk,” he says. “Hang on.”

He nearly runs some guy down who is so burdened with batteries and lights he cannot move. “So much for a one-day story,” he says. “Any more theories?”

I look back over my shoulder out the rear window, and a few of them are running for their cars. A woman reporter with her camera crew is hoofing it down the street, figuring I am due in court and it’s only three blocks. Harry asks me what I think Dana will do about all this.

“I’m hoping she’ll vouch for me with Woodruff. Tell him what happened, that I was merely interviewing a client. That I’m not a suspect.”

“You’ve been bitten by the love bug,” he says. “She is probably the leaker.” When I look over at him I see a lot of wrinkles and furrows, advice to the lovelorn from Harry. He is talking about Dana like he suspects she has lifted her leg, making me the leakee. “Why would she?

She has nothing to gain.”

“Birds of a feather,” he says.

“You mean Cassidy?”

“I mean estrogen’s thicker than water,” he says. “There are some of them who get off just tubing some poor slob.” The “them” Harry is talking about is the other half of humanity, the vast fairer sex. “Maybe you didn’t scratch the right itch the last time you got it on.” Harry’s getting personal now. “I warned you,” he says. “Two female prosecutors.”

Harry thinks the enmity in the workplace toward males is something genetic, like the encoding on the X chromosome, that there will be no peace until women are sent home. He’s still blinking, wondering how a gender that makes up more than half of the species acquired all the perks of minority status and got its head under the tent of affirmative action. “There are rules in this stuff, like the canon of ethics,” he says. “We all know the first one: Thou shalt not dip thy quill in the company ink.’ ” I remind him that Dana doesn’t work for us. The second, he says: ” Beware of false prosecutors who come to you in the night in sheep’s clothing or slinky garb, for they are ravening wolves,’ ” he says. To Harry there is little that is sacred. I give him a smile but don’t say anything.

“Sure, laugh,” he says. “But it ain’t me running down the street who’s being chased by Tabloid Mary,” he says. “It’s your ass that’s in the flames. Burnt offerings to the god of yellow journalism,” says Harry. In the distance a half block away I can hear some asshole shouting, “There he is!” The patter of feet, heels on concrete, like a stampede of hookers ahead of the paddy wagon. We’re making for the sanctuary of court, across the intersection between the parking lot and the courthouse, against a light that says
DON’T
WALK
. We are nearly hit by a car. We run up the ramp to the back door. It takes us a couple of minutes to negotiate the metal detector. It is here that the first camera crew catches us. Harry is panting, out of breath, busy putting his belt with its metal buckle back through the loops in his pants.

Pictures at five. We move away. They try to follow. The guard is pointing to the conveyor belt and telling them to unstrap for inspection. Harry turns around and gives them the finger. Their lights still on, film still whirring. “See you assholes upstairs,” he says.

“And leave the fucking cameras and mikes outside, in the hall,” he tells them. Harry Hinds on public relations. He sees the look on my face.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “They gotta bleep out all the bad stuff.”

Harry’s never heard of lip-reading. We look like two brush salesmen toting sample cases as we finally make it to the elevator. Harry’s is filled with exhibits and pieces of evidence for our case. My own has lined-out questions for examination, in the case of today, for Jack Vega, who is due up in the state’s case if I am not suspended from the practice before then. When we arrive at the clerk’s station behind the courtroom, Dana is already inside with Woodruff. The clerk knocks on the door and we are told to wait a couple of minutes. Morgan Cassidy has been summoned by the judge and is on her way. Woodruff apparently is concerned by appearances of ex parte communications. He doesn’t want one of the lawyers inside behind closed doors without opposing counsel being present. Two minutes later Cassidy breezes into the office, followed by Jimmy Lama. She walks past us like we are not there, nothing but an imperious look. Lama’s expression is dour, like maybe he’s not looking forward to this meeting. The clerk opens the door and we all press into chambers. Woodruff is seated behind a large mahogany desk. Dana has one of the two stuffed club chairs across from him. Her briefcase is in her lap. “Your honor, if I could explain.” I don’t waste any time. “I take it you’ve seen the morning paper?” Woodruff has his hand up. “I’ve seen it and I’ve talked to Ms. Colby.

She’s already told me what happened,” he says. “An inaccurate news story,” he says. “Right now I’m more concerned about how it got in the paper.” He means whether there is some ulterior motive for this, and whether it takes its inspiration from the trial. Woodruff may have the bushy eyebrows and the genteel twinkle of Walter Cronkite, but this morning he is a mean face, all of it aimed at Morgan Cassidy. There has been no love lost between her and the judge. “What can you tell us about this, Ms. Cassidy?”

“Not a thing, your honor. You don’t think ”

“Well, it didn’t come from our shop,” says Dana.

Cassidy gives her a look to kill.

Harry’s smiling. The other side of the gender conspiracy a catfight.

“How about your people?” Dana’s looking at Jimmy Lama.

His Adam’s apple comes halfway up, and then does a jackknife. A lot of nervous eyeing of the judge. “No,” he says. “Absolutely not.”

“I don’t understand,” I say. “I thought the postal investigation was a federal affair?”

“We called in the local bomb squad, and forensic support,” says Dana.

“Maybe we should get whoever headed it up over here,” says Woodruff.

“No need. They’re here already,” says Dana. “Lieutenant Lama was local liaison.” With this Jimmy is seven shades of purple, a lot of fidgeting and nervous glances, more than a few of them in my direction. Lama on the carpet. Woodruff demanding answers. Who had access to information?

The fingerprint reports? “It didn’t come from our side,” says Jimmy.

Absolute denials which he undercuts a moment later with assurances that he’ll check it out and get back to the judge. “By this afternoon,” says Woodruff.

“You got it,” says Lama.

“What?”

“Your honor,” says Jimmy. Woodruff gives him a look that says, “That’s better.”

Lama’s muttering to Cassidy. Denials sputtering like they are out of gas. “Our people wouldn’t do this.” All of them except one, and I am looking at him right now. There is no longer any mystery in my mind as to the source of this news story. Humiliation over the courthouse tape, the loss of the compact as evidence was the last straw. This is classic Lama, time-honored techniques designed to screw one’s opponent. To Jimmy life is one large board-game of getting even. Something tells me there is no way Woodruff will ever prove Lama was involved. He would have more layers of insulation on this than the average Eskimo. A dozen people between himself and the reporter, his name or fingerprints on nothing.

Under the circumstances the court cannot call the reporter who wrote the story onto the carpet and demand to know his sources. Ostensibly Woodruff has no jurisdiction. The information in the article does not relate to evidence in our case. It is all tangential, intended only to cripple me as counsel. In this Lama has been deft. Woodruff wrings his hands over the desk, making noises about a mistrial. At this moment, given the holes we have punched in their case, this would be a gift-wrapped package to Cassidy. She now knows our theory of defense.

She could shore it up and try the case again. The judge says he will poll the jury to see how many have read the article, what effect it has had. In the meantime he will craft an instruction. He orders Lama to return after today’s session to report progress on this, his inquiries regarding the story. Jimmy is bowing and scraping. Your typical toady in the face of authority, Lama is vowing to get to the bottom of it. By five o’clock he’ll be back with iron-clad assurances that nobody in the department was involved, and Woodruff will be left as I am, to harbor empty suspicions without proof. Lama and Cassidy head out to the courtroom to prepare for the day’s session. Harry follows them. Dana and I huddle in the hallway just beyond the clerk’s station. “That bitch,” she says. I am struck by her language. This is an anger I have not seen in Dana before. Her face is flushed, her hands shaking. She is looking at the wall behind me at this moment, not engaging my eyes. The expletive uttered as if she were talking to herself. As if I were not present. “She’s spent months trying to derail the appointment,” she says. Dana’s talking about her judicial aspirations. Her wrath, it seems, is predicated on something more than her personal loyalty to me.