Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller (23 page)

Loved that little gun, she thought sadly. But it has to go.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Warren believed that she believed what she was telling him. You had to see it from her point of view, as a jury would be instructed to do.
"Murder is a way of working out problems and settling scores,"
Altschuler had said. An obvious, instant, primitive solution. Only when it was done did her sophisticated self take over to muddy the trail. Warren had never known anyone like this, but he had known such mutants existed.

He asked, "Did you ever hear of a man named Hector Quintana?"

"You can't be serious," Johnnie Faye said, frowning. "You must think I came in with the first load of watermelon. Hector Quintana's the name of the guy you're defending in that other case, isn't it? The one where you were appointed by some woman judge?"

Warren nodded, but he was bewildered at her knowledge. Clearly there was a logical connection that he had missed. Staring at her, he asked, "And what about Quintana?"

"He didn't do it, which we both know now. So you'll get him off, same way you'll get me off for shooting Clyde in self-defense."

Simple as that. She was a woman of immense faith. Blood throbbed in Warren's temples.

"And let's get something real clear between us," Johnnie Faye said strongly. She had allowed the joint to expire in an ashtray. She sipped at her iced tea, then set it down on a cork coaster. She leaned forward across the table, fixing him with her thoughtful bicolored eyes. "You're still my lawyer. I'm keeping you on."

He stared at her, unbelieving. He had thought this was the kiss-off.

"You want to know why? Because I know you better than you think. Maybe in some ways better than your wife does. That's called intuition. Comes from experience, and I've got it." She smiled at him with her lips but not with her eyes; they were still probing and cold.

"You don't know me," Warren said.

"I do. You may not like that, but it's true. You're square, like I told you the other night. Straight. Boy Scout rules. You won't let me down. If you're my lawyer, you'll do the best you can. Maybe even better now that you know what you know. Because you'll be afraid not to."

"What makes you think," Warren asked, "that I still want to be your lawyer?"

"Don't you?" She seemed amused by the question. "I thought this was a big deal for you."

"If they still had hanging in this state," Warren said hoarsely, "I'd knot the noose, and not too tight. I'd put the fucking needle in your arm myself."

"Sure," Johnnie Faye said, "sure, in your fantasies. That's natural. But not in reality. See? I do know you. Why quit my case? What do you gain by quitting? You can't go to the D.A. You're my lawyer now, and you were yesterday and the week before and the week before that. Everything I told you is secret between us, even if you quit me. Now and forever, no exceptions. I checked the law, I have friends who understand these things.
Confidential
is the word, right? You can help me win, and you and that wisecracking Jewboy are going to do that.
But you can't tell anyone what I told you.
Isn't that so, counselor?"

He failed to halt a groan. "Why did Scoot pick me?"

"Why did—?" Johnnie Faye's eyes widened. "You think it's a coincidence, right? Just bad luck, what you might call irony, that you're Quintana's lawyer and my lawyer too?"

Seeing his expression, she slapped her own cheek in mock astonishment. "You still don't get it!"

"I guess not," Warren said quietly, dreading what was to come.

Leaning forward almost eagerly across the little table, Johnnie Faye explained, "I read in the
Chronicle
that the Quintana guy had been arrested for killing the slope, and I was a
little bit interested, you might say, in how things would work out. Then Mr.
Shepard calls me in and informs me he needs some help in my case: 'There are a few good lawyers I can pick from, but it's your money, so I'll tell you a bit about each one and you can give me some input.' Your name's on the list. Mr. Shepard tells me what you did way back when, and he says, 'But now this fella's on the comeback trail, and he's real sharp. He was just appointed to defend some illegal alien shot a Vietnamese.'"

A few minutes later Johnnie Faye concluded that "Warren Blackburn sounds like the right man."

Keep Blackburn close. Keep an eye on him. Learn what he knows.

Warren shook his head in numbed wonder. By taking him on as her lawyer, she ensured his silence if he discovered anything that implicated her in the death of Dan Ho Trunh. Did that mean that from the outset she had imagined the day would come when, gleefully, and with freedom from harm, she would confess?

I don't believe I want to know the answer to that, Warren thought. The muscles of his legs pressed hard on the floor. His fists clenched at his sides. His breaths had grown shallow.

"Why do you believe," he asked, "that if I defended you in court on the Ott murder, I wouldn't throw you to the dogs? I could fuck it up so badly the jury wouldn't even have to leave the courtroom to hand down a guilty verdict."

"I thought about that," Johnny Faye said. "I lost a lot of sleep over that. You can't do that. You fuck up, they'll see it. You'll be out on your ass again. I'll get a new trial, I'll get someone else to defend me." She patted his sleeve. "And you won't do any of that. I know you. You'll do your best. You'll do your job. That's the way you are, counselor. That's why I like you. And I like the idea of having you around me, so I can still keep an eye on you." She yawned, reached for a cigarette. "Sleep on it. Get used to the idea. You'll see I'm right."

"What if Hector Quintana's convicted?" Warren asked, his mind gray with helplessness. "What if I can't save him? What if he gets death, or life in prison?"

"A sad song don't care whose heart it breaks," Johnnie Faye Boudreau said. "You of all people should know that."

"All rise!" the bailiff cried, as Judge Lou Parker
swept into the courtroom to take her seat behind the high oak bench for the capital murder trial of Hector Quintana.

Her gaze flicked like a bullwhip from counsel tables to jury box to the dozen or so Vietnamese spectators. In her flowing black robes, her brown hair with steel-gray streaks swept into a bun at the back of her powerful neck, she was a force as irresistible as a high wind, as implacable as a boulder. Most other judges, on the engraved plaque nailed to the face of the judicial bench, had an announcement that proclaimed:
Hon. So-and-So
(with full name, including middle initial),
District Judge, 299th Circuit Court.
But the plaque on Louise Ann Parker's bench said:
Lou Parker, Judge.
The message escaped only the dull-witted or the hopeful.

On this day, courtesy of the State of Texas, Hector Quintana wore a reasonably well fitting blue suit, white shirt and dark blue tie, black shoes and socks. Standing next to his client at the defense table as the judge entered, Warren placed a hand on Hector's arm and squeezed it quickly.

For courage.

Goodpaster was seasoned and swift. In her opening statement to the jury she said repeatedly, "The evidence will show…" and all the while she made eye contact with the jurors. Warren watched them nod as they looked at her. They saw a bright young black woman, not too pretty as to make them envious, not too didactic to make them feel she condescended. She wore a mustard-colored blouse under a cheap serge suit that was exactly the same shade of blue as Hector's. Maybe, Warren thought, she had hiked her ass down to Kuppenheimer's.

"The evidence will show," Goodpaster concluded, "that the defendant" — she faced him squarely and jabbed a finger at Hector exactly the way they taught it at prosecutors' seminars, on the theory that if you don't do it the jury will believe your heart is not in it — "set out deliberately not merely to rob Dan Ho Trunh but to murder him. Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence will show that the murder was not the result of any struggle. There was no threat to the assailant and no resistance. The evidence will show that Hector Quintana intended from the very beginning to kill Dan Ho Trunh in order to steal a sum of less than $150. The evidence will show cold-blooded, premeditated murder of an unarmed human being."

Seated now, Hector Quintana threw his shaking hands up in the air. He groaned loudly — the wail of a tortured soul.

The piteous cry echoed through the courtroom. Every eye swung in his direction. Nancy Goodpaster's mouth fell open. For three full seconds the room was preternaturally silent, so that Warren could hear the thump of his own heart. Could a guilty man emit such a ravaged sound? Would the jury not grasp the truth?

Judge Parker cracked the silence:
"Counselor, don't let that happen again!
No more outbursts! I want his hands on the table or I'll have them cuffed!"

Warren whispered in Hector's ear, "Don't do that again." He added, more softly, "Not today."

When Goodpaster sat down, the judge waved a pale, many-ringed hand at the defense attorney.

The whole right side of Warren's face ached, but the headache was gone. The
bottle-fly bruise was turning from black-green to purple. His story was that at
two o'clock in the morning, coming back from the tall people's party, he had
blown a tire on the freeway. He had changed it himself; the jack had slipped. Warren had no idea whether anyone believed him.

He had prepared a short opening speech, but now he changed his mind. He cleared his throat and stood to face the jury.

Warren said, "Hector Quintana is innocent. He's innocent of everything he's been charged with. Not just 'not guilty' under the law, but truly innocent. The defense will show that he wasn't there. The defense will show that he didn't kill Dan Ho Trunh, and that this entire case is a frightening miscarriage of justice. And we will prove it to you beyond a reasonable doubt."

That was as far as he dared go.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The night after his meeting with Johnnie Faye Boudreau he had paced the carpet in his apartment, stared sightlessly at images on the TV, thumbed through law books and tomes on legal ethics. A great deal had been written about attorney-client privilege and the duty to keep or disclose client confidences. The lawyer as whistle-blower was a favorite topic for Bar Association symposiums. Debate was heated.

Warren had gone out to the balcony, where he gazed at a few stars glowing faintly between massed clouds. The heat pressed against his temples. He let cups of coffee grow cold.

One thing was clear. A trial was ostensibly a search for truth, but the test for truth was relevance and conformity to statute. No witness who swore to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" would be permitted to do so. The mantle of innocence was flung over the defendant to such an extent that he — or she — was safeguarded by rules of evidence which often barred revelation of that total truth. A defendant had the rights of counsel, trial by jury, due process, and the privilege against self-incrimination. To tell a secret to a lawyer believing that it was inviolate, and then have that lawyer reveal the secret, was a form of self-incrimination. The Code of Professional Responsibility and its fourth canon said: no matter how heinous the secret, to reveal it is forbidden.

Surely in this instance, Warren thought, there are overriding concerns, graver duties. What about his obligation to Hector Quintana?

Frantically he checked federal and Texas case law, just as Johnnie Faye Boudreau must have done. This too was stunningly clear: a client's confession about an unrelated crime must not be disclosed. The canon read: "A lawyer shall not knowingly use a confidence or secret of his client for the advantage of himself or of a third person unless the client consents after full disclosure." Confidentiality was sacred. And privileged communication did not lose its privileged status by reason of terminating the relationship. Even if Warren quit her in the Ott case, he was bound by the bond of silence. He was priest, she was penitent — forever.

No, he thought, this can't be. Whatever the penalty, I've still got to do it. If the law is an ass, so be it, but I am a human being.

The canons allowed him, since he had not been instructed otherwise, to share his knowledge with co-counsel. Late the next afternoon he went to Rick Levine's office. As afternoon cooled toward evening they walked together through Tranquility Park on the edge of the hard silver center of the city.

"You dumb son of a bitch," Rick said, "if you hadn't gone to her and given her that chance to throw a noose around your neck, you could have run right over to the D.A.'s office!"

"And told him that I suspected her? That I saw her car with a blue scratch on it? What good would that have done? I had no fucking
proof!"

"There must be exceptions to the privilege rule," Rick said gloomily.

"Yeah, there are four exceptions. If your client gives you permission, if a client tells you about a crime planned for the future, if it's the only way you can collect your fee, or if it's to defend yourself against a false accusation of wrongful conduct."

"Well, she's paid us, so that won't work. You don't think it would be wrongful conduct to let this guy Quintana go to jail for a murder that the dragon lady committed?"

"I do, but there's no accusation against me. That could only be if Quintana is convicted. And so what happens if I speak up then? I still have no proof! I can't nail Johnnie Faye to the wall, and if I can't do that I can't save Quintana."

They sat under a magnolia tree near a small pond and some beds of golden poppies. Lovely, Warren thought. The world is lovely. Humans are all that's corrupt.

Rick shrugged. "Then go to the D.A. now and tell him that you saw the scratches on the two cars. You figured it out all on your own. You never talked to her, she never confessed, and you're not violating confidentiality. Dump that in the D.A.'s lap and let him run with it."

Warren laughed bitterly. "I thought of that too. So they'll investigate her, but they can't prove anything. And then she brings charges against me before the judicial committee. She says, 'This guy lied four years ago in the Freer case, didn't he? He's doing it again. He hates me, and he's doing this to me to save another client's ass.' The D.A. may insist I take a polygraph. And I won't pass the test because I'll be lying about the lack of the confession. Then I'm disbarred."