The Whole Truth Read Online Free PDF

of passing out.
    "Marie! Come on up here!"
    I jump at the sound of my own name.
    It's Leanne's paralegal, Manny Meade, calling to me.
    Besides the judge and a few jurors, Manny is the oldest person on the other side of the railing that separates the players from the spectators. Jowly, overweight, always disheveled in flamboyant baggy suits, Manny looks more like a Damon Runyon character than a paralegal. I haven't yet figured out a tactful way to say that in my book, and I haven't decided if I really need to divulge that he is an ex-con who served time for fixing sporting events. As a former felon, Manny can't be admitted to the bar, but Florida law lets him get this close to it. He is sixty-three years old, a war veteran. "Oldest paralegal south of the panhandle," he likes to brag, although I doubt that's true.
    I slide through the opening that he provides for me by shoving open the half-door through which witnesses come and go.
    "Manny!" I hear adrenaline in my voice, and tamp it down. It feels unseemly to be so bloodthirsty for details. "How bad is Ray hurt? Is Leanne all right?"
    "Don't know, Marie."
    I turn to ask Leanne's cocounsel, Jaime Suarez, who shrugs, and says "You know as much as we do, Marie."
    "Why aren't you guys up there helping her?"
    "Leanne's got it under control," Manny claims.
    "I don't want to touch him," Jaime says, with an expression of distaste. "Slimy bastard."
    If his client could hear that, there'd be a malpractice suit. In an early draft of a chapter for my book I described Jaime as "tall, slim, well dressed, and fit-looking, a man with the deadpan expression of a prisoner of war, and the cynical mouth of a street thug." Then I erased it, because it's not my style to insult my subjects.
    "Don't quote me, all right?" he adds, quickly.
    "I won't, if"—I smile teasingly—"you'll tell me what Leanne said to Ray."
    "When?"
    "Right before he went off. She leaned over and whispered something into his ear. What'd she say to him?"
    "Did she say something?" Jaime glances at his paralegal, who is at least thirty years older and an equal number of pounds heavier than he. Some people claim there's a similar difference in their IQs, with the advantage going to the older man. That's another observation I erased after I wrote it down. "Did you hear her say anything, Manny?"
    The response is a jowly head shake: no.
    "She put her arm around him," I remind them, although I realize they may not have seen it. "And she said something to him. And a couple of seconds later he went ballistic. You don't know what she said?"
    Manny mutters comically out of the side of his mouth, "She said, 'Pay me before the first of the month, Ray.'"
    I smile at his irreverent joke at their client's expense.
    Jaime inclines his head toward the opposite side of the aisle. "So, Marie, you going to make them look like heroes, and us like jerks?"
    "Marie never makes anybody look bad," Manny corrects him. "Except for the killers." He winks at me, before turning back to his young boss. "She isn't just a pretty face, she's fair to everybody she writes about. Don't you read her books?"
    "Why, thank you, Manny."
    I smile at the flattery.
    "Who's got time to read about crime?" Jaime sounds aggrieved. "Besides, why would I want to pay money to see other lawyers get all the glory?"
    Manny leans close to me, and says in a mock-confiding tone, "Jaime is only in the law to serve humanity."
    "A man of principle, clearly," I reply.
    "Yeah." The young man in question snorts. "Humanity. Like, Ray Raintree is human. Not."
    This time his paralegal shoots a look up at him like a stern father warning a smart-mouthed son.
    Jaime clamps his jaw, and shuts up.
    "How can he be unconscious?"
    I turn toward the skeptical voice which uttered those words, and see a gray-haired woman right behind the defense table. She's somebody I've noticed at the trial every day. When I asked a deputy who she was, he informed me that she's a "regular," a trial junkie who shows up