Madriani - 02 - Prime Witness

by Steve Martini

  But the views from these little cubicles are something Lenore Goya might kill for. A panorama of the busy harbor kaleidoscopes before me as I pass each open door.

  A large corner office belongs to Jacoby, one of the perks of position.

  “How’s our man doing?” says Claude. “Have you questioned him?”

  “He’s doing just fine. We’ve restrained ourselves, with regard to questioning,” says Jacoby. “But your suspect is very nervous. He blurted a few statements immediately after the arrest, some gibberish,” he says. “Meant nothing to us. We made some notes.”

  Jacoby has our undivided attention now.

  “I’d have to look at the arrest report,” he says, “to get the specifics.”

  Claude gives me a look, like maybe we’ve hit some paydirt.

  “He meets with his attorneys daily, and seems to be manageable,” says Jacoby. He’s talking about Iganovich. “He’s said nothing to us since his lawyers got hold of him.” Canadian law parallels our own and the British model. Arrests are followed by admonitions to the suspects that any statement they make may be used against them in a court of law.

  According to Jacoby, Iganovich blurted whatever was said immediately after his detention, to the security guards who held him, before local police could be summoned and before he could be warned about loose talk.

  “He has appointed counsel?” I ask.

  “Legal aid,” he says.

  I make a face. This does not fit my image of the people who defend indigent renters in unlawful detainer actions back home.

  Jacoby looks at me. “Ours is a little different than your system,” he tells me. “Though he does have an American lawyer as well.”

  I look at him round-eyed, a question mark sitting across the table.

  “Oh yes. The fellow flew in this morning. Says he was hired by the family.”

  Claude and I look at each other, searching expressions.

  “Who is he,” I say. “The American lawyer?”

  Jacoby shakes his head. “I haven’t met him yet. We may have that pleasure this afternoon. As long as you’ve come all this way, I would like you to meet my counterpart, Iganovich’s Canadian barrister, Mr. Lloyd Benson-Harrington. We’ll go over to the jail later and you can talk to them there. They’re meeting with their client. Maybe we can sneak a peek at the defendant as well.”

  Claude likes this. His first look at the man in the flesh.

  Jacoby paws through a few more pages in his file.

  “Here it is,” he says. “The police report.” He’s reading, following the pencil-written line, big hand-printed words for legibility, with one forefinger. “It’s not a confession,” he says. “Don’t know the facts of your case, but it could be an admission. Made no sense to us.”

  “What did he say?” asks Claude.

  “Immediately after being taken by store security, he resisted,” says Jacoby. “It took two of them to wrestle him to the ground.” He’s tracing with his fingers again. “They picked him up, cuffed him and . . .” He’s looking for it. “Here it is. After they pick him up off the floor he says: ‘You got my van. I haven’t driven it in more than a week. I loaned it to somebody else. They used it, not me.’ That’s it,” says Jacoby. “As I told you it’s pretty much gibberish.”

  Claude gives me a broad smile. “Not exactly,” he says.

  Jacoby looks at us. We explain to him about Iganovich’s vehicle found back in Davenport, and more importantly, its contents.

  “Oh,” he says. “Then it is significant.”

  “I’d like to have Claude talk to the store security people, get their declarations under penalty of perjury,” I say. This will help tie down their perceptions of events, preserve the facts against fading memories. It will also put the lie to any defense allegations that the state was involved in extracting these statements or that they were the product of coercion.

  I use Claude to gather these statements so I have a witness later if I need him. Otherwise I would have to recuse myself in the case, withdraw as the prosecutor, in order to testify as a witness. If there were no ethical constraints, it would be the perfect dodge out of my current dilemma. Nikki would love me for it.

  “Of course,” says Jacoby. “We’ll make an appointment to get them in here.” He’s talking about the two guards.

  “One of them is in pretty bad shape,” he tells us. “Your man did not want to go with them.”

  “How serious?” I ask about the injuries suffered by the security guard.

  “I don’t have the particulars. Leg injury or something. And some burns.”

  “Burns?” I say.

  “Uh-huh. Electrical. One of those stun guns, like a little cattle prod,” he says. “He managed to touch one of the guards with it while they were wrestling him to the ground.”

  “Did you get it?” I say.

  “Umm?” He looks at me.

  “The stun gun. Did the guards retrieve it?”

  “Oh yes. It’s with his personal effects.”

  “We’d like to look at it,” says Claude. “Maybe take it with us?” His voice rises an octave, like maybe this is questionable.

  “More evidence?” says Jacoby.

  “Could be.”

  “Certainly. Anything we can do.”

  “In that case,” says Claude, “we’d also like some photographs of any marks left on the security guard by the device.”

  “Sure. We can do that. I don’t know what marks are there, but we can check.

  “Now,” he says, “I presume you’ve started the documentation? To complete the extradition application?” He shifts gears.

  I assure him that this is in the works. I have talked to Goya about helping me when I get back, a bone to try to keep her content, until I can do something more.

  “Good,” he says. He looks at me, a serious expression, to see that I have grasped the import of this.

  “In extradition,” he says, “the devil is in the details. The documents are king.”

  He is right. This is black-letter law of the worst kind. The most rigid areas of law are those governed by printed statutes where strict adherence to law and procedure is the difference between success and failure, conviction and acquittal.

  “There’s an interesting issue,” says Jacoby. “A little ticklish, but we may as well broach it now. . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “The matter of capital punishment.”

  I look at him.

  “I don’t know whether you’re aware,” he says, “but the death penalty is a highly charged subject up here. Canada abolished it some years ago. It complicates questions of extradition at times.”

  I look back at him. Jacoby knows he now has my full attention.

  “Surely this is not a problem here?” I say. “Not in this case?”

  Jacoby makes a face.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. It’s all part of our treaty, the U.S.-Canadian extradition treaty. Been in there for years,” he says. “Either country can refuse to return a suspect if that person is subject to execution in the other state. All perfectly aboveboard. It’s a question of political policy, addressed outside of the formal extradition process.”

  I look over at Claude, whose creased and thinning face has dropped nearly to the table top. The lawyers at the State Department in Washington have not told us that this could be a problem.

  “Surely I thought you were aware of this,” says Jacoby.

  “I knew of the provision,” I say. “I was not aware that it might be a problem in this case.”

  “I would expect that the extradition hearing will go smoothly. We have talked about the evidence,” he says. “It appears to be solid. This can be provided by sworn declaration.

  “But,” he says, pausing for a little effect, “our minister of justice, while a tough woman, sadly she sees little social benefit in capital punishment.” He arches an eyebrow as if to say that he himself does not understand this.

  “You think there’
s a chance your minister of justice may decline to send Iganovich back south unless we agree to waive the death penalty?” I ask.

  “There is that chance,” he says.

  “You aren’t serious?” says Claude. “This man has murdered six people, and you want guarantees that we will not execute him if he’s convicted. Not likely,” says Claude.

  I nudge him with my knee below the table. Like most of his brothers of the badge, diplomacy is not one of Claude’s polished charms.

  “You must understand. There will be a great deal of controversy and press attention to this case as it wends its way through our courts.” He wrinkles an eyebrow, his way of telling me that politicians in this country are subject to the same forces of political gravity as those south of the border. They crumble under pressure. As I sit and stare at him I begin to wonder how I will break this news to Emil Johnson and the county fathers back in Davenport, that no matter how remote, that in the political seas in which they all swim, I may have to deal away the prospect of a death sentence for a stone-cold killer. If I know them, and I think I do, I sense that we are about to enter a game of international chicken with the only question—who will blink first.

  The jail for the city of Vancouver is a block building five stories high, situated in the old city center. The surrounding buildings, many of them aging brick, are now run-down.

  Jacoby leads the way. He has called ahead to let them know we are coming. Inside he hooks up with a guard, a man in a neatly pressed uniform, light blue shirt with epaulets of rank, and dark pants.

  He leads us through a series of three-inch-thick steel doors, like airlocks, all controlled from a room behind one-way mirrored glass. We pass through a visitors’ area, a few inmates socializing with family, wives and kids.

  “This is the main conference room,” says the guard. “They are waiting for you in here.” He opens the door. There are two metal tables placed end-to-end, bolted to the floor, scarred wooden chairs around them. Iganovich’s Canadian lawyer has stopped off on his way from court like a doctor on his rounds.

  Jacoby makes the introductions.

  Benson-Harrington is by all appearances an amiable man, professional in his approach, exuding no real venom.

  Claude is busy sizing up the defendant. Andre Iganovich is seated at the head of the table. A surly look on his face, he is not interested in partaking of these social festivities. I am certain that this distance he maintains from us is something that sits well with his lawyer.

  Iganovich is maybe thirty-five, brown hair in a crew cut, an unremarkable face, a little lopsided, thin and narrow with deep-set, dark eyes, somewhat haunted as if he is still dazed by his capture and the events of the last week. The only exceptionable feature are his teeth. They are stained a dingy gray-brown, and spaced like broken pickets in a fence. Like many from the impoverished places of Europe, it is a countenance that most resembles pictures I have seen from the last century, yellowed and aged daguerreotypes of flatland farmers and back-hill country boys sent off to fight and die in the Civil War.

  He smiles at me, fleetingly. It is an expression that sends a slight chill through my body, raises the tiny hairs on the nape of my neck. His is a somewhat dense appearance, one that conveys the same native predatory message as a cruising shark, a look that makes me glad that we are not alone in this room.

  I hear the door open behind me.

  “Ah.” Benson-Harrington is suddenly all animation. “Your American counterpart,” he says. “You two must meet. Let me do the honors.”

  I turn to look. The smile on my face fades like a dying gas lamp. There before me, centered in the frame of the door, is the now familiar if aged face of Adrian Chambers.

  “We’re already acquainted,” he says, then like his client, the lawyer offers me only a forbidding and humorless smirk.

  Chapter Twelve

  The drone of the jet engines is lulling me to sleep. Claude and I are taking the red-eye from Vancouver south, and I am lost somewhere between slumberland and the snickering visage of Adrian Chambers.

  Iganovich has now formally declined to waive extradition. On this Chambers has counseled him, along with the more reserved Benson-Harrington. From their vantage point there is little to lose other than the good will of a state that wants to execute their client.

  Claude scrunches down a little in his chair, the back reclining as far as it will go. He rolls his head in my direction and plants the question I have been waiting for.

  “How did you two meet,” he says, “you and Adrian Chambers?” Along with everyone else present at our meeting, Claude has sensed the obvious hostility between us.

  “We go way back,” I say.

  “Bad blood usually does,” he tells me.

  “A high-profile defense can be good for your practice,” I tell him. “It can breed new clients. But in this case, part of his motive is also a well-inspired vendetta,” I tell Claude. “Something from Dante’s Inferno.”

  “Tell me about it,” he says. From his tone I can tell that Claude now thinks he has a stake in this thing.

  “You’ve got to understand Chambers,” I tell him. “The man is obsessive, to the point of self-destruction. Maybe it’s what gives him an edge on the rest of the world, his willingness to go to excess in pursuit of a cause.”

  Claude looks at the middle distance, like he doesn’t understand this.

  “There’s a story,” I say. “I don’t know if it’s true. But years ago, when Chambers was starting out, he represented some leather-vested bikers. People heavily into drugs, running the stuff from Mexico in the hollow tubes of their Harleys. It was early in his career, before the pricier clients sought him out. Anyway, Chambers represented them in a drug bust, took a small retainer and went to work.

  “It’s a classic equation in hard-core criminal defense,” I tell Claude, “that if you lose, your client figures he could have done as well himself, and if you win it’s because he was innocent. Either way it is easy for them to justify the non-payment of an outstanding fee. In the case of the bikers, Chambers beat the charges in an early motion to suppress evidence. He sent them a bill for fees, and they ignored it. He sent them another. It was like he didn’t exist. As the story goes, he managed to entice these guys to his office, all three bikers, and I am told that there, he collected his fee.”

  Claude looks at me. “How?”

  I make a face. “According to those who claim to know, he held two pistols, one semiautomatic, fully loaded to keep them at bay, and another revolver with a single round. He lined them up against the wall and proceeded to play Russian Roulette with their collective heads until they came up with the money.”

  Claude swallows hard. “It beats arbitration to get your fee,” he says. “How much did they owe him?”

  “Four hundred dollars I’m told.”

  He looks at me wide-eyed.

  “It was the principle of the thing.”

  “And he got away with this, this collection of his fee?”

  “The clients were not the kind to go running to the state bar, or the law.”

  “With those kinds of clients you don’t have to worry about the law,” says Claude.

  “You’re wondering why they didn’t kill him?”

  He arches an eyebrow, like this was more than a passing possibility.

  “In Chambers I think what they saw was a lot of rage, a man dancing on the edge of lunacy, like maybe the next time they showed up he might be holding a flame-thrower. It’s why the early Indians didn’t kill crazy people,” I say. “They saw them as somehow closer to the gods. I think maybe the bikers looked into the eyes of Adrian Chambers that night, and saw their own mortality. It came down to the basics. Screwing with this guy simply wasn’t worth the four hundred dollars.

  “After that, Chambers packed a loaded nine-millimeter everywhere he went,” I say. “He got a permit from the sheriff, and let the world know it. Five months later, these same three guys showed up at his front door again. Like the Horsem
en of the Apocalypse, they’d been trucking white powder all over the highway between Barstow and Bakersfield. Afflicted by the galloping dumbs, they’d been nailed again, and they were looking at doing some hard time. But when they arrived at Chambers’s office this time they were packing a bankroll to choke a horse. They gave it, all of it, to Chambers up front.”

  “Sounds like an American success story,” says Claude. “How did you manage to get this Horatio Alger all over your ass?”

  “Ten years ago he was a rising star in legal circles in Capital City. By then he’d cornered a good part of the upper crust criminal defense practice in town. Lawmakers in trouble with overzealous prosecutors, the lobbying set, a lot of politicians and their hangers-on. He made a lot of money. He also made a lot of enemies, mostly cops who were tired of taking his abuse in court.

  “As is often the case in life, Chambers lost his focus in the details,” I say. “One of his clients was Walter Henley, a bookkeeper and by some accounts principal bagman for a group of lobbyists currying favor in the capital.”

  With this sign of high-level dirt, Claude is all ears.

  “The DA’s office, where I was at the time, had Henley and two prominent lobbyists in its sights, hard evidence of bribery and extortion. We wanted to get Henley to roll over on the lobbyists.

  “Chambers’s theory of defense was not new, or original,” I tell him. “He figured he could keep the lobbyists and Henley all back-to-back, inside under a common umbrella of defense, pissing out into the wind instead of all over each other. He had visions of holding out forever.

  “I offered Henley immunity and subpoenaed him to testify before the grand jury. He could no longer take the Fifth. He had to tell us what happened or go to jail.”

  “So much for honor among thieves,” says Claude.

  “Chambers fell into the net when he approached Henley with a vast sum of money, cash from the other clients, to spin some yarn before the grand jury. What he didn’t know was that Henley was wired for sound. The cops had set Chambers up. A little payback for all the grief he had caused over the years.”

  “Chambers took your part in all this very personally?” says Claude.