The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

Twenty

Tracey had one more card to play before she filed her Motion to Withdraw. She sent Clay Evans a letter, attaching Joaquin Sanchez’s report on his conversation with Pablo Gonzalez.

You can see from this interview that the real killer is this Geronimo person. Find out who he is, check out his record-maybe he’s in prison somewhere right now-and you will find your killer. The boy you are holding right now is innocent and we both know it.

Release the boy or at least delay the trial until we can jointly investigate who and where this Geronimo person is. Let us work together to see that justice is accomplished.

Sincerely,

Tracey James

Tracey waited two weeks after that, hoping that Clay or Elena would call her. If Elena hadn’t just gotten up and walked out of their meeting, she might have relented and taken the five thousand, or at least that’s what she told herself. She might still take the five, she didn’t know, but Elena needed to call.

Elena had no intention of calling Tracey James. And Clay Evans-he had a good laugh over her letter. He was about to toss it but decided to take a walk over to Wesley Brume’s office first. He wanted to make sure that Brume didn’t have any information about this Geronimo character that he had conveniently forgotten to mention. Clay was still bristling from Brume’s lapses of memory at the suppression hearing. When Brume scoffed at the letter, Clay felt comfortable shredding it.

Tracey attached her written agreement with Elena, which spelled out the terms of her representation, to her Motion to Withdraw. The motion was granted by Judge Richardson, the new judge on the case, after a short hearing that Elena chose not to attend. Rudy’s life was now in the hands of Charley Peterson, the public defender.

Charley Peterson had been the public defender for the last ten years. He was a bright fellow, an honors graduate of Georgetown, but Charley had developed a void in his life over the years, a dry spot that constantly needed to be refreshed-with vodka. It was his drink of choice simply because he believed the myth that vodka didn’t smell. He kept a bottle in his desk and when he needed or wanted a drink, he locked his door and had one. He was fooling nobody but himself. His penchant for vodka was well known throughout the office and the courthouse. Word around the office was to catch Charley in the morning if you wanted to have a serious discussion about a case. In the afternoon, he was practically incoherent. Oh, he could talk without slurring his words and he could carry on a conversation that seemed to make sense. But if you wanted legitimate answers to questions, see him in the morning.

Perhaps Charley was miscast: Perhaps he should have been a tax lawyer. He certainly looked like one. A short, slightly built man with thinning blond hair, he certainly didn’t inspire confidence at first glance, although Charley had been a pretty good trial lawyer in his early years. Good enough, at least, to secure the appointment as public defender without any political affiliations to speak of. But something happened along the way that caused Charley to fizzle and finally burn out. What it was, nobody knew.

Charley had been following Rudy’s case in the newspaper simply because it was there, usually on the front page. It held no particular interest for him and he had no feeling about Rudy’s guilt or innocence. The last thing he wanted was to be Rudy’s lawyer, but when Tracey James was removed from the case, it was transferred to the public defender’s office.

He could have assigned it to one of his four underlings, but only two of them had any felony experience and neither had ever tried a capital case. Try as he might, Charley couldn’t duck this one. People were watching. People who didn’t want to believe the courthouse scuttlebutt.

It took him two weeks to review the file, including the transcript of the suppression hearing. His first order of business as Rudy’s new attorney was to attend a status conference, at which he told Judge Richardson he would be ready to try the case in a month. Charley’s belief was that he could plea-bargain down to manslaughter or perhaps second-degree murder. After all, it was a circumstantial evidence case and a fairly weak one, although Charley had no idea how weak it really was. He never requested Tracey James’s file, never reviewed her investigative notes, and never saw her last letter to the Fourth. Still, he was confident something could be arranged. He had worked well with Clay Evans in the past, mainly because Clay was as lazy as Charley and they were both partial to working things out rather than having to undergo the ordeal of a trial. Charley didn’t realize until after the status conference that this case was different for Clay. Clay wanted the trial and the publicity.

“I won’t even accept a plea of second-degree murder,” Clay told Charley when they finally had their discussion.

Charley took Clay at his word. In fact, if Charley had offered to plead to second-degree murder, Clay would have had to accept it. Tracey James had pointed out all too well the weaknesses in his case. The possibility of losing was simply too great to turn down such a plea. But the plea never came. Instead, Charley began his preparation for trial. He locked his office door, opened his bottom desk drawer, and took out a bottle and a glass.