Perfectly Criminal: A Novel

GUNK

JEFF KENDALL LOUNGED AT THE DEFENSE TABLE, one arm slung casually behind him in an attitude that made his hard wooden chair look like an overstuffed Barcalounger. I can barely spell haute couture, but I'd swear on a stack of gambling chits that his dandified three-button suit was Italian hand-tailored. All that aside, though, it was those ballet-sized feet of his, peeking out from under the table in argyle socks and tasseled loafers, that gave me a familiar malodorous taste in the back of my throat like I'd just slurped down a bad raw oyster. What a freaking weasel Jeff was. A rodent when we were on the same side—prosecutors at the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office—he had devolved into a slug when he left the AG's to ooze into the pond scum of criminal defense.

Jeff's courtroom antics, alas, had neither evolved nor degenerated. Today he was defending the guy I was prosecuting, a creepy dude accused of shotgunning his wife to death in their posh Dean Estates mansion. Jeff was still conjuring up the same tired tricks to make up for his lousy legal skills—twirling his pen in the air like an autistic child or an idiot savant, trying to distract the jury from my impending closing argument. No need to overwork yourself, Jeff old boy, I thought. My case was built on a house of cards and I had nothing magical up my sleeve.

I unfolded to my gangly six-foot height and, clicking across the room toward Jeff in metal-tipped stilettos, I watched his raccoon eyes ratchet open in quaking anticipation of an early death. He stared up at me and fumbled his cheap courtroom Bic to the floor. I waited. My timing was always top-notch. When the pen clattered to rest between my black-stockinged legs, I turned to the jury and pointed, my arm completely outstretched and held high, like I was denouncing a Nazi war criminal.

In a few minutes this man will stop twirling his baton and stand before you. He will try to convince you that the defendant, Micah Cohen, is a tortured and misunderstood soul whom the state is trying to crucify— Jesus Christ of Nazareth—

Jeff bolted to his feet. Objection, your honor!

Judge Ragusta raised both hands in fatigued surrender. He was used to my courtroom drama and the curtain had just opened on my finale.

"She's only just begun, Mr. Kendall. Let's allow her a little more… rope."

The jury was confused. They looked worried, nonplussed. Had there been evidence involving rope at trial? A lasso perhaps? A noose? A garrote?

"What the judge is suggesting," I explained, "is that I might eventually get myself in trouble by saying something I'm not supposed to say, like telling you things the defendant doesn't want you to know."

The judge rolled his eyes. Jeff clamped his shut. And I continued without objection.

But I will gladly get myself in trouble with this court if it means that Micah Cohen will be punished for murdering his wife. I'll gladly sacrifice myself on a cross right next to his gallows.

"As if," Jeff whined in this incredibly teensy voice.

Mr. Kendall, the judge warned.

I nodded a sweet smile at the judge. Thank you, your honor, I said, sighing deeply. "I do tend to become over-emotional when a defenseless woman's brains are splattered all over her bedroom ceiling and have to be scraped off by a local cleaning crew."

The jury sucked air into its collective lungs. A united choral gasp. I really wanted to bow, but I knew my limits. They were gobbling up my soap-opera slop. Not an easy performance, might I add. Juries, by nature, are a resentful group—captivity is a bitch. My job was to make these twelve people feel like righteous avenging angels of a dead woman's soul—to make them exult as they were herded into a stifling hot courtroom every day to listen to grisly blood-spatter evidence, when instead they could have been enjoying a breakfast bagel melt at their local Burger King. Christ, even I was bitchy at eight-thirty in the morning, and I was paid to be there.

I clicked my ruby red spikes at the heels and bellied up to the jury box. "My friends, that man—who has resumed his baton-twirling act to distract your attention— will come before you momentarily and tell you that the State of Rhode Island has no direct evidence against the defendant. He will tell you the evidence we have is circumstantial. He will explain that circumstantial evidence means that no one actually saw Micah Cohen put the gun to his wife's sleeping head—"

Objection! Jeff was back on his feet again. There is no evidence that Mrs. Cohen was asleep before she died.

"Well, a gun blast to the head would certainly wake me out of a sound sleep," I remarked to the jury.

Quiet! yelled the judge.

The jury's attention shot to the judge, but I kept mine on them.

"Objection overruled. Mr. Kendall, your own expert testified under cross that she could have been asleep when the gun was fired. Miss Lynch, continue, and let's try to get through this before the end of the lunar year."

The jury's eyes returned to me. They cracked a few cautious smiles at the judge's humor. And even though the last damn thing I felt like doing was smiling, I smiled back at them and continued my Oscar-worthy performance.

"The baton-twirling defense attorney will also tell you that Micah Cohen adored his wife. That he doted on her. Depended on her like a child does its mother. I cupped my hands over the railing dividing us and leaned into the jury box. I was entering their space. Their heads drew closer to me, as if we were going to share some secrets. And let's assume that it's true. That Micah Cohen's feelings for his wife were those of a child for its mother. I straightened, raised my head high, and let my voice sing across the room. Because they certainly weren't the feelings of a man for a woman in the traditional sense of a marital relationship. I paused, and lowered my head again. Micah Cohen is gay. Charlene Cohen discovered her husband's homosexuality three weeks before she died. Three weeks before she died, Charlene Cohen retained an attorney to end her marriage. And three weeks later, she was shot dead."

I waited for that fact to sink in, because it was the rusted linchpin for my whole rotten circumstantial case.

My heart goes out to Micah Cohen, I said with Meryl Streep sincerity. Our society remains so tragically reluctant to accept homosexuality as natural that men like Mr. Cohen feel they have to bind themselves in disingenuous relationships with women in order to cloak their true natures. Micah Cohen wanted to continue the charade of a happy marriage. I shook a few spiky platinum strands of hair into one eye. I was trying for the seductive look, but I may have looked the madwoman, which wouldn't have been too bad either—maybe I could scare them into a guilty verdict. But Charlene Cohen said no to her husband. ‘No, I will not continue this charade,’ she said.

I breathed deeply again, to coax the jury into following suit. They were by now hanging on my every word, and the poor souls looked faint.

"Charlene Cohen said no to her husband. She said, ‘I don't want a pretend life. I won't live with the lies anymore.’ She told her sister that she wanted another chance at love."

On silenced heels, I tiptoed to the water pitcher at my table. The cheap lunchroom glass looked smudged and full of prints. And was that red glop at the edge lipstick? I poured, raised the filthy glass to my lips. A few feet away Jeff Kendall had called his Bic back into action and was sketching figures of evil-looking women with short bristling hair and protruding horns.

Setting the disgusting glass down on the table, I turned back to the jury as their collective stare shot from my legs to my face. "‘I want another chance at love,’ I said in the ethereal voice of a dead woman. You heard Charlene's sister testify that Charlene said this. That Charlene told her sister she finally realized why her marriage had been so frigid. ‘I want another chance at love.’ I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, are those the words of a woman who wants to die?"

The jurors' eyes were fixed on me like a classroom of grade-schoolers worried that the teacher would call on them. No, I answered for them. Charlene Cohen didn't want to die. Ask yourselves this: Why did Charlene Cohen hire a lawyer if she intended to kill herself? Because Charlene Cohen wanted freedom, not death. But three weeks after she said no to her marriage, Micah Cohen bought a gun and shot her. Three weeks after she said, ‘This sham of a marriage is over,’ she was dead.

I let those words linger, hoping I wasn't overdoing it. The twelve men and women in the box might have been enjoying the show, but they weren't as dumb as I liked them to be. One repetition too many and I'd offend them.

At my silence, their dozen heads pivoted from me to Jeff, waiting for him to stand, object, or show any sign of life, but he merely sat there doodling, while next to him, the defendant had buried his face in his hands. If Micah Cohen had been my client, I would have kicked him under the table, or passed him a note: Hold your head up, you idiot, and look shocked. You look guilty as hell.

I returned to my chair, dragged it noisily back against the stone floor, and sat.

Judge Ragusta looked up at the clock on the back wall.

Jeff Kendall glanced at his watch.

Mr. Kendall, the judge said, I'll let you go now if you want, or you can wait until we reconvene. It's up to you.

Jeff decided to wait until Monday. Smart choice, of course. Over the weekend the force of my closing argument, weak as it was, would become but a dim memory in the jury's mind.

The judge dismissed the jurors, and when the last one had disappeared, Jeff ambled over to me as I packed up my briefcase. What's all this saccharine hypocrisy you're spewing these days? he asked. Religious allusions? Christ on a cross? Shannon, you're a bloodless misanthrope. Have you no pride?

I leaned in close to Jeff's white face. "Where's your gold Montblanc? You trying to appeal to the dirty unwashed by hiding your silver spoon behind a Bic ballpoint?"

I strode out of the courtroom, Jeff following at my heels to tell me he might not even give a closing argument. You have no case, why should I even waste the court's time?

I forwent the elevator and bolted down the stairs two at a time trying to lose him, but the little nit stuck to me like flypaper. One would think, given our hostile history at the AG's office, he'd want to escape from me as soon as the judge gaveled his final hammer, but he kept buzzing in my ear. You're a shark who'd prosecute a shih tzu puppy for pooping in the street if Vince Piganno told you to. This case is going to ruin your sterling trial record.

"I put people in jail, Jeff, not puppies. People who rape, murder, and perpetrate various and sundry acts of mayhem on innocent victims."

You know, he said, "I've often wondered if someone like you could even be a victim. I mean, if you were raped, wouldn't it qualify as just another one of your dates— your payback for saying ‘Fuck you’ to the wrong guy in the wrong alley too late at night after too many vodka martinis?"

Scotch neat, I corrected him. Out through the rotunda and down the steep courthouse steps, he followed me. "And unfortunately, raped or not, I'd be duty-bound to deliver my bad date to the local cops."

While you'd no doubt be fantasizing about a time-and cost-efficient bullet through his skull. You still carry that Colt Defender in your purse?

I stopped a few feet from my car parked on the street. I do, as a matter of fact. So why are you still stalking me?

My three-inch heels gave me the height advantage. He looked up into my eyes and smiled. My car's right up there. He glanced toward a shiny, gunmetal gray BMW farther down the street, and then back at me. Are those dark roots I see? Don't let your hair grow. The sharp spiky look is more in character with your icy and unforgiving nature. Falling in your eyes like that? It gives guys the wrong idea… like you're approachable or something.

"As long as you keep the wrong idea zipped in your pants."

"No problem there. I like the insecure type. How is Marianna, by the way?"

His wink looked more like a twitch, and he walked off toward his car still cocksure of himself, not caring if he won or lost or whether the prize was a woman or a trial. For Jeff Kendall and his spoiled clan, the daily game of life began with a coming-out party at birth, cruised through the sweet-teen years, and sailed on a breeze to vested middle age. And Jeff had nothing resembling a conscience to bump him from that first-class nonstop flight to his gold-watch-retirement gala at the family estate.

I was still fumbling with my rusty car lock when Jeff zoomed up with his head out the window. Speaking of Marianna, how's the rest of your crew? he asked.

I'm meeting them now. I'd invite you, but Marianna still has her laser sight pointed at where your dick would be if you had one.

Jeff cackled and waved an arm in the air, driving off as I sighed in relief. I boarded my giant SUV and headed to Fox Point and then into the parking lot at Al Forno, where I assumed my closest friends and coworkers, attorneys Marianna Melone and Laurie Stein and paralegal Beth Earles, were already upstairs at the bar decanting my scotch.

Straddling two steps at a time, I sprinted up to the second-floor bar and shimmied onto the stool they'd held for me. I friggin' hate August. One hell of a scorcher, huh?

Laurie's head swayed toward me. Hey, she said, then looked down at my glass. Glenlivet, right?

I raised my drink in affirmation.

Marianna stuck her hand in the air in a tired hello, and Beth leaned over her and Laurie. We're waiting for a table, Shannon. But I know you like the bar, so we can stay here if you want.

I shrugged, noncommittal. The drinks were always a more generous pour at the bar.

We were at Al Forno to commemorate our sixth year at the AG's office, but being gravely jaded about the stinking death and violence we dealt with daily at work, the atmosphere was more like a memorial service. It always seemed to be my job to hoist the jolly flag on our mast, but I was fresh from court on a losing case and I was beat to shit. Not wanting to disappoint, I downed my scotch in two gulps and held the empty glass up to the bartender. Another round for everyone—and make 'em doubles.

A fresh pour of potent drinks later, Beth announced, with a toast, that she was leaving in the fall for law school.

Beth, that's superior news! Laurie exclaimed, finally coming to life. Education is independence.

And stress, Marianna added cynically, three shots of Grey Goose notwithstanding. So how's the trial going? she asked me.

Losing, I said. Not a speck of evidence. Vince should have let this one go.

Beth was still chirping, bouncing on her bar stool like a baby chick. Wait! Can I talk first? I've been holding all this in, and I'm ready to burst.

I pulled out a fresh pack of Camels. I couldn't smoke inside, but just fondling the little cellophane package in my cupped hands would assuage a jittery nicotine withdrawal. All right, sweetkins, I said to Beth. Talk. But omit the chintz-covered adjectives and redundant conjunctions, huh? I spent the better part of my day with prepster Jeff Kendall, and I'm all choked up on proper nouns.

Leave her alone, Shannon, Laurie said, pushing my drink closer to me. This is big news. Remember when you got your law school acceptance letter?

Frankly, no. I've successfully nuked my life before the age of six.

Shit!

We turned to Marianna, who was all lit up with the high-watt bulb that had just gone off in her head. Beth is quitting. That must be why Vince hired Brooke Stanford. She turned to Beth. When did you tell him you were leaving?

Beth nodded. In May when I got the acceptance.

Our chauvinist boss, AG Vince Piganno, or the Pig as we called him behind his back (and to his face when I was in a particularly pissy mood), had hired the new girl in July, a month ago. Go figure why. He was generally disgusted with employees who got menstrual cramps. I swore if the fat pig dared make another crack about women lawyers, I was going to shove juicy Brooke down his throat—whole.

Brooke seems very nice, Beth offered. Well behaved and very quiet.

That's an understatement, Laurie said. She hasn't peeped a syllable since her first day. But then, maybe we just weren't listening. Jesus, I'm hungry, she added without a breath.

She's a Stepford mutant, Marianna said. And in the general fabric of human worth, she's a piece of lint.

Marianna was the first of us to blackball Brooke as a potential addition to our little group. In my opinion, Marianna was clinically depressed. But what the hell do I know? She kept refusing to consider her need for mega-doses of SSRIs and so far so good. She hadn't jumped off any bridges.

At Marianna's criticism, Beth shook her Grace Kelly mane, releasing a curtain of platinum hair over one eye. Mari, dropping a comment like that is so far beneath you… that even Shannon has to stoop to pick up on it.

I choked on my own laughter. Beth was too saccharine for a tart like me, but I respected her homespun attempt to keep the dirty lot of us laughing. And I'll take all the credit—she'd been hanging around me so long even her usually classy barbs were ripening to raunch.

And what's with those outfits of hers? Marianna sniped. Her skirts are so tight you can see her thong outline when she bends over.

And who, I added, wears thongs anymore? I mean, the point of them is what?

Truthfully, Marianna said, I think men find thongs more enticing than no underwear at all. They get off on the sadism of sexy clothes.

Masochism, Laurie corrected. "Men don't force women to walk around all day with a glob of fabric in their asses."

Then why do we do it? Beth asked.

All eyes spun to Beth.

Are you shitting me? I said to her. Laurie and Marianna looked at her in silent accusation. Beth's mouth fell open, the deceit of denial caught in her throat.

"We don't, Mari answered. And if we do, then we shall, forthwith, gather all such garments up in a Goodwill box and drop them at Brooke Stanford's office first thing in the morning. Okay, Beth?"

Marianna's gut reaction to Brooke Stanford was nothing more than her normal paranoia hiked up a notch by some healthy old-fashioned competitive jealousy. (You don't get ahead by cutting the new guy slack.) And since Marianna was our resident beauty—Italian in all the right places—she saw Brooke Stanford as a threat. And yeah, I guess Brooke was pretty if you like that finely-toned-racehorse look. I only know that our receptionist, Andrew (don't-frigging-ask-me-how-to-pronounce-it) Lavigne, had to wear a neck brace for a week every time Brooke blew past him. And Andy was a born-again, dyed-in-the-wool homosexual. He'd come so far out of the closet that I'd carved his name on the last stall in the girls' room.

My lack of trust in Mayflower-inspired Brooke was based on more substantial things like the fact that she was Beth without a soul. Beth understood the privileges she'd been born into and the flimsiness of their shelf life in a rotting society. Brooke, on the other hand, seemed pissed that she actually had to work for a living. Suck it up, Brooke baby. Life is no oak barrel of laughs and eventually we all get a taste of those bottom dregs.

Beth's excitement over her law school acceptance having been damned to the hereafter, we all returned to our drinks until the oppressively sweet whiff of Miss Dior Chérie came wafting our way. I raised my nose to the air like a vulture sensing fresh kill. Sneaking a look over my left shoulder, I watched none other than Brooke flip-flop into the room wearing gold sandals (Jack Rogers flats, signifying a summered Southampton pedigree, so Beth informed us). Brooke paused at the entrance, looked around, and registered her own scent of danger— the phalanx we'd set up at the bar.

Since she hadn't been invited to our celebratory soiree, I wondered just how the hell Brooke happened to find us.

Marianna began lamenting her existential fate. Oh, just shoot me, she said. Here's the bane of my waning existence. Why does that broad feel the need to torment us with her glaring presence? As if I need to see the light of my fading youth reflected in the glow of her twenty-five-year-old complexion.

Beth rolled her periwinkle eyes to the ceiling. Mari, thirty-five years hardly constitutes a waning life.

Beth tirelessly fell for Marianna's depression act. Laurie, however, was Jewish. She knew all about mental health or the lack thereof, but she figured that if her great-grandmother could survive Auschwitz, she could manage a cushy life in twenty-first-century America with a few off-color jokes and a Dewar's on the rocks. Laurie and Beth had remained sentries to the cause of hoisting Marianna's soul out of the dump, but I was ready to start lacing her vodka with powdered Prozac.

Hey, Mari, Laurie snapped. What's your alternative to old age? Huh? Tell me! What is it?

Here comes the bride, Marianna muttered.

As if Maudlin Mari didn't have enough on her already bleak plate, Brooke Stanford was inching toward us along the bar—slowly, proudly, like a Clydesdale horse getting ready for a ringside prance, except this horse had giraffe-length legs. Her flaming red hair was pulled back in a low bun, sloppy but insouciantly sexy, with just the right amount of tendril escaping into her palm-frond green eyes. I regarded her curvaceous lips that seemed to be always puckered, yet invitingly open for business-ready for the next blow job—lips through which one was blindly drawn to a dazzling display of naturally pearlescent teeth that captured the overhead pendant lights and reflected them back at higher voltage.

The crystal gears of Brooke's transparent brain working away, she was smartly wondering whether we'd acknowledge her as she watched the four of us stare at her without so much as a nod. I hoped she wasn't expecting a high five, because I was lifting my middle finger to her when Beth rolled off her bar stool and blocked me. Of course at five-four, Beth's halo hovered somewhere beneath my chin.

Hello, Brooke, Beth said sweetly. Would you like to join—

Private party, I snapped over Beth's head. Six years together at the AG's. But hey, Brooke, since you're already here, I've been wondering. Why did you want to work at the crappy AG's office? I hear Edwards & Angell is always looking for class acts like you. Air-conditioned offices. Lots of available young associates to hook up with. And unlike Vince, your boss at E&A won't throw a chair at you when he's pissed.

She tilted her head, too unsure of me to laugh. Of course, there was always the possibility she didn't think I was funny. More likely she was scared shitless that I'd bite her tongue out if she laughed with an open mouth.

Many great politicians begin their careers as prosecutors, she recited rote like a schoolgirl. Hillary Clinton is my hero—

I heard Laurie gag in the background.

—and actually Mr. Piganno was very persuasive, Brooke continued unabated. She looked at Beth and smiled. "He said Beth was the only real female in the office and he wanted to replace her with someone… well… likewise feminine."

Well, that's all 36C Mari had to hear. Not that she ever showed off her fatty milk glands. She harnessed her boobs into high-buttoned oxford shirts, always trying to hide her Mediterranean heritage, afraid that no one would take her seriously if they suspected a gene pool that included Carmela Soprano.

She hopped off her stool and into the fray. Did Vince really say that, Miss Brooke?

Brooke stepped back. I think she feared a rumble. An actual fistfight. Was she too stupid to realize the implications of what she'd said, or was she so smart that she'd auto-blasted the three of us in one sentence? Shit if I knew or even cared. But I watched in jaded amusement as Laurie twirled around to face Brooke, who was paling to the color of skim milk.

Miss Stanford, she said, do you know how tough it is to deal with hardened criminals every day? Laurie turned her cheek, giving Brooke a clear view of the scar she wore thanks to a defendant who'd managed to smuggle a knife into court. "This was carved by one of the fine young men I prosecuted a few years ago. He thought I was a little too feminine looking, so wasn't he surprised when I judo-chopped him in the balls as my face spattered blood all over his polyester shirt."

I loved Laurie when she was mad. Religiously cool under pressure, she was a zealot on ice.

"So, Brooke," Laurie continued, "let me sum up: I don't know what swill the Pig fed you at your interview, but femininity is best left at the office doorstep and he knows that better than anyone."

I had begun a slide off my bar stool when Laurie started her tirade. I had implicit faith in her ability to finish Brooke off and leave her for dead, so I smiled at Laurie's salvo and headed for the unisex bathroom off the hall outside the bar. I was pushing on the door when it abruptly opened and I fell through the threshold into the all-encompassing arms of a tall, suited gentleman. Bleary-eyed and teetering on shaky legs, he wrapped his arms around me and for a moment we held each other, neither of us sure who was supporting who, but neither of us letting go either.

It was love at first sight.

DRAWING BLANKS

HEY, PARTNER, I SAID. ROUGH DAY AT THE office?

His head fell into my chest and he gasped for a lungful of air. He raised his head and looked at me with the hollowed-out eyes of a preteen rape victim who was learning about sex with