Mitigating Circumstances Read online

  “Do you remember the last party we were both at? I do,” he said. “You were wearing this white backless dress and your hair was down, all the way down your back. You looked gorgeous.”

  “The last party was a barbecue at Dennis O’Connor’s, and that was over five years ago. If my memory serves me right, you were wearing jeans and a blue sweater.”

  Their eyes met and he refused to look away, searching there, prying where he didn’t belong. The tequila was still burning her throat and she felt uncomfortable. She took her cold glass and pressed it against her cheek. “Have to make a phone call. Watch my briefcase, okay?” She turned to head for the back of the bar, then said over her shoulder with a smile, “And, Richard, I’ve never in my life owned a white backless dress.”

  There were a lot of things Lily had never done—things far more significant than wearing a backless sundress to a party. One of them was to have an affair. Although her husband had accused her of cheating behind his back for years, Lily had remained faithful despite the accusations and the complete disappearance of sex in their marriage.

  Elbowing her way through the people, she spotted District Attorney Paul Butler on his way to the door. He was a short, serious man in his mid-fifties who seldom mingled with those who worked beneath him. She was surprised to see him.

  “Paul,” she said, “I didn’t see you earlier or I would’ve come over. I guess your secretary informed you of our conference tomorrow on the Lopez-McDonald matter.” The tequila had hit Lily hard on an empty stomach. She willed herself to appear sober, carefully articulating her words.

  “Oh, yes,” he said with a blank look in his eyes. “Refresh me.”

  “Double homicide, teenagers, lovers…the boy was beaten and bludgeoned, the girl raped and mutilated. Five suspects in custody, all Hispanic—possibly gang related.” It was front-page and sensational, both kids honor students, college bound. “You asked for the conference yourself, Paul. The case was assigned to me prior to the promotion, and I’ve already done the workup. Do you recall?” She tried to sound nonchalant, not wanting to emphasize the fact that he was uninformed on such an important case.

  Butler looked down and coughed. “The budget is due this week and the mayor is all over me. Also, the employee relocations. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

  As he moved to pass her, she reached out and took his hand, something she never would have done without the alcohol. “I just want to tell you how I appreciate the promotion. I know you had others to consider.”

  Even in the dim light of the bar, she could see his face turning beet red in embarrassment. She was holding his hand far too close, a bad habit resulting from vanity, refusing to wear her glasses outside the office. She looked down on the top of his head and saw how thin his hair was, something she’d never noticed before. He stepped back as if he knew.

  “Certainly, certainly,” he said. “Well, I guess we’ll discuss this Lopez-McDonald case tomorrow.”

  As he started to pass, he was pushed into her, against her chest, her breasts. The terrified look in his eyes almost caused her to laugh out loud. Did he actually think she was flirting with him? How ludicrous. If she was going to flirt with anyone, it sure wouldn’t be Butler. She leaned against the brass rail of the bar and watched him scurry away on his short little legs, musing on a world where a genuine expression of gratitude was so rare that it raised suspicion. Maybe Butler wasn’t even aware he’d promoted her. He didn’t remember the Lopez-McDonald matter. Perhaps his assistant just picked her name out of a hat?

  No, she rationalized, impossible. He had called Richard into his office on a rampage and demoted him, offering Lily his position only a few hours later. Richard was still a supervisor, but over the Municipal Court Division, a clear step down. The story went that Fowler had became enraged over a lenient sentence on a particularly vicious sex crime and had stormed into Judge Raymond Fisher’s chambers without announcement, all the way into his private bathroom, where he had found the forty-year-old judge snorting lines of cocaine off the bathroom counter. This was one of the reasons Lily wanted a position on the bench. Like oil in water, some of the slimiest had risen to the top and floated there, untouchable, their shifting shadow spreading and darkening all the lives beneath them. Judge Fisher got caught snorting cocaine; Fowler got demoted. That sounded like a fair and impartial judgment.

  In the back of the bar, Lily spotted the phone outside the ladies’ room. She thought it was the ladies’ room, the name said Bwanagals or something weird. She’d been here many times but never drinking tequila. With the alcohol flooding her bloodstream, the floor moved and swayed like a ship at sea. Searching for the little stick figure of a woman with a skirt and finding none, she decided what the. hell, barging through the door. She almost ran over Carol Abrams.

  “Lily,” the petite blonde said, “congratulations on the promotion. That was really quite a coup.”

  She patted Lily on both shoulders with dainty hands and bright pink manicured nails; the movement caused her blunt-cut, shiny hair to swing forward, and Lily watched, mesmerized, as it fell back to the exact position, every hair perfectly aligned. Pushing an unruly strand of hair off her forehead, Lily spotted the chipped paint on her own fingernails and quickly dropped her hands to her sides.

  “I won’t say I didn’t want that promotion. No, I won’t deny it. But I’m glad that at least it was you, a woman, and not some idiot that will sit in the office all day and make paper airplanes. You know what I mean?”

  Lily went into the stall and shut the door, carefully pulling the latch. Carol Abrams might follow her inside or open the door to continue the discussion while Lily sat there with her panty hose stuck around her thighs. Brilliant and never tiring, Abrams was an asset to any department. In court, she simply wore them down: judge, jury, defense attorneys, every last one of them.

  “I don’t know how you feel about Fowler, but I don’t mind saying I’m glad to see him go. I mean, he clearly knows the law, but recently he has lost all semblance of self-control. Everyone knows you don’t go after a judge like a madman. My God. I think he’s suffering from burnout. You know what I mean?” She stopped and took an audible breath, preparing to continue.

  “Carol, why don’t we talk tomorrow?” Lily said. Just as she flushed the toilet, she realized she didn’t want to leave until Abrams had left and wished she hadn’t flushed. She had an urge to tell her off to her face: open the door and tell her that Fowler knew more than she would ever learn in her hyperactive life, but…

  She opened the stall and the woman was gone. Thank God for small favors.

  Seeing her bedraggled face in the mirror, she ripped the bobby pins out of the loose knot and brushed her bright red hair. She reapplied her lipstick, tried to re-smudge her eyeshadow, and headed for the phone to call her thirteen-year-old daughter.

  “Shana, it’s me.”

  “Hold on, Mom, let me put Charlotte on hold.”

  Lily thought it was insane for a child her age to have a private line as well as call waiting, but her father…

  “What do you want?”

  Lily opened her eyes wide and stepped back from the phone a few steps. Shana was getting more sarcastic every day. Lily remembered what it was like to go through puberty, and she was trying her best to let it slide, thinking it was just an adolescent phase. “Are you doing your homework or just talking on the phone, sweetie? Where’s your dad?”

  “Charlotte’s helping me on the phone, and Dad’s asleep on the sofa.”

  Lily pictured him there as always: the dishes piled in the sink, the television blasting, stretched out on the sofa snoring. This was one of the reasons she had begun staying late at the office. With John sleeping in front of the television and Shana in her room on the phone every night with the door closed, there wasn’t really a compelling urge to go home. “Tell him I’m tied up in a meeting and will be home in a few hours.”

  “Mom. Charlotte is going to be cut off. Tell him yourself.”

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sp; “I love you,” Lily whispered. The line was dead. She saw Shana’s adorable face in her mind and tried to match it to her tone of voice and actions. Her own child, her precious little girl, was becoming rude and obnoxious. She’d just hung up on her. Only a few years ago, Shana would sit on the floor in front of Lily for hours, enthralled at every single word that came out of her mothers mouth, her face bright and beaming. Now she was hanging up on her. If Lily had spoken that way to her father, she would’ve been slapped to the floor. But John said those days were over; children had a right to talk back. And Shana adored her father.

  Lily started searching for another quarter to call John and then decided against it, closing her purse. She’d say something to him about Shana talking on the phone and not studying; she couldn’t stop herself. She could only be what she had already become. John would hang up and then march to Shana’s room and tell her that her mother said she had to get off the phone, but it was okay; he wouldn’t tell if she didn’t. He might even add that her mother said she had to clean her room or she was grounded. That would go over great. If that didn’t make Shana despise her, he could also remind her that her mother once said she’d have to become a waitress because she’d never study hard enough to get into college. One of those off-the-wall comments that a parent makes to prove a point to the other parent, it was not something to repeat to a child. But John repeated it and said a lot of other things that were outright lies.

  He should have been an attorney, Lily thought as she walked back into the noisy bar, straightening her skirt and smoothing down her jacket. He should have been a defense attorney. No, maybe a divorce lawyer.

  Back at the table, she saw a fresh margarita, a new shooter, and Richard Fowler. She slid the shot glass away and took a sip of the margarita, letting her hair fall seductively over one corner of her eye while she took in Fowler from his shoes to the top of his head. She was looking at a determined man, she thought, a man of conviction, a warrior, not the type of man who needed to fight with a child as his shield; nor a man who could be happy with a mediocre government job where his hours had been cut to only thirty a week and his wife carried the weight of the family while he puttered around in the kitchen. He wasn’t a wimp like John.

  Silverstein’s New York twang rang out from the adjoining table, where he was throwing popcorn into his mouth and trying to talk at the same time, complaining about some case; four out of five kernels ending up on his clothes or the floor. Duffy had apparently gone home.

  “Your hair looks great,” Richard said. “I had no idea it was still so long. You never wear it down to the office.” He reached out and touched a strand, twirling it between his fingers.

  “Not too professional. I don’t know why I don’t cut it. Guess I’m trying to hold onto my youth or something.” She inhaled deeply. She was breathless. He was so close.

  Fowler’s fingers disappeared from her hair. Lily wanted to reach for his hand and put it back, feel the electricity again, feel his fingers on her face, her skin, but the moment was shattered. From across the room, they both saw Lawrence Bodenham, a private-practice defense attorney. He honed in on Lily and headed their direction. The new rage with those in private practice was to wear their hair long, almost shoulder-length, and Bodenham’s curled at the bottom. Reaching the table, he put his hand out to shake hers.

  “You’re Lily Forrester, right?” he said. “Lawrence Bodenham.”

  “Right,” Lily said, really feeling the tequila now, wishing the man would leave and she could think of something brilliant and seductive to say to Fowler, particularly now that she’d had a few drinks and was feeling the false courage of alcohol. She made no move to shake his hand, and he withdrew it.

  “I’m representing Daniel Duthoy on that 288 matter, and I’ve been having some real problems with Carol Abrams regarding discovery.”

  The case was only vaguely familiar to Lily. Richard evidently knew it well and turned to face the attorney with a look of contempt. Two-eighty-eight was a sodomy and the victim had been a ten-year-old boy, the defendant the pillar of the community—a Big Brother. “Remember me?” Richard snapped. “If you have any problems, Bodenham, just tell it to the judge. Or why don’t you call up Butler at home on your car phone from your Porsche? He just adores you guys who pull down two hundred G’s a year defending these good folk who like to butt-fuck little boys.”

  Bodenham stepped back a safe distance before responding. “I hear you’re back assigning drunk driving and petty thefts to new A.D.A.‘s who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. Good career move, Fowler. You’re really on the way up.” As soon as the words had left his mouth, the attorney disappeared into the crowd.

  Richard pushed back from the table, slapping it with both hands. His eyes were red-rimmed and he reeked of bourbon. “That about makes an evening for me. See you around.” He turned to leave.

  Lily caught his coattail, stopping him. “You’ve had too much to drink, Rich. Let me drive you.” She was standing with her purse and briefcase, ready.

  For the first time that evening, he smiled broadly, flashing perfect white teeth. “Come on, then. If you want to save me, now is the time. But if you think I’m going to let a drunk like you drive me, you’re crazy. Come on. You never bought me that drink, so now you can buy me a cup of coffee.”

  CHAPTER 2

  He was waiting. His hands and face were pressed against the thick, tinted glass windows of the shiny new jail. Intrigued by the circles his warm breath made, he was entertaining himself by making a pattern of them. It was dark and the little red car stood alone directly under his window. Every morning and evening, he watched her long legs appear from the door of the car, her skirt hiked up. Depending on where she parked, the angle of the car, he thought he could see up her skirt, see the fabric of her underwear. He imagined that she was naked under her clothes and what he had seen was her pubic hair. It would have to be red, he thought. Red pubic hair.

  He was angry at her now. She didn’t always come out at the same time, but never this late. She was fucking someone, he was certain. He had given her the eye, making her his woman, and she was fucking someone right now, right this very minute. He saw those long legs wrapped around another mans neck, saw her reaching for him with lust-filled eyes. He wanted to take his fist and beat the lust right off her face, see some pain instead. She looked like a schoolteacher or a probation officer, but she was nothing but a whore. They were all whores.

  He kept his body against the glass but craned his neck around toward the common room, where other prisoners were sitting at the stainless steel picnic tables and laughing at some sitcom or cop show on the television. Laughing like a bunch of hyenas in a cage. They loved cop shows. When one of the television cops got shot or hurt, they all applauded and whistled. But that would stop soon—the laughter. In a few hours they would be locked down for the endless night and the laughter would stop; the other sounds would begin. They would talk to each other in the dark, their voices echoing off the bars from one cell to the other. And they would listen. In the blackness was another world.

  Sometimes he heard men crying like babies. It made him sick. They would talk about their wives, their children, even their mothers. They would talk about God and the Bible, about redemption and forgiveness. And the other sounds. The groans and moans of sweaty, smelly, disgusting sex. They tried to stop it, the keepers, but they never would.

  Men were men, he thought. And men needed sex. But he would never stoop that low—become an animal like the others, allow them to steal his manhood, his machismo. Not him. No matter what they did to him, or how many years they locked him up. He was a Latin lover, a ladies’ man. Women always said he was handsome. They all wanted him. All he had to do was choose the one he wanted.

  He pushed the lower half of his body against the window, looking down on the parking lot. He imagined himself on the floorboard of her car, waiting for her, and felt himself hard and erect against the glass. Then he saw her face, heard her screa
m, and the aching between his legs intensified. He rotated his hips against the window, his mouth falling open. His heavy breath smoked a circle and spread to ragged edges, reminding him of bloodstains. He jerked his body away from the glass, stood completely still, let anger fill him. He was no pussy boy who jerked off in a cage.

  They’d put him in a cell with a black. Not only a black, but a stupid black, an older black. He had friends inside, homeboys from the streets. But they’d put him in a cell with a fucking black and now he had to watch him, keep his eyes open even in the dark of the night.

  Laughter, hoots, and whistles rang out from the common room. This was the best part of the day. But he couldn’t leave the window, not until he saw her. She had taken this time away from him, this redheaded whore.

  “You’ll pay, bitch. You’ll pay,” he uttered against the glass. “And you’ll fucking beg. You’ll beg.”

  This morning when she’d come to work, he’d been at the window, waiting. Something about her troubled him, triggered a blinding rage to see her beneath him, her mouth open in a scream of terror. He’d seen her somewhere before. Not from the window, but close. He remembered that she had freckles, little alien dots across her nose and cheeks, something he could never have seen from the window. But he knew they were there. He could see them in his mind. Most Hispanic women didn’t have freckles. He’d never had a woman with freckles.

  “First time for everything, man,” he said, chuckling. “First time for everything.”

  “What youse laughing ‘bout, boy?” a large black man said, shuffling into the cell. “Youse always standing at dat window and laughing likes a crazy man. They gonna cart you off, they sees you. You listen to Willie, boy. Willie knows. They done get plenty pissed they sees you.”