The Defense: A Novel (28 page)

“I take it you’re not hoping to find foam in the lungs,” I said.

“Drowning doesn’t seem likely; these men were executed, Mr. Flynn. Dead before they hit the water. We don’t get a lot of piracy on the river these days, and we’ve certainly never seen anything like this.”

“You find any of the cargo?” I said.

“Not one little bit.”

“What was the
Sacha
carrying?”

Kennedy didn’t answer. Instead he grabbed the body closest to him and turned it over onto its chest. I read the company logo on the back of the coveralls—M
C
L
AUGHLIN
D
EMOLITION.

“So, let’s recap, Mr. Flynn—a couple of nights before this trial starts, the
Sacha
’s crew are murdered and the cargo goes missing. Yesterday I get information about a possible bomb threat. There might be a link here; there might not. I wanted you to come see this because I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t think you do, either. I wanted you to see firsthand what kind of people you’re representing…”

I couldn’t focus on a word Kennedy said. I’d tuned out completely. An image forced everything else from my mind—the vans that had driven into the basement lot of the courthouse.

“How much did they get?” I said.

“They got enough to give most buildings in New York a serious problem.”

Kennedy leaned back a little and looked at me, waiting for me to come clean.

In the end, I didn’t say anything. I heard a rustle from the tent plastic behind me and saw a silhouette framed in the morning sunlight. It was Levine, sucking on a surreptitious cigarette.

“Look, I’m going to be honest with you, Mr. Flynn. Yesterday we get information that you were discussing a bomb with your client. Today we discover there’s a boatload of explosives stolen and the crew executed. Now, I don’t think you killed these guys, but I’m sure you know a lot more than you’re telling me. Then there’s the blood.”

“What blood?” I asked.

“The blood I saw on your shirtsleeve yesterday. Maybe that blood came from one of these guys?”

I’d forgotten all about that spot of blood—from my hand. Last evening I’d held out my hands for the cuffs in a last-ditch effort to intimidate Kennedy into leaving me alone. I remembered him looking at my hands.

“I cut myself yesterday. A glass broke in my hand. That was my blood. Look. Here’s the cut,” I said.

Kennedy examined my hand. “I think that’s probably the first time you’ve told me the truth,” he said. “So cut the bullshit and tell me the rest.”

“There’s nothing more to tell.”

“Look, I know you’re just nervous. You’re protecting your client and all. But right now it’s you who needs protecting. I want to rule you out so I can concentrate on your client. So, I’d like you to consent to a search of your apartment.”

He unfolded a piece of paper from his coat pocket and put it in front of me. It was a standard form of consent for a property search. I remembered that moment the night before, standing in front of the window frame that had been painted shut and patting my pockets for my keys. Either the keys fell out of my pocket when I got knocked out in the limo the previous morning or … The terrible thought hit me like a punch; Arturas needed to set me up as the bomber. He took my keys to plant something incriminating in my apartment, something that linked me to the bomb. I couldn’t tell Kennedy a thing, not yet, not with Levine listening and not until I had proof, proof enough to hand him Levine and the Russians on a plate, and that proof had to be good enough to trump whatever the hell they might have planted in my apartment.

Levine must have felt me watching him. He moved to the front of the tent and unzipped the flap.

“We’d better make a move if we’re going to get back in time,” said Levine, smiling.

Kennedy closed the bags, got to his feet, and removed his cell phone from the inner pocket of his jacket, right-hand side.

“Sign the consent and we can rule you out of the investigation and concentrate on the real bad guys. Last chance,” he said, holding aloft the phone.

“I got nothing to say to you,” I said.

Flipping open his cell, he dialed.

“It’s Kennedy. I’m here with Flynn. He refused to consent to a search. Amend the last paragraph of the affidavit to read,
Eddie Flynn, attorney and officer of the court, refused to cooperate with a reasonable request from a federal law-enforcement agency to conduct a search of his property in order to rule out his involvement in suspected offenses.
” He paused to let whoever was on the end of the line take this down. As he spoke, his eyes never left mine. “
His lack of cooperation is unreasonable and is likely to obstruct and impede the progress of a federal investigation. We humbly request that the court reconsider the warrant to seize and preserve vital evidence.
You got that? Good. Get it over to Gimenez ASAP.”

Closing his cell phone with a snap, Kennedy couldn’t keep the satisfied smirk off his face. I thought over his phone call. It told me a lot. It told me that the FBI had already tried and failed to get a warrant to search my apartment because Kennedy was asking for the issue to be
reconsidered.
If the FBI need a search warrant urgently, they can call an on-duty federal judge and apply for the warrant over the phone. I guessed Kennedy had tried for the telephonic warrant last night and failed, for good reason. First, his probable cause sounded weak; a lip-reading of the word “bomb,” a federal witness under death threat, and the theft of demolition material, with no link to me, probably wasn’t enough. Second, Congress has put special protections in place for certain classes of people—lawyers being at the top of the list.

Searching a lawyer’s business or home is dangerous, due to the risk of the search team finding material protected under attorney-client privilege. A federal magistrate might be happy to suspend my Fourth Amendment rights, but because of the danger of violating my client’s rights, it would be unlikely that a warrant would be issued without a hearing. Most warrants are obtained not on the phone, but on paper, without a hearing. An agent will draw up an affidavit, setting out the reasons for the search and what they’re looking for, and nine times out of ten it’s granted. If there is a difficult issue involved, like searching a lawyer’s apartment, the federal prosecutor will need to argue the application in a hearing. That takes time. Some warrants get issued within a day or, if the feds are lucky, half a day. Some take weeks of preparation before the FBI even apply for the warrant.

Kennedy let that smirk grow into a full-blown self-satisfied smile.

He knew his application for a warrant would be granted, and I’d helped him do it. As a lawyer, I have a duty to cooperate with the court. By refusing to consent to the search, I’d pretty much handed the warrant to Kennedy. No judge would take the risk of refusing the warrant application because they wouldn’t want to give the impression of protecting a dirty lawyer.

“Which judge is hearing the application?” I asked.

“Potter. We’re scheduled for noon.”

It was 8:05 a.m.

My timetable just went out the window. At noon, Assistant United States Attorney Gimenez would get the FBI their warrant. The feds had probably frozen my apartment already by having an agent on the door, making sure nobody removed evidence and patiently waiting for the paper with Potter’s signature. After Potter granted the application, it would probably take ten, maybe fifteen minutes, to get the warrant signed and stamped by the clerk, then maybe forty minutes to get the original document to my apartment in order to legally commence the search. I thought I would have until four o’clock to figure this out. Now I had less than five hours, tops.

As we moved outside the tent, Kennedy took my arm. In his other hand he held his card. “This is my contact information. Think this over very carefully. You’re in over your head.”

I saw Levine take out his cell phone.

“No, thanks. You can keep your card,” I said.

Kennedy returned his card to his jacket.

Bill Kennedy struck me as a nervous but diligent agent. He gave a shit and that was hard to fake. At that time I felt pretty sure that Kennedy was on the level. I would have to come clean to him eventually, but I needed to have the whole story before I went to him and I didn’t want the Russians to know I’d taken Kennedy’s card. I would have to think of another way to contact him.

One that the Russians wouldn’t expect.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The feds gave me a ride back to the courthouse. There was no conversation on the way back. I felt grateful for that, as it allowed me a little time to think.

I told myself that everything I would need to nail the Russians would be in that suitcase. The suitcase on the passenger seat of one of the vans that carried the
Sacha
’s payload of explosives.

During the return journey, Levine kept his eyes on me from the rearview mirror. Kennedy and the other agent, Coulson, didn’t seem to have any inkling that Levine was dirty. Kennedy would take a lot of convincing about one of his own. One thing didn’t make sense to me, though: If Levine was on the inside, how come he couldn’t find out where the feds were hiding Benny?

“So, are you guys bringing Witness X to court this morning?” I said.

At this question, both Coulson and Levine appeared to prick up their ears as if they were awaiting Kennedy’s answer with interest.

“That’s on a need-to-know basis, right, guys?” said Kennedy.

“Right,” said Levine and Coulson simultaneously.

“In actual fact, he
is
coming to court today. I have a special team from out of town looking after Witness X—guys from the protection program. Even I don’t know where they’re holding the witness. Better that way. Accountability begins and ends with the protection team until they get him to court. After that, I handle the security.”

That explained it perfectly. Levine was definitely Volchek’s man, and nobody in that car knew where Benny was being held. I thought that was pretty smart. Kennedy went up in my estimation.

“Mr. Flynn, I’ll be keeping a close eye on you today,” said Kennedy. “If we find something in your home, I want to be the one to make the arrest.”

Shaking my head, I forced a false laugh that failed to convince Kennedy of my confidence.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. If you know there’s a bomb on its way to the courthouse, you have to tell me,” he said.

“How do you know it’s not already in there?”

“We searched the place from top to bottom. It’s clean,” said Kennedy.

Before I asked myself how the FBI missed the vans, the answer came to me. If there was a vehicle in the basement parking lot and that vehicle was authorized on the watchman’s log, the FBI couldn’t legally search it. Fourth Amendment precluded it. Arturas had planned this down to the last detail, and I would’ve bet my shirt that those vans were authorized on the security entry log. The parking lot construction had taken place in the seventies, moving the old basement cells up a floor and demolishing the execution chamber. This vast underground space now held maybe two hundred vehicles. It would probably take the feds a week to trace the owners for every vehicle in the lot, and they would need to because their warrant application required them to notify the registered owner. To legally search each vehicle would take too long. Instead the search party would give a car a once-over, from the outside, and leave it at that. Busting open a window was too risky; the car might belong to a lawyer or a judge.

*   *   *

The FBI car pulled up outside the courthouse and Kennedy let me out.

“Remember what we talked about,” said Kennedy.

I ignored Kennedy and moved briskly up the steps. The workmen who were restoring the outer shell of the courthouse were already on their high moveable platform above me. The platform was suspended from the roof on thick steel cables and sat a couple of floors from the top of the building while the workmen blasted the masonry with jets to clean away a century of grime. A fine, brown snow descended onto the shoulders of everyone waiting in line to get through security. The fat guard with the mustache stood behind Hank to make sure I came back. The Russians weren’t worried about me getting back in, as the bomb was already upstairs. However, I still had my phone, the spray, the flashlight, and the real detonator, and I didn’t want the fat guard to see any of those. This time I didn’t wait to get close to security before I jumped the line; this time I walked past everyone, straight toward the fat guard; this time I wasn’t as nervous. I’d worked out a way to get in without much attention.

The security scanner beeped as I went through it, and I ignored Hank’s call, went straight up to Arturas’s inside man, and whispered, “Get rid of your buddy, Hank. I have money on me that I don’t want them to find. The money’s yours—Arturas told me I should give you your bonus now.”

“It’s okay, Hank. This guy’s with me,” said the fat guard. His name badge read A
LVIN
M
ARTIN.

Before Hank could protest a second time about not searching me as I entered the building, I nodded to Alvin that he should follow me and said, “Let’s go somewhere quiet. There are cameras in the lobby. I know a place in the basement.”

I’d remembered Edgar’s little store in the basement—a hidden room where Edgar, former chief of security, had secretly brewed moonshine for sale and distribution to discerning clientele, like me and some of my other lawyer friends and even a few judges. I recalled that Harry had grown particularly fond of Edgar’s “Root Juice.”

Alvin followed me through the double doors on the west side of the lobby that led to the stairwell and the basement.

We entered the basement lot and turned left, down a long, unlit corridor. In a recess, a hidden door heralded the entrance to Edgar’s old brewery. Thankfully, the door remained unlocked. The store appeared to be empty of home-brewing equipment. It had once been the boiler room, but now it merely held stacks of dusty folding chairs and a few tables. Edgar had got caught but didn’t end up getting canned. I remembered that Harry put in a good word for him at his disciplinary hearing. With a judge backing him, Edgar didn’t get fired. He got demoted and lost a lot of responsibility but he kept his job. In return, Harry kept the rest of his stock.