Collision

by William S. Cohen

  “Right,” Falcone said.

  “We’ll leave it there until the crime-scene guys get here,” she said. “What about that bag he had?”

  “What bag?” Falcone asked.

  “It’s still on the floor over there, a big canvas bag,” she said. “You didn’t notice it? You’re a pretty observant guy.”

  “When I had him down I was focused on the gun. But, yes, there was some kind of bag. I remember now. When I first saw him walking into the office, he was carrying it.…”

  “It says ‘Al Jazeera’ on the side, written on by something like a Sharpie. Any ideas about that?”

  “No, Chief. Except it was big enough to hold the M16.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Mr. Falcone.” She noticed that Falcone was in some pain and kept squeezing his left hand, which was bright red and raw. “I’ll have the ME put something on that hand of yours.” She turned to the officers and, with a wave of her hand, said, “You three check with Captain Jefferson in the lobby and join the hunt for the other guy.”

  As the trio approached the elevator, the doors opened and two men stepped out, police-badge holders jutting from their suit-coat breast pockets.

  “Detective Lieutenant Tyrone Emmetts and Detective Sergeant Samuel Robinson of the Homicide Branch,” Mosley told Falcone. She paused, and shifted to her command voice: “Tyrone, I want a formal statement from this man, Falcone, who killed the guy on the lobby floor. Sam, the usual drill. Get identities and contact information of everybody here. There are a lot of people. We’ll need statements from all of them. Get help from the branch if you need it. A lot of big-time lawyers, so good luck. Most of them were behind closed doors and didn’t see anything. But they may have heard something. We’ll also need to know what those people on the couch were doing here. And if anybody knows anything about that guy who wound up on the lobby floor. Do the usual paperwork. I’ll keep closely in touch with the Branch. This is a big one, Sam.”

  Falcone pointed toward the end of the corridor and said, “I need to go there.”

  Mosley looked at him quizzically.

  “Toilet. I need to…”

  “Okay,” she said. “Which office is yours?”

  He pointed and said, “‘Falcone’ on the door.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  Falcone walked off, and in the restroom went over Mosley’s questioning. She was good, the kind of interrogator who makes you feel guilty. Al Jazeera. What the hell is that about? Those guys didn’t look like any television journalists.

  When Falcone entered, Mosley and Emmetts were seated in front of his desk in the burgundy wingback chairs that usually contained his clients. “First of all, Mr. Falcone,” Mosley began, “this seems to be an interrupted mass shooting of lawyers. Our strategy in shootings like this is to anticipate. I’ve ordered a general warning about the second shooter. Maybe he’s going after lawyers. So this is urgent. Any idea why this firm? This floor?”

  “No, Chief. None at all,” he said. He had a theory about the crime, but he decided not to share the theory with Mosley.

  “Did you feel you were … disrupting something?” Emmetts asked. “That there would have been more shooting if you hadn’t stopped them?”

  “Yes. I felt … I felt that we were all sitting targets.”

  “But why? What were they doing? Why shoot up a law firm? Why—”

  Someone simultaneously knocked on his door and entered. A tall man strode over to the chair that Mosley occupied, reached out his right hand, and said, “I am Paul Sprague. I am greatly sorry that I’m disobeying your reasonable request to remain in my office, Chief Mosley. But I came here because I am obliged to find out what happened. I’m Sullivan and Ford’s managing partner, and I am responsible for the lives of the men and women in this building.”

  Sprague then pulled up a wooden chair from a corner and sat down. In his perfectly tailored gray suit with a Légion d’honneur rosette in the lapel, he conveyed the confidence of a patrician, a man born to deference and accomplishment.

  “I’ve … I’ve seen the bodies—Ellen, the couple on the couch,” Sprague said. “Horrible. Horrible. And I understand that Harold Davidson…” He paused. “We can directly identify one of the other … victims, of course. Ellen Franklin. As to the man and woman on the couch … I assume that they carried identification … and that they had some business with someone on the tenth floor … but…”

  “The crime-scene techs will handle the obtaining of their ID documents, Mr. Sprague,” Emmetts said, “and then we’ll handle the notifying of their next of kin and making positive identification. Naturally, we will want to find out why they were here.”

  Sprague, ignoring Emmetts, pivoted toward Mosley. “Naturally, we will cooperate, Chief Mosley. But I am sure that you understand our need to adhere to the common rules of client-lawyer confidentiality.”

  Mosley did not respond. She rose and, ignoring Sprague, said, “I’m heading back to headquarters. But I’ll be in constant touch with the investigation. Goodbye, for now, Mr. Falcone.”

  Sprague reached across Falcone’s desk and picked up the yellow pad while saying, “Thanks, Sean. I’ll just turn to a fresh page and make some notes.” He looked toward Emmetts and smiled. “I’d like to start at the beginning. Is it possible to…”

  Emmetts shrugged, looked down at his notes, and gave Sprague a sketchy account of what Falcone had said so far. Falcone then finished his description of what had happened.

  “Thank you, Mr. Falcone,” Emmetts said. “Now, one other matter. You killed a man, Mr. Falcone, and we are all glad you did. But you’re going to have to make a separate statement about that unknown male’s death. And we will have to ask you to come to headquarters. Your prints are on the murder weapon, and we’ll need to fingerprint you.”

  Sprague turned to Falcone, again ignoring Emmetts. “Mind if I represent you, Sean?”

  “Well, I might really need a good defense lawyer,” Falcone replied with a tight smile. “But I guess you’ll have to do.”

  Sprague nodded and smiled back. He was a tall, slim man in his early sixties. His bearing and diction proclaimed privilege and a probable New England–Choate–Yale–Yale Law biography. But that was only part of his biography. He was born and brought up in a trailer in a little town on the Oklahoma panhandle and had known hungry days and lonely nights. He attained his scholarships because he was brilliant and polite, and he had attained his senior partnership not only because of his career as a superb lawyer but also because he had an uncanny ability to drain fear, fraud, and even greed out of a dispute, leaving only the purity of reason and common sense. He was Falcone’s favorite squash opponent, but Falcone would not like to have him as an opponent in court. Falcone’s hand, now thankfully dressed with an antiburn cream and bandaged, was still throbbing. His head ached, and he felt blood trickling down his left cheek. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, and held it against a cut on his forehead. He longed to go home.

  Sprague stood, and now clearly in charge, addressed Emmetts: “I assume you’ll need an operating base for interviewing people and so forth. I’ve arranged for the police to have an empty staff office on this floor. It’s Room 1038, just off the conference room on the north corridor.”

  Emmetts’s radio crackled. He stepped out, closed the door, and then stuck his head in to say, “Crime scene and a team from the medical examiner’s office. Have to brief them. Please remain in your office, Mr. Falcone. And then I’ll get you an escort for the trip to headquarters. Goodbye, Mr. Sprague.”

  “We have a lot of talking to do, Sean,” Sprague said as soon as the door closed. “And you need something for that cut.” He reached for the phone, pressed the button for his interoffice phone, and said, “Ursula, please bring the first-aid kit to Mr. Falcone’s office—and your laptop. Thank you.” Looking at Falcone, he added, “I’ll be right back for our talk.”

  Still clutching Falcone’s yellow pad, Sprague left.

  10


  Back in his corner office, Sprague summoned three associate partners from the eighth floor. Working from a list on a yellow pad, he assigned one to write a draft of Davidson’s obituary, which he would sign off on and send to the New York Times and Washington Post. Sprague also told the associate to start working on arranging a memorial service for Davidson at the National Cathedral.

  The second associate was to go to Ellen’s mother, give her the condolences of the firm, help her make funeral arrangements, and offer to help with Ellen’s insurance and pension account. He was also to prepare the draft of “a short message about the incident” to be sent to all Sullivan & Ford offices around the world. He would also sign off on that.

  He told the third associate to organize a meeting of the Senior Partners’ Executive Committee in the conference room. At nine a.m. tomorrow. But she pointed out that people were still streaming out of the building and that many tenth-floor occupants, after being questioned by police, would want to go home and not come in tomorrow. Sprague, acting as if nothing notable had happened, shrugged and told her to call the meeting for the day after tomorrow. And he told her to immediately send out the kind of all-personnel message used for holidays, making tomorrow “a day of remembrance.”

  He instructed Ursula Breitsprecher, his executive assistant, to take charge of incoming phone calls, keeping track of condolences and clients’ concerns. She was to politely inform every reporter or television producer who called that because of the ongoing police investigation there would be no comment from Sullivan & Ford.

  Sprague, accompanied by Ursula, then went to Falcone’s office. Falcone was sitting at his grand old desk, back to the door, staring at the Capitol dome and the graying sky. He turned to Sprague and felt that his cool and methodical behavior had somehow produced a shield of reason that held off the madness of the shootings. Sprague matter-of-factly told him about his instructions to the associates.

  “And now for you. You okay?” Sprague asked, as if, Falcone thought, Sprague had been practicing triage and now had come to treat a case that needed immediate, specialized treatment.

  Sprague took out his cell phone and clicked three images of Falcone’s wound. Then Ursula handed him a small blue box with a red cross on its lid. He took out a cotton swab, wiped Falcone’s wound, squirted antiseptic on it, and applied a large Band-Aid.

  “Now we talk about the killing,” he said. “I have asked Ursula to check out recent and classic homicide cases in which the killer claimed self-defense or justified homicide.” Ursula sat at the corner chair and opened her laptop.

  She moved gracefully and surely. He had heard that she had been a teenaged ballerina in the Leipzig Ballet when the Berlin Wall fell. Traveling alone, she managed to track down a distant relative in Philadelphia. She worked her way through the University of Pennsylvania by teaching dance. Office gossip, which Falcone usually ignored, said she was having an affair with a South Carolina congressman.

  “We go with justified,” Sprague continued. “Self-defense is a bit risky. There’s no ‘stand and defend’ law on the books in DC. This isn’t Florida, Texas, or a dozen other states that give you a license to kill. In real life, self-defense rarely ends in homicide. And when it does, some wise-guy prosecutor always asks, ‘Why was it necessary to kill John Doe? Why not just restrain him until the police arrive?’”

  “Jesus!” Falcone said. “You sound like a goddamn…”

  “Lawyer,” Sprague said. “Which is exactly what you need.”

  “The guy had an automatic weapon. You make it sound like he was the victim!”

  “The autopsy will show that his trigger finger was disabled,” Sprague continued. “Poor fellow. He landed faceup, and, from what I gather from a lobby security man I called, his nose was broken and his face bloody. Looks like you brutally attacked him and deliberately threw him to his death.”

  Falcone started to sputter a response. Sprague held up his hand in a traffic-cop gesture and said, “We go with justifiable. You were a hero. You intervened during the commission of a crime. You came to the defense of others. You prevented more murders. You were injured. When a person commits a justifiable homicide, that person is not guilty of a criminal offense.

  “Detective Lieutenant Emmetts does not realize that if the investigating police officer sees the death as justified homicide, he can just sign off, using his own judgment. No prosecutor. No court hearing. No further legal issues. I will get that assurance from Detective Lieutenant Emmetts. There is absolutely no need for you to go to police headquarters now. I’ll schedule a time at our convenience.”

  “Okay,” Falcone said wearily. “I’m sure you’re right. Look, I’m bushed, and—”

  “There are only a couple of other issues,” Sprague said. Nodding at Ursula, he opened the office door and handed her the yellow pad, saying, “Thanks so much, Ursula. As usual, you were superb. Go along to the office the police are occupying. I will see you in a moment.”

  “What other issues?” Falcone asked as soon as Ursula closed the door.

  “You and I are in a client-lawyer situation here, just to remind you. So anything you…”

  “Jesus, Paul, I know about client-lawyer privilege.”

  “Just being cautious, Sean. I must be absolutely certain that you never saw the gunman, never had anything to do with him or with the guy who escaped.”

  “I never saw that bastard before. Or the other guy.”

  “Okay. Two other matters. Delicate. First, I must tell you that when I glanced at the yellow pad I borrowed from your desk, I saw notes about SpaceMine and Robert Wentworth Hamilton. Also a note about someone named Taylor.”

  “What the hell were you doing snooping on me?” Falcone asked angrily.

  “Come on, Sean. It was an accidental discovery. But a lucky one. I’d rather not have Hamilton or SpaceMine dragged into this. And who is Taylor?”

  “Dr. Benjamin Franklin Taylor, assistant director of the Air and Space Museum—and a friend. Why the hell should you care?”

  “I care because I need to know everything about what’s going on. This has been a traumatic—potentially disastrous—incident for the firm. As you can imagine—well, it’s unimaginable—Mr. Hamilton is one of our important clients—if not our most important client.”

  “I’m well aware of Hamilton’s importance, Paul. I was watching that announcement because I was curious. GNN had been promoting a ‘major news break’ for the past couple of days. I also figured that SpaceMine or Hamilton might need some ideas about whether the SEC might get involved. Incidentally, SpaceMine wasn’t mentioned in that confidential memo about our new client. Does our work for Hamilton include SpaceMine?”

  Sprague paused, deciding not to respond to the mention of Hamilton. He then continued his line of questioning. “When you first talked to police, when they put out the description of the second gunman, did you mention that you had been watching the SpaceMine special?”

  Falcone thought for a moment. “No. I started out by telling them about walking down the west corridor, seeing the two men in the reception area, and continuing walking to the restroom. No mention of SpaceMine or Hamilton.”

  “Fine. Now, what you saw—or thought you saw—the second man was carrying. How did you describe what you saw?”

  Falcone hesitated before he responded: “I said he was carrying something … but not in his hands. It was slung over a shoulder, like the kind of case you use for a laptop.”

  “That’s what you saw … what you said? So it looked to you that the man might be carrying a laptop in a case?”

  “Yes. For God’s sake, Paul, this is getting tiresome. What the hell are you trying to get at?”

  “Harold had a desktop in his office and a laptop, both registered as property of Sullivan and Ford, just as you and most of us have. On my way here from my office, I disobeyed Chief Mosley by looking in Hal’s office—horrible, horrible. There was no laptop there. That could mean that Harold didn’t bring the laptop into the office
.”

  “Or,” Falcone said, “it could mean that Hal did bring it in today and the guy took it.”

  “Right. That’s what we must assume.”

  Sprague rose and drew his chair closer to Falcone’s desk. “If necessary, I’ll handle your description of the gunman as speedy information, not part of your formal statement, which you will be making in my presence. When you make that formal statement, I suggest that you simply say the man was carrying a briefcase, period. On the other matter, I’ll be there in case he strays away from your claim of self-defense in the death of the gunman.”

  “And in case I start to say anything that you and Sullivan and Ford don’t like,” Falcone snapped.

  “Well, you bring up the second—the final—issue. The needs of the firm are paramount to all of us, as are the needs of all our clients. Regarding Hal’s laptop, I do not want our clients to learn that a computer containing confidential client information is missing.”

  “Hold on, Paul. I said something like ‘the kind of case you carry a computer in.’ If Harold was killed so that the killer could get his laptop, that is supremely important to the police investigation.”

  “Perhaps, Sean. Perhaps. But at the moment the police are investigating a crime in progress. The second man is at large. I don’t want you to harm or thwart the police investigation or withhold vital information. Saying he had a carrying case of some kind is part of describing him. You don’t know what was in the case.”

  “I was up against guys like you when I was a prosecutor,” Falcone said, shaking his head. “Defense attorneys who were always skating at the edges. I’ll follow my conscience, and I will heed the needs of the firm.”

  “The firm is facing a crisis, Sean. We can lose clients, big clients. And we can lose personnel, even partners. I don’t want to rely on what the police or the media make of this crime. We need our own narrative, Sean. I want you to conduct your own investigation of what happened here and make a confidential report that will be presented to me as managing partner.”