“I’m Ian Rose,” he introduced himself when he finally met the man.
“I know, Mr. Rose,” Pro Bono replied, impressing on his words a certain tone that Rose didn’t quite get. “You’ve come to see me about María Paz, the Colombian girl. Look, my friend, don’t waste your time with this. She’s fine. As fine as can be, if you get my drift; and in any case there’s not much you can do for her.”
“I just want to know if it’s true that she killed her husband,” Rose asked.
“I’m sorry,” Pro Bono said, but Rose sensed that he wasn’t. “But I can’t divulge that information.”
Apparently, the charm of that lawyer who had been so kind to María Paz would not be on display for Rose. Ming had warned him that it was very likely that the lawyer would not be willing to break attorney-client confidentiality for a stranger. That was understandable, but there was an aggressive streak about him that Rose couldn’t quite figure out.
“If that’s all, Mr. Rose, let me show you out,” Pro Bono said, gesturing toward the door.
“You promised me ten minutes, sir, and not even two have passed.”
“You’re right. We can just remain in silence for the other eight minutes. Or talk about the weather. You choose.”
It seemed that this would be it. For Rose, a failure, a waste of time, in some ways an insult. The silence was tense and the air heavy. Pro Bono stood by the window, and facing the light he checked the Cartier Panthere on his wrist for the minutes left that would put an end to this impasse. Rose commanded himself to come up with something, but his mind remained blank. He had thought he’d get some solace from the lawyer, or at least some direction for his investigation, but instead he had been treated like a nuisance. Who was this Pro Bono after all, and what role did he play in the story? He may well have been a champion for the hungry of the world, but something was rotten in Denmark. Rose could not understand at all why he was being kicked out. María Paz said such flattering things about him and showed him so much respect and gratitude that Rose began to suspect that something had happened between them, something outside of the attorney-client relationship. Something in her tone alluded to the type of intimacy that those who have shared a bed cannot hide. Is that what it was then? A tussle in the sheets? Maybe that’s what it came to. But on seeing the hunchback’s figure silhouetted by the window and then taking into account that the difference in age between this guy and his client must be enormous, Rose wondered if the secret they shared wasn’t about a sexual tryst at all, but was a secret nonetheless. He decided that Pro Bono looked honorable enough not to be sneaking quickies behind the guards’ backs. But there was something between those two, perhaps some intrigue more subtle than sex, although he knew anything was possible. It was likely that María had been won over by the attorney’s masculine vibes, with his fine wardrobe, and the keys to the Ferrari or Aston Martin that he had parked outside, but more than anything by the dignified solemnity that the protuberance on his back lent him.
As the clock wound down, Rose was able to gather himself enough to play one last card. If this guy has secrets, he thought, he’s not going to want them revealed. So he mentioned that he had María Paz’s manuscript of confessions about her life.
“You are in it,” Rose asserted, thinking it would be taken either as flattery or as a threat.
“What?”
“Her manuscript. Very long and detailed. And you’re mentioned in it. A few times. I have it here.”
“May I see it?”
“Only if you tell me what she was accused of.”
Pro Bono sighed, took a couple of sips of coffee, of which he had not offered Rose any, and made a gesture like a rabbit, wrinkling his nose and showing his teeth before responding.
“Alright, Mr. Rose. You win. What you’ll hear is off the record,” he warned, after he had the manuscript in hand and had browsed through it quickly. “I’m going to tell you what happened only once. Don’t ask me to elaborate upon or repeat anything. If you are not familiar with the legal terms that I use, don’t bother asking me about them because I won’t explain them. Understand as best you can and commit it to memory, because I will not allow you to record this or take notes. Is this understood?”
Bingo! Rose congratulated himself. Pro Bono had taken the bait.
Rose was indeed unfamiliar with many of the legal terms, so much of the lawyer’s yarn went over his head, but he nevertheless felt that he got a clear sense of the big picture. María Paz, an illegal, undocumented Colombian immigrant, marries Greg, a white American ex-cop, thereby acquires US permanent residency and employment rights. Behind her back, the guy is involved in dealing arms, complicit with other officers and ex-officers. In reality, this Greg is just a link in what little by little becomes clear is a huge net of arms trafficking within the police department. On the night of his birthday, Greg walks out of his house and is shot and stabbed to death. The knife, one of the murder weapons apparently, is found in the couple’s apartment and the Colombian wife is arrested, questioned, and beaten by FBI agents, who ignore due process and human rights guidelines and keep her locked up for a few days, without reading her her rights, contacting the Colombian consulate, or providing her with an interpreter. And they don’t allow her to contact a lawyer or her family. They literally disappear her as they question and torture her. And then they officially charge her with the murder of her husband. At first, they assume that the motive was racially motivated, and afterward they claim it was a crime of passion. Pro Bono calls four of the neighbors to take the stand and testify to having seen the murderers — three tall men, all of them African-American — commit the crime. He thus invalidates the prosecution’s version, according to which the ex-cop was killed by the short Latino woman. But there is the issue of the knife found in the apartment, and this becomes the showpiece and central evidence for the prosecution. But it is a flimsy piece of evidence. On the one hand, there are no fingerprints on it, or even blood, as if it had been meticulously cleaned, and the card accompanying it says, “To Greg from your brother Joe.” It doesn’t incriminate María Paz directly. On the other hand, it’s not the murder weapon. The stabs are not deep and they were inflicted after the bullets had killed the victim instantaneously. So the knife goes from being the main piece of evidence in the entire investigation to being relegated to the background.
“It happens quite often,” Pro Bono told Rose, “that when some proof is offered, everyone gets all excited, but it’s soon disallowed and forgotten because it leads nowhere.”
Thanks to the testimony of the neighbors, the Colombian woman is declared innocent of first-degree murder. Although the authorities succeed in preventing the revelation of internal corruption and arms trafficking within the police department for a while, it is eventually revealed, and Pro Bono cannot prevent María Paz from being found guilty of complicity, although there is not a whole lot of evidence for it, except for answering the phone in the apartment and that sort of thing. They also charge her for past crimes such as forging work permits. Once the trial is over, she returns to jail. Pro Bono then asks the judge to redo the entire proceedings to honor the fundamental rights of the defendant for a competent and fair defense. In other words, Pro Bono asks the judge to declare a mistrial and begin the whole thing again from square one. The judge agrees; he has no choice given that it is difficult to imagine more crooked methods than the ones used on this woman. So the whole thing is a do-over. There’s hope again for María Paz. But until the new trial, she must remain in prison.