I assure her that no deal can be cut without her final approval. We haggle for several minutes and finally she accepts this. Though she warns me that she will go to trial on anything less man an outright dismissal. We will see. I rise and begin to move toward the courtroom.
A scruffy character with a three-day growth of beard, wearing frayed blue jeans and a tanktop, shuffles down the corridor behind his lawyer. The man’s attorney pauses to check the calendar pinned on the bulletin board outside the courtroom. His client studies Hawley with a sleepy, lustful gaze as he scratches the head of a blue dragon emblazoned by tattoo on his upper arm. If it were physically possible, I would attest to the fact that I can see waves of rancorous odor rising from his body. His finger slides from his arm to reach the latest itch through a hole in the rear of his jeans.
As for Hawley, she is oblivious to the man’s wandering eyes. I wonder if she is merely desensitized to years of male leering or if it is simply that the favors of Susan Hawley are without question beyond the price of this scurvy soul.
Armando Acosta, judge of the superior court, studies the open file on his desk. The premature bald circle on the back of his head shines through threads of fine straight black hair like the tonsure of some medieval monk. He looks up, peering over half-frame spectacles. For the first time since taking this case, I’m becoming convinced that I’ll have to go to trial to defend Susan Hawley. I’m confronted not only by the intransigence of my client but by the presence of Jimmy Lama in the judge’s chambers. He has joined Al Gibbs, the young deputy DA assigned to the case.
Lama is a thirty-year veteran of the police force, though his rank as a sergeant doesn’t indicate this. He represents everything objectionable in the overbearing, badge-heavy cop. He’s been successfully defended three times, though only Providence knows how, on charges of excessive force and brutality. The last time his collar earned forty-three stitches performing acrobatics through a plate-glass display window. According to Lama, the fifty-six-year-old wino dove through the glass, unaided, in an effort to escape.
Acosta looks up, impatience written in his eyes. “Please, gentlemen, don’t all speak at once.” The insistent tone in Acosta’s voice is scrupulously refined by years of practiced judicial arrogance.
I talk before Gibbs can open his mouth. “It’s a case of overcharging, Your Honor. The DA’s trying to bootstrap this thing into a felony on some thin theory of pimping and pandering.”
Under the law, a prostitute offering her services on the street is chargeable with a misdemeanor, but her pimp can be sentenced to state prison on felony charges. They are trying to nail Hawley on a half-baked assumption that she not only sold herself, but pimped for another woman.
Gibbs sits fidgeting in his chair, waiting politely for his turn, as if he’s at high tea. I know him; he has a good mind, but no fire in the belly.
Acosta’s impatience grows and finally he stares openly at Gibbs. “Did you come here for a purpose, counsel, or are we assembled for your entertainment?”
Gibbs begins to stutter. “Y-Your Honor. The lady was running a bordello out of her apartment. She was caught soliciting payment for sexual intercourse on behalf of another hooker,” he says.
In fact, this is a gross exaggeration, which I protest to Acosta. Hawley shared an apartment with another woman. She paid the rent and the telephone bills while her co-tenant bought the groceries and paid for the remainder of the utilities. The fact that the phone was in Hawley’s name and was used for incoming calls to hire dates for both women forms the basis for charges that she was pimping for the other woman. I put on the facts like a suit of clothes and verbally pound the table. It’s an explanation that seems to fit well, to the discerning eye of Armando Acosta. He has never been one much for the finer intricacies of the law.
Acosta’s now shuffling papers on his desk. He speaks in a staccato with a faint Mexican accent, not the intonations of street Spanish, but elegant and precise, as if the next phrase from his lips will hawk the rich qualities of “Corinthian leather.” It is an articulation that, like the judicial bearing, has been learned, for despite his Hispanic surname Acosta does not speak the language. The affected inflections of voice are just another concession to the politics of demography in a state with a rapidly rising Latino population. I have heard the poverty lawyers-the young Hispanics on their steeds tilting at the bastions of the establishment, the ones working for La Raza and the Mexican-American Defense Fund. In their circle, Acosta is known as the “Castilian Coconut,” brown and fuzzy on the outside, but white as driven snow at the core. He worships regularly at the altar of affirmative action, but anyone even vaguely familiar with the jurist knows that he has more in common with the Anglos on the board of directors of the Del Prado Country Club with whom he serves than with the brown grounds-keepers who rake its sand traps and mow its manicured greens.
But for the moment Acosta is a good judge, of sound discretion. He sides with me.
He stares at the DA. “Is this true, counsel? Are you trying to leverage this case to a felony, for purposes of plea bargaining? Because if that’s what’s going on here, this court will not countenance it.”
“No, Your Honor.” Gibbs’s denial is hollow.
There’s a momentary vacuum as Acosta waits for a further reply. Finally the void is filled, but not by Gibbs. It’s a gravelly voice to the far side of the prosecutor. “Not exactly, Your Honor.” Lama has waded in. “We’re just askin’ for her cooperation,” he says.
This is a little dance that we’ve been doing now for nearly two months-Lama, Gibbs, and I. It seems that my client is part of a larger group-ladies of the night who franchise their services to lobbyists and others who use the women to influence votes and other public actions. Lama wants their client list. Harry has dubbed mat list “the boink book.” The police have been conducting a white-collar-crime investigation, and the list of clients has become pivotal.
“She wants our consideration,” says Lama, “me lady’s gotta lay down and roll over.”
“Excuse me?” says Acosta.
“Feed us some of the bigger fish,” says Lama.
“Oh,” says the judge.
“What the officer’s trying to say,” says Gibbs, “is that the defendant is a key witness. She knows the identities of significant public officials who have partaken of her services in return for votes and other official acts.”
“So we’re talking bribery?” says Acosta.
“In a big way.” Lama’s nodding now as if the judge has finally caught on.
“What would you have me do, officer, package the lady for felony trial just so that you can squeeze her a little, based on this-your bald allegations?” Acosta has a look of wonderment on his face.
“In a word, yes.” It is Lama at his deadpan best.
“Your Honor, all we want is her cooperation.” Gibbs tries to put a face on it, tries to silence Lama before he can do more damage.
“We are prepared to allow her to enter a plea to a single misdemeanor charge of prostitution, in return for her testimony.”
“I don’t like this,” I say. “If the state has evidence of my client’s complicity in other crimes, I have a right to see it, Your Honor.”
“You don’t have a right to anything, counsel,” Lama shoots from the lip. “This information is confidential. It’s got nothing to do with the prosecution of your client.”
“Well, excuse me,” I say, “but I’d like something besides your word for that.”
Verbally we have stepped around Acosta. I’m now toe to toe with Lama, my words directed down the line past Gibbs, who sits fidgeting in his chair, flustered by the eroding decorum.