Last Lawyer Standing

by Douglas Corleone

  “Just move in?” Audra said.

  “Moving out actually.”

  “When?”

  “Don’t know yet. Probably after Turi’s case is over.”

  “That’s a long time to sleep in the living room, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. I’ve already been doing it for months.”

  I went immediately to the liquor cabinet. “Scotch? I have several single malts. I’m going to have a glass of Glenlivet myself.”

  “No scotch for me. Do you have anything else?”

  I checked the fridge but I was fresh out of Kona Longboards. My liquor cabinet was filled with nothing but scotch. Then I remembered the bottle of red wine that had been hiding in plain sight on my kitchen counter since my last female visitor.

  “Red wine? Seventeen eighty-seven Château Lafite,” I joked. “Either that or a cheap bottle of Merlot I shoplifted from ABC.”

  She smiled as she leaned over to pet Skies. “Merlot is perfect.”

  The bottle had been opened by the previous guest. I popped the cork back out and poured a few ounces into a wineglass.

  “Don’t you like red wine?” she asked as I handed her the glass. “Aren’t you Italian?”

  “Actually I’m allergic to it. That and grape juice. Doctors tell me it’s the sulfites.”

  “That’s too bad. You’re missing out. You can’t even have a single glass?”

  “Not unless you want to see me wake tomorrow morning with bright red blotches all over my body.”

  She scrunched up her features. “Who says I’m going to be here when you wake up tomorrow morning?”

  For a moment our eyes met.

  “I’ve gone my whole life being presumptuous,” I said. “Why stop now.”

  Audra took a sip of her wine and sat on the bed. I took a gulp of my scotch and contemplated sneaking away for a Percocet.

  “So where do you plan on moving to after the trial?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure yet. A few places around the globe have crossed my mind.”

  “You mean, you’re leaving the islands?”

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think it’s time.”

  Audra fell silent. So did I. We sat there staring out my sliding-glass door at the full moon. If I left the States, it would mean leaving the law behind. And that sounded right. I often imagined myself tending bar on the outskirts of Rome or waiting tables at a world-class restaurant in Madrid. A job I could leave behind when I went home.

  Finally I shut off my fantasies and excused myself to the bathroom.

  Soon as I made it there, I ripped my bottle from the medicine cabinet, uncapped it, and dumped four pills in my hand. As I swallowed them, one at a time, I stared at myself in the mirror. I was thirty-four, hurtling toward thirty-five. Not a single gray hair, but the lines on my face were undeniably more defined. My thoughts these days were turning more and more toward my own mortality. And not just because I recently had a gun pressed to the back of my head.

  How long can I keep running? I wondered.

  By not settling down I imagined I was somehow fending off time. But the calendar said differently. For a male lawyer who drank heavily and popped Percocet for emotional pain, thirty-five had to be considered middle age. Oddly, it both pained and comforted me to know I was halfway through life.

  Suddenly I heard a glass shatter, followed by a woman’s scream. I booked out of the bathroom and rushed into the living room.

  There I found Audra lying on the hardwood floor, her body shuddering in pain.

  I glanced down at the broken wineglass lying next to her and knew immediately what had happened. Panicking, I reached for my cell phone and dialed emergency services.

  “Nine-one-one operator,” a female answered. “What’s your emergency?”

  I knelt next to Audra, my whole body trembling. “A woman in my home has been poisoned.”

  “Poisoned with what, sir?”

  I swallowed but my mouth was dry of saliva. “Strychnine, I believe.”

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  I gave her my name, rushed through my address. Every word I spoke was an effort.

  “Kevin, are you the one who poisoned her?” the operator asked.

  “Of course not,” I roared over Audra’s shrieks.

  “All right, sir, I’m going to need you to calm down for me. Help is on the way. But in the meantime, I need you to keep her as quiet as possible, since any loud noise will increase the violence of her spasms.”

  I talked soothingly to Audra, told her to relax, that everything would be all right. I reminded her how beautiful she looked tonight, how she’d soon own a home smack-dab in paradise. I asked her to calm herself, but even as I said it, her convulsions grew worse.

  “It’s not working,” I cried into the phone. “What else can I do for her?”

  “Do you have any tranquilizers in the house?”

  “Benzos, sure. All types.”

  “Any Valium?”

  “The generic. Diazepam.”

  “Good. Get those and place a few under her tongue. Not too many or you’ll depress her respiratory system.”

  I tossed the phone next to Audra on the floor and raced back to the bathroom and snatched a bottle filled with diazepam, which had been prescribed to me by my shrink, Dr. Damian Opono, immediately following Erin Simms’s suicide. I’d taken a few but had little use for them on top of the Percocet.

  When I returned, Audra’s convulsions had grown even worse. I opened the bottle and spilled several pills into my hand, then I cradled her head in my lap and did my best to get the pills under her tongue.

  “Are you still there, Kevin?” came a far-off voice.

  I stared at my phone on the floor a few feet away.

  “Kevin? Are you there?”

  I didn’t respond to the 911 operator.

  She heard the sirens coming from outside my villa and told me to hang on, help was only a few seconds away.

  With Audra’s head in my lap, I rocked back and forth, humming.

  I don’t remember precisely what happened next, except that I darted downstairs to let the paramedics in. Then I begged them to save Audra’s life.

  KEPAKEMAPA

  (SEPTEMBER)

  CHAPTER 33

  When I stepped into the conference room on the fourteenth day of September, Jake and Flan were already huddled together with the contents of two files spread across the long mahogany table. One was labeled Oksana Sutin Investigation, the other State versus Turi Ahina.

  “Does this mean what I think it means, Jake?”

  “The partnership papers are drawn up, awaiting your signature, son.”

  I sighed with relief. “Mahalo,” I said, as I took a seat. “I’m going to need you to second-seat me at Turi’s trial next month. I’m not going to be able to handle this one on my own.”

  “Well, Josh Leffler’s adoption is going smoothly, and Miles Flanagan’s will is drawn up, so you’re looking at a free man. I’d be honored to stand at your side, son.”

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s start with the governor.”

  Governor Omphrey was losing some ground in the polls with rumors about his affair and possible involvement in the murder of Oksana Sutin spreading around the island like the flu. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser had him eight points up with a margin of error of plus-or-minus four. The governor was growing uncomfortable. He wouldn’t survive an October surprise.

  “Priority one is finding Lok Sun,” I said, the name dripping like acid from my tongue.

  The strychnine in the red wine was meant for me, no question about that. No one could have known that Audra Karras was coming back to my villa with me following the governor’s fundraiser. Nor could anyone have known that I was allergic to red wine; it wasn’t something I advertised. And the timing was right. The poisoning immediately followed my conversation with Iryna Kupchenko, who after that night had either gone underground or gone missing.

  I had considered that
the bottle might have been poisoned before the night of the fundraiser, but evidence suggested that someone had been in my villa that evening. Most notably, a memory stick that had been sitting in my laptop had disappeared and the hard drive had been erased. On both were documents that contained copious notes on the Oksana Sutin murder investigation, including the name Gavin Dengler. At that point I hadn’t mentioned the name Gavin Dengler to a single person. So if I had died of strychnine poisoning that night, the name would have been gone for good.

  Flan said, “How do we go about finding the Pharmacist when we don’t even know what he looks like? The feds can’t nail him down; what makes you think we can?”

  “Chances are he’s lying low in Chinatown. That’s not a large area to cover.”

  “Not if you’re Charlie Chan,” Jake said. “But if you haven’t noticed, the three of us are all Caucasian.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “We don’t need a Chinese detective. We’ve got lawyers, we’ve got guns, and we’ve got money.”

  “You plan on busting up an entire city?”

  “Just a few square blocks of it, for now.”

  “What’s our second priority?” Flan said.

  “Finding Gavin Dengler. Oksana Sutin’s apartment building has been quiet as a morgue these past couple weeks. No Lincolns, no limos, no nothing in or out. So we start with the devil we know—Yoshimitsu Nakagawa.”

  Jake chuckled. “Something tells me we’re not gonna have much luck bribing a billionaire, or hauling him into court, for that matter.”

  “The thing about billionaires,” I said, “is that they typically have a lot to lose.”

  I stared out at the Koolau Mountain Range, a thick rainbow stretching across its highest points.

  “Lok Sun, Gavin Dengler, and Yoshimitsu Nakagawa,” I said, pushing aside the Oksana Sutin file. “That takes care of the governor. Now let’s move on to Turi Ahina.”

  One week after Audra was released from the Queen’s Medical Center, Turi found his way to the infirmary with a busted eye socket. He’d been attacked in his cell in the middle of the night while he slept. The guard charged with making certain all relevant doors were locked was currently on paid leave. I raised all kinds of hell, but it got me as far as I expected. Bottom line was, I needed to get Turi acquitted of the state charges or he wouldn’t make it to Thanksgiving.

  Since the attack on Turi in jail, my dreams about Brandon Glenn and his rape and murder at Rikers Island had increased, and I’d been losing night after night of sleep.

  I looked at Flan. “Where are we with the Honda Civic?”

  “Nowhere. Still no luck finding the car. I paid a visit to Meredith Yancy’s daughter and son-in-law in Mililani, and they deny any knowledge of the existence of a Honda Civic owned by Max Guffman. If you ask me, they had been trained to say exactly that. I didn’t believe either one of them.”

  “Any luck locating Mrs. Doris Ledford in Arizona?”

  “Negative. I got a phone number for one of her kids living in a suburb of Phoenix. He said, yes, Mama had come to visit briefly. But only on her way to Nevada. Apparently Mrs. Ledford won an all-expense-paid trip to fabulous Las Vegas just before she left Hawaii. The son had no idea what hotel she was staying at and he hadn’t been given a telephone number.”

  Jake said, “Sounds like the prize came courtesy of the HPD.”

  I frowned. “That leaves us with Detective Tatupu. I need to convince him to testify.” I pulled part of Turi’s file toward me. “Even with a busted eye socket, Turi’s not talking about what he was doing in Pearl City in the first place. That means we have to pound the pavement again and find out for ourselves.”

  Flan rose from his chair. “Is that where you want to start today?”

  I thought about it then nodded. “Sounds like as good a place as any.”

  CHAPTER 34

  We expanded our search of Pearl City, covering as much of the five square miles and nine thousand households as we could in a day. Still, we barely scratched the surface. No one admitted to recognizing Turi Ahina other than when they saw him on television. It killed me that we would be coming back here all week, taking up time that should have been used to prepare Turi’s defense. But after Brandon Glenn, I wasn’t going to take anything for granted.

  “I don’t see the point,” Flan said as the sun began to set over Kolohe Street. “Why waste our time helping him if he won’t even help himself?”

  My mind was already on the areas that bordered Pearl City, Aiea to the east, Waipahu to the west.

  “It’s frustrating,” I said. “But that’s what criminal clients do. They lie and keep secrets from their lawyers. And more times than not it comes back to burn them in the ass.”

  Flan sighed, leaned on my Jeep, and spread out his hands. “But why?”

  I leaned next to him, folding my arms across my chest, staring down at the pavement. “In most cases, I’d say it’s because they’ve learned from experience that they can’t trust anybody. They’ve been fucked over their entire lives, usually beginning with their parents. As they got older, they were fucked over by people they thought were friends. By the time they make it to me, they think getting fucked over is just another side effect of humanity. Why tell their lawyer the truth when their lawyer’s just going to bend them over a barrel in the end?”

  I reached into the Jeep and pulled out a pair of prescription sunglasses and placed them on my face to mute the sunset. “Sometimes clients think they know better than their lawyer,” I said, “but that’s rare. Deep down they know the law is every bit as complex as medicine, and the government’s a cancer that’s going to get them sooner or later.” I shrugged. “But with Turi, I don’t know, Flan. Whatever he’s hiding from me, he has his reason. And you can bet that whatever that reason is, it has nothing to do with his own best interests. Turi’s protecting someone. And if I’m going save him, I have to find out who.”

  We got into the Jeep, and I drove Flan back to the office, where his jalopy was waiting for him. I took the elevator upstairs to our office and found Hoshi still sitting behind her desk at reception, staring intently into her computer screen.

  I glanced at my watch. “What are you still doing here?”

  She looked up, startled that someone was there. “Oh, hi, Kevin. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were coming back to the office tonight.”

  “Just need to grab a Red Bull, then I’m picking up Scott in Waikiki and heading into Chinatown.”

  “How did the search go today?”

  “About as well as expected. No one admits to knowing Turi, no Mrs. Ledford, and certainly no navy Honda Civic with a bullet hole in its bumper.”

  “With a Jesus fish and a KEIKI ON BOARD sticker, right?”

  “Right,” I said, smiling. “You’ve been eavesdropping, I guess?”

  She smiled back. “In case no one’s ever told you this, Kevin—your voice travels a bit.”

  “I guess it does at that.”

  “So I noticed you’re not on Facebook. But you do know what it is, right?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve heard of it. Why?”

  “Well, it’s a social-networking site. People post messages about what they’re doing and stuff.”

  “And what are these people doing?”

  “Oh, it could be anything. Eating pizza, going for a drive, walking their dog.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “Not always,” she said. “But that’s not the point.”

  I looked at my watch. “Well, what is the point, Hoshi?”

  “People post pictures all the time. You know, so their friends can see. But not every Facebook friend is someone you know in real life. You can just type in someone’s name and send them a ‘friend request.’ Most people don’t even pay attention to who they’re friending. They just click to confirm and are excited to boost their number of friends.”

  “Sounds like the exact opposite of how I live my life.”

  Hoshi giggled. “Yeah, kind of. But
back to what I was saying. I send out friend requests all the time. And I don’t usually get turned down. Especially by guys.”

  “And?”

  “And so I friended a guy named Brian Haak.”

  “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

  “Because he’s married to Karen Haak, Meredith Yancy’s daughter.”

  “Okay, I’m with you so far.”

  She waved me forward. “Come around my desk.”

  When I got there, I leaned over her shoulder and peered at the screen. She used the mouse to click on her own Facebook profile, then she moved the mouse to the area labeled FRIENDS.

  “Here he is,” Hoshi said, pulling up Brian Haak’s profile.

  His profile stated that he was married to Karen Haak, that they had one child named Kyle. It listed Brian’s birthday and his current city as Mililani, Hawaii. He was a Christian who voted Republican. He was a marine and his motto was “Get some,” whatever the hell that meant.

  Hoshi dragged the mouse over to a link that read PHOTOS. She scanned through a number of albums before finally saying, “Here it is. I downloaded it. But I wanted you to see the real thing.”

  She clicked on a photograph and I immediately recognized both of the faces. Max Guffman and his lady friend, Meredith Yancy, who was holding an infant, presumably Kyle. The picture appeared to have been taken in the parking lot of Kualoa Beach Park.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.

  Parked a few feet behind them was a navy-blue Honda, with a Washington State license plate I couldn’t make out. On the rear bumper a silver Jesus fish hung lopsided across from the word CIVIC, and just a few feet north, pasted onto the rear window, was a diamond-shaped, blue sticker that read KEIKI ON BOARD.

  “Hoshi, if I wasn’t such a bad man, I’d kiss you.”

  Hoshi grinned up at me—a bit devilishly, I thought—and said, “I don’t think either of us is ready for that quite yet.”