Dead Lawyers Tell No Tales

by Randy Singer

  “Must’ve been the beer talking.”

  “You saw him drinking beer?”

  “Several.”

  “With your own eyes?”

  “Like I said, he was sitting right in front of me.”

  For Landon, it was hard to resist a smile. After their meeting that morning, Harry had sent Landon home to get the receipt from his lunch at the Gordon Biersch Brewery. Harry took it out of his pocket and made a big show of checking three other suit-coat pockets before he found his glasses. He surveyed the receipt and then showed it to Wingate.

  “Your Honor, I’ll authenticate this when my client testifies, but I’d like to ask the witness about it.”

  “Go ahead,” Judge Lee said. She had her hand over her mouth, as if studying the situation. Landon suspected she was hiding a smile.

  “You know of any reason why those beers don’t show up on my client’s bill?” Harry asked.

  Wingate shrugged. “How should I know? Maybe the bartender gave him a break after the fight.”

  Harry gave that a moment to sink in. “Do you have your receipt for that day?”

  “Didn’t know I needed it.”

  “I see. But it would show a few beers, wouldn’t it?”

  “Maybe. But I hadn’t been drinking. They might have put our whole table on one tab.”

  “Uh-huh,” Harry said. He shifted his glasses to the top of his head. “You had two friends with you, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “They’re out in the hallway, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, Judge Lee here has to decide who started this fight. On the one hand, we have three men who came up to my client’s table when his wife went to the bathroom. Those three men might have some drinks on their tab. Then there’s my client. A skinny quarterback who had consumed no alcohol. And you want us to believe that my client took on all three of you just because you threw your hands up in the air when you turned and looked at his wife?”

  To everybody in the courtroom, and especially Landon, the idea sounded ridiculous. McNaughten had a way of rephrasing the issue to make his case.

  “I’m just saying what I saw.”

  “And you remember specifically how this fight happened—blow by blow?” McNaughten’s voice was incredulous, mocking the witness.

  “Your boy coldcocked me. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  Harry pulled out Landon’s dental bill and handed it to Wingate. “If you remember everything so well, who threw the punch that chipped three of my client’s teeth?”

  Wingate just stood there, not wanting to rat out his friend. “I didn’t see that part.”

  “But you were holding him?” Harry said, his voice rising.

  “Like I said, I was trying to pull him away from people, so, yeah, I grabbed him from behind.”

  Harry snorted. “Mr. Reed,” he said to Landon, “would you step up here for a moment, please?” He then turned back to Wingate. “Put your arms around my client in a bear hug.”

  Wingate looked at Judge Lee. “This is stupid,” he said.

  “All right,” Harry said. “I’ll do it.” He grabbed Landon from behind. “So now, you’re holding my client like this, and he’s defenseless, and somebody just nails him in the mouth but you don’t know who it is?”

  “It happened fast. I didn’t see it.”

  Harry let go of Landon. “Isn’t it true that you recognized my client as a former SEC quarterback involved in a point-shaving scandal and came over to his table in order to talk trash?”

  “No, that’s bull.”

  “And when his wife came back to the table, you started harassing her?”

  “That’s not true either.”

  “And when my client tried to protect his wife, you held him so your buddies could punch him in the face and kick him in the groin until he collapsed on the floor?”

  “You tell a good story, Mr. McNaughten. But that’s not the way it happened.”

  “And for that we have your word; is that right?”

  “You’ve got my word.”

  ///

  The next two witnesses fared even worse. Harry poked holes in their stories and highlighted inconsistencies between them. Nobody seemed to know how Landon’s teeth had gotten chipped, and Harry hammered that point relentlessly.

  Landon started to relax. This case was going nowhere, and Harry was flat-out having fun.

  After all three men testified, Judge Lee turned to Kirby Wingate. “Do you have any more evidence, Mr. Wingate?”

  He looked confused, as if maybe he was missing something. “Nope. That’s about it. That’s the way it happened.”

  Judge Lee nodded at Harry. “Looks like the prosecution rests,” she said.

  Harry took his reading glasses off the top of his head, folded them, and put them in his pocket. “I move to strike the evidence,” he said. “It’s obvious that Mr. Wingate and his friends are lying. But in addition, nobody testified as to whether this alleged crime took place in Virginia Beach. As the court knows, venue is an essential element of any criminal case, and without such testimony, the court should dismiss the case with prejudice.”

  Judge Lee was already writing on the warrant and didn’t bother looking up. “The court agrees. Mr. Wingate has failed to prove his case. The case is dismissed with prejudice.”

  She stopped writing for a moment and glared at Wingate. “I don’t know why Mr. and Mrs. Reed didn’t file an assault charge against you. But I can tell you this, Mr. Wingate—if they had, and if you had come in here and testified the way you did today, I would have given you the full year allowed by law.”

  Landon could tell that Wingate didn’t like being lectured by a woman. He clenched his jaw and stared at the judge.

  She banged her gavel. “Next case,” she said pleasantly.

  In the hallway, Landon and Kerri thanked Harry profusely. “It may take some time,” Landon said, “but we’re going to pay you every dime. You certainly earned it.”

  McNaughten handed Landon a business card. “You got a job offer yet?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got a few things I need some help with,” Harry said. “Come to my office at nine tomorrow morning, and I’ll put you to work at fifty bucks an hour. Once you pay off my bill, we’ll talk about where to go from there.”

  “Are you serious?” Landon asked.

  McNaughten looked around and lowered his voice. There was a reporter waiting patiently off to the side to talk with Harry and Landon. “Look, when I started practicing law, I had a lot to prove. Nobody in my family had even gone to college. Nobody cut me any breaks. I like hiring people who have something to prove. You put on a good case in front of the Character and Fitness Committee. If you work hard and keep your nose clean, you’ll be a heckuva lawyer someday.”

  Landon didn’t know what to say. He’d been looking for a legal job for weeks and had pretty much given up hope.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

  Harry took a step closer. When he spoke, his lips hardly moved. “Next time, don’t turn your back on the big guy. One good knee to the groin should put him down. Then you can take care of his buddies.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind, sir.”

  9

  ON MONDAY NIGHT, Landon hunched over his computer and learned all that he could about Harry McNaughten’s law firm, McNaughten and Clay.

  Harry was a criminal-defense attorney who had been in the trenches for forty years. He seemed to specialize in cases that were considered unwinnable, occasionally shocking pundits with a not-guilty verdict. The managing partner of the firm, a man named Brent Benedict, was a former Navy pilot who did mostly appellate work. He teamed with a third partner, Parker Clausen, who was not only a lawyer but a published novelist. Earlier that year, one of Clausen’s novels had hit the lower rungs of the New York Times Best Sellers List. Landon checked out the reviews, most of which skewered the book, so that he’d be able to talk intelligently
with Clausen about his writing.

  The firm had originally been founded by Harry McNaughten and a woman named Emma Clay. She had retired after an accused rapist she and Harry defended was set loose and attacked the same woman six months later. Emma Clay had given her keys to Harry, walked out of the office, and started raising horses in Pungo.

  The bios of the lawyers told Landon a few things about their personalities. Clausen’s talked more about his novels than his work as a lawyer. He bragged that he had a Mensa-level IQ and had graduated with high honors from the University of Virginia School of Law. According to his bio, his books were favorably compared to Tom Wolfe, though Landon had searched the Internet in vain for such a comparison. In the firm pictures, Clausen was always dressed casually. He was a big man, probably weighing three hundred pounds, with long gray hair that he pulled back in a ponytail.

  Brent Benedict was Clausen’s polar opposite. Buttoned-down, with a military haircut, his bio read like somebody had sanitized it and scrubbed it and then sanitized it some more. Brent listed all of his legal accomplishments—rated AV by Martindale-Hubbell, named one of Virginia’s “Super Lawyers” for appellate work, past chairman of the Appellate Section of the Virginia State Bar, and so on. He had a long list of complex appellate cases to his credit, and his bio contained links to all the opinions. He was a lawyer’s lawyer, and Landon hoped he would have a chance to work with the man.

  The head shot that generated the most conversation in the Reed household was of the firm’s associate, Rachel Strach. Rachel’s wavy blonde hair could have been featured on a shampoo commercial. She had big blue eyes, brilliant white teeth, and thick red lipstick. In the photo, she was glancing longingly over her shoulder at the camera. If lawyering didn’t work out, the woman could be a model.

  “What kind of lawyer puts a glamour shot on the firm web page?” Kerri asked.

  “She probably doesn’t look anything like that in real life,” Landon said.

  Kerri checked out Rachel’s Facebook profile and found several pictures of Rachel in a bikini. “You need to keep your distance from that woman,” she warned.

  Landon got up from his computer and looked over Kerri’s shoulder at her iPad. He gave her a kiss on the head. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Landon spent most of his time that night trying to get a feel for Harry McNaughten’s law practice. Harry’s claim to fame was the infamous defense he had mounted a few years back for an alleged assassin working for a government-contracted security firm called Cipher Inc. The defense Harry had employed was a classic case of jury nullification, a high-risk strategy where a lawyer tries to get jury members to ignore the law and follow their emotions.

  10

  SIX YEARS EARLIER

  NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

  EVERYTHING SEAN PHOENIX had worked so hard to build in the years after his release from that Syrian prison came down to this—closing arguments in front of a jury of his alleged peers, chosen from the cities and towns of the Eastern District of Virginia. The reputation and future of Cipher Inc., the company he had personally founded, were on the line. The lives of millions of people around the globe would be impacted.

  Following 9/11, two government contractors had risen to prominence. At first, the most notorious was Blackwater USA. Founded by Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL, the company had purchased more than seven thousand acres near the Great Dismal Swamp on the Virginia–North Carolina border and had trained thousands of mercenaries. Blackwater had received more than $1 billion in government contracts up until five Blackwater guards were charged in the shooting deaths of fourteen Iraqi civilians. An avalanche of unfavorable media coverage followed, as well as a criminal trial against the guards and a slew of congressional hearings.

  Blackwater’s problems opened the door for Cipher’s rise to prominence, though Sean did a good job keeping most of the firm’s actual work from public view. Cipher had thousands of employees working out of branch offices in more than thirty countries. The State Department sometimes called on Cipher agents to interrogate foreign combatants in ways that U.S. soldiers could not under current U.S. policies. Cipher operatives also provided a reliable source of intelligence-gathering on competitors of their multinational clients. And sometimes, the U.S. government would call on Sean and his team to perform “off-the-books” operations that were too politically volatile for the U.S. military to attempt directly. This much was clear: the age of terrorism had placed more of a premium on intelligence-gathering than infantry boots on the ground. Over time, Cipher Inc. had supplanted Blackwater as the most influential, despised, discussed, and mysterious company on the planet.

  Cipher’s effectiveness depended on secrecy and a sophisticated web of informants in nearly every major city in the United States, North Africa, and the Middle East. Now it all threatened to come undone. A former operative had turned against the company and claimed that he had personal knowledge of Cipher’s role in the recent assassination of a Sudanese official named Ahmed Al-Latif. Working with U.S. Attorney Elias King, that operative had provided enough evidence for King to charge both Sean Phoenix and the alleged triggerman, an agent named Daken Antonov, with conspiracy to commit murder.

  Sean had hired a big D.C. firm and paid through the nose for the best defense money could buy. Antonov had hired a local Virginia Beach lawyer named Harry McNaughten. Neither Sean nor Antonov took the stand. Their lawyers admitted that Antonov worked for Cipher Inc. but denied that Antonov had anything to do with Al-Latif’s assassination.

  Antonov was one of Sean’s best operatives. He had bushy eyebrows that came to a V just over his nose and eye sockets deeply shadowed by his bulging forehead. This, coupled with the long sideburns that ran along the bottom of his jaw, had earned him the nickname Wolfman within the Cipher organization. He was deadly efficient at what he did and seldom left any traces. The Wolfman was the last agent Sean could afford to lose.

  But Elias King was a pit bull of a prosecutor, and he built a methodical case with internal Cipher documents and eyewitness accounts of the assassination. Things looked good for the prosecution until the cross-examination of the government’s main informant by defense attorney Harry McNaughten.

  Instead of directly attacking the government’s case, Harry focused on the atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan, atrocities that Al-Latif had authorized. Harry showed photos of children dying of disease and hunger. He asked about the killing fields and the systematic raping of women and the loss of more than a million innocent lives. He showed a bloody photo of a young Sudanese boy who had lost both hands during a bomb attack. Elias King objected to nearly every question, and there were more than a few shouting matches, but Harry made his points. And finally, as Harry McNaughten rose to give his closing argument, the entire courtroom seemed to hold its collective breath in anticipation.

  He took his place in front of the jury without a single note. He hunched over the podium, his wavy gray hair and spindly frame giving him the air of a man who had seen more than his share of suffering and injustice. He didn’t bother buttoning his suit coat, his casual demeanor a stark contrast to the stiff bearing of Sean’s own D.C. lawyer and the intense staccato presentation of Elias King.

  “You’ve seen the pictures,” Harry said. “You’ve seen what Al-Latif and his men did to thousands of innocent women and children. Now, I’m not admitting that my client had any role in his assassination. But even if he did, should we convict him of murder?”

  Harry let the question hang out there for a moment. The judge had only allowed this line of defense after hours of arguments by the lawyers the preceding day, based on Harry’s theory that international law could trump these murder charges. Because of the court’s ruling, Elias King was forced to swallow his objections, and he sat at the prosecution table with a frown on his face, seething as Harry did his thing.

  “There was another murder trial many years ago. It was technically a court-martial, growing out of an incident in Vietnam known as the My Lai Ma
ssacre. Lieutenant William Calley, the platoon commander, was prosecuted for giving an order to slaughter innocent civilians. They were all herded down into a ditch and . . . bam-bam-bam.” Harry acted like he had a machine gun, pointing it into the ditch. “They just mowed ’em all down.

  “But there were other men prosecuted for that slaughter as well. Do you know what their crime was?”

  Harry surveyed the jury from right to left. He was out from behind the podium now, nothing between him and the jury box. “Their crime was that they allowed the massacre to happen. Because even in war, you don’t allow somebody to kill babies and rape innocent women.

  “There is something called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the United States is a signatory. I for one am glad we are. That charter acknowledges universal principles, and one of those is that we all have a responsibility to protect the most innocent and vulnerable among us from the atrocities of war.”

  Harry was old-school and didn’t use PowerPoint. Instead, he pulled out his most gruesome pictures, blown up and mounted on poster board, and quietly placed them in front of the jury. He walked back behind the podium.

  “There is no doubt that somebody assassinated Ahmed Al-Latif. Did it stop the atrocities shown in these photographs? No. But did it slow them down? Possibly.

  “My client didn’t assassinate this Sudanese official. But whoever did, they shouldn’t be prosecuted. They should be congratulated.”

  “Objection!” Elias King said.

  The objection was sustained, but Harry didn’t seem to care.

  “I take no joy in showing you these photographs. I take no pride in describing the unspeakable horrors that took place in Sudan. But that’s the real world. And just because Mr. King wants to pretend it doesn’t exist—that won’t make it go away.”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained. You’re pushing it, Mr. McNaughten.”

  “Sorry, Your Honor.” Harry lowered his voice. “George Orwell once said that people like us sleep peacefully in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.