Introduction

A killer with a book... A lawyer pushed too far... Freddy Builder kills Mindi Quintana and is writing the book about their relationship everybody wants--it's a lying rewrite of her life and of their miserably thin involvement. Excerpts appearing to acclaim, a televised trial is in the offing, and a new celebrity killer takes the stage--the iconic poet-murderer, a jailhouse literary sensation. Freddy's attorney, Philip, plays his sworn role as advocate; but as Freddy builds his fame with the bones of his victim, Philip finds himself dreaming of justice. For a killer with a book. Justice is served.

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

13

Holmesburg Prison

Later that day, Philip was brought through sliding barred gates, connect¬ing corridors, and corresponding frisks that he knew when to expect through experience. He opened his jacket and lifted his arms, he spread his legs by rote, and the equally perfunctory hands slid over him, not really checking.

They passed him through detectors anyhow, waiting on the other side. He was taken along the last corridor by a pair of guards, one very short and the other tall, that for years had been kept together as a team, probably for laughs. They’d been nicknamed “Short” and “Long” way before Philip came on the scene.

At the door through which lay Visitation, they frisked him, Long high and Short low, and as their fingers flew over his chest and buttocks, he instinctively didn’t say, “Oh, fellas.” He had said, “Oh, fellas,” once when he was green. They’d told him they got that all fuckin’ day and gave his balls a squeeze. Now he was a steady customer and knew better. They finished their frisk and he didn’t say, “Hey, you missed the submachine gun.” He just waited until they unlocked the door and took him into the large room.

“PD,” said Long to the two guards at the table in front.

One of them opened his eyes and shifted in his chair. “Who for?”

“Frederick Builder.”

“The China Manager?” asked Short. There was a general perking up among the four.

“Yeah.”

“I got ’im,” said Long. He took his cap off languidly and brought some sweaty hair to his scalp with the bill.

“We kin both go,” Short told him, and they started slowly away.

Visitation was about as big as a ballroom, though no one was dressed for a ball. There were four little rooms set in the wall behind the guards’ table, which Philip checked by habit for occupancy. All four doors were closed, lights off, through wire-threaded glass. He looked at the guards again, thinking they must be new since he didn’t recognize them. They were blazing examples of the custodial art—eyes peeled, one’s to the back of his lids, the other’s to a muscular female-in-bathing-suit centerfold. He turned away from them.

The room stank of sweat and baby shit. At small tables, prisoners in gray prison whites sat across from lawyers and mothers, girlfriends and infants. Most everyone seemed about an inch from tears, except the lawyers—they looked bored—and the babies, who were crying. Besides the two at the front, three more guards moved around the room. They stopped here and there to listen without hiding it to a prisoner’s conversation. Mostly, though, they found suitable places to put a foot up on a chair, or lean against a wall, and watch the girls get their guys off.

The sex wasn’t exactly hidden here. There wasn’t time or self-esteem enough for that. A woman with a shoe on her guy’s table had one leg on the ground. The other played barefoot in his groin above a pair of lowered prison pants. Each of them held a baby, though the man was fast losing interest in his, his coo coo’s becoming ahh ahh’s. Another young lady had her fella straddled in his chair. Not even one of her feet was on the ground, her heels touching behind the back of the chair, her elbows on the table behind her for support. Their movement revealed what her skirt hid. The woman caught Philip looking and winked. He smiled slightly back: he’d defended her for pretty much what she was doing now.

“Bam!” said the man under her. She raised her eyebrows at Philip. “Bam! Bam!” said the man.

“Yeah, baby, pow,” the woman said, leaning back for her cigarettes and letting his convulsion shake one loose from the pack for her.

Short and Long were back with Freddy in tow. It may have been the new plaster cast, the clean prison whites, or the lack of resolution in the background provided by Short and Long, but Frederick Builder struck Philip as a man in control. Stiff-backed and face set, he looked as starched as his garb. His eyes moved around the room slowly, and he seemed unsurprised, satisfied, if Philip had it right, that all looks were upon him. That people stopped fucking when he entered a room, even that didn’t faze him.

The guards were taking their time, shooting the shit with his client. They took especial care with his injured arm as they removed the cuff from the cast. Philip took a seat at the nearest table. They’d punch Freddy’s good arm, tell him, “Kill one for the Gipper,” and bring him over any four to six hours now. Philip removed a clean legal pad from his briefcase, and an office interview form. Took a pen from his jacket pocket and, to make sure it worked, wrote “For the Gipper,” on the pad. He thought about the party tonight. He would blow a noisemaker till his eyes bulged, he would scare off this old year with that shrill noise—when a flash of white next to him took his eyes to the right. Freddy was looking down at him, Short’s hair, and Long’s chest and head behind him over either shoulder.

“I think we can spare ’em a room, can’t we?”

“Hmmm,” said Short as though considering. “Yeah, I think we could.”

The rooms in the front wall were supposedly reserved for client-lawyer discussions like this one, but they might as well have had signs, WHITE-COLLAR CRIMINALS OR WELL-KNOWN ATTORNEYS ONLY. None of Philip’s clients had ever rated a room before, certainly he hadn’t. The guards were smiling at him expectantly, waiting for some expression of gratitude. He pointed to his throat and shook his head—“Speechless.” They were satisfied and sauntered ahead with Freddy.

Philip didn’t hurry. He closed his briefcase, gathered his things and followed. He did look once, despite himself, to see if the other attorneys had noticed where he was headed, but only met the hooker’s look again.

Inside the small room, Freddy had already taken a seat behind the rickety desk. There was another, smaller chair in front of the desk, and that was the only furniture. The walls of the room were the immaculate white of his client’s cast and clothing. Philip put his things down on the desk in front of Freddy.

“I’ll just be outside the door. Knock when you’re done,” said Long.

The guards went out and Philip helped them close the door. The old sweat-new sweat-crying babies-coming convicts were cut off. Philip felt a separation from everything, in limbo in this little white room. He turned and walked back to Freddy.

“If you don’t mind,” he said in the new quiet, “why don’t you sit over there.” He indicated the little chair. He was here to interview Builder, not the other way around. Freddy moved around.

“At your arraignment, you asked the court to appoint an attorney to repre¬sent you,” Philip said. “I’m him.” He took one of his cards from his briefcase and handed it to Freddy. Freddy held out his good arm to shake. “Frederick Builder,” he said.

“—to meet you,” said Philip. He found Freddy’s handshake warm and dry. “Mr. Builder—”

“Frederick,” Freddy said.

“Frederick. I can’t help wondering if you fully appreciate your situation.”

Freddy gave him a worried look. “I fully appreciate it,” he said. “Believe me.”

“Because out there, you seemed to regard this as theater or something akin to it. A dream. I just want to be sure you’re not in some kind of shock. You understand you’ve been arrested—”

“For murder. Yes. I spent all yesterday pinching myself.”

“Okay.” Philip leaned back as much as he could in the hardback chair. “Then what I’d like to do first is to get some preliminaries out of the way.” He began the standard spiel, forcing inflection into the chain of words. “To begin with, anything you say to me is strictly confidential. I can’t use it any way to hurt you, even if I wanted to, and the courts can’t either. So I’ll expect you to be completely honest with me. All right?”

“No matter what I say, it won’t get me into trouble?”

“That’s right. Even if you were to tell me you committed the murder, it would go no further.”

Many attorneys did this differently these days—they didn’t want a confession that would technically preclude putting their client on the stand to lie about his alibi. More attorneys solicited the confession, and didn’t let technicality get in the way of their defense.

Freddy nodded. Philip went on from the script.

“Next. Henceforth you are to make no statements whatsoever to the police, anyone from the district attorney’s office, to any guards or prisoners that you may become familiar with, or to the press, regarding your case. No matter how unimportant you think the comment may be, no matter what they threaten, promise, offer, if I’m not there, you’ve got nothing to say.”

“Why not the press?”

“Because the press will misquote you, or quote you accurately, whichever is more exciting. And because you don’t know what could be damaging to say. The press is going to be a factor in your case, and so has to be handled with extreme care.”

“I can handle myself. I’m probably just a bit more intelligent than your regular nigger.”

Philip blinked. “Keep the slurs to yourself. If you don’t mind. And if you ever say ‘nigger’ within earshot of a reporter, you can forget any possibility of sympathetic press coverage.”

“I know that. All I mean is, I can handle the press. I know what to say.”

Philip tried to keep his distaste from his voice. “Do you remember what you said to the arresting officers when they asked you about your hand?”

“Yes,” said Freddy. “All I said was I fell down the steps.”

“Yeah. That’s all you said. So, you know how many times a woman gets beaten to death and it causes a male friend, way across town, to take clumsy on the stairs? It’s amazing—sometimes in a fall so violent, traces of her skin and blood get deposited under his nails.” Philip leaned forward. “Christ, semen in the dead girl, semen in the suspect’s underwear: ‘I fell down the stairs and it got me excited.’ Do you know how often?”

Freddy shook his head.

“Well, I do, and so do judges. And so do reporters. Did the cops ask you before or after you were Mirandized, read your rights?”

“After.”

“Well, see, you’re stuck with that then. And what if it turns out your injury is inconsistent with a fall down the steps? You listen to me: I’ll be the smart one.”

Freddy’s legs were crossed so that the back of one knee touched the top of the other. He uncrossed them and put both feet on the ground.

“Okay.”

“We’ll get back to the press later. But I think I’ve got you listening now. I don’t think any of this really has hit home with you yet, despite what you say. I watched you playing the crowd out there. There are TV cameras now, but there won’t be this time next year while you’re sitting in prison all alone. Until it hits you as real, I just don’t want you to mess yourself up.”

“I’ll be careful. But you’re wrong. It has hit home. I’m—” He stopped and crossed his legs again.

“Go on.”

“I am in control, that’s all. My mind’s clear—I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t feel like I’m dreaming, I feel like I’ve woken up from a dream.”

“How did you break your hand?”

“Yes,” Freddy answered.

“You killed her then.”

“I freaked.”

“You’re not allowed to freak.” It’d come out before he could stop it.

“Hey, look! You said to tell you the truth—”

“I know.”

“—If you don’t want to defend me then get me someone who can!”

“I’ll defend you. That’s my role,” Philip said.

They eyed each other for a moment, then Freddy said, “I loved her, you know.”

“Okay,” said Philip. Fine. He turned the pages of the office form past the section for biographical information to “Facts of the Arrest,” subheading, “Background.”

“I’d like you to tell me how this all happened. Don’t start with the night of the incident. I want to hear about your relationship with Mindi Quintana, from its very beginning. And everything else of importance that’s been happening in your life along with her.”

Freddy sighed, and brought a six-year-old night into the prison. He painted it for Philip in such detail that Philip imagined its purple-black onto the walls of the room, and was surprised along with Freddy by Mindi on her porch. Listening minutely, he moved Freddy from that night and into an account of his two months with Mindi in college, carefully eliciting details, which he made note of and circled back to at intervals to see if he could elicit again. A crude tool for gauging if Freddy was lying but about all he had, and as honed by him over time, better than blunt.

From there he moved Freddy to his years at Chanet’s, where there were Managers of the Month, and of the Year, Tweed restaurants and chocolate managers, and where Freddy’s superior, Bobby Jamison, carried a pearl cigarette holder. He then focused Freddy on the recent reunion with Mindi. Here, as a claimed romance unfolded, he began to feel lied to. He heard about dates that didn’t sound like dates, but let Freddy continue; about a desire to publish him in her magazine that didn’t make sense, but he did not interrupt.

And while he listened, Freddy’s one-word response to “How did you break your hand?” kept coming back to him. Where was the remorse if he’d loved her as he claimed? Where was that anguish that someone he loved had died by his own hand? Philip had seen that anguish, he knew that remorse; it often made society’s punishment seem beside the point.

Now Freddy came to the day of the murder and Philip felt the rage.

“They promised not to make me Manager of the Year. Then they did.” Freddy’s face was red. He shook, livid. He slammed his hand down on the table.

“What did you do?”

“I went to a bar.”

“You got drunk.”

“I had two or three beers and poured them out all day.” Freddy’s forehead was damp. He dabbed it with his good arm, calming himself. “I needed her. You understand? I needed her.” Philip did not sympathize and Freddy seemed to sense it. “You wouldn’t understand.” And he did not reassure him. “You wouldn’t understand . . . first-gear self-satisfied . . .”

“Go on,” Philip said.

“I went to Mindi’s. We talked about my book. She liked it. She knew people, and told me she wanted to—”

“So you killed her,” Philip cut him off.

“It didn’t happen like that. Let me finish.” But he’d lost his thread.

“Did she rebuff you sexually?”

“No, of course not.”

“So you’ve slept with her. Lately, I mean.”

“Of course.”

“No, you haven’t. Her friend said she wasn’t dating anyone. You wanted a relationship. She didn’t.”

“I know what her friend said, I’ve read the papers. She’s incorrect.”

“No. You’re lying to me.”

“I have pictures of us at the circus. Kissing! Embracing and kissing.”

“I don’t care. Why would she lie to her friend?” Freddy didn’t answer.

“See? It doesn’t wash. If I didn’t know you killed her, and if you hadn’t told me so much of the truth, maybe I wouldn’t know the rest. But the jig’s up. You’re Manager of the Year. It was—these are your words—your ‘worst fear realized.’ You go to a bar, but you don’t get drunk. You need comfort, Mindi, so you can’t take the chance. You go to see her and—”

“That’s not what happened!”

“Freddy!” said Philip. “Give me a break. Fool the world, but tell me the truth. I don’t want to find it out at trial and you don’t want me to.” He leaned across the desk. “If I’m going to weave you a defense around what the prosecution’s got, I’ve got to know what that might be. You’re going to have to decide whether to accept a deal, if one’s offered, and if not, whether to plead guilty or go to trial. If you want me to advise you, I’ve got to know.” He sat back in the chair. “That’s the last energy I’m expending on you. I’ve got fifteen more minutes to talk today, then I’m going to proceed on whatever you tell me now, true or false.”

Freddy stood and bent over him. “You want to know? Okay. I loved her. I needed her. I had plans for us, she ruined them. She knew how much I cared about her, and she couldn’t just give me a little bit, couldn’t come around just a little and give me a chance. For six years I thought about her, and that’s what I get in return? Six years—and then she was here. And I started taking her out. And she was reading my stuff. She knew people. It would have been so easy for her to help me. So easy, and after all the attention I was showing her. But in the end, she refused. She refused!”

“Is that all she refused you?”

“You know it’s not. She didn’t refuse to let me take her out. She let me spend my fucking money on her. Led me on, let me think she wanted to be with me. But when I really needed her—in the one moment that I really needed her, she chose to back away. Okay? She says, ‘You’re a man with a sense of beauty. You have the ability to create it,’ and all she means is I can make people buy china?—”

Seeming to catch on finally that Philip had purposely provoked this rant, Freddy halted unfinished, straightened, sat down and crossed his legs.

Now Philip had what he’d wanted. Now that he did, he realized why he’d pushed for it. It had not only to do with Freddy’s defense. It was that Freddy had killed a woman and Philip hadn’t. Where Freddy had exploded, he had imploded. He’d wanted to find the difference between them.

The biggest was that Freddy hadn’t loved Mindi. She was a blue ribbon as surely as the one he despised, but she repre¬sented something he wanted. She had never been real, except maybe for the few months in college. Not during the six years of imagining, nor after, when she was flesh and blood before him, then bloody flesh before him, did he possess her with a life, purpose, or meaning of her own. So it wasn’t love that had moved him to kill her, but lack of it that had allowed him to.

“None of this,” said Freddy, “is my official position for court. It’s confi¬dential like you said. What I want to say to others, what I want the press to think is my business.”

“I said we’ll get back to the press.” He took Freddy’s file and his notes out of the briefcase. “Let’s talk about what the prosecution’s got on you to date. Normally we wouldn’t have too good an idea yet. At this stage, usually all that’s in the file is the complaint—which merely sets out the charges against you. We also happen to have the police reports. The medical examiner’s report, witness statements—except those in the reports we already have—investigatory and scientific findings will take a while. We won’t get them till after your formal arraignment, which I’ll get to. But the papers have done a job, and I spoke to the PD who covered your preliminary arraignment. She gave me a breakdown of what she thinks they’ve got so far.”

He turned to his notes. “From what the medical examiner could determine at the scene, Mindi Quintana sustained a brutal beating by a left-handed man. But it was breaking her neck that killed her.” He looked up from the pages. “You’re left handed. Your left hand was newly broken at the time of arrest.” He looked back down. “I’ve had left-handed, right-handed attributions before and they’re tenuous. Sometimes you can really eat into them.” He flipped over a page. “We’ve got the Bianchi girl’s statement that Mindi planned to go out for drinks with you that night. There’s the stuff in the papers, and probably a lot she could add, about your relationship or lack thereof. Plus, we’ve got an entry on Mindi’s calendar for December twenty-ninth that says ‘Drinks F.’ To make a long story short,” he said, his eyes again on Freddy, “we might be able to keep much of what the friend has to say out of evidence under something called the hearsay rule. Now, I don’t want to get into a long explanation of what that is, and the law in the area is somewhat unsettled at the moment anyhow. The bottom line, though, is that the court might exclude the friend’s statement about your plans for the evening. But the calendar will come in.”

His rundown of the evidence was partly to get himself thinking about it, he did not restrain his analysis and took notes on what he said.

“Moving on. There was no sign of forced entry into the apartment. The implication is that Mindi knew her killer and opened the door for him. Still, the police had to break down the door. In so doing they may have destroyed evidence of a break-in they’d have discovered otherwise.” He wrote it down. “Well, that’s our argument anyhow. That she knew her killer, however, is also supported by the fact that the only struggle was at the back of the apartment in the living room. And of course there’s the extra cup of coffee.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

What do you think about America’s fascination with killers and our willingness to turn them into celebrities?

What would you do if you had the opportunity to stop a killer from becoming a celebrity, but in order to do so, you would have to face a moral and ethical dilemma?

In your opinion, must attorneys always remain responsible to the integrity of the system even if they know it will create an injustice? Is it ever right to make a personal ethical decision that is in contradiction to an oath you took to uphold the law?

What do you think about media figures who romanticize killers and criminals? What’s behind their fascination with these monsters? Why do viewers respond so favorably to them?

Weblinks

»	Author Jeffrey A. Cohen's web site
»	Jeffrey A. Cohen's Facebook Page
»	Jeffrey A. Cohen on Twitter
»	Publisher's Book Info

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 1 of 1 members.

Member Reviews

Rate this book