I turn and leave. The only thing I've learned in this visit is that Oscar is a really easy guy to leave.
As I walk to my car, I reflect on how depressing this situation is. A lawyer-client relationship, particularly in a murder trial, is close and often intense. Unfortunately, I would rather have warts surgically implanted all over my body than be close and intense with Oscar Garcia. But he's been wrongly charged, and since I'm not willing to risk my legal career by breaking Stynes's privilege, the only way I can right that wrong is by defending him.
When I get in the car, I make a couple of phone calls to determine where my next stop should be. In that regard, I come up with two significant pieces of information. First, I learn that the dry cleaner closes at six. This is good news because I have only three suits and they've all been sitting there, no doubt hanging in plastic and feeling abandoned, for weeks. Getting there by six will be no problem, which means I won't have to wear sweatpants to the hearing tomorrow.
The next thing I find out is that the assistant DA assigned to the Dorsey case is Dylan Campbell. This takes me out of the good mood that the dry cleaner news had put me in. Dylan would have been my last choice as an adversary on this case, which may well be why they don't let the defense attorneys choose the prosecutor.
I know every assistant DA in the county; in fact, more than half had been chosen by my father when he ran the office. To generalize, they are tough, hard-nosed prosecutors whom I can't stand in a courtroom but like drinking beer with afterward.
Dylan Campbell does not fall into this category. While his colleagues and I will bend the legal rules and watch the other side bend them back, Dylan bends them until they break and then throws them in your face. He's smart but unpleasant, and I would much prefer to go up against dumb and affable.
I call Dylan, and he agrees to see me right away, which means he probably wants to make a deal. I find that plea bargains are most likely to be made either at the beginning of a case or just before trial. Early on, the accused is often scared and shaken, while the prosecutor is standing at the foot of the enormous mountain of work that preparing a case represents. It's a likely time for compromise.
Just before trial, the possibility of a bargain being struck again increases, mainly because both sides know that soon it is going to be out of their hands and into a jury's. That threat of imminent repudiation of one's position is a major motivating factor toward dealing.
When I reach Dylan's office, he catapults himself out of his chair and rushes over to greet me, hand extended. This uncharacteristic and transparent graciousness is another sign he wants to deal. "Andy, good to see you. Good to see you. Here, sit down. Sit down."
I'm not sure why he is saying everything twice, but it's probably to show me how sincere he is. "Thanks, Dylan. Thanks, Dylan."
I sit down, and Dylan's next act as the perfect host is to go to his little refrigerator and ask me what I would like to drink. He's something of a health nut, so it basically comes down to whether I want American, Swedish, or Belgian mineral water. I shrug, and wind up with Swedish.
He sits back behind his desk and smiles. "I've got to ask you a question," he says. "Everybody in the office is wondering--I mean, no offense--but how in God's name did you wind up with a loser slimeball like Oscar Garcia? Did you lose a bet or something?"
"Oscar Garcia is godfather to my children." I say this quietly, with as straight a face as I can manage, and I see a quick flash of fear in Dylan's eyes, as his mind processes the possibilities. It takes three or four long seconds for his look to switch to nervous relief, as he realizes it just couldn't be.
"Hey, buddy, you had me going there for a second. But only for a second."
I grin. "Can't fool you, you old rapscallion you."
He's a little uncomfortable with this, so he decides to get back on firm ground, which unfortunately for me is his case. "So I assume you're here to do a little business?" he asks.
"Well, I was hoping you could bring me up to date. I just officially took the case a few minutes ago."
"You want me to do your homework for you?"
"You don't have to. I can just ask the judge for a delay." A delay is something he most certainly does not want. The court system is like a conveyor belt in an assembly plant, and the prosecutor is the foreman, charged with keeping it moving. Delays are like coffee breaks: The belt stops and the system grinds to a halt.
Dylan pauses for a moment, considering his options. "You looking to deal?"
I'm not, of course, but I don't want him to know that. "I sometimes find it helpful to know what my client is up against before I advise him on what to do."
He sighs; there's no way around this. "Okay. I'll have the file copied and sent over to you with the police reports."
"Good. I'd like it today. Can you also give me the shorthand version?" I ask.
"What do you know so far?"
"About the 911 call and the fingerprints at the warehouse. Unless that's all you have …"
"Come on, Andy, if that was all we had, your boy Oscar would be out in the park peddling dope, and you wouldn't be sitting here. Dorsey's gun was found in Garcia's house."
I'm surprised by this, but only because I know Oscar is innocent. "You think Garcia murdered Dorsey, then took his gun and left it in his house?" I ask, trying to exaggerate my incredulity at the stupidity of such a move.
He shrugs. "You visited with Garcia, right?" he asks. "You see any diplomas hanging in his cell?"
I ignore that. "What about motive? That seems to be in short supply."
"We're not there yet. Dorsey was into some bad things, maybe Garcia was a partner, or a competitor. We'll get to motive, but if not?" He throws up his hands. "So what? We don't have to prove motive. Even you public defenders know that."
Dylan has opened up an area I had planned to get into: Dorsey's illegal activities. I nod and say as casually as I can, "I also should look at what the department had on Dorsey."
The fake affability immediately vanishes. He shakes his head firmly. "No can do."
"Why not?" I ask.
"I don't have it myself," he says. "They tell me it doesn't relate in any way to this case."
"Let me see if I understand this," I say. "Dorsey takes off and goes into hiding because the department had something on him, he gets murdered a week later, and what they had isn't relevant? Earth to prosecutor, come in please, come in please."
His look turns cold as he changes the subject. "It's time to make this case go away, Andy. Twenty-five to life, Garcia can be out in ten."
"He can also be in for fifty." I shake my head. "I'll talk to my client, Dylan, but the answer is going to be no."
"I might be able to do better," he says, then sees my look of surprise. He explains, "Dorsey is not a person the department brass wants to read about every day."
Warning bells are going off in my head. The offer of twenty-five to life was actually very generous on his part for the brutal murder of a cop. If he's going to try to better that, it's more than just a desire to get the conveyor moving, or to appease the higher-ups in the police department. There's something here that's interesting and waiting to be discovered.
"Do the best you can," I say. "But my guess is that the day Garcia gets out is the day the jury comes back."
He shrugs his disappointment. "Then I guess we're finished here."
"Not according to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals," I say.
"What is that supposed to mean?" he asks.
The fact is that it doesn't mean anything; it's simply a significant-sounding non sequitur of the kind I occasionally drop to get the other side curious and thinking unproductively.
"You want me to do your homework for you?" I ask, and then turn and walk to the door. He doesn't stand up as I leave. I guess pretending to be pleasant can really tire a person out.
On the way home I call Edna, who is still in a state of shock that I would turn down a prize like Stynes and take on a loser like Garcia. I tell her to call Kevin Randall, who was my second chair on the Willie Miller case, and ask him to meet me in the office first thing in the morning. I ask Edna if Laurie has called, and the answer is no. It wasn't the answer I was hoping for.
Then I call Lieutenant Pete Stanton and ask if I can buy him dinner tonight. He says that's fine, as long as he can pick the restaurant. When I say it's okay with me, he tells me he'll leave the choice on my machine, after he prices a few out and comes up with the most expensive one.
By the time I get home, he has already left the name of a French restaurant which, in his tortured attempt to pronounce it, sounds like La Douche-Face. There is no message from Laurie. I call her, but she's either out or screening my call, so I leave word on her voice mail that I'd like to talk to her. Our last conversation has left me with a sort of throbbing emotional ache, which my work-related activities haven't been able to mask.
The restaurant Pete has chosen looks like a French villa, and when I arrive, he is at the bar drinking from an old and no doubt very expensive bottle of wine. Pete is generally a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, unassuming and easily able to get by on a lieutenant's salary. Imported beer is usually too fancy for Pete's taste, so it's obvious that his intent is to reduce my financial level to his own.