The Wrong Lawyer

by Donald W. Desaulniers

  My flight was just boarding so I proceeded into the line and took my seat on the aircraft.

  The flight was totally uneventful and there were no unexpected complications boarding my connecting flight to Syracuse.

  The plane touched down as scheduled at eleven-thirty and I carried my sports bag to my car in the covered parking garage.

  It started right up and I encountered a minor problem at the payment machine at the exit. When I tried to pay with my credit card, the machine wouldn’t accept it. This was the first time I had attempted to use my VISA on the trip but it had worked fine when I originally booked and paid through Expedia. I prefer to pay for most things on my vacations with cash or traveler’s check.

  I backed the car away from the automatic payment line to the great irritation of the three cars impatiently waiting behind me, and I got in line for the sole live attendant where I paid the parking charges in cash.

  I suspected that Matthews was responsible for my useless credit card but he might have made it invalid much earlier before Homeland Security was monitoring his every move.

  It was pitch black out and began to rain lightly before I had reached Watertown.

  About an hour later I was approaching the Canadian border at Hill Island in the Thousand Islands.

  CHAPTER 23 (The Final Insult)

  As I waited in the short line to enter Canada, a feeling of relief hit me.

  In another couple of minutes I would be safely back in my own normal country away from the insanity that had infected our once invulnerable mighty neighbor to the south because of its fixation with terrorism.

  Alas, a smooth entry into Canada was not in the cards.

  As soon as the customs agent swiped my passport, all Hell broke loose.

  Sirens went off and armed agents rushed out of the building and surrounded my vehicle.

  A cacophony of stressed voices ordered me to get out of the car with my hands held where they could be seen.

  How was that even possible?

  Did they expect me to open the door with my penis?

  Since my window was wide open, I shouted, “Make up your damn minds. Do you want me to raise my hands or open the fucking door?”

  I was flaming angry.

  One of the agents grasped the door handle and yanked the door open, almost tearing the rusty old thing off its hinges.

  “Undo my seat belt,” I barked.

  He was most reluctant to do so, almost as if he expected me to decapitate him if he got any closer.

  “Do it yourself,” he snarled back at me.

  Slowly and deliberately I brought my hand down to the release button and pushed it.

  That caused the seat belt to retract quickly and the movement spooked one of the nearby agents whose weapon fired.

  I swore that I heard the bullet whoosh past my face before it embedded itself in the passenger door with a loud clunk.

  “You assholes are going to pay to fix that,” I shouted as I laboriously attempted to exit my vehicle with both my hands spread out in front of me.

  As soon as my feet were on the pavement, many hands grabbed me in unison and threw me to the ground. My arms were painfully wrenched behind my back as handcuffs were tightened so intensely that I cried out in pain.

  I was roughly dragged back up on my feet while a swarm of agents blanketed my car.

  All four doors were flung open and then the trunk was released.

  “She’s not in here,” the first agent to examine the trunk yelled.

  “There’s no one in the back seat either,” another agent hollered.

  “What have you done with her, you disgusting pervert?” a third agent shouted.

  “I married her,” I yelled back insolently.

  That inappropriate comment earned me a hard stab in my stomach with a night stick and I doubled over in pain.

  The strange thought ran through my mind that these Canadian border agents were more violent than their American counterparts.

  I was dragged unceremoniously into the main building where I was thrown into a chair inside an office. Half a dozen border agents stuffed in after me.

  Desperately wanting to get back at these thugs, my mind wouldn’t function properly, and all I could muster to throw them off their game was the completely irrelevant comment, “I’ll have a Mama burger, onion rings and a vanilla shake, bozos.”

  At that point a fat woman entered the office and immediately took charge. She showed me my passport.

  “Is this you?”

  “Yes; just because the photo makes me look like a hardened criminal doesn’t mean I am one, lady.”

  Canadian passport and driver’s license pictures were notoriously demeaning. Regulations required that the subject’s mouth be kept fully closed with no hint of a smile. As a result the photos were practically unrecognizable.

  “Are you carrying other identification?”

  “Yes, my wallet is in my right hand pants’ pocket and there’s additional ID inside.”

  “May I retrieve your wallet?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  She carefully extracted the wallet and began rifling through it. I watched her examine my Ontario driver’s license, my VISA card and my CAA member card.

  Then she began sifting through the items in the other slot in my wallet. Most of the stuff in that side was junk.

  She held up a business card on the back of which was taped a Canadian twenty dollar bill and a key.

  “What is this key for?” the lady inquired.

  “It’s a spare key for the Chevy in case I lock myself out.”

  Finally she examined the business card and I swear that her face paled.

  “Whose card is this?”

  “It’s mine. I’m a lawyer. You cretins picked the wrong lawyer to manhandle. I want the full names of each of the agents who dragged me out of my vehicle, especially the idiot who fired a round past my face into the passenger door. I need to know exactly who I’m going to sue over this fiasco.”

  “When your passport was swiped at the border kiosk, it triggered a warning that the document was phony and that the person purporting to use it was a serial killer who had abducted a five year old girl an hour ago in Watertown. Where were you an hour ago?”

  “Driving through Watertown, I imagine. It’s about fifty miles south of here.”

  “Where’s the little girl?”

  “If you call the telephone number on a piece of paper in my other pocket, the lady at Homeland Security who answers can probably satisfy you that the warning you received is fake and that I am who I say I am. It’s highly unlikely that any young girl has in fact been kidnapped in Watertown.”

  “Why would such a fake warning be posted?”

  “It’s a state secret. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  I said that with a perfectly straight face.

  It was possible that the fat lady thought that I was some kind of nut job but she fished around in my pocket and pulled out the piece of paper along with some Kleenex and a few American coins.

  She used the phone in this office to make the call. It rang a few times before the Lieutenant answered it.

  After a conversation which lasted several minutes, my handcuffs were removed and I was permitted to speak with Ms. Burgess.

  I filled her in on the missed gunshot and the physical manhandling by the border agents.

  “Please tell me that you can nail the Special Agent for this final insult,” I said with an exasperated tone of voice.

  “We’ll have to do some intensive analysis of his computers and telephones first. We’ll keep you informed. In the meantime, you will be permitted to enter Canada shortly so that you may continue on home. You’ve been a very good sport about this, Mr. Kennedy. Please don’t contemplate any further actions until our investigation is complete. At that time we can discuss the situation in greater detail. It may take an hour or so before we can e-mail the appropriate verification to the Canadian border authorities so that th
ey may release you. Please be patient, sir, and drive safely.”

  In fact within thirty minutes I was the recipient of an effusive apology from the large female supervisor and I was allowed to enter Canada.

  Half an hour later I was on the elevator heading up to my apartment.

  CHAPTER 24 (No One to Talk To)

  It was just past four in the morning when I unlocked my apartment door.

  The adrenalin must have still been pumping through my veins during the drive home because I was fully alert. Normally I’d be struggling to keep my eyes open while driving at that ungodly hour.

  However as soon as I entered the safety of my own apartment, fatigue overtook me and I didn’t even bother to unpack.

  I simply used the bathroom and crawled into bed.

  It was well after eleven o’clock when I finally woke back up.

  I ate some cereal and toast for a late breakfast and while washing the few dishes afterwards, I spotted an envelope on the carpet near the door.

  It was a brief note from Corbett informing me that he and Lynne had booked a European river cruise after all and wouldn’t return to Kingston until very late on Monday, the 29th.

  Although I felt pleased for Jim, it was disappointing news for me.

  Here I was back from the world’s most exciting vacation and I had nobody to tell about it.

  I unpacked my trip case and found the list of names of the various Canadian border agents who had accosted me last night.

  For the briefest of moments I contemplated making an appointment with a lawyer so that I could at least tell someone about my near brush with death. That bullet had been dangerously close to putting me in a coffin.

  I spent the afternoon doing mundane tasks like laundry as well as going over the bit of mail that had accumulated during my brief absence.

  Later on I was able to sort out the problem with my credit card. The call center managed to override the “DO NOT HONOR” instruction which had been placed on it. They were unable to explain how the card had been rendered temporarily unusable.

  To verify that the card was operable again, I went out and purchased some groceries using it. At least that minor irritation had been resolved.

  On Monday I contacted a couple of the downtown Las Vegas casinos to get things underway to remove my name from their casino blacklists, but all I got was the runaround so I gave up.

  As an exceedingly small-time gambler, the freebies I earned from the use of my casino player’s cards were minimal, so it was no big deal to play the slot machines without using my cards.

  I felt that my vacation had been stolen from me and I defiantly decided to book a trip back to Vegas as soon as Homeland Security could assure me that I was no longer on any terrorist or child pervert list.

  On Tuesday morning my new cell phone rang, the first time it had ever done so. I fumbled around for a moment trying to figure out how to work it and soon found myself talking with Lieutenant Burgess of Homeland Security.

  “Hello, Mr. Kennedy. I trust that you finally made it safely home.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant, and I’ve even managed to get my credit card operational again. Do you have any good news for me regarding our naughty Special Agent friend?”

  “It’s a mixed bag, I’m sorry to say. The good news is that we were able to determine that he was the culprit who issued the sex pervert abduction warning against your passport number, and he has been severely reprimanded for that action.”

  “I’m hoping you can force him to remove my name from the downtown Las Vegas casino blacklists and to undo any other devious little slurs he put in place against me. The two casinos I contacted yesterday were not helpful in sorting me out. What exactly is a ‘severe reprimand’ anyway? It doesn’t sound very onerous.”

  “That’s the bad news. The big bosses around here have determined that the gentleman’s quiet but ground-breaking success in enhancing the capability of collating and retrieving information from the mass of meta data makes him a priceless asset. Instead of being forced into retirement, he has snared a big promotion. A ‘severe reprimand’ is really no more than saying ‘BAD BOY, DON’T DO THAT AGAIN’. He won’t be subject to any other penalties.”

  “That’s distressing news. That misfit almost got me killed at the border. I literally heard the whoosh of the bullet whizzing past my face.”

  “I totally sympathize with your concerns, Mr. Kennedy, but the man is now considered to be a valuable partner in the war on terror.”

  “Is there anything to stop him from continuing his personal feud with me?”

  “He has promised to leave you alone and for your sake, I hope he meant it. I don’t expect to be contacting you again, Mr. Kennedy. You have my number just in case the new Deputy Assistant Director of Information decides to harass you further.”

  “Oh, God, is that what his new title is?”

  “I’m afraid so. He jumped several levels in the hierarchy and is now about as close to the top as anyone can get. The two or three tiers above him are political appointments and rarely attainable by ordinary employees. Good luck, Mr. Kennedy. I sincerely hope that I don’t hear from you again.”

  I was quite miffed when I got off the phone.

  The little nut job had turned his atrocious criminal activity into a fat promotion.

  It seemed to pervert the whole process of civil service.

  The cream was supposed to rise to the top, not the slime.

  In the meantime I was alone.

  CHAPTER 25 (New Friend)

  On Tuesday evening I was still seething over my conversation with Lieutenant Burgess.

  By the time I had cracked open my fourth beer, I had an epiphany.

  I wasn’t alone after all. Matthews was almost certainly continuing to spy extensively on me. His obsessive personality wouldn’t permit him to give up the battle so quickly, and he would be waiting like a spider watching my every move in the patient hope that he’d find something humiliating to use against me.

  After all, I had deeply offended him by claiming to be his clear intellectual superior.

  I decided to contact Matthews indirectly to prove my assumption.

  While seated near both my cell phone and the land line, I started to speak aloud.

  “This is Tom Kennedy, the brilliant Canadian lawyer who personally rescued Bander Haddad from the clutches of Special Agent Harlan D. Matthews by the deviously clever use of The Washington Independent and a gorgeous young escort named Mandy Franklin. By the way, I assume your middle initial ‘D’ is short for ‘Dickhead’. I understand you landed on your feet, Matthews and scored a promotion from your failed attempts to upset me. I should collect a percentage of your new paycheck. Since my best and only friend is off on a cruise, I’ve got nobody to talk to about my strange vacation. That’s why I decided I may as well contact you since I’m sure that you’re using me as one of your primary guinea pigs to test your sick surveillance prowess. Reading you like a book is just another link in my growing chain of proof that I’m smarter than you. Give me a call when you get bored and I’ll tell you a few hooker jokes.”

  I assumed that some of the keywords in my message would flag my little speech in the main surveillance computer and that Matthews would soon be listening to what I had just said.

  The following evening my theory was proven correct.

  The cell phone rang and I recognized the precise clipped voice immediately as it asked, “Is this Kennedy?”

  “You know it is, Harlan. It didn’t take you long to receive my lonely little cry for attention. I made sure that I tossed in plenty of keywords.”

  “I’m in the same boat as you are. As annoying as I find you, you’re the only guy I can talk to about my creation. The big political bosses here want to extract as much technology as they can from me but don’t want any proof to exist that they were informed about what pioneering surveillance ground I’m breaking.”

  “Does that mean that your ass will be on the line if your work goes public
?”

  “That’s right. I’ll be the scapegoat if word gets out, the unsung hero if it remains Homeland’s dirty little secret.”

  “Are they listening to us right now?” I asked.

  “They’re recording this conversation but they can’t access it. I’m the only one who knows how to filter the meta data that’s being collected. That enhancement is my inventive masterpiece.”

  “Why don’t you sell it to them?”

  “There’s nothing to sell because they already own it. As an employee of Homeland, anything I invent on the job belongs completely to them. Getting the promotion was the most I was able to squeeze out of them.”

  “How come nobody seems to realize that private conversations of the public are being collected even when people aren’t speaking on a telephone or by e-mail?”

  “Edward Snowden didn’t have access to all the government’s surveillance endeavors, only those aspects collected by the NSA. Homeland is the entity that planted recording devices reporting solely to their main computer system in virtually all newer phones and cell phones no matter where the equipment was being manufactured. Their well-kept secret is known only by a few people at the highest level of government as well as a handful of techies.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “It was a complete fluke. The filter that I was developing began collecting non-telephone conversations all on its own. I put two and two together and incorporated that unexpected data into my collating system.”

  “I can’t say that I like the end result,” I admitted, “but it is quite impressive how thoroughly the government is able to spy on its citizens. Why did you pick on Bander Haddad?”

  “I thought I’d help out our military effort to stop ISIS by forcing the Saudi government to permit a much more invasive US military presence in their country. Perhaps I was being too proactive in what I did. It was probably a good thing that your presence threw a monkey wrench into my ill-conceived plan.”