Could he still do it? Could he marshal all his inner resources and put them to work to change minds? For weeks he had been kicking the dogs of self-loathing back. They always seemed to bay and snap before and during trial. Now was the final shot and he told himself to give it everything. Make a noise like a lawyer. At least show the client he was getting his money’s worth.
Which, considering Steve hadn’t been paid yet, was a lot.
“Ladies and gentlemen, when you took your oath as jurors, you swore to do your duty to see that justice is done. You did not swear to listen only to the prosecutor, or me, or even to the judge alone. You stand in the most important position possible for a citizen in our country. You stand between the awful power of the State and a man who is presumed innocent. That is your role in our system of justice.”
Steve looked at the jurors for a face to connect with. Number six, a forty-year-old woman who worked for BlueCross insurance, nodded slightly.
“That means you must hold the prosecution to its burden of proof,” he said to number seven. “That’s a great big burden, too. Beyond a reasonable doubt. You know what that’s like?”
Steve walked to the prosecutor’s table, where Moira Hanson was wearing her best skeptic’s expression for the jurors. “It’s like there’s a great, big boulder sitting here on the prosecution table. Can you see it?” He pantomimed feeling the contours of a gigantic rock.
“It’s here, and Ms. Hanson can’t just chip away at it, which she tried to do in her summation. No, she can’t leave any of it on the table. Not even little pebbles. The rock is still here.”
He smiled at the DDA. She glared back. She hadn’t been a happy camper when the judge decided to use the traditional jury instructions, called CALJIC. There’d been a revamping of instructions in California, to make them more “user friendly,” but some judges were sticking with the tried and true.
Which is what Steve knew best. He turned to the jury once again and said, “And you must also remember that you are the sole judges of the facts. And the testimony. Did you know you don’t have to believe a police officer just because he sits in that witness chair? Police make mistakes too. Let’s talk about that.”
And he did. For half an hour he put the best face on the bad facts that he could. That was his job. Defense lawyer. You don’t lie down and die because a prosecutor has a slam dunk.
He finished with, “So remember, ladies and gentlemen, only you represent justice here. Only you. And Mr. Mendez and I know you will do your task well.”
This time, more than one head nodded in the jury box. Steve hoped that several members of the Mendez clan, out in the gallery, agreed.
Then it was Moira Hanson’s turn to rebut. This would be the last word to the jury from either lawyer. The next step would be instructions on the law from the judge, and then deliberations.
“Do not be fooled by the empty rhetoric of the defense lawyer,” she said. “You know, Abraham Lincoln said when the law and the facts are against you, pound on the table and shout for justice.”
Steve’s face started to burn. He just hoped the jury couldn’t see it.
Hanson took just twenty minutes to wrap it all up. In another half hour the judge had given the jury instructions. At 11:57 the judge told the jury to go get lunch and be back by 1:30 to start deliberations.
Steve felt the urge to drink his lunch. He always felt that way at the end of a trial. Last time, in fact, he’d done that very thing and woke up in the parking lot in back of a Safeway.
In the hallway he was surrounded by Mendezes, Carlos’s mother taking the lead. She was a fireplug of a woman looking up at him with ever increasing intensity.
“What happen now?” she said. “What happen now?”
“The jury will come back to deliberate,” Steve said.
“How long it take?”
“We just don’t know.”
“Carlos get out?”
“No, Mrs. Mendez, Carlos is in the lockup.”
“When he get out?”
“The jury has to—”
“He get out, right?”
Several Mendez faces looked expectantly at Steve. As if he were Harry Potter and could wave a stick and make everything all right. What he really wanted was an invisibility cloak.
“We have to wait for the jury, so I’ll call you when they have a decision,” Steve said. “So just try to relax and—”
“No relax! No, no!”
Steve patted her arm and was grateful when a couple of the men took over and led her toward the elevators. But all the while he was thinking it was always true when a jury was out. No relax.
9
Steve sought some quiet in the courthouse law library. It was never populated with more than a lawyer or two, trying to find that case the judge cited, or the occasional citizen representing himself or suing his neighbor.
Steve snagged a copy of the Daily Journal, the city’s leading legal newspaper, and scanned it. Good to see his name wasn’t in it. No news is no noose. Last time he got his name in the paper it was as a disciplinary statistic and his career was hanging by the neck from a tree.
On the opinion page there was a column about a couple of horrific gang slayings. It wasn’t just drive-bys this time. Two black gang members had been ritually skinned. Their inner works, so to speak, were spread around and their outer casings nailed to a wall.
Steve held in his breakfast. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse in this world, bad old reality comes along and gives you a fresh kick in the teeth. Nice place, the world. That’s what cocaine was for, after all. You could forget you lived here for a while.
Steve went to the editorial cartoon, this one of the US Supreme Court, and was admiring the rendering of Scalia when he sensed someone at his side. He tried to ignore the figure, but when a guy sat down in the chair beside his, Steve gave a quick look.
The guy was looking right at Steve. He wore a black shirt buttoned to the top, but Steve could see the tentacles of a tattoo above the collar. His hair was blond, cut close to the pate. He had the prison look. Steve had seen enough of that in his career to sense it. Like a bad smell before you see the actual Dumpster.
“Mr. Conroy.” Not a question.
“Who are you?”
“I was watching you in there. Not a bad job.”
“You a reporter?”
“In a way,” the guy said. “I’ve got a report for you.”
Steve waited as the guy pulled a fat, white envelope from his back pocket and laid in on top of the newspaper. As he did, Steve saw some letters tattooed on his left hand, on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.
“Johnny says go buy yourself a couple of new suits,” the guy said. “He wants you to. As a gift.”
“Johnny LaSalle?”
“Right.”
“Oh sure. My dead brother.”
The guy nodded.
“What’s in here?” Steve asked.
“Five large,” the guy said. “Another five when Johnny comes home and you come work for him.”
Steve’s instinct to push the envelope away was overcome by a neon thought blinking Ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars.
Five thousand of which, if the guy was telling the truth, was under Steve’s slightly trembling hand. Ten grand could keep more than a few wolves from the door. And a new suit sounded so right just about now. The one Steve was wearing, his best, had elbows you could almost see through.