The Gentlemen's Hour

62

Mary Lou Baker is skippy.

But then again, she always is.

The happy warrior.

Now she looks across the table at Alan Burke and says, “Oh, please, Alan. Save the cat-with-the-canary cryptic smile for some young pup who’s impressed with your résumé. I have your client’s confession, I have five witnesses, I have the medical examiner’s report that Kelly’s death was consistent with a severe blow to the head. You have . . . let me think . . . right, that would be nothing.”

Alan maintains the feline smile, if only to get her more jacked up. “Mary Lou,” he says as if addressing a first-year law student in class, “I’ll get the ME to testify that the severe blow to the head could have come from striking the curb. I’ll get three of your witnesses to admit that they pled to reduced charges in exchange for their testimony. As for the so-called confession, come on, ML, you might as well tear it up right now and put it into the office john, because that’s about all it’s good for.”

“Detective Sergeant Kodani has a sterling reputation—”

“Not when I’m done with him,” Alan says.

“Nice,” Mary Lou answers. She leans back in her chair, puts her hands behind her head, and says, “We’ll drop ‘special circumstances.’”

“The judge will drop the ‘special’ before we go to motions,” Alan says.

“You’re going to roll the dice on that?”

“Seven come eleven.”

Mary Lou laughs. “Okay, what do you want?”

“You go manslaughter, we have something to talk about.”

Mary Lou jumps out of the chair, throws her hands up into the air, and says, “What do I look like to you . . .

Santa Claus

?! Christmas comes in

August

now?! Look, we’re wasting our time here. Let’s just go to trial, let the jury hear the case and hand your client life without parole because you want to come in here and joke around.”

Alan looks wide-eyed and innocent. “We can certainly go in front of a jury, Mary Lou. It would be an honor and a pleasure to try a case with you. And no one is going to blame you for an acquittal. You were handcuffed by a shoddy investigation and a rush to judgment, what could you do? I’m sure Marcia Clark would—”

“I’d go second degree,” Mary Lou says. “My best and final offer.”

“That’s fifteen to life.”

“Yeah, I’ve read the statute,” she says.

“Sentence recommendation?”

She sits back down. “It would have to be somewhere in the midrange, Alan. I won’t push for max, but I can’t go minimum, I just can’t.”

Alan nods. “He serves ten on sixteen?”

“We’re in the same ballpark.”

“I’ll have to take it to my client,” Alan says.

“Of course.”

Alan stands up and shakes her hand. “Pleasure doing business with you, Mary Lou.”

“Always, Alan.”

The Gentlemen’s Hour.