[Marc Kadella 06.0] Delayed Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  Marc stood up, stepped over to Gondeck and whispered, “I’m looking forward to you trying to cross-examine her and then see if you can keep your job. Go ahead, go after her, piss her off and see how it works out.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate your concern,” he whispered back.

  Marc used up the rest of the morning session with Vivian. With a character witness like her, he had to be very careful not to flaunt her wealth in front of the jury. Instead of focusing on that and the family’s political clout, he focused on her philanthropy. By the time they finished, she came across as a wealthy Mother Theresa, at least enough to give the jury the impression she did good things for people with her money. Plus, and this part was truly genuine, Vivian herself gave off the impression as someone who could enjoy a beer and hotdog at a ball game. Someone the jury could like despite her wealth. And of course, Maddy was the daughter she wished she had.

  Seeing his career flash before his eyes if he went after this woman too hard, Gondeck completely passed on any cross-exam. He wasn’t going to get much out of her anyway so why try?

  When Vivian was excused she went straight to Maddy and gave her a well-rehearsed, sincere hug before taking her seat in the front row next to Carvelli.

  Graham recessed for lunch and before he was off the bench, Marc turned to Carvelli and said, “Go get him.”

  “I got two guys on it including your old pal, Jake Waschke,” Carvelli said.

  “Come on,” Marc replied, “don’t say that like that.”

  Carvelli smiled and said, “Relax, he genuinely likes you, as much as he can like any lawyer.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Carvelli set his coffee cup on the coaster on the coffee table. He looked at it and remembered it was one of a set that was a gift Maddy had given him. He smiled when he recalled how she had chastised men in general and Carvelli in particular for being so indifferent about the care of their furniture. He then thought about the predicament she was in and his heart dropped to his stomach.

  Carvelli looked at the television. He had the latest sixty inch widescreen, high-definition set situated directly in front of him in his living room. It was a few minutes past 8:00 A.M. and he was killing time before he left for court. Watching a local morning news show, he was waiting for the daily report on Maddy’s trial when his phone rang. Tony looked at the caller I.D. and saw the number was blocked. Curious about who would be calling him at home so early, he answered it despite the blocked I.D.

  “Tony?” he heard a man’s voice ask. “It’s Russ Simmons with the DEA. Do you remember…”

  “Russ Simmons! Now there’s a voice out of the past I haven’t heard for a while. How the hell are you, Russ?”

  Russell Simmons was a DEA agent Carvelli had worked with while he was still a detective with the MPD. Carvelli and several other MPD members had been assigned to a joint, local/federal task force investigating an Upper Midwest drug and prostitution ring. Carvelli had joined the task force toward the end of the investigation and was on it for a little over three months. During that time he had become good friends with Simmons.

  Russell Simmons was also a bit of a character. Doing undercover work with the DEA will do that to you. At the time, he was still undercover acting as a member of a biker gang and looking very much the part. Long hair, a beard, biker boots, tattoos, T-shirts and a leather vest, he had easily infiltrated the meth and hooker ring they busted.

  “You got time to meet this morning?” Simmons asked.

  “You’re back in Minnesota?”

  “Yeah and you need to see me.”

  “About what?”

  “Some stuff I’ve been seeing on TV,” Simmons cryptically replied. “It’s worthwhile.”

  “Okay. Can you meet me now? There’s a place on Fifty-Third and Chicago called Sir Jack’s. Can you find it?” Carvelli asked.

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Simmons said.

  When Simmons came through the door of the restaurant, Carvelli saw him but paid no attention to him. Tony had the morning paper on the table and after checking the man out went back to the sports section he had been looking over.

  “Hey, Tony, how you doing?” Simmons said as he slid onto the booth’s seat opposite Carvelli.

  “Russ?” Carvelli asked, an uncertain look on his face.

  The man Carvelli was looking at bore no resemblance whatever to the Russ Simmons, undercover DEA agent, he had known years ago. This one was short-haired, clean-shaven, noticeably grayer and dressed like a grown-up.

  “Oh, that’s right, I should have warned you,” Simmons laughed as he reached across the table to shake Carvelli’s hand. “I’m not undercover anymore. I’m too old. So they make me look and dress like a government employee now,” he explained while holding up the cup Carvelli had for him as Carvelli poured from the plastic carafe.

  After spending almost twenty minutes on small talk, catching up on each other’s lives, Carvelli got to the point.

  “What do you want to see me about?”

  Simmons filled both cups again then looked around to make sure no one was paying any attention to them.

  He leaned forward, as did Carvelli, and quietly said, “We’re looking at CAR Securities. We’re thinking they are a cleaning service for a Mexican cartel.”

  “Russ, that’s not news. We know a couple of them made a one-day trip to Panama. We also know one of the guys who went is connected to a guy high up in the cartel…”

  “Pablo Quinones,” Simmons said.

  “Yeah, that’s him.” Carvelli acknowledged.

  “We also have information to believe,” Simmons continued, “Quinones sent an assassin he uses who goes by the name Michael Stone after Robert Judd. Then a couple weeks later, Judd is murdered.”

  “Jesus Christ, Russ! We need that to show Maddy Rivers got set-up. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, positive. I can’t positively say this Stone guy did it but he’s good enough to pull off something like this.

  “We also have photos to prove that the two guys from CAR Securities met with Quinones and his boss, a psycho asshole by the name of Torres, in Panama.

  “Here’s the deal, Tony. I’m willing to testify that Quinones sicced this Stone on Robert Judd. I think the girlfriend got set up. But I can’t testify about anything else. We have an investigation to protect. I’m sticking my neck out two miles just doing that.”

  “Are you going to get jammed up?”

  “No,” Simmons shook his head. “I talked to my boss about it. She agrees the jury should know about this but I have to be very careful.”

  “Let me talk to Kadella, the lawyer. Be ready to go first thing tomorrow morning. Can you do that?” an excited Carvelli asked.

  “Call me,” Simmons said. He wrote his cell phone number on the back of his business card and gave it to Tony.

  When Carvelli arrived at the courtroom the lawyers were at the bench discussing something with Judge Graham. Tony quietly went past the crowded gallery, through the gate and took a seat along the rail behind the defense table. He smiled at Maddy and whispered a ‘hello’ to her. While patiently waiting for the bench conference to end, he again wondered how anyone could sit and watch this on television. To Carvelli, trial veteran that he is, trials move at a snail’s pace rarely having an exciting moment and are normally quite boring.

  The meeting finally broke up and when Marc got back to his table, Carvelli whispered to him they needed to talk.

  “Your Honor,” Marc stood to address the court, “the defense requests a brief recess.”

  Graham looked at the wall clock and said, “It’s a good time for a break. Fifteen minute recess,” he ordered.

  When Carvelli finished telling Marc about Russ Simmons, Marc immediately went up to Graham’s clerk. Steve Gondeck was right behind him.

  “Natalie, we need to see Judge Graham in chambers, on the record, right away, please,” Marc said.

  “Okay, I’ll tell him,” she replied as she picked up her phone.<
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  Gondeck pulled Marc away and quietly, so the few people who remained in the courtroom could not hear him, said, “What kind of defense lawyer bullshit are you trying to pull?”

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” Marc snarled back at him as he pulled his arm from Gondeck’s hand.

  The stress of a trial was starting to get to both of them.

  “You can go back,” Natalie told them.

  Back in chambers, Gondeck took a chair. Jennifer Moore was upstairs in the county attorney’s offices and not in attendance and Marc remained standing, his hands resting on the back of one of the chairs in front of the judge’s desk. They waited in silence for Graham’s court reporter to finish setting up. When he was ready, he said so to Graham.

  “All right, gentlemen, what’s up?” Graham asked.

  “I need to add a witness your Honor,” Marc said.

  Before Gondeck could object Graham held up a hand to stop him and said, “One at a time, Mr. Gondeck, please.”

  Marc then carefully, for the court’s record, explained to the judge what had transpired that morning.

  “This man can clearly provide us with exculpatory evidence, your Honor. Evidence we could not have discovered with a reasonable effort before this. Evidence the jury must be allowed to hear,” Marc concluded.

  “Did you know about this?” Graham asked looking at Gondeck.

  “Of course not,” Gondeck indignantly replied. “Besides,” he continued looking at Marc, “does he have any evidence that this alleged hit man actually completed the assignment?”

  “I don’t know,” Marc admitted.

  “Prejudicial and proves nothing,” Gondeck said to Graham.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Graham said again looking at Marc, “get him here in the morning and we’ll meet with him in chambers. If I am satisfied as to who he is and how credible he is, I’ll let him take the stand.”

  “Your Honor,” Gondeck started to protest.

  “If you want a continuance to prepare your cross-exam, I’ll grant it. We’ll see how it goes. But if what Mr. Kadella says is accurate, I think the jury should hear this.”

  A half hour after the in-chambers meeting was over and court resumed, Russ Simmons and his boss, Candace Green, arrived at the offices of the local U.S. Attorney. A few minutes later they were ushered into the office of the AUSA Joel Dylan. Waiting for them were Dylan, Mike Anderson and Holly Byrnes from the FBI.

  “Hi, Candace,” Dylan said as he rose from his chair behind his desk. “Thanks for coming. Please take a seat,” he said gesturing to the two empty chairs to his right.

  “What’s going on here?” Green curiously asked looking over the other three people.

  “This isn’t an inquisition, Russ,” Mike Anderson said. “But we need to know why you talked to Tony Carvelli in the restaurant this morning.”

  “Before you answer,” Dylan said moving a tape player on his desk closer to Green and Simmons then turning it on. For the next minute, they listened to part of the conversation between Simmons and Carvelli.

  “What the fuck…!” Simmons, his blood practically boiling, almost yelled as he started to come out of his chair, “You’ve been following me, Mike?”

  “Of course not,” Anderson quickly replied. “We’ve been keeping a loose eye on Carvelli. We just happened to be on him when you met.”

  “And who else?” Green asked glaring directly at Dylan. “The lawyer, Kadella? His client? What the hell are you guys up to?”

  “So,” Dylan calmly began, “I take it you knew about this,” he said tapping the tape player. “You knew Simmons was going to offer to testify at this trial?”

  “What of it?” Green angrily asked.

  “Can’t happen, Candace,” Anderson said.

  Simmons leaned forward in his chair, looked to his right at Holly Byrnes and said, “What do you have to say about this, Holly?”

  “I just follow orders,” was all she said.

  “Have you been subpoenaed?” Dylan asked Simmons.

  “No, I haven’t,” Simmons replied, his anger still unabated.

  “Russ, you can’t testify,” Anderson quietly said. “We have serious, classified investigations going on that we have to protect. I’m sorry. I hate to blindside you like this but we had no idea you were going to meet with this Carvelli. Sorry.”

  The room went silent for a couple of minutes, no one knowing quite what to say. Finally, Candace Green spoke up looking directly at Dylan.

  “You could have let us know you were investigating CAR Securities. So are we.”

  “You didn’t have the need to know,” Dylan said.

  “God I hate that ‘need to know bullshit’. Joel, you should have called me in to talk to me about it. Find out if we had an interest in it. This is why people think their government is such an inefficient clusterfuck. We keep running around tripping over each other wasting more time, money and resources than should be necessary.”

  “That’s why you’re here now, Candace,” Dylan said cutting her off. “We’re going to bring you and your investigation in and roll it into ours, with your involvement, of course. This is straight from the Attorney General and is non-negotiable,” Dylan lied.

  “As for you,” Dylan continued as he reached into his desk drawer, removed a plain, white, letter-size envelope and handed it to Russ Simmons, “Holly is going to take you home, you’ll pack a bag and get out of town for a few days. There’s a plane ticket and accommodations for you all paid for in there,” he said referring to the envelope. “Have a nice trip.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Maddy reached over and placed her right hand on Marc’s left to stop him from nervously tapping his fingers on the tabletop. Marc looked at the clock on the courtroom’s wall then compared that time to the time his watch had. Both read the same: 9:22. Barely two minutes more than the last time he checked.

  Judge Graham’s clerk, Natalie, answered her phone. Marc watched her as she whispered something into the phone, nodded her head and then hung up. She looked at Marc and motioned for him to come up to her chair. Steve Gondeck went with Marc and before they got to Natalie, Steve gently nudged Marc and with a smirk on his face pointed at the clock.

  “Judge says he’ll give you ten more minutes to produce your witness then he’s coming out.”

  “Tell him we can put Pascal back up, he’s here,” Marc replied.

  “Okay, I’ll call back to him,” Natalie whispered.

  Before Marc got back to his table, Tony Carvelli came through the hallway door. Marc looked at him with an inquisitive look on his face in response to which Carvelli shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

  The gallery impatiently stirred as they watched Carvelli walk up the center aisle.

  “What’s going on?” a reporter in the front row asked Marc.

  “Shut up, Ben,” Marc answered him obviously irritated.

  Knowing something was wrong with Marc’s case, this exchange elicited a round of laughter from the three rows of media members, including Ben.

  “He’s gone,” Carvelli whispered to Marc and Maddy at their table. “No answer on his phone and I called their office and got stonewalled.”

  “What the hell…” Marc started to ask.

  “Don’t know. Something tells me somebody doesn’t want him on the witness stand.”

  “How…?”

  “I don’t know,” Carvelli said cutting him off. “I tried finding him last night, too. No luck.”

  “Mr. Kadella,” Natalie said.

  “One minute,” he replied holding up his left index finger.

  “Get Pascal in here,” Marc said.

  Marc drove out of the underground parking garage to be greeted by barely moving rush hour traffic. As predicted, a heavy snow storm was rolling across Minnesota. The snow had started coming down shortly after one o’clock and by the time Marc left the courtroom at 3:30, there was already three inches of wet, slick, sloppy snow bringing the start of rush hour traffic to a crawl.


  The testimony had ended in the morning with a very mild cross-examination of Walter Pascal by Steve Gondeck. With no more witnesses to produce, Marc rested his case and requested a dismissal of the charges by Judge Graham which was promptly denied. Knowing the snow was coming, Graham, after meeting with the lawyers, released the jury for the weekend. Closing arguments would take place first thing Monday morning.

  After lunch, Marc sent Maddy home with Carvelli. Marc’s afternoon was taken up in chambers with the judge and prosecution arguing about jury instructions. At three o’clock Graham stood up, stretched his arms over his head, looked out his window at the new Vikings’ stadium and decided to call it quits.

  “It’s coming down pretty hard,” Graham said after turning back to the lawyers. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll go through your requested jury instructions over the weekend and have them ready by Monday. I want your closings done Monday and we’ll charge the jury Tuesday.”

  While Marc was creeping along with traffic he tried to move his head from side-to-side. His neck, shoulders and back were sore and as tight as a drum.

  “God, could I use a massage,” he tiredly whispered to himself.

  Instead, he turned on the SUV’s radio and punched the button for a classic rock station. The babbling idiot on the radio finally shut up in time for Led Zeppelin to pound the car’s interior with their classic hit, ‘Rock and Roll’.

  “Perfect,” Marc said and turned up the volume to let the music blast the stress out of his head.

  For the third morning in a row, Marc was the first one into the office. Sleep had come fitfully at best since the jury began deliberations. Today would be the third day they had the case. Usually, or at least in theory, the longer they took the better for the defense. Were there a couple of holdouts for acquittal that could get him a hung jury? Maybe.

  Also for the third morning in a row, after arriving early, Marc sat staring out the open window behind his desk. Exhausted due to little sleep, stress and worry, he was unable to keep his concentration long enough to get any work done.