Last Lawyer Standing

by Douglas Corleone

  I lined four pills up on the floor and started to crush them beneath my can of Gillette shaving cream. It took five minutes, maybe ten, but I soon had a nice fine powder on the tiled bathroom floor. But all the work had caused me to sweat. So I took off my T-shirt and shorts and threw them out into the bedroom, after removing a pen from my pocket. I broke the pen and used it as a straw, placing one end into my left nostril and holding the other end to the pile of powdered Percocet. When I snorted, my nose and eyes and throat burned even worse and I howled in pain.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I suddenly heard a voice say.

  I swung around, startled. Tried opening my eyes again. The image was fuzzy, but I could just make him out. Special Agent Michael Jansen of the DEA.

  “I have a valid prescription,” I said.

  CHAPTER 57

  Special Agent Jansen dug into my closet, ripped a shirt off the rack, picked a pair of jeans out of my hamper, and threw them at me in the bathroom. “Put these on, and hurry. I don’t know what the hell this woman looks like. I need you to help me find her.”

  “I can’t see anything,” I told him as I slipped into my shirt. “I can’t help you find Iryna if I’m blind.”

  “I sent the sketch artist down to the ABC Store to pick up some baby shampoo. That’ll remove the spray and you should have your vision back within ten minutes.”

  Jansen helped me off the floor once I’d dressed, then guided me into the living room. “Why the hell did she run anyway?”

  “She’s not documented.”

  “Did you tell her I don’t give a rat’s shit about her immigration status? That I just want to find this killer Masonet?”

  “She’s ignorant. And scared.”

  Once the sketch artist returned, she rubbed the Johnson’s baby shampoo gently into my eyes over the kitchen sink. I’d all but stopped coughing and my breathing was beginning to return to normal. Five minutes after the shampooing, I could open my eyes into narrow slits.

  I walked through the bedroom and glanced into the bathroom mirror; the entire top half of my face was blotchy and red.

  “Come on,” Jansen said. “We’re not going out to pick up women, just to find the one.”

  * * *

  Three hours later and not a sign of Iryna Kupchenko. Scott Damiano was staking out the Meridian, while Jansen and I stood in the main lobby of the Kupulupulu Beach Resort, our eyes peeled. I removed my phone from my pocket and dialed Jake’s cell.

  Jake picked up on the first ring.“Where the hell are you?”

  “Ko Olina. Long story. Look, I’m going to need you to put Guffman on the stand this afternoon.”

  “He could be our last witness. Son, you can’t pull this shit in the middle of a murder trial. Narita is not happy. He just called us into chambers and asked me where you were. The jury is not happy. They watched you the entire trial, and they’re looking at me like I’m the fucking understudy. And Turi, that young man is not happy at all. He’s scared shitless. He thinks you ran out on him.”

  “Jake, we’re close to finding Masonet. We’ve had a setback. But you assure Turi that what I’m doing is absolutely vital to his defense. Promise him I’ll be there to deliver closing arguments.”

  The moment I hung up, a soaking-wet Scott Damiano materialized with a soaking-wet Iryna Kupchenko on his arm.

  “She went for a swim,” Scott said. “Only she can’t swim. She tried to doggy-paddle her way to a yacht that had just left the marina. Good thing I spotted her when I did or we’d be fishing her body out of the drink.”

  I stepped over to Iryna, took her hand gently in mine. “It’s all right. I talked to the DEA agent. He has no intention of having you deported. But we need you to come back to my house to give the sketch artist a description of the man you saw in the elevator of Gavin Dengler’s building.”

  Iryna refused to look at me. “I don’t believe you. All men are liars.”

  I placed my arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the main lobby. “Maybe. But this time, all we’re trying to get at is the truth.”

  CHAPTER 58

  An hour later we were back in my villa, Jansen and I standing around the kitchen, arms folded, biting our nails, while Iryna and the sketch artist worked together in my bedroom.

  “So, what’s with the painkillers?” he said.

  “Got stabbed in the abdomen last year.”

  “Wanna tell me about it?”

  I shook my head, motioned to the paperback on the counter. “Read the book.”

  Jansen picked Sherry Beagan’s book up off the counter and started flipping through it, settled on the photographs in the middle. “She’s beautiful,” he said, pointing to a picture of Erin Simms in her wedding dress.

  “Was.”

  Jansen turned the pages again and again until he reached the final photograph—the picture of me in a soaked-through suit, sunglasses covering my eyes, a Panama Jack hat atop my head, standing, covered from head to toe in blood, on the beach abutting the lagoon outside the Kupulupulu Beach Resort.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  “So, with the pills, what are you doing, doctor-shopping?”

  I gave him a look as though I might kill him right there in my kitchen. “What?”

  “You know, going from doctor to doctor to get multiple prescriptions.”

  “Are you on the job, Jansen?”

  “Always.”

  I took the book out of his hands and tossed it back onto the counter. “Buy your own copy.”

  “You think what I do is a joke, don’t you, Counselor?”

  “Not always. When you take down a Mexican cartel trafficking black tar heroin, I’m all for it. When you raid a meth lab that might blow up at any second, you have my utmost respect. But when you take down a farmer with a marijuana field on the Big Island and try to put him away for life, I think you’re wasting taxpayer money and being naïve and an all-around son of a bitch.”

  We remained silent after that. Waiting for Iryna Kupchenko and the sketch artist to exit my bedroom with a usable depiction of our one common enemy, the man known as Orlando Masonet.

  * * *

  “It’s not going well,” the sketch artist announced a half hour later. She set several stray sheets from her sketch pad onto the kitchen counter and spread them out. “She’s confused. And her command of the English language isn’t helping.”

  “Shit,” Jansen said, pounding his fist down on the counter. Everything on the counter shook, all the piles of papers and folders I’d accumulated the past few months that weren’t directly being used in the trial. A few items fluttered to the hardwood floor.

  I swallowed hard, suddenly thirsty and desperate for a few pills. My cell phone buzzed and I picked it up without looking at the caller ID.

  “Trial is adjourned for the day,” Jake said. “I put Guffman on the stand, and he didn’t budge, not even an inch, not even when I entered the Facebook photo into evidence. He insists he’s never once seen that car.”

  “You didn’t get anything from him?” I said, suddenly angry at myself for wasting the day here in Ko Olina and not being in the courtroom to question Guffman myself.

  “I got Guffman to admit that someone else may have parked in front of his house if they knew he wasn’t home. That’s it.”

  As I was telling Jake what had transpired on this side of the island, Iryna Kupchenko stepped out of my bedroom, crying.

  “I’ve got to go,” I told Jake. “I’ve got to get to work on my closing argument.”

  “All right, son. I think maybe you need to visit Turi, too. Prepare him for the likely verdict and inform him about the appeals process.”

  I dropped the phone onto the floor and buried my face in my hands. My eyes still felt raw from the pepper spray. My stomach ached, a combination of nerves and withdrawal. I was one closing statement away from losing this trial. Which meant that the man who once saved my life would be going away for the rest of his
, thanks to my shortcomings. And on the inside, Turi’s life expectancy wouldn’t be long at all. Knowing what he knew, there was no way Masonet could allow him to live. Turi Ahina would be murdered at Halawa just as Brandon Glenn was murdered at Rikers Island.

  “This, it is him,” I suddenly heard Iryna say from behind me.

  Jansen stepped around the kitchen counter as I turned and saw Iryna leaning over some papers that had fallen to the floor.

  In her hands was a brightly colored brochure.“This, it is him. I swear it.”

  Jansen took the brochure out of her hands and studied the photograph she’d been pointing at. “Who is this guy?”

  I looked over Jansen’s shoulder, my heart pounding hard in my chest. The brochure was Audra’s—media material for the towering new condominium building being constructed in Kakaako.

  Water Landings—your private oasis in the center of it all.

  “That’s a property developer,” I said to Jansen. “The most prolific in all of the Hawaiian Islands.” I grabbed the brochure from him and stared at the rich, familiar bloated face. “His name is Thomas S. Duran.”

  “Duran?”

  “The governor calls him Tommy,” I said.

  CHAPTER 59

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I said at the start of my closing, “first off, I want to apologize for my absence from the courtroom yesterday. Although I am prohibited by evidentiary rules from explaining what transpired yesterday, I can assure you it had nothing to do with me not wanting to be here, and it had everything to do with ultimately achieving justice for my client, the defendant, Turi Ahina.”

  I waited for Dapper Don to object, but the prosecutor sat silent, his lips pursed, his eyes set on the table in front of him. He appeared pensive, untypically unsure of himself, unsure of his case.

  “Turi Ahina,” I continued, “is the victim in this case. He is the victim of a crime, namely the attempt on his life by Detective Kanoa Bristol of the Narcotics Intelligence Unit of the Honolulu PD. He is the victim of a cover-up, specifically the attempt by Detective Ray Irvine to circumvent justice by tampering with and removing evidence from the crime scene and manipulating witnesses to deceive you during the course of this trial. Finally, Turi Ahina is a victim of this system, a system that allows an innocent man to be prosecuted and convicted in the media before the first witness ever takes the stand. A system that fails to take into account that some police and prosecutors are corrupt and will do anything in their power to obtain a conviction, especially when it means saving their own asses.”

  “Language, Counselor,” Narita said in a bored tone from the bench.

  I paused. I had considered putting Iryna Kupchenko on the stand. But who on the jury would believe an undocumented prostitute called at the eleventh hour? And so what if the jury did believe her? What could she say except that she’d witnessed a billionaire land developer named Thomas S. Duran pay a visit to her pimp just before he was murdered? How could we possibly connect all the dots?

  “Ladies and gentleman,” I said, “you heard during this trial from Mindy Iokepa, daughter of a state senator and mother to Turi Ahina’s child. She testified as to why Turi was on that dark street in Pearl City at that time of night, and why he was carrying five thousand dollars in cash. The five thousand dollars—what Mr. Watanabe tried to convince you was drug money—was actually funds to help Mindy Iokepa raise and support her and Turi’s year-old daughter, Ema.

  “So what do we make of the prosecution’s assertion that Detective Bristol came upon Turi Ahina in the middle of a drug transaction? What do we make of Mr. Watanabe’s assurance that Detective Bristol was merely trying to apprehend Turi Ahina when shots suddenly rang out? I’ll tell you what we make of it. We make everything of it. Because that alone constitutes reasonable doubt.”

  And this was true. Once we introduced some credible evidence of the existence of justification, the prosecution became burdened with proving beyond a reasonable doubt facts that negated the defense. In this, I felt, Dapper Don had failed miserably. But there was no telling what a jury would do in the face of such legal and factual complexities.

  “Let’s examine seventy-two-year-old Doris Ledford,” I said. “Mrs. Ledford testified that she heard two shots, not three, which would bolster the prosecution’s claim that Detective Bristol never fired his weapon. Frankly, I believe Doris Ledford. Not that she actually heard two shots rather than three, but that she thinks she did. After all, Mrs. Ledford testified that she had never, in her seventy-plus years of life, heard gunshots before that night. She thought she was hearing firecrackers. She called Emergency Services thinking that she was reporting some fat kid playing with fireworks. It wasn’t until she saw Detective Bristol lying on the ground that Mrs. Ledford realized she’d heard gunfire for the first time in her long life. And before she could come to her own conclusion as to how many shots she heard, she was informed by Detective Ray Irvine that she only heard two.

  “Mrs. Ledford didn’t intend to deceive us, but Detective Ray Irvine undeniably fed her the facts necessary to cover up Detective Kanoa Bristol’s crime. And why did Detective Ray Irvine go to such lengths—removing and tampering with evidence at the crime scene, and manipulating witnesses—to cover up his fellow officer’s murder attempt? Because Detective Ray Irvine himself had, and continues to have, plenty at stake.”

  I watched the jurors, and they told me nothing, not with their eyes or any other part of their bodies. They simply watched me, and I had to be content in the belief that they were at least listening, that they hadn’t already made up their minds.

  What if I could have showed them Orlando Masonet? What then? Jansen didn’t have enough evidence to haul Tommy Duran in. And even if he had, Duran would have lawyered up the minute he stepped into the station. If I had called him to testify, he would have lied, and with his reputation I would’ve been laughed out of the courtroom. At best, Tommy Duran would’ve taken the Fifth. I would just be standing here begging the jury to make an inference.

  “What does Detective Irvine have at stake? You heard during this trial from Detective John Tatupu. He testified at length to the corruption he witnessed within the Honolulu Police Department, particularly the Narcotics Intelligence Unit. Detective Tatupu discovered drugs and money missing from the evidence locker. He observed officers, including Detective Bristol himself, receive envelopes filled with cash from known drug dealers. He overheard plans for off-duty officers to carry contraband to the islands from Mexico and the mainland. He saw officers trade leniency for sexual favors. Detective Tatupu watched the disease of corruption spread throughout his beloved department like a cancer, and he risked everything to take the stand and tell you about it. To tell you that the Honolulu Police Department is run not by Chief Edward Attea or Honolulu’s mayor, but by a cold-blooded killer known widely as Orlando Masonet.”

  I stepped across the courtroom and swallowed some ice water, allowing the jurors’ eyes to follow me to the defense table and a sympathetic-looking Turi Ahina.

  “When Judge Narita instructs you on the law, he will define for you once again the legal term choice of evils. He will explain the reasonable person standard and inform you that the critical factor in determining whether Turi Ahina’s actions were justified is his state of mind, or his belief with respect to the facts and circumstances. By selecting each of you as jurors, Mr. Watanabe and I, and of course Judge Narita, made the determination that you were twelve reasonable people. Thus, applying the reasonable person standard in this case should be reasonably easy. All you will have to do is ask yourself this: What would I do if I were staring into the barrel of a loaded gun on a dark street in Pearl City? If I were armed, would I fire back? Would I fire first in order to save my own life? Would I fire to remain on this earth with the ones I love? If I fired at my attacker’s chest only to find the bullet bounce off his Kevlar vest like some homicidal Superman, would I fire again? And if so, would I aim higher? Maybe at the throat, maybe at the head? Would I kill
to keep from being killed? Under the law, if you are a reasonable person, the answer is yes.”

  I swept my hand across the jury rail as I looked each of the twelve jurors in the eyes. “You were cautioned by Mr. Watanabe at the beginning of this trial to expect smoke and mirrors from me. He referred to me as an illusionist, implied that I’d wave my wand and whisper hocus-pocus and make evidence disappear, just as Detective Ray Irvine did at the Pearl City crime scene. But I have something better than smoke and mirrors, something far more powerful than magic. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have the truth on my side. And whether you choose to believe the truth or Detective Irvine’s lies will mean the difference between justice and a terrible, irreversible injustice. A vote of guilty is a vote to continue the status quo, to permit the stench of corruption to continue to permeate every inch of our lives in these islands until every man, woman, and child has been exposed to the disease. I therefore ask that when you retire into the jury room to deliberate, you do so with the intention of righting a series of terrible wrongs. And I ask that when you return to this courtroom to deliver your verdict, you send a loud and powerful message to those who would destroy this city—and deliver a verdict of not guilty on all counts.”

  CHAPTER 60

  Judge Narita read the jury instructions late Friday, meaning the jury wouldn’t begin deliberations until Monday. Which meant I had the entire weekend to think about all the things I’d done wrong during the trial. The third bullet bothered me most. Technically, it wasn’t necessary to the choice-of-evils defense. Legally it didn’t matter whether Kanoa Bristol fired first or fired at all, so long as Turi reasonably felt his life was in imminent danger. But to the jury I knew it did matter, and it could mean the difference between a conviction and an acquittal.

  Problem was, so little evidence supported my claim. I based the defense on Turi’s word, and to me, Turi’s version of the events made perfect sense. Especially the details he provided. A navy Honda Civic. A Jesus fish. A sticker in the rear window that read KEIKI ON BOARD. But the jury never got to hear Turi say anything about this, or anything at all for that matter. That would’ve been too risky. Indeed, it could have proved suicidal.