Night on Fire

by Douglas Corleone

  Every hand in the media mosh pit rises at once, as Chief Attea bows his head and steps back from the microphone.

  The spokesman steps forward. “I am afraid the chief will be unable to take any questions at this time.”

  The chief steps off the stage and wraps his arms around a teary-eyed female civilian, who I assume is related to one of the unnamed victims, if not Trevor Simms himself.

  I’m in a daze, everything happening so fast I can barely breathe. It feels as though the sun is punching me in the back, beating every last bit of energy out of me.

  I lift off my cap to wipe away the sweat. The moment I do, I hear: “Is that Kevin Corvelli?”

  I pull the cap back down, push the brim over my eyes, but it’s too late.

  Someone shouts, “It is. Swing the camera.”

  The mob turns and trains its microphones on me.

  “Word is, you were at the fire, Mr. Corvelli. Are you a witness?”

  “Are you representing the accused, Erin Simms?”

  “Mr. Corvelli, have police yet identified a motive?”

  “Were you surprised by your client’s quick arrest?”

  “Have you had an opportunity to meet with your client yet?”

  I draw a deep breath, lift the UH cap from my head. Sweat drips into my eyes, causing them to sting.

  I take a step back, taking my time, wiping the sweat from my eyes with the sleeve of my T. Finally, I look into the cameras as they look into me.

  “No comment,” I say. Then I slowly make my way through the mob toward the station.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us, Mr. Corvelli.”

  It’s a few hours after the press conference, the sun already hiding behind the mountains, and we’re in my office rather than the conference room because the conference room still reeks of Jake’s bacon and eggs. I think Jake stowed the leftovers in the back of one of our mahogany bookshelves. Hoshi, with a respirator tied tightly over her face, is on the case. In forty-five minutes, if she hasn’t yet found anything, she has instructions to call in HazMat.

  “Of course,” I tell Erin’s stepfather, Todd Downey, from behind my cluttered desk. He’s a thin man, somewhat frail for his age, appropriately melancholy under the circumstances. A surprising number of parents, step or otherwise, who sit across from me at my desk don’t appear genuinely distraught at all. It’s almost as though they are there on behalf of some stranger who they simply have had the misfortune to know. And it’s not just the folks of the real bad seeds, it’s just as often the parents of good kids who merely suffered some lapse in judgment, who fucked-up, bought drugs, sold drugs, stole, embezzled, drove drunk, got high and climbed a telephone pole in their Speedo, whatever. Those children, no matter their age, always deserve parents who are at least willing to try to understand. After all, we all fuck up sooner or later.

  “We don’t know where else to turn,” Todd Downey says.

  “Well,” I say, “that’s why I do what I do.” That and I was too chickenshit to follow my boyhood dreams to Hollywood.

  I glance at Erin’s mother, Rebecca, who hasn’t yet said a word. Rebecca was clearly once as beautiful as her daughter, a cougar in her own right, even today. Smooth skin, eyes like green-blue marbles, hair as silky as any model in an Herbal Essences commercial. She may have had a facelift, I don’t know. Maybe Botox. Whatever it was, it’s one of those oh-so-rare cases where it actually worked, preserved to a sufficient degree the beauty that once was.

  I lean forward on my desk. “Let me begin by telling you we don’t have a whole hell of a lot of information on your daughter’s case just yet. Nothing more than what you’ve already read in the papers and seen on TV. In the coming hours and days that will change. But for now, aside from a brief lecture on criminal procedure, all of the facts are going to be coming from your side of the table.”

  Todd Downey nods. “Understood.”

  I typically dread meeting someone’s parents—a client’s, a girlfriend’s, a friend of a friend’s, it doesn’t matter. It’s something I try to avoid at all costs. I just can’t look them in the eye and smile while I’m imagining the ways in which they fucked up their child. Because they all have in some way or another, and I can’t help but want to get them on the witness stand. To delve into the deepest, darkest recesses of their minds until I get them to admit the things they refuse to admit to themselves.

  Following Chief Attea’s press conference I had only a few minutes to speak in privacy with Erin herself. She was in no state to provide me with any relevant details, so I simply reiterated what I told her this morning on Hidden Beach: Exercise your right to remain silent and speak only to me.

  Now I’m left to gather what I can from her parents. So I pull a yellow legal pad from my top desk drawer and ask them to tell me what I need to know.

  “Where should we begin?” Todd Downey asks.

  We’re going to be here until dawn if I have to stop and answer stupid questions every three minutes, but it’s been a long day for them too, so I let this one slide.

  I click open my blue Pilot G-2 05. “How about at the beginning?” I suggest.

  * * *

  All so typical. “Normal” is the word they use, but “normal” infers that any other type of relationship, any other road to wedlock, or cohabitation for that matter, is abnormal, and I can’t accept that. But the relationship between their daughter Erin and her beau Trevor was tres, tres typical. A one-year courtship, give or take a month, followed by a one-year engagement, give or take a week, and a destination wedding-honeymoon on the gorgeous tropical Hawaiian Island of Oahu. Typical. Traditional. Tres Americana.

  What was atypical, of course, was the death, maybe murder, of their son-in-law on their only daughter’s wedding night. And, as I am just now learning, the afternoon that immediately preceded it.

  “There was a…” Dad pauses, searches for the word, not for my benefit, I can tell, but for his wife’s. “… an indiscretion—”

  “Oh, for shit’s sake, Todd, just say it.” Rebecca shuts her eyes and clenches her fists as she spits these words out. When she reopens her eyes, they’re wet and angry and fixed on me. “Trevor fucked one of the bridesmaids,” she says. “Erin learned about it just minutes before the wedding.”

  I lift my pen, put the tip to the yellow page, and scrawl a woman scorned. I turn the pad upside down on my desk. There’s our motive.

  “The bitch confessed it to my daughter,” Rebecca says, “after Erin was already in her wedding dress. Said she slept with Trevor on his boat in San Francisco Bay just a little over two weeks ago.”

  At least now I know what they were arguing over at Kanaloa’s.

  “They said their vows,” Todd says, “to save face, I guess. But Erin hadn’t decided what she was going to do after that. She told her mother and maid of honor she needed a few days to think things through. She and Trevor had at least decided to stay in separate rooms during the honeymoon.”

  “But she retained a copy of the room key to the honeymoon suite,” Rebecca says, as though she has read my mind.

  I flip the legal pad over and scribble access. There’s our opportunity.

  Motive + Opportunity is not a pleasant formula for our side.

  There are a lot of other questions I have—about who else attended the wedding, how many guests were there for the groom, how many for the bride, who presided over the ceremony, who catered the reception, was there live music or a deejay—but now’s not the time for all that. Because there’s one issue that takes priority over all others. One I can’t escape, as much I’d sometimes like.

  Todd the Father now seems to have read my mind. “How much is something like this going to cost us?” he asks.

  “Something like this,” I say frankly, “between attorneys’ fees and expenses, I would need somewhere between three and four hundred thousand just to start. Likely double that if this case goes all the way to trial.”

  I pull the phone nea
r me, in case Todd decides to have himself a heart attack on my desk. But there’s no myocardial infarction, just a deep breath and two misty eyes, a glance in his wife’s direction.

  “We’ll have to sell the goddamn house,” she says immediately.

  Todd bows his head in resignation, and I feel a little like shit. I only wish I could be the type of lawyer you find in Hollywood movies, one that doesn’t accept money, that is independently wealthy, and can take on an array of good causes for free.

  “Okay,” Todd says quietly to me. “We’ll get you the money. I talked to my broker back in California this morning. We already have a buyer lined up.” He pauses, his eyes tearing up. “Six hundred thousand,” he says. “That’s all we can get. Three up front and three at the start of trial if and when it comes to that. Is that fair enough?”

  “That’s fair,” I say.

  “We spent our entire savings on this wedding and honeymoon,” he adds. “The house is the only asset we have.”

  I nod. “I understand.” Though I will have our investigator Flan check this out first thing in the morning.

  “But what about bail?” Rebecca says, her voice rising like the tide.

  I shake my head. “Your daughter’s charged with nine counts of first-degree murder. And she’s already tried to run once. If bail is set at all, it will be set in the millions. In which case, the point is moot.”

  Rebecca begins crying, Todd trying to comfort her. Their daughter will be doing at least the next six to twelve months behind bars thousands of miles from home.

  “All right,” I say, standing up, still in a T-shirt and shorts. “I’ll have Hoshi draw up the retainer agreement and have you sign it. If you can leave a deposit of ten thousand dollars I’ll be at your daughter’s initial arraignment tomorrow morning.”

  Todd nods his head.

  “One last thing before you go,” Rebecca says as I step around my desk. Her voice is now cracking like ice in a cup of hot coffee. “One last thing you need to know.”

  I stand silent, waiting for the shot like a prisoner on the firing line.

  She glares up at me. “Our daughter has a history of starting fires.”

  CHAPTER 9

  It’s standing room only in Judge Sonya Maxa’s courtroom for an arraignment that may last all of ten minutes, about which anyone with an inkling of sense or knowledge about the American judicial system already knows the outcome. As I routinely tell my clients: “There are rarely any surprises at arraignment.”

  As I move through the courtroom, I instinctively loosen my tie. The windows are open but there are few trade winds blowing in during the middle of July. I turn to the nearest court officer, a dark young man with three chins and no neck. “No A/C?” I say.

  I get a shrug and a barely discernable shake of the head. “Broken,” I think he says.

  I set my briefcase down on the defense table and glance over at my adversaries on the other side of the aisle. It’s a big day for them. The press is hungry, the public’s out in droves. At least two nations are watching events unfold from either side of the Pacific. The prosecution today—“the good guys,” as cable commentator Marcy Faith might say—are all sympathetic smiles and handshakes, an aggrieved crowd of cops and deputy prosecutors leaning over the rail to console the victims’ families.

  Front and center in the gallery is the female civilian whom Chief Edward Attea hugged following yesterday’s press conference. Jake and I watched her on the news last night at Sand Bar during burgers and beers and a brief arraignment strategy session. Her name is Lauren Simms, Trevor’s sister, and she’s irate and out for blood. And she is “dead certain” my client Erin Simms, who now “shamefully shares the family surname,” is the party responsible for Trevor’s death. Not to mention the demise of eight other innocents.

  Lauren Simms takes her seat directly behind the prosecutor’s table. Still standing at the table is Donovan Watanabe, decked out as always, today in a meticulous gray Pierre Cardin suit. Dapper Don, as he is known in legal circles, is one of the best in the business, not only here in the islands, I’d wager, but in all fifty states. On top of that, he’s respectful and open-minded. In fact, if I hadn’t purposefully doused Dapper Don with a cup of lukewarm Kona coffee during our first trial together, I’d be honored to call him my friend.

  Dapper Don notices me staring and bows his head solemnly in my direction. I return the gesture with a wink, then open my briefcase and remove a half-dozen pages of notes I scribbled down last night at Sand Bar. I’m assuming this is Dapper Don’s case, if not the head prosecutor’s himself. Strangely, as good as he is, I’m looking forward to facing Donovan Watanabe again. Our first rematch since the Gianforte case.

  Judge Sonya Maxa enters the courtroom from chambers. Silent, we all rise on cue and I’m reminded of church and the mind-numbing Sunday mornings of my youth. Maxa is a stern-looking woman to most observers, though it may be the long flowing black robe, the bifocal glasses, or the reddish brown hair chopped obscenely short and combed neat like an eight-year-old Catholic schoolboy’s. But I’ve been before Maxa on previous matters, and she is one of the fairest jurists I have yet to come across.

  “Have a seat,” she says.

  From the corner of my eye I catch the prisoner being led this way in shackles down the aisle.

  Here comes the bride.

  An image of Nikki Kapua flashes through my mind but I quickly push it away.

  Once Erin Simms is safely at my side, I stand again, gently sweep aside her hair, and whisper in her ear. “This is just a formality. I’ll enter your plea and we’ll argue for bail, though as I’ve told your parents, bail will, in all likelihood, be denied. If not, it’ll be set so high, Bill Gates himself would probably have trouble making it.”

  She starts to cry, and I ache a little inside. So I look away, back toward the prosecutor’s table. When I do, my eyes cross, my mouth contorts. I’m utterly perplexed and I can’t help but show it. Standing alone across the aisle now is a man about my age, approximately my weight and height. A good-looking guy with blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and a suit picked out for the cameras.

  I swing toward the court officer standing behind Erin. “Hey, Perry,” I say.

  Perry’s so big he could break me in half, but he’s one of the gentlest human beings I’ve ever known. “New guy,” he whispers to me. “Just came over from L.A. Got a hard-on for the media and says he plans on being the next head prosecutor soon as Frank DiSimone retires.”

  I frown. “No enemies in the office yet? No opposition?”

  Perry shrugs. “You know how it is in the islands, Kevin—too much respect, too little personal ambition. Guy like him figures he can fly across the pond and steamroll his way to the top. Hell of a lot easier to do that here than L.A.”

  The clerk calls the case. “State versus Erin Simms, Docket Number…”

  We briefly sit again while the judge gets her file in order. It’s a few moments before I catch my foot tapping against the floor. Then the clerk asks for our appearances.

  L.A. rises. “May it please the Court, Your Honor, Luke Maddox for the State of Hawaii…”

  I scribble the words Luke Maddox on my yellow legal pad and decide that I hate the name already.

  My turn. “For the defendant, Kevin Corvelli…”

  I waive a formal reading of the charges, sparing Erin and her family a few extra minutes of grief. Then Judge Maxa turns immediately to the issue of bail. It’s a lost cause, I know. And we’ll get another shot at it within two weeks, once Erin has been formally indicted on the charges. Though I don’t expect circumstances to change between now and then, I tell her now in her ear that there is at least a chance at getting bail reduced if exculpatory evidence surfaces before the next arraignment. Chances are, though, that she will remain incarcerated through trial, and I don’t want to get her hopes up too high.

  “Maybe though?” she says.

  “Let’s see what happens over the next two weeks,” I tell her. “We�
�ll try.”

  Meanwhile the prosecuting attorney Luke Maddox is being heard on the issue of bail. He reveals little more than what the public read in this morning’s copy of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. That the defendant Erin Simms committed the offense in question over an affair had by her new husband just weeks before the wedding. Yada yada yada. He’s holding back a lot, I can tell, but that’s because he doesn’t need a lot. Not for this. Erin is not going anywhere unless her parents can somehow cough up a few million in bail, and as we all already know, that’s not going to happen.

  As I watch Maddox go through the facts of the case, I decide that Maddox is probably just going to bat for DiSimone or Watanabe during this initial arraignment. This is little more than an exhibition game. No need to tire out your starters.

  “… and the defendant’s Zippo lighter was discovered at the scene…” Maddox is saying. She had access, a key. She had more than motive. There is no question, Maddox submits, that the defendant Erin Simms is responsible for this heinous crime.

  “As such,” Maddox concludes, “the State requests that bail be set in an amount no less than six hundred thousand dollars…”

  What? My head snaps up, my eyes bulge from their sockets like a cartoon coyote’s.

  “… with the conditions, of course, that the defendant immediately surrender her United States passport, be confined to a home here in Honolulu County, and submit to wearing a monitored ankle bracelet for the duration of this case. Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Her Honor appears no less stunned than I am. My client is already displaying a confused smile on her otherwise despondent face.

  Judge Maxa turns to me. “Mr. Corvelli?” she says.

  I stand, staring down at my file, trying to comprehend what just happened. I glance back into the gallery, at the front row behind the prosecution’s table, at the deceased’s sister, Lauren Simms, and I think I understand.

  “Mr. Corvelli?” the judge says again.

  I shrug. “I apologize, Your Honor. Six hundred thousand dollars, it just sounds like an odd number to me.”