Nelson is in deep consultation with Meeks. It would take a minor miracle to rehabilitate Skarpellos now. It takes Nelson and Meeks less than five seconds to come to this same conclusion. The best they can do is to get him out of the courtroom, out of the sight of this jury as quickly as possible, and hope that memories, like the dark days of winter, are short.

CHAPTER 38

Susan Hawley has been captured by the police; her picture from a file photo-part of a story about the trial on the evening news-netted her in L.A. As always, she was in the tow of other beautiful people, at a gala with some movie mogul when the cops nailed her.

Harry and I are in a quandary, whether to call her to the stand or not. We’re closeted in my office talking strategy.

Skarpellos has made such a disaster of his testimony that it’s hard to imagine that anything further could be gained by putting Hawley up.

Harry says no. “She’s slick,” he says, “bright and quick.” The stuff of which pricey call girls are made. If they applied themselves in other ways, most could make it in the world of corporate high finance, I think.

“It’s risky,” says Harry. “Skarpellos couldn’t save himself, but Hawley might.” There is concern here that she could come up with a plausible story for the $25,000 “loan”-a down payment on a condo, or a new car. She might say that she told the Greek this. “Then she’ll flash big eyes at the jury,” says Harry. “I can hear her. She will tell them, ‘That Tony, lover that he is, he just forgot, that’s all.’ ” Like that, we could lose all we’ve gained from the Greek.

Harry looks at me stark and cold, like this is a premonition. It is one of the things I like best about Harry. He has good instincts.

It is for reasons such as this that I was not more overt in pointing to Skarpellos in my opening statement. Nelson would have done more to cover up. This is more difficult now. We are deep in the defense case, and Nelson is saddled with the Greek’s lame explanation for the $25,000 “loan.” He is, I think, not likely to move the court to reopen his own case to call Susan Hawley.

“If we could crush her on the stand,” I tell Harry, “get her to admit that it was all a scam, tampered testimony that Skarpellos bought, that Tony and she were not together on the night Ben was murdered, it would be like putting the smoking gun in the Greek’s hand.”

Harry looks at me, a wry smile. This is the stuff of trial lawyer lore, bald fiction, not what happens each day in most open courts in this state. Cases are won or lost, not on the truth, but by the preponderance of perjury uttered by witnesses on the stand, who lie with impunity and then walk away. This is most true on the criminal side.

If we put Susan Hawley up and fail, she could cut the legs out from under our case, I concede. Harry is right. The risk is too great. We will not call her to the stand.

The telephone rings. I pick it up-it’s Nikki. I say “hi” and ask her to hold for a second.

Harry’s happy with my decision on Hawley, says he thinks we’ve dodged a bullet. He heads back to his office down the hall.

I take my hand off the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Hi,” I say.

“How’s it going?” she asks. Nikki has burned too much vacation, and she is back on the job, at least for a few days.

“Ask me in a week,” I tell her.

“I read about Skarpellos in the morning paper,” says Nikki. “They’re speculating that the bar may be opening an investigation into his finances.”

“Long overdue,” I say.

“You sound tired.”

“I am.” Nikki knows the hours I’m working. She’d been a wallflower in my life long enough, during my stint with the firm, and before that when I was in the DA’s office, to know that I am not worth being around when I’m in the middle of a trial.

“You haven’t been over in a while,” she says. “Sarah thinks you died.”

I feel bad about this. I haven’t seen Sarah in two weeks. I promise to make amends when this is all over.

“How about dinner,” she says, “over here tonight? I’ll make it quick, something you like.”

“I wish I could. Harry and I are scheduled to go over notes tonight for the witnesses in the morning,” I tell her.

She’s not hurt; she says she understands. She’s not so sure about Sarah.

“A week and the case is to the jury. I will make it all up then,” I say. “Can she wait one more week?”

“I guess she’ll have to.”

“I promise,” I say.

“I’ll tell her. Try to get some sleep,” she says. Then she hangs up.

I feel like a first-class shit. The plight of the trial lawyer’s family.

Nikki has been fighting old battles again, her demons of dependence-the feeling that with my career, in our marriage, she was a mere afterthought to be tended to, serviced, somewhere between late nights at the office and weekends laboring over briefs and pleadings.

It seems she has a new sense not only of herself, but of who I am, now that I no longer float like some satellite in the orbit of Ben. I feel that in her eyes I am now the master of my own destiny, as threatened as that may be. If indeed we are each a mirror image of how we perceive others see us, I can now say that there is something of greater worth reflected in Nikki’s eyes each time she looks at me.

In the weeks since the start of the trial, she has found herself caught between a growing desire to reconcile our differences and the thought that we have, each in our own ways, paid such a painful price to find ourselves. It has taken her more than a year to shed that self-image which makes a wife in our society an invisible appendage of her spouse. And she is unwilling to backslide.

She has sent clear messages of late, like an emissary ending a war, that if I want her back it must be on her own terms.

I pick up the phone and dial her.

She answers.

“What’s for dinner?” I say.

A bit of jubilation at the other end of the line.

“You look like the lawyer from hell,” he says. Harry’s commenting on the big gray bags sagging under my eyes and on the wrinkled dress shirt.

I explain that Nikki forgot to set her alarm. Dinner turned into an hour of play with Sarah and a long evening of conversation over wine with Nikki, a lot of mellow forgiveness and subtle understandings. We rolled out of the sheets at eight-thirty, me with a nine A.M. court call. It was Sarah who woke us, bright eyes of wonder and delight, crawling over the sheets and my body to snuggle between her mother and me. It was not a night of much sleep. It seems that we have rediscovered old passions, rekindled a new interest in life together.

Melvin Plotkin, five-foot-two, is a real piece of cake. An irate businessman injured in a fiery auto collision four years ago. Neither the psychic trauma of the accident nor the permanent injuries sustained have taken the starch out of this little man. He has burn scars on his upper arms and neck, places where skin grafts have left splotches of discoloration. His case was settled for a quarter-million dollars by attorneys for P amp;S two years ago. He got his money eighteen months later, after a pitched battle with Skarpellos.

Tony has probably stolen from a dozen other clients, but Plotkin is not to be horsed around with. He owns a small collection agency and survives like a pilot fish swimming with the sharks. Harry suspects that Plotkin-shrewd, no stranger to sharp business practices-cooks his own books, that he probably steals from the mom-and-pop shops that assign their claims to him for collection, so he knows how it’s done. It stands to reason that he would be the first and loudest to scream if cheated.

We have our problems with Plotkin. It seems he once owned a much larger collection agency, started on a shoestring and with much hard work. He tinkered with a merger, a national firm ten years ago, and in the end found himself muscled out of his own business. Two lawyers for the larger company showed him the door. Since then Plotkin has had an abiding hatred of lawyers. He is here under subpoena.