“Theresa, the amount of contempt that a criminal defendant-not to mention his lawyer-faces used to amaze me. Now it saddens me.”
Theresa responded quickly, like a child making a confession. “I can’t leave my house without being asked what he’s like, what his real name is, when he came to this country-even why he killed the Borzois.”
“The what?”
“Two dogs were killed at the same time as Brad Richardson. With a machete, apparently the same one. Sometimes I think he’s going to be indicted for animal cruelty. And,” she smiled, “I’ve never tried a case for animal cruelty.”
“And let me guess, Theresa, not one of those reporters asks you about the possibility of his innocence. And not one of the bloggers ever mentions the presumption of innocence?”
She shook her head no. And then she brought herself to the question that had led her to Raquel Rematti. “Can you take this over from us?”
It had been two or three years since Raquel had represented a client in a highly publicized case. The last one was an assault and gun possession charge against a famous rapper and record producer named 007-Up. The charges were dropped because the three witnesses against him had in fact been in Miami, not in New York, when 007-Up was arrested in East Harlem. Listening to Theresa Bui, Raquel was swept by the rush of adrenaline she always felt when there was the opportunity to represent a notorious client.
“Who knows you’re here?” Raquel asked.
“No one. I didn’t speak to my bosses. I know that only two of them have handled one or two murder cases. The clients were convicted in an hour.”
Raquel said, “That’s not unusual, Theresa. There’s a pretty reliable statistic that ninety-eight percent of the murder trials in this country end in convictions. If trial lawyers were judged like major league hitters on their batting averages, little kids would throw away the baseball cards with our pictures on them.”
Theresa smiled, but only faintly. “I think he could be innocent, Raquel. I don’t know, of course, but I think so. I want him to have a chance.”
“I’ll go to see him, Theresa. It’ll be his decision. And I need to get a sense of the man before I take him on.”
“Good, thank you.”
“Another thing,” Raquel said. “I’ll need you to work with me. Only wizards work alone. I’m not a wizard.”
“You’re not?”
They smiled at each other.
Raquel Rematti knew from that moment that she would take on Juan Suarez. It was the attraction of the challenge, the lure of the outcast. She had always found that combination irresistible.
And it was even more irresistible now, as she was seeking to leave behind the cancer that for the last year had, like a stalker, been trying to claim her life.
14.
Joan Richardson was in a place she’d always loved: the Plaza Athenée hotel, on the Avenue Montaigne, in Paris. Through the slatted wooden shutters, the ceiling-to-floor windows let soothing light from the sunny winter afternoon into the room. The stately windows, the understated furniture of the hotel suite, and the glorious allure of the cold and sunny Paris streets just outside usually calmed her on her visits to the city. But this afternoon she was restless, irritable, and constantly in motion.
She had come to Paris with Hank Rawls, because the producers of a movie based on one of his novels had asked him to take a small role. She also saw Paris as a refuge from the endless daily publicity dominating her life since Brad’s killing. While he was alive, they attracted many reporters and photographers, particularly when they donated the money for a new wing at the Met and the reconstruction of the East Hampton library. She had enjoyed the level of attention from society reporters, financial journalists, and photographers. She sometimes treated the photographers with the same care she’d shown to the yard workers, on the first day she met Juan, when she invited them into the East Hampton house because of the rain on that chilly April morning. In the past, she would from time to time send coffee, sandwiches, and fruit to the reporters and photographers who waited on the street for Brad and her to emerge from a dinner party. They rewarded her with attractive pictures on Page Six in the Post, on the society page in the Sunday New York Times, on the cover of Town & Country and Elle. She treated the elfin, 80-year-old Bill Cunningham, who had taken society pictures for the Times for decades, as a friend. He moved all over Manhattan on his bicycle. He never once failed her: all the photos were flattering.
But now, even months after Brad’s killing and more so as the trial approached, it was all different. As she told Hank Rawls, “I’ve gone from being the cover girl, the Jennifer Aniston sweetheart, to the scheming shrew, Cruella DeVille.” The stories about her in newspapers, magazines, and tabloids, and on television and the Internet were relentless. The billion-dollar babe, the girl who loved to “party down,” the lady with her own Senator. Since Brad’s killing, Joan was never alone on the Manhattan streets except when she managed to slip out of her apartment building through the service entrance wearing the clothes of a fortyish cleaning lady and an oversize Yankee baseball cap. She was always conscious that outside the building were people with cameras, tape recorders, and notebooks waiting for her, and that her chances of escaping in disguise were remote.
Hank, who had spent his life in public since the time, at 27, when he first ran for a seat in the Wyoming Congressional district where he was raised, seemed bemused by all the attention. He was long past campaigning for political office. He no longer had any need to worry about the company he kept or the places he went. His publisher and his managers believed that the added exposure he received as Joan Richardson’s boyfriend-he had been the boyfriend of many famous women-was one of the many factors that fueled sales of his books and the movies based on his books. It was also true that he had loved Joan Richardson, although her nervous distractions and her fears and her impatience (and her jealous possessiveness) were the kinds of traits that had led him away from many women in the past. Hank liked having fun. Joan Richardson had, for the last year, been a lot of fun. Now that Joan was virtually crumbling under the pressures that followed Brad’s death, Hank wanted to be patient with her. At 60, he consciously decided to teach himself, if he could, the traits of patience, tolerance, and acceptance. But he knew he had a short attention span.
When Hank emerged naked from the marble bathroom, toweling himself, he saw Joan doing something completely uncharacteristic. She was smoking. It was a Gauloise. The pack was on the table beside the bed, as succulent-looking as a French pastry.
He smiled at her. “Aren’t you worried about crows’ feet around the eyes?”
“I’m a wreck. I used to smoke at Stanford. When I got my first modeling job, I quit smoking. For years I’ve wanted to smoke again.”
“Doesn’t the Surgeon General warn women off because of what smoking does to their eyes? It’s right there on the packs: ‘Warning from the Surgeon General for all gorgeous women: Smoking causes wrinkles.’” Hank Rawls had attractive, cowboy-like lines around his own eyes, not from smoking but from long spans of time in the sun-in Wyoming, on beaches in Europe and the Caribbean, on boats, on his long foot races.