Chapter 16: Conflict of Interest

The judge did not rule that morning.

She called a recess, and then she called both lawyers to the bench.

I watched Emiliano's shoulders from behind while she spoke to him.

When he came back to the table, he did not sit.

"She's setting it for two weeks from today," he said. "I can't stay on as your counsel."

"Why not?"

"Because I typed the paper. I'm a witness now, and I'm also your lover."

"She won't hear a case where one man is all three."

"Then I'll find someone else."

"Yes."

"And you'll go sit in the back row."

"Alma." He kept his voice low. "If I step out of your life entirely, her photographs prove nothing."

"No."

"It would be simpler."

"It would be simpler for her."

Across the aisle, Soledad was drinking water from a paper cup.

She looked calm.

She looked like a woman who had already won.

"I'm not trading you for custody," I said.

"You told me the truth the same day you found it out."

"She made a weapon of it. I won't hand her the rest."

He looked at me for a while.

"Then I'll step aside as your lawyer," he said. "And only as your lawyer."

"Good."

"I'll find you the best person I know."

He found her by noon.

She came out of the clinic on Telephone Road to meet us on the sidewalk.

She was a broad woman in her fifties, with reading glasses pushed up into gray hair.

She had a legal pad under one arm and a sandwich in her other hand.

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