The following short story is a work of fiction by Stephen Cooper. It is the 11th installment of his previous short stories published in the Advertiser: “The Mayor of Woodland Hills”, “The Mayor of Woodland Hills Awakens”, “Woodland Hills Mayor Gets Arrested,” “A Look at Woodland Hills Mayor’s Arrest,” “Another Reason Woodland Hills Mayor’s Arrest,” “Anger Boils Over Woodland Hills Mayor’s Arrest,” “Woodland Hills Mayor Meets His Public Defender,” “Mayor’s Public Defender Investigates,” “Woodland Hills Mayor’s Public Defender Reflects on His Hatred of Poverty,” and “Hate of Homelessness Hits Woodland Hills Hard.”
Public defender Sally Garon winced as she looked at the clock; as a public defender, you spend a lot of time wincing as you look at the clock. Sally tapped her foot and adjusted a framed photo on her desk of her little black miniature schnauzer named “Objection.” She unconsciously hummed Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World,” playing softly from her clunky, outdated computer. There wasn’t much else Sally could do in those moments. Her investigator, Rusty, was escorting out of the lobby one of the most colorful, argumentative clients the public defender’s office had ever represented for a misdemeanor—Sally had been the “good soldier” recruited by a well-meaning judge to “sacrifice one for the team.” So it was that Sally, a seasoned public defender accustomed to serious criminal trials, was representing Gerald Freeman—better known in the San Fernando Valley as the “Mayor of Woodland Hills,” a nickname sometimes used as an honorary title and sometimes pronounced with a sneer. Freeman was accused of stealing a Whole Foods shopping cart—the first such “test case” in LA for Whole Foods shopping cart theft. Sally played drums with her pens in time to the moody, escalating rhythm. Then, with a soft sigh, she swiveled her chair around and tucked her running shoes back under her freshly pressed, hanging suits, many of which were still in vacuum-sealed dry-cleaning bags. Sally’s office was bursting with the bric-a-brac of the trade. Access to many of the suits was blocked by a colorful chart protruding from her closet at an awkward, slanted angle and taped to a white poster board. This one Sally had designed many moons ago to convince jurors just how “high” the standard for “reasonable doubt” really is. To the chagrin of the stuffy and salty prosecutors who objected – as well as a number of ultra-conservative judges who upheld those petty objections – this was a straightforward, surprisingly effective piece of evidence; its colorful shading and sharp lines provided a powerful, visually compelling demonstration of the government’s burden of proof. “You’ve been here before, Mr. Mayor, so I’m going to depose you,” Rusty’s muffled voice came from the claustrophobic and crowded hallway, which felt even more cramped as you walked through it, like a trick hallway at an amusement park. This was due to the stacks of white boxes of documents that lined the bare white walls – all either on their way to the “archives” or on their way back from there.
“If you believe in reincarnation and the Buddhist ‘Wheel of Life,'” Sally once quipped while preparing for a hopelessly unsuccessful murder trial, “we’re all either on our way out of the ‘archives’ or on our way back.” The mayor’s wheelchair squeaked as its chrome handles came into view, gripped tightly by the mayor’s tanned, leathery hands. The mayor wore a T-shirt with a cross-eyed Clint Eastwood in a cowboy hat that read in black letters, “Go ahead, make my day.” A wispy lock of his silver-black hair stuck stubbornly and sweatily to the center of his forehead, giving him a stiff, Superman-like curl above a grumpy-looking and almost, but not quite, monobrow. “And how is my favorite court-appointed adviser today?” the mayor asked with a knowing smile. “Do you miss me?” “Like a prodigal son,” Sally hissed, waving goodbye to Rusty, who winked at her sympathetically. With a thin smile, Rusty turned to leave and closed Sally’s door. “So, Mr. Freeman – excuse me, Mr. Mayor – thank you for coming in such a hurry,” Sally began, “we have urgent matters to discuss.” From a red fountain with the inscription “People v Gerald Freeman”, Sally pulled out a “summons to show cause” she had received the other day, ordering her and Freeman, aka “the mayor,” to appear in court in a week because his most recent drug test had come back “positive for opioids.” Any law enforcement officer reading this would conclude: It was a blatant hint from Freeman’s judge that she would not allow the mayor to continue using until trial. Sally presented the paperwork to the mayor, including the result of his most recent drug test from the board of inquests. He picked it up, scanned it, put it down again, and looked at Sally blankly. “So what? You think I care? Listen: I’m an old man. My damn legs were blown to pieces in a foreign country—for you, the district attorney, and all the judges and their families, too. So I self-medicate. I’m in pain. I don’t have damn legs. This can be painful, you know?” “I don’t know, but I hear you,” Sally replied. She put the drug test and the trial summons back in the file. “I just don’t want you locked up. Here’s the thing, and I’m not telling you what to do, but I have to tell you: The prosecutor prosecuting your case just called. He’s willing to defer your prosecution for a year if you agree to stay away from all Whole Foods stores in Woodland Hills; if you can do that, your case will be dismissed immediately as if it never happened. And crucially, as for your current freedom, if you accept this deal to stay away from prosecution now and go through drug treatment, the prosecutor will agree to file a joint motion with me to quash this trial summons as to why maybe you shouldn’t be locked up next week for opioid use while on parole. The judge will be OK with it as long as you’re in treatment.” The mayor looked at his stomach as Sally spoke, showing no emotion. Sally paused to let him speak, but the silence grew worse until her discomfort became deafening and she was forced to continue. “So… I’m not saying you have to take this deal – I’m not. But ethically, I’m obligated to tell you about it. If you’re convicted in court of stealing that shopping cart, you’ll probably get at least 10 days in jail, courtesy of Judge Seiderbaum. That’s the kind of asshole she is; when she was a prosecutor, she never prosecuted anything beyond a misdemeanor, and she’s carried the ‘misdemeanors are serious, too’ inferiority complex ever since.”
The mayor scowled at Sally, so she stopped talking, although she planned to say a lot more—more about the jail time the mayor would serve if he didn’t take the deal and lost the case, and more about the jail time he would serve if he continued to produce positive drug tests. Instead, she took a different approach. She sighed heavily and heard herself say, “But you know, this case is bullshit. And to accept the plea deal, you would have to admit under oath that you intended—and did—steal the Whole Foods shopping cart that the police say you gave to that poor old woman, Mary Cincotta.” The mayor was smiling at Sally now. In a gravelly voice, he said, “Now you’re starting to make my day.” “Yeah? There’s other stuff that happened out there – out on Providence Street the other day – while Rusty and I were out there investigating near the scene of your arrest. It could send you over the edge and put you on trial, and me along with you.” The mayor raised his almost monochromatic eyebrow and waited for Sally – who had paused for effect – to continue. “You know, from what Rusty and I have learned from a very disturbed and awkward young man named Abacus Frinch, your case seems ripe for dismissal and selective prosecution. This ‘Abacus’ told me that his father ‘Buster,’ a high-ranking attorney on the city council, personally lobbied the district attorney after your arrest; he demanded that you be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, even though no one has ever been charged with stealing a Whole Foods shopping cart. I got a handwritten statement from Abacus in which he said his father had boasted to him that he had pressured the district attorney who was inclined to drop the case against you to attack you full force instead.” Like a magician, Sally pulled Abacus’ statement from the mayor’s file and presented it to him. “I’m rooting for you, boy,” the mayor said. “And I predict this story… this trial… it’s going to be good, it’s going to be bad, and it’s going to be a little ugly. But you know: I didn’t just start fighting now. I’ve been fighting most of my life.”
Stephen Cooper is a former public defender in Washington, DC who served as an assistant public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has written for numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and abroad. He is a full-time writer and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on “X”/Twitter @SteveCooperEsq
