Eddie Flynn 02-The Plea

by Steve Cavanagh

  Popo spoke through cracked and bleeding lips. ‘Where you been, lawyer man?’

  He sounded a little pissed off with me, just as we’d arranged.

  ‘Buying you breakfast,’ I said, and I handed him a sack I’d concealed beneath a case file. I sat down on the bench on Popo’s left. Popo was the closest prisoner to the mark, who sat a few feet to Popo’s right, on the end of the bench. After I’d spoken to Neil earlier that morning, he’d put me on the phone with Popo and I’d told my client to get cozy with the geeky-looking white guy. With trembling fingers, he opened the sack and began devouring a burger. I let him eat. He offered the other burger to the man on his right. He declined. I thought then that they made an odd pairing. They were both twenty-two years old, both born in the same city, both lived in the same city, and were both cooling their asses on the same jail bench, and yet they could’ve just as easily come from different planets. One from Planet Rich, one from Planet Poor.

  The mark was David Child. He owned the fastest-growing social media network in history – Reeler. In the three years since its launch, it had made David Child a billionaire and made Facebook look like Myspace. Hardly a month went by without some story about Reeler, or David, making the headlines. With his head folded into his chest, his hair slick with sweat, I almost didn’t recognize him. Up close he didn’t strike me as the kind to get involved in anything underhanded. He looked straight. But then again, a lot of straight guys are capable of murder. The kid was a genius, but I couldn’t figure out his connection to Harland and Sinton. He was a client of the firm, but what else connected them? Kennedy said this kid was the only one who could lead them to the money. I couldn’t figure it out, not yet. I looked at David and Popo sitting on the same bench. Crime was a great leveler.

  ‘So how long dis time, Eddie?’ said Popo.

  I sucked air through my teeth. Not something that any client wants to hear.

  ‘Well, we don’t have a three-strike rule here, but considering you’re on something close to your forty-third strike, I’d say, half hour, forty-five minutes tops. By that time I’ll have persuaded the prosecutor to drop the charges and you’ll walk.’

  As I’d told a persistent offender and junkie that I’d have him out within an hour, I heard a snort of laughter. David’s head turned, and he stared at me. I deliberately avoided any eye contact and kept my gaze nonchalantly on my client.

  ‘I told ya, Eddie’s the man,’ said Popo, turning and sending a friendly jab into David’s shoulder. ‘Better not be longer, Eddie. I got places to be,’ said Popo.

  ‘I’ll do my best. I’m not a miracle worker. I should have you out before ten thirty, but I’m not promising anything.’

  He smiled. The truth of the matter was that Popo got arrested every other Sunday night. That was our arrangement. He got caught a couple months ago for a robbery and was looking at some serious time. His only option was to cooperate with the police, and with my help he made a deal. If you’re a paid informant you have two payment options: sixty-three dollars sixty per week, or the state will pay for a legal representative of your choosing at a maximum of one hundred and fifty dollars an hour. This new pilot scheme, which paid for a private lawyer as opposed to the normal charitable or partially state-funded alternatives, was designed to ease the burden on the public defender and the other, overworked legal-aid schemes and avoid conflicts of interest for the public defender’s office. It was not uncommon for the public defender to simultaneously represent both the snitch and the guy he’d ratted out. While it was a good idea, in practice most guys just took the sixty-three dollars and sixty cents.

  Not Popo.

  As long as Popo got arrested for possession of narcotics every other Sunday, I could bill six hours for getting him out again the next day. Somehow the fact that he was a paid police informant kept slipping his drug-addled mind, and I would have to attend and sort everything out at court on Monday at one hundred and fifty an hour. You can’t be an inside man in a drug ring without carrying a little product – so getting the charges dropped would be a cinch. Even so, I normally took my time getting Popo released. With Popo’s help, I billed the Justice Department around fifteen hundred a month, kicked back fifty to the desk sergeant at central booking and five hundred to Popo, who in turn paid protection money to the local dealer so he wouldn’t get killed for being a snitch. Guy with a name like Popo needed all the help he could get to stay alive on the street. The dealer gave Popo the names of his employees who were slow on the corners so they got picked up and the dealer could bring in fresh, cheaper talent. After all, anyone who couldn’t sell two thousand dollars’ worth of dope a day on a street corner in New York really shouldn’t be in the business anyway. I’d thought of it as a sweet deal for everybody. Everyone got paid, the crime statistics looked better, and the public defender’s office got themselves some free time. Nobody got hurt, and the city picked up the check.

  A nice little racket.

  ‘Sit tight. I’ve spoken to the prosecutor. She’s a friend of mine. She’ll call your case first so you can get out of here fast,’ I said, and gave Popo a slap on his wet back.

  I got up and offered some final advice to my client.

  ‘Be ready in about ten minutes. Say nothing and leave all the talking to me. Got it?’

  He nodded. Satisfied, I turned to leave. I’d expected that I might get to the cage door before David called after me. He called out before I’d taken my third stride.

  ‘Excuse me, Counselor, do you have a second?’ said David.

  I stopped but didn’t turn around.

  ‘The public defender will be in court later. I don’t do legal aid or pro bono, pal,’ I said.

  ‘No … no … ah … you don’t understand. I’ve already got a lawyer … It’s just I …’

  I half turned and cut him off. ‘Then you don’t need me.’

  ‘No, wait, please stop. I just need to ask you something, please,’ he said, and laced his fingers together before holding them under his chin. He silently mouthed please, over and over. Although he desperately wanted to speak to me, he didn’t want to get up; his fear of getting up from the bench, and thereby attracting attention from his cell buddies, outweighed his desperation.

  ‘Take it easy. It’s okay. Say, don’t I know you?’

  He seemed to shrink and hugged his body. Last thing he wanted was to be recognized.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ he said.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ I moved over to him.

  ‘My lawyer, he told me last night that he would be here this morning. He hasn’t shown up, and I’m worried. I’ve … I’m not used to …’

  ‘You’ve never been arrested before. I get it. Who’s your lawyer?’

  ‘Gerry Sinton.’

  ‘From Harland and Sinton?’

  ‘Yeah. You sound surprised.’

  ‘Well, a little. My wife’s an attorney at Harland and Sinton. I thought they were strictly corporate.’

  ‘Gerry and I go way back. I trust him. Have you seen him this morning?’ he said, his voice breaking high and low from a raw throat. Neil had told me that David had been crying most of the night, until Popo managed to calm him down. A wise move; the men in the cage can smell weakness a mile away.

  ‘No, I don’t believe I’ve seen Gerry this morning, but I’m sure he’ll be here soon.’

  I noticed his hands were small and soft. They shook with the same fear threatening to overcome him completely. His jaw worked like a jackhammer, his eyes red and wide. He reached out as I turned to leave and took hold of my wrist.

  ‘Hey there! Hands off,’ said Neil, the guard.

  The mark let go and grimaced.

  ‘Wait, please. Could you maybe find out if Gerry’s arrived? I can’t call him, and he should be here by now. I’ll pay you for your time. Maybe you could call your wife? See if she’s seen him?’

  Popo didn’t have a bank account, didn’t have any money or possessions other than the clothes he wore. Kenn
edy told me that David’s net worth stood at 1.9 billion dollars, he owned a yacht, a fleet of cars, three properties, and a basketball team. Right then there wasn’t much to separate David from Popo. Each of them needed their fix. Popo needed heroin, the mark needed his lawyer, and their aching leveled both men in a way that only death or disease could match.

  ‘Christine works for Ben Harland. I don’t know how much she sees of Gerry Sinton, but I’ll call her anyway.’

  As I pretended to call Christine on my cell, I checked my watch. Before I’d come to court, I’d tried calling her half a dozen times when I’d managed to slip away from Dell and the feds. She didn’t pick up. Truth is, I didn’t know what I would’ve told her if she had answered. I thought I’d tell her to stay home, but I didn’t think she’d listen unless I told her everything. Then I decided that Dell was probably right – the more she knew, the more she was in danger.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry. He’s probably caught in traffic. I’m sure he’ll be here. When he arrives, he’ll give his name to the court clerk and register as your counsel of record, pick up the case papers, and make contact with the prosecutor. Look, I’ll ask Neil to call the clerk and check it out for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the mark, shutting his eyes in the hope that when he opened them, I would’ve located his savior.

  I closed my phone, said, ‘Her cell is off. Probably in a meeting.’

  I called Neil over to the bars and asked him to call Denise, the clerk, to check if Gerry Sinton had arrived in court. While Neil made the call, I gave David a reassuring smile. Neil probably called his bookie. He certainly didn’t call Denise. No need. At that moment in time I had a pretty good idea of Gerry Sinton’s precise location, and if everything went according to plan, Gerry Sinton didn’t have a hope in hell of making it to court anytime soon.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  About an hour before I’d walked into the cells, Gerry Sinton would’ve been sitting in traffic on the Avenue of the Americas behind the wheel of a 1968 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. Dell told me that Sinton had a car collection that would make Jay Leno weep, and Sinton liked to drive. At one time he had employed a driver, like most other top attorneys, but laid him off when he bought the Roller six months ago.

  As he drove, the car in front of him, an old Ford pickup, would begin to veer in and out of Gerry’s lane. Gerry would’ve seen the couple in that car arguing and he might’ve sounded his horn once or twice at the pickup and attempted to overtake them. The pickup driver, Arthur Podolske, wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. Arthur weighed around three hundred and seventy-five pounds. He was in his fifties, asthmatic, and ranked as one of the best precision drivers I’d ever worked with. That guy could stop a boat in a heartbeat. Arthur would change lanes to block Gerry’s overtaking maneuver and, at just the right moment, Arthur would hit the brakes hard at the very second that the light turned red. Gerry wouldn’t stand a chance of stopping. His classic would assuredly hit the back of the old pickup.

  Gerry probably got out of his car shouting obscenities at Arthur. That wouldn’t last long. As soon as the driver’s door of the pickup opened and Arthur spilled his considerable ass onto the street, he would begin to feign a heart attack. Arthur’s wife, Eileen, makes Arthur look like a gymnast. I imagined Eileen had burst into hysterics, like she usually does, and flapped her huge arms at Gerry, and within seconds panic would overtake the whole situation. The big risk was that Gerry would use his cell to call his office and dispatch another lawyer to the courthouse to look after his client. I’d planned for that. Luckily, a passing NYPD patrol saw the whole accident, and while one patrolman radioed for a paramedic, the other would pull Gerry out of the Roller, plant him face-first into the hood, cuff him, and then bundle him into the back of the patrol car to be dealt with after the paramedics arrived. All before Gerry could dial for help.

  Not an easy setup by any means, but I had help from the kind of people who can arrange for a patrol car to follow a lawyer and detain him before he could get a chance to make a call on his cell phone, who can do just about anything they think necessary.

  There was zero chance of Gerry making it to court that morning.

  ‘Your client here speaks very highly of you,’ said David, holding out a hand to Popo.

  ‘I told him, my man Eddie is the best,’ said Popo, through shuddering teeth. Withdrawal was beginning to hit him hard.

  I held my gaze on David, like I was taking a real look at him for the first time. His face was dirty with tears, and his hair stuck to his forehead.

  ‘Hey, I do know you. You’re …’

  ‘Not here,’ he said. His eyes flitted around the cage, and he gripped his knees to stop his hands from shaking. Even so, his feet jacked and, sensing my stare, he slid his feet underneath the bench.

  I hadn’t anticipated David losing his footwear. Sometimes you’ve got to improvise. Some of the best and most convincing cons were successful because the hustler saw an opportunity to sell himself as an honest man. Getting the mark to trust you is the biggest hurdle, and when opportunities arise to cement your relationship with your target, you’ve got to take them. In the game we called these little plays ‘convincers’ or ‘persuaders.’ Those chances have to be grasped no matter what the odds. Losing his shoes counted as a golden opportunity for me to prove to David that I was on the level.

  ‘Hey, what happened to your shoes?’

  He hung his head and rubbed the back of his neck. His feet bounced nervously, and he wrung his hands. He looked at me before shooting a glance into the heart of the pen. I saw a huge black guy standing in the center of the floor, like he owned the place. He had a lot of space around him in a crowded cage full of dangerous men. This guy was at the top of the food chain. He wore a pair of new Nike training shoes. Red slip-ons. They were way too small for him and his heels spilled over onto the floor.

  Ignoring David’s pleading hands and whispers to ‘please, leave it,’ I headed for the center of the pen and held out my hand to the giant in front of me. He was six inches over my six feet, maybe a hundred pounds heavier than me, and all of that extra weight looked like well-compacted muscle. A tattoo of a black eagle spread its wings across his broad chest, and I saw gold shining in his gums.

  The big guy just stared at me.

  ‘I’m Eddie Flynn,’ I said, leaving my hand out.

  Nothing.

  ‘Can’t help but notice you’re wearing my client’s shoes. I don’t think they fit you. I’d like ’em back.’

  The big man’s eyes burned, and I could see the rest of the men in the cage nudging one another, ready to watch the shit go down. A heavy stillness settled over the pen. I could smell the man’s sweat. My hand remained extended, and my gaze never left his face.

  Instead of taking my hand, the giant’s right arm shot out and grabbed my tie. He was either about to pull me close and strangle me, or just threaten me. I didn’t give him the opportunity. Instead I gripped his right hand in mine and anchored it to my chest. My left arm shot toward the ceiling and took the big man’s elbow with it. I kept his wrist locked low, and his elbow struck the ten o’clock position with a loud crack from his shoulder. I watched the man’s expression change from anger, to amazement, then sheer, hot agony. Arms weren’t designed to fold like this.

  ‘I push my arm two inches higher and your shoulder pops for keeps. There’s a lot of cartilage in there that will grind and snap. You’ll pass out, and when you wake up you’ll wish you were dead. You want to take off the shoes and play nice? Or you want a disability check on the first of every month?’

  He nodded. I let go. The arm would be dead for a few hours; the nerves and muscle fibers shot to shit. I could tell he was thinking about jumping me.

  I smiled.

  He took off the shoes.

  Growing up in the meanest boxing gym in the city had its advantages, even in legal practice.

  I tossed the shoes to the mark. His mouth hung open. Neil broke the stunned silence. ‘You know,
I really should get a new prescription for these glasses,’ he said as he took off his spectacles and held them up to the light.

  Neil continued. ‘You’re up, Eddie, and your little friend is up right after. I called Denise; no sign of Mr Sinton.’

  ‘Thanks, Neil,’ I said.

  I saw David lose his breath upon hearing that Gerry Sinton hadn’t made it to court, managing only short, noisy gasps that made his lips curl into his mouth as he struggled to inhale the stale air. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose and mingled with fresh tears on his face.

  ‘Can you help me, please? I don’t know what’s happened to Gerry. He should be here, but look, it’s not like I’m going to get bail anyway. Gerry told me I didn’t stand a chance. It’s just I … I can’t go out there alone. Can you represent me? Just this one time? Please, I’m begging you.’

  All that planning, all that preparation, everything I’d done that morning was designed to elicit that plea for help. When it came I didn’t say anything, because I knew if I said yes, there was no going back. I ran over all the possibilities in my mind one more time. I’d thought of little else for the last ten hours. Nothing had changed. There was no other choice, no other way out.

  The alternative was to end up in a cage just like the one I was standing in, only I wouldn’t be there to visit a client – I would be there to visit my wife.