Free A Case of Redemption by Adam Mitzner

that I needed to spend some time alone with her husband. When she left the room, I gave him the standard criminal-defense-lawyer speech.
    â€œIt is my job to represent you zealously no matter what the facts are, Darrius. So if you’re innocent or you’re guilty, it doesn’t change my job one way or the other. My only responsibility is to protect you. But I can’t do my job unless I know the truth. More people go to jail for lying to their lawyers than for committing crimes.” (Needless to say, I doubted that was actually true.) “I wasn’t in the hotel room with you, and I don’t have the ability to ask Vickie Tiernan what happened, so the only version of events I’m going to hear before trial is from you. And based on that, I’m going to fashion a defense and make arguments to the jury. If one fact ends up being proven wrong, then the whole defense collapses like a house of cards. Jurors, like everybody else, don’t like being lied to, and they often conclude that if a defendant lies to them about anything , no matter how small, that means that same defendant is probably lying to them about everything . So if there’s anything—anything at all—that you lie to me about, the odds of your being convicted go up exponentially.”
    â€œI understand,” he replied calmly.
    â€œGood. So in light of that, is there anything you want to tell me that’s different from the facts you provided when Erica was in the room?”
    â€œNo. It happened exactly like I just told you with her here.”
    And I believed him. Not a little bit, either. Completely and totally—the same way Nina believed Legally Dead.

9
    N ina and I arrived at the Wall Street heliport by six, and just like Matt Brooks had said, we were inside the Borgata less than an hour later.
    There were ten or so poker tables on the main floor of the Borgata. Each was populated mainly by senior citizens who looked as if they had to borrow money to make the minimum bet. A far cry from the high rollers I imagined Brooks counted as his crowd.
    â€œIs there a more private area for poker?” I asked a scantily clad cocktail waitress who was passing by with a tray full of drinks.
    â€œStraight through those doors are the no-limit games,” she said without stopping.
    I had expected the high-roller area to look different from where the schnooks play, but it didn’t. The carpeting was the same, and the dealers were all still wearing cheesy gold vests and red bow ties. The cocktail waitresses looked older, likely a result of a system that rewarded seniority, but they were just as scantily dressed as the younger women on the main floor. Even the gamblers seemed pretty much the same: out-of-shape men wearing tracksuits, interspersed with old ladies. Casino Royale, it was not.
    Amid this crowd, Matt Brooks was easy to spot. He was in the back of the room, sitting at one of the no-limit tables, attired in his trademark dark, double-breasted suit, tie, and matching pocket square. He was playing blackjack, which surprised me a bit because he’d told us to meet him at the poker tables, but he was also playing all five spots on the table, which seemed consistent with everything I’d read about him.
    Even at first glance, it was obvious that Matt Brooks was the big dog in every sense of the term. It wasn’t his size—even though he was seated, I could tell he was an inch or two under six feet tall—but there was something about the way he carried himself that left no doubt he was the man in charge of every interaction in which he engaged. He could fairly be described as handsome, with a swarthy complexion, strong jaw, and eyes that suggested a sharp intelligence resided behind them.
    Brooks’s rags-to-riches tale was something of legend. The official history on Capital Punishment’s website had it that Brooks and a guy named Ronald Johnson, whom everyone referred to as Rojo, were