3
PACK A MARLBORO LIGHTS, box. Make it two.” Sammy Cutler fished a crumpled twenty out of his pocket. He threw a container of Tic-Tacs onto the conveyer as well, joining a couple of frozen dinners. The grocery store clerk, a young Latina woman with soft skin and hair as dark as coal, looked as bored and tired as Sammy felt. Sammy had just finished a double shift on the new highway being built. He figured he had another month, tops, of good weather before the construction trade shut down for the long winter. He didn’t have a backup plan at the moment. Employers weren’t knocking down the door for ex-cons.
He slipped one pack of cigarettes into the pocket of his flannel shirt, the other in his leather jacket. He noticed his hands, big and rough and hairy and swollen from another day of manual labor.
“Where the hell is Manny?”
Sammy glanced at the complaining man, standing in the next grocery line over, wearing a starched white shirt and a name tag that indicated some authority. Top grocery guy. He grabbed a plastic bag and began packing groceries that were piling up in the area past the register.
“Griffin,” the man said. “Griffin!”
Sammy felt his body go cold.
“-your change, mister.”
Sammy looked down at the green bills and silver coins placed into his hands. Then back up, at a man who entered his sight line, approaching the grocery store manager. The man was small, hunched, with small green eyes and cropped hair, grayed at the sides but mostly a dark red.
“Work this aisle, Griffin. Where is Manny?”
“
Sammy bristled at hearing the voice. He’d never heard the man speak. Never even laid eyes on the man. He’d been so young.
And surely there were other people with the name, however unusual it may be.
But he looked the part. Sammy had served with some of them, the ones who liked little kids. You could spot them from a mile away. Meek and squirrelly. Like they carried an inner shame that never left them.
Yes. This was the man that had killed his sister twenty-six years ago.
Sammy felt himself move, his focus on the grocery clerk named
“Don’t forget your groceries, mister.”
Sammy’s trembling hand reached out. His grip closed over the plastic handle of the bag.
“Don’t worry,” he said slowly. “I haven’t forgotten.”
ONE YEAR LATER OCTOBER 2007
4
HE CALLED an hour ahead for an appointment, and he called himself Mr. Smith. Over the phone to my assistant, he didn’t specify the reason for the visit other than saying he had a “legal matter,” which distinguished him from absolutely no one else who entered my law office.
From the moment my assistant Marie showed him in, he felt wrong. He presented, frankly, better than most potential clients. He was thin, precisely dressed in an Italian wool suit, a deep dimple in his shiny blue tie, gray hair immaculately combed. It was clear that whatever he wanted from me, he’d be able to afford the freight. So far, so good.
But still-wrong. His hand was moist when I shook it, and he didn’t make eye contact. As I retreated behind my desk, he closed the office door behind him. It wasn’t uncommon for visitors to want discretion with their lawyer, but still-it was my office, not his. It was a power move, establishment of control.
“Mr. Smith,” I said, wondering if that was his real name. I was assuming this was a criminal matter, and I like to guess the crime before the client tells me. A slick guy like him made me think of financial crimes or pedophilia. If it was the latter, this was going to be a very short conversation.
Smith didn’t seem too impressed with the surroundings. I wasn’t, either. I had a couple of diplomas on the walls and some pieces of art picked up at an estate sale and some bookcases filled with law books I never use. My brother had given me a couch that I put near the back of my office, though I wasn’t sure if that made the place look too cramped.
In his thousand-dollar suit, Smith looked like a fish out of water. He had one of those pocket squares that matched his tie. I never owned a pocket square in my life. I hate pocket squares.
“We’ll require your services, Mr. Kolarich. Can you tell me your hourly fee?”
In my recent reincarnation as a solo practitioner, I find that I have three categories of clients. Category one is a flat fee to handle a small criminal matter, like a DUI or misdemeanor. Category two pays me by the hour, with an up-front retainer. Category three is the client who promises to pay but stiffs me instead.
My hourly fee, where applicable, is usually a buck fifty. But I decided, then and there, that it was time to have an escalating fee schedule, depending on whether my client wears a pocket square.
“Three hundred,” I answered. It felt nice just saying it.
Smith seemed amused. Well-bred as he was-or was trying to appear-he stifled any comment. He was getting a mark-up, and he wanted me to know that he knew.
It usually took me a full half hour to dislike someone, but this guy was narrowing that window considerably.
“Three hundred an hour would be acceptable,” said he.
Then again, maybe I was being too hard on the guy.
“You’re young,” Smith said to me. “Young for a case like this.”
“Mozart composed a symphony before the age of ten.”
“I see.” I didn’t get the impression that Smith was placing me in the same category as the prodigy Amadeus.
“You came to me, friend,” I reminded him.
He didn’t offer a response, but I could see that he wasn’t here by choice. Why, then,
“The man you’ll be representing is charged with first-degree murder, Mr. Kolarich.”
That sounded like something important, so I reached for my pen and notepad. I wrote,
“The man he killed was a sexual predator,” Smith told me.
My would-be client killed a pedophile? Well, if you’re going to pick a victim, there’s none better.
“And who are you to this guy?” I asked Smith.
He thought about that for a while. It didn’t seem like a hard question to me.
Typically, if it’s not the defendant himself reaching out for counsel, it’s a family member on his behalf. I didn’t get the sense that Smith fell into that category.
“As you can imagine,” Smith finally said, “sex offenders usually count their victims in the multiple, not the singular.”
Right, but he was being vague. Talking around the subject. I do that all the time, but I don’t trust people who
