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

on the third floor , passed the bar and squeezed onto the front bench reserved for lawyers. Again, with Scoot Shepard at work, the courtroom was crowded. The defendant, a thirty-five-year-old bank vice-president with a handlebar mustache, looking debonair but concerned, sat next to Scoot at the defense table. Warren had been right: there was a good fee.
    Scoot was in the midst of cross-examining a young police officer with an alert expression on his face. The bank vice-president had been pulled over one night for weaving back and forth on the freeway at an erratic rate of speed. The police officer had asked him to recite the alphabet and the banker had failed to do so accurately.
    Scoot asked the officer if
he
knew how to recite the alphabet.
    "Yes, I do."
    "Would you do it, please, for the benefit of the jury? And may I approach the witness, your honor? I'm just a tad hard of hearing, and I want to make sure I catch every little letter."
    With the defense attorney only a few feet away from him and staring intently in his face, the young cop tried his luck. "A-b-c-d-e-f-g-h-i-j-k-1-m-n-o-p-r… ah… p-q-r-s…" Predictably, he blushed. "No, wait a minute, let me start over."
    "You must be drunk," Scoot said.
    The officer laughed uneasily. "No, sir, I'm not drunk, I'm just temporarily confused."
    "And didn't it appear to you on the night of March 5 that my client might also have been confused?"
    The officer boldly said, "I'm not confused, I'm nervous. Because you're standing very close to me, sir."
    "And weren't you standing close to my client on the night of March 5? And are you nervous the same way someone might be nervous who's stopped at one o'clock in the morning by two Houston police officers who accuse him of being intoxicated when he knows he's not?"
    The police officer said, "Your client had no reason to be nervous. But I do."
    "Why? You're not going to jail."
    "But you're a famous lawyer, and I don't want people to think you can make a monkey out of me. And I
do
know the alphabet."
    The judge laughed. The jury laughed. Even the prosecutor grinned.
    "I'm sure you know the alphabet. You're a bright man. Pass the witness," Scoot said.
    The judge declared a two-hour break for lunch. Scoot immediately came up to Warren, squeezed his hand and said, "Let's trot over to my office. I'll have Brenda send out for sandwiches. These goddam restaurants around here, air-conditioning's so high I get icicles on my nuts."
    But five minutes later when they reached Scoot's office on the sixteenth floor of the Republic Bank Building, Warren said, "For God's sake, Scoot, it's five degrees colder here than my refrigerator."
    "I'll lend you a shawl, I've got plenty." Marching down the long carpeted corridor, Scoot offered a cheery hello to one of his law clerks. In his office he pulled two cans of Lone Star beer from a diminished six-pack in the little refrigerator behind his desk. The rosewood desk was bare except for a yellow legal pad, a jar of pencils, and several stacked volumes of
Reversible Errors in Texas Criminal Cases.
Brenda was dispatched into the heat for turkey sandwiches and another six-pack. Scoot lit a cigarette, popped the beer can, and dropped with a sigh into his leather armchair.
    Scoot had wanted a drink, Warren realized, and not in public. An old tale.
    Sixth child of a rag-dealer father and an alcoholic mother, Scoot (born Joseph Howard Shepard) had grown up in Houston's Fourth Ward. A street kid, a carouser, he had put himself through college by running numbers — his nickname came from his speed in delivery — and then law school at the University of Houston. Some years before Warren's father died, Warren had asked him: what
is
Scoot's secret, the one he'll never tell?
    "It's no secret at all," Judge Blackburn said. "He just lives by it better than most people. Lawyering is acting, a con game. Assuming his case has some merit, if a lawyer gets a jury to like him and then trust him more than the son of a bitch