Jake and I exchanged a look. We couldn’t argue. From the moment Jake had transferred into Special Trials two years ago, we’d found in each other a kindred workaholic spirit. Being a prosecutor was more than a career for us—it was a mission. Every victim’s plight became our own. It was our duty to balance their suffering with some measure of justice. But by an unspoken yet entirely mutual agreement, our passion for the work never led us into personal territory—either physically or verbally. We rarely had lunch outside the building together, and during the long nights after court when we’d bat our cases around, we never even considered going out to dinner; instead we’d raid my desk supply of tiny pretzels, made more palatable by the little packets of mustard Jake snatched from the courthouse snack bar. Not once in all those long nights had we ever discussed our lives outside the office— either before or after becoming prosecutors. I knew that this odd boundary in our relationship went deeper than our shared devotion to the job. It takes one to know one, and I knew that I never asked personal questions because I didn’t want to answer them. Jake played it close to the vest in the same way I did: don’t ask, don’t tell, and if someone does ask—deflect. The silent awareness of that shared sensibility let us relax with each other in a way we seldom could with anyone else.
“Well, she’s not entirely wrong, Tone,” Jake said with a smirk. “She did get lucky—she had Judge Tynan.”
Toni chuckled. “Oh sweet Jesus, you did get lucky. How many times did you slip?”
“Not too bad this time,” I admitted. “I only said ‘asshole’ once.”
“Not bad for you,” Toni remarked, amused. “When?”
“During rebuttal argument. And I was talking about one of my own witnesses.”
My inability to rein in my colorful language once I got going had earned me fines on more than one occasion. You’d think this financial incentive would’ve made me clean up my act. It hadn’t. All it had done was inspire me to keep a slush fund at the ready.
“There is an undeniable symmetry to your contempt citations,” Toni observed. “What did Tynan do?”
“Just said, ‘I’m warning you, Counsel.’ ” I sighed, took another sip of my drink, and stretched my legs out under the desk. “I wish I had all my cases in front of him.”
“Hah!” Jake snorted. “You’d wear out your welcome by your second trial, and you’d be broke by your third.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Jake shrugged. “Hey, I’m just sayin’…”
I laughed and threw a paper clip at him. He caught it easily in an overhand swipe, then looked out at the clock on the Times Building. “Shit, I’ve got to run. Later, guys.” He put down his cup and left. The sound of his footsteps echoed down the hallway.
I turned to Toni. “Refresher?” I said as I held up the bottle of Glenlivet.
Toni shook her head. “Nah. I’ve had enough of county ambience for one day. Why don’t we get out of here and hit Church and State? We should celebrate the hell out of this one.”
Church and State was a fun new restaurant in the old Meatpacking District, part of the ongoing effort to gentrify downtown L.A. Though how a restaurant that catered to a hip, moneyed crowd was going to make it with Skid Row just two blocks away was a looming question. I looked over at the stack of cases piled on the table where I kept my mini-fridge. I wanted to party, and with that gnarly no-body murder behind me, I could probably afford to. But the trial had taken me away from my other cases, and I always got a little—okay, a lot—panicky when I hadn’t looked in on a case for more than a few days. If I went out with Toni tonight, I’d just be stressing and wishing I were working. I owed it to her to spare her that drag.
“Sorry, Tone, I—”
“Don’t even bother—I know.” Toni shook her head as she plunked her mug down on my desk and stood to go. “You can’t even take time off for one little victory lap? It’s sick, is what it is.”
But it wasn’t news, as evidenced by the lack of surprise in Toni’s voice.
“How about tomorrow night? We’ll do Church and State, whatever you want,” I promised with more hope than conviction. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to wade through the pile of cases and finish all the catch-up work by then. But I hated to disappoint Toni, so I privately vowed to push myself hard and make it happen.
Toni looked at me and sighed. “Sure, we’ll talk tomorrow.” She slung her laptop bag over one shoulder and her purse over the other. “I’m heading out. Try not to stay too late. If even your OCD partner-in-crime took a powder,” she said, tilting her head toward Jake’s office, “you can spare a night off too.”
“I know.” I looked toward his office. “What’s up with that?” I laughed.
“Maybe his alien leaders told him to get a friggin’ life,” Toni said as she moved to the doorway. “And I’ve already got one, so I am now officially exiting the OCD Zone.” She smiled and headed down the hall.
“Have fun!”
“You too,” she called back. In a loud stage whisper, she muttered, “Ya freak.”
“I heard that!” I yelled out.
“Don’t care!”
I leaned back to rest my head against the cold leather of the majestic judge’s chair. It was a tight fit at my little county-issue prosecutor’s desk, but I didn’t mind. The chair had mysteriously appeared late one night, abandoned in the hallway a few doors from my office. I’d looked up and down the hall to make sure the coast was clear, then whisked it into my office and pushed my own sorry little chair out to a hallway distant enough that it wouldn’t be traced back. As I’d returned to my office, scanning the hallway for witnesses, I wondered whether someone had “liberated” the chair straight out of a judge’s chambers. The possibility made my score even more triumphant.
I turned to the stack of case files and pulled the first one off the top, but within fifteen minutes I felt my eyelids drooping. I’d thought I’d had enough energy to plow through at least a few cases, but as usual I’d underestimated how tired I was. And the Glenlivet hadn’t helped.
I listened to the last stragglers chatter their way out of the office. As the door snicked closed behind them, silence filled the air. I was tired, but I wasn’t ready to go home. This was my favorite part of the day, when I had the whole DA’s office to myself. No phones, no friends, no cops to distract me. I exhaled and looked out the window at the view that never got old. The streetlights had blinked on, and the jagged outline of the downtown L.A. office buildings glowed against the encroaching darkness. From my perch on the eighteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building, I could see all the way from the main cop shop, the Police Administration Building, to the theaters at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and all the streets and sidewalks in between. The irony of being in the middle of those two extremes still made me smile. Just having an office with a window was a coup—let alone one with a spectacular view. But the fact that it had come with my transfer into Special Trials—the unit I’d worked my ass off to get into for seven years—made it a delicious victory.
Not that I’d minded working the routine felonies during my stints in the smaller Van Nuys and Compton branch courts. Seeing the same defendants come back to the fold with a new case every couple of years gave the job a kind of homey, family feeling. Sure, it was a weird, dysfunctional, and largely criminal family, but still. So it wasn’t as though I was miserable when I worked the outlying courts. It just wasn’t for me. From the moment I’d heard of the Special Trials Unit, based in the hub of the DA’s office downtown, I’d known it was where I wanted to be. I’d been warned by the senior prosecutors in the branch courts about the long hours, the marathon-length trials, the public scrutiny, and the endless pressure I’d face in the unit. I didn’t tell them that, for me, that was the allure. And being in the unit was even better than I’d imagined. On almost every case, I got to work with great cops and the best lawyers—for both the prosecution and the defense—I’d ever seen. Far from a detraction, the intensity of the job was exhilarating. Too often in life a long-desired goal, once achieved, turns out to be much less than expected—as they say, “Be careful what you wish for.” Not this time. Getting into Special Trials was all I’d hoped for and then some, and I savored that fact at least once a day.
I tried to drag my mind back down to the supplemental reports—updates on the investigation—that had been added to the case file during the last month, but the words were blurring on the page. I leaned back in my chair, hoping to catch a second wind, and watched the cars crawl down Main Street. The sky had darkened, and clouds were moving in.
I could tell my second wind wasn’t going to arrive anytime soon. I decided to admit defeat and pack it in for the night. I got up, stretched, walked over to the table next to the window where I’d dropped my briefcase, and brought it over to my desk. I threw in five of the files—wishful thinking, I knew—picked up my purse, and grabbed my coat off the hook on the back of the door. I swung into my jacket and slung the strap of my briefcase over my
