A Criminal Defense

by William L. Myers Jr.

  “He never told me about any of this,” I said, more to myself than to Watley. “Is there anything you can do for him? Reduce the charges to simple battery?”

  Spencer paused at the other end of the line. “I’ll see what I can do. But even with simple battery . . . with his record, he’ll still do close to a year.”

  I sigh. “A lot better than what he’d face for agg battery. I’ll owe you one, Spencer.”

  “A big one.”

  It was almost a month before Tommy returned my many calls to his cell phone. By then he’d been out on bail and had rented an apartment in Pensacola until his plea deal was finalized.

  “Why did you have to get involved?” he asked, defensive from the outset.

  “You’re welcome,” I snapped back.

  “I didn’t need your help with this.”

  “You were facing an aggravated-battery charge.”

  “I could have gotten them to reduce it.”

  “You think so? It was a cop, Tommy. And the prosecutor told me about your priors. Why didn’t you tell me about any of that? And what the hell is going on with you that you’re getting into so much trouble?”

  “It’s not a big deal. A few dustups is all.”

  By now my head was starting to bake. “This shit isn’t a joke, Tommy! You’ve probably already fucked up your chances of getting into Special Forces. And law enforcement isn’t going to touch you now. What happened to all of your plans?”

  On the other end of the phone, Tommy laughed bitterly. “My plans are dead. I guess I killed ’em.”

  And with that, Tommy hung up.

  This is why I’m so concerned about Tommy now. As if going through an endless deathwatch with my father didn’t scar him badly enough, now he seems to be planning to put himself through it all over again—for Lawrence Washington. I figure Tommy’s had his act together for so long that he may not remember his long, hard fall to the bottom. I close my eyes and shake my head.

  “Not again,” I say quietly.

  Please, God, not again.

  13

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

  It’s the middle of September. I enter the firm, wave to Angie. The minute I reach my office, she buzzes to tell me our banker, Sandra Linney, is on the line. When I pick up the phone, Sandra says she’s near my building, asks if she can come up and meet with me and Susan. I tell her sure and punch Susan’s extension. The line goes directly to Angie.

  “Where’s Susan?” I ask.

  “Not here,” Angie answers. “Doctor’s appointment.”

  I walk into our office kitchen, brew myself a cup of coffee on the Keurig. By the time I’m finished, Sandra’s at reception and I walk her to my office. She sits across from my desk. She doesn’t look happy.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “I’m dying.” Sandra looks puzzled. “That’s what your face looks like. Like a doctor about to tell a patient he has a week to live.”

  Sandra forces a smile. “It’s not that bad. But it is bad.” She takes a deep breath. “The bank’s in trouble. We failed a federal stress test, and the government is all over us to clean ourselves up, pull in as much of our unsecured paper as possible.”

  I know now where this is going, and the bottom falls out of my stomach. The line of credit to our firm is unsecured. It’s not backed up by real estate or cash, just my signature and Susan’s. “Jesus, Sandra.”

  “I don’t have a choice. My bosses say I have to call in the loan.”

  “Who can I talk to? Who can I meet with?”

  Sandra shakes her head. “No one. The decision’s been made. If it makes you any happier, you’re not the only one I have to deliver this news to. At least you have some money coming in to cover the loan. You just settled that big case, right? What was it—Crenshaw?”

  You bitch—I want to scream it at her. I know exactly why they’ve chosen to call in the loan now. I believe in being transparent with all the companies that do business with the firm. When I got Arthur Hogarth’s call about the Crenshaw case, I e-mailed Sandra about our coming windfall. Now, almost exactly thirty days later—the normal period between a settlement and the plaintiff’s receipt of the check—Sandra is in my office with her hand out.

  “You’ve been a good customer, Mick. Moving forward, we can—”

  “Moving forward?”

  She knows we won’t be moving forward. That I’ll close out our accounts, move the money to another bank.

  As soon as she’s gone, I pull up QuickBooks on the computer. The $275,000 balance on the line of credit will eat up all but $111,000 of our share of the Crenshaw settlement. About enough to keep the firm breathing for a month. Which would be bad enough if Susan and I hadn’t sucked $30,000 out of the firm the day after Hogarth’s call. I couldn’t wait to get home that day to tell Piper that we wouldn’t have to borrow money from her father for the new roof. I took her a check for $15,000, half the cost of the roof, to use as the down payment. My taking the $15,000, of course, meant that Susan had the right to do the same, and she did so to pay for a new living-room suite for her apartment.

  I close my door and tell Angie not to let any calls through. Tomorrow, I’ll have to tell Vaughn and the others that our windfall is going to blow right past us and that they’ll all have to send the billable-hour clock spinning again. More motions. More hours in the office. Anything that lets us withdraw money from the client-retainer accounts.

  The phone rings again. I pick up the receiver, ready to ream Angie. But before I can start, she tells me it’s Piper. I exhale and say I’ll take it. Piper gets right down to business. The roofers are ready to start tomorrow, and they’re looking for the second half of their money.

  “Before they start?”

  “That was for the materials,” Piper explains. “The new money is to pay the workers. Is there a problem?”

  “I’ll bring home a check tonight,” I say curtly, then hang up. Things have been especially bad between us since our blowup after we returned home from dinner with her parents. We’re civil with each other, but just barely. I’m still angry at Piper’s soliciting money from her father for the new roof. I’m annoyed, too, over her stinging remarks about my always leaving. As if my working hard is an excuse for her to play the bitter housewife. And all my ill feelings are just the gloss covering a black ball of rage. It’s taking all my strength not to launch the nukes, put everything on the table. But it’s too soon.

  It’s four o’clock and I’m standing at the reception desk, signing a letter for Angie to mail when two men saunter in. “My two best friends,” I say. Detectives Tredesco and Cook. “Come to tell me the DA’s dropping the charges against David Hanson? You’ve decided to look for the real killer? Maybe even dig up some actual evidence?”

  Tredesco snorts. “There’s that famous sense of humor I told you about,” he says to his partner. “Nah, Hanson’s going down. But you may be right about evidence. How about we have a chat.”

  I lead the detectives into the conference room. “Okay, John. So what brings you to my little kingdom?”

  “It’s the incriminating calls,” he answers. “The calls your panicked client placed to you after he killed Jennifer Yamura.”

  My heart skips a beat. Tredesco is walking in the wrong direction, but I know instantly what he’s getting at. Still, I play dumb. I look at Cook and say, “Your partner fall off the wagon?”

  Tredesco is instantly pissed. “Fuck you, Mick. I’m seven years clean and sober. And don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. The phone records show two calls from Jennifer Yamura’s iPhone to your office. One at 11:45. And one at 12:30. I’m figuring Hanson called you just after he sent the reporter down the stairway to heaven and then a little later, just before he left the house. Or is the phone company wrong?”

  Tredesco is wrong about the calls, of course. They were both from Jennifer herself. The first was to set up the appointment to see me. The second was when she moved the appointment up. Something had happened between
the calls to upset her, though she didn’t tell me over the phone what it was.

  I smile smugly at Tredesco. “You’re so far off course that part of me wants to keep my mouth shut and watch you flounder. But I’m too soft. So I’m going to help you out here. Both of those calls were placed to me by Jennifer Yamura. She wanted to hire me to represent her in connection with the grand-jury mess. She called once to set a time to come in, then a second time because she decided she needed to get together sooner.”

  Tredesco’s eyes flash fury. He’d shown up thinking he was going to catch me off balance. He probably figured that, as David’s attorney, I would reflexively hide behind attorney-client privilege, which would have only confirmed what he suspected—that the calls on Jennifer’s cell phone had indeed come from David.

  “Horseshit. All that story tells me is that you and Hanson worked out a cover for the calls. You’re smart; I’ll give you that. So’s your client. But both of you together aren’t going to think your way out of this mess.” Tredesco shoots out of his seat, turns, and leaves.

  Ed Cook sits for a moment, staring at me blankly, a deer in the headlights. Then he, too, stands and leaves. This time he doesn’t shake my hand.

  He’s learning.

  14

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

  It’s Tuesday morning, the week after the bank’s decision to call in our line of credit. I’ve told Susan, and she’s as stressed as I am about our money.

  My phone buzzes. It’s Angie. “It’s Patti Cassidy,” she sighs. “She says it’s important.”

  I sigh back. “With Patti, it’s always important,” I say. “All right, I’ll take it.” I try never to miss a chance to talk to the press about a case, spin the story in some way favorable to my client. “Hi, Patti,” I say, my voice as sunny as I can make it. Not an easy task. “How are things with you these days? I hear you’re up for some journalism award.”

  Patti skips the pleasantries, gets right to it. “I’m calling to see if you want to comment on the second geisha house.”

  Silence hangs between us as I try to figure out what she’s talking about.

  “The brownstone, in New York?”

  “I honestly don’t know what you mean.”

  “Your client, David Hanson,” she says. “Turns out the house on Addison Street isn’t his only love nest. He has another one, in Manhattan. And there are, like, three Chinese girls living there.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I say it before I can stop myself. “No! Wait.”

  Patti laughs. “I’d rather just quote your expletive.”

  I take a deep breath, try to lower my blood pressure. “Look, I’m sorry. Can you just give me a little more background?”

  “Sure. About two weeks ago, we get an anonymous tip that your client’s Philadelphia pied-à-terre is one of a pair. That he has a second house in New York. The caller even gives the address. So we do a little research and find out the house is held in the name of HD Holdings, the first link in a chain of companies ultimately ending with Hanson World Industries. A couple of reporters stake out the building, watch who goes in and out. They see not one but three young women living in the house, all young and Asian and quite beautiful. I’m sure they can’t wait for their lord and master to show up.”

  My ears perk up. “So he hasn’t been seen there? At the house?”

  “Come on, Mick. A house full of Asian girls? Owned by the same corporate fronts your client used to buy the place in Philly?”

  My head is bent low. My eyes closed. I’m rubbing my forehead with my left hand as I hold the receiver with my right. I’m irked at the delight Patti is obviously taking in telling me this. But my ire at the reporter is nothing compared to the rage building inside me at David Hanson. Still, I remind myself I am a professional, with a job to do. And part of that job is damage control. So I give Patti my statement: “Here it is, Patti. This latest story, undoubtedly leaked to the press by the DA’s office, serves only to betray the prosecutor’s mission to sidetrack the public and poison potential jurors with gossip and innuendo in the hopes of distracting everyone from the only real issue in this case: my client’s actual guilt or innocence. It seems that a few sorry members of law enforcement, and the press as well, have forgotten that every citizen is innocent until proven guilty, and that an accused citizen’s right to freedom from wrongful imprisonment isn’t to be stolen from him for the sake of selling a few newspapers.”

  “Ouch. Sounds like we hit a nerve.”

  “More than one.”

  I hang up, then dial David’s cell number. I leave a message, tell him to call as soon as possible. Then I dial his home number. Marcie answers on the second ring. After an awkward pause, I tell her it’s me and ask for David. Marcie informs me he’s not home but should be soon. “I’m going to drive out there,” I say. “Something happened. Is about to happen. There’s going to be another story, about David. I need to talk to him before it comes out. I should talk to you, too.”

  Marcie asks me to tell her over the phone. I say I’d rather not. I ask if I can bring Susan.

  “The more the merrier.”

  I feel awful for Marcie. So much bad has happened in her life in such a short time. The cancer. The radiation and chemo. Then her husband is indicted for murder. Then comes the Philadelphia geisha-house story revealing that David’s been cheating on Marcie for who knows how long. And now it’s about to get even worse. David isn’t just some schmuck who got caught having a fling. He’s something else entirely: a man who keeps women for his enjoyment. Asian women. Marcie will want to kill him. Or herself.

  I walk into Susan’s office, tell her what’s happening, and ask her to drive with me to David and Marcie’s house. “I’ll need you there for moral support when I tell Marcie about the place in New York. I’ll also need you there to keep me from strangling David.”

  I spend the drive to the Hansons’ thinking about Marcie. I first met her in the Hamptons, where she and some friends had rented a beach house for the summer. David drove me up, told me he’d found a terrific girl and wanted me to meet her. “She’s the only woman I’ve ever met who’s as competitive as I am,” David confided. She was also, it turned out, striking. Tall with long, toned legs, thick raven hair, emerald-green eyes, high cheekbones, and flawless olive skin.

  When they were married a couple of years later, I was a groomsman. For several years afterward, David and Marcie and Piper and I often got together for dinner. We even once spent a week vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard. But over time we drifted apart, pulled away from one another by our very different social circles.

  The last time I saw Marcie was a few months before David’s arrest, when Piper and I had dinner with Piper’s parents at the country club. We crossed paths in the lobby. Marcie was different from the tanned and smiling athlete I first met in the Hamptons. She was pale. Her once-fit limbs were bone thin. Her ample chest was gone. She had opted against reconstructive surgery after her mastectomy, and her blouse hung limply. She didn’t smile once. I saw in her eyes a look that took me a while to decipher. It wasn’t just pain, though that was certainly present. Rather, Marcie’s eyes broadcast confusion. As though—I decided—she simply could not understand how this could have happened to her, how her body, once a powerhouse of vitality and strength, could betray her, could decide to eat itself alive.

  I drive past the large stone columns framing the entrance to a quarter-mile-long cobblestone driveway leading to the front of the Hanson family compound, Blackthorn. The main house is a three-story Victorian Gothic monstrosity constructed of large, coarse limestone with two turrets framing the center entrance and reaching fifteen feet above the roofline, and squatter turrets on each of the building’s four corners. Built in 1915, the house in many ways typifies the notion of luxury held by many turn-of-the-century, self-made American millionaires like Linwood Hanson.

  “This place makes me feel cold just looking at it,” Susan says as we walk toward the entrance.

  Marcie opens
the door before we knock. She doesn’t look anything like the sickly, haunted creature I’d last seen. Her face is pink, her skin supple. Her eyes are bright and alert. And though I try to avoid looking directly at it, her bosom is large. She must have had the reconstructive surgery, after all.

  Marcie sees me scrutinizing her and says, “I’m not quite the six-million-dollar woman, but I do feel that I’ve been rebuilt from the ground up.”

  Once we’re inside, I lean in and kiss her cheek. Susan says something about how lovely the house is.

  “All the warmth of a prison,” Marcie answers, “which it is, literally, in a way.” I already know the history but listen as Marcie explains to Susan. “David’s great-grandfather bought most of the stone for the exterior from a company that had been storing it since the 1860s. The stone had been harvested from a demolished Civil War–era prison in upstate New York. Linwood Hanson thought it was charming that his house was built from prison block.”

  Marcie leads us to a drawing room, and we sit on facing couches. Susan and I look around as Marcie pours us coffee from an ornate silver service. The room is cavernous. The ceiling is twenty feet above the floor. Two gigantic candelabras sit on either end of a white-marble fireplace big enough to garage a Mini Cooper. The walls are fitted out in polished, dark woods. Crimson-hued Orientals overlay the parquet flooring. Susan comments again on how lovely everything is.

  Marcie ignores her. “So, Mick. What is it you need to tell us?”

  I exchange glances with Susan, bite my lower lip, and inhale. “There’s a story that’s going to come out,” I start. “Not a good one. I wanted to give David a heads-up, and you.”

  “More women?” Marcie asks matter-of-factly.

  “Uh . . .”

  “It’s all right. David and I have had some long talks since this all started. Some very long talks. I know what’s out there. I think I do anyway.”

  “Okay,” I say. “There’s a townhouse in Manhattan . . .” I proceed to tell Marcie about the call from Patti Cassidy.