More Twisted

their CD collection under your arm. He called the cops and they nailed you. A fair representation of events?”
    “Wasn’t all their CDs. I didn’t take the Michael Bolton.”
    “Don’t ever try to be funny with me.”
    Pilsett flicked his earlobe again. “Was pretty much what happened.”
    “All right, Jerry. Listen. This’s a small town and people here’re plenty stupid. I consider myself the best defense lawyer in the country but this case is open and shut. You did it, everyone knows you did it, and the evidence is completely against you. They don’t have the death penalty in this state but they’re damn generous when it comes to handing out life terms with no chance for parole. So. That’s the future you’re facing.”
    “Yup. And know what it tells me? Tells me you’re the one can’t lose on this here situation.” Pilsett grinned.
    Maybe they weren’t as dumb in Hamilton as he thought.
    The young man continued, “You come all the way here from New York. You do the trial and you leave. If you get me off, you’re a celebrity and you get paid and on Geraldo or Oprah or some such for winning a hopeless case. And if you lose, you get paid and nobody gives a damn because I got put away like I oughta.”
    Lescroix had to grin. “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. That’s one thing I just love about this line of work. No charades between us.”
    “What’s charades?”
    “Doesn’t matter.”
    “Gotta question.” He frowned.
    Take your time . . .
    “Say you was to get me off. Could they come after me again?”
    “Nope. That’d be double jeopardy. That’s what’s so great about this country. Once a jury’s said you’re innocent, you’re free, and the prosecutor can’t do diddly . . . . Come on, you gonna hire me and boot that Goodwin back to the law library, where he belongs?”
    He flicked his earlobe again. The chains clinked. “Guess I will.”
    “Then let’s get to work.”

    Paul Lescroix’s résumé had been amply massaged over the years. He’d gone to a city law school at night. Which wouldn’t of course play in the many new stories he fantasized would feature him, so after he graduated he signed up fast for continuing ed courses in Cambridge, which were open to any lawyer willing to pay five hundred bucks. Accordingly the claim that he was “Harvard educated” was true.
    He got a job at minimum wage transcribing and filing judicial opinions for traffic court magistrates. So he could say that he’d served his apprenticeship clerking and writing opinions for criminal court judges.
    He opened a solo practice above Great Eastern Cantonese carry-out in a sooty building off Maiden Lane in downtown Manhattan. Hence, he became “a partner in a Wall Street firm, specializing in white-collar crime.”
    But these little hiccups in the history of Paul Lescroix (all right, originally Paul Vito Lacosta), these little glitches didn’t detract from his one gift—the uncanny ability to decimate his opponents in court. Which is one talent no lawyer can fake. He’d unearth every fact he could about the case, the parties, the judge, the prosecutor, then he’d squeeze them hard, pinch them, mold them like Play-Doh. They were facts still, but facts mutated; in his hands they became weapons, shields, viruses, disguises.
    The night before the Pilsett trial, he spent one hour emptying poor Al Goodwin of whatever insights he might have about the case, two hours meeting with reporters and ten hours reviewing two things; the police report, and a lengthy document prepared by his own private investigator, hired three days ago when James Pilsett, Jerry’s uncle, came to him with the retainer fee.
    Lescroix immediately noticed that while the circumstantial evidence against Pilsett was substantial, the biggest threat came from Charles Cabot himself. They were lucky of course that he was the only witness but unfortunate that he happened to be the husband of the woman who was killed. It’s a dangerous risk to attack the credibility of a witness who’s also suffered because of the crime.
    But Paul Victor Lescroix, Esq., was paid four hundred dollars an hour against five-figure retainers for the very reason that he was willing—no, eager —to take risks like that.
    Smiling to himself, he called room service for a large pot of coffee and, while murderer Jerry Pilsett and decent Al Goodwin and all the simple folk of Hamilton Countydreamt their simple dreams, Lescroix planned for battle.
    He arrived at the