The Lincoln Lawyer - Michael Connelly [39]
The choice was hard but simple. The state held all of the cards. They had him cold on two hand-to-hand sales with quantity. The reality was that a trial would be an exercise in futility. McGinley knew this. The reality was that his selling of three hundred dollars in rock cocaine to a cop was going to cost him at least three years of his life.
As with many of my young male clients from the south side of the city, prison was an anticipated part of life for McGinley. He grew up knowing he was going. The only questions were when and for how long and whether he would live long enough to make it there. In my many jailhouse meetings with him over the years, I had learned that McGinley carried a personal philosophy inspired by the life and death and rap music of Tupac Shakur, the thug poet whose rhymes carried the hope and hopelessness of the desolate streets McGinley called home. Tupac correctly prophesied his own violent death. South L.A. teemed with young men who carried the exact same vision.
McGinley was one of them. He would recite to me long riffs from Tupac’s CDs. He would translate the meanings of the ghetto lyrics for me. It was an education I valued because McGinley was only one of many clients with a shared belief in a final destiny that was “Thug Mansion,” the place between heaven and earth where all gangsters ended up. To McGinley, prison was only a rite of passage on the road to that place and he was ready to make the journey.
“I’ll lay up, get stronger and smarter, then I’ll be back,” he said to me.
He told me to go ahead and make a deal. He had five thousand dollars delivered to me in a money order—I didn’t ask where it came from—and I went back to the prosecutor, got both pending cases folded into one, and McGinley agreed to plead guilty. The only thing he ever asked me to try to get for him was an assignment to a prison close by so his mother and his three young children wouldn’t have to be driven too far or too long to visit him.
When court was called into session, Judge Daniel Flynn came through the door of his chambers in an emerald green robe, which brought false smiles from many of the lawyers and court workers in the room. He was known to wear the green on two occasions each year—St. Patrick’s Day and the Friday before the Notre Dame Fighting Irish took on the Southern Cal Trojans on the football field. He was also known among the lawyers who worked the Compton courthouse as “Danny Boy,” as in, “Danny Boy sure is an insensitive Irish prick, isn’t he?”
The clerk called the case and I stepped up and announced. McGinley was brought in through a side door and stood next to me in an orange jumpsuit with his wrists locked to a waist chain. He had no one out in the gallery to watch him go down. He was alone except for me.
“Top o’ the morning to you, Mr. McGinley,” Flynn said in an Irish brogue. “You know what today is?”
I lowered my eyes to the floor. McGinley mumbled his response.
“The day I get my sentence.”
“That, too. But I am talking about St. Patrick’s Day, Mr. McGinley. A day to revel in Irish heritage.”
McGinley turned slightly and looked at me. He was street smart but not life smart. He didn’t understand what was happening, whether this was part of the sentencing or just some form of white man disrespect. I wanted to tell him that the judge was being insensitive and probably racist. Instead I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Just be cool. He’s an asshole.”
“Do you know the origin of your name, Mr. McGinley?” the judge asked.
“No, sir.”
“Do you care?”
“Not really, sir. It’s a name from a slaveholder, I ’spect. Why would I care who that motherfucka be?”
“Excuse me, Your Honor,” I said quickly.
I leaned over to McGinley again.
“Darius, cool it,” I whispered. “And watch your language.”
“He’s dissing me,