Where Nobody Dies by Carolyn Wheat Page B

smokes, Derrick.”
    â€œThose cases was squashed,” Derrick replied with all the confidence of a jailhouse lawyer.
    â€œOh, my God,” I groaned. “If I had a dollar for everybody whose cases were ‘squashed,’ I’d …” I broke off, aware that I’d lost Derrick’s already minimal attention.
    â€œIn the first place,” I said waspishly, “nothing’s ‘squashed.’ I’m trying to work out a deal here to cover the whole package. In the second place, ‘squashed’ or not, a guy who keeps getting busted in the company of a known chain-snatcher is going to have a hard time selling a jury on the idea that he just stood there with his thumb in his mouth while his buddy grabbed the chain. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
    I let Derrick think about it while I dashed to the door to make sure my quarry was still waiting to be flushed. I’d done a lot of juggling to arrange an accidental meeting with Pat Flaherty and I didn’t want to lose him to another courtroom.
    To say the least, it had been a shock when Pat’s name leaped out at me—on about the fourth reading—from Aida Valentin’s application to a Phoenix House in Brooklyn. She’d listed him as a reference. It took me a minute or two to recall that before coming to Brooklyn Legal Aid, he’d been a juvenile rights lawyer in Bronx Family Court. It seemed a coincidence made in heaven—somebody who could clue me in on Aida’s past and maybe pave the way for me to talk to her without scaring her half to death.
    Pat stood before the bench, his humorous Irish face solemn as he spoke on behalf of his client, a guy who looked as if he’d been around the block so many times he’d worn a groove in the pavement. In the old courthouse phrase, he wore his yellow sheet on his face.
    â€œMy client, Your Honor,” Flaherty boomed, “is now ready to submit himself to the discipline of a residential drug program. He’s ready to—”
    â€œMr. Flaherty,” Judge Diadona’s dry voice interrupted. His lightly ironic tone was helped by the slightest of Spanish accents.
    â€œYour client,” he went on, “felt ready in 1982, in 1980, and in 1977. He entered drug programs in each of those years, promising each and every judge who put him there that now would be the time he would conquer his drug habit and face the world as a law-abiding citizen. May I remind you, Mr. Flaherty”—the judge was near a smile, but it was the grin of a predator about to pounce—“that in none of those cases did your client last in the program for even one month. So kindly do not give me”—this time the ‘r’ had a full Spanish pronunciation—“‘ready.’” The lawyers in the front row cracked up, but Flaherty looked pained, as though Judge Diadona had told a dirty joke at a funeral. That was Flaherty’s strength as a criminal lawyer, I thought appreciatively, watching him work. He conveyed an air of utter sincerity, of deep concern for each of his clients, that was only partly an act. It seemed suddenly odd and touching to think of a younger Pat Flaherty using these talents on behalf of the South Bronx teenager who’d grown up to become the beautiful Aida Lucenti.
    I turned and went back into the pen. “Derrick,” I called softly through the bars, “what’s your friend Ralph’s nickname on the street?”
    A puzzled frown accompanied the answer. “Speed,” Derrick replied promptly.
    â€œOh, he’s a druggie,” I said innocently, “he does amphetamines.”
    Derrick snorted, “He ain’t do no drugs. He be called Speed on ’count he fast.”
    â€œHe’s fast.” I pretended to think about it. “You mean, he spots the gold, he snatches the gold, he runs with the gold—that kind of fast?”
    I could picture it. The victim