4th of July

Chapter 80

AT SEVEN THAT NIGHT, I opened the door to Indigo, a brand-new restaurant on McAllister, two blocks from the courthouse, which ought to have taken my appetite away. I passed through the wood-paneled bar into the high-ceilinged restaurant proper. There, the maître d’ checked me off his list and escorted me to a blue velvet banquette where Yuki was leafing through a sheaf of papers.

Yuki stood to hug me, and as I hugged her back, I realized how very glad I was to see my lawyer.

“How’s it going, Lindsay?”

“Just fabulous, except for the part when I remember that my trial starts Monday.”

“We’re going to win,” she said. “So you can stop worrying about that.”

“Silly me for fretting,” I said.

I cracked a smile, but I was more shaken than I wanted her to know. Mickey Sherman had convinced the powers that be that we would all be best served if I was represented by a woman attorney and that Yuki Castellano was “a great gal for the job.”

I wished I felt as sure.

Although I was catching her at the end of a long workday, Yuki looked fresh and upbeat. But most of all, she looked young. I reflexively clutched my Kokopelli as my twenty-eight-year-old attorney and I ordered dinner.

“So, what have I missed since I skipped town?” I asked Yuki. I pushed chef Larry Piaskowy’s pan-seared sea bass with a parsnip purée to the far side of my plate and nibbled at the fennel salad with pine nuts and a carrot-tarragon vinaigrette.

“I’m glad that you were outta here, Lindsay, because the sharks have been in a feeding frenzy,” Yuki said. I noticed that her eyes made direct contact with mine, but her hands never stopped moving.

“Editorials and TV coverage of the outraged parents have been running twenty-four/seven. . . . Did you catch Saturday Night Live?”

“Never watch it.”

“Well, just so you know, there was a skit. You’ve been dubbed Dirty Harriet.”

“That must’ve been a riot,” I said, pulling a face. “I guess someone made my day.”

“It’s going to get worse,” said Yuki, tugging at a lock of her shoulder-length hair. “Judge Achacoso okayed live TV coverage in the courtroom. And I just got the plaintiff’s witness list. Sam Cabot’s going to testify.”

“Well, that’s okay, isn’t it? Sam confessed to doing those electrocution murders. We can use that!”

“’Fraid not, Lindsay. His lawyers filed a motion to suppress because his parents weren’t there when he blurted out his confession to that ER nurse.

“Look,” Yuki said, grabbing my hands, no doubt responding to the way my face had frozen in shock. “We don’t know what Sam’s going to say—I’ll take him apart; you can count on that. But we can’t impeach him with his confession. It’s your word against his—and he’s thirteen and you’re a drunken cop.”

“And so you’re telling me ‘Don’t worry’ because . . . ?”

“Because the truth will out. Juries are composed of human beings, most of whom have had a drink in their lives. I think they’re going to find that you’re entitled and probably even expected to have a few drinks now and then.

“You tried to help those kids, Lindsay. And that ain’t no crime.”