The Client

V - Money

Eddie Hawkins was my biggest fan. I'd represented him several years prior on an indictment for Armed Robbery in the Hernando County Circuit Court. The indictment alleged that early one Sunday morning, Eddie had robbed an Exxon cashier at gunpoint while his accomplice, Terrence Bird, stood outside as the lookout. The cashier, a man of middle-eastern descent who'd just been hired the day before the incident, was unable to identify either of the accused in a photo lineup. The only other evidence was surveillance video, which showed the offender's face, shrouded in a dark hoodie, turn toward the camera for a couple of seconds. It was entirely too grainy to identify the gunman.

The State wanted Eddie badly; he'd been indicted as a habitual offender, having served time on two previous felonies, and was looking at a mandatory life sentence in prison if convicted. The police investigators questioned him several times, even after he requested an attorney, but couldn't crack him. When they finally realized he wasn't going to cooperate, they turned their attention to Terrence.

Bird, as they called him on the street, was a first-time offender. The Coles Creek Police Department knew Terrence would likely agree to "flip" on Eddie in return for a dismissal of his charges, but before they were able to offer him the deal, he bonded out. His bail was only ten thousand dollars, a paltry amount for a serious felony. I was pretty sure Terrence's father, a pastor in town, had called in a favor with the city court judge.

Eddie didn't take it that way. He was back on the street within a week of his arrest, having put up the entire amount of his own substantial bail in cash. The next week, before the CCPD could track him down, Terrence was killed one street over from Eddie's neighborhood. The investigative report said he'd been robbed during a drug deal; the word on the street was Terrence had *already* flipped on Eddie—if not, why the low bail, the thinking went—and Eddie had killed him as payback. Eddie was never charged.

With Terrence dead, the police changed tactics. The State's story immediately changed; Paul Maxwell now expected one of the investigators to testify that he could identify Eddie on the video.

At the pre-trial hearing a week before the trial, I moved to exclude the investigator's testimony based on case law precedent which clearly held that testimony from a lay witness identifying an offender based on their review of a video is only admissible when the witness knows the offender personally and has seen them in real life situations. Basically, only family and close friends can identify offenders from a video. The Judge agreed and ruled the investigator's testimony inadmissible. Without Terrance's testimony or the video identification, the State had no choice but to dismiss the case against Eddie. He'd gone from a possible life sentence to freedom, just like that.

A short time later, I found out I had earned a new nickname: "The Truth".

I was sitting in the garage with my vehicle idling when I dialed Eddie's number. Instead of a normal dial tone, I heard Chris Tucker's famous line from the movie Friday: I know you don't smoke weed. I know this. But I'm gonna get you high today. He still hadn't changed it, despite my insistence. The first time I'd heard the line, I'd asked him what a potential employer would think. "Jack, I ain't worried about no employer," he'd said. "Only the dope fiends. When they call an hear that, they know they got the right number."

Eddie sold weed and every lowlife in Coles Creek between the ages of fifteen and thirty knew it. Unlike some of the other clients I'd represented over the years who robbed and hurt simply because they could, Eddie did it solely for the money. He liked to "stack paper", as he put it. Who was I to say his ringtone shouldn't be an advertisement for his services?

Smokey's line had already gotten annoying by the time Eddie picked up. I could hear the bass from the club thumping in the background. We shouted back and forth for a moment before he finally went outside. I told him we needed to talk—immediately—and he agreed to meet me at the usual spot.