The Defense: A Novel (17 page)
My arms shook violently. Looking over the statue’s shoulder, I saw a wide alcove behind the Lady on the lower floor. I could go over the arms or try to slide underneath. Letting my feet find a firm hold, I then adjusted my grip to my left hand, ready to take the weight. Against all my natural instincts, I let my body swing out before sweeping my legs underneath the arms of the Lady. As soon as my feet hit the apex of the swing, I let go.
I landed on the alcove ledge on the eighteenth floor. A violent beating of wings and squawking welcomed me, and I grabbed the statue again and pulled my face close to the granite as the city crows protested at my invasion of their resting place.
Adrenaline surges usually don’t bother me. I’m trained to use them. When you stand up in a room in front of hundreds of people and all eyes are upon you, you feel a huge adrenaline surge. You’re not human if you don’t. Everything slows. A second’s pause feels like a three-minute nightmare when the juice is flowing through your system. That’s what it’s supposed to do. A slow-motion moment that allows you time to fight or flee. It quickens your reactions and completely distorts your sense of time and space. Every sense stands on high alert, and every reaction becomes sharpened to a razor’s edge.
I forced my system down a few gears. Let my engine cool and looked up at the path I’d taken to the statue. The ledge I’d leaped from was almost gone. The brick had all but disintegrated. I checked the street. There was nobody lying on the ground, looking back at me. The rubble had hit the pavement. No one got hurt. Thankfully, I was in New York and real New Yorkers never look up. I leaned against the cold brick and looked up at the back of the Lady. She was part of the game. Lawyers are often asked how they can represent someone they know to be guilty. I’d been asked that question many times, and I’d always given the same answer—we don’t. In reality, we operated just like the US military operated for years in relation to gay personnel—don’t ask, don’t tell. I never represented anyone I knew to be guilty because I never asked any of my clients if they were guilty. I never asked because there was always the terrible possibility that they might just tell you the truth. The truth has no place in a courtroom. The only thing that matters is what the prosecution can prove. If I met a client facing criminal charges, I told them what the cops or the prosecution thought they could prove and asked them what they thought about that. This leads them into their own little performance. If they wanted to say the cops were right, they fessed up. If they wanted to dance, they told me they were innocent. What they all understood was that if they told me they were guilty but that they wanted to fight the case anyway, I could no longer represent them. That was the game.
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Eleven months ago, I found out that playing the game costs lives, and I’d decided that I never wanted to play the game again.
My heartbeat came back under control, and I looked at the route I was about to take: another ledge—just as narrow, just as treacherous.
The sounds of the city still pulled at me, and just at that moment I heard something familiar. I checked the street below and saw a few cars moving swiftly along. I didn’t see many people. I moved closer to the exposed ledge and tested it with a tentative foot, putting more and more weight on it until I was reasonably sure it was safe. I stepped out and heard it again—a drumbeat, a voice; I knew both as well as I knew my own name. The band were the Rolling Stones; the song was “Satisfaction.” It was distant and muted but unmistakable.
I knew the song, I knew the band, and I knew the record owner. The music gave me the final boost I desperately needed, and holding to the side of the building, I moved out and kept moving. Keith Richards’s guitar sounded better and better the farther I got out. It didn’t take me long to see a welcoming glow from a window maybe five feet away.
My pace quickened.
Reaching for the window, I hunkered down again and tried to pry it open. Locked. The scene inside the room looked almost cozy. A record player in the corner belted out my siren. A lamp on the desk sent a warm pillar of light through a neighboring whiskey bottle, which in turn threw bright golden sprites onto the floorboards. An elderly black man wearing a red pullover sat at a desk, drunk or asleep or both, his chin resting on his chest. His white hair stood to attention, as if straining to catch the bass lines from the music before transferring their magic directly into his brain.
I knocked on the window.
Nothing.
I knocked again, loudly this time.
He was definitely drunk and asleep.
I knocked a third time. The window almost fell in, and His Honor, Superior Judge Harry Ford, woke up, looked around the room nervously for a second, then put his head back down for another snooze. I hit the window yet again, and this time he could orient the direction of sound. He looked straight at me, his mouth open, and I heard a muffled scream before his legs lifted and he tumbled backward off his chair, ass over tit. He got up in a rage, his face contorted in fury. He must have thought I was on a drunken escapade. The window opened.
“I have a damn good mind to call the cops or push you off this goddamn building, you crazy son of a bitch.”
My mood changed because I had to tell him. My amusement at his drunken shenanigans passed, and I felt the weight of my predicament and the plastic explosive on my back.
“Harry, I’m in trouble. Big trouble. They’ve got Amy.”
“Who’s got Amy?”
“The Russian mob.”
I pulled the window shut to keep out the freezing wind. Harry knocked the needle on the record player, abruptly cutting off Mick in full flow. Turning from the window to look at Harry, I still felt jacked up on adrenaline. His anger seemed to be subsiding into a thoughtful stare.
“I need a drink,” we said simultaneously.
He poured three fingers into a dirty glass and held it out to me. It was my glass. It hadn’t been used since the last time I was here, the night before I went into rehab. The liquor felt warm and soothing. I told myself that I needed it. That I wasn’t starting back down that road, that this was just a fix to calm my system. Harry found his own glass under his chair. He poured a big one and sipped at it with both hands, then righted his old swivel chair and sat down with a practiced sigh.
“What the hell’s going on, Eddie?”
Another sip of bourbon and I laid it all out. Everything that had happened that day from the moment Arturas put a gun to my back in the bathroom of Ted’s Diner.
Harry just listened. He didn’t interrupt; he knew better. Get the full story out, then pick at it later.
When I finished, he looked at me like I was an idiot.
“What in God’s name are you doing here? Call the cops.”
He picked up the phone and pressed nine for an outside line. I hung up his call.
“I can’t go to the cops. These guys have a fed on their payroll, and that means they sure as hell have a few cops, too. If I call, I can’t be sure that I won’t get one of their men.”
“But I know cops—I’ll call Phil Jefferson.”
“This is my daughter’s life we’re talking about. I’m not gambling it on the honesty of a cop. And I don’t care who he knows—not even you. The system doesn’t work; you know that. And I have no proof. I’m the one holding the bomb; even if I found an honest cop, they’d probably arrest me instead of the Russians. Even if the cops or the FBI believed me, which I doubt, it only takes a second for Volchek to make a call and my daughter is dead. One thing I’ve learned today: I shouldn’t ignore my instincts. My gut tells me that I have to handle this my way—at least for now.”
Harry put the phone down. His eyes darted around the room, and I saw the skin on his face pull tight; his chest rose and fell quickly.
“Is Amy okay?”
“They told her that they were a security team, working for me, that I got sent a death threat and that I’m being cautious. I think she bought that initially. When I talked to her, I was pretty sure that she didn’t believe that story anymore. She knows, Harry. She knows she’s been kidnapped. I have to get her out.”
Harry drained his glass and winced with the hit. The wooden legs of his old swivel chair creaked as he reached for the bottle.
“What about Christine?” said Harry.
“She thinks Amy is in Long Island on a three-day field trip. As far as I know, she is oblivious to all of this. But you know Christine. I don’t want her melting down and calling the cops. So I’m not going to tell her anything.”
“You
have
to call the police.”
“If I call the cops, they’ll kill Amy. I told you I can’t go to the police; they’ve bought a fed. If they can do that, they can buy an entire precinct.”
“How do you know they’ve got a fed on their payroll?”
“I told you I found a card in one of their wallets. I lifted a wallet from one of them in the limousine. It’s an FBI card. It looks genuine. There’s a phone number on the back.”
“You stole a wallet?”
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised. You know where I’m from.”
“What I’m wondering is if you ever left.”
He bowed his head and sighed. He was probably right; I hadn’t left my old self behind. I was still on a con, but instead of insurance companies, I’d been hustling juries.
I took another drink and stretched my neck and back. The ledge maneuvers had finally put my cervical spine into a chronic spasm. The alcohol would help, but just for now.
“Is there a name on the card?”
“No.”
“Could be the Russian flipped, too. Maybe he’s got the card to call the FBI.”
“No. This guy hasn’t been flipped. He looks like one of the meanest sons of bitches I ever saw. Picked me up like a doll. No. Doesn’t make sense for him to have the card if he’s a snitch. Not unless he’s the stupidest informant on the planet, who carries around his handlers’ contact number on an FBI business card. Somehow I don’t think so. He made no attempt to hide it. The number on the card is for an employee. That employee is probably in the FBI. I can’t see another reason for a number to be on the card, but I’m open to suggestions.”
He had none.
“I need you take a look at the device, see if you can disarm it.”
“I haven’t done anything like that in a long time, Eddie,” he said. As he spoke, I thought I could see a shadow move across his features, but maybe it was just his movement in the half-light. Harry had been among the first African Americans in Vietnam to reach the rank of captain. He’d led a team of tunnel rats, guys who fought the VC underground, in the dark. He did three tours, never talked about his experiences, and had a bunch of medals that he never showed anyone. That was Harry.
I slipped off the jacket, reversed it, set it on Harry’s desk, and opened the seam. My knowledge of explosives was zero.
Harry approached the device warily, his hands on his hips. Then he bent over. For a moment I thought he was taking a closer look, but then I noticed he was sniffing the thing.
“That’s C4. Two blasting caps dug in and a complete circuit rig,” he said.
“You can tell all that from the smell?”
“Don’t be stupid, I can tell it’s C4 by the smell. Take a whiff.”
There was an odor from the plastic explosives, but at first I couldn’t quite discern what it reminded me of.
“Gasoline?” I asked.
“Close. Motor oil. C4 is a composition explosive made up of lots of different chemicals and compounds. For some reason, they cut it with motor oil. That’s why it came in handy in Vietnam. We carried a lot of it because we had to block up the VC tunnels. But we mostly used C4 for cooking our rations.”
“Cooking?”
“Yeah. Gave off a stink, but it burned real good in the rain. Even having that stink in your nose was better than eating cold rations. See, you need a small explosive charge for this sucker to go off. You can burn it, or even hammer it, but without some kind of primary explosion to set it off, it’s as safe as Play-Doh. These cylinders, the ones that look like little pens, they’re blasting caps. But there is more circuitry involved here. I couldn’t even begin to tamper with it in case it’s booby-trapped. You said you lifted the remote detonator?”
“Yeah.” I took it from my pocket and laid it on Harry’s chair.
“Easiest thing to do would be to take the battery out of the detonator. I’ve got a screwdriver somewhere…” And off he went.
Harry spent a minute or two riffling in cardboard boxes and searching a bookcase in the corner that held more tools, shot glasses, and whiskey bottles than law books. He came back with a screwdriver set. The remote detonator looked like an ordinary remote control that operated a garage door or vehicle central locking. It was about two inches long, an inch wide, and half an inch deep. There were two buttons on one side. On the reverse, there were three countersunk screws to hold the two halves of the remote together. I selected the smallest flathead screwdriver on the set, removed it from its sheath, and tried to fit it into the screwhead on the detonator. It didn’t fit. The head was too big.
Harry began opening and closing drawers, banging cupboard doors, and muttering. After a few minutes, he came back with a box cutter. The tip of the blade just fitted the screwhead and no more. I had to be careful with the thin blade; if it snapped, I was done.
I held the remote in my left hand, careful not to touch any of the buttons, and began, slowly and carefully, to loosen the first screw. My eyes were having difficulty shifting from the darkness of the room to the intense brightness from the desk lamp. Harry leaned over my shoulder. I could feel his impatient scrutiny.
The room grew colder despite the warm glow from the lamp and heater. Harry turned up the heat and helped himself to a whiskey. He poured me another. My head began to spin from too much alcohol and no food.
I tipped the first screw into my palm and carefully placed it on the desk.
Harry bent over and began rubbing his head—running alternate hands from the back of his neck to his white dome of unruly hair. We’d been friends long enough for me to know his little tells. When he was worried or he was thinking through a problem, he rubbed his head. A surprising number of people do the same. It’s as if they’re trying to coax the thought out physically.