False Allegations

with your own preference.'

'Doesn't matter to me.'

'Please,' he said quietly. 'Indulge me. It's one of my pleasures to give people exactly what they want.'

'An armchair, then.'

The woman spun sharply and left the room. He remained standing, hands clasped behind his back, saying nothing. The woman came back in, carrying a butterscotch leather armchair in her hands as easily as if it was a portable typewriter. She held it level, using only her wrists, walking it over next to the fan–backed chair. She moved back and forth, still holding the chair aloft, until she was satisfied. Then she put it down gently.

'Please…,' he said.

I took a seat just as he did. We were facing each other. I was looking over his shoulder at the bright windows. His face was in a shadow just past the light. I couldn't see the woman—she was somewhere in the room, somewhere behind my back.

Maybe two minutes passed. I kept my eyes on the lenses of his glasses, breathing shallow. If he thought waiting was going to make me nervous, he didn't know as much about me as he thought he did.

'You probably think I went to a great deal of trouble,' he said, finally.

'Depends on what you wanted,' I answered. 'If it was just to impress a small–timer like me, you wasted your money.'

A flickering just to my left. The white wall. Only now it was a painting. No, a photograph…a giant photograph of a child's kite, dark blue against a pale–blue sky, a long tail dangling, strips of different–colored ribbons tied on. The kite seemed to float on the wall, moving in a breeze I couldn't feel. A hologram? It was hypnotic, pulling me into it. I turned my eyes back to the man, focusing on the lenses of the pink glasses.

'What I wanted,' he said, like he hadn't noticed me looking away, 'was to prove to you that I am a fellow professional. A serious person, with serious business.'

'What business is that?' I asked him, getting to it.

'I'm an investigator,' he answered. 'Like you. In fact, we investigate the same things.'

'I'm not a PI,' I said. 'I may have looked into a few things for some people over the years. But that's not what I do. That's not me. You've got me confused—'

'No, Mr. Burke. I don't have you confused with anyone else. Confusion is not a problem for me. Not in any area. I had thought—what with all the trouble I went to—that perhaps we could dispense with the need for all the tiresome fencing about and just talk business. As professionals.'

'Professionals get paid,' I reminded him.

'Yes. And if you accept my offer to…participate in what I'm working on now, you will be paid, I assure you. You and I will have no financial problems, Mr. Burke—there is money in this for you. And more, perhaps.'

'More?'

'Perhaps. What I need from you now is a quality you have already demonstrated amply. Some patience, that's all. I went to all this…trouble, as I continually refer to it, to set the stage. Not out of any sense of theatricality, but to make a point. I have an offer for you, but it will take some time to explain. If you'll grant me that time, you will be rewarded.'

'How much time?'

'Say, an hour,' he said, glancing at the wafer–thin watch with a moon–phase chronograph face he wore on his left wrist. 'Perhaps ninety minutes. Right now. All you need do is listen…although you are free to interrupt, ask me any questions you wish.'

'And the reward?'

'The reward is down the road, Mr. Burke. And like all rewards, it is not guaranteed. But professionals don't talk about rewards, do they? Professionals talk about compensation. Payment. Will you agree to, say, a thousand dollars. For listening. One hour. That's a better rate than any lawyer gets.'

'I'm not a lawyer.'

'I am. Do we have a deal?'

'Yeah,' I said, tapping one of the tiny buttons on the cell phone in my pocket to auto–dial the phone in the Rover. The audio had been disconnected—the little phone didn't make a sound—but Clarence would get the ring at his end.

I heard the tap of the woman's spike heels, felt her come up behind me on my right side. Smelled her thick orchid perfume, felt a heavy breast against the back of my shoulder. A small, chubby hand extended into my vision. Her manicure was perfect, the nails cut short and blunt, burst–orange lacquer matching her eyes. Her hand was holding what looked like fresh–minted bills. I took the bills, slipped them into my inside pocket. Her breast stayed against the back of my shoulder for an extra couple of seconds, then she moved back to her post, somewhere behind me.

'Would you like to smoke?' he asked, tilting his head to look at the woman.

'Smoke?' I asked, a puzzled look on my face.

'Oh. Excuse me. I thought you…'

I looked at him blankly. The faintest tremor rippled across his face. He was a man who relied on information. Needed it to be right—because he was going to use it.

He cleared his throat. 'Very well. As I said, I am a lawyer. Law school was a great disappointment. A simple–minded exercise—not exactly an intellectual challenge. You know what excites law students—those budding little sociopaths? The great apocryphal stories: Like the man who paid his lawyer a fortune to create an unbreakable will…and was later hired by the same man's widow to break it. And the professors—those pitiful little failures with their practiced little affectations. The older ones bombard you with pomposities, the younger ones act oh–so cynical, so blase. You know: 'A trial isn't a search for truth, it's a contest to determine a winner.' Well, it was then I decided: my career would be precisely that—a search for the truth.'

I shifted position in the armchair just enough to show him I was listening, counting time in my head.

'But it was all a lie,' he said, the titanium wire clear in his voice. 'Ninety per cent of all cases are over as soon as the jury is picked. Juries today are over–amped on their own power. They're treated as celebrities—the garbage press waits with bated breath for their 'revelations,' as though the morons actually have something of value to contribute to our collective store of knowledge. Ah, the sacred 'impartial' jury…with each member trying to outpace the others in getting their story to the media first. It's all media now. Haven't you ever seen them walk out of the courtroom holding up their index fingers, doing their stupid 'We're Number One!' routine because they just awarded some mugger ten million dollars…some poor soul who was shot by the police trying to escape? It's disgusting.'

I shrugged my shoulders. Me, I was never in front of a jury. Like most people who live in my part of the city, I had the opportunity plenty of times…but that was one chance I never took.

'Do you understand the concept of jury nullification? Where the jury just decides to ignore the evidence and substitute its own will?'

'What's to understand?'

'What's to understand, Mr. Burke, is how the concept has become so perverted. Classically, jury nullification applied when the law was the problem, not the facts. So a father shoots and kills two men who had raped his daughter. The jury hears all about how he had no right to defend his daughter after the attack took place, but it decides to disregard the law in favor of justice, and they find him not guilty, yes? Today, jurors nullify the facts. If they don't like the way the police investigated the case, if they don't like the way the prosecutor presented it, if they don't like the way one of the witnesses spoke on the stand…whatever…they simply refuse to convict.

'It's a disgrace. A foul, disgusting perversion,' he spewed venomously. 'It makes me sick to my stomach. Did you know there are actually 'Jury Clubs?' And that they lobby for what they're calling 'Juror's Rights' now? It's as though some demonic trickster had rewritten the Bible: '…and a pack of imbeciles shall lead us.''

'That wouldn't be a major change,' I said. 'What with Congress and all.'

'It's not a source of humor to me, Mr. Burke,' he said quietly. 'With Congress, there is at least some sense of reviewability, do you understand? But once a guilty man is set free by jury nullification, that's the end. The injustice is permanent.'

'Yeah, okay. So, then you…?'

'First I tried matrimonial law,' Kite said, brushing aside my interruption like I hadn't spoken. 'I thought that