Last Lawyer Standing

by Douglas Corleone

  “Thanks for going along with all this, Mistah C,” Turi said immediately after greeting me. “Ya know, you’re going to heaven for this, brah.”

  I started down the street without saying anything.

  Turi followed me in the direction of the garage where I’d parked my Jeep. We took the elevator up to the third floor, then walked briskly toward my white Wrangler. Turi waited until we were both inside, then said, “I need one favor, yeah? I need you to come with me tonight around midnight to meet up with Tam in Chinatown, eh?”

  “Tam?” I said, turning the ignition with no small amount of trepidation. “Who’s Tam?”

  “He’s one Vietnamese guy I know. If anybody can get one message to Masonet, it’s Tam, brah.”

  I backed slowly out of the tight space, then threw the transmission into drive and rolled forward. “Why me? Why tonight?”

  “Because, brah, I might not make it till dawn. And I need you with me or else no one’s gonna buy my story that I got one haole lawyer gonna help me out by helping the big boss. I go to Tam’s bar with that shit, and I’m not coming out, eh?”

  I pulled the Jeep onto Ala Moana Boulevard. “All right. But for now we’re headed up to my home in Ko Olina. We can hang low there until it’s time to take off for Chinatown.”

  “We need to make one stop first, brah.”

  “One stop where?”

  “Kailua, yeah? We gotta stop by my house.”

  “What for?”

  “I need something.”

  “Anything you need—clothes, toiletries, snacks—we can buy at the ABC Store near my villa. I’ll pay or you can borrow some of my things.”

  Turi twisted his thick neck to look at me, then shook his head. “No offense, Mistah C, but you don’t got what I need.”

  “What’s that then, Turi?” I asked, checking my rearview to make sure we weren’t being followed.

  “If we’re going to Chinatown, we’re going strapped. So I gotta get my gun.”

  * * *

  By the time we drove to Kailua and picked up Turi’s .44 Glock, it was already dark, so we grabbed some steak sandwiches at Buzz’s in Lanikai and waited. Then we waited some more. Few words were said; even fewer were necessary. We both knew we had our backs against the wall. One wrong move and the two of us were fish food.

  At a quarter past eleven we finally began the anxious drive from Lanikai to Chinatown.

  Once Honolulu’s red light district, Chinatown had undergone a recent face-lift. The area was now more known for its cutting-edge art and world-class cuisine than for its violent drug gangs and dilapidated buildings. But Turi and I weren’t heading into Chinatown to admire its oil paintings and sculptures or to dine at one of its four-star Asian eateries. We were making for Nuuanu Street and one of its relics—a dive bar that few knew about and even fewer entered, a place where you could go in the front whole and come out the back in pieces.

  We parked in the business district and walked. I knew we’d hit Chinatown once the street names were accompanied by Chinese symbols. The moon offered the only light, and from the corner of my eye I caught more than a few of the district’s nocturnal denizens lurking in the shadows. Not too many of the men looked Chinese, but plenty looked plenty tough. Face-lift or not, Chinatown wasn’t a place where you wanted to walk the streets after dark.

  “There it is,” Turi said, motioning toward a nook between two abandoned storefronts.

  The joint had no sign, the door was hidden in shadows, and I thought, not for the first time, There’s nothing more indecent than a dive bar that doesn’t want to be discovered.

  “All right,” I said. “What’s the play?”

  “We go inside, brah. And we try not to get killed.”

  Sounded like a plan. I’d passed through Chinatown plenty of times before but only once spent any length of time here—for the Chinese New Year back when I was dating Nikki Kapua. We’d stood on crowded sidewalks and watched colorful dancing lions snake through the streets while sipping baijiu, welcoming—now ironically—the Year of the Rat.

  We crossed the street and ducked into the nook, then Turi rapped on the door.

  Nothing like a bar where you’ve got to knock.

  When the door finally opened, an Asian man the width of Turi with twice the height prevented us from seeing inside.

  “Ahina?” the giant said, glowering at Turi. “The fuck you doin’ here?”

  “I need to see Tam, brah. I got one message for him, yeah?”

  “Nah.” The giant shook his head. “No can.” He looked at me. “And who’s the fucking haole, eh?”

  “That’s Mistah C. He’s my lawyer, yeah?”

  “Whatevahs. You bettah get from here before you and this muff get your heads blown off.” The giant started closing the door.

  Turi stopped it with one mammoth sandaled foot. Then he pulled his piece. Held the business end flat against the giant’s temple.

  “Oh, fuck,” I muttered. This plan had just gone from bad idea to suicide in under sixty seconds.

  “Easy, brah!” the giant said. “No huhu, brah. No get upset.”

  Turi didn’t flinch. “Feel that chicken skin, eh?” he said calmly. “Them goose bumps telling you to open that door and no make ass. One funny kine move and I make you parallel fo’ real, eh?”

  “Easy, brah,” the giant said quietly. “No need.”

  Behind the giant I detected movement.

  “Quickly, Turi,” I whispered.

  Turi got the message. “You got three seconds, moke, then I cut you down peanut-size.”

  “Oh, wow, like that, eh?” the giant said, raising his voice. “’Kay, fine then!”

  The giant moved out of the doorframe and Turi aimed his pistol at the bartender, who was rising from behind the bar with a shotgun.

  “No act!” Turi shouted.

  The bartender lowered his weapon and Turi led the way inside, gun still raised.

  A half dozen people were in the bar, counting the giant and bartender. Two men—one Asian, one Caucasian—sat at the bar, their eyes trained on Turi’s weapon. In the rear of the cramped space, a scarred man sat on an old maroon velvet couch, a young woman straddling his lap. Her back was completely bare, displaying a torso-length tattoo of a rare bird escaping its cage.

  The scarred man dumped the girl off his lap and rose.

  “What the fuck you think you’re doing?” he said to Turi in near-perfect English.

  From the side of his mouth Turi said to me, “This here is Tam. He no like Americans. They kill his whole ‘ohana back in ’Nam.”

  “You might have mentioned that sooner,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Turi shrugged. “You no ask.”

  I stole a glance at the Caucasian idling at the bar; he suddenly appeared very European. I swallowed hard and vowed to keep my lips shut. Until we left this shithole—if we left this shithole—I was 100 percent Canadian. Je suis de Québec, amigo.

  “I no want no beef, Tam,” Turi said evenly. “I just come to bring you one message.”

  “And what’s that message, Ahina?” Tam sounded as though he’d just swallowed a mouthful of gravel. “That you have one death wish or something?”

  “No get wise, Tam.” Turi glanced over at the bartender, shouted at him to keep his fucking hands raised, then he looked back at the giant and ordered him to stand in the far corner where we could keep our eyes on him. Then he turned back to Tam. “Your wahine speak English, yeah?”

  The young Asian girl with the uncaged-bird tattoo nodded. “I speak English.”

  “Good,” Turi said. “You come here, eh?”

  “What are you doing?” I whispered to Turi. “Why not go back there and tell Tam himself?”

  “In case you no notice,” Turi whispered back, “I’m a big guy and I no move too fast. I get close to Tam, and he’ll stick me like a pig.”

  The girl—she couldn’t have been more than eighteen—swayed forward slowly. When she was just a little more than an a
rm’s length away, Turi ordered her to stop.

  In a hushed voice Turi said to her, “You tell Tam I have one way for big boss man to get off the island. My lawyer here, he owe me one favor, and he have one jet ready to take off for anywhere big boss man wanna go. No need file flight plan.” He motioned with his head to Tam. “Now go.”

  My fingers tingled, and the stagnant air of the bar was causing me to sweat through my shirt and suit jacket.

  Tam listened to the message then pushed the girl away hard enough to drop her to the floor.

  “Big boss is gonna ask how the fuck you got out of the FDC,” Tam said.

  As the girl uneasily got to her feet, Turi motioned her over again. But I didn’t want her involved, and I didn’t think I’d make it through another round of telephone.

  “I bailed him out,” I said aloud.

  “And why would you do that for a half-ton bag of shit like Turi Ahina?”

  “Hit the archives of the Advertiser,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “Go back three years and you’ll find out why.”

  Tam smiled, the long, jagged scar stretching across his face. “Alika Kapua.”

  Small island, I thought. Too damn small.

  I ignored the name and said, “Bottom line is, I have the means and the motive. Turi remains untouched, and I send your boss anywhere on the planet that doesn’t share reciprocity with the United States.”

  Tam scratched at his scar, which ran like the Kaukonahua River from his brow all the way down to his chin. “I will deliver the message. How does he get in touch with you?”

  “No need. I’ll get in touch with him through you in forty-eight hours. That should give him enough time to check me out and confirm everything I just told you.”

  I turned around and went for the door while Turi backed out slowly.

  “Lawyer!” Tam called just as my fingers grazed the door handle. “What’s your name?”

  I turned back to him. “Kevin Corvelli.”

  “Corvelli. You are an American?”

  “Worse. I’m a New Yorker.”

  CHAPTER 14

  When I opened the door to our offices late the next morning, I found AUSA Audra Levy sitting in our reception area reading the latest issue of Time. I ignored Hoshi’s good morning and turned to the assistant US attorney. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Excuse me?” she said, looking up from the magazine.

  “You heard me. Are you trying to get me and my client killed by coming here to check up on things, or are you and William F. Boyd just plain stupid?”

  “Kevin—,” Hoshi said, rising from behind her desk.

  I held up a palm and told her to keep quiet.

  Audra Levy stood and tossed the magazine onto an empty chair. “I didn’t even know this was your office,” she said with indignation.

  “Then just what the hell are you doing here?”

  Hoshi’s voice rang out from behind me. “Ms. Levy is here to see Jake.”

  “Jake?”

  “I’m purchasing a condominium in Kakaako,” Audra said. “I’m retaining Mr. Harper to review the contract.”

  “We don’t handle real estate matters.”

  “We don’t.” Jake suddenly emerged from the conference room. “But I do.”

  I dipped my hand into the right pocket of my suit jacket and fondled my pill bottle. “What are you talking about, Jake?”

  “We dissolved our partnership, son. Or have you forgotten already?”

  “So now you’re handling real estate matters?” I said incredulously.

  “Real estate, wills and probate, divorce, adoption. I’m coming up on seventy, son. I can’t be chasing after iceheads and gangbangers during my sunset years. I’m resuming a general practice, something I did in the old days back in Houston when the judges weren’t being generous with criminal assignments.” He smiled at Audra. “I’ll be right with you, young lady.”

  “Do you not know who she is, Jake?”

  “Pardon?”

  “This is AUSA Audra Levy. She’s working the Turi Ahina case with our friend Billy F. Boyd. So there might—just might—be a bit of a conflict involved.”

  “I apologize, Mr. Harper,” Audra said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know you worked with Mr. Corvelli or even shared office space. He’s right; this would present a tremendous conflict of interest.” She retrieved her handbag from the chair.

  Then she turned to me. “I’m sorry, Kevin. I received a referral from my real estate agent. The Ahina case is Boyd’s. I never saw a copy of your letterhead or I never would have shown up here.”

  Audra appeared distressed, and I immediately regretted raising my voice and barking accusations at her. I realized that my outburst was at least partly due to its being past time for my pills.

  “You’re Audra Karras, aren’t you?”

  She half-smiled. “So you do remember me from high school.”

  “I thought I did, but I didn’t see a ring, so I wasn’t sure.”

  She raised her hand, knuckles out, palm facing her. “No ring. I’m divorced.”

  I motioned down the hallway. “Why don’t you take a seat in my office? Since you’re already here, we might as well take the opportunity to talk.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “No, please. I’d like to discuss the case and I don’t trust the phones. And I’m sure as hell not stopping by DEA headquarters until this case is concluded.”

  Audra finally agreed, leaving me and Jake alone in the reception area with Hoshi.

  “Sorry, son. I had no idea.”

  “I realize that. I never mentioned her name.”

  Just then the conference-room door swung open, and I heard a small boy’s voice. “Miss Hoshi, do you have any more of those gummi bears?”

  My heart nearly melted in my chest.

  Jake stepped aside, and for the first time since shortly after Erin Simms slit her wrists, I saw Josh, a child I pulled from the Kupulupulu Beach Resort fire a long twelve months ago.

  “Kevin?” Josh said. “I knew I was right. I knew this was where you worked!”

  The boy ran toward me as fast as he could, and as I lowered myself on my haunches, he jumped into my arms.

  I looked over the boy’s shoulder past Jake, at a kind-looking couple in their late thirties, smiling deeply as they exited the conference room.

  Jake shrugged at me, then smiled himself.

  “An adoption I’m handling,” he said. “Guess I’m just full of surprises today, son.”

  * * *

  After meeting Josh’s new family and assuring the kid we were still friends and that we’d see each other again real soon, I moved down the hallway to my private office, where I sat at my desk across from Audra. I began to tell her about my relationship with the boy, about the fire and the criminal trial that followed, but she stopped me midsentence by saying, “I read the book.”

  “The book?” I said, trying to regain my train of thought. It was now well past time for my Percocet and my mind was choked with fog.

  “Paradise on Fire by Sherry Beagan. About the Erin Simms trial. The boy Josh was one of the main characters.”

  “Oh.”

  I didn’t know what else to say, couldn’t seem to figure a way to move on. Audra had read a nonfiction account of one of the most challenging and painful periods of my life, a story that depicted me as a cad, as a callous and calculating lawyer whose scheming didn’t cease once he left the courtroom. It was more or less the portrait of a modern-day monster.

  A sharp pain suddenly struck me like a fist in the gut. Perspiration formed at my temples. I needed my pills and fast. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

  I shot across the hall and entered Jake’s office, quickly scanning the top of his desk. Empty as usual. I moved behind the desk and searched the drawers. No way I could wait forty minutes for the pills to kick in. I needed something to crush them. In Jake’s bottom right-hand drawer I found a paperweight—an elaborate piec
e of glass art with a solid bottom. I fished the pill bottle from my jacket pocket, opened it, and spilled four pills onto the desk. I crushed them one at a time, keeping my eyes on the closed door. Then I reached into my back pants pocket, removed my wallet, and snatched out a $20 bill. I rolled the bill tightly then held it to my right nostril. I leaned over the desk and snorted the dust, cursing yet savoring the burn.

  After cleaning up, I returned to my office, the drip still traveling down the back of my throat.

  “Sorry about that,” I said, sniffling. I felt like a racehorse, felt like grabbing a gun and running down to Chinatown to show Tam and the giant the type of haole I really was. “Now, where were we?”My fingers absently played with the file folders cluttering my desk.

  “We were about to discuss your client Turi Ahina. And Orlando Masonet.”

  “Yes!” I said, slapping my desk. “Phase two of the plan is complete. We delivered the message to Masonet.”

  “How did you do that?”

  I shook my head, pointed at the ceiling, and shook my finger, too. “No, no. That’s something I don’t share with you. Suffice it to say, we’ll know if we can move onto phase three within forty-eight fours.” I glanced at my watch. “Thirty-six hours to be exact.”

  “Boyd will be pleased.”

  The mere mention of Boyd’s name caused me to deflate, to think of the last lawyer to truly get under my skin: a young state prosecutor named Luke Maddox. Maddox had made the Erin Simms trial personal, and somehow every matter I’d handled since felt the same way. That feeling could destroy a trial lawyer, could burn him into nothingness at a young age.

  “How did you wind up with the US Attorney’s Office anyhow?” I said, wondering briefly just how well and in what capacity she knew William F. Boyd.

  “I clerked for a federal criminal court judge in the Eastern District right out of law school, and I guess I fell in love with the practice and wanted to be on the side of right.”

  I smiled, taking the jab in the spirit in which it was intended. She smiled back, but hers was more difficult to read. Whether it was friendly or flirty, from that moment on I couldn’t take my eyes off her. With a mere twitch of her lips she’d gone from US attorney to human—a transformation I wouldn’t have thought possible just an hour ago.