The Plea, page 36
part #2 of Eddie Flynn Series
My breath came in short bursts that had to fight their way through the clamp of adrenaline threatening to crush my chest. The chill wind from the broken window behind me began to dry the sweat on the back of my neck. The glass partition that moments before had separated the reception area from the conference room lay in thick, beady chunks on the floor.
The digital clock on the wall hit 20:00 as I saw my killer.
I couldn’t see a face or even a body; my killer took shelter in a dark corner of the conference room. Green, white, and gold flashes from the fireworks bursting over Times Square sent patterns of light into the room at odd angles that momentarily illuminated a small pistol held by a seemingly disembodied gloved hand. That hand held a Ruger LCP. Even though I couldn’t see my killer, the gun told me a lot. The Ruger held six nine-millimeter rounds. It was small enough to fit into the palm of your hand and weighed less than a good steak. Three possibilities leaped to mind.
Three possible shooters.
This was Dell’s piece. Maybe he’d found it.
I hadn’t seen El Grito’s body. He could’ve picked up the gun, or brought it with him.
A third possibility: Dell’s lover.
No way to persuade any one of them to drop the gun.
Considering the last two days I’d had in court, they all had a good reason to kill me. I had an idea about which one it might be, but right then it didn’t seem to matter somehow.
The Ruger’s barrel angled toward my chest.
I closed my eyes, feeling strangely calm. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. Somehow this last breath of air didn’t feel right. It felt as if I’d been cheated. Even so, I filled my lungs with the smoke and the metallic tang that dwelt long after a shooting.
I didn’t hear the shot, just a dull thump, which couldn’t have been a gunshot. My eyes were tightly shut, so I didn’t see the muzzle flash—I only felt the bullet ripping into my flesh. That fatal shot had become inevitable from the very moment I’d made the deal to persuade David to plead guilty in exchange for Christine’s immunity.
My pants felt wet and warm. I guessed it was my blood.
Only then did I hear the shot; it sounded like a bullwhip cracking.
Instantly, I knew that sound was different—it wasn’t the deafening thump of muzzle blast from the bullet and its gas propellant exiting the bore. This was the sound of the bullet breaking the sound barrier. I knew I wouldn’t hear the shot because the shooter was too far away. He was in the building across the street, behind a “for rent” sign with an M2 sniper rifle, one of his favorite toys. He’d watched Christine from the Corbin Building, and if anyone had tried to take her out, he’d take their head off with one squeeze of the trigger.
I opened my eyes. The Ruger was no longer there; neither was the gloved hand. A bloodied stump of bone and matter, the hand taken clean off by the Lizard’s shot. I heard the scream then. A woman’s voice, yet deep and agonized. She stepped forward, into the moonlight, and Sophie Blanc raised a Glock with her other hand.
I’d thought everyone was dead.
I was wrong.
Four quick shots. Her body crumpled to the floor.
I turned and saw Kennedy leaning out from behind a couch.
The pain in my chest grew from something similar to a burning cut into an ice pick plunged through my rib cage. I forced myself to look down. There was no bullet wound. Instead, the slide from the Ruger protruded from my chest. The handgun had been torn apart by the hollow-point boat tail fired from the Lizard’s sniper rifle. I guessed that the gun part was maybe six inches long, and most of it was buried in my chest.
I don’t remember falling, but I recall Kennedy shouting my name. And then Weinstein was in the room beside Kennedy. His head framed in the blare of the fireworks.
“Eddie, stay with us. We got ’em. We got ’em all. We heard it all on your call,” said Kennedy.
I hadn’t disconnected Kennedy’s call. Instead I’d put the phone on the conference table and let Dell talk.
“Your wife’s safe. So is David. It’s okay. Paramedics are on their way…”
My head wouldn’t stay upright. It kept flopping to my left. Each time it did, I saw Dell’s body, the top of his head missing. The Lizard would have taken out Dell first. Beside him I saw El Grito’s corpse, his dead eyes staring at me.
I heard Kennedy hollering for the paramedics.
And I lost my battle for the light.
EXTRACT FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18.
The New York Police Department has released some of the names of the individuals who lost their lives in a bloody gun battle that took place yesterday evening in the heart of corporate Manhattan. Lester William Dell, 54, and Sophie Blanc, 31, were law enforcement officers working with the Treasury Department. Eli Patton, 28, Joel Friend, 29, and Sonny Ferrar were agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Gerald Sinton, 49, was a named partner in Harland and Sinton, one of America’s most respected law firms. His partner, Benjamin Harland, lost his life in a boating accident just two days before. Police sources believe the two incidents are not linked. One dead man, believed to have links to the Rosa Cartel, has not yet been named. And finally, criminal defense attorney Eddie Flynn, 37, also lost his life. The district attorney’s office has yet to fix a date for a grand jury hearing into the murder of Clara Reece. No official statement has been issued on why this violent episode occurred.
CHAPTER NINETY
6 weeks after the shot
“How’s it feel to be a dead man?” said Kennedy.
Even though he’d had time to rest and recover from the ordeal, the fed still looked like hammered shit.
“I feel a damn sight better than you look. You ever sleep?” I asked.
“Not much. Not since Ferrar’s funeral. I saw you there, but it wouldn’t have gone down well with the rest of the Bureau if we’d spoken. You understand?”
I nodded.
“Look, I know your business took a dive after the Times told everyone you were dead, but we had no choice. We had to let this blow over. The State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Justice Department are all up in arms about renegade CIA operatives setting up a joint task force to carry out the largest robbery ever committed on American soil. The CIA have said they’re carrying out their own investigation.”
“I’m sure that’ll be extremely thorough. They have to know exactly what happened so they can make sure it’s buried for good.”
Kennedy smiled and said, “You could be right. I’d say none of this will go public—too embarrassing. It’ll all blow over. In the meantime, I figured it would be good to take the heat off you and your family for a while. If everyone thinks you’re six feet under, the cartel won’t go looking for a dead man.”
“You find the money yet?”
He shook his head. “The virus David unwittingly uploaded wiped the whole system. We believe the virus and the money switching into David’s client account and then into the wind was Bernard Langhiemer’s work…”
His face darkened at the mention of Langhiemer.
“You find him yet?” I asked.
“Most of him,” said Kennedy. “It looks like Dell’s partner, Sophie, was hiding out in Langhiemer’s apartment. El Grito found them, got Langhiemer and Sophie talking. It wasn’t pretty.”
“So you think the cartel knows it was Dell who robbed them?”
“We think so, but we’re making sure of it. We don’t want a bloodbath while they go looking for the money. At the same time as we’re covering this up in the press, we’re leaking to our sources in the cartel that Dell went renegade and that we recovered the money. That way no one will come looking for it from David or Christine. The cartel are sore about their man getting plugged, but it turns out El Grito had already fed back to his boss that the firm was tearing itself apart, what with Sinton killing Ben Harland and his daughter.”
“His daughter?”
“We got a positive ID last week on Samantha Harland being the body in David’s apartment. DNA profiling from her old man’s body. We also got a toxicology report. Turns out she’d been given a powerful sedative. We figure Sophie brought her into David’s apartment the day before the murder, drugged her, and stashed her in the soundproof panic room. The next day, after David leaves the apartment, she shoots Samantha in the back, then drags her into the kitchen and unloads into the back of her head. Samantha was twenty-six years old. Assholes like her father never think that what they get into might end up hurting their kids.”
I gazed out at the street.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I think it’s best if you lie low for a while, and when you want to practice law again, we’ll get the Times to print a retraction. If the cartel found out you’d made it out of there alive, they’d kill you on principle. But they’ve got short memories when it comes to straitlaced lawyers. Sometimes killing an ordinary Joe Public is much more difficult than taking out a player.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Don’t suppose your memory has improved?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The sniper hole cut in the glass on the thirty-eighth floor of the Corbin Building, the fact that Dell and Sophie Blanc all had bullet wounds consistent with a round from a high-caliber rifle? Any of this ringing any bells yet?”
“I already told you, I don’t know anything about that.”
I finished off my stack of blueberry pancakes, drained the last of my coffee, and left forty bucks on the table for the check and the tip.
“David pay you for the prelim?” said Kennedy.
“Way too much,” I said. My financial worries were over, at least for now.
A horn sounded outside Ted’s Diner, and I shook hands with Kennedy.
“That’s my ride,” I said.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Kennedy, handing me a large manila envelope. I checked its contents, shook hands with Kennedy again, and placed the envelope in my bag, beside two others of similar size.
It was late April, and the blossoms were tumbling through the puddles on the sidewalk. I opened the rear passenger door of the Range Rover and climbed in.
“This is a mighty step up from that Honda,” I said, gritting my teeth at the stretch to get into the high vehicle. The wound in my chest still hurt like hell when I least expected it. It would heal, but I’d been told to expect an ugly scar.
Holly pulled into traffic and looked at me in the rearview mirror. “I know,” she said. “You could say our relationship has moved on. David wanted to get me a Ferrari, but I told him it was too ostentatious. This is nice.” David leaned over from the front passenger seat and whispered something to her. She patted his knee and they laughed softly together. When David got released the day after Saint Patrick’s, Holly took him in. Through all the shit they went through over those two days, they’d somehow found each other. I was glad.
“So, you ready?” said David.
The question wasn’t meant for me. It was directed toward the other passenger, in the seat beside me. He didn’t answer. He just stared out the window.
David and I talked a little during the drive, and Holly told me all about their plans for a romantic weekend away—their first. The other passenger never spoke. After an hour, when we were well into upstate New York, we fell into silence as we approached our destination. Holly and David were very much in love. It was nice to see, but it made me ache. Christine and Amy were staying at Christine’s parents’ house. I’d seen them both, briefly, once I got out of the hospital. We’d agreed to meet in the park.
I’d watched Amy on the swing. Christine and I sat on the grass in the little park close to her parents’ house. After a while I purposefully tuned out Christine and watched my daughter. I didn’t want to hear what she was saying. She said there was something about me that brought danger to our lives, that somehow, as long as I was in the law, I would attract bad men. And bad things would happen, whether I wanted to do the right thing or not.
Christine and Amy would live with her parents in the Hamptons. Amy would change schools. I could see Amy once a month, at their house. No more. Not for a while. Not until Christine was sure they would be safe. I tuned out again and stared at Amy.
“So what do you think?” said Christine.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“You haven’t really been listening, have you? I said how would you feel if we tried things again in six months?”
“You mean us?”
“Yes, I mean us.”
The creak of the swing drew my eyes to Amy again. She was getting taller. Her feet were dragging on the ground on every low point of the swing. I’d taken her to this same park the year before and her feet couldn’t touch the ground then. I thought about finding a bloodied seventeen-year-old girl in my client’s house, not a mile from here; I thought about David, fighting for air in the courthouse conference room as he begged me to help him; I thought about Christine, that moment in Harland and Sinton before I got her out.
“I can’t. I love you both too much,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Bad things happen around me. Maybe I let them happen. I don’t know, Christine. I can’t take the risk that something might happen to you or Amy. I don’t want to put distance between us, and I want to watch my little girl grow up. But it’s more important that she gets the chance to grow up and be with you. Whatever has happened to me, whatever’s happened to us, I can’t change that. All I can do is make sure that I don’t do any more harm than I’ve done already.”
“Eddie, it’s not forever. I want to try again when things have calmed down. It’s your job; it’s not you. I thought you could think about winding down the rough cases, maybe even trying a new career. And hey, I’m not blameless here either. What happened with the firm wasn’t your fault.”
“You’re wrong. Dell told me I was the target, not you. They wanted to use me to get to David. You were leverage to them, nothing more. I can’t expose you or Amy to that risk. As things stand, I’m a dead man. That facade won’t last for long. I can spend the weekend here, but I need to go back.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to. I can’t really explain it, but I need this. I need to work. I can help people. David reminded me of that.”
“There are other lawyers…”
“I know, but most of them are probably like I was before I pulled Hanna Tublowski out of that house. If I’m not there, who’ll pull out the next girl?”
She dragged herself close to me, rested her head on my shoulder.
I was going to be on my own. For the good of my family. That made me think about what kind of a man I was, that my family was better off without me—without the hustler, the lawyer, the con man.
Holly made a left and drove along a narrow gravel path that led to a large mansion, set in acres of open green fields.
We pulled up outside the house. Several men were waiting outside, dressed in white hospital uniforms. I got out of the car, walked around, and opened the other passenger door. The low morning sun blazed into the car. This place wasn’t advertised on the Internet, or anywhere else for that matter. Maybe a hundred doctors in the whole country knew of its existence. As far as I knew, the house didn’t even have a name. Rock stars, movie stars, the überwealthy came here to get clean.
Popo wept as he got out of the Range Rover. He was shaking, and his lips were cut and bleeding. I told him to stop biting his lips. David and Holly joined us.
“You’ll stay here until you’re better. Until you’re clean,” said David. “And when you’re clean, you come see me, and I’ll make sure you have a job at Reeler.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say,” said Popo.
“You don’t need to say anything. You saved my life. Whatever I can do to save yours, you got it,” said David.
I knew Popo would make it. He’d been given a chance to turn his life around, to become another version of himself, a better version, a stronger version, a purer version. A chance to get back to who he really was.
I hoped I would get the same chance someday.
We waved goodbye to Popo and got back into the Range Rover.
“Okay, now to business,” I said. “You can drop me off at Hogan Place.”
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
“Dead man walking,” said Zader, as I closed the door to his office in 1 Hogan Place.
I took a seat and admired the headlines in the newspapers he’d spread out in front of him. Most of them were speculating on his next move in the David Child case and when the grand jury would hear the evidence. The DA looked tired; his eyes were heavy and his collar was undone.
“So, think your client will be ready to face the grand jury next week?” he said.
I opened my bag, removed the three envelopes, and set them on top of the papers.
“Say, can I get a drink?” I said.
He converted a sneer into a half smile and pressed a button on his desk phone.
“Miriam, two coffees please. Oh, sorry, cancel that. One coffee for me, and see if you can rustle up a scotch for Mr. Flynn. He looks like he could use it.”
“I don’t drink anymore,” I said. “But you knew that.”
“Miriam?” said Zader into the intercom. “Miriam, are you there?”
“Maybe she’s picking up your dry cleaning?” I said.
He leaned back in his leather chair and said, “We’re going with your client as an accomplice to the murder. It’s not the full beans, but…”
I could see his eyes focus on something behind me, which cut him off in full flow. Miriam entered his office with two coffees on a plastic tray. She placed one coffee in front of me and the other beside it. She pulled up a seat and took the second cup of coffee for herself.
