I entered and closed the door after putting the do not disturb sign on the outside handle. David “Legal” Siegel was lying in bed, his eyes on the screen of a muted television bolted to the upper wall across from the bed. His thin white hands were on top of a blanket. There was a low hiss from the tube that brought oxygen to his nose. He smiled when he saw me.
“Mickey.”
“Legal, how are you doing today?”
“Same as yesterday. Did you bring anything?”
I pulled the visitor’s chair away from the wall and positioned it so I could sit in his line of vision. At eighty-one years old, he didn’t have a lot of mobility. I opened my briefcase on the bed and turned it so he could reach into it.
“French dip from Philippe the Original. How’s that?”
“Oh, boy,” he said.
Menorah Manor was a kosher joint and I used the legal consultation bit as a way around it. Legal Siegel missed the places he’d eaten at during a near-fifty-year run as a lawyer in downtown. I was happy to bring him the culinary joy. He had been my father’s law partner. He was the strategist, while my father had been the front man, the performer who enacted the strategies in court. After my father died when I was five, Legal stuck around. He took me to my first Dodgers game when I was a kid, sent me to law school when I was older.
A year ago I had come to him after losing the election for district attorney amid scandal and self-destruction. I was looking for life strategy, and Legal Siegel was there for me. In that way, these meetings were legitimate consultations between lawyer and client, only the people at the desk didn’t understand that I was the client.
I helped him unwrap the sandwich and opened the plastic container holding the jus that made the sandwiches from Philippe’s so good. There was also a sliced pickle wrapped in foil.
Legal smiled after his first bite and pumped his skinny arm like he had just won a great victory. I smiled. I was glad to bring him something. He had two sons and a bunch of grandchildren but they never came around except on the holidays. As Legal told me, “They need you until they don’t need you.”
When I was with Legal we talked mostly about cases and he would suggest strategies. He was absolute aces when it came to predicting prosecution plans and case roll outs. It didn’t matter that he had not been in a courtroom in this century or that penal codes had changed since his day. He had baseline experience and always had a play. He called them moves, actually—the double-blind move, the judge’s robes move, and so on. I had come to him during the dark time that followed the election. I wanted to learn about my father and how he had dealt with the adversities of his life. But I ended up learning more about the law and how it was like soft lead. How it could be bent and molded.
“The law is malleable,” Legal Siegel always told me. “It’s pliable.”
I considered him to be part of my team, and that allowed me to discuss my cases with him. He’d throw out his ideas and moves. Sometimes I used them and they worked, sometimes not.
He ate slowly. I had learned that if I gave him a sandwich, he could take an hour to eat it, steadily chewing small bites. Nothing went to waste. He ate everything I brought him.
“The girl in three-thirty died last night,” he said between bites. “A shame.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How old was she?”
“She was young. Early seventies. Just died in her sleep and they carted her out this morning.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. Legal took another bite and reached into my briefcase for a napkin.
“You’re not using the jus, Legal. That’s the good stuff.”
“I think I like it dry. Hey, you used the bloody flag move, didn’t you? How’d it go?”
When he’d grabbed the napkin, he had spotted the extra blood capsule I kept in a Ziploc bag. I had it just in case I swallowed the first one by mistake.
“Like a charm,” I said.
“You get the mistrial?”
“Yep. In fact, mind if I use your bathroom?”
I reached into the briefcase and grabbed another Ziploc, this one containing my toothbrush. I went into the room’s bathroom and brushed my teeth. The red dye turned the brush pink at first but soon it was all down the drain.
When I came back to the chair, I noticed that Legal had finished only half his sandwich. I knew the rest must be cold and there was no way I could take it out to the dayroom to heat it in the microwave. But Legal still seemed happy.
“Details,” he demanded.
“Well, I tried to break the witness but she held up. She was a rock. When I returned to the table, I gave him the signal and he did his thing. He hit me a little harder than I was expecting but I’m not complaining. The best part is I didn’t have to make the motion to declare a mistrial. The judge went right to it on his own.”