Desperate Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  “Okay, I think I know them. Listen. You get me all of the names. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  “Wait a second,” Conrad said, “I remember another guy. Thinking about the Corwin murder brought it back to me. His name is Corwin, too. Robert Corwin, I’m sure of it. But not the same guy who got killed. This guy is older. Supposed to be pretty prominent. Maybe related to the same Corwin family?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Tony said trying to hide his shock. Recovering, he said, “I’ll call you in a few days, I got some things to check on. Take off and I’ll be in touch.”

  Conrad crossed Charles and went east down Lake toward his car. Tony walked a few paces toward his Camaro but kept an eye on Conrad. When he was sure Conrad wouldn’t see him, Tony reversed course and went back to cross Lake Street and head toward Marc’s office while he made a phone call to a competitor of Conrad. Tony quickly told the man where he was and what he wanted and the man informed him he would be there in fifteen minutes.

  Carvelli entered Marc’s building through the front and not bothering with the old building’s rickety elevator, took the flight of stairs two at a time up to the second floor. He went through the door leading into the suite of offices and when Carolyn saw him and started to greet him, Tony quickly put an index finger to his lips in the universal signal to quiet her.

  Marc’s door was partially open and Tony could not hear any conversation coming from within it. He slowly pushed open Marc’s door and again holding the finger to his lips, gestured for Marc to follow him. Marc got up and with an understandably curious look on his face, followed Tony into the hallway. The two men went down the stairs and onto the sidewalk where Tony quickly told Marc what he had found out about his office being bugged by Leo and Bruce Dolan.

  “I’m not surprised,” Marc said after he heard the news. “I thought the whole thing seemed a little too contrived. But when I look back at it, I don’t know what I would’ve done differently.”

  “You did a good job for your client.”

  “I’ll get that sonofabitch disbarred,” Marc angrily said. “What an outrageous stunt to pull.”

  “Good luck proving it,” Tony said and then added, “Here comes my guy. We’ll get your office swept just to be sure.”

  They waited on the street for Tony’s surveillance expert and the three of them went back upstairs. While Marc’s personal office was being swept, Tony and Marc gathered all of the other office personnel together and quietly explained what was happening. Connie Mickelson, the lawyer whose name was on the lease, looked as if she might explode. Instead, they all decided to break for lunch when they were told it would be at least an hour before the entire office could be checked.

  Carvelli took them all back across the street to Molina’s for lunch and picked up the bill with Vivian Donahue’s expense money. Connie spent most of the lunch time trying to get the information out of Tony as to how he found out about the wiretapping so she could bring an ethics complaint against Bruce Dolan, whom she despised anyway. If proved, conduct like that could easily be grounds for disbarment.

  “Look, Connie,” Tony said to her as the group was walking across Lake Street to go back to the office, “I can’t get into specifics, but if it becomes possible to prosecute Leo and Dolan for this, you’ll be the first one I call. But my guy isn’t going to admit to several felonies just to stick it to Dolan. Maybe if we can get him immunity, we’ll see.”

  “Let me think about it. I can make a call to the county attorney’s office and check into the possibility,” Connie said.

  After they had been told the office was clean and Tony’s surveillance guy had been paid, by cash from Vivian’s expense money, Tony said his good-byes and left. Marc, Chris Grafton and Barry Cline took chairs in Connie’s office to discuss what had just occurred.

  “I will cut Dolan’s balls off if it’s the last thing I do,” Connie said. “The nerve of that bastard.”

  “Look,” Marc interjected, “I know Tony, and if there’s any way we can get him, he’ll figure it out. Plus, the source of the information would be a co-conspirator and that alone would not be enough. Tony knows that so let him keep digging.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” she sighed. “But in the meantime, I’ll call Slocum’s office and talk to a guy I know there. His name is John Hutton. You know him?” she asked Marc.

  “Yeah, I know John,” Marc said.

  “So do I,” Barry chimed in. “He’s a pretty straight guy. He should talk to you, don’t you think?” he asked turning to Marc.

  “Yeah, especially if it’s about Dolan. They pretty much hate his guts in that office,” Marc said.

  “With good reason,” Barry added. “He kicks their ass in court often enough.”

  The three men left her office and Connie made the call and spoke to her friend in the county attorney’s office. She laid out the situation for him looking for an opinion as to the possibility of getting immunity for Tony’s source. The best Hutton could tell her was that it was possible, but as Marc had already mentioned, his testimony alone would not be enough, even for the attorney disciplinary committee. They would need some independent corroborative evidence against Dolan and Leo. The two of them discussed it for a few more minutes and Connie ended the call by promising to keep Hutton informed of any developments.

  Ten minutes later, John Hutton quietly left the office and went out for a break. He took a walk and after going two blocks, Hutton made a call to Bruce Dolan.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Melinda leaned back in her soft leather captain’s chair and watched the edited version of today’s show. The show itself was fine, Melinda looked great and there are always plenty of stories about moron criminals doing incredibly stupid things. In fact, the most popular segment of the show came in the last few minutes with the “Dumbest Criminals of the Day.”

  Today’s featured idiots were a man in Baton Rouge, LA, who had recently pled guilty to bank robbery and was sentenced to forty-eight months in prison. This genius had gone to his own local bank branch to check on his account. He gave the teller his name and social security number and she looked up his account information. She told him his account balance was at zero and that is when he decided to rob the bank.

  The second master criminal of the day was a man arrested in Richmond, VA for rape. Believing his second victim had eyes for him, he wrote down his name, address and phone number expecting her to call him for a future date. Police say he was quite surprised when they showed up instead.

  Her eighth producer in five years, Robbie, silently sat next to her waiting for Melinda’s assessment. He finally broke the silence while she downed what remained of her third glass of wine by asking, “Well, what do you think?”

  “Oh, I guess it will do,” she answered as she held out her empty glass to him. “The dumb criminals were good. Where do you come up with them?”

  “There are several websites online. You can find them,” he answered as he poured what was left of the bottle in her glass.

  “You get this stuff off the internet? How reliable is it? Ninety-nine percent of the crap out there is pure bullshit.”

  “We’re okay,” he said mildly patronizing her. “I make a copy of them and keep a file. I always make sure the story has been reported by at least one reputable news outlet or I won’t use it. I’ve checked with legal and they okayed it in writing, remember?”

  “I just don’t trust that internet crap. Any idiot can, and does, go on there and write whatever he wants. And the scary part is that people believe it.”

  “Is the show good to go?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s okay. It’s just been kind of boring lately. We need something really juicy. Something that makes people’s skin crawl you know, like the trial of that guy in Park Rapids who’s pit-bull killed that little girl. That was great stuff.”

  “That’s really morbid, Melinda.”

  “Oh,” she said dismissively, “you know what I mean. I’m not actually hoping for some dog to maul
a little girl.”

  “Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Robbie sarcastically replied as he pulled the tape to take it to the production room for airing.

  When the show was finished, Robbie spent another two hours preparing for the next day’s show. Research was his number one priority. His top priority was to find enough courtroom and criminal information each day to fill twenty-two minutes of air-time. The hard part wasn’t finding enough newsworthy stories; the hard part was prioritizing it and anticipating what Melinda would want to use and what not to use. He could easily find sixty minutes worth each day, but Melinda wanted the most outrageous stories. The stories she liked the most were those involving judges who made ridiculous sentencing decisions. It always seemed the very worst of which involved child molesters being given a slap on the wrist.

  His next priority was to come up with some art, pictures to go along with the story. It was normally quite easy to track down a picture of the judge who was the topic of a story or, at least, a shot of the courthouse to show the viewers. He had to be extra careful to be sure he had the correct judge’s picture to match the story. One time Robbie’s predecessor had used the wrong picture of a local judge accused of his third drunk driving arrest. A lawsuit was threatened and a chastened Melinda had to make an on-air correction and apology. The last thing you ever wanted to do would be to make her look bad or embarrass her. Robbie was promoted a few days later after the producer who made the mistake was fired.

  Robbie Nelson initially moved to Chicago upon graduation with a degree in communication from the Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. He was twenty-three at the time, a reasonably attractive, well-groomed, articulate young man trying to land his first decent job. Through no lack of effort, he was unable to land anything in Chicago and after three years of bartending, cab-driving and retail sales jobs, he answered an online ad for an entry level position with a local TV station in Minneapolis. Robbie could make more money driving a cab, but he was offered the job two years ago and had not looked back.

  He started out as an associate producer for Melinda’s show at a salary just above the poverty line, but Robbie didn’t care. He had an interesting job in a field that he truly enjoyed. The promotion to producer came with enough of a raise to allow for an occasional night out and he was finding out that Melinda’s bark was worse than her bite if you were organized, efficient and willing to stand up to her.

  At the still young age of twenty-eight, Robbie felt life was good and would only get better.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Melinda Pace impatiently tapped the well-manicured fingernails of her left hand on her dressing room vanity. She was waiting for Robbie to fill her glass with a cold Chardonnay and light her cigarette. When he finished she dismissed him with a wave of the hand that held the cigarette while she took a solid gulp from the long-stemmed wine glass. Robbie lightly chastised her for her drinking and when she snarled at him left her dressing room to edit the taping of her TV show, The Court Reporter which needed to be ready for airing in less than two hours.

  Melinda was a thirty-eight year-old, twice divorced, childless host of a half-hour daily show airing locally on Channel 8 at 4:30 P.M. As the name implied, it was a show about what was of interest, as Melinda decided, occurring in the court system. Not just locally but nationally and on occasion when an American ran afoul of the law while abroad, internationally. The show itself was allegedly a news program but in reality it had evolved into tabloid journalism, usually at its sleaziest.

  Melinda had a degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She had graduated magna cum laude sixteen years ago because, as she believed, she was an exceptionally bright, hard-working student who earned every good grade she received. Her fellow students would attribute it to her exceptional good looks and her more basic, carnal endeavors by sleeping with every male professor in the journalism school and as rumor had it, several of the female ones as well. The truth was that she was an intelligent, exceptional student who also slept her way through most of the faculty members.

  After graduation Melinda found a job at a small local TV station in Duluth, Minnesota. She was hired as a minimum wage intern, basically a gofer, running errands for the producers and on-air talent. Just three months into the job she was beginning to be recognized for her ability, especially by several of the men, when her first break dropped in her lap.

  It was a very busy news day in the Duluth-Superior, Wisconsin area and as luck would have it, every news van and crew the station had were out covering stories. Just before four o’clock that afternoon, word came in of a serious fire in a high-rise apartment building three blocks from the station. The fire had gone to a second alarm and there were rumors of serious injuries and maybe even a death or two.

  Three of the producers began scrambling to get a crew on the scene but all of them were at least an hour away. Without waiting for permission or approval, Melinda grabbed two other interns, both young men with serious Melinda fantasies, found two video cameras, one for each of them, and audio equipment to match the cameras. Melinda told an associate producer what they were up to as they headed for the parking lot door. One of the young men drove an old van and the three of them jumped in and headed for the fire.

  What happened then was the stuff that journalistic legends are made from. With barely enough experience to know how to turn on the audio and video, Melinda proceeded to cover the fire, which had begun to consume several floors of the building, with the calm, savvy, professionalism of a veteran reporter with ten years experience. Keeping one of the cameras with her while the other male intern shuttled tapes to the station which went on the air virtually unedited, she stayed at the scene for the next two hours, refusing to step aside when one of the live-feed vans finally showed up. It was clearly the story of the week, if not the year, and she was even nominated for an award by the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists.

  Melinda, without a doubt having earned it, was immediately dropped as an intern, hired, promoted and assigned to do on-scene coverage. She continued working for this station for three more years with the full knowledge the experience she was getting was invaluable.

  Melinda’s beauty, sexuality and flagrant promiscuity were only going to take her so far in this market. The two main station on-air anchors, a man and a woman both in their late thirties, neither of whom had the talent to go anywhere else, were well established and Melinda was not going to supplant either of them anytime soon. She did manage to get some weekend air time on the anchor desk but she was hungry and ambitious and she wanted more and in a bigger market. When she was still a young twenty-five, she began to send audition tapes to stations in the Twin Cities, Chicago, Denver and even California. It wasn’t long before one of the Twin Cities stations gave her an interview and offered her a position. Their on-scene court reporter had left and Melinda seemed to be an ideal candidate.

  She moved to Minneapolis and took to her new job like a fish to water. Melinda absolutely loved watching and reporting on trials. The more reprehensible the murder and the accused were, the better. During the next three years, she occasionally did anchor duties, mostly on weekends and as a fill-in but her first love was the courts and criminal beat.

  Melinda finished the first three years and she had become such a huge asset that the station, in order to keep her, agreed to send her to law school and pay for it if she agreed to extend her contract for five years. Melinda quickly agreed, enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School and while still working at full pay for the station, received her J.D. and after graduation kept her end of the contract with the station. She stayed on for two more years then decided to give practicing law a try.

  Melinda had made hundreds of contacts in the courts and legal community, especially among the male attorneys. Finding a job required little more than letting people know she was looking for one. She took a job with one of the most prestigious firms in the state in their downtown Minneapolis office in the white c
ollar criminal defense department. This firm did not and never would sully its hands and reputation on common criminals who committed crimes to eat and provide for themselves. No, their class of clients were the ones who stole millions and bankrupted vulnerable victims in the process. Truly a better class of defendant and best of all, they could afford the best justice money can buy.

  For Melinda, it was the worst two years of her life. Up to this point she had only seen the most interesting part of the practice of law. Reporting on trials was interesting, glamorous and rewarding. Having to spend ninety hours a week billing time for greedy partners was not what she had bargained for. And she quickly found out that sleeping with them wasn’t going to move her up the ladder any faster. Billing hours and making them money was the only thing that mattered. A very long two years after she started, an exhausted and extremely disillusioned Melinda Pace contacted her old boss ready to beg for her job back.

  Three months after gratefully getting her TV job back, a partner in the firm she had just left, a married man fifteen years her senior whom she had been discreetly sleeping with, left his wife and three children and asked Melinda to marry him. Never having been married and now in her thirties, Melinda quickly said yes and six months later, two days after his quick divorce was finalized, they were married.

  If the two years she had worked as a lawyer seemed like ten, then the six months she was married seemed like twenty. Two weeks into the marriage she started having serious doubts. Melinda was quickly discovering that marriage was a far cry from the romance of dating, and her new husband was proving to be a vain, selfish, self-centered, demanding child. What she saw when they were dating, a charming, strong, take-charge man, was really an egotistical, narcissistic, control freak who had to have everything his way or he would pout like a petulant teenager for days. To make matters worse, he was practically ordering her to get pregnant so they could have a child, the thought of which horrified her.