Harry and I wander around the room, checking these trophies as Tate finishes a meeting down the hall in the library.
There are photos of the man shaking hands with baseball players, movie stars, other politicians: confirmation of his orbit in the celebtocracy in case he should forget. Some of these shots date him badly, figures in them have held horizontal residence at Forest Lawn for the better part of two decades. Time moving on, catching up.
Harry’s looking over my shoulder with an appraising eye at a shot of Marilyn Monroe showing some thigh, seated on the edge of a desk with Tate’s name placard on it. Tate is seated behind the desk looking very much younger, an eager and rising deputy.
“When he retires, they’re gonna have to take an oral history or lose touch with the ancient world,” says Harry.
“Who says he’s going to retire?”
The clutter of memorabilia is a flea market dream. What purports to be the first Padre baseball thrown out in one of the league play-offs sits on the second-base bag from that same game. A three-hundred-pound block of granite, a tombstone, with the engraving
DEATH PENALTY REPEAL
RIP
stands in a corner of the office, proof of Tate’s credentials in the cop community and the brotherhood of prosecutors. I am told he drapes this with a black lace handkerchief when closeted with deputies deciding whether to seek the death penalty in capital cases, and has scratched notches in the edges of the stone whenever the penalty was exacted in one of their cases. He is no squeamish liberal when it comes to retribution, and plays his politics the same way.
Before I can move to check the edges of the tombstone closer, the door behind me opens.
“Sorry to keep you gentlemen waiting.” Tate sweeps into the office like an autumn wind. Being sucked along in the vacuum of his wake is Tannery.
“Did Charlotte offer you some coffee?”
I wave him off, but he ignores me, plops himself into the chair behind his desk and picks up the receiver on the phone hitting the com line.
“Charlotte, bring in some coffee, will ya? Four cups. You guys want cream and sugar?”
Before we can answer. “Sure, bring it all on a tray. And see if you got some of those little cookies. The ones with the mint.”
He sets the phone on its cradle and he’s back out of his chair before Harry and I can say a word, hanging his coat up on a hanger that dangles from the coat tree in the corner.
“You must be Madriani.” He reaches over on his way back to the desk, shakes my hand in an almost absent fashion as he passes by.
“Harry Hinds, my partner,” I tell him.
He has to backtrack to catch Harry’s hand. “Good to meet you. Have a seat. Sit down.” He directs us to the two client chairs. Tannery pulls up a ladder-back chair from the small conference table across the room and joins us.
“Heard good things about you both,” says Tate. This is very much his meeting, in control.
“Seems we have some mutual friends up in Capital City.” He mentions some names, fixtures in the local bar and on the bench.
“You represented Armando Acosta,” he says.
I nod.
“That was a big case. Got headlines all over. Not every day you get a state court judge charged with murder. Especially,” he says, “where there’s a little nookie involved.” He pulls on his right earlobe, smiles as if perhaps he can entice me to share some confidences from the past. Tate is referring to charges that the judge had been snared in an undercover vice sting by a pretty decoy sent out by the cops to nail him. She was later found dead, and Acosta was charged with her murder.
“Those charges were never proven,” I tell him.
“Of course not,” he says. “You won the case. Judge Acosta is eternally in your debt, from what I understand. Your biggest cheerleader. That was not always the case.”
“I haven’t been able to try a case before him since the trial. Judge Acosta is scrupulous in disqualifying himself in any matter in which I am involved.”
“Funny how that works. Do somebody a favor and it comes back to bite you in the ass.”
“The law is not politics,” I tell him. “That is, if it works right.”
He smiles. “Of course not. Which brings us to the reason for today’s meeting. Some pretty fortuitous events,” he says, “the death of a witness on the eve of testimony. I’ll bet that hasn’t happened in one of your cases before?”
“Not that I can recall,” I tell him.
“Obviously it’s thrown a glitch into the people’s case.”
“We noticed,” says Harry. Harry’s getting tired listening to the bullshit. He wants to cut to the chase. “Why did you call us in here?”
“We still think we have a solid case against your man. Don’t get me wrong,” says Tate.
“Is that why you called? To tell us you have a solid case?” I ask.
He looks at Tannery, smiles. “No. I called you here to discuss a possible resolution. As it stands, your client can’t be sure he’s gonna beat the wrap. Don’t misunderstand; the Epperson thing throws up some dust. It may not be quite as clear as it was before, but there’s still the question of the cable ties in his pocket, the tension tool in his garage, the fact that he and the victim were not on good terms. The medical evidence points to a skilled hand dismembering the body. There’s plenty there for a jury to chew on,” he says.
“And given this. . mountain that we have to climb, what are you prepared to offer?”
“A solution that provides your client with a more certain result,” he says.
“What? You gonna pump the poison directly into his heart instead of his arm?” says Harry.
“What if the result avoids the death penalty?” says Tate. “Perhaps a life sentence without possibility of parole.”
“Not a chance,” I tell him.
Tate looks over at Tannery once more. The expressions that are exchanged between the two lead me to conclude that this was not Tannery’s idea. He knows he doesn’t have the leverage, but you can’t blame Tate for trying.
“Okay. Second degree,” he says. “We drop all the special circumstances, he gets fifteen to life; with good behavior he could be out in ten. That’s as good as it gets,” he says.
I look at him, say nothing, Mona Lisa smile on me.
“Fine, we’ll sweeten it a little.” Tate doesn’t know when to stop talking. “Your guy pleads out, we agree not to bring any charges regarding the Epperson thing as to him, if he cooperates with us.”
“Cooperate how?” I ask.
“Tells us what happened.”
“No problem. Mr. Epperson committed suicide,” I say.
“And you believe that?” he says.
“The last time I looked, there was nothing in the Evidence Code giving rise to presumptions based on what I believe. But I think if you look at the facts they might bear it out. Do you have evidence that Epperson didn’t commit suicide?”
Tate doesn’t have good lawyer’s eyes; perhaps that is why he left the courtroom and became a politician. His big brown ones say, No.
He swallows, clears his throat, looks over at Tannery. “Evan, maybe you should get involved here.”
Tannery edges over. “It’s a good deal,” he tells me. The devil in front of me, and the devil in my ear.
“I’ll take it to my client,” I say.
“Will you recommend it?” says Tannery.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because your case is in a ditch. I’d have to be incompetent to recommend a deal like that.
Tannery looks at me; his eyes get wide.
“All the testimony regarding my client’s alleged motive to kill Kalista Jordan, the supposed racial genetics studies intended to inflame the jury, that’s all out. Everything Tanya Jordan testified to is hearsay without Epperson, so all you have are some nylon cable ties and a tensioning tool found in the defendant’s garage, that and some bad blood between Crone and Jordan. At worst, this can be characterized as a severe case of professional differences. What’s more,” I tell them, “did you know that Epperson asked her to marry him? That she turned him down just a few days before she disappeared?”