Blood Defense - [2]
And thanks to the magicians in the makeup room and a shot that catches me from only the chest up, I look like I just stepped off the red carpet. You can’t see the safety pin that’s holding my skirt together, the scuffed pumps that’ve been resoled four times, or the old coffee stain on my blouse-which is still missing the last two buttons because I can’t face up to the chore of searching through the overstuffed bag of spare buttons crammed under my bathroom sink.
I pulled out my cell phone to do one last Twitter blast.
I’m on LIVE with Sheri! Talking the Samron case: 14 Yr Old who shot her brother-tune in! #HLN
I’ve been doing the cable news circuit for about six months now. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not a paying gig, so only the young and desperate do it-or the already successful types who have the time to do it for fun because they’re paying the young and hungry to do the real work. It’s a real time suck, and if it’d been up to me, I’d have said no gracias when one of Sheri’s producers first approached me. But Michelle elbowed her way in between us and said, “She’d love to!”
I’d been pissed. “I don’t have time for that crap, Michy.”
She’d hissed under her breath. “Are you nuts? This ‘crap’ is how you snag the kinds of cases that’ll finally put us in the black. You can’t afford not to.”
So far it’s netted me only a couple of DUI cases and a lot of requests to take on pro bono work. But it is kind of fun. A limo picks me up, hair-and-makeup wizards make me look fabulous, and I get to hammer other lawyers without having to worry about getting locked up by the judge. Where does any of that go wrong?
But since it still hasn’t proven to be a cash cow, I limit myself to one or two shows a week. A lot of the lawyers who do this cable circuit are hoping to get their own show. I have to admit, I think about it, too, every now and then. It’d be nice not to have to worry about whether I’ve got enough money to feed Beulah, my ancient Mercedes, who-in addition to having a rear passenger window that no longer rolls all the way up and an ugly dent in the right rear fender (which, coincidentally, showed up the day a client got convicted of murder and his girlfriend threatened to kill me)-is a gas hog.
And it’d be a real personal coup if I could wind up living as well as my mother-without having to slide underneath a rich old guy every night. But I love what I do; I believe in what I do. Sticking up for the little guy is why I went to law school.
So I keep doing it, hoping to score my big break. A shrink who was on one of the shows with me a few months ago said the real reason I did the cable circuit was because I needed to prove that I was “somebody.” Probably to my parents. I told the shrink I’d never met my father, and the only thing that would make my mother think I was “somebody” was if I married a rich “somebody.” And then I told him I thought he did these shows because he was a self-important ass waffle who probably got his degree from an online “university” in Belize. I hadn’t meant to pop off like that-not that it didn’t feel good to take down that self-important, patronizing jackass. But I figured that was the end of my brief stint as a talking head. Which just shows how green I was. The producers booked me for three more shows on the spot.
As I was finishing a tweet, Dane, the audio guy, spoke in my earpiece. “Could you give me a ten-count, Samantha?”
“Sure.” I counted to ten while I scrolled through my Twitter feed.
Go get ’em, Samantha! #onetoughlawyer
Love you, Samantha! #onehotlawyer
Your a cunt. #SamanthaBrinkmansawhore
I retweeted the first two and answered the last:
You’re a cunt. You are=you’re.
Dane was back in my ear. “Okay, Samantha, coming to you in ten. Heads up.”
The case we’d be banging around tonight was a simple one. Fourteen-year-old Linette Samron, who’d had enough of her bullying big brother, Ryan, “borrowed” her dad’s 9mm and plugged him three times. If it’d been you or me, we’d be dead. Ryan, however, was in “stable condition” and resting comfortably.
It’s the Law of Douche Bags. Douche bags walk away with enough holes in them to look like a colander, while good guys go down for the count with one random punch to the head.
Sheri-one of my favorite hosts; I love her tough, funny ’tude-came to me first. “Samantha Brinkman, you’re our expert defense attorney. Linette’s lawyers are claiming it was an accident. What do you think of their strategy?”
“I think Linette would be better off hiring Justin Bieber. Three shots? An accident? Look, she wins on popularity, not the law. She’s the David to his Goliath. They’ve got a boatload of evidence that Ryan beat her up in the past. She needs to put it all out there and go for self-defense-”
Barry jumped in. “Come on, Samantha. They can’t sell self-defense. She went and got the gun and then hunted him down-”
