The Defense: A Novel (3 page)
Not yet.
“I realize then that I could not rely on Jack. Before I kill him, I gave the sister some satisfaction. I hand her my knife. I helped her cut him, cut him bad.”
A hellish fire kindled in his gaze, bathing his eyes in light. He appeared to find the memory delicious.
“Jack was in over his head, so I cut it off and gave it to his sister before I killed her, too. She was brave. Not like her brother.”
I looked at the gym bag on the floor, now mercifully closed, and thought of Jack. My opinion swung back to hating him. If I could, I would have kicked his severed head into the Hudson. Just plain kicked the shit out of it. Jack deserved to lie at the bottom of the river next to that sunken ship.
“We don’t have time for a dry run for you,” continued Arturas. “You take the bomb in now, Mr. Flynn. Calm yourself. Remember your daughter. You get the bomb in—you are a step closer to her. If you get caught, you go to jail for trying to blow up a public building. You’d get life, no parole. What do you think?”
I thought he was right. People who try to blow up public buildings in this city don’t usually fare too well in sentencing. I would be in the running for life imprisonment without doubt. The only saving grace would be that I’d planted the bomb because they’d threatened my daughter. Extreme duress isn’t an absolute defense, but I might avoid life.
That sickening smile spread over Arturas’s face once again. I almost got the impression that he could guess what I was thinking. Volchek stubbed out his cigar and peered at me through the dying smoke. I thought that they were both intelligent, ruthless men, but each had a different kind of intelligence. Arturas seemed to be an adviser, the man with the plan who thought through the eventualities and carefully weighed up the risks, a calculated thinker. His boss was way different. Volchek’s movements were slow and graceful, like a big cat sitting in the long grass, stalking its prey; his intellect was primal, instinctual—almost feral. My instinct told me that these men weren’t going to let me live to tell my tale, no matter what happened.
“I haven’t set foot in that building in a long time. What makes you think I’m going to be able to just walk in today without being searched?”
“You know the security guards and, more important, they know you,” said Arturas. His voice began rising, and he sat forward to hammer home his point. “We’ve been watching the courthouse for a long time, lawyer. I’ve spent nearly two years planning this to the last detail. Whoever carries the bomb has to be someone the guards trust, someone they least expect. There is no other way of getting a bomb into that building. I’ve watched you myself, running through the doors late for court, waving at the guard on the desk when you jog through the sensors and set off the alarm. They ignore it and wave you on. You talk to the guards. They know you. They even take your calls for you.”
I didn’t carry a cell phone. I never liked the thought of anyone being able to pin my location to the nearest cell phone tower. It was a hangover from the old days that I’d never shaken off despite Jack having bought me more than one cell phone. I lost them all. When I was practicing, I’d be in the courthouse most of the day. If anyone needed me urgently, they rang the pay phone in the lobby. Usually somebody in security had a good idea what court I’d be in and they’d come get me. A couple of bottles of whiskey for the security guys at Christmas and a basket each at Thanksgiving was a small price to pay for that kind of help.
My head began to clear a little.
“Why can’t you kill this guy some other way? A sniper could take him out as he travels to court.”
Arturas nodded. “I’ve thought about that. I’ve thought over every possibility. We don’t know where he is or how he will get to court. This is the only way. We had lots of law firms look at the case. Those big firms practiced all over the city. You and Jack had nearly all of your cases here, in Chambers Street. You got to know the staff. Those other lawyers charge nine hundred dollars an hour. You think they have time to talk to a security guard? No. I knew this had to be the way the very first time I saw you and Jack run through security, setting off the alarm, and no one batted an eyelid. You showed me the way.”
Arturas was the brains here. This was clearly his plan. He seemed somehow detached, coldly rational, and I imagined he’d be that way even when it came to pulling the trigger. The opposite could’ve been said for Volchek. Even though he appeared calm after I’d hit him, I could sense that a monster lay behind his restrained pose, pawing at the surface, ready to break free at any moment.
I put my head in my hands and breathed deeply and slowly.
“There is one more thing, Mr. Flynn,” said Volchek. “You should know that we are fighters. We are proud. We are Bratva: This means
brotherhood
. I trust this man.” He put his hand on Arturas’s shoulder. “But much can go wrong. You must get the jacket inside. Your daughter’s death is one phone call away. You will get in. I know this. I can see a fighter in you, too. Do not fight me.”
He paused to light another cigar.
“Arturas and I came here twenty years ago with nothing. We spilled much blood to get where we are, and we will not run without a fight. But we are not stupid men. The trial is scheduled to last for three days. We are giving you two days. We cannot risk more. Two days to get Little Benny onto that seat so we can kill him. If he is not dead before four o’clock tomorrow, I have no choice. I will have to run. The longer the case goes on, the more likely the prosecutor will try to revoke my bail. A nine-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer told me that. You are smart enough to know he is right.”
I’d seen that happen before. Most prosecutors don’t have their most damaging piece of evidence at the arraignment when the accused applies for bail. DNA and expert evidence takes time to prepare. But by the time the case comes up for trial, the prosecution have all their ducks in a row, and if the prosecutor gets a good run on the evidence, they will make an application to the judge to revoke the defendant’s bail. That usually seals the defendant’s fate. All it takes is a small, yet deliberate, delay by the custody officer for the jury to see the defendant in handcuffs. A second’s glance at those bracelets and it’s all over—the jury will convict every time.
I nodded at Volchek. He knew that I was experienced enough to know prosecution tactics, so there was no point in denying it.
As Volchek delivered his ultimatum, he struggled to hide the brutality of his true nature from his voice.
“The court has my passport as part of my bail terms. I get merchandise flown in from Russia three times a year, by private plane to a commercial airstrip not far from here. That plane arrives tomorrow at three o’clock and leaves at six. If Benny is still alive at four—you’ve run out of time. I will need to leave the court at four to make the plane. That plane is my last chance to get out of the United States. I want to stay. I want to fight. Little Benny must die before four tomorrow, or I will kill you and your daughter. Know this as a solemn vow.”
The whiskey glass shattered in my hand.
I felt like I was falling. My body slumped, my jaw trembled, and I shut my teeth tight to keep them from rattling. Blood dripped from a cut in my palm, but I couldn’t feel the pain. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. My breath escaped in a short, low moan. If anything happened to Amy, the pain would kill me. I could feel my brain, my muscles, my heart, burning with the mere thought of that agony. My wife, Christine, had put up with a lot from me: the long hours in the office, the three a.m. phone calls from police precincts all over the city because the cops arrested one of my clients, the missed dinner dates and excuses I made for myself that I was doing it all for her and Amy. When I hit the bottle a year ago, she threw me out. I’d lost one of the best things I’d ever had. If I lost our daughter? I couldn’t even begin to contemplate that horror.
From somewhere I heard the voice of my father, the man who’d taught me the grift, the man who’d told me what to do if I ever got made during a con
—hold it together no matter what.
I closed my eyes and silently prayed,
Dear God, help me. Please help my little girl. I love her so much.
I wiped my eyes before the tears came, sniffed, and scrolled though the menu on my digital watch, past my alarm call, and on to the timer. I set it to countdown.
“You need to make a decision, lawyer,” said Arturas, fingering the revolver.
“I’ll do it. Just don’t hurt Amy. She’s only ten,” I said.
Volchek and Arturas looked at each other.
“Good,” said Arturas. “Go now and wait for me in lobby after you get through security.”
“You mean
if
I get through.”
“Should I make your daughter pray for you?” said Volchek.
I didn’t answer. I got out of the limo alone and saw Arturas looking up at me from the car as I stepped to the sidewalk.
“Remember. We are watching you, and men are watching your daughter,” Arturas said.
I nodded and said, “I won’t fight you.”
I lied.
Just as they’d lied to me. No matter what they said, no matter what they promised me, come four o’clock tomorrow, even if Benny should be reduced to a stain on the courthouse ceiling by then, they weren’t letting Amy go. They were going to kill me and my little girl.
I had thirty-one hours.
Thirty-one hours to double-cross the Russian Mafia and steal my daughter back. And I had no clue how to do it.
I folded my coat around me. Buttoned it, flipped the collar, and turned toward the courthouse. My father’s voice still played softly in my ear—
hold it together
. My hand had stopped bleeding. It felt even colder now; my breath seemed to freeze and fall in front of me. As that cold mist cleared, I saw something that I’d never seen before in nine years of daily practice at that courthouse—a line of maybe forty people comprised of reporters, lawyers, witnesses, defendants, and TV crews—all of them waiting to get though security.
There’s a strange electric sensation at the beginning of a major trial. As I joined the back of the line, I felt the excitement rising off the crowd, like heat shimmering on a stretch of distant Texan blacktop. Some of the crowd carried the early edition of the
New York Times
. I could see the front page in the arms of the man in front. The paper led with Volchek’s picture and the headline R
USSIAN
M
OB
T
RIAL
B
EGINS.
The guy in front of me looked like a crime reporter. Probably freelance or attached to a rag. You could spot the type a mile away: bad suit, bad haircut, and nicotine stains on his fingers revealing him as a chain smoker. I ducked my head into the folds of my overcoat and tried not to look at him.
The New York Chambers Street Court building was an old Victorian Gothic-style courthouse on steroids. Twenty-one courts spread over nineteen floors.
I counted twenty people in the line ahead of me.
The courthouse greeted visitors with a fifty-foot-wide stone staircase leading up to a row of Corinthian columns that sheltered a run-down entrance hall last decorated in the sixties. More people came and stood behind me as we slowly shuffled up the steps. I chanced an upward glance at the building. Statues, busts of former presidents and the first justices of New York, sat along the ledges, but time and weather were taking their toll on the old place.
As I climbed the last step, I felt sweat running down my cheek. My shirt clung to my back and made me even more aware of the bomb, which felt warm and alien. I counted only twelve people in front of me.
Getting into the courthouse without being searched seemed to be even more of a remote possibility than it had first appeared in the limo. Without consciously removing it from my pocket, I suddenly became aware of my pen in my right hand. Trudging slowly toward the entrance, I rolled my pen around my fingers absently. I’d often found myself doing this without even realizing. Somehow it helped me think. The pen had been a gift from Amy.
At the time it had felt like a parting gift. When I’d been drinking, I’d rarely made it home. About a week before Father’s Day, Christine decided I should move out and that Amy had a right to know. Christine told me that she didn’t recognize me anymore and that it was better for Amy not to have to watch me decline any further.
Kids are smart, and Amy is smarter than most. She knew something bad was on the horizon when she saw both of us standing at her bedroom door. She’d tied up her long blond hair so that it wouldn’t get in her eyes while she worked on her computer. As usual, she wore her favorite denim jacket over her jammies; if she wasn’t sleeping or in school, she wore that jacket, covered in pins with smiley faces and rock band logos. She’d saved her weekly allowance for a whole month to buy it in a cheap clothing store, then set about decorating it in her own style. I stared at her for a while—we both did. Before we could say anything, she simply put aside her laptop and cried. We didn’t need to tell her anything. She saw it coming a mile away. She asked the usual questions: How long would I be gone? Is it permanent? Why can’t we just get along? I didn’t have any answers. I just sat on the bed beside her, hugged her, and tried to be strong. Instead, I felt ashamed. Glancing at her laptop, I noticed she was looking at a website that sold engraved pens and had selected one with the inscription W
ORLD’S
B
EST
D
AD.
The pen stopped in my hand, the same pen Amy gave me just after I moved out of the house. I glanced down at the single word engraved on the polished aluminum shaft—
DAD.
She nearly broke my heart with that one. I stuffed the pen into my hip pocket and checked the line.
Ten people in front of me.
A whir from heavy machinery drew my attention skyward. The mayor had authorized extensive, external building restorations for the courthouse, and a huge suspended scaffold stage hung from the roof, cradling the stone workers about four floors from the top. It was difficult to make out the workmen from the ground, but even from this distance I could see the stage gently swaying in the wind. They were blasting the dirt from the masonry and restoring the broken ornamental work. Developers wanted to pull down the courthouse and move justice to cheaper accommodations. With the mayor being a former lawyer, it hadn’t taken long for a petition to get the backing of influential councilmen. The courthouse could stay. They would restore the exterior and continue to let the interior rot away. New York was like that sometimes, content to let the polished veneer hide the rotting corpse in the basement. The reality was that Chambers Street Courthouse had historical value, as it was the first night court ever to be established in the United States. Night court is the most important court in the city. Every defendant has to be brought before a judge within twenty-four hours of being charged. With three hundred arrests per day in Manhattan alone, that meant an extra court sitting from five p.m. through to one a.m. When the recession really took hold, crime in the city went up. Now Chambers Street ran a criminal court twenty-four hours a day. Justice didn’t sleep in this courthouse, and it hadn’t closed its doors in the last two years.
