Bennie. Just don’t mess up the patent application, it’s an original.”
“Brace yourself.” I reached for the glass but it popped out of my outstretched hand and tumbled end over end like a fumbled football.
“Argh!” Mark shouted, springing to his feet. “Jesus! That’s cold!” Eyes wide, he jumped away from counsel table, crunching the ice cubes in a frantic jig.
“Oh no!” I cried, then dropped the glass pitcher on his foot. “Oh, it slipped!”
“Yeeow!” Mark grabbed his toe. “Jesus H. Christ!”
“Oh, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I flapped my arms like a baby seal and tried to look helpless, which isn’t easy for me. I haven’t been helpless a day in my life.
Meantime, chaos was erupting at the front of the courtroom. A juror in the first row pointed in surprise. The back row, mostly older women, burst into giggles. Eve had turned around, her lipsticked mouth hanging open. Judge Thompson tore off his glasses, his lecture abandoned. “Bailiff! Deputy!” he barked. “Get some paper towels! I won’t have my tables stained!”
“Yes, Your Honor,” said the courtroom deputy, who was already hurrying over with paper towels. He shot me a dirty look as he mopped up the water pooling on counsel table and dripping onto the dark blue rug.
“Can I have a few of those?” Mark asked. He snatched a handful of towels and dabbed his crotch, which triggered another wave of tittering from the jurors in the back.
Judge Thompson sighed audibly. “Let’s break for the morning recess, ladies and gentlemen. Ms. Howard, please escort the jury out, since the deputy is otherwise engaged.”
“It’s your mess, you clean it up,” snapped the deputy. “Better make sure there’s no water marks.” He dumped the pile of paper towels on the table and walked off toward the court reporter, who was flexing her fingers.
The courtroom emptied quickly, the lawyers laughing and talking as they filed out. Plaintiffs counsel snapped his briefcase shut and left, walking past Dr. Haupt, who lingered by the door, his Teutonic features betraying only the slightest bit of annoyance. My acting had been so good I fooled even him. So be it. It wouldn’t be the first time I looked like a jerk for the cause.
“Thanks a whole lot, Bennie,” Mark said. He swabbed the huge, wet stain spreading like bad news across his crotch.
“Sorry, partner,” I told him, surprised to feel a tiny twinge of regret. Ice cubes melted into the rug, and Eve stepped over them delicately to reach us.
“You okay, honey?” she asked softly, and rubbed Mark’s back with a concern so touching I almost gagged.
“It’s water,” I pointed out. “He’ll live.”
“You could have been more careful,” she said, frowning. “I was just getting into my cross.”
I almost laughed. “Do you really believe this was an accident, child? I dumped the water to-”
“That’s enough, Bennie,” Mark interrupted, holding up a wet paper towel. “I’ll handle this.”
“Oh really.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“You’d better. I have to go, I have a new client. Lots of luck, kids.” I turned to avoid a puddle, then took off, banging through the heavy mahogany doors. As they closed I heard Eve’s laughter, followed by Mark’s. Masculine, heartier.
I remembered his laugh, I remembered it all.
Now what I had to do was forget it.
2
The goose egg made by the initial blow was tinged a virulent pink and a deep gash contorted the teenager’s strawberry blond eyebrow. His left eye had hemorrhaged, the white turned a crimson red, and that side of his face was mottled from bruise and trauma. Luckily, the skin on his forehead wasn’t split, so I guessed the weapon was a billyclub, not a service revolver. Somebody on the force must have liked young Bill Kleeb.
The judge had sent the case to me, since Kleeb and his girlfriend, Eileen Jennings, had filed complaints of police brutality, my expertise. Philadelphia had coughed up $20 million in lawsuits for police misconduct in the past two years, and most of the money went to clients of mine. My cases ran the gamut from police assault, excessive force, and false arrest to the officially “mistaken shooting,” like the grad student who was shot by an off-duty cop because the student was wearing a knit Eagles cap, the same as a robber seen fleeing in the area. The cop, who had been drinking, temporarily forgot that everybody in Philly wears Eagles caps, especially when the team’s in the playoffs.
That case had made headlines, as had the complaints I filed against the 39th District, where a cadre of Philly’s finest confessed to fencing stolen goods and falsifying evidence in drug cases, thereby sending over one hundred people, including a sixty-year-old tailor, to prison for twelve years. No matter that the tailor was innocent. He won two mil from the city, for which he paid my nominal fee and made me a custom suit. I liked my work, it had a purpose. The way I figured it, my hometown didn’t need me to tell it we had a problem in the department, it just needed me to remind it once in a while. For this I charged only a nuisance fee. My fee to be a nuisance.
“Now tell me again, Bill. Why didn’t you ask the cops for a doctor?” I took inane notes during the interview so I wouldn’t stare at his battered face, a part of the job I never got used to. I scribbled on my legal pad,DOCTOR, DOCTOR, GIMME THE NEWS.
“I said I didn’t need no doctor. They put ice. It was good enough.” His hair was a greasy blond, and splotchy freckles spread across his small nose and onto a swollen upper lip. Bill had the kind of teeth only poor kids have anymore, irregularly sized and spaced. Amazingly, none had been knocked out during the melee.
“You should have gotten it checked. Anytime you lose consciousness.”
“I’ll remember that.”
I wrote,I GOT A BAD CASE OF LOVIN ’YOU. “How’s your ribs? They all right?”
“Fine.”
“Does it hurt to breathe?”
“Nuh. See?” He blew a cone of cigarette smoke into the air.
“Impressive. No kicks to the stomach? No feet, clubs, anything?”
“I’m fine,” he said crankily, and I began to feel ticked off. Maybe it was the way the morning had gone so far.
“If you’re so fine, Bill, why did you allege the police used excessive force against you? And why do you want to plead not guilty when we have an offer that gets you out of jail free?”
“It’s Eileen, my girl.” He shifted position in his blue prison jumpsuit. “She… uh… wants us to do the same complaint… Together, like.”
“But it doesn’t make sense for you to plead not guilty. Eileen’s the one who started the trouble, she’s the one with the record.” For smalltime prostitution, but I didn’t need to drive home that point.
“She wants us to be, like, a united front.”
“Well, you’re not. You’re two different people, you have two different situations. That’s why you have separate lawyers. Eileen’s in more trouble than you. She had the weapon.”
“It was only a taser gun.”
“Electricity applied to the chest of an arresting officer. You think that doesn’t count?”
He ran his tongue over his swollen lip. “Eileen, she’s got quite a temper. She’ll be pissed if I don’t go along.”
“So what? Who wears the nose rings in this family?”
Bill winced as he dragged on his Salem. Cigarette smoke and cheap disinfectant thickened the air in the interrogation room. The lattice cage over the door window was furry with dust, and a chewed-up Styrofoam cup lay on its side on the filthy table. I’ve seen this same Styrofoam cup in every precinct in Philly. I think they move it
