Sudden Death (2 page)

T
HE FLIGHT HOME
is boring and uneventful, which I view as a major positive when it comes to airplane flights. The movie doesn’t appeal to me, so I don’t put on the headphones. I then spend the next two hours involuntarily trying to lip-read everything the characters are saying. Unfortunately, the movie is
Dr. Dolittle 2,
and my mouse-lipreading skills are not that well developed.

Willie, for his part, uses the time to refine his casting choices. On further reflection he now considers Denzel too old and is leaning toward Will Smith or Ben Affleck, though he has some doubts that Ben could effectively play a black guy. I suggest that as soon as he gets home he call Greg and Eric to discuss it.

Moments after we touch the ground, a flight attendant comes over and leans down to speak with me. “Mr. Carpenter?” she asks.

I get a brief flash of worry. Has something happened while we were in the air? “Yes?”

“There will be someone waiting at the gate to meet you. You have an urgent phone call.”

“Who is it?” I ask.

“I’m sorry, I really don’t know. But I’m sure everything is fine.”

I would take more comfort from her assurances if she knew what the call was about. I fluctuate between intense worry and panic the entire time we taxi to the gate, which seems to take about four hours.

As soon as the plane comes to a halt, Willie and I jump out of our seats and are the first people off the plane. Somebody who works for airline security is there to meet us, and he leads us to one of those motorized carts. We all jump on and are whisked away.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I ask.

The security guy shrugs slightly. “I’m not sure. I think it’s about that football player.”

Before I have a chance to ask what the hell he could possibly be talking about, we arrive at an airport security office. I’m ushered inside, telling the officers that it’s okay for Willie to come in with me. We’re led into a back office, where another security guy stands holding a telephone, which he hands to me.

“Hello?” I say into the phone, dreading what I might hear on the other end.

“It took you long enough.” The voice is that of Lieutenant Pete Stanton, my closest and only friend in the Paterson Police Department.

I’m somewhat relieved already; Pete wouldn’t have started the conversation that way if he had something terrible to tell me. “What the hell is going on?” I ask.

“Kenny Schilling wants to talk to you. And only you. So you’d better get your ass out here.”

If possible, my level of confusion goes up a notch. Kenny Schilling is a running back for the Giants, a third-round pick a few years ago who is just blossoming into a star. I’ve never met the man, though I know Willie counts him as one of his four or five million social friends. “Kenny Schilling?” I ask. “Why would he want to talk to me?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Pete asks.

Annoyance is overtaking my worry; there is simply nothing concerning Kenny Schilling that could represent a disaster in my own life. “I’ve been on a plane, Pete. I just flew in from Fantasyland. Now, tell me what the hell is going on.”

“It looks like Schilling killed Troy Preston. Right now he’s holed up in his house with enough firepower to supply the 3rd Infantry, and every cop in New Jersey outside waiting to blow his head off. Except me. I’m on the phone, ’cause I made the mistake of saying I knew you.”

“Why does he want me?” I ask. “How would he even know my name?”

“He didn’t. He asked for the hot-shit lawyer that’s friends with Willie Miller.”

An airport security car is waiting to take us to Upper Saddle River, which is where they tell us Kenny Schilling lives, and they assure us that our bags will be taken care of. “My bag’s the one you can lift,” I say.

Once in the car, I turn on the radio to learn more about the situation, and discover that it is all anyone is talking about.

Troy Preston, a wide receiver for the Jets, did not show up for scheduled rehab on an injured knee yesterday and did not call in an explanation to the team. This was apparently uncharacteristic, and when he could not be found or contacted, the police were called in. Somehow Kenny Schilling was soon identified as a person who might have knowledge concerning the disappearance, and the police went out to his house to talk to him.

The unconfirmed report is that Schilling brandished a gun, fired a shot (which missed), and turned his house into a fortress. Schilling has refused to talk to the cops, except to ask for me. The media are already referring to me as his attorney, a logical, though totally incorrect, assumption.

This shows signs of being a really long day.

Upper Saddle River is about as pretty a New York suburb as you are going to find in New Jersey. Located off Route 17, it’s an affluent, beautifully wooded community dotted with expensive but not pretentious homes. A number of wealthy athletes, especially on those teams that play in New Jersey like the Giants and Jets, have gravitated to it. As we enter its peaceful serenity, it’s easy to understand why.

Unfortunately, that serenity disappears as we near Kenny Schilling’s house. The street looks like it is hosting a SWAT team convention, and it’s hard to believe that there could be a police car anywhere else in New Jersey. Every car seems to have gun-toting officers crouched behind it; it took less firepower to bring down Saddam Hussein. Kenny Schilling is a threat that they are taking very seriously.

Willie and I are brought into a trailer, where State Police Captain Roger Dessens waits for us. He dispenses with the greetings and pleasantries and immediately brings me up-to-date, though his briefing includes little more than I heard in radio reports. Schilling is a suspect in Preston’s disappearance and possible murder, and his actions are certainly consistent with guilt. Innocent people don’t ordinarily barricade themselves in their homes and fire at police.

“You ready?” Dessens asks, but doesn’t wait for a reply. He picks up the phone and dials a number. After a few moments he talks into the phone. “Okay, Kenny, Carpenter is right here with me.”

He hands me the phone, and I cleverly say, “Hello?”

A clearly agitated voice comes through the phone. “Carpenter?”

“Yes.”

“How do I know it’s you?”

It’s a reasonable question. “Hold on,” I say, and signal to Willie to come over. I hand him the phone. “He isn’t sure it’s me.”

Willie talks into the phone. “Hey, Schill… what’s happenin’?” He says this as if they just met at a bar and the biggest decision confronting them is whether to have Coors or a Bud.

I can’t hear “Schill’s” view of what might be “happenin’,” but after a few moments Willie is talking again. “Yeah, it’s Andy. I’m right here with him. He’s cool. He’ll get you out of this bullshit in no time.”

Looking out over the army of cops assembled to deal with “this bullshit,” I’ve got a feeling Willie’s assessment might be a tad on the wildly optimistic side. Willie hands the phone back to me, and Schilling tells me that he wants me to come into his house. “I need to talk to you.”

I have absolutely no inclination to physically enter this confrontation by going into his house. “We’re talking now,” I say.

He is insistent. “I need to talk to you in here.”

“I understand you have some guns,” I say.

“I got one gun” is how he corrects me. “But don’t worry, man, I ain’t gonna shoot you.”

“I’ll get back to you,” I say, then hang up and tell Captain Dessens about Schilling’s request.

“Good,” he says, standing up. “Let’s get this thing moving.”

“What thing?” I ask. “You think I’m going in there? Why would I possibly go in there?”

Dessens seems unperturbed. “You want a live client or a dead one?”

“He’s not my client. Just now was the first time I’ve ever spoken to him. He didn’t even know it was me.”

“On the other hand, he’s got a lot of money to pay your bills, Counselor.” He says “Counselor” with the same respect he might have said “Fuehrer.”

Dessens is really pissing me off; I don’t need this aggravation. “On the other hand, you’re an asshole,” I say.

“So you’re not going?” Dessens asks. The smirk on his face seems to say that he knows I’m a coward and I’m just looking for an excuse to stay out of danger. He’s both arrogant and correct.

Willie comes over to me and talks softly. “Schill’s good people, Andy. They got the wrong guy.”

I’m instantly sorry I didn’t leave Willie at the airport. Now if I don’t go in, I’m not just letting down a stranger accused of murder, I’m letting down a friend. “Okay,” I say to Dessens, “but while I’m out there, everybody has their guns on safety.”

Dessens shakes his head. “Can’t do it, but I’ll have them pointed down.”

I nod. “And I get a bulletproof vest.”

Dessens agrees to the vest, and they have one on me in seconds. He and I work out a signal for me to come out of the house with Schilling without some trigger-happy, Jets-fan officer taking a shot at us.

Willie offers to come in with me, but Dessens refuses. Within five minutes I’m walking across the street toward a quite beautiful ranch-style home, complete with manicured lawn and circular driveway. I can see a swimming pool behind the house to the right side, but since I didn’t bring my bathing suit, I probably won’t be able to take advantage of it. Besides, I don’t think this bulletproof vest would make a good flotation device.

As I walk, I notice that the street has gotten totally, eerily silent. I’m sure that every eye is on me, waiting to storm the house if Schilling blows my unprotected head off. “The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife” suddenly doesn’t seem like a cliché anymore.

Four hours ago my biggest problem was how to ask the first-class flight attendant for a vodkaless Bloody Mary without using the embarrassing term “Virgin Mary,” and now I’ve got half a million sharpshooters just waiting for me to trigger a firefight. I’m sure there are also television cameras trained on me, and I can only hope I don’t piss in my pants on national television.

As I step onto the porch, I see that the door is partially open. I take a step inside, but I don’t see anything. Schilling’s voice tells me to “Come in and close the door behind you,” which is what I do.

The first thing I’m struck by is how sparsely furnished the place is and how absent the touches of home. There are a number of large unopened cardboard boxes, and my sense is that Schilling must have only recently moved in. This makes sense, since I saw on ESPN a few weeks ago that the Giants just signed him to a fourteen-million, three-year deal, a reward for his taking over the starting running back job late last season.

Schilling sits on the floor in the far corner of the room, pointing a handgun at me. He is a twenty-five-year-old African-American, six three, two hundred thirty pounds, with Ali-like charismatic good looks. Yet now he seems exhausted and defeated, as if his next move might be to turn the gun on himself. When I saw him on ESPN, he was thanking his wife, teammates, and God for helping him achieve his success, but he doesn’t look too thankful right now. “How many are out there?” he asks.

Why? Is he so delusional as to think he can shoot his way out? “Enough to invade North Korea,” I say.

He sags slightly, as if this is the final confirmation that his situation is hopeless. I suddenly feel a surge of pity for him, which is not the normal feeling I have for an accused killer pointing a gun at me. “What’s going on here, Kenny?”

He makes a slight head motion toward a hallway. “Look in there. Second door on the left.”

I head down the hall as instructed and enter what looks like a guest bedroom. There are five or six regular-size moving cartons, three of which have been opened. I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to be looking for, so I take a few moments to look around.

I see a stain under the door to the closet, and a feeling of dread comes over me. I reluctantly open the door and look inside. What I see is a torso, folded over with a large red stain on its back. I don’t need Al Michaels to tell me that this is Troy Preston, wide receiver for the Jets. And I don’t need anybody to tell me that he is dead.

I walk back into the living room, where Kenny hasn’t moved. “I didn’t do it,” he says.

“Do you know who did?”

He just shakes his head. “What the hell am I gonna do?”

I sit down on the floor next to him. “Look,” I say, “I’m going to have a million questions for you, and then we’re going to have to figure out the best way to help you. But right now we have to deal with
them.
” I point toward the street, in case he didn’t know I was talking about the police. “This is not the way to handle it.”

“I don’t see no other way.”

I shake my head. “You know better than that. You asked for me… I’m a lawyer. If you were going to go down fighting, you’d have asked for a priest.”

He wears the fear on his face like a mask. “They’ll kill me.”

“No. You’ll be treated well. They wouldn’t try anything… there’s media all over this. We’re going to walk out together, and you’ll be taken into custody. It’ll take some time to process you into the system, and I probably won’t see you until tomorrow morning. Until then you are to talk to no one—not the police, not the guy in the next cell, no one. Do you understand?”