4

Damn. Nothing good ever came from a Monday. Julia dragged the rickety cart stacked with trial boxes behind her down the handicapped ramp in back of the courthouse and hurried across Thirteenth to the Graham Building, home of the State Attorney’s Office. A gusty tropical breeze threatened to Marilyn Monroe her skirt right in front of the steel-barred windows of DCJ and the two leering Sabrett sausage vendors gathered on the corner, and she cursed herself for picking out the one suit in her closet without a tailored hemline.

She knew Karyn thought she was being overzealous and combative. And her judge was mad at her – again. She had just a day to prepare for a trial she really wasn’t prepared to have, with a judge, a DC, a defense attorney, and even a victim who didn’t want her to have it. Now, just when she thought the day couldn’t get any shittier, the Chief of Major Crimes was demanding to see her in his office.

In the food chain of the State Attorney’s Office, Major Crimes was right up there with administration, and its chief, Charley Rifkin, definitely had more than just the ear of the State Attorney – he’d also been the man’s golf partner for the past ten years, and his campaign manager a decade or so before that. Being summoned to Rifkin’s office was not a normal happening for anyone, and especially not a B, unless, of course, he’d observed something in court that he didn’t like. Or, Julia thought nervously as she nibbled a fingernail and watched her file boxes pass through the Graham Building’s metal detector, had a judge or another attorney call him about a problem.

Major Crimes was the specialized trial division that handled explosive media cases, complex homicides, and all death-penalty cases. Each of the ten or so elite attorneys assigned to the division had more than a dozen years of prosecutorial experience, which – thanks to dismal salaries and a high burn-out rate – was practically a lifetime in an office where most people didn’t stay ten seconds past their three-year commitments. There was no doubt that Major Crimes attorneys were good at what they did, and there was also no doubt that most of them knew it. Their presence in a courtroom could instantly command the respect of the judge, the attention of the jury and the envy of the defense bar. It also could, and usually did, intimidate the hell out of a lot of the pit prosecutors in division, especially if whatever lurid, high-profile case they were appearing on had attracted a camera crew and a few eager reporters to the back of the courtroom. And it wasn’t just the newborns – new Cs fresh from Juvi or County Court – who lost it, either. Julia had witnessed even seasoned As and DCs develop a sudden, uncomfortable stutter when a Major Crimes prosecutor strode into the gallery and asked to call a case up on calendar.

She uselessly hit the lit lobby elevator button again, and waded back into the waiting crowd of uniforms, attorneys and assorted interesting persons that were headed upstairs. Even though it probably wouldn’t have deterred her from pressing forward on Powers this morning if she’d known that Charley Rifkin was standing behind her taking notes, she still wanted to kick herself for not knowing that he was.

Other than an occasional elevator sighting and seeing him speak at an office voir dire training session one afternoon some months back, Julia had never actually met the Division Chief of Major Crimes before. In fact, while she’d been to the second floor maybe a zillion times over her two years in felonies to either see Career Criminal about getting a plea offer on a habitual offender, or visit the offices of other division attorneys, she’d never once even been through the secured access doors that led to the Major Crimes Unit. The Hallowed Hall. It wasn’t that her identification card wouldn’t open the door; it was just that there’d never been any need. None of her cases ever involved issues that appealed to Major Crimes – like a famous defendant, a celebrity victim or a brutal serial killer. And as for socializing, for the most part, attorneys in specialized units did not interact or hang out with the younger pit prosecutors in division. Like Julia supposed it was in every corporate workplace, there existed at the SAO an invisible and unspoken social and economic caste system among its workers: administration dined with administration, senior trial attorneys lunched with senior trial attorneys, support staff noshed with support staff. And in their five minutes of free time, pit prosecutors shared croquetas, PB&Js, and the morning’s courtroom war stories with other pit prosecutors, either at their desks or over at the courthouse cafeteria across the street.

She got off on two with a guy who she figured for either a drug dealer or a plain-clothes City of Miami narc in need of a shower. The tattooed head of a King Cobra slithered out of the collar of his T-shirt, bearing its fangs in a wicked grin as it arched its back and aimed for the jugular. Its owner smiled at her like he knew her, before disappearing down the hall that led to Career Criminal. She hesitantly smiled back and hoped he was a narc.

Her own office was up on three, but she decided it might be better to head straight over to Chief Rifkin’s office first, thinking that maybe if the man actually saw the four enormous trial boxes on her cart, he’d remember just what carrying a caseload of 102 B felonies was like before he ripped into her for taking on her judge with a doomed domestic. She stopped at the door marked Major Crimes, wiped her palms on her skirt, took a deep breath, and slid her card through the security access. It clicked open and she entered a long, lowlit, empty hallway, painted – like the rest of the State Attorney’s Office – the most depressing shade of pasty gray.

Immediately, the air changed. That was the first thing Julia noticed. The second was the collective blank stares of the eight Major Crimes secretaries whose lair she’d landed in when the depressing hallway abruptly ended. A fluorescent-lit maze of Formica and plexiglas cubbies, and there she was, standing dumb-faced right in the middle of it, like a kid whose waterslide had unexpectedly dumped him into the deep end of the pool. Conversation didn’t just softly die down – it dropped dead in mid-sentence.

‘Hello,’ Julia began, trying her best at a big smile. Since no one looked away, she addressed them all. ‘I’m looking for Charley Rifkin’s office?’

‘Is he expecting you?’ one of the faces asked, an older woman with a sour expression and droopy, doughy cheeks. Somebody cracked gum.

Julia glanced down. On the desk in front of droopy cheeks was a plaque with a plastic manicured index finger that bobbled back and forth. It read Don’t Mess With Grandma. ‘I think so,’ Julia answered slowly. ‘My DC told me that Mr Rifkin wanted to see me.’

‘Oh,’ said Grandma. Her face slid down until it looked like it would just melt into her neck. ‘You’re the one from Judge Farley’s division.’

That couldn’t be good. ‘That’s me,’ Julia replied, and casually dried her hands on her skirt again. Unfortunately, she’d inherited the sweaty-palm gene from her mother – a career curse. She still tried to hold on to the smile, but it was fading quick.

Grandma picked up the phone, hit a number, and turned away. ‘She’s here,’ was all she said. Then she looked back at Julia, and motioned down the hall with a nod of her head. Her doughy throat jiggled like a turkey’s. ‘Two-oh-seven. Take the hallway to the second corridor and make a right. Last office on the left.’