Rogue Lawyer (10 page)

After two hours, Hank says it's time to wrap things up. I knock and reenter the room, an unventilated little box that's always stuffy. Jameel sits with his arms crossed, his eyes on the floor. Partner sits with his arms crossed too, staring at the screen, and I get the feeling that, though much has been said, no words have passed in some time. I say, “We gotta go.”

This is what both want to hear. They manage to say good-bye with some fondness. Jameel thanks us for coming, passes along greetings and love to Miss Luella, and stands as Hank enters the room from behind him.

Driving away, Partner says nothing for an hour.

Link Scanlon is not my first mobster. That honor goes to a sensational crook named Dewey Knutt, a man I do not visit in prison. While Link relished the blood, broken bones, intimidation, and notoriety, Dewey went about his life of crime as quietly as possible. While Link dreamed of being a Mafia don from childhood, Dewey was actually an honest furniture salesman who didn't break bad until he was in his mid-thirties. While Link's net worth was substantial but largely untraceable, a business magazine claimed Dewey was worth $300 million before his troubles. They sent Link to death row; Dewey got forty years in a federal slammer. Link managed to escape; Dewey has hair down to his waist and grows organic herbs and vegetables in a prison garden.

Dewey Knutt was a fast-talking salesman who moved a ton of cheap furniture, and with his earnings he bought a rental house. Then another, then several more. He learned the trick of using other people's money and acquired a prodigious appetite for risk. He parlayed his properties and loans into shopping centers and subdivisions. During a short recession, a bank said no to a loan, so he bought the bank and fired all the suits who worked there. He memorized banking regulations and found all of the gaping loopholes. During a longer recession, he picked up a few more banks and some regional mortgage companies. Money was cheap and Dewey Knutt proved to be a master at the borrowing game. His downfall, as we later learned, began with his penchant for double- and even triple-collateralizing assets. A visionary in the world of shady profits, he was one of the first to churn the fertile fields of subprime mortgages. He fine-tuned the intricacies of loan-sharking. He became a skilled briber of politicians and regulators. Add tax evasion, money laundering, mail fraud, insider trading, and the outright looting of pension funds, and Dewey richly deserved his forty years.

Those still searching for hidden remnants of his fortune include an entire cast of present and former enemies, some banking regulators, at least two bankruptcy courts, his ex-wife's lawyers, and several branches of the federal government. So far, they've found nothing.

When Dewey was forty-nine, his shiftless son, Alan, was caught with a trunk load of cocaine. Alan was twenty, a real mess of a kid, and was trying to impress his father with his own style of entrepreneurship. Dewey was so incensed and embarrassed that he refused to hire a lawyer for Alan. A friend referred him to me. I took one look at the seizure and realized the cops had blown it. They'd had no warrant and no probable cause to search the car. It was cut-and-dried, black-and-white. I filed the proper motions and briefs and the City halfheartedly contested the issue. The cocaine bust was ruled unconstitutional, the evidence was thrown out, and all charges against Alan were dismissed. It was a big story for a few days and I got my picture in the papers for the first time.

Dewey used his favorite lawyers for his heavy work, but he was so impressed with my slick maneuvers he decided to throw me a few scraps. Most of it was outside the scope of my expertise, but one case intrigued me and I signed on.

Dewey loved golf but had a hard time working it into his frenetic schedule. In addition, he had little patience for the staid traditions of most golf and country clubs, few of which, if any, would consider such an outlaw as a member. He became obsessed with the idea of building his own course and lighting it so he could play at night, either alone or with a few pals. At the time, there were only three other lit courses in the entire country, and none within a thousand miles of here. Eighteen holes, all private, under lights—the ultimate rich boy's toy. To avoid the City's zoning Nazis, he selected two hundred acres a mile from the city limits. The county objected. The neighbors sued. I handled the legal work and eventually won approval. More headlines.

However, the real notoriety was just around the corner. A housing bubble popped. Interest rates spiked. A perfect storm blew in and Dewey couldn't borrow fast enough. His house of cards collapsed in spectacular fashion. With flawless timing, the FBI, IRS, SEC, and a trainload of other tough guys with badges arrived on the scene, all waving warrants. The indictment was an inch thick and loaded with brutal allegations against Dewey, the obvious target. It also alleged grand conspiracies involving his bankers, accountants, partners, lawyers, a stockbroker, and two city councilmen. It detailed, in very convincing narratives, dozens of violations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. RICO for short, the greatest gift Congress has ever bestowed upon federal prosecutors.

I was investigated and became convinced I would be indicted too, though I had done nothing wrong. Thankfully, I had managed to remain on the fringes. For a while it seemed to be a shoot-now-and-ask-questions-later inquisition. But the Feds backed off and lost interest in me. They had much bigger crooks to nail.

Alan was indicted, basically for being Dewey's son. When the FBI threatened to indict Dewey's daughter, he caved and agreed to a forty-year deal. The bogus charges against his kids were dismissed, and most of his co-indictees pled to light sentences. All avoided serious jail time. In short, Dewey did the honorable thing and took a mighty fall.

He was building his golf course—grandly named the Old Plantation—just as the Feds moved in. All the money vanished in a matter of weeks and construction stopped—after the fourteenth green.

Today, it is the only fourteen-hole course with lights in the entire world, as far as anyone knows. In honor of Dewey, it's called Old Rico. Its membership consists solely of his cronies and conspirators. Alan's job these days is taking care of the course and keeping it playable, which he manages to do. He plays nonstop himself and dreams of becoming a pro. He collects enough in dues to hire a few groundskeepers, all undocumented workers, plus we suspect he knows where some of Dewey's old loot is buried. I pay $5,000 a year and it's worth it just to avoid the crowds. The greens and tee boxes are usually in good shape. The fairways can get rough, but no one cares. If we wanted a manicured course we would join a real club, though none of us at Old Rico could survive the vetting process.

Every Wednesday night at seven o'clock we gather for Dirty Golf, a game that bears little resemblance to what you might see on CBS. Dewey's original plans were to build the course first, so he would have a place to play, and then build the clubhouse, so he would have a place to drink. Absent a proper clubhouse, we meet for pregame drinks and wagering in a converted tractor barn where Dewey once enjoyed cockfighting, perhaps the only crime not covered by his indictment. Alan lives upstairs with two women, neither his wife, and he's the organizer of Dirty Golf. The two gals work the bar, absorb the crudities, and banter with the crowd. The rituals call for the first pint—in fruit jars—to be lifted in a toast to Dewey, who's smiling down from a bad portrait above the bar. Tonight there are eleven of us, a workable number since Old Rico has only twelve golf carts. As we drain the first pints, Alan goes through the rather raucous chore of bracketing the tournament, establishing handicaps, and collecting money. Dirty Golf costs $200 each, winner take all, not a bad pot but I've never won it.

Winning takes skill, of course, but also a higher handicap and the ability to cheat without getting caught. The rules are flexible. For example, a bad shot that goes outside the fairway boundaries is always in play if it can be found. There's really no such thing as out-of-bounds at Old Rico. If you find it, play it. A putt of three feet or less is always conceded, unless an opponent is having a bad night and wants to play hard-ass. Every player has the right to require another player to putt everything. A foursome can agree that each guy can take a mulligan, or a free shot in the aftermath of a bad one. And, if all four are in the right mood, each can take one mullie on the front seven and another on the back. Needless to say, the sponginess of the rules leads to disagreement and conflict. Since not one golfer in ten knows the real rules anyway, each round of Dirty Golf is loaded with incessant carping, bitching, complaining, and even threats.

Partner drives my golf cart and I'm not the only one here with a bodyguard. Since I play alone, tonight I'm paired up with Toby Chalk, a former city councilman who served four months in the wake of Dewey's demise. He drives his own golf cart. Caddies are forbidden at Old Rico.

After an hour of drinking and preliminaries, we head for the course. It's getting dark, the lights are on, and we do indeed feel privileged to be playing golf at night. It's a shotgun start. Toby and I are assigned the fifth tee, and when Alan yells “Go” we race away, carts bouncing, clubs rattling and jangling, grown men half-drunk and puffing on big cigars, whooping and yelling happily into the night.

Partner grins and shakes his head. Crazy white men.

Here's what happened:

My clients, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Renfro, Doug and Kitty to everyone, lived for thirty quiet and happy years on a shady street in a nice suburb. They were good neighbors, active in local charities and the church, always ready to lend a hand. They were in their early seventies, retired, with kids and grandkids, a couple of dogs, and a time-share in Florida. They owed no money and paid off their credit cards in full each month. They were comfortable and reasonably healthy, though Doug was dealing with atrial fibrillation and Kitty was rebounding from breast cancer. He had spent fourteen years in the Army, then sold medical devices for the rest of his career. She had adjusted claims for an insurance company. To stay busy, she volunteered at a hospital while he puttered in the flower beds and played tennis at a city park. At the insistence of their children and grandchildren, the Renfros had reluctantly bought his-and-her laptops and joined the digital world, though they spent little time online.

The house next door to them had been bought and sold a dozen times over the years, and the current owners were oddballs who kept to themselves. They had a teenage son, Lance, a misfit who spent most of his time locked in his room playing video games and peddling drugs through the Internet. To hide his habits, he routinely piggybacked on the Renfros' wireless router. They, of course, did not know this. They knew how to turn their laptops on and off, send and receive e-mails, do basic shopping, and check the weather, but beyond that they had no idea how the technology worked and had little interest in it. They did not bother with passwords or security of any kind.

The state police initiated a sting operation to crack down on Internet drug trafficking and tracked an IP address to the Renfros' home. Someone in there was buying and selling a lot of Ecstasy, and the decision was made to launch a full-scale SWAT team assault. Warrants—one to search the house and one to arrest Doug Renfro—were obtained, and at 3:00 on a quiet, starlit night a team of eight city policemen rushed through the darkness and surrounded the Renfro home. Eight officers—all in full combat gear with Kevlar vests, camouflage uniforms, panzer-style helmets, night-vision goggles, tactical radios, semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, knee pads, some even with face masks, and a few even with black face paint for maximum drama—ducked and squatted and moved fearlessly through the Renfros' flower beds, their itchy fingers eager for combat. Two carried flash-bang stun grenades and two carried battering rams.

Warrior cops. The vast majority, as we would later learn, were woefully untrained, but all were thrilled to be in battle. At least six later admitted to consuming highly caffeinated energy drinks to stay awake at that awful hour.

Instead of simply ringing the doorbell and waking the Renfros and explaining that they, the police, wanted to talk and search the house, the cops launched the assault with a bang by kicking in the front and rear doors simultaneously. They would later lie and claim they had called out to the occupants, but Doug and Kitty were sound asleep, as you would expect. They heard nothing until the invasion began.

What happened in the next sixty seconds took months to unravel and get straight. The first casualty was Spike, the yellow Lab who slept on the kitchen floor. Spike was twelve, old for a Lab, and hard of hearing. But he certainly heard the door crash just a few feet away. His mistake was to jump up and start barking, at which time he was shot three times by a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. By then Doug Renfro was scrambling out of bed and reaching for his own gun, one properly registered and kept in a drawer for protection. He also owned a Browning 12-gauge shotgun he used twice a year to hunt geese, but it was tucked away in a closet.

In attempting to defend the home invasion, our bumbling chief of police would later claim that the SWAT assault was necessary because they knew Doug Renfro was heavily armed.

Doug had made it to the hallway, when he saw several dark figures swarming up the stairs. An Army veteran, he hit the floor and began firing away. Fire was returned. The gun battle was brief and deadly. Doug was shot twice, in the forearm and shoulder. A cop named Keestler was hit in the neck, presumably by Doug. Kitty, who had rushed in a panic out of the bedroom behind her husband, was shot three times in the face and four times in the chest and died at the scene. Their other dog, a schnauzer who slept with them, was also shot and killed.

Doug Renfro and Keestler were rushed to the hospital. Kitty was taken to the city morgue. Neighbors gawked in disbelief as their street was lit by flashing lights while ambulances rushed away with the casualties.

The police stayed at the home for hours and collected all possible evidence, including the laptops. Within two hours, before sunrise, they knew the Renfros' computers had never been used to peddle drugs. They knew they had made a mistake, but coming clean is simply not in their playbook. The cover-up began immediately when the commander of the SWAT team gravely informed television reporters on the scene that the occupants of the home were suspected of trafficking in drugs and that the man of the house, a Mr. Doug Renfro, had attempted to kill several officers.

After his recovery from surgery, six hours after getting shot, Doug was told of his wife's death. He was also informed that the invaders were actually police officers. He had no idea. He thought they were armed criminals invading his home.