Free No Way Out by David Kessler Page A

some one to fill our victim litigation slot and she took the bait. She knew she wasn’t going anywhere in the Big Apple so she came out here.”
    “Will she do it?” asked Webster.
    “She’s hot and she’s ambitious. I know she’d just love a piece of the action. If you want a cute piece of ass to sit next to Claymore looking comfortable and keeping shtum , you won’t have any trouble convincing Andi Phoenix to take the seat.”
     

Friday, 12 June 2009 – 16:30
    “I won’t do it!” said Andi, flatly.
    This time they were in one of the smaller conference rooms: Andi, Paul Sherman and Alex Sedaka. When she was first summoned here, Andi thought she was going to be consulted about a civil lawsuit against a convicted criminal. It had been a rude awakening when she discovered what Sherman really wanted. In fact she had been so angered when he told her, that it would have had pacifying effect if he’d told her then and there that he was just joking and that what Alex really wanted to sleep with her.
    She was standing by the window, half-looking out, half-glancing at this Laurel and Hardy pair of clowns. Alex met her eyes across the table, surprised by the ferocity of her resistance.
    “Why not? It’ll be great experience for you – and a challenge.”
    “Don’t patronize me. I’m past the stage when I need that sort of a challenge. And I’ve had plenty of experience back east –”
    “Oh my mistake,” said Alex, “I thought you came out here was because you hit the glass ceiling in the Big Apple.”
    Andi felt like punching him in the face for the sarcasm. She felt like punching Sherman too for exposing her to it. But she contained her anger.
    “That doesn’t mean I have to scramble for the dregs.”
    “No one’s asking you to scramble. I’m coming to you remember. All I’m asking of you is your help for our client.”
    “He’s your client not mine .”
    “He’s Levine and Webster’s client,” Sherman stepped in. “That makes him your client too.”
    “That doesn’t mean I have to prostitute myself defending him.”
    “We’re not asking you to prostitute yourself,” said Alex. “We’re just asking you to stand up for the principle that a man is innocent until proven guilty.”
    “Oh come off it Mr. Sedaka. What do you need me for? I’m a civil litigator.”
    “You’ve had criminal experience,” Sherman cut in. “Working both sides of the fence.”
    “There are plenty of criminal lawyers here with a lot more experience. Why do you need me?”
    “Okay I’ll be honest with you,” said Alex. I don’t want you to play an active role. I just want you to sit next to him, make him look harmless. Look, you know the kind of pre-trial publicity this case is going to arouse – the sort of publicity it’s already aroused. They’ll drag in every incident from Claymore’s past. They’ve already compared him to O. J. Simpson. They’re going to savage his reputation before the case ever gets to trial. That’s what we’re up against.”
    “And how do you think me sitting there next to him is going to refute all that negative pre-trial publicity?”
    Alex met her eyes, trying to read her.
    “When the jury sees a beautiful young women sitting next to him, it’ll melt away their prejudice. It’ll make him look like a normal, everyday human being. It’ll show them that he’s safe, harmless, inoffensive… not the monster that the prosecution is trying to make him out to be.”
    “And you say you’re not asking me to prostitute myself?”
    She was looking at him hard, telling him with eyes as much as her words that she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
    “Look,” he said after a long pause and a deep breath, “Claymore has an image problem with Middle America. Everyone knows about his past, how he raped white women and said it was political. How he broke out of prison and fled to Libya. But he has the right to be judged by the evidence in this case – not his past history