Guilt by Association Read online

CHAPTER ONE

  Jayson Cook surreptitiously sniffed the air, taking in the gentle bouquet of expensive scotch. The handsome, dark-skinned man found the plush armchair supporting his six-feet, one hundred eighty-pound frame to be comfortable enough. His host had broken out the high-quality stock, but Jayson held no illusion his summons had been a social call. The thirty-five-year-old attorney raised a tumbler to his lips and sipped, showing off a monogrammed cuff and gold cufflink, and listened to Judge Robert O’Hare recount his grandchild’s exploits at her first ballet recital.

  While currently a highly-paid criminal defense lawyer, Jayson anticipated that, God willing, in the not-too-distant future he’d be sitting in the same room bending some poor lawyer’s ear about his daughter. Toward that end, over the years he had contributed to the right political candidates and attended the right social events, hoping to be noticed by the right people. Of course, after accepting his robe and the keys to his chambers on the fifteenth floor of the McCormack Post Office and Courthouse building in downtown Boston, he would brighten the place up a little. The dark paneling on the walls would be first to go, and the place needed, as his wife would say, more cheerful lighting.

  Jayson liked O’Hare, not only because he hoped to occupy his chambers some day but also because the judge had always been fair with him. Furthermore, he found the man amiable enough outside of court. However, inside the courtroom, Bob “By-the-Book” O’Hare could be impatient with lawyers making arguments based on emotions rather than law. He treasured efficiency and brevity. His motto: “Never say in ten words what you can say in five.” Young assistant DAs and defense lawyers who entered his sanctum sanctorum unprepared, stumbling over words or searching in their briefcases for a lost file, did so only once.

  Eventually the burley judge finished his ballet story, and the two men shared a few laughs about the perils of being six years old. O’Hare, clad in a shirt and tie but no robe, glanced at his watch before engaging in one more bit of small talk. “You’ve got a little one yourself, isn’t that right, Jayson?” he asked.

  Jayson smiled. “Yes, Judge. About the same age as your granddaughter.”

  “Well,” O’Hare mumbled, “thanks for letting me go on about my little ballerina.”

  “Not at all, Judge,” Jayson replied. “I rather enjoyed it. I know the feeling.” His words were sincere. He didn’t mind listening to a man nearing retirement brag about his grandchild, even on a Friday evening. As a husband and father himself, he appreciated and respected a man’s pride in his family. Besides, this was a side of O’Hare he had never seen. “So, Your Honor, you asked to see me?”

  The judge stirred a few papers on his desk. “You’re familiar with the Stone case, aren’t you?”

  “Um, the Stone case?” Jayson asked, trying to sound nonchalant, but his weak voice gave him away. His stomach started to do flip-flops at the mention of the name. He frowned at the realization of why he had been summoned. Of course he was familiar with the Stone case. Who wasn’t? He peeked at the pictures on the judge’s desk—handsome, elegant wife and five smiling grandchildren—then refocused on the judge and decided to not answer the question. “Your Honor, I’ve got too many cases of my own to worry about someone else’s, you know?”

  O’Hare nodded. “Um-hmm,” he muttered, apparently allowing Jayson to indulge in his sin of omission. “Brian Stone is a white supremacist who’s been sitting in jail for over a year and a half awaiting trial for that bombing two years ago that destroyed a church, killed a twelve-year-old girl and put her father—the minister of the church—in the hospital for a month.”

  “Oh,” Jayson replied and nodded. “That case. I don’t know much about it other than what I’ve read in the papers. Like I said, I’m doing my own thing.” He ran his long nails over his head, covered with only a very thin coating of hair.

  “Um-hmm,” the judge muttered again, indicating his patience had begun to wane. “Well, Stone and his second public defender don’t seem to be hitting it off any better than the first. He was arraigned and bound over for trial, but the whole thing’s been moving slower than a glacier—and now he’s insisting that I appoint him yet another lawyer.” The judge sipped his drink and continued. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure another PD is the best way to ensure that he gets a fair trial.”

  Jayson squirmed in his chair and finished his drink. “I see. Well, I’m sure you’ll do what’s best.”

  “I want you to take over his defense.”

  Jayson pointed at himself. “Me? You’ve gotta be kidding!” He raised his hands as if defending himself. “No offense, Judge, but from what I’ve read, the guy’s some kind of super-conservative racist. If he’s having problems with his white PDs, he’s certainly not going to want his fate in the hands of an African American, liberal lawyer. Besides, I’m far from a public defender these days.”

  O’Hare opened his hands. “But you were once, and a damn good one, too.” He finished his drink and poured a splash more into his glass. “Another?”

  Jayson covered his glass with his hand. “No, thank you, sir—and thank you for the compliment,” he said, “but you know the routine: put in a few years to get some experience, then—”

  “And you acted as court-appointed lawyer with the State Bar Advocate System for a few years after that,” the judge reminded him.

  “And I recently stopped taking those cases, too,” Jayson said. “To be honest, my private practice is going pretty well and I don’t want to take cases for a fraction of what I could—”

  “Charge your drug dealers, murderers, embezzlers, rapists, et cetera?”

  “Alleged drug dealers, murderers, embezzlers, rapists, et cetera,” Jayson shot back politely, with his index finger in the air.

  The judge ran his hands over his thick, white hair and sighed. “Jayson, you’re one of the best goddamn lawyers I’ve ever seen in all my years on the bench, and one of the most successful. I don’t want to see this case kicked back on appeal ‘cause the man said he didn’t get adequate representation. You’re good, and you give a hundred percent for your client, no matter who he is.” He pointed at Jayson. “If you’re the man handling this there’ll be no questions about Stone getting the best legal representation in the county—the whole goddamn state, for that matter.”

  Jayson stood. “But you can’t afford me.” He repositioned his tie inside the jacket of his pricey but off-the-rack suit.

  The judge smirked. “Sit down, counselor,” he commanded gently. His silver cufflinks reflected the dim light in the room.

  Jayson did.

  “However many hours you bill for you and your staff, the state won’t question.”

  Jayson widened his eyes. “Really?” He thought for a few seconds. A big murder trial could mean several hundred billable hours. He resisted the temptation and shook his head slowly. “Well, the money part was in the second place. In the first place, the man’s not gonna want a nigger for a lawyer.”

  “He asked for you.”

  Jayson stood again.

  “Sit doooown, counselor,” the judge ordered, clearly enjoying himself.

  Jayson returned to his seat. The two men sat silently for a few seconds while the younger one collected his thoughts. “What do you mean, he asked for me?”

  O’Hare shrugged. “Whatever the man is, he’s no fool. He knows that just by getting you to sit next to him a jury might think maybe he’s not so bad.” He gestured toward the opposite side of the room. “Let me show you something. One of my clerks got this for me.” He reached into his desk drawer, produced a remote control stained with faint traces of ketchup, mayonnaise and other condiments, and waved it in the air at a twenty-inch TV/DVD player across the room.

  Jayson adjusted his muscular torso in his chair and watched the television behind him. He saw the screen flicker, then an attractive Asian woman in her late twenties appeared clutching a microphone. Jayson recognized the area: the lobby of the John Adams Courthouse in downtown Boston. The woman, one
of about ten reporters huddled on the right side of the screen, spoke over her jostling colleagues. Jayson stood on the left side in the foreground, his hair about a quarter-inch higher than at present. A white, middle-aged, bald man stood next to him. Anyone with eyes could see the man, although only half-visible, grinning as if he had just left a whorehouse.

  “Mr. Cook,” Michelle Ling opened breathlessly, “are you and Mr. Morgan and Professor Greenberg and the ACLU pleased with the court’s ruling today that Mr. Morgan can hold his group’s rally at the Boston Common?” She extended the microphone closer to Jayson’s mouth.

  Jayson nodded at the woman and spoke in a low, measured monotone. “We’re all pleased that the First Amendment will be applied to everyone, regardless of his or her views—as long as those views are expressed peacefully.”

  The woman, who measured nine inches shorter than Jayson, quickly asked a follow-up question. “And does it bother you, sir, as an African American, that Mr. Morgan is the leader of an organization that preaches what many consider to be racist beliefs against African Americans and other minorities?”

  “Mr. Morgan’s views are not the issue here, Ms. Ling,” Jayson retorted. “The issue is whether the state can restrict the right to free, peaceful speech based on its content. The Supreme Judicial Court, the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, says it cannot. By safeguarding anyone’s right to free speech, we safeguard everyone’s—including yours and mine.”

  Other reporters shouted questions at him.

  In O’Hare’s chambers, present-day Jayson grimaced. “Okay, okay, Your Honor,” he grumbled, adjusting himself to face his host again. “I remember all this. Your point?”

  The judge pressed the button and shut off the television. “The point is, Stone must’ve heard about you and figured that if you busted your ass for one of his brothers, so to speak, you’d do the same for him.”

  “But that was different,” Jayson insisted. “There was a principle involved, you know: free speech couldn’t be restricted just because we don’t agree with its content. This is a first-degree murder trial about the killing of a young girl.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice as if revealing a secret. “And I only took that case because Seth Greenberg had asked me to. You know how hard it is to say no to him.”

  O’Hare chuckled. “I know what you mean.” He tapped his desk with his index finger twice. “In his day, Seth was one son of a bitchin’ top-notch lawyer. I know he was your law professor and mentor. How is the old goat these days?”

  Jayson lowered his head. “Not too good. You know he’s in a wheelchair now since that last stroke.”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “But he’s still feisty,” Jayson added. “He had asked me to second chair that case because I’d done some work with the ACLU before, but I ended up taking over the damn thing after he took ill.”

  “Well, everyone was impressed with how you put your personal feelings aside and defended that racist asshole’s constitutional rights. Word was that you were—” The judge abruptly shifted his train of thought and cackled. “If I remember correctly, that stupid rally couldn’t have had more than a dozen fellow assholes and their wives—probably all related by blood—in attendance.”

  “Jayson snickered. “Yeah, they had to pick a day when it rained buckets.” The two men shared a hearty laugh.

  The judge checked his watch and put an end to their levity. “You know, I could just order you to do this.”

  Now it was Jayson’s turn to enjoy the upper hand. “Why don’t you?” He knew signing on of his own volition would reduce the likelihood of an appeal due to a claim that defense counsel was a reluctant, half-hearted draftee.

  “Because I want you to do just like you did three years ago with that other racist son of a bitch,” O’Hare snapped, obviously unaccustomed to getting a lawyer to do his bidding by persuasion. “Defend his rights because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “But why me?”

  “Because you’re the best, and the defendant won’t take anybody else.”

  “And because I’m black.”

  “Yes, and because you’re black.”

  Jayson sighed and ran his fingers along the edge of his smooth chin. “You don’t know what I went through after that ACLU case. You don’t know what my family went through. Old friends not speaking to me, my wife lectured at work by her colleagues…”

  “Hah!” the judge snorted. He raised his hand in the air and brought it down forcefully on his desk. “I could show you hate mail I’ve gotten over the years that would curl your hair—if it was longer.”

  Jayson chuckled. “I bet you could.”

  O’Hare stood and grabbed his jacket, which hung on a wooden coat rack behind him next to his robe. “And if you want to sit on my bench after I retire some day, you better develop a thicker skin,” he advised, arching his bushy eyebrows and slipping into his jacket. “Besides,” he continued, “two years later almost everyone came to realize that you and Seth were right, and that the mayor was just pandering to get votes, like politicians always do.”

  Jayson stood as well and sighed deeply. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, he did what he did best: negotiate. “Okay, I’m in, but no post-trial nitpicking about my fees. And after the trial is over, I’m done. No hanging around for appeals, federal trials, nothing.”

  “Okay,” the judge replied. “Is that it?”

  “Well,” Jayson muttered, “let me get home and break the news to my wife. She’s gonna be just thrilled.”

  A few minutes later Jayson stood alone in the elevator clutching his bulging leather briefcase. He rode the fifteen floors down to the lobby and wondered if he hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of his life.

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