A Case of Redemption Read online

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  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Acknowledgments

  About Adam Mitzner

  For my wife, Susan

  Gonna stop you when you sing,

  gonna give it til you scream;

  don’t like what you said,

  gonna go A-Rod on your head.

  —LEGALLY DEAD, “A-ROD”

  FROM THE SONG “A-ROD,” LYRICS AND MUSIC BY LEGALLY DEAD (REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM CAPITAL PUNISHMENT RECORDS, INC., ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

  “Where should I start?”

  This is what my clients would say, back when I had clients. And they’d say it with the utmost sincerity, as if they truly didn’t know how to explain the circumstances that gave rise to their seeking out a criminal defense lawyer who charged a thousand bucks an hour.

  It wasn’t that they didn’t know when the facts concerning the crime began, but they wanted to emphasize that there was a context, a preface to all that followed. By telling me they didn’t know where to start, they were indicating that something came before they crossed the line into criminal conduct, and that was important, too.

  So, where should I start?

  Everything in my life—the one I have now—starts at the same point. Nearly two years ago, my wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. I’ve learned it’s best to just come out with it like that. No amount of prefacing prepares people for the shock, and so I say it straightaway. I also tell them that the other driver was drunk, because if I don’t, they invariably ask how it happened. And to cut off the next question, I volunteer that he also died at the scene. I keep to myself that the driver’s death is but small solace, because it was instantaneous, which means that the son of a bitch didn’t suffer.

  Shortly after, I calculated how many minutes I’d been alive up to the exact moment of the accident. I used the calculator on my phone to go from the 1,440 minutes in a day to 43,200 in a thirty-day month, and then to the 525,600 in a non–leap year. My forty-one years, three months, four days, six hours, and twenty-nine minutes meant that I’d been alive for 21,699,749 minutes at the time of the accident, and up until that point nearly everything in my life had gone exactly according to plan. I’d gotten good grades, which led to acceptance at an Ivy League college, then a top-ten law school, a coveted judicial clerkship, employment at a top-tier law firm, and then the Holy Grail of partnership. My wife was beautiful and whip smart, and my daughter was, in a word, perfect.

  And then, in the 21,699,749th minute, my life was shattered. Broken so utterly that it was impossible to know what it had even looked like intact.

  That is the context, although obviously not all of it. Suffice it to say, when I met Legally Dead, the up-and-coming hip-hop artist accused of murdering his pop-star girlfriend, I was legally dead, too, and looking for someone or something to put life back into me.

  1

  The siren felt like it was inside my brain. My first thought was that it must be the vestige of a nightmare. That’s how I normally wake up these days, in a cold sweat. But then I felt the aftereffects of at least two drinks too many. My tongue felt coated, my throat hoarse, and my eyes drier than both. And seeing that I’m not usually hungover in my dreams, I concluded that I must be conscious, although perhaps just barely.

  The god-awful sound wailed through my head again. It was only then that I realized it was the ringer on my phone. I must have at some point changed it to the horrible all-hands-on-deck emergency sound. I wouldn’t have answered it at all, but I desperately did not want to hear that shrillness again.

  “Hello,” I croaked.

  “You sound like you were hit by a truck,” said a woman’s voice.

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Nina.” Then, after a slight pause, “I was calling to say that I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, but it sounds like you might need more time than that.”

  “Nina?”

  She laughed, a soft lilting sound that struck a chord of recognition.

  “Rich’s sister,” she said, just as I recalled it myself. “We talked last night at the party. I told you that I’d be coming by your place today at nine.”

  I squinted over at the clock on the cable box. Eight forty-five.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t—”

  She laughed again. “No apology necessary. You’re doing me the favor.”

  Favor? It felt like trying to reconstruct a dream. Shards of recollection were out there, but I couldn’t pull them together in any type of coherent way.

  Neither of us said anything for a moment, and then, as if she had just gotten the punch line of a joke, she laughed for a third time. “You don’t remember anything from last night, do you?”

  That was not entirely true. I recalled showing up at Rich and Deb’s annual Christmas party in jeans and a sweatshirt, unshaven, while everyone else was dressed to the nines. I didn’t care about looking more or less like an aging hipster, however. I hadn’t wanted to go at all, much preferring to spend the evening as I did most nights, in the company of my closest confidant these days, Mr. Johnnie Walker. But Deb had been Sarah’s closest friend since middle school, and that gave her a sense of familial entitlement to invoke Sarah’s will, claiming that my deceased wife would be very disappointed in me if I didn’t attend her best friend’s annual Christmas party.

  So, there was that.

  And I remembered meeting Nina. Although what we’d discussed was still a mystery, a clear image of what she was wearing came into view—a low-cut, sparkly silver cocktail dress, three-inch pumps that brought her to eye level, and a pendant hanging midway through her deep cleavage. But, let’s be honest, even a dead man would have remembered that.

  “Rich warned me that this might be the case,” Nina said, sounding somewhat amused by my hangover. “Last night you agreed to come with me to visit with Legally Dead. He’s being held at Rikers.”

  I didn’t have the faintest recollection of even d
iscussing Legally Dead, much less agreeing to visit him in prison. But at least now I knew the what. Unfortunately, the why was still a mystery.

  I was tempted to just ask her—after all, she said I was doing her the favor here. But I decided the better course was not to let on how little I remembered from the previous evening, just in case something I’d said or done was too far over the line.

  So I offered her the most noncommittal-sounding “Okay” known to man.

  “Jesus, you really don’t remember, do you? How much did you drink last night, anyway?”

  There’s no good answer to that question, and so I said nothing.

  In the voice you’d use to talk to a second grader, she said, “Okay, let’s review. I’m a third-year associate at Martin Quinn. We do work for Capital Punishment Records. That’s Legally Dead’s label. With me so far?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying not to sound either annoyed or embarrassed, although both emotions were coursing through me.

  “Good. So, at one of the team meetings, I heard that Legally Dead wanted to switch counsel, and that he wanted the guy who represented Darrius Macy. That would be you. Remember, I told you that story about how Legally Dead first said, ‘Get me the dude who represented O.J.’ And when he was told that Johnnie Cochran had been dead for about ten years, he said, ‘Then get me that guy who got Darrius Macy off.’ ”

  I had no recollection of that story at all. Fortunately, Nina didn’t wait for me to acknowledge my alcohol-induced amnesia before continuing.

  “Steven Weitzen, he’s the big hitter in the litigation group at Martin Quinn, called over to Taylor Beckett, and someone there told him that you’d left the firm and that you weren’t practicing anymore. End of story, right? But I knew that you were Rich and Deb’s friend and I’d see you at their party. At first you were trying to make excuses, everything from thinking he must be guilty to you, and here I quote, not being a lawyer anymore, but I explained, rather persuasively, I thought, about how there was no evidence against him and how this is mainly a racial thing. White pop princess, black rapper. And you agreed.”

  And I agreed? I must have drunk even more than I thought. Even as far removed from life as I’d been lately, I still wasn’t in deep enough to believe that Legally Dead’s arrest for murdering the pop star known by the one-name moniker of Roxanne was mainly a racial thing. All you needed to do was turn on a radio for fifteen minutes and you’d hear “A-Rod”—a song written and performed by Legally Dead in which he rapped about beating a singer to death with a baseball bat. Coincidence of coincidences, that was precisely how Roxanne was murdered.

  I’d never declined taking on a client before because he was guilty. In fact, in my previous life, I would have jumped at the opportunity to insert myself into a high-profile case without a moment’s hesitation. Now, however, I saw a million reasons to decline.

  “Listen, Nina, I’m really flattered, but I can’t even think about taking on something like this . . . I’m . . .”

  I didn’t finish the thought. There were so many words that might have completed the sentence that I found it hard to pick just one: depressed, suffering, in pain, mourning, and how about just plain old drunk a lot of the time.

  “I’m not having the same conversation we had last night all over again,” Nina said forcefully. “I heard all your reasons then, and after you heard mine, you said you’d come with me today. That, my friend, is known in the law as a binding contract, and I’m holding you to it. Besides, as I told you last night, and as I’m sure you don’t remember today, I’ve met with Legally Dead a couple of times already. He’s a very sweet guy, and I absolutely believe him when he says that he’s innocent.”

  I wondered if I’d asked her last night if he said that in a song, too, or if he reserved his music for threats of murder, but given my compromised brain function, I just wanted this conversation to end, even if it meant capitulation on my part. Although spending the morning visiting a murderer in jail was not necessarily my idea of fun, it’s not like I had anything else on my agenda that day. Or any other day that month, for that matter.

  “Okay, you win. But it’s going to take me . . .” I couldn’t even remember how long it took me to get ready in the morning. “A half hour, maybe forty-five minutes.”

  “That’s fine. I’m relatively sure that Legally Dead isn’t going anywhere. Just remember, you promised me you’d wear a suit and shave.”

  I did? Christ.

  The shower helped relieve my headache, and the mouthwash removed the stench of my breath, which was so putrid it even bothered me. Then I scraped off my stubble, trying to remember how many days’ growth it represented.

  When I opened my closet, the first suit that caught my eye was my best one, a charcoal-gray Brioni. It was the one I wore the opening day of the Darrius Macy trial. My go-to suit. The one that, once upon a time, gave me the most confidence.

  It was also the last suit I’d worn, on the day of the funerals.

  It fit much more snugly than the last time I’d worn it. I didn’t know exactly how much weight I’d gained, but twenty pounds would have been a safe bet. The jacket pulled across the back, and the inside pants button was a lost cause. It was yet another reminder that I was a different man now.

  Before I left the apartment, I stopped to assess last night’s damage in the hallway mirror. I’d been seeing my father’s face in my reflection more and more these days. He died three months after my daughter was born, and for a while it was something of a macabre race as to which event would occur first.

  There are worse things to see, especially on the morning after an evening during which I’d had too much to drink. My father was very handsome, almost to the point of distraction. We share the same pale complexion, long straight nose, and strong chin. It’s around the eyes, however, where I see the strongest resemblance, for better and for worse. My eyes have always been among my better features, large and deep blue, which contrasts with my jet-black hair. More than one person had commented, back in my younger days, that I looked a bit like Superman. Now, however, all I saw was sallowness, which reminded me of the way my father looked after the chemo ended, when all hope was lost.

  2

  Rikers is a jail, not a prison. The distinction is that it’s operated by the city and the inmate population hasn’t been convicted yet, but is awaiting trial. For that reason, it houses less-hardened criminals than you might find at Sing Sing, for example, one of New York State’s prisons. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bed-and-breakfast, either. Just a few years ago, one of Rikers’s guards was indicted for running a program in which handpicked inmates operated as enforcers, beating prisoners at the guard’s command.

  It was below freezing outside, and not much warmer inside. It wasn’t just the air that was cold. The cinder-block-gray walls were bare except for the painted-on name of the institution and the official photos of the president and New York City’s mayor in cheap, black plastic frames. The floor was even more barren, without a stick of furniture or a rug, just scuffed gray tile that might once have actually been white.

  We waited in line to show our credentials to a heavyset woman sitting behind what I assumed to be bulletproof glass. Just beyond her was a small courtyard where two inmates shoveled away last night’s light snowfall while under the supervision of two guards.

  “Inmate name,” the woman behind the glass barked when it was our turn at the head of the line.

  “Nelson Patterson,” Nina said. Seeing my confusion, she whispered to me, “You didn’t think his parents actually named him Legally Dead, did you?”

  “Purpose of your visit?” the heavyset woman said.

  “Counsel,” Nina replied.

  Nina slid her business card through the small slot in the window, and then said, “My colleague forgot his, but he’ll write out his contact information if you’d like.”

  The woman behind the glass eyed me suspiciously. No wonder Nina had told me to wear a suit.

  After I scribbled down
my home address and cell phone number, the woman pressed a button that caused a loud buzzer to sound. Simultaneously, a large metal door beside the bulletproof glass slid open. Nina and I walked through the doorway only to find another large metal door locked in front of us. When the first door closed behind us, the buzzer sounded again, indicating that the second door was now opening.

  We were immediately hit with a wave of almost paralyzing stench, the unfortunate by-product of hundreds of men living in extremely close quarters. In front of us stood a guard who looked barely older than twenty and was as big as an NFL linebacker. The smell didn’t seem to faze him in the least.

  The guard led us down a maze of hallways until we arrived at a bank of phones. They looked just like they do on television cop shows. Each station was a mirror image of a black phone on the wall and a single metal chair, the two sides separated by thick glass, which, again, I presumed to be bulletproof.

  There were only two other visitors. One looked like an attorney, if only because he was wearing a suit. The other was a woman, a girl, really, likely still in her teens. Her arms were covered in tattoos and she was holding an infant up to the glass.

  “You’ll have a little more privacy over here,” the guard said to explain why we were being assigned to the phone on the end.

  The baby was now crying. The top-of-the-lungs shriek that only infants can muster.

  As we waited for Legally Dead to arrive, my thoughts turned to the reason why he was here in the first place: Roxanne. More accurately, I remembered that my daughter was a big fan. In fact, Roxanne may have been the first popular recording artist Alexa ever mentioned. One day she was singing the theme song from Elmo’s World, and the next she was yelling from the backseat of the car that she wanted me to play Roxanne on the radio. Sarah laughed that our daughter thought the car radio worked like an iPod, and we could conjure at will whatever song we wanted to hear.

  That memory merged seamlessly into a less happy one. An interview of Roxanne’s mother I’d seen only a few weeks earlier. She didn’t look much older than me, and was weeping to Katie Couric about how Legally Dead had murdered her precious angel.