The Victim (12 page)

“
But he disagreed,” Mandy said.

Daniella took another breath and let it out. Her gaze turned to stone, fixated on some arbitrary spot on the floor. Anton knew that look. He’d seen it in the eyes of the countless victims of violent crime he’d dealt with since his days as a prosecutor. This was the part in the story where things got bad.

“
I unlock the door, walk into my apartment, and go to close it. But I can’t because his foot’s in the doorway. I push against the door trying to shove him away but he’s a lot bigger than me and he wasn’t moving. So I shut the door hard on his foot thinking he’ll pull it back but he just lets out like a growl. It was this awful noise. He…charges into the door, knocks me back. I almost fall.”

She sniffled and wiped her eyes with her fingers, leaving mascara streaks on her face. “He barges in and shuts the door. He takes…he takes off his belt and makes a loop with it. He wraps the thing around my neck and yanks it so hard I fall to my knees. He tugs it like a leash, practically dragging me across the kitchen floor.” Tears ran down her cheeks. Anton reached into his desk drawer and handed her a packet of tissues. “Thank you.” She dabbed at her eyes. “He was saying I was an unappreciative bitch and that I had rented this apartment with money he had given me, that I was nothing without him. He said he’d rather see me dead than living on my own without him. He wasn’t himself; you could see it in his eyes. I really thought he was gonna kill me. I couldn’t breathe.”

“
Had he ever done anything like this before?”

“
No. We’ve fought, don’t get me wrong, but it’s never been physical. Emotionally abusive, yeah. But he’s never put his hands on me before.”

“
How did you get him to stop?”

She smirked. “I was on the floor and I made a fist and thrust it up into his groin.”

Anton’s knees instinctively tightened. “That’ll do it.”

“
I slipped the belt off my neck and ran into the bedroom and locked the door. Called 911 from my landline.”

“
What was he doing while you were calling the police?” Anton asked.

“
He was out in the kitchen or living room. I could hear him moving around.”

“
He didn’t leave?”

“
I don’t think he knew I was calling the cops.”

Anton knew that even if Bryan wanted to leave, he probably wouldn’t have had the chance. A call about a domestic burglary of that magnitude from a high-end building like the Templeton would not only have resulted in an immediate response from the police but also the building’s own security staff.

“
Who arrived first?”

“
Security.” Anton nodded at the expected answer. No doubt police dispatch would have contacted the front desk while units were en route since they would be in a better position to provide immediate assistance. “Police arrived a minute or two after.”

Anton looked at the inmate profile picture. He turned the monitor so that Daniella could see it. “The police did that to his face?”

“
Yeah, they did. I had come out of the bedroom at this point. Bryan was on the floor thrashing and kicking. Two security guards and a cop were trying to hold him down. He got up and the cop took him down. Pretty hard. He hit his face on the floor and cut his head.”

“
Cops call that maneuver ‘redirecting a subject to the ground,’”Anton added, quietly laughing. He typed a few more notes and decided that he had asked her just enough to get a solid overview of what had occurred. “Daniella…do you want to prosecute your husband?”

That was the crucial question in any DV case. More often than not, the victims did not want to proceed. In most DV cases, the victim’s unwillingness to cooperate with the police and prosecutors was enough to secure a dismissal of the charges.

She sighed. “Yes and no. I don’t want him to go to prison or anything but I don’t want him to think he can get away with doing that to me.”

“
Well, the problem with that is for a charge of burglary with an assault or battery, Bryan’s looking at a level eight primary offense under the Florida Criminal Punishment Code. With the other two charges as secondary offenses, I’m guessing Bryan scores out to five years in prison at the bottom of his sentencing guidelines, assuming he has no priors. Am I correct?” She nodded yes. “If you’re onboard with prosecuting, which is completely your decision, you realize that the prosecutor won’t give him probation with anger management classes and call it a day just because that’s your desire.”

Mandy nodded along. Another reason why he was present was so that Daniella couldn’t say that Anton had pressured her into dropping the charges.

“
Do I have to decide right now?”

“
No, you don’t. If you should decide that you don’t want to press charges I can have you sign what’s known as an affidavit of non-prosecution. All it says is that you no longer wish to cooperate in the prosecution of your husband. The affidavit makes it clear that you haven’t lied or made any false statements during the investigation.”

“
Will I get in trouble?”

“
Technically the State can pursue legal avenues in an effort to compel your cooperation. But it’s my experience that in these situations where the injury is relatively minor and there’s no prior history of violence between the parties, the State doesn’t exhaust its resources on a case like this. If there’s no independent evidence supporting the charge, an affidavit of non-prosecution would likely lead to the case being dropped.”

“
Let me think about it.”

Anton accepted that answer, not willing to press the issue. “If I can ask, how did you find me?”

Anton expected her to say that she had found him online.

“
I saw you on TV this afternoon. I was home, trying to clear my mind of everything that happened, so I was watching daytime TV. It always makes me so depressed watching those stupid commercials they show. You know what I mean?”

Anton laughed, recalling all the times he had ever stayed home sick. As if the marketing people who crafted those commercials were targeting the chronically unemployed. Ads for methods for extracting quick cash out of long-term settlements and online trade school degrees.

“
You saw the news?”

“
Yup, at twelve. I didn’t know you were the lawyer representing that guy who dropped a brick on that cop’s head. They showed a clip of you in court and you seemed so confident. You look like you really fight hard for your clients. That you actually care. So many lawyers in this town just seem to cut right to the chase and want to talk about money. You’ve really impressed me. I’d like to hire you to represent Bryan. As long as there’s no conflict.”

“
There’s no conflict as long as you understand that I will be representing Bryan. Not you. The attorney-client privilege extends to him and only to him. Just because you pay for the representation doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to know anything other than what’s public record. Unless Bryan okays it, I can’t tell you anything else. You’re a state witness, and while I hope that we can come to terms on a resolution at some point in the near future, you have to understand that if you sign your name on a check made payable to my office, that’s the extent of our relationship. I don’t mean to sound callous, but I have to be crystal clear. I’m not your lawyer. I’m Bryan’s, provided he okays it once I go to the jail to see him.”

Daniella nodded. “I understand completely. I don’t hate the guy and I don’t want him to go to jail, but I’m not ready to forgive and forget. I don’t want him going through this without a good lawyer. And I know good lawyers cost money. How much is your fee?”

Anton drew a breath, anticipating if his quote would either be acceptable or would cause her to get up and shop for someone cheaper.

“
My fee is thirty thousand dollars. That’s all paid upfront. My investigator will need an additional ten thousand for his services.” Mandy bit his bottom lip, suppressing a smile. “Plus twenty-five hundred that I’ll hold in my trust account for litigation and investigative expenses. We may need more later on but we can discuss it if and when the time comes. The fee is non-refundable, even if we go to trial and lose. I don’t handle appeals so that’s not included in the agreement. The representation will commence as soon as Bryan signs the agreement. The representation will terminate upon the conclusion of the case, be it in twenty-one days if the state opts not to file or in a year after a plea or verdict.”

She didn’t bolt out the door.

Daniella slipped her hand into her purse and retrieved a checkbook. “Whom do I make the checks out to?”

***

It was the single largest fee Anton had ever received, but he kept his game face on. Lips tight and solemn, his eyes calm and narrowed, as if $30,000 checks made payable to The Law Office of Anton L. Mackey, P.A. were a weekly occurrence. After she left he would close his office door and do a celebratory dance.

The sun was slipping into the early evening and the lights of Brickell shone through the office window. Sounds of rush-hour traffic echoed from the street twenty-four stories below.

Daniella had signed her name on the Agreement under payer but the signature that mattered still had to be obtained. Anton shot off a quick text to Gina letting her know that he would be home late.

Anton walked Daniella through the lobby and out to the elevator bank.

“
If it’s not too much trouble, could you walk me to my car?” she asked, gazing at her distorted reflection in the bronze elevator doors. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. “It’s just late and I had to park a few blocks away.”

For $30,000 Anton would have done her laundry had she asked. He stepped into the elevator and they rode down in silence. They walked out into the lobby, past the Morton’s on the first floor. Anton could smell the peppery aroma of steaks in the broiler. The Heat game must have been playing on the TVs in the bar. He could hear the sloppy laughter of the after-work crowd.

They stepped out onto Brickell. The cold was bitter, possibly somewhere in the fifties. Men and women walked along the sidewalk bundled up in heavy coats and scarves.

Daniella checked the temperature on her smart phone. “Fifty-seven degrees.”

Anton’s breath turned to steam. He blew hot breath into his hands and rubbed them together. “Jesus it’s cold.”

“
Cold snap will come and go. It’ll be eighty-three and sunny this time next week.”

“
I’m not a cold weather guy. I’ve always lived in warm climates.”

“
Where are you from originally?”

“
Southern California.”

She turned mid-stride. “How the hell does a Southern California boy end up in Miami?”

He shrugged. “How does anyone end up in Miami?”

“
You go to law school out here or something?”

“
Yeah. I went to UM.”

They walked a few paces in silence before she asked, “Who was the guy in all of those sketches on the wall in your lobby? There was a guy with gray hair in all of them. Nice suits, or at least as nice as you can make a suit look with colored pencil.”

“
That’s Jack Savarese. I share office space with him.”

“
He looks important.”

“
He is.”

“
That’s me.” She pointed to a black Mercedes-Benz ML 350 parked at the curb. She clicked her key fob and the parking lights flashed. “How old are you, Anton? I can call you Anton, right?”

“
Of course you can. I’m thirty-two.”

“
Huh. Bryan’s thirty. You’d think I’d want to hire a lawyer who looks like that guy in those pictures on your wall, but I like young professionals. More passion. A lot of those old guys, they’ve burned out. They don’t have the fight in them.”

“
Jack’s one of the last of his generation of lawyers. Most of his defense colleagues from the seventies and eighties have either retired or died off. But Jack’s still at the top of his game.”

“
You really admire this guy, don’t you.”