Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving

an oak tree. He bought a hot dog from a vendor and ate it while he studied the
Quintana
file. Some mustard dripped onto the pages. Warren wiped it off with his breast pocket handkerchief.
    An hour later he settled into a steel-backed chair in a Harris County Jail visitor's cubicle, as he once had with Virgil Freer. A modern facility, a massive cube twelve stories high — air-conditioned, computerized, with closed-circuit TV — the jail was never silent. Men yelled, women wept, telephones jangled, doors clanged. Warren sat at a shiny bare metal desk under fluorescent lighting so garishly bright that it made his eyes ache. He talked to Hector Quintana through a metal grill.
    Quintana had smooth skin, black hair, an uncomplicated face. Warren guessed they were about the same age.
    "Mr. Quintana, do you understand English?"
    Quintana nodded, but Warren saw the uncertainty in the man's brown eyes.
    He kept his speech simple. "My name is Warren Blackburn, and I'm a lawyer appointed by the court to represent your interests because you don't have the money to hire your own lawyer. The State of Texas will pay my fee, but I don't want you to think for one minute that means I work for them. I work for you now, Mr. Quintana, unless you have any objections to me. If you do, you'll have to explain them to Judge Parker. There's nothing you tell me about this case that I'll ever repeat to another living soul unless I have your permission. I'm bound by a solemn oath — what we lawyers call confidentiality and lawyer-client privilege. You understand what I'm saying?"
    "Sir," Quintana said, "I didn't do what they say I did."
    Warren ignored that. He would never ask Quintana if he had done it. That was the first rule of a criminal defense attorney, carved into his mind from the day he began practicing.
    "Do you trust me?" Warren said.
    "Yes, sir."
    "Let's get rolling."
    Warren formally told Hector Quintana that he had been accused of murdering, on or about the night of May 19, 1989, in Harris County, a man named Dan Ho Trunh, an electrician by trade, twenty-seven years old, married, the father of two children—
    "I doan know this man," Quintana said.
    "Let me finish, please."
    Slowly, now and then using some of the Spanish he had learned in San Miguel de Allende, Warren explained that the indictment returned by the grand jury was for capital murder, because it was believed that the offense took place during the course of a robbery — Dan Ho Trunh's wallet had not been found on his person or in his car. Texas law mandated that if Hector Quintana stood trial and was found guilty of capital murder, or instead pled guilty to the court, there were only two possible penalties: life in prison or death by injection.
    Quintana gasped. "But I doan kill this man. I doan know him. I try to rob a store,
nada más."
    Warren was used to this sequence. Few lawyers had ever introduced themselves to an accused murderer who said, "Glad to meet you, counselor. Sure I killed the sleazebag, and if you gave me the chance I'd do it again."
    That came later, down a long road filled with rocky detours.
    "Hector, suppose you tell me your version of what happened on the evening of May 19."
    "I was
borrachito,"
Quintana said. A little drunk.
    "Where do you live?"
    With friends near the stables in Hermann Park. In the evenings, behind a shed, they fried pork cracklings in a pot of deep fat. Sometimes they cooked
menudo,
a kind of tripe soup that was wonderful for a hangover. When he first came here he had pumped gas at a Mobil station. He had lost the job because he showed up one time
borrachito
and then hadn't shown up another time because of, he seemed to remember, the same reason. Later he worked as a handyman in a convenience store, a 7-Eleven. The 7-Eleven was a good job, but the franchise had been sold to a Vietnamese who paid Hector a week's wages and let him go because a brother-in-law wanted the job.
    "Did that upset you?" Warren asked.
    "I had no work. It