A Criminal Defense

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A Criminal Defense Page 14

by William L. Myers Jr.


  When I’m finished, Marcie smiles. “The brownstone on the Upper East Side,” she says. “A lovely place,” she adds, glancing at Susan. “And the three young girls. Yes, I’ve met them, and I can tell you that they’re all very, very sweet.”

  Susan and I look at each other. We both exhale.

  “So it’s not some Asian love nest?” Susan says.

  Marcie smiles. “Certainly not. Not now.”

  “Not now?”

  “Not since David and I have begun talking. Before then, of course, it had been just that—a place where David stored his strumpets until he wanted to play with them. But the women who are there now are anything but playthings. Each is a gifted musician, here on scholarship at a top music school.”

  “How . . . ?”

  “It was easy. David simply told the girls who had been living there to leave, and he paid them a good deal of money to do so. Then, with the help of some prominent men in Japan and the People’s Republic of China, we moved in three other girls. College girls. Who, coincidentally, look almost identical to the girls who had been living there before. And although the house was bought by Hanson World Industries, the paperwork will show that it has been leased, for more than three years, to the People’s Republic of China for use as a home for visiting students.”

  “The paperwork?” I ask.

  “Backdated, naturally. Edwin will be furious when David produces the lease.”

  Now I’m completely lost. China? Japan? Edwin? I spread my arms. “I’m afraid all of this is going way over my head.”

  Marcie smiles, takes a sip of coffee, puts down her cup, and says, “Let me show you.” She leads us to a door at the end of a long hallway. She puts her thumb on a square metallic box hanging on the wall. The door unlocks and swings opens automatically. Marcie leads us into a space utterly different from the rest of the house. “David’s study,” she says. Though not as large as the sitting room we have just come from, the space is substantial, maybe twenty-by-twenty-five feet. Behind David’s desk, the far wall is all floor-to-ceiling windows that showcase the view beyond of a lush, well-ordered garden full of flowering plants that features a pond and a wooden footbridge. “It’s a Japanese garden,” Marcie says, following my gaze. “David has become a student of ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arranging.”

  “Looks like your husband has fallen in love with all things Japanese,” Susan says, looking around the room. “That sword, for example.”

  “It’s a katana, a samurai sword. From the thirteenth century and signed by Masamune—Japan’s greatest swordsmith. David refuses to say how he came to possess it, but I suspect a major bribe was involved.”

  I move closer to the glass display case. Beneath the sword is an ornamental sheath. The sheath sits on twin metal holders. The sword, however, does not appear to be mounted on anything; it just hangs in the air. I feel Marcie behind me, watching me study it. “Amazing, isn’t it?” she says. “There’s some kind of electromagnetic field inside the box that keeps the sword in midair like that. The display cost a quarter of a million dollars to set up.”

  “Yet all I’d have to do is get a bat and smash the glass, and the sword is mine.”

  Marcie laughs. “You’d never get out of this room. Any damage to that case causes the study door to lock automatically.” She follows my eyes to the windows. “That glass is several inches thick.”

  Susan and I exchange glances. I wonder if she’s thinking what I am. All this planning to protect a sword, but the guy’s fool enough to get caught with his pants down? Stupid enough to try to clean up a murder scene?

  “This is interesting,” Susan says, looking at a painted kimono hanging inside another glass case mounted on a wall.

  “It’s an art form called tsujigahana. It’s from the Edo period, late 1800s.”

  The sword and kimono are hardly the only things Asian in David’s office. On the third wall hang three striking silk scrolls, each encased in glass. They depict peonies, chrysanthemums, and roses, with dark-blue butterflies hovering over rich pink petals and dark leaves. Marcie tells us they were done in the mid-1700s by Ito Jakuchu. Like the samurai sword, Marcie says, they are priceless.

  The furniture also is distinctively elegant—and familiar. “Nakashima?” I ask. George Nakashima was a Japanese American woodworker and architect who became one of America’s premier twentieth-century furniture makers. His original work is extravagantly expensive, when someone is willing to part with it at all.

  “Nakashima,” Marcie affirms. “David’s father was a personal friend, and David and Edwin both visited him many times in New Hope, where he had his shop. I sometimes think that David’s love affair with the Asian culture began with Nakashima’s art. Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to why I decided to share this with you.”

  Marcie leads Susan and me back to the drawing room, and we all sit. Marcie pours more coffee, and then she resumes.

  “It was never David’s idea to go into law. He wanted from the outset to run Hanson World Industries. David’s father, however, left that mantle to Edwin. Still, David went to work for the company right out of law school, as you know. And he’s worked hard ever since to break into the operations side. For a long time, he was just beating his head against the wall. Then, about six years ago, things changed. By then David had immersed himself in the cultures of Japan and China. He was making monthly, sometimes weekly, trips to both countries, using his connections to arrange private tours of the countries’ museums and archaeological sites, and to stay in the private homes of some of the most powerful men in both nations. David knew that, sooner or later, HWI would have to break in to Asia in a big way—not just to build manufacturing plants like Apple, but to open the Chinese market to HWI’s products.

  “It looked likely that HWI would begin selling some of its personal-care products in China, but Edwin, always a bull in a china shop, pardon the pun, offended the Chinese. So as much as he hated doing it, he had to ask David to smooth things over. David flew to China and used the networks he’d already built there to keep the deal alive. Pretty soon, the company was selling a whole range of products in China.”

  “Because of David, basically?”

  Marcie nods. “Recently, HWI was on the verge of cementing a joint venture with powerful companies from both China and Japan. It was an unprecedented arrangement for everyone concerned, especially HWI. And David built it all on his relationships in the countries.” She pauses.

  “Edwin?”

  Marcie nods again. “Was furious. Not just because David was the company’s rising star, but because David was leveraging his Asian influence to pressure Edwin for an executive position on the operations side of the business. Worse yet, David had HWI’s Japanese and Chinese partners pressuring Edwin as well. Edwin finally, grudgingly, agreed, and David was about to be named President of HWI-Asia, making him second-in-command in the company to Edwin, and Edwin’s heir apparent.”

  Marcie takes a sip of her coffee.

  “And then . . .” Her eyes darken. She puts down her cup and saucer. “And then Jennifer Yamura. David is disgraced and forced to resign as chief legal counsel at HWI. His hopes to take a seat in the company’s operational pantheon are dashed. And Edwin’s as happy as a pig in shit.”

  Susan leans forward. “Because?”

  “Because Edwin and David hate each other.”

  I’m nodding. “It must have galled Edwin to no end to have the Japanese and Chinese business partners breathing down his neck about David.”

  “So,” says Susan, “it’s possible that Edwin leaked the story about the house in New York.”

  Marcie purses her lips. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  I consider everything Marcie has told us. “How solid is the paper trail backing the fake lease?”

  “Solid. And David’s Chinese backers agreed up front to give affidavits, if necessary. Same with the girls, of course.”

  I smile. I’m going to make Patti Cassidy sweat for this
one. I’ll bring Devlin Walker into it, too.

  Abruptly, Marcie stands, making clear that our business is concluded. I infer from this that David won’t be coming home anytime soon, contrary to what she told me over the phone. She escorts us to the front door and opens it. Susan thanks Marcie for meeting with us, and I do, too. Then in the doorway, a thought strikes me. I turn back to face Marcie.

  “Did Edwin know about the house on Addison Street before David’s arrest?”

  “David told me he didn’t. But Edwin is enormously clever, and he micromanages the company, keeps his hands on everything, his nose in everything. So who can say?” Marcie waits a few seconds. Then she looks me in the eyes and says, “David is not going to be convicted.”

  I hesitate. “Well, of course I’ll do everything in my power to—”

  “You’re not hearing me. David is not going to be convicted. Period. And you’ll do whatever it takes to make sure of it. Whatever it takes. Do you understand me?”

  I hold Marcie’s stare, then nod slightly and turn away. I catch up to Susan at the car. We pull out of the driveway and head back into the city. As we cruise down the Schuylkill, Susan turns to me. “What that hell was all that?”

  I exhale. “That was a wife doing her best to defend her husband.”

  After a while, Susan says, “Did you notice that she didn’t ask the question?”

  I don’t have to ask which question Susan’s is referring to. She means the question. Whether David is guilty. Whether he killed Jennifer Yamura.

  “She didn’t ask,” Susan says, “because David’s told her everything. Marcie knows he’s guilty. And she doesn’t care.”

  “Maybe . . . and maybe she does care, or did in the beginning, but now things are working out. Between them, I mean. To hear Marcie describe things, it almost sounds like the murder charges have brought them closer together.”

  “Murder as the foundation of a happy marriage . . . ,” Susan intones. “I wonder what Dr. Phil would say about that.”

  “Not murder. Forgiveness.”

  Or, given that Marcie ordered me to do whatever it will take to get David off the hook, maybe something else. Like two serpents seeing each other for the first time and liking that they are of the same sort.

  I wonder what would have happened with my marriage if I had been arrested instead of David. Would Piper have circled the wagons with me to fight off the attack, as Marcie seems to be doing with David? Or would she have led the lynch mob herself?

  15

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

  David and I sit side by side at the defense table. I look to my left, where Devlin Walker huddles with a junior ADA. They are reading the brief that we just handed them. Behind us, a crowd fills the courtroom. Vaughn has alerted the press that something big is about to happen, and the piranhas are present en masse. Among them is Patti Cassidy, whom I have subpoenaed, and who casts me an angry look. In the seats just behind David and me are Marcie Hanson and, to her left, three young Asian women. To Marcie’s right is a stern-looking Chinese gentleman in his fifties, a member of the diplomatic staff of the Chinese consulate. Marcie marched her entourage into the courtroom so they could take their seats fifteen minutes ago, then promptly presented me with a cheat sheet that set forth her witnesses’ names and the lies to which they’re prepared to testify.

  The first thing I did when I got back to the office after visiting Marcie Hanson was to tell Vaughn to call the clerk’s office and request an emergency hearing. We received a call back in two hours informing us that William Henry had been assigned to the case.

  Before he was elevated to the bench, William Henry served two decades in the public defender’s office. He is a believer that a criminal defendant’s right to a fair trial is the keystone of liberty. Judge Henry does not abide prosecutorial hijinks in any form. In his view, any effort by the government to distract attention from its high burden, or to give itself a leg up, is intolerable. His Honor, no doubt, takes an especially dim view of pretrial leaks by the district attorney.

  I look back at the prosecution table and find Devlin Walker glaring at me, seething. He gets it now. I’m going to blame the DA’s office for leaking the story about the second geisha house in New York to Patti Cassidy. What Devlin doesn’t know yet is that the courtroom is filled with witnesses prepared to testify that the story was complete nonsense, a fact that will make Judge Henry doubly angry. Devlin slowly shakes his head no, silently telling me not to do this.

  Don’t you dare. Or I’ll make you pay.

  The door to the robing room opens. In a whoosh, Judge Henry is on the bench. His face is red, his lips pursed. He looks around the courtroom, takes everyone in. His gaze hangs for a long minute on Patti Cassidy, then he turns to Devlin Walker. The normal procedure would be for the judge to ask me to state my position first, then give the prosecutor his turn to reply. But Judge Henry skips right to the fun part. “Well?” he says to Devlin. Just one word.

  Devlin is taken aback, but only for a moment. He leans forward, raises my brief above his head, and declares, “Rubbish.” Then he sits.

  But Bill Henry will not be assuaged. “Not so fast, Mr. Walker. What do you mean, rubbish? Are you telling me your office did not leak this story to the press to poison the potential jury pool? Are you telling me someone else leaked it? Who would do that, Mr. Walker? Who besides the prosecution has anything to gain by this type of leak?”

  Before Devlin has a chance to answer, I leap to my feet. “Your Honor, the leak is only half the story. The other half is whether there’s any truth to it. Present in this courtroom are the three young women whose reputations have been smeared by the story in the Inquirer. Also here, and prepared to testify, is Mr. Hsan Chan, who will, if he takes the stand, tell the court that he is a member of the Chinese Consulate General’s office in New York, that he knows the three young women, that they are in this country on student visas, that all three are studying music at a prestigious school in New York City, and that they are able to do so thanks to a grant from Hanson World Industries. A grant arranged through a program designed by Mrs. Hanson, who is also in the courtroom and ready to testify. One more thing that all these young women will attest to is that they’ve never even met David Hanson, let alone engaged with him in any sort of a sordid relationship.

  “Which reminds me . . .” I withdraw a civil complaint from my brief case and walk it to Patti Cassidy. “Mr. Hanson and each of the three young women are suing the Inquirer, and Ms. Cassidy personally, for defamation.” Patti gasps as I hand her the complaint. The spectators, most of whom are Patti’s fellow newsmen, fall quiet as a crypt, undoubtedly thinking, There but for the grace of God go I.

  Now it’s Devlin’s turn to leap to his feet. “My office had no involvement in this!”

  His outburst triggers loud murmuring throughout the courtroom; Judge Henry slams his gavel to reestablish order. He closes his eyes, rests the head of the gavel against his temple, pauses to gather himself, make sure he gets this right. Opening his eyes, the judge says matter-of-factly, “There will be no witness testimony. There is no need. I’m going to grant the defendant’s request for a gag order. Neither side, from this point on, is to say or leak anything publicly about this case. And it works both ways. If something detrimental to the defense finds its way into the wind, I’ll know it came from the prosecution. If something detrimental to the prosecution gets out, I’ll know it came from the defense. In either case, one of you will find yourself in contempt of court. Am I understood?”

  I nod and say, “Thank you, Your Honor.” Devlin’s nod is almost imperceptible. He thanks no one.

  And the hearing is over.

  I leave the courtroom to find Marcie Hanson holding her own mini press conference in the hallway. Marcie chastises the Inquirer for unjustly crucifying her husband by twisting a wonderful program designed to help young musicians into a “sordid and, quite frankly, racist” attack that blemished not only her husband’s reputation but that of three utte
rly innocent young women. “I’m looking forward to the newspaper’s quick and unqualified apology for this travesty,” she continues. Marcie also has some choice words for the “coward” who tipped off Patti Cassidy to the New York house. “You’re curled up in your hole, safe in the cloak of anonymity. You may think that what you did was clever, but all you accomplished—all that you almost accomplished—was to further the efforts of those who want to deny my husband his right to the fair trial at which he can clear his name. He will rebuild the life that has been so unjustly shattered by the false charges brought against him by the DA’s office.”

  I smile and shake my head. One broadcast-worthy sound bite after another. All delivered with flawless grammar and the indignant tone of a woman defending the man she believes in. I am, at this point, quite frankly awed by how well—and how quickly—Marcie and David pulled this all together.

  “Not bad, eh?” It’s David, now standing beside me. “It’s certainly taken the wind out of Patti Cassidy’s sails,” he adds, nodding toward the stricken reporter standing at the back of the pack, the blood drained from her face and lips.

  I take David’s arm and guide him down the hall a bit, away from the crowd.

  “When we were out at your house yesterday, Marcie let Susan in on the enmity between you and Edwin. Susan asked if Edwin might even have been the person who tipped off Patti Cassidy, and Marcie said she wouldn’t put it past him.”

  David looks away, watches Marcie address the reporters for a moment, then returns his gaze to me.

  “Edwin.” He spits out his half brother’s name. “He couldn’t have found out about the brownstone any more than he could have discovered the house on Addison Street, which is a whole lot closer.”

  I take a minute, let David’s words sink in. My eyes widen. “Edwin didn’t leak the New York house to the Inquirer. You did. You and Marcie. The two of you orchestrated this whole thing. To poison the well, set up Devlin, make it look to the potential jury pool like Walker’s not playing by the rules, like he’s out to get you any way he can, whether you did something wrong or not.”

 

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