You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy (15 page)

“Is Juanita there?”

“No, she isn’t. But I can take a message for her too.”

“Is that Nat?”

“Yes.”

In the short time that Nat had been there, he had never actually spoken to David. He knew that David was a few years younger than himself – twenty-four to his twenty-seven – but there was no time for pleasantries.

“Okay, well, look,” said David, “do you know when he’s getting back? This could be important.”

“Well he should be back within the hour, but you can call him on his cell.”

“Maybe you could do that. I want to get back to the computer and see what else I can find. I have to leave the lab every time I need to make a call. Basically, just tell him that I’ve managed to log in to Dorothy Olsen’s old email account and I’ve found the EasySabre receipt.”

“Holy shit!”

“My sentiments exactly,” said David. “It shows that she booked a one-way flight from Mexico to Luton Airport in the UK. The booking was made on May 19, 1998 and the flight date was May 24 of that year – the day after she disappeared.”

14:34 PDT

“So how do you manage when there’s only three of you?”

The crowd in the deli was thinning out, but Juanita and the young man were still engaged in earnest conversation.

“We’re a small office. Sometimes even
three’s
a crowd.”

“Yes, but I mean … in a case like this? One minute, you’re running up to DC to argue a motion before the Supreme Court, next minute you’re meeting the governor here in San Fran.”

“That’s the way Alex likes to operate. At one time he didn’t have anyone, it was a one-man band. He did everything, research, interviews, drafting briefs, litigation.”

“Why?”

“He’s an individualist. He likes to run his own show.”

“But isn’t it risky? I mean, what if something comes up and he needs to go back to the Capitol to get a ruling?”

“We can go to the Federal District Court. But we’ve also got a partner firm on standby up in DC.”

“But I thought Mr. Sedaka went there in person to argue the motion? He was on the TV outside the court afterward.”

“Yes, he went there for that because that was the last-chance saloon as far as the court proceedings were concerned. But if anything new comes up that the District Court can’t or won’t handle, we’ve got another firm on standby to file a motion and even argue it if it’s called for.”

The young man shook his head.

“That seems like kind of a strange way to operate – for a big case like this.”

“You have to remember that until recently we didn’t have any cases as big as this.”

“What about that case with the girlfriend of the drug baron?”

“Estella Sanchez? That wasn’t really a
big
case in terms of workload.”

 “
People
magazine called it ‘a landmark case.’”

“The media like to exaggerate. I suppose it did set a precedent, but the same could be said of any case that goes before the Supreme Court – or at least every successful case.”

“Still … it must have taken some serious work to win it.”

“All we really had to do was file the certiorari motion and one well-written brief. That hardly puts it in the same league as murder with special circumstances. We’ve never dealt with a capital case before.”

Juanita knew that time was ticking by. This was originally supposed to be a short lunch break. But she sensed that she was making some progress here, even if the flow of information so far was going from her to him. It was almost as if
he
was pumping
her
for something. But she knew that she was getting somewhere, and she had to hang in there. She had to find out
what
he was looking for.

“So why
did
you take on a capital case this time?”

“We didn’t so much take it on as inherit it. The white-shoe firm that had it before us saw it as a sure-fire loser and were looking to unload it.”

“
You
didn’t
have
to take it on.”

“Oh there’s kudos even in losing
-
if you put up a brave enough fight along the way.”

“Brave enough and
public
enough.”

Juanita smiled.

“Touché”

“So why did the big league firm want out?”

“They got cold feet.”

“And you were the only ones who wanted to touch it?”

“ Oh no, plenty of others were ready to pick it up.”

“Then how come you beat the competition – if you’re such a small outfit?”

“It was Burrow’s decision. I guess he heard about the Sanchez case and decided we were flavor of the month.”

“So the client came to you – you didn’t ambulance chase?”

“Certainly not! But I think Nat was kind of enthusiastic about.”

“Nat?”

“Nathaniel Anderson, our legal intern.”

“Why would
he
want it?”

“The follies of youth.”

Jonathan looked confused.

“Nat’s an idealist,” Juanita explained.

“He thinks Burrow is innocent?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But he believes that even a sucker deserves a break. Like I said: he’s idealistic.”

“So how come he isn’t in the office?”

“Who says he isn’t?”

“Well I didn’t see anyone else back there in the office.”

Juanita felt a tingling sensation, as she remembered how Jonathan had looked round in the office.
Was he spying on them?

14:41 PDT

Getting stuck in traffic is a pain in the ass at the best of times. But when you’ve got a client on death row, with the execution scheduled for just over nine hours’ time, it was a nightmare. That was the position in which Alex found himself now. He was still in Marin County and the bridge wasn’t even in sight.

Plus – and this was the kicker – he felt as if he wasn’t making any progress with Burrow either. The logjam that his car was stuck in seemed, in some way, like paradigm for the case. His client was as stubborn as ever and seemed determined to die. Burrow was putting on a brave face. But Alex could sense that he was scared. The only question was, if he was scared, why didn’t he take the bait? Why didn’t he grab the lifeline that the governor had thrown him?

Was he protecting his mother? He’d have to talk to Nat and find out what he’d got from Sally Burrow. He was about to call the office when his cell phone rang. It was his daughter.

“Hi, Debbie,” he said.

“Hi, Dad,” she replied through clenched teeth. He was the only person in the world who could get away with calling her Debbie – and live. To everyone else, she was Deborah. It was nothing personal, more of a professional requirement. When you’re a hotshot corporate lawyer with a leading Wall Street firm, you can’t afford to be taken anything other than seriously.

“Are you calling from work?”

He knew that two thousand seven hundred miles away she was smiling.

“Dad, I’ve been at my desk since quarter past seven.”

“Sorry.”

He knew that she’d probably been there since half past six. She was ambitious and she worked hard. Like father like daughter.

“Listen, I…” She trailed off. There was always an awkwardness between them. It had been there since long before his wife died, but the killing had been a blow from which their fragile relationship still hadn’t recovered. Melody had been the bridge between them.

“I just wanted to wish you … good luck. With the Burrow case.”

He wondered if she had heard about the clemency offer and if he should tell her about Burrow’s unexpected rejection of it. He decided not to. He could consult her about it as a lawyer – if she had any relevant expertise to contribute – but he couldn’t tell her as his daughter.

“Thanks.”

He didn’t know what else to say. He often thought about things he wanted to talk about when they next talked, but somehow he always seemed to dry up and forget what had been on his mind when one of them picked up the phone and the conversation actually took place.

“Look, I know you’re busy today. But if you need to – if you
want
to talk to anyone
-
I’m here for you.”

A soft center inside a hard shell – the exact opposite of her mother.

“Bye, Dad.”

“Bye, Debbie.”

He felt a desolate loneliness as he pressed the red button on the cell phone. But it wasn’t just Debbie he was missing; it was her mother. He wondered if Melody had felt fear when she looked down the barrel of the gun.

She had been working the graveyard shift at A&E in the hospital nine months ago when the two gang members were brought in. Normally they try to separate gang members from rival gangs and don’t bring them in to the same hospital. But when a gang shootout left two victims – one from each side – knocking on death’s door, time was of the essence. So fate would have it that Hector Ramirez and Esteban Delgado were brought in to the A&E Department of St Mary’s Hospital, without any one of the overworked doctors so much as knowing that it had been Delgado who shot Ramirez, before getting shot himself.

All Melody Sedaka knew was that Esteban Delgado was a seriously injured man and it was her professional duty to save him. But while Melody succeeded in her duty with Delgado, Hector Ramirez was pronounced dead on arrival.

She had been warned that with Delgado behind bars and thus inaccessible to the rival gang, she might be targeted instead for revenge – for saving the man who had killed Ramirez. But she had refused to let it interfere with her work. Even the normal security escort to her car had been given short shrift by Melody. So – one week after Thanksgiving – it had been relatively easy for one of Ramirez’s homeys to sneak into the parking lot and gun her down as she was about to get into her car.

Shortly after that, sixteen-year-old Eduardo Rivera was stopped in a Jeep Cherokee because of a busted tail light. When the cops radioed in to check the license plate, they found that the jeep had been seen driving away fast from a shooting. A search of the jeep revealed a Glock, and Rivera was arrested on the spot. Then the evidence technicians went in. Ballistics matched the gun to the bullets and cartridges from the Melody Sedaka killing, while fingerprints – albeit on the barrel, not the stock – linked the gun to Rivera. He also had gunshot residue on his left hand, but not on his right. The fingerprints on the barrel were also from his left hand.

The Public Defender – who was representing Rivera – pointed out that his client was right-handed and that the lack of right-handed prints on the stock or gun residue on Rivera’s right hand suggested that the boy was merely driving the getaway car and dumping the gun.

This was what his
lawyer
was saying. Rivera himself was saying nothing. He had invoked his right to silence and stayed schtum ever since. In the absence of any denial or explanation from Rivera, the cops and DA had concluded that this was Rivera’s initiation for gang membership: “Kill the bitch who saved the man who killed our brother and you’re in.” They pointed out that negative results from the gun residue test to the right hand did not prove conclusively that he had
not
fired a gun from that hand and he might have wiped the prints from the stock while holding the gun by the barrel.

There were, however, some in the DA’s office who had their doubts.

Alex knew all of this, but had been in too much shock to process the information. He had no idea whether Rivera was guilty or not, and frankly he didn’t care. That was perhaps why the DA had thought it an ideal time to try and persuade Alex to abandon his one-man law firm and join the DA’s staff. So far Alex had refused. But the DA wasn’t yet ready to stop trying.

Ironically, while Rivera was still trying to prove himself a man, Delgado was now busily re-branding himself as a returning Catholic and campaigner against gang violence. Alex had wondered if this was a ploy to reduce his prison sentence. But maybe his brush with death had really changed him into a better man. The jury was still out on that one.

Strangely, one of the factors that had given Alex pause was a visit from a young Hispanic woman who introduced herself to him as Eduardo Rivera’s cousin. She had never been part of the gang culture, but she came to him to personally apologize for what her cousin had done. She offered no excuses and when he was initially rude to her, she had taken it all in her stride.

By then it was his turn to apologize to her and – over lunch at a nearby deli – it emerged that she was attending night school for a law degree and was a fast typist with good shorthand skills. One week later, the young woman – Juanita Cortez – started work for him as his secretary.

He remembered now that he had been about to call Juanita when Debbie had phoned. He reached out to the cell phone in its hands-free cradle.