THE MAD LAWYER
PART ONE
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CHAPTER ONE
Many things went wrong. His pupils were ships in the middle of a tornado.
“I swear, I don’t know.”
I know. I just can’t say yet. “This is a matter of life and death, Makin.”
“Stop scaring him!” His mother snaps, her gele now a mess around her neck. It stood regally on her head at the beginning.
“Tell me everything, for God’s sake!” I shut the dossier. The rusted ceiling fan isn’t creaking today. My cravat itches. My cowlick is glued to my forehead in sweat. My collar, dangerously soaked. With sweat. If only they knew. That when I sweat, it means I am using 400% of my brain.
“I-I-I-I don’t know how, I swear.” His nail beds are oozing blood. He lifts his thumb to his lips for the thousandth time, and his mum swats it away.
“O kin ro nu ni?” Don’t you ever think? She wipes sweat from her nose with a golden handkerchief.
Most lawyers pray for rich clients. Because rich clients always have problems.
Big problems.
Mountains of them.
I didn’t pray for rich clients. I studied law so I could get the innocent from prison. Get justice for rape victims. Victims of domestic violence. Rescue children from child traffickers. Rescue victims of forced prostitution. Justice for raped widows. Justice for the scammed elderly. It brought me fame. But little money. Connections. But not much money. Perhaps because people think the famous are always rich. So I began my NGO, and paid myself a salary from the fundraisers. I am not the problem of this country.
My family kept asking when I would get married, and stopped asking when I turned twenty nine. When my younger sister said she wanted to study law, they borrowed money and shipped her to a school of midwifery.
“Let her see how children are born, so she will marry and have children.” My mother huffed.
Okay.
In my eleven years of practice I have handled forty one cases. Twenty two rape cases. Of those, nine are pedophilia. Nothing, nothing, in this tiny universe can make me boil like a child being abused. I play detective, soldier, lawyer, forensic scientist and hit man when solving a case concerning a child. Remove hitman.
Which brought me to this child in front of me. Makin Gold. Son of Makin Gold, brother of the governor. I was thinking of which fundraiser to host so I can pay my office rent when my secretary brought his mother to my office two days ago.
I could have hissed at the sun. You bathe yourself in gold, because your surname is gold? Her Hollandis lace, gold. Her gele, gold. Her shoes, gold. Her earrings, gold. Her bag, black – thank God. She wasn’t wearing a necklace. Her left ear was missing. It almost cost her in-law the recent reelections, when a pastor called her a witch. She lost the ear in a fight with her father though, when he tried raping her after her sister ran away. Forty years ago. How do I know?
I’m a lawyer.
A good one.
I know how to dig.
Dig for gold.
I turn down rich, ostentatious, proud clients – not that I get many of them – but for her near rape experience, I’ll listen. Women supporting women, after all.
I almost cover my nose when her perfume slaps me.
She surveys the room with her owl eyes. “They didn’t tell me you were………..here.” Here. Trenches. She slips a card to me. Ferguson and Associates. I helped them with a child kidnapping case two years ago.
My secretary offers her water or tea. She declines, scrunching her face as if she was offered urine. “They said I should come to you. You know why.”
“State your business.” I slouch in my chair, deliberately. “I’m a lawyer, not a mindreading witch.”
It stings. She throws an envelope at me. “It’s a cheque. Three million. And if you can get him out, two more.”
“Did he do it?” I do not touch the envelope.
Out of nowhere, she starts crying. I used to have a box of tissues on the table, but when almost every client turned here to a therapy clinic, I stopped. Also tissues got expensive.
“Most mothers say they know their children, but I swear, I swear, I know my son. I know him. He didn’t do it. He didn’t. He can’t kill a cockroach.”
Same thing the mother of the boy who killed his teacher said. And the boy who lured his younger schoolmates to the van of child traffickers. And the girl who forced her neighbour’s daughter to give her dog a blowjob. They couldn’t hurt a cockroach. They are scared of rats. They can’t drink hot tea. They don’t know where their penis is. Or the vagina.
I sipped watery tea. Of course I saw it in the news. But I was not sure. Until I saw him.
***********************************************************************
CHAPTER TWO
“If you don’t tell me everything, I can’t help you.” I loosen my cravat. Roll up my white sleeves. Tap play on my recorder. Get my notepad and pen ready.
“I……..” He scratches his head, glances at his mother. Today her gold lipstick is smudged. “Mummy can you come back later?”
She has been betrayed. She glares at me as she leaves the cement room. As soon as the door closes, his shoulders stand firm. The sweat somehow stops. His back sits straight. His fingers stop trembling. This is the part of my profession I dread.
Yes, I did it.
But you gats get me out. Abeg.
“I didn’t do it.” He takes my cup of water and gulps. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I relax in my chair. Time to hear a story.
“I’ve known her since senior class three. We agreed not to date till I got to university. Then we started dating –“
“Before university?”
“In university. First year. First semester. January.”
“Be specific. Tiny details have solved the hardest cases.” I twist my cravat in my tiny fingers.
“So……we were dating. It was nice. We had only one rule. No sex. But we did…..other things, before I went to university, in class three.”
I nod. Your mum knows you well indeed. He wants to go on. I pause. “Who else knew then?”
“Nobody.”
“Where did you usually do it?”
“At her house. When she came for holidays. She is in boarding school.”
I nod.
“So in my second year she met this guy, cheated on me with him.”
“How did you find out?”
“She told me. We were having an argument and she told me.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
I stretch in my chair. I yawn. “Stop going in circles. You know what is at stake here?”
He nods, his dreads jiggling. “I got angry. I told her I’ll kill the guy.”
“But you didn’t.”
He sighs. “We broke up a week after that. Then got back together. Then broke up. Like…..six times.”
“And you were making out all through?”
“Normal.” Then he tightens. “But I didn’t do it, I swear.”
****************************************************
They fired their two lawyers after the first hearing. I slick my cravat down.
The centre of attention and attraction approaches the witness box. In a soft white gown. The saint of innocence.
I point at her glasses. “Can you see without those?”
She shakes her head.
“Answer the question with your mouth. Nobody is deaf and dumb here.”
“No.”
“So you can’t see without those glasses?”
“Yes. I know where you’re leading to. I was not wearing my glasses, but I saw him. It was him.”
I don’t see the deadened shock of a rape victim. I see the acidic anger of a………..hmmm…….
“How old are you, Chevron?”
“Seventeen.”
My client is nineteen.
“I am new to the case, so can you please run me through the whole story?”
“Objection, my lord.” Her lawyer is so heavy he can’t even stand up to address the judge. “Speculation."
“Objection overruled.”
Speculation? Speculation? Which law school did he go to? “We are all ears, Chevron.”
Little tears slip from her eyes. “As you can see, I’m a minor –“
“Your birth certificate isn’t on your forehead, but go on.”
Her lawyer hisses.
She dabs at her face with a pristine handkerchief. Why do people think crying in front of a court attracts pity? “I met him when I was in class one. I am very brilliant, so my education isn’t slow. Most of my mates had not entered secondary school, so –“
Clever. “We don’t have all day. Chevron.”
She waits for her lawyer to cough, “Objection”, and when it doesn’t come, she continues. “It is so embarrassing I cannot talk about it in front of all these people. I am already traumatized.”
“But you want justice. Justice has an uncomfortable process. Go on.” I urge.
“So he…..we attended the same church, and we were in the same choir group. Then he said he liked me – “
“She always sat on his laps!” Makin’s mother yelled from behind. “She would feign colds so she would borrow his cardigan, then – “
“Order.”
“I didn’t want to be rude, so I told him I’ll think about it. I was afraid he would…you know…..force me….so I accepted, and we said we would date when he gets to university. So we started dating, and then, I said I wanted to break up, cause I didn’t feel safe. He got violent, and hit me. I have scars as proof. He threatened to get some boys to gang rape me –“
There is a gasp.
She is no longer crying. She is painting a villain. “I could not tell my mum because I was terrified…..I could not tell anybody.”
New tears.
“Then, on march, 29th, he came to see me in my boarding school. He lured me to a hotel, and promised he’ll be nice to me. Then he raped me.” There is an avalanche of tears now. Snot dribbles down her nose. “Now I’m pregnant.”
I expected Makin to stand, scream and say, “I didn’t rape her!” But when I turn, he is crying. Like, tears. Guilt? Pain? Betrayal? I’m a lawyer, not a witch.
“How did he lure you?”
“huh?”
That’s the problem with lies. Unless written in stone somewhere, they are sand castles.
“You said he lured you. How?”
She glances about. “He told me he had a surprise. For our upcoming anniversary.”
“When did you start dating?”
She bites her tongue. I see it, clear.
“My lord, this illegal couple began dating in January last year. January 17th, a week after the beginning of the first semester. The witness lies to this honourable court, my lord. What other lies have she told?”
“Objection –“
“Overruled .” The judge says.
“He lured a smart girl like you with a surprise for an anniversary that has already passed?” I twist my cravat.
“He did! I was afraid he would hurt me –“
“You were in school, Chevron. School. He could not have tried to hurt you. Or lured you away. Unless you weren’t in school. Were you in school?”
I swear her mother gasped.
“Object –“
“Where were you on 29th March?”
“School.”
“You can’t remember all the lies, Chevron.” I open a blank page and read from it. “You were at the Regent Hotel, room 29 –“
She wants to challenge it, to tell me it was room 19, but she can’t.
“The concierge helped you with your purple school bag, and you took his chocolate from him. He didn’t see a terrified girl in a school uniform. You were……excited. Two hours later – I don’t know what took you so long – the concierge, and a number of staff, and guests saw you swimming with my client in the hotel’s pool. You were not acting like a kidnapped girl, Chevron. You were enjoying –“
“He forced me to smile and act normal! Else he’ll hurt me! If you
were in my shoes –“
“I wouldn’t have collected chocolate from the receptionist.” I clear my throat. “You were not lured away from school, Chevron. You called my client and told him you were breaking up with him. He was devastated, and wanted to talk to you. So you told him to come meet you at the Regent Hotel. You flew the fence during lunch break with a purple school bag, changed clothes, applied make up, and took a bike. The wind almost blew your face cap off, so you wore a face mask as backup. When you got there, my client was already waiting by the gate. You hugged him, and went in. You snatched a chocolate bar from the receptionist, and told him your boyfriend will pay. That’s two chocolates now. In the room you ordered chicken. The AC was on. You gave him a blowjob, but he didn’t come. So you gave him a handjob–“
Makin starts crying.
“Then helped him dispose the condom. Except you didn’t. You put the sperm in a tube cooler, a monekinized cooler you’d stolen from your mother’s lab. Very portable. You premeditated this a long time–“
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