Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 02 - FINAL ARGUMENT - a Legal Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

buying a case of chateau-bottled Bordeaux.
    But I was basically a sober fellow and still had work to do. One of the places to do it was the Lawyers Lounge on the fourth floor of the Duval County Courthouse. The voices drifting through its smoky blue air might have been those of men and women chattering in a singles bar, except that the subject was time served, deals offered, the hairpin curves of criminal law.
    One morning I sat on the sofa there with a young assistant public defender, plea-bargaining a drug case. She said gravely, “Mr. Jaffe, the last offer you made was a straight eighteen. Would you consider coming down to maybe twelve years, with a substantial fine?”
    I swallowed more coffee; I knew this was going to be a long day. “Eighteen is bottom line,” I said, “and if your client had the brains of a pissant, she’d take it. Better yet, she’d hightail it back to Colombia.”
    “But I can’t tell her to do that, can I?”
    That was true. That would break the canons of ethics. But it would certainly simplify matters. Sometimes I wished that lawyers could do what any other practical person would do—like, in this case, tell the client to jump on the next plane and go home.
    “Yes,” I said, “she’s got to be smart enough to figure that out for herself. What’s her bond?”
    “Fifteen thousand dollars.”
    “She’s a mother, right? She’s got two children down there in Medellin?”
    “You’re telling me . ..”
    “I wouldn’t think of such a thing. You do whatever melts your butter. Just remember how poor the State of Florida is, and that we could use the bail money.”
    Most prosecutors, if they hadn’t chosen the law, might have opted for law enforcement or the church. I wasn’t one of that majority.
    The telephone by the coffee urn rang, and one of the hovering defense attorneys snatched it up. “Your lord and master,” he said, waving the receiver in my direction.
    A moment later the gruff voice of Beldon Ruth said in my ear, “Get your ass upstairs, Ted, if you’re not too busy and you’re still working for me.”
    I took the stairs two at a time to the fifth floor and soon sat squeezed between two potted purple azaleas on the window ledge of the state attorney’s office, the only space available for any visitor to sit down. Beldon’s legal files for current cases were spread on the floor in semicircles in front of his desk. They were also piled on the sofa and on three chairs.
    “What a fucking mess,” I said. “How are you going to survive when I’m gone?”
    “I’ll do just fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” Beldon rocked back and forth in his creaky swivel chair. “I know Sarasota—I took a vacation there once with Laurette. Lost my watch in the sand and didn’t give a rat’s ass. Screwed a lot, drank a lot of Tennessee sour mash, walked into a lot of art galleries, watched a buncha beautiful sunsets. I was sure glad to get home and go to work again. But come to think of it, I guess that was the good life.”
    “I’m betting that it still is,” I explained.
    Beldon laughed, the deep rumble of a man twice his size.
    “What’s Toba going to do while you pace the wall-to-wall carpet of your office, wondering whether to trade your Honda for a Porsche or a Mercedes?”
    How well he had come to know me. I wondered if he liked what he now saw.
    “Real estate. She may be the one winds up driving the Porsche. You going to hang out here for the rest of your life, Beldon?”
    He sighed theatrically. “Bare work and poor pay sort of suits me.”
    “I won’t be doing just civil law,” I said, feeling a little defensive. “There’ll be criminal cases.”
    “Hell, yes! You’re gonna argue for leniency when rich folks’ kids get drunk at the wheel or buy dope from a lady cop. You’re gonna rack up thousands of hours of community-service sentences. But meanwhile you still work for the State of Florida. So listen up for a bit.”
    He picked up the bulkiest of