My BlackBerry and cell phone were going nuts. I was late now for an appointment with the defense team in the biggest case of my career. Two wealthy collegiate tennis players from the ritzy suburb of Short Hills stood accused of raping a sixteen-year-old African-American girl from Irvington named—and no, her name didn’t help—Chamique Johnson. The trial had already started, had hit a delay, and now I hoped to cut a jail-time deal before we had to start up again.
The cops gave me a lift to my office in Newark. I knew that opposing counsel would think my tardiness was a ploy, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. When I entered my office, the two lead defense lawyers were already seated.
One, Mort Pubin, stood and started bellowing. “You son of a bitch! Do you know what time it is? Do you?”
“Mort, did you lose weight?”
“Don’t start that crap with me.”
“Wait, no, that’s not it. You’re taller, right? You grew. Just like a real boy.”
“Up yours, Cope. We’ve been sitting here for an hour!”
The other lawyer, Flair Hickory, just sat there, legs crossed, not a care in the world. Flair was the one I paid attention to. Mort was loud and obnoxious and showy. Flair was the defense attorney I feared like no other. He was not what anyone expected. In the first place, Flair—he swore it was his real name but I had my doubts—was gay. Okay, that wasn’t a big deal. Plenty of attorneys are gay, but Flair was gay gay, like the love child of Liberace and Liza Minnelli, who’d been brought up on nothing but Streisand and show tunes.
Flair did not tone it down for the courtroom—he intentionally ratcheted it up.
He let Mort rant another minute or two. Flair flexed his fingers and studied his manicure. He seemed pleased by it. Then he raised his hand and silenced Mort with a fluttery wave.
“Enough,” Flair said.
He wore a purple suit. Or maybe it was eggplant or periwinkle, some such hue. I’m not good with colors. The shirt was the same color as the suit. So was the solid tie. So was the pocket hanky. So were—good Lord—the shoes. Flair noticed me noticing the clothes.
“You like it?” Flair asked me.
“Barney joins the Village People,” I said.
Flair frowned at me.
“What?”
“Barney, the Village People,” he said, pursing his lips. “Could you possibly come up with two more dated, overused pop references?”
“I was going to say the purple Teletubby, but I couldn’t remember his name.”
“Tinky Winky. And that’s still dated.” He crossed his arms and sighed. “So now that we are all together in this clearly hetero-decorated office, can we just let our clients walk and be done with this?”
I met his eye. “They did it, Flair.”
He wouldn’t deny it. “Are you really going to put that deranged stripper-cum-prostitute on the stand?”
I was going to defend her, but he already knew the facts. “I am.”
Flair tried not to smile. “I will,” he said, “destroy her.”
I said nothing.
He would. I knew that. And that was the thing about his act. He could slice and dice and still make you like him. I’d seen him do it before. You’d think at least some of the jury would consist of homophobes and that they’d hate or fear him. But that wasn’t how it worked with Flair. The female jurists wanted to go shopping with him and tell him about their husbands’ inadequacies. The men found him so nonthreatening that they thought there was no way he could pull anything over on them.
It made for a lethal defense.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
Flair grinned. “You’re nervous, aren’t you?”
“I’m just hoping to spare a rape victim from your bullying.”
“Moi?” He put a hand to his chest. “I’m insulted.”
I just looked at him. As I did, the door opened. Loren Muse, my chief investigator, walked in. Muse was my age, midthirties, and had been a homicide investigator under my predecessor, Ed Steinberg.
Muse sat down without a word or even a wave.
I turned back to Flair. “What do you want?” I asked again.
“For starters,” Flair said, “I want Ms. Chamique Johnson to apologize for destroying the reputation of two fine, upstanding boys.”
I looked at him some more.
“But we’ll settle for an immediate dropping of all charges.”
“Dream on.”
“Cope, Cope, Cope.” Flair shook his head and tsk-tsked.
“I said no.”
“You’re adorable when you’re macho, but you know that already, don’t you?” Flair looked over at Loren Muse. A stricken expression crossed his face. “Dear God, what are you wearing?”
Muse sat up. “What?”
“Your wardrobe. It’s like a frightening new Fox reality show: When Policewomen Dress Themselves. Dear God. And those shoes…”
“They’re practical,” Muse said.
“Sweetheart, fashion rule one: The words shoes and practical should never be in the same sentence.” Without blinking an eye, Flair turned back to me: “Our clients cop to a misdemeanor and you give them probation.”
“No.”
“Can I just say two words to you?”
“Those two words wouldn’t be shoes and practical, would they?”
“No, something far more dire for you, I’m afraid: Cal and Jim.”
He paused. I glanced at Muse. She shifted in her seat.
“Those two little names,” Flair went on, a lilt in his voice. “Cal and Jim. Music to my ears. Do you know what I’m saying, Cope?”
I didn’t take the bait.
“In your alleged victim’s statement…you read her statement, didn’t you?…in her statement she clearly says that her rapists were named Cal and Jim.”
“It means nothing,” I said.
“Well, see, sweetie—and try to pay attention here because I think this could be very important to your case—our clients are named Barry Marantz and Edward Jenrette. Not Cal and Jim. Barry and Edward. Say them out loud with me. Come on, you can do it. Barry and Edward. Now, do those two names sound at all like Cal and Jim?”
Mort Pubin answered that one. He grinned and said, “No, they don’t, Flair.”
I kept still.
“And, you see, that’s your victim’s statement,” Flair went on. “It really is so wonderful, don’t you think? Hold on, let me find it. I just love reading it. Mort, do you have it? Wait, here it is.” Flair had on half-moon reading glasses. He cleared his throat and changed voices. “‘The two boys who did this. Their names were Cal and Jim.’”