by Webb Hubbell
I shouldn’t have worried. Perfect. Now hopefully they would let follow up questions drop. I gave a little sigh of relief as the reporters turned to the case at hand.
“Are you going for temporary insanity?” came the next question.
Micki flashed a smile and began in her best southern accent.
“Listen people, y’all don’t know me. I practice criminal law every day in Little Rock and have one unbendable rule. I don’t talk about any case with the press until the case is over, and usually not even then. If I were representing any one of you, that’s the way you’d want it. You can ask me questions about my strategy till the cows come home, but I won’t break that rule.”
“Billy Hopper was found in his room with a brutally murdered woman in his bed. The door was locked from the inside. How do you defend that?”
Good question, and I worried that Micki’s temper might flare at the leak by the prosecutor’s office of the detail of the locked door. I shouldn’t have worried.
“As I said, I don’t talk about the details of any case with the press. I save my answers for the courtroom. But I would like to say something about the information you just casually threw out.”
The reporter shrugged, signaling ‘go ahead.’
“Here in DC, people leak information ‘off the record’ and ‘on the condition of anonymity’ every single day. It’s become such common practice that reporters take such information as gospel, never questioning why someone isn’t willing to stand behind their own words.
“You seem to be a professional, so I assume you have independently verified the information you were given. But to others who aren’t so diligent, I caution you to do your homework before you go about reporting information from confidential sources. It might save you from looking, shall we say, unprofessional.”
The reporter had been called to task, and Micki had at least planted a seed of doubt in the other reporters’ minds. They should have left well enough alone, but a guy from the Post immediately called out.
“Are you saying that the room wasn’t locked from the inside and the prosecutor’s office was wrong to put forth that detail?”
Micki paused and stared down the reporter for a minute. The questioner was starting to fidget, when Micki turned on the charm again.
“You know I’ve been on this case officially for less than an hour. If the prosecutor leaked the information as you suggest, whether it is right or wrong is a question for her, not me. I have no independent verification of your source, so I’m not inclined to worry much about it.”
Micki paused and then continued.
“Here’s what I will say. I don’t leak details of a case. Once I assemble a team, they won’t either—if they do, they’ll be fired, that simple. We will present our case in a court of law, not in the press.” she said with emphasis and then softened.
“Sorry to disappoint, folks—it’s just the way I roll.” She turned and walked away.
Micki had been impressive without saying much of anything. If I were Constance Montgomery I’d be pissed. Someone in her office had leaked the fact that the door had been locked from the inside, and in order to confirm their story, the reporters had betrayed their source.
I waited to give Micki time to get away and then called.
“You’re a natural. Why were you nervous?”
“Thanks, it was your list of twenty questions that made me nervous,” she replied.
“Constance Montgomery has to be upset. The reporter fingered her for the leak.”
She brought me back to earth. “I’d feel better if we had a good explanation for how the doors got locked.”
“I agree, but as you said, you’ve only been on the case for an hour. We’ll deal with the locks later.”
“Yes, and my partner is holed up in a hotel watching TV. I don’t need a TV critic, I need facts.” She was definitely on the case and on mine.
45
MR. KIM WAS getting nervous. His people had yet to discover Patterson’s whereabouts. Lawrence’s performance with the press had been flawless; maybe he needed to revaluate his opinion of her. Jones and Rice were still acting like starry-eyed lovers when she wasn’t working for Matthews, but she had proven a worthy advisory to his hacker. The information flow coming from Patterson’s office had never been this low. To top it off his listening devices at the Hay-Adams had been discovered.
He had finally gotten someone into Barker’s, but even that had proved to be useless. No one had seen Patterson. The case against Hopper was still airtight, and the client was happy, but Kim still worried where Patterson might be. Perhaps the time had come to act.
*****
Walter walked into the dining room, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I wished we were meeting at Columbia for a round of golf and the nineteenth hole. Good friends like Walter and Maggie make up for a lot of the sucker punches life brings. Goodness knows I needed the company of a friend.
He gave my hand a warm shake. “We need to get you out of here. It’s just been three days, and you’re already turning pale.”
“And a whole lot heavier,” I laughed. “The skin color will return as soon as we hit the golf course. I’m not sure about the pounds.”
“If you don’t return soon, we may need to get a new addition to our foursome,” he kidded.
“Don’t think I’m not worried. The stir crazies are setting in.”
Walter sat down and said seriously, “I’ve never seen you quite like this. You really are worried this time, aren’t you?”
I shook my head. “A bullet whizzing within inches of your head will do that. I’m even more worried about Beth and Maggie. My love and concern for them is well known.”
“And now, Carol?” he asked.
“Yes, and now Carol, but don’t tell Maggie.”
“She already knows. She can read you like a book,” he smiled.
“Let’s order.” On cue Barb sidled up to the table, put her hand on my shoulder and said with a flirt, “What can I get you, Jack?”
Walter raised his eyebrow, but said nothing. I wondered why she was working the dining room. We both ordered, ignoring her smiles. She left looking a little crestfallen.
“What do you know about Red Shaw?” I asked Walter.
I knew Maggie had told him the Lobos were a new client. Maggie knew she could share whatever she learned at the office with her husband. It was a violation of the attorney-client privilege, but I was realistic about conversations between husbands and wives, and besides I’d trust Walter to go to the grave with anything Maggie told him.
“I’ve never had any personal dealings with him, except when he was putting together his syndicate to purchase the Lobos. Everything I’ve heard is that he’s a straight shooter, makes money for his investors, and is as honest as the day is long. He’s a little rough around the edges, but that’s to be expected. As I remember, he grew up somewhere in the middle of rural Texas.”
“So you almost invested in the Lobos?”
“Came very close,” he said.
“What caused you to back out? According to David Dickey, it’s a gold mine.” I really was interested.
“It wasn’t anything to do with Red or the deal. It’s player safety, the brain injuries. A report was released last year about football players and what they call CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The study said that ninety-six percent of now deceased players in the study tested positive for CTE. The NFL is doing what it can to reduce concussions and develop better equipment, and the ball players are at least aware of the risk and are paid well. But for some players the price to pay for fleeting glory is still tragic.”
“If it isn’t the NFL, what bothers you?”
“It’s high school and college ball, the farm system for pro football. This study determined that the incidence of CTE for college athletes isn’t much less than those who play in the pros. These are kids who don’t make a penny. They get a questionable education in exchange for a shot at the big time—the NFL.
Fewer than two percent of the ball players are ever drafted, many of them never actually play a down. At some point the colleges and high schools are going to get nervous about their liability for destroying kids’ brains to fatten their endowments, and start shutting down programs. I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened.” Walter was always a straight shooter.
“Well– but don’t you think some of them play because they enjoy the game? Baseball was my real game, but I played football for a while in high school. Nobody made me play—it was fun. Girls could never understand getting hit and falling down over and over, but, I don’t know, it was just fun.”
“And don’t forget sports is the only way some of these kids can ever go to any college.” I don’t know why I felt the need to defend the game. I hoped it wasn’t the result of my new position with the Lobos.
“All true, Jack. And I think most folks would agree with you. I enjoy watching the game as much as anyone, especially the pageantry of the college game. But the fact remains that if you had played college ball, odds are that you would have sustained an injury that you’d still be dealing with today. I don’t see how schools will be able to afford the liability now that the risk of permanent injury is so well documented.
“Don’t get me wrong. It would be fun to be an owner of an NFL franchise, as well as a good investment. I talked to Red about the concerns I have, and privately he has similar concerns. I believed him when he said he is doing everything he can to reform tackling techniques, improve equipment, and reduce helmet-to-helmet collisions. But in the end I turned him down. All the efforts in the world can’t change the game itself.”
“So what’s the answer?”
“I think we’ll see changes sooner rather than later. As insurance companies become more concerned, liability insurance premiums will begin go through the roof. High school sports will be the first to be affected. At some point neither public nor private high schools will be able to afford the insurance premiums for football programs. It won’t happen overnight—there’s too much money at both the college and pro level for the game to go quietly into the night.
“In my business—life insurance—we’re beginning to have underwriting discussions about premiums associated with former ball players. We already ask if the potential insured is a former smoker or has a family history of heart disease. I suspect it won’t be too long before we start asking about whether he played football and for how long. When that happens the NFL is going to cry foul, but it will be forced to do more especially when the public-at-large understands that former ball players have a significantly reduced life span.
“I hadn’t really thought about the insurance ramifications. Do you know anything about Red’s other businesses? Government contracting, for example?”
“I checked him out pretty thoroughly. He makes most of money cleaning up other people’s messes—airplanes that don’t fly, boats that don’t float, and tanks that fall apart. There are plenty of all three. I have a report I can give you if it would be helpful, but I’ll tell you it doesn’t contain a lot of negatives.
“He’s made his share of enemies. Most government contractors make their fortunes through change orders and by taking advantage of delays in decision-making. If the government can contract with Red to fix a problem rather than being stuck with the original contractor, then that contractor loses a lot of money.”
“Anybody in particular.” I asked.
“I remember one pretty well–Logan Aerospace. Red has been called in to clean up a lot of their mistakes.”
46
LOGAN AEROSPACE—THE SPONSORS of the table at the NFL Honors banquet who paid extra for Billy Hopper to sit with their four young executives. I don’t believe in coincidences. Walter said he would send me the report that afternoon. I was tempted to call Red about Logan, but he was still a suspect, and I sure didn’t want to blow my cover.
Both our moods and conversation lightened when our food arrived. He treated me to some good stories about their trip to Italy. I had hoped we’d have time to talk about Carol, but he grew pensive over coffee, idly playing with the sugar spoon. Finally he said,
“You’ve been in danger before, Jack, but I worry that at some point your luck is going to run out. Micki is a good enough lawyer to represent Hopper. If you think you’re in real danger, I think this time you should consider walking away. This isn’t about Maggie, it’s about you. It’s time you learned there are times to walk away.”
We both rose and shook hands, no smiles this time. He had made a good point, and I had no good response. Maybe he was right.
The dining room was almost empty, so I sat alone for a few minutes before calling Maggie to remind her to get a report on Logan Aerospace from Dickey. She replied somewhat tartly that she had already asked, but couldn’t make it appear like magic. Stella was still at Walter’s office cleaning up their computers; Clovis had dropped by for only a few minutes for a cup of coffee. She had no idea where he was going. Micki was back at the jail with Billy. She added that she had just sent several packages to Barker’s, and not to worry because Martin’s men were being careful with deliveries.
Almost as soon as I got off the phone three packages of documents were brought to me by one of the bellmen. I carried them to my room—time for some serious work. The first package I opened was the one from Novak. It consisted of one small vanilla folder that had seen better days and a second folder that seemed more current. The tab on the outside of the first contained a single name, “Nadia.” Inside the folder I found a Bulgarian passport and other immigration documents for one fifteen-year-old girl named Nadia Nikolov. One of the documents written in a language I assumed was Bulgarian contained her fingerprints. The only photograph of her was the one in her passport. Nadia had entered the country in 2001, just before September 11th.
The second file was also labeled “Nadia,” and it contained a treasure trove of information. He found a copy of her Virginia driver’s license issued in 2015 that revealed both a picture of her face and a residence address on Chain Bridge Road in McLean, Virginia. The name on the driver’s license was Carla Diaz. The file also included several professionally taken photographs of Carla. There was no doubt that the woman found in Billy’s bed was Carla/Nadia Diaz. The file also contained other photographs of Carla that appeared to have been taken without her knowledge—photographs of her exiting a condominium, at a bar talking to a man, of her getting into a limousine.
The pictures seemed to be in sequence, rather like someone was keeping tabs on her, nothing pornographic. Her confirmed age came as a surprise—according to the license she was almost thirty years old rather than the early twenties reported by the press. Something was amiss here—either her license or the coroner’s determination was inaccurate. She certainly wore nice clothes, and the file had a car registration for a 2012 Mercedes. Clovis and Stella had their work cut out.
Micki informed me through email that any information we obtained about the deceased was considered our work product; we weren’t required to give it to the prosecutor. I felt a stab of conscience—surely Nadia had a family somewhere who would be worried about her. Then again, our duty lay with Billy.
I texted Micki to ask when we would get the autopsy report. I also texted Novak a very brief thank you. I didn’t want to know how or from whom he had obtained the files. I was more concerned about what he would expect in return.
The second file also held copies of Nadia’s medical records regarding her attempt to have the brand removed. I didn’t recognize the name of the surgeon. I made a mental note to check him out with my friend Jim French, a local plastic surgeon. I wondered why neither the surgeon nor any of his staff hadn’t already notified the authorities. Surely murder takes precedence over HIPPA.
I tried to call Clovis to tell him about the latest developments, but he didn’t pick up. So I dove into the first batch of information on the Lobos. For a while, I felt like an antitrust lawyer. I reviewed the team’s financial projections, profit an
d loss statements, as well as their organizational chart. An NFL Team is comprised of a lot more than just the coaches and players on the field; both income and expenses came from multiple sources. I was about to open the collective bargaining agreement between the player’s union and the owners, when I remembered that I still hadn’t heard from Clovis.
I punched in his number, but again got voicemail. I called Maggie, who hadn’t heard from him either. I felt a twinge of unease. Clovis and I work well together—I respect his judgment and intuition, and he always has my back. More than that, we’re friends. I knew my unease was premature and tried to put it out of my mind.
I returned to the collective bargaining agreement, but couldn’t concentrate; my thoughts turned to Nadia. Clearly she had broken away from her original handlers, who had branded her and taken her immigration papers.
She seemed to have freed herself from bondage, yet she had stayed in the business. Very few women were able to earn a living without the protection of a pimp.
My phone finally vibrated—Clovis, thank goodness.
“Where’ve you been? I was beginning to think you’d been kidnapped or something.”
No answer. “Sorry, Clovis, I was only kidding.”
“I know you were—I just can’t believe you said it.”
“No—sorry, I really was concerned.” This conversation was taking a strange turn.
“You sitting down?” He asked.
Something wasn’t right. “What’s happened? Tell me.”
“Someone tried to snatch Carol Madison.”
47
I ASKED THE only question that mattered.