One Dog Night (6 page)

Of course, in order to ask her the question, you’d have to be able to get her on the phone, which is almost impossible. If her office is her castle, then caller ID is her moat.

It’s not that Edna doesn’t like people; she has an extended list of family and friends that is miles long. When any of their numbers pop up, she happily takes the call. It’s that she likes work even less than I do, and any unfamiliar number that she answers is a potential assignment.

My cell phone number is one of the chosen few, and she answers on the fourth ring. “We’ve got a client,” I tell her, and I can feel her physically recoil through the phone.

“Really?”

“Really. His name is Noah Galloway.”

“Noah Galloway? The Noah Galloway on TV? The mass murderer?”

“The very one.”

For most people, cringing is a physical act. For Edna it is verbal; I can hear it in her voice. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I do.”

“Well … okay … but you know I have a vacation planned.”

Edna spends seventy percent of every day doing crossword puzzles, and she is an unmatched genius in that area. The other thirty percent she spends planning vacations with her family that they never take. When she adds up all the nieces, cousins, and the like, there are seventy-two people, and they won’t go away until all of them can make it. Suffice it to say that seventy-two schedules don’t ever match up that perfectly.

“Where are you going?”

“Either on a cruise to the Caribbean or Mount Rushmore,” she says.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

I ask Edna to call Dylan’s office and make an appointment for me to see him regarding Noah’s case. How quickly he sees me will be a sure indicator as to how strong he considers his position. Fast means he’s confident, slow means he doesn’t completely have his act together, and there are holes to be plugged.

Edna calls me back five minutes later, to tell me that Dylan is available now if I’m so inclined. I’m not at all inclined, but I suck it up and tell her to advise him that I’m on the way.

There is pretty much nothing I like about Dylan Campbell. For one thing, he’s at least six foot two, maybe two hundred pounds, and in outstanding shape. He probably gets up at three-thirty in the morning to do calisthenics and eat wheat germ.

He was a quarterback at Duke, which is why I bet against them every chance I get. Unfortunately, this childishness extends to my betting against their basketball team, not a very profitable thing to do.

He’s got one of those cleft-things in his chin, which I’ve never trusted. Even his teeth, which I would like to knock out of his mouth, are pure white and perfectly spaced.

To my knowledge, only two things really bother Dylan. One is that his ambition has been at least temporarily thwarted. He has always seen his job as prosecutor as a stepping stone for his political career, and even made noise about running for Congress last year. His party establishment chose a different candidate, and Dylan was said to be livid about it.

The other source of pain for Dylan is the fact that he has faced me in two major cases and lost both times. This not only damaged his reputation, but particularly galled him because he hates me. Most prosecutors hate me, but Dylan’s hatred rises above the others’.

The distressing topper to all of this is that Dylan is smart and tough. He comes in prepared and focused, not a good combination for us inhabitants of the defense table.

Dylan is of course all fake smiles when I arrive, and he comes out to the corridor to greet me. He shakes my hand with a powerful grip and says, “Andy, good to see you. It’s been too long … way too long.”

“Really? You think? I thought it felt just right.”

He laughs, as if I’m kidding, though he knows I’m not. I silently admonish myself; for Noah’s sake I need to be on my best behavior, since Dylan holds all the cards.

He brings me into his office, and he gets right to the point. “You’ve got a tough one here, Andy.”

“Not the way I see it.”

“Then you’re not looking too carefully. This guy is going down with a thud.”

“What have you got?” I’m going to see what he has in detail when I get the discovery documents; I’m just looking for a preview now.

“Twice as much as we need, including a confession.”

“He allowed himself to be interrogated?”

Dylan shakes his head. “No. But we’ve got someone he confessed to a few weeks after the crime.”

“Who might that be?” I ask, cringing.

“A friend of his at the time. Galloway told him chapter and verse how he did it. The chemicals he used, how he set it off, locked the doors, and who he was after.”

A key part of lawyering, both in and out of the courtroom, is to never look surprised. It’s even better never to actually be surprised, but if that’s impossible, then appearance will have to do. What Dylan has just said is stunning to me and makes little sense. How could Noah have remembered something in such detail then, but have no recollection of it now? Could it be a result of his drug-taking?

“When will I get discovery?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Day or so. We’re putting it together.”

“Can I get the documents relating to this witness now? Seems like it would be an important piece in deciding which direction to go with this.”

“No problem.” He picks up the phone and gives directions to his assistant to copy those particular documents right away.

All kinds of theories are going through my mind, but I put them on hold to finish this conversation. There is still information to be gathered, and impressions to be left.

“So what are you looking for on this?” I ask.

He smiles an annoying smile. “Justice.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Andy, twenty-six people died a horrible death. The guy who did it is never going to see the sun again. Life … no parole.”

It is exactly what I expected, but I don’t tell him that. I also don’t tell him that Noah would be fine with that outcome. There’s nothing for me to say until I see the witness statement.

Dylan’s assistant brings in a folder with the statement documents in it, and I thank him, make some noises about talking to my client about all this, and leave.

Your mother was wrong, Brett Fowler would tell you.

Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.

Lunch is where the action is. It’s where deals are brokered, alliances are forged, careers are made, lies are told, backs are stabbed, and lives are ruined.

And then it’s time to get the check.

Fowler was not someone who would be considered to be at the center of the political world. He wasn’t an elected representative; he never ran for office, introduced a bill, or voted on an amendment. He was an outlier, an appendage who contributed to the process, and certainly profited from it.

He was a political consultant.

Political consultants, especially in Washington, D.C., have gotten a bad name as a group. Not quite as bad as lobbyists, or lawyers, or politicians themselves, but pretty bad nonetheless.

The truth is there are few things one can be in Washington and still have a good name, since the city itself has become the subject of scorn. Politicians who’ve served in Washington for twenty years try to reinvent themselves as “outsiders,” and they go home to give speeches that decry “Washington politics.”

So the bad-mouthing that was done of political consultants didn’t bother Brett much. In fact, it didn’t bother him at all.

The trend in political consulting was toward large firms, but Brett had long ago decided he would never go that route. He believed in operating on his own, no restrictions. If was better for himself and for his clients. Especially for himself.

Of course, that was when political consulting was his main occupation, when helping people succeed was his stock-in-trade. That was before he became an executive in another operation, which also helped people, but which then owned and used them from that time forward.

Almost everybody, even the wealthy or powerful, reached a point in their lives when they needed or wanted something that they couldn’t get. Very often accomplishing that goal would be very embarrassing, very illegal, and nearly impossible. So Fowler’s “team” provided the money or the muscle necessary to make it happen.

And from that moment they owned that person, as surely as anyone can own anything.

It reminded Fowler of that line from
The Godfather,
which he considered the best movie ever made. Don Corleone had done a favor for a man, an undertaker, and he said to the grateful man, “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.”

That is how Fowler saw his own situation, with one difference.

That day always came.

Lunch that day was with Joseph Chesney, congressman from the Fourteenth District in Central Kansas, one of Brett’s second-tier clients. Chesney was mulling a run for the Senate the following year. At least that’s the story he was putting out in the press; the truth was he was doing far more than “mulling.” He had already made the decision to go full speed ahead.

It was not an easy call. Chesney’s district was a safe one, and he probably could have remained in Congress for many, many years to come. But in the class system that is the U.S. government, the Senate is on a much higher level than the House, and that’s where Chesney wanted to be.

The problem for Chesney was that the incumbent senator that he would have to take on in the general election was Ben Ryan. Ryan was finishing his second term, and if anything his star was on the rise. He won his last election five years ago with an unheard-of seventy-one percent of the vote, and polls showed him at least as popular now.

Chesney’s own private polls showed him getting swamped in a proposed matchup with Ryan, and most people would consider his entry into the race to be political suicide.

Which is why he hired Brett Fowler.

The purpose of the lunch was for Brett to provide a report on “campaign operations,” but instead Chesney had to endure an hour of conversation, consisting mostly of political gossip about what was happening in Washington. Mostly it was a recitation of who was up and who was down, and the two always evened out. Washington is a zero-sum city.

It wasn’t until Brett asked for and received the check that he addressed himself to the one thing that Chesney wanted to hear. “Your senator just got back from Amsterdam yesterday. Another example of his tireless efforts to help the people of Kansas.”

Chesney was immediately on alert. “And how did his trip go?”

“Apparently he had a wonderful time,” Brett said. “I didn’t talk to him directly, but I spoke to a friend of a friend of his.”

Chesney cast a wary glance at the other people in the restaurant, in the unlikely event that this apparently bland conversation was being overheard. Satisfied that what they were saying was private, he asked, “So it went well?”

Brett looked at Chesney, who thought he was in the process of cementing a bright future. He had no idea that he was just a backup, to be used only in case Plan A went very wrong. Which didn’t bode well for him, since a Plan A in this operation never went wrong.

Brett just smiled and raised his water glass. “It went fine, Senator.”

The Tara Foundation is how I want to spend my declining years.

Which is just as well, since my body started declining a while ago, and it’s not like it started from that high a peak.

When I don’t have any clients to take up my time, I spend much of my day at the foundation building, located in Haledon. But I never put in the effort that Willie Miller, and his wife, Sondra, do. It is their sole focus, and for them it’s a total commitment and a labor of love.

We’ve been doing it for five years, and in that time have placed close to three thousand dogs in homes. It would have been more, but Willie has rather rigorous criteria for what constitutes a home worthy of having one of our dogs. I’m strict about it, but Willie is over the top.

The operation costs us a lot of money, but that is not exactly a major problem. I am the undeserving beneficiary of a very large inheritance, plus a few enormous financial victories on behalf of clients. Willie is also very well off, since he was one of those clients, earning ten million in a wrongful-imprisonment lawsuit. It’s a lot of money, but not worth his spending seven years on death row for a murder he didn’t commit.

Outside factors have caused Willie’s time commitment to the foundation to waver lately. Being a national hero can be a time drain, and that is what Willie has been for the last four months.

It was part of a case that I was working on. Willie insisted on helping out, and I reluctantly gave him minor assignments, since Willie can be a bit of a loose cannon. Not only did he wind up catching the bad guys, but he heroically thwarted what would have been a devastating terrorist attack on a natural-gas tanker.

Willie’s resulting national celebrity was very much deserved, and he became the target of every interviewer in America. If he turned one down, I’m not at this point aware of it.

I was supposed to be here this morning to spend the day working and hanging out with the dogs, but my involvement with Noah and his case prevented it. I characteristically forgot to call Willie and tell him, and I know he will just as characteristically think nothing of it.

Sondra is in the reception area when I get there. “Sorry,” I say, “I got tied up with some work stuff.”

She smiles. “No problem. It’s been slow here today anyway.”

“Thanks, Sondra. Willie here?”

“In the back. He’s anxious to talk to you about something.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll let him tell you. But after he does, please talk him out of it.”

Willie is somewhat volatile, and more than somewhat impetuous, so this could be anything from wanting to remodel the foundation offices to enrolling in astronaut school. I’m not going to know until I know.

When I get into the back, which is where the dogs are, I find Willie in his normal position, rolling around on the ground, playing with six of them. I love dogs in a way that most people consider well north of eccentric, but Willie makes me look normal.