I hurried down a narrow alley toward the back entrance of the building, nearly running into Curly Hendry, who was leaning on his rolling trash bin. Curly, who was bald, had spent several stretches in the county jail, plus a couple of years upstate. I represented him once, when cops found an ATM machine all trussed up in a towing chain, the other end of which was attached to a winch on his heavy-duty Dodge pickup. These days, he pushed a broom for the county.
"Qué pasa, Curly?"
"Don't talk no Espan-oley to me, Jake. I'm just a cracker who's got to clean up after them crazy island fuckers." He pointed into the trash bin and held his nose. "So far this morning, three dead chickens and a goat's head. Now what's this?"
He bent down and looked at a cake with frosted icing.
"To sweeten a judge's disposition," I told him.
"Damn voodoo."
"More like Santería."
"Makes me want to move to Georgia. Yesterday, had some damn broken eggs out here. The sun got to 'em before I did, could smell 'em all the way to Hialeah."
"They're to make the case collapse."
He scooped up the cake and tossed it into the trash bin. "Last week, a dead lizard with its mouth tied shut."
"That's—"
"I know. To shut up a snitch."
"Right."
"So, Jake, what brings you out here with all these witch doctors and Third World types?"
"Bond hearing. Say, Curly, you find anything that'll get me bond in a murder one?"
"To hell with cakes and lizards, Jake. Just pray for a judge whose brother-in-law is a bondsman who needs the work. If not, slip some Ben Franklins in an envelope and call it a campaign contribution."
"Curly, you know I don't play the game that way."
He went back to his broom. "No damn wonder I did twenty-seven months at Avon Park."
"If a bad childhood were an excuse for murder, our prisons would be empty," Abe Socolow said gravely. "I'm quite sure every inmate on death row had a perfectly atrocious childhood. Far worse than that of Ms. Christina Bernhardt in her oceanfront mansion, I daresay."
He daresay?
Abe Socolow had a tendency toward pomposity, but for a prosecutor, he was almost human. A little rigid, a little self-righteous, but honest and fair. He was tall and lean and sallow and preferred undertaker-black suits with white shirts and blood-red ties. His cuff links were miniature silver handcuffs.
At the moment, Honest Abe was ridiculing my assertion that the state had overcharged my client, going for murder instead of manslaughter.
"Recovered memories," Socolow sniffed. "Posttraumatic stress disorder. Judge, these silver-tongued defense lawyers come up with more syndromes than a dog's got fleas."
Damn, it sounded like Abe had been talking to my granny. Either that or he was just trying to be folksy, something that didn't come naturally. Judge Myron Stanger peered down from the bench, his eyes hidden behind tinted glasses so we couldn't tell when he dozed off. He had a bulbous nose lined with tiny blue veins and a white fringe of hair on his egg-shaped head. His Honor was fond of the Bolivar brand of Cuban cigars, and at this moment was chewing on a cold Corona Gigantes, in violation of both courtroom protocol and the federal Embargo Act. The judge was flanked by the American flag and the Florida flag. A set of Florida Statutes sat, still in shrink wrap, on his desk. Only a few spectators were on the long wooden benches that resembled church pews. I was sitting at the defense table on a heavy mahogany chair whose brown leather seat had cracked with age and taken on the shininess of cheap trousers.
Abe rambled on, "Battered-spouse syndrome supposedly lets a woman kill her husband, though she's in no immediate danger. A white man guns down two black teenagers and says he's been traumatized by urban survival syndrome and ought to be excused. A woman who shot her husband on Super Bowl Sunday says she suffers from football widow syndrome. A fellow charged with tax evasion has failure-to-file syndrome. Abused-child syndrome, black rage, mob psychosis—where's it going to end? I ask Your Honor, where will it all end?"
Judge Stanger seemed startled, perhaps wondering if Socolow really wanted an answer. Then he said, "Let's not argue the case today, gentlemen. This is merely a bond hearing, and under Arthur v. State, the defense has the burden of showing that the proof is not great and that a presumption of guilt is not evident. As I understand the proffered testimony of Dr. Schein and Mr. Lassiter's argument, there's no factual dispute. The defendant shot her father."
The judge nodded toward the defense table, where Chrissy, in a jailhouse smock, sat next to me. We'd get her dressed up prim and proper by the time a jury was called. She seemed dazed, out of place, in the controlled chaos of the courtroom. To those of us who work there, it's a second home. Same for my customers, those recidivists who know as much law as I do. But to someone from east of the highway, as we call those who grew up near the ocean, it's a frightening new world.
The judge waved his giant cigar in my direction and said, "While conceding that the shooting occurred, Mr. Lassiter argues that the defendant may not have had the requisite criminal intent to be charged with premeditated murder. Is that about it?"
"All the elements of the crime having been established, the grand jury indicted her for first-degree murder," Socolow said, raising his hands, as if it were out of his control.
"The grand jury would parade naked down Biscayne Boulevard if Abe asked them to," I piped up.
"Your Honor," Socolow said, shooting me a murderous glance, "even assuming all this psychiatric mumbo-jumbo is true, it's not a defense. Just because criminal behavior is caused doesn't mean it's excused."
I got to my feet and approached the lectern for the second time that morning. "May it please the court," I
