The 6th Target - James Patterson [46]
Alfred Brinkley was coming up the aisle. His beard had been shaved, his long hair had been buzzed short, and he was wearing a blue polyester suit and tie, looking about as dangerous as rice pudding.
But it wasn’t Brinkley who’d made her stomach clench and her mouth drop open.
Barbara Blanco wasn’t at Brinkley’s side. Instead, there was a man in his early forties, prematurely gray, dressed in a charcoal-gray Brioni suit and yellow-print Armani tie. She knew Brinkley’s new attorney.
Everyone did.
“Aw, fuck,” Parisi said, smiling stiffly. “Mickey Sherman. You know him, don’t you, Yuki?”
“Sure do. We were cocounsel when we defended a friend of mine only months ago.”
“Yeah, I remember. Homicide lieutenant charged with wrong-ful death.” Parisi took off his glasses, polished them with his handkerchief, said to Yuki, “What’d I say last night?”
“ ‘Be prepared for anything.’ ”
“Sometimes I hate it when I’m right. What can you tell me, apart from the fact that Sherman’s never seen a camera he doesn’t like?”
“He’s a big-picture guy,” Yuki said. “Leaves the details to others. Stuff might fall through the cracks.”
Yuki was thinking how she’d read that Mickey Sherman had resigned his job as deputy corporation counsel for the City of San Francisco and opened a small private practice. He’d do the Brinkley case pro bono, but the media attention would be a hell of a launching pad for Sherman and Associates — if he won.
“Well, he hasn’t got a big staff anymore,” Parisi said. “We’ll just have to find those cracks and pry them open with a crowbar. Meanwhile, I already see his first big problem.”
“Yeah.” Yuki nodded. “Alfred Brinkley doesn’t look insane. But Len, Mickey Sherman knows that, too.”
Chapter 63
YUKI STOOD AT ATTENTION as Judge Norman Moore took the bench, Old Glory on one side, flag of the State of California on the other, thermos of coffee and a laptop in front of him.
The two hundred people in the courtroom sat down as court was called into session.
Judge Moore was known to be fair, with a tendency to let lawyers run out ahead a jot too far before bringing down his gavel.
Now Moore spent a good fifteen minutes instructing the jury before turning his bespectacled blue eyes on Leonard Parisi. “Are the People ready to begin?”
“We are, Your Honor.”
Leonard Parisi stood, fastened the middle button of his suit jacket, walked toward the jury box, and greeted the jurors. Red Dog was truly large, his hips broad and his shoulders sloping and wide. His red hair was fuzzy, and his skin was pocked and rough.
Leonard Parisi was no heartthrob, but when he spoke, he had the stage presence of a character actor, one of the greats like Rod Steiger or Gene Hackman.
You just couldn’t keep your eyes off him.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, when you were selected for this jury, you all said that you’d seen the ‘Rooney tape’ of the Del Norte ferry tragedy. You said that you could keep an open mind about the defendant’s guilt or innocence. And you promised that you’d judge Mr. Brinkley by what’s proven to you in this courtroom.
“That’s why I want to tell you what it was like November first on the Del Norte, so that you will see it fresh in your mind’s eye.
“It was a real nice day for a ferry ride,” Parisi began. “About sixty degrees, with intermittent sun. A lot of the tourists were wearing shorts because, hey, San Francisco is in California, right?”
Laughter rippled across the courtroom as Parisi warmed to his opening statement.
“It was a beautiful day that turned into a day in hell because the defendant, Alfred Brinkley, was on that ferry.
“Mr. Brinkley was penniless, but he’d found a round-trip ticket at the farmer’s market and decided to take a ride. He had a loaded gun in his pocket, a revolver that held six rounds.
“On this particular day, Mr. Brinkley rode the ferry to Larkspur without incident, but on the return trip, as the boat was docking in San Francisco, the defendant saw Andrea Canello having a discussion with her little boy, a cute nine-year-old lad by the name of Tony.
“For a reason known only to Mr.