It seldom worked. He didn’t really expect it to. Clients lie for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they’re embarrassed at what they’ve done. Sometimes, if they admit guilt, they’re afraid you won’t fight as hard for them. That, of course, was ass-backwards. You have to fight harder for someone who actually did the deed. How else could you win?
Long ago, Steve decided there were several ways to pry the truth from perjurious clients.
You can plead with the weaselly bastards:
You can treat your client like an adverse witness. Bob and weave and cross-examine:
Or you can pound them into submission with a frontal assault:
As he walked into the county jail, Steve still hadn’t decided on his approach. He figured he’d just look at Nash and instinctively know what to do.
The visitors’ room was crowded with wives, girlfriends, and children of the men who were awaiting trial or had been sentenced to less than a year’s incarceration. The place smelled of dried sweat, dirty feet, diapers, and machine oil. From inside, inmates shouted and wailed. Steve had come to believe that modern jails and medieval mental asylums had a lot in common.
He had been here hundreds of times, but the overweight sergeant at the desk still insisted on making him show his Florida Bar card when logging in.
“Crenshaw, why do you do this? You know me.”
“I figure one day, after they disbar you, you’ll show up without that card.”
Sticking out his tongue at the security camera, Steve signed the sheet. He waited for Crenshaw to hit the buzzer and open the steel-barred door.
“Can you hurry up, Sergeant? I’ve got a wrongfully accused man waiting for me.”
“Nope. Regs say I can keep out any visitor who’s inappropriately dressed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your T-shirt, asshole.” He pointed at Steve’s chest and the slogan:
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s blasphemous.”
“It’s satirical. Like that old bumper sticker
“Solomon? That’s a Jewish name, right?”
“Aw, jeez, Crenshaw. Don’t pull a Mel Gibson on me.”
“You wanna come into my house, you gotta take that shirt off. Except then you’d still be inappropriately dressed, so I guess you’re shit out of luck today.”
Steve could have told him to go fuck himself. Or he could have called the ACLU. Instead, he tugged the T- shirt over his head, turned it inside out, and put it back on again.
Crenshaw glared at him. “All defense lawyers are cockroaches, ain’t that right, Solomon?”
“Will it speed this up if I say yes?”
“And this is the roach motel.” The buzzer sounded, and the electric lock clinked open. “One day you’re gonna check in, Solomon, but you ain’t checking out.”
Three minutes after being insulted by the bored and burned-out sergeant, Steve wagged a finger at his client. “Nash, you stupid shit! Why are you lying to me?”
The frontal assault.
“I’m not lying,” Nash whined. A kid accused of swiping cookies.
“You didn’t need a boat to pick up the dolphins. If you were really worried about them swimming back to the park, you could have bolted the gate on your way out.”
Nash shook his head stubbornly. Jailhouse stink clung to his faded orange jumpsuit, and he looked as if he’d lost weight on jail gruel. “We were afraid they’d stay there and be recaptured. Or just swim back up the channel when the gate was opened. That’s what Sanders said, anyway.”
“My nephew says he’s wrong.”
“I dunno. Sanders knew all about dolphins. Even their Latin name.
Then it’s even worse, Steve thought. If Sanders was so damn knowledgeable, he’d lied to Nash. But why?
“Let’s start at the beginning,” Steve said. “Sanders offered to provide the boat, right?”
Nash nodded. “He said he could get one with a lift and a saltwater tank.”
“And the two guys on the boat. Where’d they come from?”
“Dunno. Except they worked for Sanders.”
“And you have no idea where I can find them?”
Nash dug a finger into one ear. It didn’t make him look any smarter. “I didn’t meet them until they ferried our Jet Skis over to the Key. Never asked their names and they didn’t offer. Last time I saw them was when they dropped Passion and Sanders and me off.”
“How about a description? What did they look like?”
“Two guys in their thirties in good shape.”
“Great. I’ll look for suspects at Bally’s.”
“Fuck, man. It was dark out. The guys wore watch caps. They never made eye contact.”
“Anything? Tattoos. A limp. Three arms?”
Nash seemed to think about it. The effort slackened his lips and opened his mouth, as if he’d suffered a stroke. “One guy was real muscular, the other more wiry. And he had a scar on his forearm.”
“Which arm?”
“Don’t remember. And it wasn’t a scar exactly. More like a chunk missing with scar tissue built up. Like a bullet might have grazed him.”
“Either guy say anything?”
“Not to me.”
“To Sanders, then?”
Nash shrugged again. A lazy slacker shrug. “Only thing I remember, right before we put the Jet Skis in the water, Sanders said something about the wind picking up, asked if the Gulf Stream would be rough. One of the guys told him not to worry about it.”
“Were those his exact words? ‘Don’t worry about it’?”
“More like, ‘Stop worrying. You do your job, we’ll do ours.’”
“Why would you cross the Stream? If you were gonna release the dolphins, you had lots of open water without going that far.”
“I never thought about it. Me and Passion weren’t going along for the ride. We were gonna ditch the Jet Skis under the Rickenbacker, then pick up her car.”
“So you never asked Sanders why he was going to all the trouble to gather up the dolphins, take them somewhere, and set them free again?”
“I just figured Sanders wanted to release them on the Great Bahama Bank. You know, where there’s a lot of fish to eat.”
“Why not just take them to Red Lobster?”
“Okay, so maybe I didn’t think this through. Maybe I didn’t plan it right.”
“You didn’t plan it at all. Sanders did. Maybe with Passion’s help.”
Nash looked shocked, as if he’d never thought of that, either.
“My nephew thinks you weren’t setting the dolphins free. You were kidnapping them.”
“No frigging way! I believe animals have certain inalienable rights. You know that.”
