Compelling Evidence by Steve Martini Read Free Book Online Page B

her final approval. We haggle for seveml minutes and finally she accepts this. lbough she warns me that she will go to,trial on anything less than an outright dismissal. We will see. I rise and begin to move toward the courtroom.. A scruffy character with a three‐day growth of beard, wearing frayed blue jeans and a tanktop, shuffles down the corridor behind his lawyer. The man's attorney pauses to check the calendar iinned on the bulletin board outside the courtroom. His client rtudies Hawley with @ a sleepy, lustful gaze as he scratches the lead of a blue dragon emblazoned by tattoo on his upper arm. If it were physically sible, @? pos I would attest to the fact at *9 waves of rancorous odor rising from his body. His fin er 1@ from his arm to reach the latest itch through a hole in 1W of his jeans. As for Hawley, she is oblivious to the man's wandering All wonder if she is merely desensitized to years of male leering 2 it is simply that the favors of Susan Hawley are without sm@. beyond the price of this scurvy soul.
    Armando Acosta, judge of the superior court, studies the on his desk.
    The premature bald circle on the back of his shines through threads of fine straight black hair like the MM' of some medieval mbnk. He looks up, peering over 117116;@ spectacles. For the first time since taking this case, I'm convinced that I'll have to go to trial to defend Susan I M. confronted not only by the intransigence of my client but V. presence of Jimmy Lama in the judge's chambers. He has Al Gibbs, the young deputy DA assigned to the case. It Lama is a thirty‐year veteran of the police force, I rank as a sergeant doesn't indicate this. He represents Al thing objectionable in the overbearing, badge‐heavy COP. been successfully defended three times, though only I I knows how, on charges of excessive force and brutali . 46 time his collar earned forty‐three stitches performing through a plate‐glass display window. According to r‐Moi fifty‐six‐year‐old wino dove through the glass, unaided, effort to escape. Acosta looks up, impatience written in his eyes. "Please men, don't all speak at once." The insistent tone in Acos@i is scrupulously refined by years of practiced judicial ‐i I (41tl" I talk before Gibbs can open his mouth. "It's a ‐,' overcharging, Your Honor. The DA's trying to bootstrap 1* into a felony on some thin theory of pimping and 0 Under the law, a prostitute offering her services on the it chargeable with a misdemeanor, but her pimp can be,@40@Tiok state prison on felony charges. They are trying to nail a half‐baked assumption that she not only sold herself, but for another woman. Gibbs sits fidgeting in his chair, waiting politely for Toli as if he's at high tea. I know him; he has a good mi fire in the belly. Acosta's impatience grows and finally he stares openly ‐Md you come here for a purpose, counsel, or are we assembled for Your entertainment?"

    Gibbs begins to stutter. "Y‐Your Honor. The lady was running a bordello out of her apartment. She was caught soliciting paymetit for sexual intercourse on behalf of another hooker," be Says. in fact, this is a gross exaggeration, which I protest to Acosta. ley Haw shared an apartment with another woman. She paid the S‐,77,@ and the telephone bills while her co‐tenant bought the groceries and paid for the remainder of the utilities. The fact that phone was in Hawley's name and was used for incoming AWS to hire dates for both women forms the basis for charges ,‐M she was pimping for the other woman. I put on the facts IH?.‐ a suit of clothes and verbally pound the table. It's an explawwon that seems to fit well, to the discerning eye of Armando P. He has never been one much for the finer intricacies of V4. law. Acosta's now shuffling papers on his desk. He speaks in a *717;7(1 with a faint Mexican accent, not the intonations of street V7M ant and precise, as if the next phrase from his 3w, but eleg hawk the rich qualities of
    "Corinthian