False Witness (27 page)

It was news to Isaiah as well, and he made another note:
Be more thorough on client interviews.

“You know how we found out that your client has a copy?” Parcelli asked.

“Why don't you tell me,” Isaiah said as if he had a choice.

“Because Mr. Hoffman recently sent a message through a mob hit man named Johnny Chin, presently serving a life term in California, that Hoffman was ready to sell the algorithm to the mob.” Parcelli waited a beat for that piece of information to sink in. “Since he's the one who contacted the mob first, it seems a little strange for him to blame his present troubles on the marshals' office.” Parcelli raised an eyebrow, punctuating that last point.

Isaiah hoped his own expression wasn't revealing how much this information caught him off guard. And shocked him. “What's the nature of this algorithm?” he asked.

“You might want to ask your clients that question,” Agent Parcelli suggested. “My only point is this: your clients brought this little dilemma on themselves. Until they're ready to tell us everything they know—including giving us a copy of the algorithm—they shouldn't expect any further protection from the federal government.”

This suddenly felt like a movie scene—intrigue, a double cross, a secret algorithm. But in the movies, the debonair defense lawyer always had a clever comeback.

“I'll talk to them about it,” Isaiah said, feeling like the clueless law student he was.

45

Jamie arrived at the law school ten minutes early for her six thirty meeting with Isaiah. She had reserved one of the small study rooms in the library for privacy. She waited for Isaiah in the marble-floored main lobby of the stately redbrick building that served as the home for Southeastern Law School.

For three days now, Jamie's life had been a living hell. She carried a loaded Kimber in her backpack, checked her rearview mirror constantly, called Chris several times a day to check on Snowball, double-checked locks before going to sleep, and then hardly slept at all. She was not the nervous type. But she had been attacked. And the cops weren't making much progress. Even now, she scanned the law school lobby for any signs of trouble.

Thick Persian rugs were scattered around the lobby with overstuffed leather furniture placed in a square on each one. Some first-year study sessions occupied three of the groupings, so Jamie took a seat on the fourth. She removed her federal tax book from her backpack and opened it to Wednesday's assignment. Reading tax cases was like driving through Atlanta during rush hour—boring, frustrating, and an incubator for new curse words.

She couldn't help overhearing the obnoxious study group a few feet away, first-years trying to impress each other with their knowledge of tort law, as if being the top dog in a study session would somehow guarantee success on the exam. Jamie had given up on study groups after her first semester and watched her grades quickly improve. Other students swore by them.

“Not if the plaintiff had the last clear chance to avoid the injury,” one particularly loud student said. “He can't recover a dime if he was the one who had the last clear chance but didn't stop in time.”

“I don't think that's right,” a softer voice said. “I think it only applies to defendants.”

“You're wrong—check the case,” the first student bellowed. She said it with such confidence and acidity that her friend shrank back into the couch. “Why do you think they call it ‘last clear chance'? It applies to whichever person had the last chance to avoid the accident.”

Jamie knew it was none of her business, but she had this thing about justice and getting stuff right. She ambled over as the group moved on to the next point. “Actually,” she said, standing just behind one of the chairs, “last clear chance only applies to defendants. It's a doctrine used to take the sting out of contributory negligence.”

The first-years fell quiet as Jamie continued. “In some states, if the defendant is negligent but the plaintiff is also contributorily negligent, even in the slightest degree, the plaintiff's negligence completely bars her from recovering anything. To make that doctrine a little less harsh, the law says that the plaintiff might still be able to recover if the defendant had the last clear chance to avoid the accident.”

“Thanks,” said the soft-spoken student whom Jamie had bailed out.

“Yeah. That helps a lot,” the other said. “Though Sullivan said it wasn't really used that much. I doubt it will be on the test.”

Her good deed complete, Jamie slipped back to her own Persian rug and returned to the drudgeries of tax law. But she couldn't keep her mind on the intricacies of the Internal Revenue Code. Instead, she thought about her gun.

Even though she carried it around with the safety on, she worried about it constantly. What if it discharged accidentally? What if she thought somebody was going to assault her and shot in self-defense, only to find out later it was a mistake? What if she tried to shoot an assailant and ended up hitting a friend?

The talk of last clear chance gave her an idea.

Maybe she should remove the cartridge from the chamber. According to Jacobsen, her gun held seven additional rounds in the attached magazine. It was a single-action trigger, and Jamie already knew she could pull it quickly. An empty chamber might be an additional fail-safe, and it might give her a chance to bluff somebody by actually pulling the trigger once
before
the bullets started flying. It would give her target a last clear chance to stop. And how likely was it that she would end up in a situation where she could squeeze off only one shot?

She decided that she would empty the chamber later. She checked her watch: 6:45. She called Isaiah's cell for the second time. Voice mail. She was on pins and needles, anxious to hear how his meeting with Parcelli went. It had been Isaiah's idea to meet in person. He didn't trust cell phones or the Internet. But if he didn't show up soon, she might just use her first bullet on him.

She turned her attention back to her federal tax book. What could she think about next?

At seven, with Isaiah still a no-show, Jamie found herself on the fence between anger and worry. If something had happened to him, she would feel terrible. If not, she might make something happen. She called his cell one more time and left another message.

She packed up her books and decided to check around the library. Maybe he had slipped by her. After ten minutes of searching, she came back to the lobby and discovered her seat was taken. She walked out in front of the building to wait for Isaiah there.

That's when she saw him.

The founders of the law school had had enough foresight to buy a large piece of property that was part of an old rail yard in downtown Atlanta scheduled for redevelopment. When the redevelopment took place, and the area became Atlanta's newest hot spot to live, the law school found itself in one of the city's most desirable locations with sufficient acreage to surround the building with trees, a walking path complete with marble park benches, a huge asphalt parking lot, and a large grassy quad area directly in front of the school. That large and flat piece of grass saw constant use—school picnics, students lying in the sun to study, ultimate Frisbee, and on nights like tonight, pickup football games.

Isaiah faded back to pass, smiling as he evaded a rusher and darted left, the ball held casually out to his side in a way that would give any coach a heart attack. He had stripped down to a pair of baggy khaki shorts and sneakers, and his upper body gleamed with sweat. He stopped suddenly and heaved the ball three-quarters of the length of the quad in a perfect spiral—outdistancing his receiver by at least five yards.

“I thought you were faster than that!” Isaiah yelled.

“Reggie Bush ain't that fast.”

Jamie folded her arms across her chest. She felt the heat of anger coloring her face. She couldn't believe how rude this guy was.

He spotted her as his ragamuffin team was huddling up.

“Jamie!” He acted surprised.

She scowled at her watch. She scowled at Isaiah. She scowled at his teammates, just for good measure.

“You wanna play?” asked a clueless second-year who didn't understand scowl language.

“No thanks. Isaiah and I were supposed to be meeting together forty minutes ago.”

“Gotta run, guys,” Isaiah said.

“Next score wins,” somebody suggested.

But Jamie's ice-cold stare ended that idea.

Isaiah toweled off with his shirt as they entered the building. “I was waiting out front for you,” he said. He pulled his torn T-shirt on over his head. “Figured I'd see you when you arrived.”

“What time did you get there?”

“You know, six thirty or so.”

“Or so?”

That pretty much quelled the conversation until they got inside the small study room. With Isaiah still glistening with sweat, the cramped quarters smelled like a locker room. Jamie gave him a few seconds to apologize but quickly realized it was a lost cause. She knew that she should probably drop it, but she had always believed if you had something eating at you, it's best to get it out in the open.

“We were supposed to meet at six thirty,” she said. Even to her, it sounded pretty chiding.

“I was here at six thirty . . . African American time.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I'm a victim of the way I was raised.” Even Isaiah couldn't fight off a smirk with this lame excuse. “When our church was supposed to start at eleven, it would start at eleven thirty. We called it African American time.”

“Yeah, but courts don't run on African American time.”

“Au contraire,” Isaiah said. “Perhaps you didn't attend the panel presentation featuring accomplished trial lawyers earlier in the semester. Our dear Professor Snead made an excellent point about showing up late.”

“You're quoting Snead?”

“Just because he can't teach doesn't mean he couldn't try cases.”

Jamie sighed. “I thought you said he lost most of his criminal cases.”

“Yeah, but he won big verdicts in his tort cases,” Isaiah said. “And that's where the money is. Anyway, on this panel, Snead the accomplished trial lawyer—as opposed to Snead the pitiful law school professor—said he always arrived in court a few minutes late. He said that only one person could be in charge of the courtroom—either one of the lawyers or the judge. By arriving late, he showed the judge that he wasn't going to abide by the court's picayune rules on things as trivial as starting time.”

“And you bought that?”

“I arrived late in Snead's class for three straight weeks afterward.”

“Maybe someday you can be just like him.”

Isaiah wiped some sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his T-shirt. “You're good,” he said. “You ought to be a prosecutor.”

Having avoided an apology, Isaiah told Jamie about his meeting with Parcelli. “This dude was clinical, Jamie, like a robot.” He told her that Parcelli claimed the Hoffmans violated their memorandum of understanding by trying to sell Professor Kumari's algorithm to the mob. Parcelli wasn't willing to even talk about new identities or additional protection unless Hoffman gave up the algorithm.

Jamie wanted to take the problem to Snead. “We're just students, Isaiah. You shouldn't have even met with Parcelli in the first place. We don't even know if Hoffman has this algorithm. And if he does, why did he offer it to the mob?”

But Isaiah reminded her that the clients didn't want Snead involved. “We should at least get the entire story from Stacie Hoffman first,” he argued. “Our first duty is to our clients. If the Hoffmans have the algorithm, maybe they'll trade it for protection. Maybe the Hoffmans didn't contact Johnny Chin like Parcelli claimed. Maybe somebody in the federal government set them up.” Isaiah paused and leaned forward. “I've been giving this a lot of thought, Jamie. Before we decide what to do, I owe it to my client to meet with her and find out the entire story.”

“I thought she wasn't actually a client,” Jamie said.

“Whatever she is, I still owe it to her to meet with her first.”

“And then we'll go to Snead,” Jamie said.

“We'll see,” Isaiah said with a wink.

“And then we'll go to Snead,” Jamie repeated, more firmly than before.

The next day, after Stacie confirmed that she and her husband had the algorithm but still refused to give it to the government, Isaiah himself called Snead and scheduled the appointment for first thing Thursday morning.

46

Thursday, April 3

Snead's office was the disastrous result of trying to cram all the paraphernalia from a trial lawyer's plush corner office into the smaller, cubicle-size space of a law school professor. The monuments to Snead's ego that seemed a natural part of a spacious office overlooking downtown Los Angeles felt claustrophobic here. The walls were cluttered with diplomas, pictures of Snead with important friends, bar admission certificates for a half-dozen states, an artist's sketch of Snead arguing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, a framed cover story from
Lawyers Weekly
naming Snead as one of the highest paid lawyers in 2001, and the obligatory handwritten letter from a client singing Snead's praises. It made Jamie wonder what her own wall might look like at the end of her legal career.

The office was also cluttered with piles of paper that had fanned out like snowdrifts across the floor and desk, shelves full of law books, and scattered trinkets and memorabilia from Snead's trials. Blue books from past exams were everywhere. The place smelled like a combination of cigarette smoke and air freshener, the way hotel rooms smell right after they've been sprayed, topped off by a generous whiff of men's cologne.

The meeting got off to a rocky start when Isaiah showed up fifteen minutes late. From there, it went downhill.