Free Lily White by Susan Isaacs Page B

again. “—they came and knocked on the door. And I opened it! I didn’t even say ‘Who’s there?’ If I’d’ve done that, Norm could’ve gotten out the back.”
    “When they’re arresting someone on a murder charge, they usually have people staked out in back.” But I didn’t want to make her feel too comfortable. Since I couldn’t get anything much from my client to help in my defense of him, I naturally decided to try Mary. She was feeling horribly guilty. Not for being an accessory before and after the fact to a crime—at best, fraud; at worst, homicide. No, she felt guilty for failing Norman.
    “Take it easy,” I said, and handed her a couple of tissues. (I keep a box in my top desk drawer so I can easily hand a bunch to a weepy client or, more commonly, a nonweepy, sociopathic client’s hysterical family.) “Maybe we’ll be able to do something for Norman.”
    “He told me it was hopeless, that the cops think he did it.”
    “They do. But that’s why we have trial by jury. And that’s why you’ve retained me. Maybe among all of us we can figure something out that will convince the jury that Norman is not guilty.”
    “He is
innocent”
Mary corrected me, and blew her nose. A too ladylike puff, not the HONK! a good-sized, healthy young woman would naturally produce. “He didn’t do it!”
    “Then help me find something so I can prove it.”
    “He left that house
one second
after that witness saw him withBobette, and he came right home to me and we were together from then on.
Every minute
until the cops came.”
    “What was his relationship with Bobette?” I asked.
    She drew up into a prim position, feet and knees together, hands in lap. “He said not to talk about anything.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because … you know.” I could think of several reasons, the main one being that he did indeed kill Bobette and was worried Mary would unintentionally give it away. If I were Norman, I’d be worried too. I couldn’t tell if Mary was simpleminded or merely so new at grown-up life that she hadn’t learned to lie without chewing the inside of her cheek and turning red. “Norman said: ‘No matter who, keep your lip zipped, and I mean zipped
all the way
up.’”
    “Look, I’ve been a lawyer too long to expect him to break down and confess to me—”
    “He didn’t do it!”
    “Fine. But if I’m going to help him prove that, I need all the information I can get, good or bad. I’d rather learn it from him than get a big surprise from the prosecutor.” Then I added ominously: “She is one scary dame.”
    “Oh, God,” Mary whimpered. She began to nibble her thumbnail. Instead of trying to allay her fear, I narrowed my eyes and flared my nostrils. Suddenly I became one scary dame too, which is what I wanted. I didn’t relish going into court with Mary testifying to Norman’s alibi. She’d turn to mush after thirty seconds on cross. Plus I sensed that Holly had one of those solid circumstantial cases that make defense lawyers like me pine for the good old days of being prosecutors—when the world was young and the facts were on our side. So I had to scare Mary into opening up. I also figured talking to her would be better than talking to Norman; with Mary, at least, I had a chance of hearing something resembling the truth. But she remained mum.
    “Too bad you can’t help him,” I said, and pushed back my chair, as if I were about to stand to see her out. But she remained where she was, on the edge of her seat. She reached out and grabbed onto the desk, a huge old thing made from a farmhouse table. It looked as though she was trying to drag it toward her.
    “If I talk to you,” she asked me, “would you have to tell Norman?”
    “Well …” I stalled. It was one of those questions only a chairman of a bar association ethics committee could love: Is an attorney’s ethical obligation of full and complete disclosure of information to a client paramount? Or is counsel duty-bound to