One Man's Paradise

by Douglas Corleone

  “I’m so afraid of losing Alika like I did my mom and dad.”

  It’s often said that lawyers like the sound of their own voices, and I suppose I’m no exception. But this is one of the rarest of times when I am at a complete loss for words.

  I lead her by the hand back into the light.

  We are met by Jun, a Malaysian sun bear with poor eyesight. At least that’s what the sign reads. The small bear ambles toward us to Nikki’s delight. I’m relieved that there’s someone to shoulder the load, to help take Nikki’s mind off the ruination of her family.

  Unfortunately, Nikki finds another sign that reads that Jun was just a cub when her father was carted off to the mainland to live in captivity at the Oakland Zoo. The look on her face tells me she’s thinking of her own dad, of the time he served on the mainland. And that he never came back.

  I’m thinking, Of all the goddamn luck.

  We walk to the entrance of the African Savanna, where an East African tribesman made of copper stands guard, bidding us karibu or welcome.

  Nikki’s mood switches from somber to chipper and she apologizes if she brought me down.

  “Not at all,” I lie. “I want you to be able to tell me everything that troubles you,” I lie again.

  “You’re so sweet, Kevin.”

  Nikki and I walk the length of the zoo, watching the animals be animals. We see two seven-thousand-pound hippos, who spend the warm days resting underwater, coming out to play only at night. We pass all kinds of creatures, from gazelles, dainty and alert and graceful, to warthogs, ugly and fat and smelly. A rhino, brown and dirty, swats flies with its tail, while zebras and giraffes mingle like old friends.

  Chipper Nikki makes for great company, and the date makes for one great afternoon. As we wave good-bye to a chimpanzee, I regret my inability to console and decide to take one last lick.

  “It’s nice that you stuck together, you and your brother, despite everything that’s happened. I’m sure with you at his side, everything will turn out all right for him. In my business, I deal with a lot of youths who get mixed up with the wrong crowd and make some bad mistakes. But those that have the right family support are able to turn the corner and change their lives for the better.”

  It sounds lame and melodramatic even as I say it, but it makes her eyes a little moist.

  “The only ohana—the only family—Alika and I have left is each other. I would do anything for my brother, and I know he would do anything for me.”

  Nikki holds me and invites me back to her place to spend the night. Over her shoulder I watch a Komodo dragon pacing back and forth in its cage. Some living things would rather die than live a life behind bars. I have an appointment to meet with Flan this evening. And I am scheduled to meet Joey at the jail come morning. So, as tempting as her offer is, I ask for a rain check.

  Just as I’m about to give Nikki the long, hot kiss good-night, we hear the merry melody of the cell phone in my pocket. I apologize and pull the damned thing from my pocket. I cup my hand over the screen to shield it from the glare of the setting sun. The caller ID reads FLAN.

  “Speak.”

  “Kevin?” Flan asks. “May I speak to Kevin please? Kevin, is that you?”

  Here we go again.

  “Yeah, Flan. It’s me.”

  “Are we still meeting tonight?”

  “Yeah. Sand Bar, seven o’clock.”

  “I just left Carlie Douglas at her hotel,” he says.

  “You have some news for me, Flan?”

  “Yes, I do, Kevin. I recommend you get to the Sand Bar early and have a few drinks before I get there.”

  “Why’s that, Flan?”

  “Because you’re not going to want to be sober to hear what I have to say.”

  PART II

  ALL IN THE OHANA

  CHAPTER 18

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that your family is part of the New Jersey mob?”

  I am livid. Even this concrete tomb can’t contain my anger. The echoes ricochet off these walls like bullets, hitting Joey from every which direction. The room is supposed to be completely soundproof, yet a guard pops his head in after I smash, with a deafening bang, my metal folding chair against the floor. He pops his head right back out as soon as he sees the red in my face and the venom in my eyes. Were I the Incredible Hulk, I’d be green, and this beige linen suit would be in shreds, such that I could wrap it around the throat of this lying son of a bitch and squeeze until he couldn’t breathe.

  That something that Carlie Douglas told her daughter that night that led to the incident that led to Joey’s misdemeanor conviction was this: Joey Gianforte Jr. is the son of the underboss of a northern New Jersey Mafia family.

  Flan extracted this bit of information from Carlie Douglas with the help of peach schnapps and his natural charm. After hours of soothing talk and a dozen Fuzzy Navels, Carlie was happy to finally get it off her chest, having been warned by police and prosecutors not to share that bit of news with the media. At least not for the time being. I have absolutely no doubt that come time for jury selection, Senior’s mug will be plastered all over the news right next to Joey’s. A healthy dose of pretrial poison for which there is no antidote.

  Joey sits silent, avoiding both my gaze and the question on the table.

  “If you don’t answer me, I’ll file a motion to be relieved as counsel this afternoon.”

  I confirmed what Flan told me last night with a late-night call to Milt Cashman in New York. Milt verified the information with a couple telephone calls of his own. The time difference between Honolulu and New York is evidently irrelevant to the city that never sleeps. What Milt said was what I most feared: Senior is, indeed, second-in-command to Louis “Louie the Screw” Fiordano, the fearsome head of the Fiordano crime family, which operates out of Newark.

  “I’m sorry,” Joey says lamely. “I have absolutely nothing to do with my father’s business, so I didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “I’m the lawyer. I ask the questions. You give the answers. Then, I decide what is relevant and what is irrelevant. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Yes!”

  Joey wants to move on, but I’m not letting this go. Not after Brandon Glenn. Brandon’s dead, partly because he didn’t share with me that he was gay. Now Joey has tried to keep from me his family ties to La Cosa Nostra.

  I somewhat blame myself. Ordinarily, my first order of business would have been to ask the parents what they did for a living in order to gauge how much they could afford for their son’s defense. But when Jake told me about the $50,000 check sitting underneath the prepared retainer agreement, how Senior made his money became, well, irrelevant.

  “Had I asked him, what would your father have told me he does for a living?”

  “My father would’ve told you he’s in construction.”

  Good. Now I can go back to blaming Joey.

  “Last week, when we first met, I told you, unequivocally, that I need to know everything you know. ‘My father is a cross between John Gotti and Tony Montana’ should’ve been the very next fucking words out of your mouth. Now we’re past the lies and the lame apologies, past the pleasantries and half-truths. If you hold anything else back from me, you might as well save it for your memoirs, which you’ll have twenty-three hours a day to work on in your eight-by-ten cell over the next fifty or sixty years of your life. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. Now tell me about Jim Catus.”

  I wait for the reaction. It’s one of complete confusion. I suspected Joey knew, that he came to Hawaii to pull the professor’s wrinkled, old ass off from atop his girl. That Cindy DuFrain had known and let slip the details of the tryst. That the professor was another secret Joey somehow saw fit to keep from me. But the look on his face says otherwise. The poor bastard had no idea.

  “The law school professor?” he asks.

  �
��Yeah. Tell me everything you know about him.”

  “He taught constitutional law to our first-year section. He gave me a C-minus both semesters.”

  “Did you know that Shannon was meeting Professor Catus in Waikiki the day after she arrived?”

  Joey’s face is frozen in a blank stare as he computes what I just said. His is the reaction one would expect of someone just informed of their dead love’s ultimate betrayal. Either he is one hell of an actor, which I think not, or the Catus-Shannon sex romp is news to him. News that hits him like a rock. A poor analogy, I suppose, considering how Shannon was killed.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am,” I say, my anger subsided, my sympathies returned. “I met with Catus myself.”

  Joey looks as though he may become sick, a look that tells me that had he known about Catus, he might never have come. His hands drop onto the table, his head drops into his hands.

  “Do you think Catus killed her, Kevin?”

  “His story is thin. His alibis are weak. He’s someone we may be able to use to cast reasonable doubt.”

  Joey’s head stays buried in his hands as I remind him that his arraignment tomorrow is a mere formality. He will plead not guilty and bail will remain out of reach at 3 million bucks. Senior does not have that kind of cash, he tells me. Evidently, in this economy, even organized crime doesn’t pay all that well.

  Joey doesn’t lift his head until I stand up to leave.

  “Is that it?” he asks.

  “Unless there’s something you haven’t told me yet.” Joey shakes his head. He looks at me like a puppy who doesn’t want his master to leave. I can tell he’s trying to think of something to say, to keep me here, even if only for a few extra minutes. Brandon Glenn used to do the same thing, by trying to force small talk about the New York Knicks.

  “I’m going to level with you,” I say. “I wasn’t hired to hold your hand. I’m not being paid to keep you company. My job is to do everything I can to get you acquitted. You can make both our lives easier by telling me everything I need to know. If you insist on keeping things from me, then I’ve got to go out there and learn what I need to know on my own or wait until the prosecutor starts piling this shit in my lap on the eve of trial.”

  “I’m not keeping anything else from you. I promise.”

  That and eighty-five cents will get me a can of Diet Coke.

  “You see, now that I know that the press will eventually label you a real-life Sonny Corleone, I can prepare for it and exercise some damage control.”

  “I understand,” he says. “I promise I’ll do anything you ask.”

  “Good, because I have something else to ask of you.”

  “Anything. What is it?”

  “I see your father’s name is on the approved guest list for later today.”

  “Yeah. He’s coming to visit me this afternoon.”

  “That’s fine, so long as you keep our little conversation today between the two of us.”

  “I won’t say a word. May I ask why?”

  “Because, Joey, I don’t want to wake up to find a fucking horse’s head at the foot of my bed.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Just as I set the telephone receiver back into its cradle, Jake enters my office without knocking. His hands are orange from the bag of Doritos or Cheetos or whatever the hell he’s holding, and the flask sticks out of his left hip pocket like an appendage. As he takes a seat in the client chair in front of my desk, he licks his fingers one by one with orange lips and tosses the crumpled bag on my desk. He sees me eyeing the bag and quickly thinks better of it, removing the bag from my desk and depositing it in the waste receptacle on the floor. I’m not used to this kind of familiarity. Milt and I have known one another for over a decade, and neither of us would even think about entering the other’s office without knocking. Yet I’ve known Jake for a week and a day and here he comes strutting into my office like Chester the Cheetah, turning everything in his path a crummy and ugly orange.

  “Who was that?” he says, pointing to the phone with an orange finger, while cheesy projectiles spew from his 80-proof mouth across my desk.

  “That was Milt Cashman,” I tell him, grabbing the paper towels and the bottle of Fantastik from my bottom desk drawer.

  Milt works fast. When I spoke to him last night, I briefed him on the entire Gianforte case. He said he was intrigued and offered to help. Since I’m not shy when it comes to accepting favors, I asked him to start by getting me some background on the victim, including the Newark law firm where she worked.

  “What did Not Guilty Milty have to say?” Jake asks, unscrewing his flask.

  “I had asked him to check out Shannon’s employer, the law firm of Carter, Backman and Knight.”

  “They’re the personal injury lawyers, right?”

  “That’s what Joey told me.”

  “Was he lying to you, son?”

  “I don’t think so, Jake. I think that’s what Shannon told him.”

  “But it isn’t the truth?”

  “Apparently not,” I say.

  Milt Cashman informed me that the law firm of Carter, Backman & Knight is a front. All of the partners on the firm’s charter are former FBI, but Milt’s sources say none of them are really very former. The law firm is a cover. Shannon didn’t want to work for the FBI. Shannon was working for the FBI.

  Finished with the Doritos, Jake begins to chew on this. “Does Cashman have any idea what Shannon may have been working on specifically?”

  “No,” I say, “but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say organized crime.”

  “Hell, that could be helpful to us, son.”

  “Apparently, you haven’t spoken to Flan.”

  “Not for a couple days,” he says. “Why?”

  I tell him about Senior, about how the $50,000 check was written to me by the underboss of the Fiordano crime family. If Joey knew that Shannon was working for the Feds, it would give him even further motive to kill her, or so the state would argue. Claiming that Joey’s association with the Mafia goes to show motive would also allow the prosecution to explain that association to the jury. The notso-subtle message to the jury about Joey would be simple: killing is in his blood.

  “Do you think Shannon was working this kid the whole time?” Jake asks.

  “I don’t know, Jake. It’s a crazy post-9/11 world. The bolder the Justice Department becomes on the terrorism front, the bolder they’re going to become on other fronts, like organized crime. Times have changed. Donnie Brasco sure didn’t have to fuck the information out of his crew, but nowadays, who knows?”

  “Are you gonna tell Joey about this?”

  “I’m going to have to tell him at some point. But I’m going to give it some time. I just this morning dropped the information about Professor Catus on him. All this news on top of the stress of life behind bars could put him over the edge. Tomorrow’s his arraignment. We’ll go through the motions and I’ll tell him I’ll visit again next week.”

  Jake takes a nip from his flask and shakes his head. “This case is taking on a life of its own. Sure as hell glad I’m not lead counsel.”

  Taking on a murder case is a lot like getting a pet. When you’re deciding whether to go through with it, you focus on the negatives. Mainly, whether you can handle cleaning up all the shit that comes with the territory. Once you decide to go through with it, cleaning up the shit becomes just another part of your daily routine. The case or the pet quickly becomes a major facet of your life. Before you know it, you find yourself wondering how you would’ve ever lived without it, shit and all.

  I swivel my chair around to face the mountains. When you’re knee-deep in shit, it’s easy to forget where you live. Even here in paradise.

  From behind me, Jake’s voice takes me out of the moment and back to reality.

  “Since I didn’t have a date at the zoo yesterday afternoon, I took it upon myself to view the hotel surveillance videos. Would you like the good news first, or
would you like the bad news first, son?”

  I swivel my chair back around to face him. “I could use some good news.”

  The good news, he tells me, is that Palani left his post for some time after taking over for his fellow doorman at the Waikiki Winds on the night Shannon was murdered. However, he was gone for less than fifteen minutes, barely enough time to get to the beach and back, let alone enough time to find Shannon, get into another argument, and kill her.

  “I’ll pace it off, from the hotel to the beach and back,” I say. “But why would he leave work to go back to the beach?”

  “Maybe he still wanted to fuck her.”

  “Must’ve been one hell of an erection.”

  “Hell, haven’t you ever taken Viagra?” Jake says.

  I give him a look and shake my head.

  “Well, we’re not all thirty-one, son.”

  “So, Jake, aside from your needing Viagra to get it up, what’s the bad news?”

  “I have to get up to piss a dozen times a night.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You bet,” he says. “Let’s go into the conference room. I think it’s best you see it for yourself.”

  Jake asks Hoshi to set up the DVD player in the conference room. We pull the shaded film over the windows to reduce the glare and take our seats.

  Hoshi seems to know even more about the discs than Jake. She puts one in and fast-forwards as she looks down at notes she has scribbled on a yellow legal pad. She hits play and a minute goes by before I see Joey stepping off the elevator and into the lobby of the Hawaiian Sands hotel.

  “At first,” Jake says, “I was only focusing on the time reference at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.”

  The image of Joey disappears as he exits the hotel. Jake nods and Hoshi fast-forwards again. Minutes pass here in the conference room as hours pass on-screen. Finally, Hoshi hits play again. Another two minutes go by before Joey steps back into focus.

  “The second time I watched it,” Jake says, “I focused in on Joey himself.”

  Jake squints, and I find myself squinting, too. Joey’s face is fuzzy, so I can tell nothing about his mood. His clothes seem clean, and I’m thankful for that. He sways like someone who has been drinking all night. In other words, like everyone else stumbling into their Waikiki hotel at that time of night.