Short story: The Mayor of Woodland Hills meets his public defender

The following short story is a work of fiction written by Stephen Cooper. It is the seventh part to his previous short stories published in the Advertiser: "The Mayor of Woodland Hills," "The Mayor of Woodland Hills is Awakened," "The Mayor of Woodland Hills is Arrested," "A View to the Arrest of the Mayor of Woodland Hills," "Another reason the Mayor of Woodland Hills was arrested," and "Anger boils over arrest of the Mayor of Woodland Hills."

“Look I don’t expect much,” The Mayor said, not looking at Sally, his public defender, who sat across from him with her yellow legal pad centered on her desk, pen primed to take notes.

Warily The Mayor eyed the poster of Bob Marley affixed to Sally’s wall, behind her desk, tracing suspiciously with his eyes Bob’s twirling, gravity-defying dreadlocks.“But I liked what you told the judge, how I could sue those cops for stuffing me, a disabled, decorated veteran, in a police car like that. That took some guts.”Sally smiled noncommittally at the Mayor, but didn’t say anything. She’d learned early in her career that after explaining “attorney-client privilege” and its limits, it was best to let a new client do most of the talking—to let them tell their story without interruption or direction. Sally was a client-centered public defender, and highly regarded in the city’s legal circles as one of the best attorneys in Superior Court.After 15 years as a public defender, the last 10 spent handling the most serious and difficult cases, usually murders, Sally — by happenstance — happened to be in the courthouse when the initial court hearing in the matter of People v. Gerald Freeman , aka “The Mayor of Woodland Hills," was called.As a “favor” to Superior Court Judge Helen Hartwell, Sally agreed to be appointed to the Mayor’s misdemeanor theft case—the theft of a Whole Foods shopping cart — a case far below her practice level. This was after a hushed conference at the bench where Sally’s colleague, a first-year public defender initially assigned the case was allowed to withdraw, him having borne the brunt of the Mayor’s post-arrest vitriol without enough experience not to take it personally; hence Sally was appointed to be The Mayor’s lawyer instead.“So Mr. Freeman —,” Sally began.“Call me ‘Mayor’,” gruffed The Mayor. “You heard’em in court less than an hour ago when they called the case; even them prosecutors know Gerald Freeman’s ‘The Mayor of Woodland Hills.’”

The Mayor said “Freeman” drawn out as “Free-man.” He smiled slyly at Sally. “As for you — you sure you’re a lawyer? I like that Bob Marley poster you got there. Real cute. You gonna pull out a bong from your closet when we go to trial or what?”

“No, Mr. Mayor, I keep my bongs at home — ‘smoke free’ office rules and such.”Sally delivered this retort so effortlessly, so quickly, The Mayor blinked, then smiled, then leaned back in his wheelchair, shook his head and laughed. He winked at Sally approvingly and said: “What self-respecting man of the people doesn’t like Bob Marley?”Now it was Sally’s turn to smile. “Well, Mr. Mayor,” Sally said coolly, “to quote my favorite Bob song, I hope I’m not ‘waiting in vain’ for you to tell me how you ‘earned’ that Whole Foods cart you were arrested for having — like you told the police earlier today.”“You know, I like you kid,” The Mayor said, “you’ve got spunk. I like how you told that pencil-neck D.A. today he had his zipper down on the record — right after he demanded I stay away from all Whole Foods shopping markets until my misdemeanor trial date. Even that fuss-bucket judge had to laugh at that, then looked away while Whippersnapper-Willy had to zip himself up.”Pointedly Sally clicked her retractable gel pen positioned at the top of her yellow legal pad. She smiled at the Mayor pleasantly.“Okay, okay,” said The Mayor. “Here’s the story. But I know you ain’t gonna believe it; you’ll have to find Enrique — hear it from him, hell he may still have the security video. I know he pulled the tape that night to show the cops, heck they played a segment on the local news — someone said it made a few national broadcasts. I wouldn’t know, haven’t watched the boob tube in years. But for two weeks solid I had to stay off the Boulevard what with all them newshounds trying to find me. ‘Bad-Ass Whole Foods Wheelchair Vigilante’ they dubbed me.” The Mayor shook his head incredulously, and Sally wrote one word on her legal pad: “Enrique?”“Yeah, Enrique,” said The Mayor, looking at Sally’s pad. “Enrique’s the manager of that new Whole Foods on Ventura, opened not long before Covid first hit — that futuristic-looking one with all them angles, and glass.”“So at the beginning of the pandemic, when that new Whole Foods’ employees were getting sick, one even dying, I made a deal with the store manager, Latino guy named Enrique: For free coffee and pastries from the in-store Starbucks counter, as well as whatever ‘tips’ I might get from customers, I agreed to position my chair by the entrance where I handed out and encouraged people to wear surgical masks before entering.”“So one night, about closing time, these two guys are about to walk into the store together and right away I know something’s wrong. They ignore me completely though my wheelchair is right next to the entrance’s automatic, sliding-glass door. And that’s when I noticed they both have on black military fatigues. In a blur one of them reaches in his pants and pulls out a handgun, a Glock, and the other was reaching too. And that’s when I did what I did.”“What — what’d you do?,” Sally mumbled.“Wheeled right over the foot of the guy reaching with my chair. And when that scumbag screamed, the other turned his gun right at me. But I was ready with a full, industrial-sized hand-sani bottle — it’d been lying on a table right beside me — and I squirted a thick stream of it straight in his face. He hollered like a hyena, started wiping his eyes something fierce when the other jackass, still hobbling, whimpering about his foot, grabbed the guy with the gun by the crook of his arm and said: ‘This ain’t happening. Let’s go!’”“So they flee running down Ventura a stretch before ducking down some alley. And Enrique, he comes over to me from where he was at the Customer Service area. He’s sweating bullets, looking like he’s seen a ghost, and says: ‘Holy cow! You’re a hero, man!’”

“And that’s the story about how I earned as many Whole Foods carts as I want — not to mention Starbucks coffee and pastries for life! Enrique, he did that little hair flip he does and then said, ‘it was the least they could do for me.’”

Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on "X"/Twitter @SteveCooperEsq

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Short story: The Mayor of Woodland Hills meets his public defender