The Son of John Devlin (28 page)

The prospect of facing a charge under the RICO law was terrifying, because it provided prosecutors with vast powers.

As the navy-blue Chevy Suburban pulled into the basement garage of the John W. McCormack Federal Courthouse, it occurred to Coakley that a RICO prosecution would ruin what was left of his life.

* * *

“Mr. Coakley, I am Emily Lawrence, Assistant United States Attorney. I have a feeling we’ve met before. Have we?”

Coakley had just been led into her office by Agent Jeeter. He stood there, still wearing his overcoat, sweating profusely, wondering how soon he would be able to go home, put his feet up, and have a drink. Where Coakley seemed confused, frazzled, Emily was crisp and clear-minded. She wore a charcoal-gray suit, and a white blouse with green pinstripes. He was taken aback by how young and pretty she was.

“A few years ago, a criminal matter involving one of my clients, Jimmy Keegan,” he said.

She brightened. “Of course,” she said. “I knew we’d met.” She turned to Agent Jeeter and smiled. “Thanks,” she said, nodding.

“We’ll be outside,” he said.

She nodded again. “I’m sorry about our method of transport today,” she said, turning back to Coakley. “I suppose it seemed a bit abrupt to you?”

“It was illegal,” Coakley replied. “You can’t merely—”

“Of course, you’re absolutely right about it,” she said, smiling. “It was entirely illegal. Properly done, there would have been a warrant for your arrest based on some crime you had or were about to commit, and we would have demonstrated probable cause and yadda yadda yadda. You’re right. But when one gets warrants in this city, Mr. Coakley, sometimes the target of that warrant will learn of the impending action before its execution. From my standpoint, that is exceptionally inconvenient.

“So I made a decision to keep this as quiet and simple as possible. To include as few people as possible. To make the whole thing … how can I put it? Discreet.”

She indicated that Coakley should take a seat on her office sofa. “May I take your overcoat?” she asked.

He took it off and handed it to her. She brought it to a closet in the corner of her office and hung it up. Then she went to the easy chair that faced the couch and was about to sit down.

“Can we get you anything, Mr. Coakley?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. “A glass of whiskey,” he said.

“Of course,” she said. She went to the door of her office and spoke quietly with Agent Jeeter.

“It’ll just be a moment,” she said, taking a seat in the chair opposite him. “Mr. Coakley, permit me to get a few preliminaries out of the way.” She placed a legal pad on her lap. “You are fifty-nine years old, is that correct?”

Coakley hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll be sixty in April.”

“And you reside at 157 Stratford Street in West Roxbury, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And with whom do you reside?”

“I live alone,” he said.

“You are divorced?”

“Many years ago,” he said.

“Children?” she asked.

Coakley seemed annoyed. “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” he said.

There was a quiet tap on the door and Agent Jeeter entered. He carried a highball glass half filled with
brown liquid. “Hope scotch is okay,” he said. “Sorry we had no ice.”

“Thank you,” Coakley said, taking the glass in hand. He brought it to his lips and sipped. Jeeter left and Coakley held the glass in his hands, resting on his lap.

The office was very quiet, and softly lit. They had encountered only a few members of the building’s cleaning crew when they’d come up from the garage to Emily Lawrence’s office. Coakley had been in this building many times before; never under such circumstances, however.

Emily watched Coakley carefully for a long time. She said nothing.

Finally, he spoke: “What do you want of me?”

She nodded as though to say, That’s a reasonable question.

“What I want of you is to understand something,” she said. “I want you to understand that you need me.” She stared intently at him, looking directly into his eyes. “Because if you understand that, if you know the truth, which is that you need me right now, then everything else will fall into place. But we can’t do any business, not on a collegial basis, until you acknowledge that.”

Coakley sipped his drink and was deeply pleased by the sensation. In a way, he’d already worked this conversation through in his mind, or at least a conversation similar to this one. He’d worked it through in his mind now for years. He was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu.

“And why do I need you, Miss Lawrence?” he asked.

She got up from her chair and went to the office window. She gazed out at Post Office Square, twelve floors
below. At this time of night, the city’s business district was all but deserted.

“A better way to put it is that we need each other,” she said, turning from the window and returning to her seat. She smiled again. “We’re codependent.”

Coakley was surprised by this twist. “How so?” he asked.

“With your help, I succeed,” she said. “I get what I want. Without it, I fail. With my help, you get what you want, or rather, keep what you have. Without my help, you fail, too.”

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“You know exactly how I mean,” she said. “You know what I’m saying is right. You know it because if you did not know it you would have left here already. Because, of course, you are free to leave at any time. As you correctly pointed out, it violates the Constitution to take a citizen in a car and drive him downtown and keep him without probable cause. It’s illegal. And if you’re being held against your will right now, then that is illegal. We must charge you or release you—if you’re being kept here against your will.”

There was a certain force to her voice, a force, he thought, that derived from the simple clarity of her speaking style—direct, unadorned, yet with a certain confidence.

“Shall I tell you what I know and don’t know?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I know you are connected somehow to the morphine deal,” she said. “I know you are connected because you have met with Christopher Young and because common sense tells one that Dr. Young would need someone such
as yourself to provide direction and prudent counsel in such an ambitious undertaking as this. And so I know you are involved. What I do not know is precisely how you are involved. I do not know from whom the drug will be purchased, who manufactures it and where, and, most importantly, to whom it will be distributed. Because my goal here is to prevent the distribution of this substance and arrest those involved. That is my intent. I do not know many things, but I believe that if you recognize our mutual dependence, then I’ll have a very good chance of learning the things I need to know.”

She sat very still in her chair, her hands on the armrests, her back straight, head slightly cocked to one side.

“And if I tell you that I know Dr. Young because he is a client I advise on tax law, and I walk out of here right now, then what?” Coakley asked.

“Then you will not have finished your drink,” she said, nodding toward the nearly empty glass. “And that isn’t very hospitable.”

She did not want to say it, he suddenly realized. She did not want to behave like a traditional tough guy, making threats. The threat was understood, the sanctions grave. It was in the air, in his own mind, she knew. This she did not have to say. Not unless he pushed her to do so.

“So my choice is to help you or face a RICO prosecution,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

She stared at him for a long moment, then nodded slowly, confirming his statement. A RICO prosecution that would allow the government to seize his property—before a conviction, before trial. He would be left with nothing.

“I need you to help me bring in the man behind this whole thing,” she said. She stared at him. “Will you do that, Mr. Coakley? Will you help me and help yourself?”

Coakley gazed into his glass, then took a polite sip of his whiskey. He held the glass in two hands on his lap and nodded. He looked up at her.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll need our agreement drawn up in writing. But, yes, I will do that.”

She smiled a tight, cold smile. “Good,” she said. “Let’s jump right in. Why don’t you start, Mr. Coakley, by telling me precisely how this all relates to Detective Jack Devlin of the Boston Police Department.”

The report back from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue indicated that of the thirty-seven bars on the list he’d submitted, nine had made substantial contributions during the past year to charitable organizations. The pattern was strikingly similar to what he’d discovered with the Blackthorn: quarterly payments in equal amounts to organizations such as StopCrime, KidWatch, and Youth-Support. The donations ranged from a low of $12,000 per quarter to a high of $43,000. The average quarterly payment was $26,000 and the total annual take from these nine bars was $936,000. Nearly a million dollars, from just those nine bars. How many other clubs were involved? Jack wondered.

These contributions, in each instance, were the only donation made to the organizations, and in each case the funds were in turn passed along to the Law Enforcement Education Association.

The LEEA report that he’d requested indicated that the organization, during the previous year, had made donations to community groups totaling $117,000. Jack
guessed that amounted to ten percent or less of the LEEA’s total revenues for the year. Which meant that the other ninety percent was going somewhere else.

All of these bars, he suspected, made huge amounts of additional money because they were permitted to go way beyond their legal capacity on weekend nights. Thus, these owners must have seen the payments as the cost of doing business, and paid willingly, even eagerly.

Jack sat at an IBM computer terminal in the Massachusetts Office of Corporate Records. Within this department’s computer was listed every company in the state, as well as every not-for-profit organization of any kind, from world-renowned medical centers to Pop Warner football organizations.

He typed in the words Law Enforcement and found that there were thirty-one entries beginning with the words Law Enforcement. He called the full list to the screen: Law Enforcement Association Pension Fund, Law Enforcement Community Relations Assembly, Law Enforcement Assistance Act offices, and on and on. Halfway down the list he found the Law Enforcement Education Association. He tapped a few keys and called the organization’s incorporation records to the screen.

LEEA had been incorporated seven years earlier. It was located in Boston—a post office box—and its listed purpose was “the dissemination of law enforcement education.” It was registered as a nonprofit organization and was accorded tax-exempt status by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The founder and chairman was listed as Theodore J. Sheehan of West Roxbury. Marion W. Sheehan, of the same address, was listed as the secretary-treasurer.

Devlin printed out a copy of what was on the screen and headed downtown to the headquarters of State Street Bank and Trust Company, one of the world’s largest custody banks. It was from within State Street that trillions of dollars in world pension and mutual fund assets were kept track of. Its computer systems were among the most advanced financial systems ever devised.

Jack’s classmate from law school, Felix Dexter, headed the bank’s technology division. Felix Dexter had been the subject of profiles in the
Wall Street Journal
and other business publications celebrating his genius at financial technology. He’d been surprised to receive a phone call from his old friend Jack Devlin the night before. But, yes, he would be delighted to have Jack drop by.

“So this is the reward of climbing the corporate ladder?” Jack said as he was shown into Dexter’s spacious corner office.

“Ah,” Dexter replied, “you have more fun, I’m sure. But,” he said, turning and looking out toward International Place and, beyond, to the harbor, “I must admit I do like it. I like to come in here, shut my door, get my computers revved, and work the world financial byways as I gaze out over the sailboats.”

“So things are going really well for you?” Jack said.

“I’m very lucky,” Dexter replied. “And intrigued. When a friend who happens to be a policeman calls you at home at nine o’clock at night and says he has this case, I mean, it’s not what I’m accustomed to. So what’s up?”

Jack removed the document he’d copied at the Office of Corporate Records and handed it to Dexter. “If I
wanted to follow the financial activity of this organization, how would I go about it?” he asked.

Dexter took a moment to look at the document. He shrugged. “To follow a particular transaction?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’d have to be a party to it,” Dexter said. “You’d have to have a stake in the transaction to have access to the information. That or some sort of subpoena.”

“Let’s say for the moment I had a subpoena,” Jack said. “Would it be possible to follow—” He glanced over at the terminals on Dexter’s desk. “—from here, for example, what happens to that transaction?”

“You have to be more precise, Jack,” Dexter said.

“If a deposit were made into this account, or a series of deposits, and the money was then quickly dispersed in different directions, could it be followed by anyone outside the transaction. Could you follow it, for example?”

Dexter shrugged. “Yeah, well, I mean, it depends on whether I have access to the mainframe at the host institution. If I do, and I can get at the transaction on my machine, then I can mark it and follow it to the ends of the earth. I mean, that’s something we’re very good at here. There are huge pension funds, at GM for example, that have like fifty money managers throughout the world investing pieces of their pension fund. And somebody has to follow all the transactions all of the time. That’s us. So if GM calls me tonight and says, ‘Okay, where’s my dough?’ I have to be able to say, ‘Well, you have so much in U.S. equities and so much in Europe and so much in Asia,’ and then break it down into the most minute possible detail. So if you can get me the key to the front door, I can give you a tour of the house. Sure.”