Just Revenge

by Alan M. Dershowitz

  “You gave the orders.”

  “But others gave me orders.”

  “You agreed with their orders.”

  “I was wrong. And I will probably burn in hell for eternity for obeying those orders. And so will you if you hurt my innocent grandchildren. Do you want to burn in hell?”

  “The Ponary Woods were worse than any hell. Every day since has been worse than burning in hell. I can take hell, if that’s what is in store for me,” Max said.

  “You don’t believe in hell, do you?”

  “Do you?”

  “I didn’t when I was young. When I did what I did. Now I do. My priest has forgiven me for Ponary Woods, without promising salvation. He says God will judge me harshly, but only at the end of my life.”

  “Well, I am your judge and jury, just as you were my family’s judge, jury, and executioner. I condemn you to watch the revenge killing of your grandchild. As you watch, you will know that he is being killed for only one reason: because of what you did in Ponary Woods. A philosopher once said that he who kills another must be considered as if by that act he has willed his own death. By killing my family, you willed the death of your family. You are their murderer.”

  “They are innocent.”

  “Then they will go to heaven, where you will never again see them, because whatever your priest has told you, you will certainly go to hell.”

  “How do you know?” he asked wildly.

  “If there is a hell, it is surely reserved for people like you and me, who are prepared to kill innocent people, especially children, in cold blood. I am prepared to spend eternity in hell for what I am about to do. Are you prepared to spend eternity in hell because of what you did?”

  “If I could save my family by spending eternity in hell, I would do it.”

  “I was never given that option.”

  “You are not God!” Prandus shouted, looking upward.

  “Neither were you. But you held the power of life and death over my family. And you chose death. I have the same power now over your grandchild. Now I must choose. Do you remember my grandfather’s last word?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It was nekama. That means take revenge. I must obey his last command.”

  Danielle had listened silently to the dialogue between Max and the man who had killed his entire family. At various points she had wanted to interject her own feelings. She realized, however, that her feelings related to her own grandfather, for whom Prandus was merely a surrogate. This was Max’s moment. The Maimonidean solution was her idea, but Max was in charge of his prisoner.

  At a signal from Max, Danielle placed a gag over Prandus’s mouth as the old man shook his head frantically from side to side and pressed against the ropes. “Marc will be dead by tomorrow,” Max said as they left a whimpering Marcelus Prandus tied helplessly to the chair.

  Chapter 24

  MAX IS MISSING

  “He’s not at home and he’s not in the office,” said Abe. “No one knows where he is.”

  “Has anyone checked inside the house?” Rendi asked.

  “Yeah. I have a key. Nothing unusual. I even checked his luggage. It’s all there. I’m worried.”

  “He’s probably at the library or on a walk. How long has he been unaccounted for?”

  “Only today. Yesterday he spoke to his secretary. Asked for some books on the Bible. The usual stuff.”

  “Look, I’m concerned, too. There’s nothing we can do. It’s too soon. The cops aren’t going to start looking for someone who’s been missing for a day.”

  “You’re right, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m going to try the hospitals.”

  “Then I’ll help you,” Rendi said. “I’ll try Mt. Auburn. You call Cambridge City. After that we’ll cover Boston.”

  As Abe and Rendi called each of the hospitals, another family, several miles to the north, was looking for another old man who had disappeared at about the same time.

  Chapter 25

  PAUL PRANDUS

  “My father never made it to the Lithuanian Social Club,” Paul Prandus told his friend, investigator Freddy Burns.

  “What do you mean, he never made it? Maybe he went somewhere else.”

  “You don’t know Papa. He always goes to the club. It’s his second home. He told us he was meeting his friends over there. They were expecting him. He never showed. He’s missing.”

  Although Paul spoke in his characteristically soft voice, his desperation was obvious.

  “He’s not missing,” Freddy said reassuringly. “I’ve seen a million disappearances like this one. The guy comes home the next day. Sometimes with a black eye. Sometimes with a hangover. But he always comes home.”

  “Papa always goes to the club. He left the house at six o’clock. It’s a ten-minute walk. I’m worried that someone may have kidnapped him. We’ve got to find him.”

  “Paul, you’re watching too many movies. What would anybody want with your old man? You’re not exactly Bill Gates, you know. You couldn’t even pay a ransom that covered the costs of a decent kidnapping.”

  “Maybe it’s not about ransom,” Paul said, his voice getting even lower.

  “Then what is it about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about the obvious? A heart attack? A girlfriend? A breakdown?”

  “He’s too old for girlfriends now. And he is not the type for a breakdown. Not yet. He’s as strong as a horse, both mentally and even physically, despite his cancer. His heart’s perfect. He was snatched—without a trace.”

  “Okay. I’ll work on that premise. Where do we start?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, that’s a hell of a lead. Let’s start by checking the hospitals, the police station, the church, old friends, the park—the morgue. You take the police station and the church. I’ll take the others. We’ll exclude all the obvious places. Then, if he hasn’t shown up—which I’m sure he will—we can look at the less obvious possibilities, like your snatch theory.”

  “Please, find him. He’s dying. I want him to die at home with his family. Not alone, in some strange place. My son needs to see him again,” Paul said, flipping open his wallet to show Freddy his son’s picture. “He loves him. Please, Freddy.”

  Paul knew that his father would not be found in the obvious places. He knew, though he couldn’t articulate it, that there was nothing obvious about his father’s disappearance.

  Freddy Burns certainly didn’t look like a personal investigator. Maybe that was why he was so successful at his work. There was a time, now long gone, when he had looked the part. In the days he worked as a Boston police officer, he was trim and almost good-looking. But since he took the bullet in his groin, he had let himself go.

  The bullet had come from a shoot-out with a Russian immigrant who was holding his own wife and children hostage, threatening to kill them unless his wife agreed to return to Russia. Both Freddy and the Russian were rushed to the emergency ward, where the criminal was treated before the cop because his wounds were more serious. When they finally got around to Freddy, they weren’t able to restore him to his previous self, even after rehabilitation.

  Freddy would never forget the first person who visited him in the hospital: It was the well-known Cambridge defense lawyer Abe Ringel, who had cross-examined him on many occasions, always trying to discredit his testimony. Freddy had a warm spot in his heart for the defense attorney. If he ever got in trouble, Freddy thought, he knew whom he would call to defend him.

  When he finally left the hospital, they put him behind the desk, first as a dispatcher and then as a spokesman for the precinct. Freddy hated it. He felt cooped up. He described his job as a “mercy fuck,” and he quit after a year on three-quarters disability. The pension was enough to pay his alimony and child support, but it left him with nothing. So Freddy Burns opened up the “B and B Agency,” specializing in personal security and discreet inquiries. The second “B” was part of hi
s fantasy—never realized—that he would someday meet a woman who would be both his partner and his wife.

  The first lawyer to hire Freddy was a recent graduate of the Boston College Law School who had just opened a practice in Salem. His name was Paul Prandus. He was a serious, somewhat rigid man who spent much of his time on church-related activities. Freddy had remembered Paul’s name from his days as a local football star. Despite his athletic build, Paul didn’t carry himself like a former athlete—no swagger, no jock talk, no carousing. Now he acted every bit the lawyer. Paul’s client was a local high school senior who was facing homicide charges in a bizarre case. The boy had been in a schoolyard fight with the class bully and had caught him with a lucky punch. The bully’s head hit the pavement at a sharp angle, putting him into a coma. He was kept alive by a respirator, and after ten months his mother was thinking seriously of pulling the plug. Paul said he identified with his young client because of his own youthful fistfights. “We’ve got to help this kid,” he told Freddy.

  Freddy happened to have been in the same hospital as the comatose kid, and the case was the talk of the wards, since under the law, if the victim of an assault dies within a year and a day of the assault, the crime is homicide. If the victim lives for more than a year and a day, the crime is merely assault. The defendant hired Paul Prandus to try to prevent the mother from pulling the plug on her son, thereby not turning an assailant into a murderer. Freddy called Prandus and offered to do some investigatory work, since he was already familiar with the case. Prandus hired him, and Freddy snooped around the hospital with ease, since he had been a familiar face there for months. He discovered that the injured kid’s mother had never visited her son, that she had been estranged from him for several months before the coma, and that she had taken out several of those TV “no physical exam required” insurance policies on her comatose son’s life. This information gave Prandus a leg up in his negotiations and resulted in a plea of attempted manslaughter and a suspended sentence.

  From that time on Paul Prandus always used Freddy Burns as his investigator.

  Freddy and Paul quickly checked out all the leads and came up empty.

  “Someone snatched him—or killed him,” said Paul. “I know. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “I don’t think so. My gut tells me he’s out somewhere with a broad, no matter what you say. No one’s ever too old for a little hanky-panky. But he’s your father, so we’ll go with your bones over my gut.”

  “I don’t know where to begin,” said Paul.

  “Let’s start out with you. Is there anyone who would want to take revenge against you by hurting someone close to you?”

  “I am a defense lawyer. We’re not the most beloved species in the world.”

  “Believe me, I know. You guys rank somewhere between skunks and poisonous snakes. Closer to the snakes. But why you in particular?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve defended some pretty bad characters. Lost my share, won my share.”

  “And every time you lose, the guy who goes to jail has it in for you?”

  “Could be. But every time I win, the victim’s family has it in for me.”

  “That doesn’t narrow the list of suspects much. What you’re telling me is that every criminal case you’ve been involved in provides a possible motive!”

  “When a criminal lawyer is killed, everyone’s a suspect. Even strangers despise us. You should read my anonymous hate mail.”

  “I will. You never know where you’ll find a lead.”

  “I really don’t think that anyone has it in for me enough to risk a long prison term and become a murderer.”

  “What do you mean, become a murderer? Some of your clients had achieved that distinguished status even before they met you. It’s a hell of a lot easier to kill your second victim than your first. Got any candidates?”

  “I recently lost a big one involving a Mob guy with a rap sheet from here to Cape Cod. I have to tell you, though, it just doesn’t sound right to me. I’m not the kind of lawyer who arouses those kinds of passions. I’m a pretty straitlaced guy. I’ve never even been so much as threatened. Hated, yes—threatened, no.”

  “That makes it even more challenging. The threateners never kill. It’s the quiet, resentful ones you’ve got to watch your back for. Tell me about this Mob guy.”

  “He’s in Walpole for life, but he’s got friends.”

  “Get me a list.”

  “It would be a telephone book,” said Paul. “We’re talking about the Mafia. They’ve got hit men from all over.”

  “Yeah, they play crisscross.”

  “Huh?”

  “They bring in a guy from Kansas to take out a guy from Boston, and a guy from Boston to go after a guy from Kansas. Crisscross.”

  “I still don’t know where we begin.”

  “I begin with my knowledge of the Mob,” said Freddy. “This doesn’t look like their MO to me. They don’t go after lawyers who blew a case—unless it was a sellout. And they don’t go after family members. They value family too highly. Not like the druggies in Miami. If the Mafia had it in for you, it would be you who would be missing, not your dad. This is not the Mafia.”

  “I agree.”

  “Is anyone else out to get even with you?”

  “I can’t think of anyone with enough of a motive. Well, maybe Scooter.”

  “Who’s Scooter?”

  “Scooter Scott. Drug pusher from Malden. My client ratted him out. He got ten in federal prison. I made the deal.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Scooter was not a happy camper. He did threaten my client. I used the threat to get my guy a suspended sentence. I argued that sending him to jail with a snitch jacket would be a death sentence.”

  “So where is your little angel?”

  “Witness protection program. Somewhere in the Midwest—Boringtown, U.S.A., where they send all the stoolies.”

  “Did Scooter threaten you?”

  “No. Just a dirty look.”

  “How dirty?”

  “Par for the course, nothing special.”

  “Is Scooter connected?”

  “Not that I know of. Pretty much of a loner.”

  “He doesn’t sound like the guy. Anyone else?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s me.”

  “Okay, let’s say it’s not you they were trying to get even with. Who else in your family?”

  “The only other person I could think of would be Papa himself.”

  “Your old man? Who did he ever hurt?”

  “I don’t know, but it could be him.”

  “Wasn’t he some kind of mechanic or something?”

  “He was a lot of things since he came to this country. Security guard, auto mechanic, handyman. He’s been retired for a few years. Mostly hangs around the Lithuanian Social Club with his buddies from the old country.”

  “What did he do in the old country?”

  “He never talked much about it. I know he was in the war. He fought against the Communists. That’s why he left. Stalin wasn’t happy with him.”

  “Well, at least we know it’s not Stalin who’s out to get revenge. That bastard was tough, but even he couldn’t get revenge from the grave.”

  “Papa was in some kind of militia unit. They rounded up Communists. He never wanted to talk about it. Maybe someone he rounded up held a grudge?”

  “For fifty years? No way. Even the Mafia has a statute of limitations. Naw, that’s a dead end. I have a rule about motives. Passions cool quickly. Look at yesterday, not last month. Let’s focus on more recent events.”

  “I have a weird feeling that Papa’s disappearance may go back to the old country. What happened there produced some pretty strong feelings. I learned a little about it in college. It was pretty awful. Could you do a little checking? But don’t talk to anyone in the family. At least not yet. Everyone’s in shock. I don’t want to get anyone riled up unnecessarily. Can you do a little snooping on the q.t.?”
>
  “Is it okay if I go down to the Lithuanian Social Club and talk to some of his friends from the old country?”

  “They’ll never talk to you. They’re a bunch of very narrow-minded old guys. Only Lithuanians count. An Irishman like you is from Mars. I’ll go with you. They’ll talk to me and maybe let you listen.”

  Paul and Freddy walked the few blocks to the storefront social club. Half a dozen men, all in their seventies, were sitting around playing cards and speaking Lithuanian. One man was in a wheelchair, reading a book. The walls were covered with photographs and travel posters of Lithuania and faces of Lithuanian political and sports figures.

  “Paulus. I ain’t never seen you here before,” said Peter Vovus, one of Marcelus’s friends. “Is everything okay at home? I haven’t seen your papa today.”

  “Or yesterday,” chimed in another man. “He was supposed to come by yesterday, but he never showed. Is his cancer acting up?”

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about. Papa’s missing. Disappeared. This man, Freddy, is my investigator. He has reason to believe somebody may have snatched Papa or hurt him.”

  “Oh, my God. Your father never hurt anybody. He’s a good man, a family man.”

  “Freddy here thinks it may go back to the old country, to Vilnius during the war.”

  As Paul uttered these words, there were audible gasps from some of the old men. One by one they put down their cards and looked at Paul. The man in the wheelchair closed his book and moved closer to Paul as he continued.

  “We need your help. We have no time to lose. If my father is still alive, we may have only hours or days to find him. We must find out the truth about Papa. Even if it’s painful. So no bullshit. Please. We came here to ask you all one question: What did my father do during the war?”

  Stunned silence. No one had asked these old men about the war years since they came to America in the 1940s.

  Paul remembered how, at home, his father had never spoken of the war years. When he had asked him questions, he said he had been a policeman who helped in the roundup of Communists. Now Paul could not be satisfied with these answers.