J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 03 - No Time To Hide (15 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

The three of them sat on a bench in Saint Mary’s Park. It was a dark, linear park. Sunlight only lit the playground in the early morning. The rest of the day, the park was covered in shadow from the large concrete train bridge directly above it. The bridge gave the park a disorienting feel, as though somebody put the basketball courts and playground equipment there without permission.

“You order the torpedo?” Kermit examined a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper.

Quentin nodded, and took the sandwich from Kermit.

“This beauty looks like mine, so this must be yours.” Kermit handed the turkey and Swiss to Andie.

They ate in silence as the trains rumbled above them.

When Kermit finished, he crumpled the paper a
nd dirty napkin. Then he got up and tossed his garbage into a nearby trash can.

“Nobody likes a litter bug, yo.” Kermit came back toward the bench, but he didn’t sit down. “Got a bad vibration from that hearing this morning, Q.” Kermit started swinging his arms, doing some ballistic stretches as if he were a swimmer about to enter the pool. “What’s the next step? How you gonna free the bird?”

Quentin took the final bite of his sandwich, chewed and swallowed, figuring out how to answer.

“Listen, guys. I have to be straight with you.” Quentin looked around, ensuring that nobody else was nearby.

“Michael is in a terrible place. I know he has a history of getting out of tough jams, but …” Quentin shook his head. “You have to understand that I don’t have a magic bullet. I’m going to fight for him, don’t get me wrong. It’s just …” Quentin paused, trying to phrase it delicately. “It’s just that Michael may be better taking a plea deal. That’s my honest analysis. I just don’t understand how we’re going to win at trial.”

“Michael’s got a plan,” Andie said, thinking about Brea Krane. “Just trust him.”

“Well, he hasn’t told me the plan.” Quentin had an edge to his voice, a bit of annoyance. “I’ve been reviewing the government’s file. The evidence is overwhelming.”

Andie shook her head.

“Just take it to trial.” She got up off of the bench. “Let’s get back to work.”

###

The three walked down Nelson Street and cut over toward the rental via Clinton. Quentin scrolled through an email on his iPhone, and his shoulders slumped a little as he saw ten emails from Brenda Gadd. The subject line stated that there were more discovery disclosures. The email attachments were huge.

“Looks like I need somebody to help review and organize documents.” Quentin sounded defeated. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office sent me a bunch of zip files. I’m afraid they’re so big that they’re going to crash my computer.”

“I can do it,” Andie said as they turned the corner. “Got nothing else to do.” Then she saw him. He was about a block away. “You expecting anybody?”

###

Brent Krane stood in front of the brownstone with a brick paver in his hand, trembling. He had taken it out of the neighbor’s tiny, front garden to quiet the crowd. He didn’t want to do anything extreme. After checking the Court’s public computer terminal, he just wanted to see the place where Michael Collin’s attorney was working. When the attorney entered a certificate of representation, this was the address listed. When Brent had arrived, he realized this was also the place where all of them were living.

Now he didn’t know what to do.

Of course the voices wanted to light it on fire, but he convinced them that was foolish. Then they wanted him to hide and wait, but he wasn’t prepared for a fight. He didn’t have a knife, and he was still working on the gun.

Then he had seen the pavers. Brent held one in his hand
. Perhaps the sound of shattered glass would quiet the crowd. He was tired of fighting them. He needed sleep, but they wouldn’t allow it. He needed peace, but they kept on.

Brent cocked his arm back, getting ready to throw the paver through the brownstone’s front window.

That’s when Brent saw them. They were about a half block away, and it looked like the weird guy with dreadlocks was running toward him.

Brent hesitated, conflicted. It would only take a second to throw, but he didn’t have a second.

###

Kermit was in a full sprint. “Hey!” was all he could get out.

The skinny white dude dropped the brick, turned, ran toward the car, opened the door, and jumped inside.

Kermit got to the vehicle just as it pulled away. All he could do was slap the back window, and shout.

He watched it speed down the street. Kermit read the license plate, repeating the letters and numbers over and over.

Soon Andie and Quentin caught up.

“You get the license plate number?” Andie asked.

Kermit nodded his head, continuing to repeat the letters and numbers.

“Good.” Quentin nodded. “I got the whole thing recorded.” He smiled and held up his iPhone. “Technology is pretty cool.”

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Brea Krane watched the whole scene play out from the safety of her white SUV parked around the corner. After meeting with Tad Garvin, she figured that she needed to keep a better eye on
her brother. She figured that he would do something stupid. It was a safe assumption.

She picked up her cell phone once her brother had sped away. Brea pressed a button.

Tad Garvin’s number appeared on the screen and the phone started to dial. A few rings, and Tad answered.

“My brother is
a psychopath,” Brea said as she shifted her SUV into gear and started driving back to her condominium.

Garvin laughed. “What did he do now?”

“Almost threw a brick through the window of where Collins was staying.”

“Anybody see him?”

“Me.”

“Anybody else?”

“The lawyer and the other two. The hippie almost caught him, but Brent got away.” Brea stopped at a light, waited, and then continued.

“But Brent didn’t actually throw the brick.”

“That’s right.”

“Then it shouldn’t be too big a problem. No actual damage to property, and it’s not a crime to think about naughty stuff.” Garvin paused. “Speaking of naughty stuff …”

Brea rolled her eyes

“Are you getting frisky with me, old man?” Brea grimaced, pretending she was actually interested.

“What are you doing later?”

“I’ve got some stuff for work, but maybe we could meet.” Brea turned. Traffic wasn’t too bad for mid-afternoon. “What are you thinking?”

Garvin was thinking about a lot of things, most of which could not be spoken over the phone. “Let me see if I can blow off the wife with an excuse, and I’ll let you know.”

“Sounds good.” Brea stopped the car in front of her building. The valet opened her door, and Brea got out. She walked to the condo’s front door and a doorman opened it for her.

She walked through the marble lobby, underneath an ornate glass chandelier, and toward the elevator. Once inside, she swiped her card and the light for the twenty-third floor lit up.

Brea got out on her floor and walked down the hallway to her condo, swiped her magnetic card
, again, at her door and waited for a green light. The black cell phone on the kitchen counter was already ringing. It wasn’t a surprise.

Brea walked through the entryway into the main living area.

The cell phone stopped ringing for a few seconds, and then started again. 

She tossed her purse on the couch and walke
d into the kitchen as the cheap disposable cell phone continued to rattle.

Brea picked up the phone and pressed a button.

“Hello.” She smiled when she heard the voice of Andie Larone. “I thought you’d be calling.”

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

The beat cop wasn’t a mover and shaker in the department. In fact, it was highly unlikely that he’d ever get promoted to sergeant, but he was okay with that. As long as he had enough seniority to avoid working the holidays, Officer Barts was fine with his position in life.

He liked people, especially if they bought him a cup of coffee or something from time to time, and respected the badge.

Vatch pushed a plate of hot, c
rispy, fresh-cut French fries toward Barts.

“Like I said before,” Barts picked up three fries, dunked them in ketchup, and shoved them in his mouth. “We don’t have anything to charge him with at the moment, but Anthony’s name is coming up in more and more conversations.”

“Conversations?”

Officer Barts nodded.

“You know.” Barts shrugged. “Just talking. I ask who was at the party or who were you playing ball with and stuff like that, and Anthony’s name is coming up more and more as trouble.” Officer Barts took a sip of soda. “But he doesn’t go by Anthony any more. His street name is Cards.”

“Cards?” Vatch shook his head. The idea that the little boy who used to crawl through his window had a street name repulsed him. “So is he in?”

“In what?”

Vatch’s eyes narrowed. He hated conversing with anybody, especially a law enforcement officer with minimal intelligence. Play nice, Vatch thought, you need him to be on your side.

“A gang,” Vatch responded. “Is Anthony in a gang?”

Barts smiled. “It isn’t like that anymore. Used to be we had the Bloods and Crips, maybe the Gangster Disciples or Vice Lords, and those were real criminal enterprises, like the mafia. They were all set up to sell crack, and there was a hierarchy with rules and order.”

Barts waved at the waitress and lifted up his empty water glass.

“Now it isn’t like that. We were too successful.”

Vatch’s slit of a mouth bent into a frown. “Too successful?”

Barts nodded, waiting as the waitress refilled his water from a large plastic pitcher and then went on to the next table.

“Exactly,” he continued. “The police were too successful breaking up those gangs, and so now we got a mess. Instead of two or three big gangs, we got hundreds of them. Take any four kids, put ‘em together, and they’re now a gang. They come up with some stupid name for themselves, and that’s it. No initiation. No leader. No rules. Just four thugs who like to smoke weed and steal stuff, sell the stuff to buy more weed, and then repeat.” Barts ate a few more French fries. “Maybe they do something more violent, but living the lifestyle is more the goal than actually being a gangster.”

Vatch raised his eyebrows. “So Anthony is in with this Spider person.”

Barts laughed, again. “You don’t get it.” Barts dunked a fry in the ketchup. “There are no rules anymore.” He ate the fry. “Not only are there hundreds of gangs, but kids are in three or four of them at the same time. Just depends on who’s hanging out, who’s partying, and whether somebody wants to shoot.”

“You mean shoot other people?”

“Maybe. Doesn’t matter.” Barts shook his head. “It’s all random. It’s chaos out there. You’re lucky you’re in an office, man. Stuff makes sense in an office. On the streets, here in the hood, it’s just wild.” 

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Michael didn’t trust the phones.  The government claimed that it didn’t monitor or record the phones reserved for attorney-client communications, but he doubted it. “Safety” was an exception to every government policy related to privacy. It just took one civil servant to decide that somebody’s safety was at risk, and the confidentiality was gone. In his case, Michael knew that civil servant’s name was Agent Frank Vatch.

Michael wanted only in-person conversations. Those were the safest, even though it made the MDC a lonelier place that got lonelier every minute.

He’d been on self-imposed solitary confinement since his arrival. Although the individual cell doors didn’t close until after the evening head-count, Michael wasn’t in the mood to make friends. He didn’t wander around Pod 3. He didn’t play board games or explore the MDC’s small library. He didn’t go outside to the yard. Michael only came out of his cell for meals.

One of the MDC’s psychologists stopped by to see if he was depressed or whether she should place him on a suicide watch, but Michael declined her services.

He didn’t think he was depressed, which was likely what a depressed person would think, and Michael had told the psychologist that he’d be more social after the hearing. He was just waiting it out.

Michael had one more day. The custody hearing was scheduled for 9:00 am, and Michael hoped that the judge would release him.

The court could make Michael surrender his passports. Michael could be placed under house arrest with an ankle bracelet. Hell, Michael thought, he’d agree to the judge implanting a microchip in his shoulder, if it’d get him out.

In the meantime, Michael sat in the cell for hours.

He thought about the money being spent to keep him caged. Then, he thought about all the money wasted on the people around him.

The United States had the highest incarceration rate of any country in the civilized world. Yet it was still one of the most violent. The money spent on prisons and jails could be spent on schools and roads, but America was a land of immediacy. Investing in schools and roads provided little immediate pleasure, Michael thought, locking up a crook was more fun.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Then he felt shame and guilt. Who was he kidding? He deserved to be locked up.

When he was still the highest-billing associate at Wabash, Kramer, and Moore, Michael remembered reading a law review article about white-collar criminals like him. Two psychiatrists interviewed three hundred white-collar criminals residing in various federal prisons throughout the United States. The psychiatrists created a personality profile, listing the most common traits.

Michael thought about the list and the three most common traits.

The first one was that white-collar prisoners believed that they were the focus of government harassment and that his or her prosecution had been politically motivated or a personal vendetta. The second trait was that none of the white-collar criminals believed that they had actually committed a real crime or that they were real criminals, like a murderer.  The third trait was that they were narcissists. Deep down, they all believed that they were the smartest people in the room. They believed they were smarter than their attorney, smarter than the investigators, smarter than the judge. They had it all figured out. They believed that they had found a loophole to avoid any consequences for their actions. They believed that they deserved the money that had been stolen. They were entitled to it.

Check. Check. Check.

How could he be so self-righteous about education and incarceration rates when he had rolls of gold coins in a dry box, fake passports, a history of evading investigators, and had just snuck across the United States border from Mexico in the past week?

Michael sighed.

Maybe I am depressed, he thought. Maybe I should be on a suicide watch.

###

A guard knocked on Michael’s door. “Visitor.”

The word lifted Michael’s spirits. He opened his eyes. Michael sat up and got out of his cot, and then followed the guard out of his cell. They walked through the common area, and through the series of secure doors leading out of Pod 3.

As they walked down the hallway to a door, Michael studied everything. He tried to remember the route. He noted the cameras and the location of the guards. Michael realized that most of the doors that they had walked by were unmarked, probably to make escape more difficult and the MDC’s layout more confusing.

Escape would be hard, thought Michael, probably impossible.

They stopped.

The guard that had escorted him from Pod 3 pressed an intercom button. They both looked up at a small camera above the door. They waited, and were buzzed inside another small room a few seconds later.

A second guard sat behind a glass window surrounded by security monitors. The second guard waited for the door to the hallway to close and lock, and then he buzzed Michael inside the visitation room through a second door. As stated during his orientation, neither door could be open at the same time, another obstacle for escape.

Michael walked into the visitation room. It was an open area with four tables spaced evenly apart. It was brightly lit, but sterile. There were no pictures on the wall. There were no lamps or wall sconces. There were no magazines or pencils. In short, there was nothing that could easily become a weapon.

The guard led Michael across the room to a door with a small window near the top. It was a private room for attorney-client conferences. The various detainees that were visiting in the public area looked at Michael with jealousy. They wanted a private room too, but for other reasons.

The guard opened the door and pointed inside. “Have a seat.”

Quentin arrived a few minutes later. “How you holding up?”

Michael shrugged. “How are you holding up?”

Quentin shook his head. “It’s been interesting.” Then he told Michael about the person with a brick in front of their rental and the offer from United States Attorney Brenda Gadd.