REAL CRIME STORIES DON'T MAKE HEADLINES POOR, WEAK, AND OFTEN STUPID CLIENTS WON'T BE SENT FLOWERS BY NETWORKS.

Byline: Joseph Honig Local View

WITH Southern California's legal season in high gear - a remarkable athlete's troubles, the Robert Blake case and L.A. lawyers starring in the Laci Peterson drama - what a relief to get a call from my friend Martin, attorney to noncelebrities.

After all, who couldn't use a break from so much tabloid justice?

And Martin is a lawyer who defends burglars and shoplifters and fourth- rate gunsels, the real L.A. Law's awful underside.

``I can't make our dinner,'' Martin told me. ``I have to go down to the jail. One of my guys got locked up. He wants me to get his boots.

``They are good boots and he paid a lot of money for them. He is afraid they will be stolen before he gets out.''

In Martin's world - an ``L.A. Law'' of poor, weak, and often stupid clients - Katie Couric and Larry King don't send flowers and limos in exchange for interviews.

In Martin's world, there are no award-winning defendants.

In Martin's world, you don't find advocates named Cochran or Geragos or Weitzman. Maybe they started in Martin's world. But they moved on.

And Martin stayed.

Stayed in a job where poor and helpless dopes retain him to figure out how they might suffer the least possible damage for being allegedly crooked.

He thinks it's honorable work; everyone's entitled to a defense. Especially the accused drug dealers, swindlers and thieves who paid for his home.

Who helped him educate children and take vacations and hold his head up high. As a professional man.

Still, if you are accustomed to televised justice, if you know what you know because of O.J. Simpson, you would not recognize Martin's world.

It is raw and pitiful and occasionally crazy. So many clients, even those behind bars, never make arraignments or preliminary hearings. They lose themselves in far-off corners of Men's Central Jail. Or board the wrong inmate bus. On purpose.

There are middle-of-the night phone calls and meetings in places you would not go without bodyguards. There are empty promises and unpaid bills. There are a lot of terribly troubled souls who probably did what prosecutors say they did but never told Martin the whole truth. They couldn't. You can't tell your lawyer you're guilty and expect a defense.

And because he is smart and charming and a very able lawyer, a good number of Martin's clients do not go to prison. For cops can screw up and jurors, overwhelmingly, take their jobs seriously. Once in a while, identifications falter. Once in a while, witnesses can't remember because they are drunk or high or on glide paths toward other altered states.

Not many Perry Mason moments when Martin's in court.

Have felons gone free? Even though a dozen citizens said they weren't guilty? Who knows?

Martin did his job, he reflected. No one, he mused, ever had much good to say about defense lawyers.

Until they needed one.

Until their sons or grandsons got jammed up because they knew bad people or held onto packages for friends.

Until they said something or did something utterly out of character.

Until they got caught.

What Martin doesn't want to think about - but what he suspects to be true - is his inadvertent responsibility for pocket-size crime waves. All over the city.

For when you tell a thief he must return with a few thousand dollars, you may be sending him out to steal more stereos or televisions or coin collections. Burglars, as a rule, are not good savers.

Days later, when they return with sacks of crumpled bills, it is even money some fur coats are missing. Somewhere.

But Martin needs funds upfront. Convicted felons don't, as a rule, send checks from San Quentin.

Over the years, Martin has amassed quite a collection. Of pickpockets. Of breaking-and-entering artists. Of small-time grifters whose penny-ante stories would never inspire movies-of-the-week. There was the world-class booster who made Winona Ryder look like a Kmart shopper. She carried gift packages with spring-loaded hinges. Dressed to the nines, she cruised department stores, filling orders for friends who abhorred paying retail. This was not some sickness. It was her job.

There was the 300-pound Hawaiian financial consultant. Sydney Greenstreet with jade rings and pendants. I met him at a downtown apartment. He showed me Japanese bearer bonds said to be worth $500 million or so. The U.S. Attorney's Office disagreed. The defendant took his portfolio to a federal lockup near El Paso.

There was the whippet-thin cocaine dealer who wanted out of state prison. In the worst way. Wanted out so badly he paid $10,000 for what everyone said was a doomed appeal. What he really wanted was to hit the streets, organizing friends and family to smuggle drugs back inside. He knew a market when he saw one.

And then, my favorite, the Pasadena burglar who sent himself away. When all he had to do was be a little smarter than he'd ever been in his life. For a minute.

He was on the stand denying to anyone and everyone he'd ever set foot in a looted home. A district attorney asked about a cut on his hand, a cut noted by cops in a police report.

``So how did you cut your hand,'' the burglar was asked.

``I cut it in the house," he said breezily.

Later, over drinks, Martin told me about his day in court. About the burglar and the admission and how the guy would probably spend years in the big house.

``His problem,'' said Martin, ``is that other than being a thief, he is basically honest.

``He just couldn't help it.''