I lay down on my bare mattress in the middle of the living room and fondled the softcover book at my side. Ostensibly, it was a work of nonfiction: true crime. The author was a lover I picked up here in Ko Olina more than a year ago. Sherry Beagan. Ironically, at one point I couldn’t even remember her name. It’s now etched into my memory, as vivid as the blue-white corpse of Erin Simms.
I held the book above my eyes and squinted through the darkness at the title: Paradise on Fire: The True Story of an Innocent Young Bride and the Lawyer Who Saved Her Life. A bullshit subtitle if ever there was one. And not only because Erin Simms suicided before any verdict was ever read.
I sat up on the mattress and flung the paperback across the room. The book smacked into the sliding-glass door like a blind pigeon, the racket frightening Skies, sending him scampering out of the kitchen before finishing his meal, his claws scratching the hardwood as he skidded into a turn. I tried to call him back with a soothing voice, to no avail.
Time for a move. But to where? Another island? Another state? Another country?
The silence was suddenly interrupted by the obnoxious peal of my cell phone, and I felt a sudden rush of empathy for the court officer I’d nearly cursed out earlier. I stood and searched the cluttered kitchen counter for my cell.
The caller ID read RESTRICTED.
“Speak,” I said into the phone.
“Is this Mr. Corvelli?”
“Yeah.”
“Mr. Corvelli, my name is Jason Yi and I’m calling on behalf of the governor.”
The clock on the microwave read 11:02 p.m.
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “You’re soliciting votes at this time of night four months before the election? Good luck with that.”
As I searched for the PWR button, the voice on the other end protested, “No, sir, you misunderstand. I’m Governor Omphrey’s chief aide. I’m not calling to secure your vote, Mr. Corvelli. I’m calling to secure your services.”
“I’m a criminal defense attorney. Not an election lawyer.”
“The governor is well aware of the type of law you practice, Mr. Corvelli. And of how well you practice it.”
I smirked. Wade Omphrey was up for reelection this year, and according to the polls and the pundits, he had an incredibly slim chance of losing the governor’s mansion. But that could all change with a single headline.
“The governor has been charged with a crime?”
“Not charged, Mr. Corvelli. At least not yet. And probably he never will be charged. That’s what we want to make certain of, and that is why we’re getting you involved so early in the investigation.”
“What type of investigation are we talking about?”
Jason Yi hesitated, swallowed audibly. “Murder, Mr. Corvelli. Your specialty.”
CHAPTER 4
As a defense attorney it wasn’t often that I got the opportunity to visit a fresh crime scene, but this scene was as fresh as a lobster plucked straight from the tank at John Dominis. Not that I felt lucky to be here. I was one of the few people in this voyeuristic nation who actually looked away when they glimpsed yellow police tape. I wanted nothing to do with blood and gore, wasn’t the slightest bit intrigued by the macabre. So when I entered the elite residential complex on Diamond Head Road, I did so with dread, with trepidation, with a feeling like sharp metal lodged in the pit of my stomach.
“Fourth floor,” Jason Yi said as he opened the door to the stairwell. “All the way to the top.”
The police had shut down the lone elevator. We passed a number of uniforms in the sterile white stairwell on the way up, each of them eyeing us without attempting to mask their contempt for our trespass onto their playing field.
We stopped at the top of the steps, and I presented my attorney ID to a young officer guarding the door.
“Mr. Corvelli’s with the governor,” Yi told the cop.
The cop handed me a pair of latex gloves.
“I’m allergic to latex,” I said.
“Tough shit, Corvelli.” Staring at me from over the young cop’s shoulder was Detective John Tatupu, Honolulu Homicide. Tatupu was a good cop who had found himself on the losing end of two major murder trials since I’d arrived in the islands. “Put the gloves on and come with me, Counselor. But don’t touch a goddamn thing.”
Yi nodded, and I slipped on the gloves, itching already, and stepped past the guard, following Tatupu into the center of the flat.
The apartment was a vision, the entire living area open to the air, with a view of the Pacific few five-star hotels on the island could rival.
“I don’t know what Omphrey’s lapdog has already told you,” Tatupu said, “but you’re here as a courtesy to the governor’s office only. On the condition that nothing you see here finds its way into print. At least not until the FBI has concluded their investigation.”
“The FBI?”
“Didn’t you see the suits on your way in?”
“I thought maybe your boys were playing dress-up.”
Tatupu, a native Hawaiian, cast a dark glance in my direction. “Better get the laughing out of your system now, Counselor. Because after you see what’s behind Door Number One, it’s going to be all you can do just to sleep.”
And the son of a bitch was right.
The corpse was already in the grip of rigor mortis, frozen, apparently, in the middle of a violent convulsion, her backbone curved like the St. Louis Arch. Her body was dressed in a sheer nightie. From the neck down, she resembled the young girl from The Exorcist when she spider-walked down the stairs.
I swallowed hard and set my jaw. “What the hell happened to her?”
“I’m not here to give you a tour and hold a Q and A, Corvelli. Look but don’t touch, and you’re welcome to draw your own conclusions. But in a few minutes you’ll have to clear out so Dr. Tong can do his thing.”
“Tong?”
“Yeah. You didn’t hear? Derek Noonan handed in his resignation following the Simms trial. Last week was his final week as chief medical examiner. Turned the reins over to Charlie Tong.”
I took a step toward the corpse. Downstairs, Jason Yi had retained me for $10,000 in cash, which now felt like a cumbersome bulge in my left pants pocket. Yi’s chief concern was that Governor Omphrey be protected by the attorney-client privilege. Of course, that was the case the moment I answered the phone.
Jason Yi had filled me in on a few facts. The deceased, Oksana Sutin, twenty-six, was a Russian national and the governor’s latest mistress. The affair had been going on for the past six months. That was undoubtedly why the feds were involved, though who leaked the affair to the feds remained to be heard. Yi assured me that Omphrey had an alibi. In fact, the governor was still in Washington, DC, for meetings with White House officials, and he’d been there for the past two weeks.
“Then what do you need me for?” I’d asked.
Yi didn’t hesitate. “The press. The governor is up for reelection. If news of the affair breaks, there’s going to be tremendous pressure from the party for the governor to step aside.”
“I can’t control what gets leaked to the press.”
“No, but you can spin it. You can also threaten to go after anyone who commits libel and slander by implicating the governor in this crime. And you can deal with the police and prosecutors if and when they have questions for the governor.”
Now I knelt at the side of Oksana Sutin’s body. No visible bruises, no visible wounds. I glanced around the room at the high-end dark-wood furniture arranged in the ancient Chinese method of feng shui. No sign of a struggle, nothing conspicuously out of place.
I stood and stepped over to the dresser, caught a glimpse in the oval mirror of the midnight shadow on my face. I stopped myself from picking up a framed photo of the deceased, a picture of the ravishing brunette alone at sunset on Lanikai Beach, the Mokulua Islands idling in the background. She looked nothing like the grotesque form strewn out behind me. In the photo, her blue eyes lit the sky, her cheekbon
es looked as though they’d been chiseled by a sculptor, her lissome body filled a plain white two-piece. Oksana Sutin could have passed as a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model; in fact, this shot could easily have made the cover.
“You about done here, Counselor?” Tatupu asked from the doorway. “Dr. Tong just arrived, along with an ME from the Bureau.”
I backed away from the dresser and nodded.
As I passed Tatupu in the doorframe I said quietly, “Want to save me a three-second Google search and tell me which poison could have done something as hideous as this?”
“Off the top of my head?” Tatupu said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “I’d say strychnine.”
CHAPTER 5
I arrived at the Federal Detention Center early the next morning. The FDC stands adjacent to Honolulu International Airport, and after I parked and popped a few Percocet, I sat in my Jeep listening to Eddie Vedder and watching the planes take off from the Hawaiian Airlines terminal. I could do it, I thought. I had enough money to pack it all in and start over somewhere else. In a small town maybe. Just buy a two-family house out in the sticks and set up shop downstairs, drafting wills, reviewing contracts. Maybe run for mayor someday.
I stepped out of my Jeep and slammed shut the door. First I had a job to do.
Turi Ahina first waddled into my office about three years ago, while I was defending a young New Jersey man named Joey Gianforte, who was accused of stalking and killing his ex-girlfriend Shannon Douglas on Waikiki Beach. Turi had been caught up in a simple buy-and-bust operation set up by the Honolulu PD in which he’d sold an undercover officer a $40 bag of crystal methamphetamine, otherwise known as ice. Thanks to some creative lawyering on my part, all charges against Turi Ahina were ultimately dismissed. But that was just the beginning of our relationship. As a gesture of appreciation, Turi sent me a steady stream of criminal clients—in other words, his associates—which aided me in building the successful law firm Harper & Corvelli eventually became. Later, during the Gianforte murder trial, Turi Ahina shot a man dead in order to save my life. Since then I had successfully represented Turi in at least a half dozen other matters, but as far as I was concerned, my debt to Turi wasn’t paid. I still owed him. No matter what it took, I promised myself as I entered the Federal Detention Center, I would extricate Turi from the DEA’s dragnet in this case.
Forty-five minutes after signing in, I spotted Turi carrying his wide load across the packed cafeteria toward the tiny Plexiglas cube in which I had been scanning a copy of this morning’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser for news about Oksana Sutin’s death. Nothing yet. Fortunately, the local media sometimes operated on aloha time.
As Turi Ahina squeezed through the door to the Plexiglas cube, I stood and braced myself for what was coming next: the patented Turi Ahina bear hug. Only Turi didn’t move to hug me, didn’t even attempt to shake my hand. He simply sat down.
The wide smile that was all but painted on Turi’s face was absent, possibly confiscated during the raid. For the first time since I’d met him, Turi Ahina appeared scared.
I sat across from him as the Plexiglas door closed, sealing us in. I angled my metal chair slightly so that I wouldn’t be distracted by the goings-on in the cafeteria: the wives and girlfriends, sisters and mothers, sitting, talking, weeping, with their loved ones; young children—sons, daughters, younger siblings—running around the tables and playing on plastic chairs, undaunted by their surroundings, acting as though this were simply a theme park, a carnival, some sad, chaotic county fair.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s begin where we left off yesterday.”
Yesterday Turi described for me the early-morning raid by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Turi and two others were working at a clandestine meth laboratory in Waialua at exactly 6:00 a.m. when agents busted through the door. The lab was a simple one-bedroom home set off a distance from its neighbors, not only to protect its privacy but because the chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine are toxic, flammable, and explosive. Explosions and fires at meth labs are common and deadly. Thus, at least two workers charged with damage control and cleanup remained on-site at all times.
“We called the lab the Tiki Room,” Turi said in pidgin English. His t’s sounded like d’s, his r’s often disappeared completely. “Biggest lab on the island, maybe in all of Hawaii because of the flyovers over the Big Island.” Turi was referring to the recent crackdown on marijuana fields on the Big Island of Hawaii.
“Aside from the product itself,” I said, “what were the agents able to seize?”
“Everyt’ing,” Turi said, eliminating the h as always. “We didn’t have time to dispose of nothing, Mistah C.”
“Specifically?”
Turi took me through a laundry list of chemicals, which included ephedrine and pseudoephedrine—ingredients extracted from cold tablets and diet pills. Kerosene, lye, anhydrous ammonia, lithium from batteries, drain cleaner, red phosphorous from the heads of matches and flares, and iodine.
I leaned forward and told Turi to cover his mouth. We were visible to other inmates, and although lip-reading wasn’t a common talent among the criminal crowd, you could never be too careful. We were about to enter extremely dangerous territory.
“I need you to tell me about the organization, Turi.”
My client’s thick lips folded in on themselves and his eyes seemed to close of their own accord as he drew in a colossal breath.
“There’s no getting around it this time,” I told him. “This isn’t like getting caught with a gram of ice or an unregistered handgun. If getting popped for simple possession were the common cold, this is a heart attack, a stroke, and a positive HIV test combined.”
My analogy didn’t seem to ease Turi any.
“Turi, I’ve been in this game long enough to know and understand the rules. ‘Keep your mouth shut and take your medicine like a man.’ But not this time. I can’t play Beat the Speedy Trial Clock or ask the prosecutor on a date to get you out of this one. And we’re not talking six months in Halawa if you plead guilty. We’re talking fifteen, twenty years minimum at a maximum-security pen on the mainland.”
“What do they got me on?”
“If they can prove everything set forth in the complaint—and, believe me, Turi, the feds don’t move on a suspect until they’re absolutely sure they can get a conviction—then they have you on racketeering and everything that comes with it.”
“And there’s no chance at trial?”
“Turi, the feds in this case are going to parade photos, wiretaps, chemicals, corpses, and testimony from your cohorts in front of the jury. You’d have a better chance of escaping the FDC than walking out of federal court with an acquittal. No pun intended, big guy, but this is much larger than you.”
“Awright,” he said grimly. “What do we gotta do?”
I glanced past the Plexiglas again, covered my lips when I spoke. “There’s only one way to handle this, Turi. And I think you already know exactly what I’m about to tell you.”
Turi wouldn’t look at me.
“You’re going to have to flip.”
Turi started sobbing and shaking his head before I even finished the sentence, but I continued nonetheless.
“You’re going to have to offer the US Attorney’s Office something they don’t already have. You’re going to have to sing about everything and everyone you know, and you can’t hold anything back.”
By the time I finished speaking, Turi’s head was on the table, his enormous shoulders shaking up and down like mountains in the midst of an earthquake.
“No way, Mistah C,” he mumbled into his fleshy forearms. “No can.”
“You can, Turi. You saved my life a few years ago. Allow me now to save yours.”
A long while passed before Turi finally looked up again, his cheeks bright red mounds, the whites of his eyes encased in thin, red spiderwebs. “I need some time to think.”
I shook my head. “I wish I could grant you that ti
me, Turi, but it’s not mine to grant. The two others who were arrested with you are going to be having this same conversation with their own lawyers soon, if not already. Then it’s a footrace to the US Attorney’s Office, and the first one in the door wins. The two who are left behind can get nice and comfy in their cells.”
Turi turned his head and eyed the guards, the inmates, on the other side of the Plexiglas. Then he stared at me. “You’re looking at a dead man,” he said.
Maybe, I thought sadly. But it wouldn’t be the first time.
And it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.
CHAPTER 6
When I opened the door to our thirty-third-floor office on South King Street, our receptionist, Hoshi, immediately leapt from her chair and scurried around her desk.
“I wanted to call you, Kevin,” she said, her words hurried and hushed, “but Jake told me not to. He said you’d take off for Tokyo and leave him holding the bag.”
Before Hoshi could further fill me in, the door to our conference room opened and Jake stood in the doorframe.
“Good, son, you’re here. Let’s duck inside the conference room. There’s someone you need to meet.”
I crossed the reception area, tossing my Panama Jack on Hoshi’s desk along the way. As I stepped through the conference room door, I already regretted coming straight to the office following Turi’s uneventful arraignment in federal court. I’d been shanghaied again.
Jake coughed into his fist, then said, “Kevin, I believe you already know Mr. Jason Yi.”
Yi stood and nodded his head.
“And this gentleman,” Jake said, motioning to the older Caucasian sitting next to Yi, “is, of course, Governor Wade Omphrey.”
“Governor,” I said.
Neither of us made a move toward the other. The heavyset governor remained stoic and seated, and I stationed myself just inside the door. Client or no client, I had no intention of shaking hands with a politician. Particularly this one.
Last Lawyer Standing Page 2
