J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 03 - No Time To Hide (17 page)

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Brent Krane had made a realization. It was early in the morning. He had been up all night. Drugs and the crowd hadn’t permitted the sleep to come, and so he had been forced to cut. He made a half-dozen cuts to the back of his leg, releasing the pressure inside himself. It mollified the crowd.

The silence was pure. Then the realization had come.

He sat on the
couch in his little apartment, surrounded by filth. There was no future here. Beyond revenge, there was nothing he needed to accomplish. This reality had been there for a long time, but Brent hadn’t put the pieces together. He hadn’t drawn the necessary conclusion. But now it was so obvious.

The epiphany absolved him of worry.

The opinions of the crowd seemed less important.

He was simply going to do whatever he needed to do, and he knew that the crowd would understand. They would probably like it. They liked action.

Brent Krane decided that he was finish getting a gun. He’d fill out the forms. He’d wait as long as it took. And then, if they denied him, he’d try to buy it some other way or he’d steal it. He didn’t care.

That was the real
ization. That was the epiphany: He didn’t care. Brent Krane just wanted it all to end.

His sister told him that he needed to get out of the city. Brea said that Michael Collins and his friends knew about his trip to Mexico. She claimed that they got access to his passport file. He wasn’t sure he believed it, but Brent didn’t care anymore.

He wasn’t going to fight her.

Brent decided he’d go to the beach rental in Montauk. If his sister was going pay for it, he’d humor her and get out of the filth for a few months. Then when the trial was going to start, he’d come back.

It wouldn’t be hard, and the time away would give him a chance to plan for the end.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Agent Frank Vatch knew that the visit was coming. The government’s dysfunction was well known and reported. The dysfunction started with the elected officials and then trickled down and through the bureaucracy.

Every federal agency had been squeezed, including law enforcement. They were looking to save money. Vatch had seen the boss work his way down the hall. He had visited each of the senior cogs in the bureaucratic machine and made them an offer that most couldn’t refuse.

Now it was Vatch’s turn.

The knock on the door was perfunctory.

Martin Nix was the Special Agent In Charge of the New York Field office. Vatch had been supervised by seven different special agents over the course of his career, and Vatch had discerned that there were only two types: gunners and caretakers. The gunners were young and ambitious. They came in from outside the New York Office with big ideas and a burning desire to be promoted to something better in Washington, D.C. The caretakers came in after the gunners. They cleaned up the mess, soothed the troops’ ruffled feathers, and then retired a few years later.

Nix was a caretaker.

He came into Vatch’s office. Nix sat down in the chair across from Vatch. Nix looked at Vatch, apologies in his eyes. “You know why I’m here.”

Vatch nodded.

“Gotta do it.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if the head of the FBI was watching him. “Orders.”

“Well you’re wasting your time.” Vatch was short with him, but Vatch wasn’t as rude to Nix as he was to his other colleagues. The fact that Nix was his boss didn’t matter. Vatch di
dn’t care much about his place on the organizational chart. Vatch simply appreciated Nix’s management style, which was to leave him alone.

“Gotta do it.” Nix repeated, and then put his hands on his knees. “Because of the cuts, every field office has a target that we have to meet. Rather than lay people off, I got the authorization to offer buy-outs to the old-timers.”

“Get rid of the experienced investigators and leave everything to the rookies.” Vatch shook his head. “Sounds like a plan that the politicians would love”

“Hey.” Nix raised his hands. “Not here for a debate.” Nix wasn’t interested in a fight. He just needed to make his pitch and move on to the next office. “The offer is $30,000 in cash, and then full retirement benefits if you’ve got enough
years of service. People with less years get the cash and maybe a little less benefits, but you have enough credit. You qualify for the full boat.”

“A bribe?”

“We prefer to call the $30,000 an ‘incentive.’”

“Well, I don’t want it.”

Nix stood. “Figured.” He walked toward the door. “But you got some time to think.” Nix shrugged his shoulders. “I’m taking the money. Then I’m taking my wife on a cruise, getting the hell out of New Jersey and kissing that damn commute good-bye.” Nix paused at the door. He turned back. “Frank, you’re an asshole, but give it a little more thought.” Nix’s eyes took in Frank Vatch’s spartan office. “There’s real life out there in the real world. Might be time to hang it up after bringing down Michael Collins.”

Vatch shook his head. “Collins isn’t down yet.”

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

Andie sat across from Michael at a small table in the corner of the visiting room. They held hands, and Michael told her about the boredom and routine of life in the MDC. Then Andie talked about their mutual friend.

“You know my cousin Nicole was in town.”

“Yeah.” Michael knew that Andie didn’t have a cousin, Nicole. Andie didn’t have any family. She grew up in foster care until she was old enough to run away. “How’s she doing?”

“The same,” Andie said. “She’s always looking to get paid, but nobody’s got any money.”

“I thought you had that list of people that were looking for nannies or cooks or whatever.”

“Maybe.” Andie shrugged her shoulders. “Couldn’t find it in my bag.”

Michael shook his head. “I think it may have been put in my bag, because there wasn’t much room in yours.” He thought of the dry-box and the list of account numbers. “Go down the list with her. See if anybody’s willing to hire her. Might get lucky.”

“Really?”

“Might be a little something to keep her interested.” Michael squeezed her hand. “Keep her busy.” Then Michael stood up. Andie stood, too.

He wanted to touch her, caress her, but the rules didn’t allow it. So he leaned in. He kissed her quick on the lips, and then whispered in her ear. “Don’t trust Brea Krane. Play along. Give her a little money, if there is any. But stick with our other plan.”

Andie pulled away. “Sounds good.” She nodded.

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

Michael lay flat on his back with his eyes open. Th
e thin mattress was coated in thick plastic. The intent was to easily repel blood and other bodily fluids. The plastic crackled underneath him as he stared at the picture.

It was a
black and white photograph of his namesake. The Irish revolutionary stared back down at him. It was out of the frame. Glass and wood weren’t allowed. But the picture didn’t violate any of the MDC’s rules, so he was allowed to have it.

Michael  thought about the days back in his mom’s apartment in Boston, staring up at the picture of the Irish revolutionar
y, Michael John Collins. It had hung on the wall above the kitchen table. It was next to the pictures of John F. Kennedy and the Pope.

Michael loved the fight and the honor that the photograph represented. When life in the MDC became dark, the photograph provided him a little light. He just needed patience.

Michael Collins had a Constitutional right to a “speedy trial.” It was a right derived from the Magna Carta; written in 1215, developed over time by English judges, and eventually enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Various state courts interpreted the word “speedy” differently, but, in federal court, the definition of “speedy” was clear. The government had seventy days.

Seventy days, in the abstract, may have sounded fast, but the trial could not start quickly enough. Every day in Pod 3, Michael felt his spirit die a little bit.

He was being institutionalized. His routine never varied, and he wondered how he could survive if he was convicted.  He’d be sentenced to at least twenty years.

The only thing that kept him going was the picture of the Irish revolutionary and the little, gro
wing stack of paper near his bed.

PART THREE: TRIALS

“To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.”

–George Orwell

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

It was remarkable how fast the city changed with the season. The pavement no longer sizzled. The air became easier to breathe. People became a little more relaxed.  The collective sought to enjoy the final days in a park or a long lunch at a sidewalk cafe before winter came and the mood changed again.

Michael, however, could only experience it in the abstract. He only knew the seasons were changing by the calendar on his wall. Michael kept socializing to a minimum. The nature of the MDC meant that there was a constant shuffle of people. Accused men rotated through the MDC by the hundreds: intake, transfer, release, repeat.

Michael had watched the faces change every day for over two months, feeling more and more like a lifer each time a new face appeared or a familiar person disappeared.

Time passed slowly. Life fell into a routine. Every day Michael got up, ate breakfast, and then he spent the rest of the morning at one of the six computers in the MDC’s library.

He’d then eat lunch, go to the small yard and run around the loop, regardless of whether it was raining or cold. Then he’d either go back to the library or meet with Andie, Kermit, or Quentin in the visitors room.  After dinner, he printed.

There were no exceptions, especially with regard to the last activity of the day. He always printed after dinner. He needed to build the stack of paper in his cell.

There was usually an hour and a half between dinner and lights out. Michael used that time to print all of the Securities and Exchange Commission documents that he had found that day related to Joshua Krane and his various engineering and manufacturing companies. These were dense legal documents and mind-numbing financial disclosures, exactly what Michael was looking for.

There were thousands of them posted on the Securities and Exchange website. Michael knew that he wasn’t going to get every document. But he was going to try.

In the beginning, library staff had found it amusing. After a week, however, they were concerned.

Michael used an inordinate amount of paper. The laser printer’s toner cartridge had to be replaced, and Michael was blowing through the library’s tiny budget for supplies.

During the second week, library staff had told Michael that he could not print any more documents. Michael politely complied, knowing that Quentin would intervene.

The next day Quentin informed the staff and the Director of the MDC that Michael had a constitutional right to participate in his own legal defense. Michael was a lawyer, and he was researching the charges against him as well as the man that he was accused of stealing from. The MDC wasn’t persuaded.

Then Quentin offered a compromise that no government agency would ever turn down: Quentin offered to pay.

With an agreement that the MDC would send Quentin a bill every week for Michael’s expenses, there was nothing more that they could do. No more interference.

Michael knew that the MDC guards and library staff wanted to see what he was printing. Michael knew that they were curious. But because it was for his legal defense, the documents were privileged. He had a right to confidentiality, and so the jail staff watched helplessly as Michael brought a new stack of papers from the library to his cell at the end of every day.

In the corner, by his bed, Michael put each new stack on top of the old. When the stack on the floor became ten to twelve inches high, Michael brought the paper to a meeting with Quentin.

Quentin then took them
back to the rental, and Michael started a new stack.

It was tedious and repetitive, but it was Michael’s only chance.

Although Michael used the Sixth Amendment to get the earliest possible trial date, his future actually depended on the Fifth Amendment.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution prohibited any criminal defendant from being put on trial twice for the same offense. It meant that if Michael and Quentin could get the jury to say two words — not guilty — he would never stand trial again.

Agent Vatch could do nothing. The government couldn’t continue to prosecute him. There would be no second chances for Brenda Gadd. It was the rule that prohibited double jeopardy. The government cannot prosecute an individual twice for the same crimes or any crime alleged to have arisen from the same conduct. 

The Founding Fathers, of whom Michael had grown quite fond during his time at the MDC, had been concerned about a tyrannical government. The only exception to the rule was when the jury could not agree on a verdict and a mistrial was declared.

Michael wasn’t interested in a mistrial or a “hung jury.” He wanted a unanimous “not guilty.” Either his plan was going to work or it wasn’t. He was betting everything.

He had made his choice. It was done. Michael pushed the doubts aside. He’d do whatever it took to get out. Whatever it took to be free. He wasn’t going to play fair. The truth didn’t matter. The truth was the government’s problem, not his.