Indefensible
Page 34
And the biggest problem was that, if he went to federal prison, he’d be dead within a year. The lower-echelon criminals would hate him for working with the U.S. attorney’s office, and the big boys of organized crime might see him as a threat because maybe he really did know something damaging. And of course everyone would worry that he was snitching for us, feeding info back to his old employers. So I couldn’t let him go in on federal charges.
But I couldn’t let him off, either. So I did the equation: the severity of his crime versus his prospects for rehabilitation, his good character versus his denial of responsibility, the likelihood of his reoffending versus his potential for becoming a productive member of society. My compassion for the difficulties of his childhood versus my anger over the choices of his adulthood. The contempt I felt toward him for Cassandra’s death. And finally, the equation that only I, as judge and jury, could calculate: my grief over his betrayal and the deaths of Cassandra and Zander versus my grief at the prospect of losing another son.
You can’t put numbers on these things. No meter measures loss and sorrow. No blood test shows the level of remorse. I was on my own. And in the weeks before my talk with David, the assistant DA, I thought over every prison sentence I’d ever seen handed down in my long career. Some were raw deals, some were sweet.
The mystery of who was selling information from inside the official offices of the federal criminal justice system remains unsolved. Naturally, Kenny has incurred suspicion, but I’ve taken pains to cover his tracks. Among other things, I filed a tax form this year, declaring several cash gifts to Kenny that coincided with the large deposits made to his bank account. If any official investigation should trend too heavily in Kenny’s direction, I believe I can use my influence to steer it away.
• • •
Last fall, I walked out of Kendall Vance’s office with the gun in my pocket and that searing pain in my head. I staggered to the car loaned to me by the FBI and slumped in the front seat. The wood chipper had left while I was inside, so I sat there a few minutes. Kendall had done what he believed was right, and that belief would make whatever followed tolerable.
I drove from Kendall’s office to Kenny’s apartment. I let myself in with my key, got the screwdriver from his kitchen drawer, removed all the cleaning supplies from under the bathroom sink, unscrewed and lifted up the bottom panel, and then, after wiping it clean of any prints, I put Scud Illman’s gun there, then replaced everything as I’d found it.
I took more Percocet, then I lay on the bed and sobbed. I called Kenny and told him to pick up a video and some Chinese takeout on his way home.
We had a nice time, and by the end of the evening, I saw Kenny’s boyish grin unleashed for once from its constantly niggling awareness of his lesser status in my life. “How come we don’t do this more often, Nick?” he asked.
How come, indeed?
In the morning I called in the anonymous tip of where to find the gun that had killed Scud Illman.
CHAPTER 58
At the urging of my new-agey friend Chip, I was briefly involved in a men’s group, though we didn’t beat drums and dance in the woods. Our mission was practical, not psychological. There are only a few members in the club, and we were chosen with intention. It was Hollis Phippin’s idea. Hollis, bereaved father of a murdered boy, has lots of money and lots of connections. Hollis needed someone in the U.S. attorney’s office, so he approached Upton Cruthers (bad boy for the prosecution and dreamer of the urban utopia), whose daughter spent a week in ICU and suffers permanent cognitive impairment from a drug overdose. Hollis and Upton needed a judge, so they asked me, thinking I was about to be installed on the circuit court.
• • •
As I say, Percy Mashburn has disappeared. He had reached that point in the career of a kingpin where he never traveled without his entourage and bodyguards, so it’s unlikely that anybody could have gotten to him. What we know is that he was brought in on a federal warrant for questioning. The entourage wasn’t invited. True, the grounds for the warrant were flimsy and would have been deemed insufficient probable cause by the cautious Two Rivers. But Upton requested the warrant from Judge Washington, not Two Rivers. We were unsure whether he’d sign it, but with it stuck into a small stack of other petitions, the tired and overworked Washington didn’t hesitate.
Nothing was left to chance. A certain result was desired, so the necessary information flowed outward from our little group to those whose participation was needed. Percy was brought into the FBI for a fruitless Q and A and then released. For his own protection, he was released secretly out the rear entrance. And yes, we have the security footage of him leaving the building, this scrawny purveyor of misery walking from the building without the safety of his henchmen. Percy walked away beyond the range of the video and has never been seen since.
And my little men’s group has now disbanded.
CHAPTER 59
Kendall and his family finally arrive. Kaylee jumps from the car and runs to Lizzy, who hugs her like a sister and takes her into the cabin to change into their swimsuits. Kendall introduces me to his wife, whom I introduce to Flora and Chip and everyone else. Then Kendall and I, by unspoken agreement, stroll away from the crowd along the edge of the lake. We stop and face each other, and Kendall asks how I’m doing and about my confirmation by the senate. I tell him I’m doing okay, but that the confirmation is stalled.
There isn’t much to say. We could talk about Kaylee and Lizzy, but we don’t. Maybe if we weren’t such guys, we’d put our arms around each other and get weepy. But Kendall is a commando and a hard-bit defense lawyer, and I’m an assistant U.S. attorney and a nominee to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Naturally, I told Kendall all about Kenny so he, Kendall, wouldn’t worry about somebody else doing his time for Scud’s murder. Kendall and I are pretty balled up in mutual confidences. To pull any thread would unravel the whole.
After too much awkward silence, Kendall and I walk back toward the group.
In my nearly thirty years as a criminal lawyer, only twice did I sign on as defense counsel, but those cases have left me with secrets to keep: for my client Kendall, I keep the secret that he killed Scud Illman. For my client Kenny, I keep the secret that he didn’t.
Finally, I hear the rumble of tires on the gravel, and I turn to see Tina pull up in the line of cars. I trot over to meet her. Colin, the boy with the two-tone eye, gets out of the back and stands embarrassed, the way kids do in new environments. It turned out that Colin’s mom, Scud’s wife, was an accessory in some of Scud’s less contemptible crimes. She’s doing a few years inside, and Colin is in foster care. Tina and I take him out sometimes, trying to show him life from the other side. Call it another attempt to redeem my failures with Kenny.
As Colin stands there, our three-month-old mutt from the pound hurls herself from the car and runs barking toward the other dogs. Colin runs after them. I close the car door, noticing as I do that the backseat is a mess of muddy puppy prints and kids’ books and soda bottles and spilled bags of chips.
I take the wheelchair from the trunk, but Fuseli is already out. “I’ll try it myself,” he says, waving the chair away as I wheel it over to him, and he starts his faltering journey to the picnic table.
“Wow,” Tina says, “I really have to pee. Again. And I think I’m going to barf. Again.” With one hand supporting her swollen belly, she hurries toward the cabin. Her hair has grown out, and she has tied it in back. It’s beautiful.
LEE GOODMAN has an MFA in fiction writing and literature from Bennington College, and his work has been printed in, among other places, The Iowa Review (where it received a nomination for the Pushcart Prize in fiction) and Orion magazine. An attorney and commercial salmon fisherman, he lives in Alaska and has two children.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Lee Goodman
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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe
Cover design © Jae Song
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Author photo by Brian Luenemann
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goodman, Lee.
Indefensible : a novel / Lee Goodman. — First Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books hardcover edition.
pages cm
1. Legal stories. I. Title.
PS3607.O577I53 2014
813’.6—dc23
2013032300
ISBN 978-1-4767-2800-1
ISBN 978-1-4767-2802-5 (ebook)