Last Lawyer Standing

by Douglas Corleone

  I also had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because, at that moment, Marcy Faith’s bug-eyes were staring back at me from the TV.

  “We’re talking this evening about an American hero from our nation’s fiftieth state,” the odious legal-news pundit barked. Cable’s worst commentator had started poisoning my pool of potential jurors weeks ago and wouldn’t relent until well after any verdict was read.

  “A hero who was struck down in the call of duty,” Marcy continued. “An officer of the law who was gunned down on the dark streets of Pearl City. His name was Kanoa Bristol, and he was a detective with the Honolulu Police Department. Let’s now go live via satellite to our affiliate in Hawaii. Jim Reynolds of KGSP. What do you have for us, Jim?”

  Reynolds and his receding hairline filled the screen, the Honolulu Police Department’s headquarters on South Beretania serving as the backdrop.

  “Marcy, Kanoa Bristol was a thirty-eight-year-old detective in the Honolulu PD’s Narcotics Intelligence Unit. He’d been with the department for just over seventeen years. Last month, while off-duty, near his home in Pearl City, Bristol was shot dead, police say, by this man—Turi Ahina, a lifetime Kailua resident with multiple arrests for drug possession and trafficking. Police assert that Detective Bristol caught Turi Ahina in the midst of an unlawful act—in all likelihood a drug transaction—and was attempting to apprehend the suspect when Ahina turned a gun on him and shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the throat. The forty-four-caliber bullet to the chest lodged in the Kevlar vest Bristol was wearing for protection, but the bullet to the throat killed him, police say, almost instantly.”

  “Oh, dear,” Marcy said, a hand fluttering to her crimson lips. She shook her head, swinging the locks of her platinum-blond wig. Once she finally pulled herself together, Marcy asked, “What, if anything, did police recover from the suspect, Jim?”

  “Police say they recovered an envelope filled with cash, Marcy. Somewhere in the ballpark of five thousand dollars. And a forty-four-caliber Glock was discovered in a sewer near the scene. There were no prints on the gun, but ballistics tests show that this was the weapon used to kill Detective Bristol.”

  “Oh, dear. Tell me, Jim. I’ll brace myself. Did our American hero have any children?”

  Reynolds bowed his head. “He did, Marcy. A spokeswoman for the Honolulu Police Department advises us that Detective Kanoa Bristol left behind a wife and two young children.”

  A familiar ominous tune boomed from the television speakers as Marcy Faith stared solemnly into the camera. “When we return, we’ll bring you Vic Merriweather, a criminal defense attorney from Atlanta, and Anna Crane, a former prosecutor from Denver, to discuss the ongoing criminal case against Turi Ahina, the local thug who shot and killed this American hero in our nation’s so-called paradise.”

  Scott snapped off the TV. “Our man still sticking with his story?”

  I nodded. In the weeks immediately following the shooting, Turi insisted he didn’t pull the trigger. “Gunshot-residue tests turned up negative.”

  Scott shrugged. “Gunshot residue can be completely washed off in a couple minutes. Hell, some guns don’t release any residue at all.”

  I knew this through research on cases dating back to my days as a clerk at the Cashman Law Firm in New York. Scott Damiano spoke from personal experience.

  I placed my hands behind my head, ran them down my neck and across my shoulders, trying to smooth out some of the tension. A lump the size of a golf ball protruded from the back of my shirt, and the pain was overwhelming.

  “Neck still bothering you?” Scott said.

  I nodded, flashes of pain accompanying every movement.

  Scott leapt off the couch and disappeared behind me. For a moment I thought he was about to offer me a neck rub, and my pulse began to race. A neck rub initiated by anyone associated with the Tagliarini family typically involved a length of piano wire and ended with a whole hell of a lot less breathing in the room.

  Instead Scott returned to the sofa with a business card. “Call, make an appointment.”

  I read the card. “Massage therapist?”

  “Yeah, her name’s Lian. She’s great. Best massage in Chinatown.”

  “Chinatown,” I mumbled, stuffing the card in my pocket.

  Scott popped the top on a beer. “I still don’t know how that fat bastard got by me.”

  “I’m only concerned with why.”

  Scott was charged with watching Turi Ahina’s cottage in Kailua the night of the shooting. He and another guard with the private security firm I hired after Turi was bailed out of the FDC. Turi told Scott he was turning in for the night, then somehow slipped out of his cottage, jumped in an old, borrowed black Nissan Pulsar, and drove to Pearl City.

  Scott didn’t know Turi had left the cottage until the other guard on duty received a call from his boss, telling him Turi Ahina was on the news—for killing a cop.

  Turi told me later that he drove to Pearl City to collect some money that was owed to him—the $5,000 police later found in his possession. But he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell me who had owed him money. “I only know him by face,” Turi insisted.

  The gun recovered by police in a nearby sewer was dusted for prints and came up clean. But I was still waiting on most of the prosecution’s discovery. This morning I appeared before Judge Hideki Narita and filed a motion to compel. Donovan Watanabe stood in for the state and promised to have discovery for me later this week.

  Experience had taught me that I could expect only one thing once discovery was finally turned over to the defense.

  Surprises. None of them pleasant.

  CHAPTER 18

  I set a copy of this morning’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser down on the dashboard of my Jeep. The governor had lost a few points in the polls but maintained a double-digit lead. Still, Omphrey wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He was convinced that as the election grew closer, his critics would jump on his alleged ties to Oksana Sutin and attempt to implicate him in her death. Thus, the governor wanted me to handle this case as though he’d already been indicted. That meant a full independent investigation by the defense. Which was fine by me, since I was currently handling Turi’s high-profile homicide case pro bono. And I still had to eat, still had to pay the rent.

  So Flan and I sat quietly in my Wrangler, watching Oksana Sutin’s ritzy apartment building in Diamond Head, waiting for one of its residents to exit. Knocking on doors in a murder case was not a proven strategy. Better to catch your witnesses offguard, on neutral turf. Preferably in a public place, where they were less likely to cause a scene or run away.

  Since the governor couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell us much about the deceased, the only way to learn the details of her life would be by hitting the pavement. Learning the details of a victim’s life was the best and often the only way to learn the details of a victim’s death.

  “My father’s flying out here tomorrow,” Flan said out of the clear blue.

  “All the way from New Orleans? What for?”

  “To die, I guess.”

  That was one hell of a conversation-stopper. Flan’s dad, Miles, was an eightysomething widower with no family left on the mainland. He had two daughters, but one went MIA once she married and the other had moved to France. Still, the flight from New Orleans to Honolulu seemed like a long way to go just to die. A man could die pretty much anywhere these days.

  “You going to take him in like you did Casey?”

  Casey was the younger of Flan’s own two daughters. Up until last year he’d seen neither of the girls since they were babies. Casey was now eighteen years old and living with Flan after a fight with her mother, Flan’s ex-wife, Victoria, back in New Orleans.

  Unfortunately, Flan’s unexpected leap back into fatherhood wasn’t a story straight out of a fifties sitcom; it was more like a risqué reality show, complete with a glove box filled with used condoms, and Casey’s footprints scuffing the ceiling of his ancient Ford. In
her first few months in the islands, Casey racked up enough speeding and parking violations to pay down half the state deficit, and she was filching Flan’s money and painkillers with the aptitude of a professional thief. Still, I had to hand it to him; Flan was hanging in there when few formerly estranged fathers would.

  “Nah,” Flan said. “Can’t do that. Gonna have to put him in a nursing home.”

  “Your dad have any money?”

  “Some. In fact, I was talking to Jake just yesterday about updating my dad’s will.”

  A brand-new navy Jag passed us on the street, followed by a mint silver Porsche Carrera GT. Typical of these Honolulu neighborhoods just outside Waikiki. Diamond Head, Black Point, Kahala. All of the glitz and convenience with—at least ostensibly—none of the crime or noise.

  “Here’s something,” Flan said, motioning with his chin to a shiny black Lincoln pulling up to Oksana Sutin’s building.

  Thanks to the Lincoln’s tinted windows, we couldn’t see in. The driver parked the car but didn’t get out.

  A few minutes passed before we realized why. The Lincoln was there to pick someone up. An interesting someone with an unbelievable body and dirty-blond hair all the way down her back. The driver did get out when he saw her. Walked around the rear of the car and let her slide that figure into the backseat. Then he got back into the driver’s seat and drove away.

  I started the Jeep and pulled away from the curb. I kept the Lincoln in sight while hopefully maintaining enough distance so that we wouldn’t get made. Not that we were doing anything wrong. Not yet anyway.

  The Lincoln kept a steady pace, obeyed all the laws. When it pulled into the Grand Polynesian resort, I pulled in after it. The Lincoln stopped in front of the main lobby, and a bellhop helped the young woman out. Then the Lincoln kept moving.

  I asked Flan to take the wheel and I jumped out of the Jeep, nodded curtly to the bellhops, and followed the blonde inside. Meanwhile, Flan followed the Lincoln in the Jeep.

  A few minutes later, while I was standing in the main lobby, Flan called my cell. “The Lincoln’s parked. Looks like he’s waiting on her.”

  “She went into the spa,” I responded. “I’m going to catch her on her way out. If I keep her attention too long and you notice the driver getting antsy, send me a text. And if he makes his way over here, be sure to follow him inside. I don’t want to be blindsided if we can help it.”

  I ended the call. Bought a copy of Newsweek at the gift shop and waited on a bench outside the spa. I read an article about the nation’s tightest congressional races. It was only August and I was already sick of politics.

  A little over an hour later I received a text message from Flan. The Lincoln was headed back to the front entrance of the main lobby.

  I tossed the copy of Newsweek in the trash and bolted toward the spa. When I opened one of the double glass doors, a petite brunette was standing at reception, making her next appointment. I risked a bit of rudeness.

  “Excuse me,” I said, nearly muscling the brunette out of the way.

  The tanned young woman behind the counter stared at me hard.

  I ignored the looks from both of them and said, “I’m a driver. I’m here to pick up a young woman, a tall blonde, but I left my client list back at the garage. Am I too late?”

  “Iryna?” the receptionist said.

  I shrugged. “I’m sorry, I’d only recognize her last name.”

  The receptionist hit a few keys on her computer. “Kupchenko.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “She’s still here. Would you like me to notify her that you’re waiting?”

  “No, no. I’m in enough trouble. I missed my last pickup by thirty minutes. I’ll just wait out in the lobby. Please don’t let her know I stopped in. I’ve got four kids, all under the age of two. If I lost my job in this economy…”

  “I understand.”

  I stepped out of the spa, thinking, Four kids, all under the age of two?

  I didn’t have long to dwell on it. Two minutes after I left the spa, the blonde stepped back into the lobby, her skin glowing, hair shimmering, finger- and toenails ready to party.

  “Don’t I know you?” I said as she passed me.

  She glanced at me but didn’t stop, didn’t slow. “I don’t think so.” Her Eastern European accent was thick and smoky.

  “Iryna,” I said. “Iryna Kupchenko.”

  That stopped her.

  “You don’t remember me?” I gave her the sad, hound-dog eyes. “I believe Oksana introduced us.”

  “I know no Oksana,” she said, turning toward the exit.

  I wrapped my fingers gently around her pencil-thin forearm. “Oksana Sutin. She lived in your apartment building in Diamond Head.”

  “I didn’t know her,” she insisted.

  “Come on,” I said, smiling. “Two beautiful, young Russian women living in the same building…”

  “I am not Russian.” She was growing irritated, her perfect cheeks tinged red. “I am Ukrainian. Now, if you will excuse me, I really must run.”

  I gripped her wrist a little tighter. “Please, just a few words.” My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, but I ignored it.

  “A few words about what?”

  “About Oksana.”

  “I told you—”

  Iryna’s eyes flashed over my shoulder, then a firm male hand gripped the back of my neck, the same spot where the painful lump had formed, the exact area that carried all of my stress. It actually felt good. But the hard jab to my left kidney that followed, not so much.

  I would’ve fallen to the ground but Iryna’s driver held me up.

  “Go outside to the car,” he instructed her.

  I heard Iryna’s heels clip-clop across the lobby.

  “As for you, Mr. Corvelli…” The driver’s voice was gruff and accented, another import from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Romania, somewhere along the Black Sea. “You should be minding your own business.”

  “This is my business.”

  He wasn’t impressed. Suddenly I felt the sharp tip of a blade through my shirt. “Ever get fucked in the ass with a hunting knife?”

  No, but last year I did get fucked in the upper abdomen with a stiletto.

  “This is your only warning,” he said, parting the flesh at the bottom of my spine. “Stay away from the girls.”

  He swung my right arm around my back and lifted it up until I heard a crack and felt a sharp pain flash from my elbow up through my shoulder. I swallowed a scream, and no one in the lobby seemed to notice. The knife stayed in my back.

  Then Flan’s voice emanated from behind my attacker. “I’ve got a thirty-eight Special aimed right at your balls, Yakov. Let the lawyer go or you’re gonna have one hell of a worker’s comp case. And let me tell you from experience, the settlement will not be worth the anguish.”

  The driver slowly released me.

  “Now head out the door, get back in your Lincoln, and drive,” Flan ordered him. “And if I see you near the lawyer again, you might as well have your nuts in a jar so you can simply hand them over to me. Because I promise you, you won’t be going home with them.”

  The driver turned and scurried out the revolving door.

  “Nice bluff,” I said.

  “Who’s bluffing?”

  I looked down and saw the .38 Special in Flan’s rough hands. “Where the hell did you get that?”

  Flan shrugged. “Found it in Casey’s room.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The next morning, after visiting the Trials Division of the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office for a brief sit-down and exchange of discovery with Hawaii’s best-dressed prosecutor, Donovan “Dapper Don” Watanabe, I shot over to the county jail to meet with Turi Ahina.

  “They treating you all right?” I asked him once we were safely seated in the confines of the concrete tomb they called an attorney-client conference room.

  “Yeah, Mistah C. Fo’ now.”

  I had petitioned the powers
-that-be to keep Turi in a cell by himself for his own safety. But what Turi was implying—and what I knew to be true—was that eventually the wrong guard would be on duty at the wrong time. A simple “mistake”—a cell door left open, for instance—and Turi could get shanked in the gut while he slept. A tray of food that passed through the wrong set of hands and Turi could end up with a fatal food poisoning. And there was always the fallback: a shot through the back of the head, followed by the words “The prisoner tried to escape.”

  As long as Turi was inside, he wasn’t safe.

  “I’m not going to waive speedy trial,” I told him. “I just informed Dapper Don and I sent a letter to Judge Narita. We need to get you in front of a jury as soon as possible and win you an acquittal. Stay in here too long and you’re—”

  “A dead man.”

  “Technically, the prosecution has six months to take this to trial. But Dapper Don said he’ll be ready to go by October. That means you have to hang in and watch your back for another sixty days or so. It’s the best we can do under the circumstances. Narita’s not going to budge on bail since you were already out on bail on the federal drug charges when you were arrested.”

  Turi bowed his head.

  I pulled his file from my briefcase and told him that it was time we discussed strategy. “If we’re going in October, I need to get my witness list together now. So I’m going to ask you again, and I expect a straight answer. Who did you go to see in Pearl City on the night of the shooting?”

  Turi shook his head in apparent frustration. “I already gave you one answer, yeah?”

  “But I’m not buying it. And a jury’s not going to buy it either. Some motherfucker on the street owes you five grand, and you don’t know his name or where to find him? Bullshit.”

  Turi looked away from me.

  “And you went looking for this son of a bitch who owed you that kind of money without going strapped? Knowing the entire Masonet Organization was gunning for your ass? Come on, Turi. Who the hell do you think you’re fooling?”