Bad Lawyer by Stephen Solomita

usually in dreams, and I knew (or hoped) that if I waited a few minutes, it’d go away.
    Julie filled a glass and set it down in front of me. Then her fingers rose from the glass in a languid arc to caress my cheek.
    “Ya know, Julie,” I said, “I really hate it when you read my mind.”
    She sat down next to me and jabbed a fingernail into my ribs. “Macho Sid. Gonna do it all by himself. You ever stop to consider that someone else in the room might be feeling the same thing?”
    Caleb dumped the ribs into a glass pie dish, shoved the dish in the microwave, and shut the door. “Forget that AA bullshit for a minute.” He was clearly annoyed, his small mouth a black line between walrus cheeks. “Read the goddamned paper, Sid. Page four.”
    I dutifully opened the tabloid, finding the story in question at the bottom half of the page. It bore the clever headline: NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE FOR BYRON SWEET .
    “Read it out loud.” Julie was leaning into the refrigerator, gathering the ingredients for a Caesar salad.
    The story, an interview with Reverend Mathias Silverstone, an ordained Presbyterian minister whose flock included Sebastian and Rose Sweet, parents of Byron Sweet, was straightforward enough. Mathias intended to preach a sermon denouncing the fact that a black man had been shot down in the prime of life and the white-owned media were preparing to exonerate his killer before the trial had even begun.
    If Byron Sweet had been white and his wife black, Reverend Silverstone was quoted as saying, these same people would call for a lynching. It’s got to stop.
    The reporter, Rachman Cousins, whose byline headed the story, stopped short of actually canonizing the dearly departed Byron, but he did list the names of four black women, battered one and all, whose claims of self-defense had been ignored by the media and rejected by a jury.
    “That reporter ain’t lyin’,” Caleb said.
    “If Byron’s a choirboy,” I insisted, “then Priscilla’s the Virgin Mary.”
    Julie turned away from the counter by the sink and began to set the table. “What is it you want, Sid? You want to grab the brass ring, fly off into that madness? It didn’t do much for you the first time around.”
    I think the question was supposed to catch me off-guard, but the truth was that I’d been considering the question all day. I got up and went to the refrigerator for a bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce and a jar of salad dressing. Blue Cheese, if I remember right. “It isn’t the money,” I said, then looked defiantly from Julie to Caleb, daring them to contradict me.
    “We know that,” Caleb said. “Julie wasn’t talking about the money. More like the thrill of it all.” He took the ribs out of the microwave and set them on the table.
    “The thrill? Why not the high of it all?”
    “Forget it, Sid,” Julie said. “Nobody’s trying to put you on the spot.”
    I sprinkled hot sauce onto my ribs, took a bite, then wiped my fingers on a paper napkin. “I understand Caleb’s point, and he’s got it right. I’m never more alive than when I’m in that courtroom. Plagues? Riots? Wars? Julie, as far as I’m concerned, the only endangered human being in the entire universe is my client. The only war is in that room.”
    Twenty minutes later, I was getting up to do the dishes when the phone rang. Julie answered, mouthed Phoebe Morris, and listened for a moment. “I don’t think that’s a problem. You wanna talk to Sid?”
    I took the call in my bedroom. “Phoebe, it’s Sid. How goes it?”
    “It’s deadline time. And it goes very slowly. Look, we’re running the photos in tomorrow’s edition. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’re running your client’s rap sheet as well. Any comment?”
    “I thought you already catalogued my client’s sins?”
    “Well, we’re doing it again.”
    “Did Buscetta give you an exclusive or did he mail a little package to every journalist on the east coast?”
    “For the