Conflict of Interest Read online

  “What’s that?”

  “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”

  “Interesting,” Dreiser remarked. “Do you like Chinese food? Getting out of this place for a few hours would do us both good, don’t you think?”

  “I’ll meet you in the lobby in five minutes?” Joanne answered, unable to resist. “I need to stop by my office and pick up a probation report. It’s only a few pages long. I can read it in the car.”

  Joanne and Dreiser were facing each other across the red linen tablecloth at the Mandarin Inn, a spacious older restaurant near the courthouse. Since she hadn’t had breakfast, she consumed an entire plate of cashew chicken and fried rice. Dreiser waited until the waiter removed their plates, then stated, “I might consider letting Ian plead guilty to a misdemeanor.”

  Joanne Jerked her head back. “You’ve got to be kidding. Robbery is a serious offense. And this new gun makes the crime even more serious.”

  “That’s why I didn’t approach you about negotiating this from the onset,” Dreiser told her, fiddling with the knot on his tie. “I don’t want this kid to have a felony conviction on his record. They’ll use it as an enhancement if he gets in trouble again. This is how guys like Ian get caught up in the system.”

  A good amount of time passed in silence. Around the office, they Jokingly referred to Joanne as the queen of the pregnant pause. People often repeated themselves, thinking she hadn’t heard them. She tried to explain that her personal database had grown so large that she needed time to sift through the unnecessary clutter. “The state has a strong case,” she told him, clasping her hands together “We have no reason to settle.”

  “Just hear me out,” Dreiser said, sighing in frustration. “Ian Decker is developmentally disabled. The Rubinskys conned him into acting as their wheelman. While they were allegedly committing the robbery, Ian was waiting outside in his car. These two assholes told him they were going into the market to buy beer and cigarettes.”

  Joanne placed her napkin over her mouth and chuckled. The longer she spent with this man, the more he impressed her. He certainly wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. Although he had purposely inserted the word “allegedly” into his comments, for all practical purposes, he had just admitted that his client had been involved in the crime. “You’d better watch your mouth, or you won’t get paid.”

  “Trust me,” Dreiser said, grimacing. “I’m not making a dime off this case. I agreed to represent Ian as a favor to Elizabeth.”

  “If your client is innocent, why do you want him to plead guilty?”

  “Put this guy on the witness stand and there’s no telling what will come out of his mouth,” Dreiser told her. “The Rubinskys completely control him. They won’t even let him speak to his mother. Didn’t you see that fiasco in the courtroom? Elizabeth is frantic. She doesn’t know where Ian is staying. The police impounded his Firebird, and as far as we know, the Rubinskys don’t have a vehicle. No one knows what’s going on with these men.”

  “Maybe Ian doesn’t want to talk to his mother,” Joanne said. “I might not want to talk to my mother either if I’d made a mess of my life. He may be a little slow, but he is an adult.”

  “About a settlement…”

  Joanne arched an eyebrow. “A felony, right?”

  “You’re tough,” Dreiser said, mumbling the words under his breath. “I explained why I won’t let him plead to a felony. Make it a misdemeanor with a year in the county jail, and three years of supervised probation.”

  Joanne leaned forward. “Absolutely not.”

  “Fine,” Dreiser snapped. “Let the poor guy go to prison. By the time he gets out, he’ll be a hardened criminal. Then hell kill someone and end up on death row.”

  “Let’s not get carried away here,” Joanne said, tossing her napkin on the table. “The only way a person can end up on death row in California is to be convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances. Even then there are no guarantees. The prisons are filled with killers who will never be executed.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Don’t try to tell me you actually believe that prison causes a person to go out and start killing people.”

  “Maybe with a normal person,” Dreiser continued, “I’d agree with you. But when you take someone with the mental capabilities of a ten-year-old and warehouse them in an institution of violent offenders, you’re on the road to creating a monster.”

  “I refuse to listen to this,” Joanne said, having been down this road too many times in the past. She felt like getting up and walking out of the restaurant, then reminded herself that she had no way to get back to the courthouse. Usually, she made a point of bringing her own car. The attorney’s charisma had affected her reasoning.

  “People commit crimes, Arnold,” Joanne continued. “Without the system, we’d have no way to protect society.” She picked up a chop-stick, snapping it in half. “There’s an easy way to stay out of jail. Don’t break the law. I’m sick to death of all these excuses. Everyone has problems. You could lock me up for years for a crime I didn’t commit, and it wouldn’t cause me to rob or kill someone once I was released.”

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be inside the mind of a person with this type of disability?” Dreiser asked, his eyes expanding with intensity “The frustrations are mind-boggling.” He picked up the check for their food, waving it in front of her. “Something as simple as paying this bill, counting money, figuring out how to get to their job every day without getting lost. And what about registering their car, paying their taxes, dealing with the frustrations of HMOs and other huge corporate entities like banks and utility companies. Just using a pay phone these days is complex, for God’s sake.”

  Joanne opened the file she had brought. “Good speech,” she said, reading through the first page of the report. “Save your energy for the courtroom.”

  “Elizabeth is a wonderful woman,” Dreiser answered, refusing to back down. “Her husband was killed in a car accident when Ian was a toddler She’s been fighting this kid’s battles since the day he was born. You saw how awful she looked today She’ll never be the same if her son goes to prison. Her health is another factor. She had a liver transplant a few years ago.”

  “Is she an alcoholic?”

  “No,” he said. “She had chronic liver disease.”

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your position,” Joanne told him, setting the report aside. “Any mother would be devastated. You probably felt obligated to represent this man.”

  “A person with Ian’s disabilities doesn’t belong in a prison environment,” Dreiser told her, his voice escalating. “He’ll be brutalized from the first day he gets off the bus.”

  “If your client is incompetent to stand trial,” Joanne countered, irritated that he’d waited until now to bring such a serious issue to light, “then why didn’t you petition the court to send him off for a ninety-day diagnostic before the preliminary hearing?”

  “Nothing would have come of it,” the attorney explained, tapping a spoon against his water glass. “The state psychologist would have ruled that Ian was competent to stand trial. Most of his IQ tests have come in around seventy, give or take a few points. He’s borderline, the worst possible scenario. He looks normal. He can drive, mow a lawn, read and write at around a fifth-grade level, perform simple tasks. As far as the courts are concerned, he’s the same as any other defendant.”

  Joanne still needed to finish reviewing the report on the sentencing hearing, make a few phone calls, and try to scrub the stain off the front of her jacket. The first hour of the recess had already passed, and she was becoming even more anxious. “You’ve just described 50 percent of all criminal defendants,” she told him. “You do realize that, don’t you?”

  Dreiser’s courtroom demeanor began to surface as he attempted to make his point. “Yes, Ian knows right from wrong. Yes, he can cooperate with his defense. He’s still a child trapped inside a man’s body” He paused, handing the wai
ter his credit card. “If he’d stabbed someone, then I wouldn’t have a problem if he ended up in prison. But this crime doesn’t involve violence. The Rubinskys took advantage of him. They needed a car. When they bumped into their old pal from the neighborhood, Ian became the perfect solution to their problem.” He paused and then continued. “I’ve changed my mind about negotiating a settlement. I’ll get Ian acquitted.”

  Joanne crossed her arms over her chest, giving him her undivided attention. He was providing her with information she could utilize during the trial. “I don’t see how you’ll ever get a jury to acquit Ian Decker when we have an eyewitness who can place him inside his car, parked in front of the Quick-Mart at the time of the robbery. He’s not blind, is he? The store has glass windows. How could he sit there and not see what was going on? And what about the gunshot the Rubinskys fired with their disgusting new weapon?”

  “The victim is so confused,” Dreiser said, “he’d probably identify his own brother. He’s contradicted himself five times during the preliminary hearing. And this witness who placed Ian at the market just got out of drug rehab. He’s mistaken on the location of the car. Ian says they parked on the north side of the market. He wasn’t able to see what was going on inside. There’s a concrete wall there. Don’t tell me you have an airtight case, because I know better.”

  Joanne tapped her fingernails on the table. The clerk at the Quick-Mart was one of the weakest links in their case. “Mr. Bhavan got confused during some of the questioning,” she told him. “I think he had trouble understanding the interpreter. That’s why I asked the court to hire someone else for the trial. Bhavan is here on a six-month visa from India. I have to keep reassuring him that we’re not going to deport him.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dreiser said realistically “Whatever he says on the stand is his testimony”

  “Bhavan picked all three of your clients out of a lineup,” Joanne tossed back at him. “He just can’t remember which of the two brothers fired the gun. Your memory might be a little fuzzy too if someone opened fire with what you thought was a cell phone.”

  “Ian was asleep,” Dreiser said, not prepared to reveal the rest of what the young man had told him about the night before the robbery.

  “Bullshit,” Joanne said, shocked that Dreiser would try to use such a lame excuse. “Instead of the Rubinskys conning your client, you’re the one who’s being conned. Decker was a walling participant. You’re wasting your time, Arnold.”

  “Elizabeth bought him that car for his twenty-first birthday” Dreiser told her, staring at a spot over her head. “Ian had finally managed to move into a subsidized apartment building and was doing fairly well living independently The Rubinskys knew they could trick him into acting as their wheelman. They also got him to hand over the money he got from his monthly disability checks. When he couldn’t pay his portion of the rent, the complex evicted him.”

  Joanne watched as he scribbled his name on the credit-card slip, then slapped it back down on the table.

  “Ian was a lonely guy, okay,” Dreiser said. “Individuals like this are exploited every day. Offer them a few hours of companionship, and they’ll give you the shirt off their backs.”

  “We have to leave,” Joanne said, standing and smoothing down her skirt. The attorney wasn’t as charming as she’d thought. He was cunning and relentless. If nothing else, she would make every attempt to learn from him during the course of the trial.

  “I didn’t intend to argue the case over lunch,” Dreiser said as they walked out of the restaurant into the bright afternoon sunlight. “I just don’t want to see this kid take a fall.”

  He circled around to the passenger side of his black Cadillac Escalade, opening the car door for her. Once Joanne had fastened her seat belt, he headed off in the direction of the courthouse. “I want to confirm something,” she asked him. “You’re not receiving any compensation for representing Ian Decker?”

  “Zilch,” Dreiser told her. “Elizabeth doesn’t have any money. She mortgaged her house to pay for Ian’s bail.”

  Joanne contemplated their conversation. Recently, there had been a rash of publicity regarding developmentally disabled offenders. In Texas, they had executed a man who wasn’t even aware he was going to die. He had asked the guards to save his dessert for when he returned. She wished she’d never accepted Dreiser’s offer to go to lunch. “Can you get me copies of Ian’s school records, along with any recent psychological evaluations?”

  “Elizabeth has boxes of that stuff,” Dreiser told her. “You’ll have it by tomorrow morning.”

  Once they had pulled into a parking space at the courthouse, Joanne reached for the door handle, then turned back to the attorney. “I doubt if anything is going to come of this,” she said. “You should probably tell his mother that you want to look over his records yourself. Giving her false hope will only make things worse.”

  “I agree,” Dreiser said, remaining in the car with his hands on the steering wheel. “Do you have children?”

  “Two,” Joanne answered. “What about you?”

  “I had a sixteen-year-old son,” he said, his eyes misting over. “I lost him five years ago.”

  Joanne pulled her hand away from the door. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Jake committed suicide,” Dreiser said, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him. “After all this time, we still don’t know why He didn’t use drugs. He had wonderful friends, was active in sports, did well academically”

  “Your wife…”

  “We were divorced at the time,” he said, leaning back against the headrest. “The divorce was amicable.”

  Joanne felt small and helpless. When someone revealed something this tragic, words became meaningless. Listening was the only consolation.

  “Not knowing is what eats away at you,” Dreiser continued, brushing his hand underneath his nose. “Jake didn’t leave a note. In the beginning, I thought someone had killed him and set it up to look like a suicide. The police couldn’t find any evidence of a crime, so we had no choice but to accept the truth. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, that your son never wanted to see you again, let alone live.”

  Joanne reached over and touched his hand. “Maybe after the trial is over,” Joanne told him, taking a deep breath, “we can have dinner. I’ve never been through anything close to what you have, but I’ve had some serious problems related to my children. My ex-husband is awaiting trial in Los Angeles. He embezzled a fortune. Because he thought I was going to report him, he took off with my kids. I didn’t know where they were for two years.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dreiser told her. “I don’t know what caused me to start talking about Jake. It was around this time of the year that it happened. I try not to think about it, but it always hits me like a tidal wave.”

  Joanne’s eyes darted to the clock on the dashboard. “The hearing begins in seven minutes,” she said, quickly jotting down her home number on a scrap of paper, ‘i can’t afford to be late again. Call me tonight. By ten, the kids will be in bed, and we can talk as long as you want.” She tried to give him the paper, but he looked away. She placed it on the center console. Why had she mentioned her children? He would never see his son again. Her stomach was churning. She felt as if she had somehow moved inside his mind, and was swimming in a murky pool of grief. Was this what he was referring to when he’d been talking about Ian Decker? She’d never felt this way before. She had trouble focusing her eyes. “Perhaps I should tell Judge Spencer I’m not feeling well, ask for a continuance?”

  “I’m fine,” Dreiser said curtly “All I need is a few minutes alone.”

  Joanne leapt out and hurried toward the front of the building. Leah taking the car the night before no longer seemed important. All she’d done was drive around inside the gated compound. If she’d managed to relieve her tensions without hurting anyone, was it really worth punishing her, putting even more strain on their relationship? She had lost two years ou
t of her children’s lives, years that could never be reclaimed. Arnold Dreiser’s passion for this particular case was understandable in light of what he had just told her. Obviously, he was trying to save more than just Ian Decker. Having a child commit suicide was a parent’s worst nightmare. She could only imagine the demons that assailed the poor man. Was it something he had done, something he’d said? Did he fail to see the warning signs? Could he have somehow prevented it? For the rest of his life, he would be asking himself the same questions.

  Joanne glanced over her shoulder, seeing the attorney slowly making his way across the parking lot, moving his feet as if they were encased in concrete. Although she didn’t believe that every event that occurred in a person’s life was preordained, she did feel people sometimes came together for a reason. It might not have been uplifting, yet she’d needed to hear this man’s story. No matter how frustrating her day was, when she got home that evening she would put a smile on her face and make certain to tell Mike and Leah how deeply she loved them.

  FOUR

  Thursday, February 8, 2001, 6:15 P.M.

  ROOM 734 at the Economy Inn in Ventura was filled with the pungent odor of marijuana, body odor, and stale beer. After the three defendants had been released on bail, they’d taken up residence at the motel.

  Gary Rubinsky stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped loosely around his waist. He scooped up his pants off the floor and dug in the pockets for another joint, fired it up, and took a puff. Although the brothers were both good-sized men, Tom was in the best physical shape. He’d played on his high school basketball team, and, whenever he could ditch Gary, he spent Saturday afternoons shooting hoops. Although Tom had failed in his attempts to obtain a basketball scholarship, he’d been accepted at several universities. Their parents were going through some rough times financially, however, and were unable to provide for his tuition. Because Gary had skipped college, he’d convinced his younger brother that it was a waste of time, that he’d end up with a mountain of student loans and drop out before he received his degree. A degree was just a lousy piece of paper, according to Gary. If Tom wanted a degree, Gary told him he could get one of his friends to print one up for him.