Depraved Indifference. Joseph Teller
wrong. He’d faithfully abided by the terms of his suspension. He’d given up his law office, which had never been more than a desk, a phone, an answering machine and a computer in a tenth-floor suite. He’d stayed away from 100 Centre Street, Foley Square and all the other courthouses of the city. He’d stopped giving out business cards, refrained from offering legal advice to the few friends and family members he had, and quickly corrected anyone who addressed him or referred to him as a lawyer, attorney, counselor-at-law, or anything else that suggested he was still practicing. Beyond taking those precautions, he lived a life that was almost boring in its adherence to the law. With his car in dry dock, he accumulated no speeding or parking tickets. Without an income, he had no taxes to cheat on. If he broke the law at all, he excused his transgressions as the inevitable by-product of his name: as a pedestrian he continued to pay little heed to hatched crosswalks, traffic lights, and WALK and DON’T WALK signs. But those offenses were hardly the stuff that called for the authorities to go out and recruit Mata Hari types to conduct clandestine surveillance on him.
So who was this blonde who was following him, if rather amateurishly? Jaywalker had been determined to find out. So he’d gradually led her, looking back only surreptitiously, and only often enough to make certain she was still there, all the way to the main branch of the public library. There he’d mounted the outer flight of steps and entered through one of the revolving doors. From the darkened interior, he’d watched as she’d climbed the steps in pursuit. Then, as soon as she’d stepped inside one of the four sections of the door, he’d gotten in opposite her and jammed the thing with his foot. Only after he’d gotten a good look at her from up close—and liked what he saw—had he given the door a good shove to get it going again. Unfortunately, she must have been pushing at the same time, and their combined efforts, as he released his foot, had literally knocked her to the ground. Which meant that, being a gentleman, Jaywalker had had no choice but to come around to her side and help her to her feet.
Her hat had somehow stayed in place, but the force of her fall had knocked the sunglasses from her face. He picked them up and held them up to his eyes for inspection.
“No damage,” he assured her.
What he’d really been doing, of course, was checking to see if they were prescription and therefore necessary on a day that was, if anything, even more overcast than the previous one. They weren’t, meaning they were nothing but a prop. Still, Jaywalker hesitated a bit longer before returning them to her, getting an even better look at her.
That had been an hour and a half ago. The chat on the library steps, the cup of coffee in a nearby luncheonette and the cab ride to her place had taken less than an hour. The rest, as they say, was history. Yet at no point had Jaywalker confronted her about having followed him. Instead, he’d allowed her the fiction that they’d met only because he’d happened to knock her down.
He decided she must have known who he was all along. Her “You’re that guy!” epiphany had been nothing but an act, meant to convince him that it had been pure serendipity that she’d ended up in bed with just the man she wanted to defend her husband.
Why had she gone to such elaborate lengths to meet him? If the answer to that question still went begging, Jaywalker could come up with a pretty plausible explanation. Immediately following his suspension, he’d vacated his office, disconnected his phone, canceled his e-mail account and all but ignored whatever showed up in his post office box. His home phone number, as it always had been, remained unlisted. In other words, he’d become a phantom, a very difficult man to find. Had Amanda Drake—now that he knew her real name—used more traditional means to try to meet with him and hire him, she no doubt would have failed. So she’d somehow hunted him down and then resorted to the old follow-him-until-he-catches-me trick. Then she’d lured him into her bed and, coming up for air, innocently asked him what he did for a living. So while Jaywalker was forced to deduct one point for her having been less than forthright, he gave it back to her for sheer cleverness.
A woman after his own heart.
Even though he was pretty much satisfied with his explanation of why Amanda had been following him, he was tempted to come right out and ask her. Not so much to test his hypothesis as to show off his own superior instinct and skill at having spotted her. But he resisted the urge. Some cards are better played early on in the game; others are best held on to. Who knew if an opportune moment might arise when confronting Amanda would pay a dividend? So he’d settle for having made the tail, in more ways than one.
He kept quiet, therefore, and turned his thoughts to the notion of getting back into the business of defending criminals—okay, accused criminals. And the love-hate relationship he’d long carried on with the way he’d been making his living for the past twenty-some years.
As much as he’d been enjoying his extended sabbatical from the law, Jaywalker could feel the pull of getting back into the trenches. He missed the courthouse, that filthy place of long lines, broken elevators and peculiar smells. He missed the people, the camaraderie—defense lawyers and prosecutors he’d grown middle-aged with; judges who itched to hold him in contempt every time he stepped across some foolish line they’d drawn, but would have hired him in a New York minute if they themselves had gotten into trouble; court officers, corrections officers, clerks, court reporters and translators he’d come to feel he’d known forever. He missed even the defendants, often initially surly or even hostile, invariably self-destructive, but almost always deeply appreciative by the time he parted ways with them. He missed the battle, that matching of wits, that take-no-prisoners struggle they called a trial but might just as well have called a war. He missed opening statements, cross-examination, summing up. He missed sitting on the edge of his seat and feeling his heart pounding in his chest as the jurors filed into the courtroom one last time to deliver their verdict. He missed the incredible high that lifted him into the stratosphere with each acquittal. He even missed, in some strange way, the depths of despair into which he plunged following a conviction.
What’s more, Jaywalker found himself intrigued by the case against Carter Drake. Should the act of driving, no matter how poorly or even recklessly, ever be a sufficient predicate for a murder charge and the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment it carried? Was Jaywalker being old-fashioned by thinking that before accusing a man of murder, the state ought to first be required to demonstrate that he’d set out to harm somebody? Was that asking too much?
But beyond Jaywalker’s interest in that legal issue, there was a much more mundane reason for wanting to get involved. And that was the worst invention Homo sapiens had ever managed to come up with. Money. A murder case, even one predicated upon the faulty operation of a motor vehicle, meant a five-figure fee. God knew he could use the money, which would be his first income in more than two years. And since Carter Drake was apparently willing to do whatever it would take to drag the case out until Jaywalker’s suspension was over, things might actually work out. He’d have to be careful, of course. He’d have to steer clear of the New City courthouse, refrain from saying anything about the case that might find its way into the newspapers and avoid any conduct that might arguably constitute practicing law. And if he were to accept any money, he’d have to do it in such a way as to make it look like something other than a legal fee. But that could be done, he was pretty sure.
Then there were the secondary drawbacks and benefits of getting involved. On the negative side was the sheer notoriety of the case. Taking on Carter Drake as his comeback act would mean that Jaywalker would be returning to the scene of his past transgressions with a considerable bang. Right off the bat, he’d be representing a high-profile murder defendant in what was sure to be a media-circus trial. The prospect of that kind of free publicity would no doubt have delighted every one of Jaywalker’s colleagues, but in that respect he stood apart from them. In fact, the thought of it brought him dangerously close to gagging.
Finally, there was the chance that one of the benefits of representing Carter Drake might be Amanda Drake. Then again, what a conflict of interest that would be! Jaywalker allowed himself a chuckle as he imagined a slew of new charges from the disciplinary committee. He could picture the presiding justice snarling down at him with righteous indignation. “So, Mr. Jaywalker, we conclude that you deliberately made certain that your client would remain