Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller Read Free Page B

while Warren listened to the rain and the banshee wind.
    The lawn sprinklers popped up at six o'clock, arcing their spray onto the soaked grass. Warren woke again, this time with an erection, which he attributed to his wife's presence on his side of the bed. Usually Charm hugged her down pillow and kept far to her own side, for the bony parts of Warren's body disturbed her sleep. But this morning she was behind him, breasts pressed against his shoulder blades, breath in his ear. He took that closeness to be a hangover from the storm and the unnamed fears it arouses in those of us whose roots are not strong.
    Twisting toward her, he whispered her name. Charm opened her eyes to slits, but slid a hand from under the sheet to wag her finger briefly in front of Warren's nose. The wave was the same one she had learned to use down in San Miguel de Allende to fend off urchins who nagged for pesos. The kids backed off. Then Charm would say, "Oh, God, how could I have done that?" and chase after them to press coins in their hands.
    "What time is it?" she whispered.
    "Six-fifteen."
    She turned away from him and pulled the comforter over her head.
    The clouds rushed westward, birds chirped on the lawn. Sliding out of bed, Warren embraced Oobie, his arthritic old golden retriever who slept on the carpet at the foot of the bed, and then slipped into his gray sweats. With Oobie joyfully limping and panting at his side he jogged for twenty minutes along Braes Bayou. At home again he showered, brewed coffee, and with it ate a bowl of Mueslix and a banana from the tree by the pool.
    He dressed quietly, careful not to wake Charm. Looking down at what he could see of his wife — some strands of dark blond hair, a curve of ivory cheek, a familiar shape in a fetal curl under the covers — he whispered, "I love you."
    A few minutes after seven he was in his BMW on the Southwest Freeway under a blue sky scrubbed by the night's rain. Under it you could dream of wranglers riding up from the Brazos and the old paddleboats churning foam on Buffalo Bayou. And indeed, Warren dreamed as he drove. But he dreamed that he was married to a woman who still adored him, that his office telephone never stopped ringing, that he was in control of his life. The wholeness of things held sway. He knew that he had to make a move or the center would fall apart.
    ===OO=OOO=OO===
    From a telephone outside the basement cafeteria in the courthouse, he called his answering service. The only message of consequence was a request to call Scoot Shepard's office. Dropping another quarter into the slot, Warren returned the call. A secretary informed him that Mr. Shepard was in a pretrial hearing in the 342nd District Court.
    "And what's happening in the 342nd?" Warren asked.
    "A setting of bail in the Ott case," the secretary said.
    "If I can't catch him there," Warren promised, "I'll call back."
    Scoot Shepard was the dean of Houston criminal defense attorneys; he had been a friend of Warren's father. Few people are legends in their own time, but Scoot was one. In the trial of John R. Baker, the oil multimillionaire accused of poisoning his society wife, Scoot had hung the jury twice in a row until the case ultimately was dismissed. He had represented Martha Sachs, the sex doctor accused of murdering her woman lover in front of two witnesses, and won an acquittal. Scoot had defended major drug dealers and Mafia capos and got them off when there was little more than a hazy hope or a muttered Sicilian prayer. He had been profiled in
Time
and even
Vanity Fair,
and had been asked by a dozen New York publishers to write a book about his cases. Declining, he was quoted as saying, "Once I give away my secret, what advantage have I got?" But there was minimal honesty in that, Warren decided. Nobody could learn from a book what Scoot knew.
    Warren took the elevator up to the fifth floor and the 342nd District Court. Under a lofty ceiling, its walnut-paneled walls were lined with oil