In My Dark Dreams Read Free Page A

handful of Spanish interpreters, other support staff. We also hire additional interpreters, as needed, for other foreign-language defendants. Last year, sixty-eight different languages were spoken in one or another of the Los Angeles County courtrooms.
    We handle an incredible number of cases. In a normal year we’ll defend about 350,000 misdemeanors and 90,000 felonies. It makes for a heavy caseload—the average is twelve to fifteen new cases a month, with twenty to thirty cases outstanding at any given time. All of our work is criminal law; we don’t do civil cases. It’s a lot of work, and we’re always hopping.
    It’s twelve-thirty; I break for lunch. I usually eat lunch at my desk. It’s the only free time I have during the day. Most of my colleagues can’t wait to flee the building at lunchtime, and occasionally I’ll join a group, but I need my solitary time. I function perfectly well in most social situations, but at heart I’m most comfortable when I’m by myself. My jagged and ultimately violent relationship with my mother reinforced that part of my personality, but I’m convinced I was hardwired from birth to be a loner. I understand that nurture has an important place in one’s personal history, but I’m from the school that believes nature trumps everything.
    Today I’m feasting on chicken salad with real mayonnaise, macaroni salad, and buffalo mozzarella with fresh tomatoes swimming in olive oil. I prepare my meals at night before I go to bed, pack the food in individual plastic containers, and store them in the community refrigerator down the hall from my office. There are a lot of groceries stacked up here on my desk, and I don’t stint on the portions. If I have a break in the afternoon, I’ll often grab a milkshake from the coffee bar on the eighth floor. People who see me put all this food away marvel at how I can eat so much and not gain weight.
    It’s a piece of cake, I tell them: when you’re running fifty miles a week you burn more calories than your body can possibly consume. Upon hearing my explanation, they nod sagely, then change the subject—everyone wants to lose weight, but that’s too rigorous for most folks.
    “Damn, that smells good,” Joe Blevins exclaims as his head pops into my doorway. Joe is my boss, one of the senior deputies in the office in charge of assigning cases. “How much garlic do you use in that dressing?” he asks, sniffing the air.
    The reek he’s inhaling comes from the olive oil on the tomatoes and cheese. I douse it liberally with garlic, for health reasons and to keep the werewolves and vampires and malodorous clients at bay. It’s an old family tradition, which I initiated last year.
    “Forty cloves,” I tell him.
    He laughs. “Seriously?” People aren’t always sure if I’m joking.
    “Actually, three,” I confess. “But I do have a pea soup recipe that calls for forty cloves. From a restaurant in Guerneville, up in Sonoma.”
    “With their crappy weather, they need forty cloves,” he remarks. Joe’s a dyed-in-the-wool Southern Californian, for whom everything north of Santa Barbara is enemy territory. You should hear him curse out Barry Bonds when Vin Scully is broadcasting a Giants-Dodgers game on the radio. The entire building shakes.
    He sniffs again. “Does all that garlic help you run faster?” He knows I’m in serious training.
    “No,” I answer, “but it keeps my pursuers at a safe distance.”
    “You don’t have any courtroom appearances the rest of the day, I take it.”
    “Actually, I do have one, but there will be nary a scent on my breath,” I promise him. I always gargle after eating garlicky food, as a courtesy to my coworkers. I wish the smokers, some of whom have really foul halitosis, would reciprocate, but few of them do.
    “Now you have two,” Joe says, handing me a thin manila folder. “An arraignment, this afternoon.” He explains: “One of Lorrie Patuni’s kids got sick at school and she had to