Prime Witness

Chapter Three

Two years ago Derek Ingel was working in the bowels of the attorney general’s office, shagging criminal appeals for the state. He found the fountain of political patronage in a GOP club with people who believe that only good Republicans speak in tongues, and who foster the social ideals of Beaver Cleaver.

Since then Ingel has ascended to the judicial heavens faster than Elijah and his fiery chariot. He now sits as the legal pooh bah in this county, in the PJ’s chambers of the superior court. These are not opulent, and I am offered a hard wooden chair on the other side of Ingel’s desk for this audience.

He tells me how busy he is. This to let me know my time here is short. He is down one judge, a vacancy on the court, he says.

Talk among local lawyers is that Ingel is now pulling strings to put one of his cronies from the AG’s office in this spot. He has made statements in private, which he now denies, that only former deputy AG’s are qualified to be judges in this state. Such are his views of social and professional diversity. If narrow-mindedness is a virtue, Derek Ingel is its patron saint.

We quickly run out of pleasant things to say to each other.

He leans back in his chair.

“So what is it that you want?” he says. The man has the animation of Calvin Coolidge, a human droid whose maker forgot to program a smile. I am beginning to understand how Derek Ingel earned his moniker-“the Prussian.”

“It’s the nature of our arrangement,” I say. “My agreement with the county.”

He gives me a long slow nod, takes off his wristwatch and sets it on the desk faceup like he’s timing some event. I am wondering if the floor will open up and swallow me at some point.

“Feretti’s death,” I tell him, “circumstances that none of us anticipated.”

“Ahh, yes,” he says. “Tragic.” Then nothing more. He makes some noises, like he’s not sure exactly how this affects me. Stuck in the morass of Mario’s job, one foot in private practice and the other here, forty miles away, and I have to get out my crayons and draw the man a picture.

But Ingel is not as dense as he makes out. What he really wants, I think, is for me to grovel. From his satisfied expression I think this is the part he likes best about his job. Attorneys in three-piece suits, on their hands and knees.

I start making a case, the lawyer at work, the fact that circumstances were different when I signed the contract with the county. That the parties all understood that I was merely filling in for Mario, who is now dead. How long can it take to name a successor?

He sits listening to all of this, a few facial calisthenics to show that judgment is at work.

“It would be good,” I tell him, “if we could settle the matter of my temporary assignment.” I put a lot of emphasis on the “T” word. “Put some closing time frame on it.

“The county would be ill-served by a change of prosecutors in the middle of some high-profile case,” I say. I would wink at him and add “like the Putah Creek stuff,” but I think he gets it. Still he says nothing, a lot of dead in the eyes. Ingel is a torpid sponge. I’m beginning to wonder why I have bothered, when I could have stayed home and talked to myself.

After several minutes working up calluses on my tongue, he finally cuts me off.

“What’s the bottom line?” he says. “What is it specifically you want?”

“I thought I made that clear. A closing time frame on my duties here.”

He looks at me, like be real.

I climb back in the saddle. “With a vacancy in the office, it would serve us all well if a permanent replacement is found quickly,” I tell him.

He makes a face, seesawing his head like maybe this is so and maybe it isn’t. Then he swivels in his chair a quarter turn so that he is now looking at the degrees and honors hanging on his wall.

“You put me in a difficult position,” he says.

“How’s that?”

He turns to me, square on again. “I’m going to be honest with you,” he says. “You were not my pick for this job.”

Great, so let me go, I think.

“Nonetheless,” he says, “you signed a contract with the county. This contract, I believe, is open-ended.”

He means that it has no specific term of months or years at which time it will expire.

“That’s true. But at the time it was signed, the circumstances were clear,” I say. “It was understood by both parties that I was merely filling in for Mr. Feretti. During what was believed to be his period of recuperation. After surgery,” I say.

“But the contract didn’t say this?” he says.

“Not expressly.”

“Don’t hedge with me,” he snaps. “It either did or it didn’t.”

“It didn’t,” I say.

“Fine.” He rolls back in his chair a little, looks at the ceiling. “And so now you want out?”

I could say yes, but from his tone and manner I opt for a fallback.

“I would like a reasonable time frame for the county to find a permanent replacement. Support from the court for this position. Something to motivate the supervisors to move quickly instead of taking their time.”

“And what do you consider a reasonable time frame?”

“A month, six weeks.” I make it sound generous, like the Creator built the universe in six days.

“And that’s it?”

Maybe I’m getting somewhere.

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Is there something,” he says, “that makes you think the county’s not proceeding in a timely manner? To replace Feretti, that is?”

I make a face, like I’m not sure we should get into this.

“Oh, go ahead,” he says. The first smile I’ve seen this afternoon. Now I am wary.

“You can be candid here,” he says. “In the confines of this office,” he says, “confidences are sacred.”

I could test this by telling him I do abortions on the side. Instead I hedge.

“I hear rumors,” I say, “scuttlebutt that there are budgetary considerations.”

“What have you heard?”

“Nothing specific.”

He looks at me like maybe he doesn’t believe this.

The fact is I know more. The county is drawing down a block grant from the state for a large share of my salary, a condition that will end when they appoint a permanent DA. Local funding being what it is, the county grandees intend to nuzzle up and suckle at the tit of the state as long as possible.

“It couldn’t have anything to do with the Putah Creek things?” he says.

“I won’t deny that I’ve considered those cases.” I make a face, the obvious.

“A prosecution would involve protracted criminal litigation,” I tell him. “It could go on for a year. Longer. The county would be smart to get a permanent prosecutor on board before anything is too far along.”

“Maybe you don’t think you’re up to the task?” A little simper on his lips, imperious. Maybe he is wondering if I have the sand for the job. Or more likely he is questioning my commitment, a switch-hitting lawyer who has been prosecutor and defense attorney and now is back on the side of the angels. For a judge, he packs a lot of prosecutorial baggage to the bench. I think Ingel is one of those judges who believes in putting a beveled edge on justice for the criminally accused.

“No. That’s not it. I’m up to the task,” I say. “But I have other commitments.” I wonder if this sounds as bad as I think, a lawyer on the dodge.

“Sure,” he says. Then a look that is a naked attempt to work over my pride, little jabs around the belt in the clinch.

I swallow hard. A piece of my dignity goes down with the saliva. But I think maybe he’s about to let me go.

“I have a private practice,” I say. “My arrangement was intended to be short-term. A few months. I would not have taken the position otherwise.”

He doesn’t say anything. He knows as well as I that, once started, the Putah Creek cases will be like an Asian land war, much easier to get in than to get out.

“Some people have told me you’re a good lawyer,” he says.

I make a face, like compliments are nice.

“In coming here your reputation precedes you,” he says.

Now he’s sugarcoating it. From Hyde to Jekyll in a heartbeat. The man is mercurial, more faces to his character than Lon Chaney.

“But I for one don’t think much of lawyers who bed their clients,” he says.

Like the wind’s been knocked out of me, a sucker punch. My face goes cold. He talks about dirt in my past, allusions to my earlier affair with Talia Potter, before her case, when Nikki and I were separated, ancient history. This is not news, I think. It was in all the local papers, my cross to bear during the Potter trial. And I’d thought it was over, killed by the heat and bright lights of public exposure. Now Ingel is dredging it all up.

I say nothing, but sit there and take his shellacking.

“As a courtesy, Judge Acosta called from Capital City,” he says, “when he read that you’d been appointed as special prosecutor here. You will learn,” he says, “that judges talk.”

Apparently like fishmongers. Ingel’s been holding forth with the Coconut, Armando Acosta, Mexico’s answer to the Lord of the Flies. I should have seen it coming.

Acosta presided over the trial of Talia Potter, whom I defended in Capital City on charges of murdering her husband. This was seven months ago. Before that, during a period that I was separated from my wife, Nikki, and long before the Potter trial, Talia and I had had an affair. This was to my eternal discredit, because Talia’s husband, Ben Potter, had been a friend and benefactor. I had not disclosed my earlier relationship with the defendant to the court when I took the case. By that time the affair was long over. It was ancient history. But to my chagrin, the papers and the Coconut found out, during the trial. Acosta had threatened to draw and quarter me during the case. And to this day he has not forgiven me for this deception.

“He was not pleased that we took you on,” says Ingel. “He has particular reasons for this.” He’s talking about Acosta.

“I can imagine.”

Right now the Coconut’s pleasure is not my concern. I am seething out to the tips of my ears. That Acosta should pack his arrogance across the river to poison my well on this side has me wondering if I have grounds to lay complaint to the Commission on Judicial Performance, the agency that dogs judges for misconduct in this state. No doubt my temporary role as public official swathes his slander in the protections of the First Amendment.

When I protest, Ingel tells me there’s a reason for all of this. He means the Coconut’s involvement in a case outside his own county.

“One of the victims,” he says, “the coed Sharon Collins, was his niece.”

I sit slack-jawed.

“His younger sister’s daughter,” says Ingel. He’s giving me a lecture on the Coconut’s family tree. Poor Mexican immigrants who made good, though his sister is not so well connected as the judge, so he is taking the lead on her behalf, according to Ingel, looking for a little extra justice no doubt.

Sonofabitch, I think, of all the people on this planet.

“From what I understand, Judge Acosta was like a father to the girl. Mother was divorced,” he says. “He is pretty broken up over the whole thing,” he tells me.

Ingel looks at me like I’m supposed to do something about all this.

“Sorry to hear it,” I say. “He probably has a lot of company.”

Ingel stares at me.

“The parents of the other victims, the other kids,” I tell him. The message is clear. Tell the judge to get in line.

He gives me steely eyes.

“We need to get something straight,” he says. “While you may have slipped through the cracks in getting here, you have a contract, and you will fulfill it, or I will see to it that you answer to the State Bar.”

“On what charge?” I say.

“Abandoning a client,” he says. “Unless I am wrong, that is still grounds for legal discipline. And don’t think about dumping the Putah Creek cases, rolling over on some early motions, allowing the cases to be dismissed so somebody else can refile them later. If I smell any collusion or negligence, I will have your ticket. You’ll be writing briefs by mail order for lawyers in other states. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly. I take it the county has no intention of retaining a permanent prosecutor for these cases?”

He makes a face, like if he knows, he’s not saying. He picks up his watch. “If I can ever do anything more for you,” he says, “feel free to ask.” He looks at me stone cold, something from Rushmore. I get up, out of the chair.

“One last word of advice,” he says. “There will be a lot of people watching you.”

“Because of Judge Acosta?” I say.

“He does have a personal stake in all this.”

Sure he does, and he’s driving it into my ass.