An Engineered Injustice

by William L. Myers Jr.

  Day opens his top drawer, removes the drawer tray, and retrieves the envelope. He stares at the wording beneath the 2020 Marketing letterhead: “You’re a dead man. Bang, bang, motherfucker. Bang, bang.”

  He’d kept the original for himself and given Corey King the copy to read to the engineer over the cell phone. In the back of his mind, he knows it’s probably not the greatest idea to keep the paper, but he can’t bring himself to get rid of it. Some things are too good to part with.

  31

  TUESDAY, JULY 29

  Vaughn gets the call just before noon. Angie buzzes him, and when he picks up, he hears the strain in her voice.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Uh, someone’s here to see you. It’s, it’s . . .”

  “Never mind. I can guess. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Vaughn turns the corner to the hallway leading to the reception area. Sure enough, standing by the leather couches is James Nunzio. With him is Johnny Giacobetti. Approaching them, Vaughn glances at Angie, whose face is white with fear. It’s okay, he tells her with his eyes. It doesn’t do any good.

  “Nice place,” says Nunzio. “Your bosses must be doing well. After that Hanson trial, I would expect so.”

  Vaughn doesn’t answer. Nunzio probably has an inch-thick folder on Mick and Susan and the firm. Probably knows every case they ever tried, the names of the prosecutors. The verdicts.

  “I have something you may want to see,” Nunzio says.

  “Your friend Jack Bunting gave it to us,” adds Giacobetti.

  Knowing what likely happened to Bunting, Vaughn winces.

  “Don’t worry, counselor,” Giacobetti says. “It won’t get back to you. That’s one stone that will never be unturned.”

  Vaughn cringes, then leads them down the hall to the big conference room. When he shuts the door, Nunzio nods to Giacobetti, who pulls a memory stick from his breast pocket. Vaughn accepts it, plugs it into the system, and the three of them watch what happens with Eddy in the moments leading up to the crash.

  The video starts at 12:06:05, the time Eddy pulled the train out of 30th Street Station. Eddy is positioned in the engineer’s seat, which is on the right-hand side of the locomotive—the same side drivers sit on in the UK. Judging from the video, the camera must be positioned in front of and above Eddy. For two minutes, nothing unusual happens. Then, at 12:08:10, Eddy pulls a cell phone from his shirt pocket and dials a number. He waits for the person at the other end to answer, then says a few words. There’s no sound, so Vaughn can’t hear what Eddy says, but he knows that Eddy placed the call to Kate, so he figures his cousin is just asking how she’s doing. For ninety seconds, Eddy listens some and talks some. Then he hangs up and puts the phone back in his pocket.

  For the next eight minutes, Eddy remains seated, mostly looking out the front window, sometimes glancing out the side, sometimes looking at his control console. Every few moments, with his left hand, he presses forward on a small handle. This, Vaughn knows from talking to Eddy, is the “dead-man’s switch.” It’s a safety device meant to ensure that a train doesn’t go speeding down the track with a dead engineer at the helm. The lever has to be pushed every thirty seconds, otherwise the train automatically goes into emergency mode, its brakes fully applied until it comes to a stop.

  At 12:17:50, Eddy glances down at his shirt pocket and withdraws the cell phone. He doesn’t look to see who’s calling before he answers. As soon as he hits the “Receive” button, his face contorts with a mixture of surprise and confusion. After a second, Eddy, looking angry, says something into the phone. Then he listens for a moment, his eyes widening at what he hears. Suddenly, at 12:18:03, he leaps up from his seat. He covers his face and stumbles backward, and down. He disappears from view, and remains that way until the tape goes black, at 12:18:18.

  Vaughn looks at Nunzio, who opens his hands to signal, That’s it. Vaughn turns off the TV. “It doesn’t make sense,” he says. “It seems like Eddy sees the TracVac and jumps up. He covers his face and goes down. But it takes fifteen seconds before the video goes black, which would’ve been when the train hit the TracVac.”

  “Plenty of time to apply the brakes,” Johnny G. says.

  The comment makes Vaughn’s heart stop. He struggles to come up with some explanation for why Eddy cowered under the control panel rather than brake the train, but he comes up empty.

  The video hasn’t saved Eddy; it’s doomed him.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the track machine he was responding to,” Nunzio says.

  Vaughn studies him for a moment, glances at Johnny Giacobetti, then returns his gaze to Nunzio. “Sounds like you have it figured out.”

  “Let’s just say I’ve seen guys react to certain things the way your cousin did.”

  They sit quietly for a moment, until Vaughn asks a question he already knows the answer to.

  “Jack Bunting?”

  A smile spreads across Johnny G.’s lips. “We Theon Greyjoyed him,” he says, explaining what Ramsay Bolton did to the luckless scion of the Iron Islands on Game of Thrones. “But we didn’t finish by cutting off his dick; that’s how we started. And things went downhill from there. For him.” Johnny G.’s eyes sparkle as he says this.

  Vaughn shudders. His dream about Nunzio and Giacobetti and the table loaded with power tools obviously wasn’t too far off. He’d like to be able to lie to himself and say that he’s surprised how things turned out for Jack Bunting. But, of course, he knew exactly what could happen. His setting up Bunting was the threshold he knew he’d have to cross to move forward. The fork in the road that Nunzio referred to.

  “He would have been more helpful to us as a witness than as a corpse,” Vaughn says.

  Giacobetti blows air. “That guy? He wasn’t going to testify for you.”

  “I have to hand it to him,” Nunzio says. “He was a tough son of a bitch. Didn’t cop to anything about causing the crash. Just decided when he’d had enough and told us where to find the download. It was right in his glove compartment.”

  “So that’s one down and what—three, four—to go?” Giacobetti asks his boss.

  “Starting with my lawyer,” says Nunzio. “Balzac.”

  “Wait!” Vaughn shouts. “There can’t be any more killing. I’m not sure yet who I’ll need at the preliminary hearing. Look, I know you have your own endgame here. But so do I. This is all for nothing if I can’t get the charges against Eddy dismissed. That’s what we have to focus on. What we have to—”

  “Have to?” Nunzio says. He leans across the conference table and points at Vaughn. “Boy, don’t ever tell me what I have to do.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vaughn says, desperate to win Nunzio over. “I apologize. But I’m guessing you can reach out and take your vengeance anytime you want. My cousin has one chance. And that’s for me to lay it all out at the preliminary hearing. Convince the judge, and the press—hell, everyone—that Eddy isn’t to blame for what happened.”

  “I’d be more concerned about convincing me,” says Nunzio.

  “But you saw both the videos. You said you had a hunch—”

  “A hunch, that’s right. But a hunch isn’t the same as knowing. Your cousin is still on my list.”

  Vaughn’s in full panic mode now.

  “I need to talk to him myself,” Nunzio continues. “I need to watch him watch that video and see if it makes him remember. See if it went down like I’m thinking it did.”

  “But there’s no way I’ll be able to get the video through prison security to show it to him.”

  Nunzio and his enforcer exchange glances and laugh.

  “Prison security.” Johnny G. practically spits out the words.

  Nunzio stands. “Come on.”

  “What? Where?”

  “We just went over this,” says Nunzio. “We’re going to meet your cousin. The car’s waiting outside.”

  Everyone stands, and Vaughn leads Nunzio and Giacobetti toward the lobby. Mick is there, talking to Ang
ie. He looks hard at the two mobsters, then fixes his eyes on Vaughn. “My office, when you get back from wherever it is you’re going.”

  Vaughn nods and keeps walking.

  Outside the building, Nunzio opens the back door to an Audi A8 L, then looks to Giacobetti. “You made the arrangements?”

  “All set.”

  “Call and tell them we’re on our way.”

  Nunzio motions to Vaughn to climb into the car, then gets in after him. Johnny G. remains on the curb.

  It’s a twenty-minute drive north on I-95 to the prison. Another fifteen minutes checking in and passing through security, during which Vaughn and Nunzio are disencumbered of their cell phones. They are led to a small room used for private inmate-attorney confabs. When they enter, a guard hands Nunzio an Apple 6s Plus, then turns and leaves.

  “Video’s on the phone,” the gangster tells Vaughn.

  Eddy is brought into the room, and his cuffs are removed. He glances at Nunzio, then looks to Vaughn.

  “This is Mr. Nunzio,” Vaughn explains.

  Eddy’s eyes widen.

  “He’s on our side now.”

  “We’ll see,” says Nunzio.

  “We have something we want you to look at,” Vaughn says. “We found a way to get our hands on the video from the locomotive cab.”

  Eddy looks confused. “What video? The railroad wasn’t supposed to be taping us. That was the deal with the union.”

  “They welched on the deal,” Nunzio says.

  “The video runs the whole way through the crash,” Vaughn says.

  “What does it show?”

  “That’s what you’re going to tell us,” Nunzio says. He slides the phone across the gunmetal-gray table between them and pushes the button to play the video. Then he and Vaughn watch Eddy watch the video.

  Eddy’s face remains frozen for the first two minutes. Then, when the video gets to his call to Kate, he brings his left hand to his mouth and slowly nods his head. He keeps it there as the video shows him clicking off the call and replacing the phone in his shirt pocket. His eyes widen when the video shows him reaching for the phone a few minutes later. His jaw drops when he sees himself talking to the person on the other end, and his whole body begins to shake. He utters a low cry when the video shows him leaping out of his seat and covering his face. A louder cry when he falls backward, out of sight.

  “I remember! I remember! He said he was going to shoot me! Then he did shoot! That’s why I went down. That’s why . . .” Eddy puts his elbows on the table, buries his face in his hands, and rocks back and forth. “Oh God. Oh God.”

  Vaughn glances at Nunzio, who nods. The mobster’s hunch, Vaughn realizes, must’ve been that Vaughn’s reaction was that of a man being fired upon—something Jimmy Nutzo has certainly seen before.

  Vaughn waits until Eddy drops his hands and lifts his head. Then he asks, “What exactly did he say to you? Do you remember? Take it slow.”

  Eddy looks up, closes his eyes. “He said . . . he said I was a dead man. Then he said he was going to shoot me. No, wait! He made shooting sounds. Then, all of a sudden the windshield cracked, and I knew it was a bullet. I went down, and the shots kept coming. I could hear the windshield being hit again and again.”

  “Why didn’t you stop the train?” Nunzio asks.

  “I knew I didn’t have to. Coming out of that curve, it’s a straightaway for ten miles. All clear, or it was supposed to be. Even if the shooter was firing from a half mile away, I knew I’d pass him pretty quickly. The worst thing that could have happened was for the train to automatically set its emergency brake because I hadn’t pushed the dead-man’s switch.”

  Vaughn turns to Nunzio to make sure Eddy’s explanation sits well with him.

  “It was all on purpose,” Eddy says, the emotion in his voice thickening to anger. “They put that TracVac on the rail and found a way to get me down so I wouldn’t see it. They wanted the train to crash. They wanted all those people to die. To get injured. Oh my God.”

  Eddy Coburn looks to Vaughn, then to Nunzio, then back to Vaughn. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to get justice, Ed. For all those people. And for you. We’re going to get justice.”

  “And then some,” says Nunzio.

  It’s just before five o’clock, and Vaughn is sitting in one of the visitor’s chairs in Mick’s office. He’s told Mick about the engine-cab video, about his meeting with Nunzio, and their meeting with Eddy. Mick listens without speaking. When Vaughn is finished, Mick stares at him for a long minute. Then, “You got the video how?”

  Vaughn takes a deep breath. “Nunzio got it, from Jack Bunting.”

  “How’d he know Bunting had it?”

  Vaughn skips a beat. “I told him.”

  Mick nods, looks away for a minute. Then he looks back at Vaughn and waits.

  “It was the only way.”

  Mick says nothing.

  “Bunting would never have turned it over voluntarily. He denied it even existed.”

  Mick stares.

  “I was out of time.”

  Still nothing from Mick.

  “Nunzio was blaming Eddy. He’d have been murdered in jail by now if I didn’t get the video. It was the only way to convince Nunzio that the crash wasn’t Eddy’s fault.”

  “And did it? Does Nunzio no longer blame your cousin? Even a little?”

  “He knows the whole thing was a setup. That Eddy was their stooge.”

  “So it was worth it?”

  Vaughn shoots to his feet. “Fuck Jack Bunting! He was part of it. He planned for Eddy to take the fall. If Eddy even lived. They all probably thought Eddy would be killed on impact.” Vaughn collects himself, sits again. “Are you saying you wouldn’t have traded Bunting for Tommy if you were in my place?”

  It’s Mick’s turn to think. “No, I’m not. I just want you to be very clear with yourself about the decision you made. To own it. And, hopefully, to find ways to avoid ever having to repeat it.”

  Vaughn studies his boss. Something in the tone of his voice makes it clear that Mick has been in his shoes. “Believe me, Mick, I didn’t do this lightly,” he says. “I thought about it. About what it would mean about me. And then I thought about all those people on that train. The ones Jack Bunting, and Balzac, and Day killed and mangled. I thought about their families—the husbands and wives, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters left behind.”

  Vaughn turns away from Mick, then looks back. “You talk about finding ways not to repeat it. But I can look you in the eye, Mick, and tell you I’d do it again, a hundred times, to save my cousin. To get justice for all those people.” With that, Vaughn turns and leaves.

  It’s close to midnight. Vaughn and Erin are sitting on the balcony of her eighth-floor condo at Independence Place. Vaughn is wearing only his boxers. Erin has on short shorts and a white wife-beater T-shirt. Her thick hair is pulled up into a ponytail. The heat and humidity have returned, with a vengeance. Vaughn’s beer bottle is dripping with sweat. Erin’s skin has a sheen. For a long time, they sit quietly, listening to the sounds of the city—the beeping of a car horn, people laughing as they walk by the building, a far-off siren.

  Erin reaches over, takes Vaughn’s hand in hers.

  Vaughn smiles, lifts his beer with his other hand, takes a swig. “I realize I’m asking too much of you.”

  That she testify about the drone. Admit she rummaged through Day’s desk and found the bang-bang note.

  “Hey, I volunteered for this, remember? I only wish I’d have taken the original of that note, not just a picture on my phone. And that the drone thing had worked out.”

  Erin’s hope that perhaps the drone would leave digital fingerprints on its videos was shot down by the technology expert Vaughn hired. “No,” the expert had said flatly. “And even if it were otherwise, you’d need the original of the video, not just a copy recorded secondhand on a cell phone.”

  Vaughn shrugs. “It’s still going to be dram
atic when you march into the courtroom carrying the drone.”

  “For sure.” Erin smiles, throws back her own bottle. “Maybe I can get a job with one of those tech-support companies that helps lawyers present evidence in the courtroom. My career at Day and Lockwood will certainly be over. Actually, if we’re successful, Day and Lockwood will be over.”

  “Which brings me back to my original point: I’m asking way too much.”

  Erin’s smile disappears. “You can stop that, right now,” she says, an edge to her voice. “What we’re doing here is a whole lot bigger than my job. I’m not doing this because you asked. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing. I’ll be paying a price, yes. But it’ll damn well be worth it.”

  Vaughn accepts the rebuke. “I still apologize,” he says. “But you’re absolutely right.”

  They sit silently again, until Erin brings up Laurie Mitzner. “I’m worried about her. I spent the whole time at dinner with her tonight talking her off the ledge. She insists that Balzac is onto her. She even thinks he knows she searched his office. He cornered her the next day. Said he knew his office was ransacked, and said she was the only one at the firm he was telling about it. He told her he wanted her to be his lookout.”

  “Sounds like he trusts her, not that he suspects her.”

  “She said it felt like he was toying with her.”