One to Go (10 page)

When the alarm went off the next morning, he found himself still in the red recliner, covered in orange crumbs and beer stains. He looked to his left—his eyes hurt to move—and saw the fifth of whiskey was half gone. Had it been a new bottle? When he attempted to
climb out of the recliner, he stumbled to the floor. The movement triggered a gag reflex and he vomited orange puke onto his rug.

Okay, that was it. No more booze. He was stopping right then and there. He'd turned to the bottle as a way to dull the pain immediately after his mother's death. Since then, he knew he'd increased his consumption, and while he certainly wasn't an alchoholic, he was well aware that sometimes he overindulged.

No way could he go to work. He did his best to clean up the mess, then stumbled into the kitchen and poured Cheerios directly from the box into his mouth. Hopefully, the dry cereal would soak up the putrid brew in his stomach.

His eyes caught the flashing “notice” light in the corner of his laptop, signaling a reminder from the firm. Every morning, the light would flash to alert firm personnel of upcoming appointments and events scheduled for the day.

He clicked on the icon and read the message.
Damn
. Today was the deadline to give notice of his preference for the next rotation. He was about to click on Corporate, when he saw he also had the option of selecting this round for his pro bono obligation. There were several pro bono options, but the one that caught his eye was a single opening at the Public Defender Service. What better place to find bad guys than in the criminal justice system? And what better way to gain access to said bad guys than as a part of that system? He wanted that slot at PDS. Correction, he
needed
it; after all, it was a matter of life and deaths.

He dragged his ass to the shower to begin the slow process of regaining full consciousness and washing sticky Cheetos powder from his hair.

Edie Rudnick smiled at him from across her desk. In her fifties, Edie looked like everybody's favorite aunt—round but not fat, silver hair pulled in a bun, and eyes in a constant state of twinkle. She was the most unflappable person Tom had ever met, which came in handy administering a staff of over 500 attorneys, ranging from
mildly self-centered to egotistical pricks, plus paralegals, secretaries, mail room personnel, four IT guys, three accountants, and a full-time chef. Unmarried, she'd been with the firm for fifteen years, and she was rumored to have been Bat Masterson's mistress in the early days.

“You don't look so good, Tom. Are you ill?”

“Maybe a touch of flu. No big deal.”

“The Irish flu, perhaps?”

He was screwed. Must be his breath. He'd gargled for ten minutes, but Gayle had always taken perverse pleasure in pointing out that when he drank, alcohol seemed to seep from every pore in his body.

Edie opened her desk drawer, removed a tin of Altoids mints, and slid them across the desk.

“When I have that strain of flu, I find these are helpful.”

He decided right then and there that Edie Rudnick qualified for sainthood. The fact she happened to be Jewish was only a minor impediment. He popped three of the mints into his mouth.

“Thanks.”

“So, I'm curious why you want to do your pro bono obligation now. Most associates do everything they can to put it off.”

Left unsaid was the reason most associates wanted to put it off—they viewed nonbillable obligations as a distraction, an interruption that had the potential to throw them off their singular upward journey to the promised land—partner.

“I want to go to WC for my next firm rotation, and I figured knowing something about the criminal system, even at the street level, might be helpful when representing white-collar defendants. So I thought PDS might be a good destination.” Tom froze his facial features, hoping she would buy this explanation.

She held his stare for a few seconds. He could tell she knew something was askew, but couldn't quite figure it out. “Very well. Katherine O'Neil gave you high marks for your work in Corporate,
so we want to accommodate you.” She handed him a slip of paper. “Report to the PDS administrator this afternoon.”

“Thanks.” He got up to leave. She pushed the Altoids across the desk.

“Take the whole tin.”

After a lunchtime burger with Zig—“grease is the best antidote for a hangover”—Tom took a cab from the restaurant to PDS headquarters on Indiana Avenue where the courthouse, police HQ, prosecutor's office, and public defender's office were all conveniently located within a few blocks of each other.

The '60s-era building looked to be about twelve or thirteen stories. He entered and was mildly surprised to have to go through airport-style security screening. Guess by definition, PDS clients were the type of folks for whom security screening was devised. The small lobby had a vaulted ceiling, which must've been impressive when it was built fifty years earlier. He stepped into the elevator with two other men, each of whom appeared strung out on one of the many illicit substances available in the nation's capital. He nodded to them.

“How's it goin'?”

Each stared through him as if he weren't there. When the elevator reached the fourth floor, both got out. As the doors closed, Tom saw a sign reading: DC Drug Intervention Services.

He rode up one more floor and stepped into a tiny lobby decorated in mauve and cream. No doubt at one time the space had been beautiful, but wall smudges, deep nicks in the floorboards and chair rails, and tiny wallpaper tears testified to years of wear, and more important, budget priorities. He entered through a glass door where a pleasant receptionist led him to the small office of Shannelle Burk. A sign outside her door identified Ms. Burk as CJA Coordinator.

“Come in, come in. I'm Shanny—we're all on a first–name basis here, part of the foxhole mentality.” They shook hands. A
slim, athletic African-American woman almost as tall as he was, she appeared to be in her mid-thirties. “Have a seat.” She lifted a stack of case files off the office's single chair and Tom sat down. “We don't get volunteers from firms like SHM very often, so it's refreshing to have you join us.”

“Criminal law has always fascinated me.” Well, not always. Actually, only after he'd recently become a criminal himself. “You mentioned a foxhole mentality.”

She chuckled. “As you'll come to learn very quickly, we have an impossible job. We're required to represent the indigent, which in this town, means 95 percent of everyone who enters the system. Our budget is a sliver of the prosecutor's budget. Most all of our clients are guilty, but they watch TV and expect a million-dollar defense, and get pissed off when we can't provide it. We not only have to deal with clients who are, shall we say, unsavory, but we must also deal with their wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and kids and grannies and, in many cases, their gangs and entourages. Throughout it all, we must maintain our professionalism and our belief that everyone deserves a fair trial, or as is much more likely the case, a fair deal.”

“Sorry I asked.”

“No, it's good that you understand from jump what you're getting into. So how much do you know about criminal law?”

“Took several courses in law school, but it's been a while.”

“We have a pretty good training program here that we jam down your throat in a day. Then it's on-the-job training.”

“Not very much to defend a murderer.”

She looked at him as if he'd just said the most stupid thing in the world. “Mr. Booker, Tom, you won't be defending any murderers, or handling any felonies, for that matter. That's the job of our senior staff. You and other outsiders, both those who volunteer and those who're drafted through the DC Bar, are what we call CJA attorneys, named after the Criminal Justice Act of 1964. You handle traffic cases and misdemeanors, so we have the time to represent those charged with major felonies.”

Okay, maybe he did say the stupidest thing in the world. “Guess I thought I might be sitting second chair to a senior attorney in a murder case instead of the little stuff.”

“Look, what you call little stuff is very important. It's ridding our communities of little stuff that improves quality of life, which then can have a cascading effect on more serious crime.”

“You sound like a prosecutor.”

“I was. Many of us have spent time in the US Attorneys' Office. Best training in the world.” She must've read the disappointment on his face. “But don't worry. Chances are, your little stuff clients will have done some big stuff in their past. Many times the prosecutor will bring misdemeanor charges against someone who they know did the dirty but couldn't prove it. They're looking to use the charge as leverage to try to turn the perp and pull in a bigger fish.”

Okay, that was sounding better. He put on his eager-beaver face. “Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it.”

“Great.” She stood, signaling the meeting was over. “We assign each of our CJA attorneys to a mentor. You're assigned to Eva Stoddard. She's been here three years, which makes her a veteran. You'll find her in arraignment court.”

As Tom walked down the hall, he considered that maybe handling misdemeanors was a blessing. Unlike murderers, who'd be locked up and mostly inaccessible, a bad guy charged with a misdemeanor would likely be out on the street.

Where Tom could kill him.

Thirty minutes later Tom rode the escalator down to the C level of the Moultrie Courthouse. The escalator was located in the middle of a huge, airy central lobby that reminded Tom of a shopping mall. Corridors spoking out from the center hall contained well-appointed courtrooms. Strategically located banks of TV monitors gave notice of cases being adjudicated that day—criminal, civil, domestic, and juvenile. A courthouse was a place to deal with conflict, and few of the people bustling through its corridors looked particularly happy. Most everybody was there because something bad happened.

When he reached the C level, he passed a narrow hallway over which a sign read: “To Holding Cells.” Presumably prisoners were taken there from the DC Jail and held pending their court appearance. He followed the signs, turned right, and found the door to Courtroom, C-10. Two TV monitors outside the door listed the defendants scheduled to appear for arraignment or other pretrial proceedings.

As he was about to enter, the courtroom doors opened, and a mass of humanity spilled out. From snatches of conversation, Tom concluded the judge had taken a break. No one told him what Eva Stoddard looked like. A short, stocky woman whose age and the era for which her clothes were designed both appeared to be in the '50s, carried a stack of files as she exited.

“Excuse me,” asked Tom, “Would you be Eva Stoddard?”

“Right church, wrong pew. I'm the AUSA”—she saw the blank look on Tom's face—“The Assistant US Attorney. That's Eva.”

She pointed to a tall young woman holding an armful of manila files, leaning against the wall, talking on her cell phone. Maybe a year or two younger than Tom, she had red hair, green eyes, a slim body, and wore a don't-screw-with-me expression on her face.