Shoot the Lawyer Twice

by Michael Bowen

  “Hmm,” Melissa said.

  “Right.”

  “What do you think she has in mind?”

  “I think she wants to make a deal on my son’s case. Fear trumps hatred.”

  “Fear of what?”

  “Being implicated in Professor Angstrom’s murder.”

  “You believe Hoeckstra thinks you have a line on evidence tying her to Angstrom’s killing?”

  “Right. I think she’s afraid that if I get the tape showing her entering Curtin Hall on the night of the break-in, I’ll be able to connect it to the damaging information Angstrom had and land her hip-deep in a homicide investigation.”

  “So if you’re right, at five after one tomorrow afternoon Hoeckstra will offer to let Jimmy off the hook if you’ll stop going after this hypothetical incriminating evidence—is that the idea?”

  “Yes. She can tell Finnegan that she doesn’t want to face the psychological trauma of another trial. He’d pretty much have to let Jimmy off with a wrist-slap that wouldn’t brand him as a sex offender or send him to prison. I’d no longer have any reason to try to prove that she killed Angstrom to suppress evidence that would help Jimmy, so I’d stop trying.”

  “The only complication being that, tape or no tape, you don’t actually have the lead on the Angstrom information that she thinks you do.”

  “Which isn’t a complication as long as she thinks I do have it.”

  “So you’d make the deal?” Melissa asked.

  “Of course. I’d make the deal even if I did have the evidence. Jimmy is more important to me than justice for a dead professor.”

  “You haven’t considered going to the police?”

  “The police are trying to put my son in a single-gender dance hall for two to three years.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re suggesting a debate, so I won’t argue with you,” Melissa said. “Just for the record, I think you’re showing poor judgment.”

  “Noted.”

  “If your mind is made up, though, why are you telling me?”

  “Because my whole theory could be dead wrong,” Clevenger said crisply. “Maybe she doesn’t want to make a deal at all. Maybe she has a completely different agenda. Listen to the message again. Focus on the last part.”

  Clevenger played the voice-mail back. Melissa frowned in concentration as the closing sentence crackled over the tiny speaker.

  “‘Note that the area code….’” Melissa repeated. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes. I’m betting the phone she used to call with this message is one of those things with prepaid minutes that you can pick up at Wal-Mart. She had to drive at least to Sheboygan County to get one with a nine-two-oh area code. If she paid cash for it there’d be no way to trace the number to her.”

  “What would that accomplish?”

  “If she couldn’t be tied to the phone or the message she could deny leaving the message for me at all, and claim that the meeting was my idea instead of hers. After all, you’ve heard the message twice. Could you swear under oath that it’s Hoeckstra’s voice?”

  “No, I guess I couldn’t,” Melissa said. “But what difference does it make which one of you proposed the meeting?”

  “She’d want it to look like I called for the meeting if she’s setting me up for a witness-tampering charge—a claim that I tried to save Jimmy by threatening her or bribing her. Not that I have delusions of grandeur, but that’s uncomfortably close to the way Clarence Darrow got framed for jury-tampering during a labor-terrorism trial in the ’twenties.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Melissa said. “But how do you defuse that trap by telling me about it in advance?”

  “I don’t. Doing that accomplishes nothing. If you feel like going to St. Josephat’s for the tail end of noon mass, on the other hand, I’d be happy to have your company—and that would accomplish a great deal.”

  Chapter 32

  In Federalist Paper Number 1 Alexander Hamilton wrote, “I affect not reserves which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation, when I have decided.”

  Well, Alexander Hamilton wasn’t a trial lawyer. At nine-twenty-two on that same February morning, sitting beside Q Kazmaryck at the defense table in Courtroom Six-thirteen of the Milwaukee County Courthouse, Walt Kuchinski was affecting reserves that he didn’t feel: scratching his head, poring over the computer print-out of the jury list with a worried frown, and otherwise suggesting an appearance of deliberation even though he had in fact decided, ten minutes ago, that the stiff in the suit had to go.

  At last he squared the jury list in front of him. He bent his head toward Kazmaryck for a moment’s final consultation. He nodded again, as did Kazmaryck. Then, as if with great reluctance, he drew a line through the stiff’s name and next to it scribbled Δ#3, formally identifying the stiff as the defendant’s third peremptory strike from the pool of potential jurors.

  As Boone Fletcher in the spectator section watched the clerk take the jury list from Kuchinski and show it to the fresh-faced assistant district attorney, his first thought was that the ADA was a damn child. A baby. Fletcher had condoms that were older than that kid. His second thought was that he hadn’t made a lot of progress recently on the Angstrom/sex-or-swim et cetera story, and he wasn’t likely to make much more if Q got his silly butt hauled off to the House of Corrections for six months when this trial was over, which at the moment looked rather likely.

  The clerk called out the names of the twelve jurors who’d survived the cut. The judge dismissed the rest of the panel and told the ADA to begin his opening statement. Fletcher guessed that he ought to pay attention, so he sighed and tried to focus on the courtroom.

  ***

  At nine thirty-six A.M., Hoeckstra worked the last of six nine millimeter cartridges into the Luger’s clip. She’d found the unfamiliar task surprisingly difficult the first couple of times she’d tried it, but after burning two boxes of bullets at an indoor shooting range she felt well practiced now, and slid the ammunition deftly into place. Then she inserted the clip into the Luger’s stock and pushed it home until a solid CLICK announced that it was in position, ready to feed the chamber.

  Naturally, she put the safety on. That’s the kind of thing engineers do.

  ***

  At ten o’clock sharp, Rep frowned as he retrieved Melissa’s voice-mail. He frowned first of all because the Contac he’d taken that morning hadn’t done a thing for his stuffy nose, and secondly because every word in the voice-mail except “dearest” bothered him.

  Nevertheless, five minutes later he was dialing Kuchinski’s cell-phone number. Kuchinski was in court and would have his cell-phone turned off, but Rep figured he would check messages during the morning recess.

  “This is Rep. I suddenly need to get to Saint Josephat’s over the noon hour. I checked Mapquest but it looks like they’re taking me there by the same route the Third Crusade used to get to the Holy Land. So if you can get me a south side travel tip sometime in the next hour, I’d appreciate it.”

  ***

  At ten-fifteen A.M., patrolman Thad Obendoerfer of the Milwaukee Police Department took the stand in Courtroom Six-thirteen. He testified that around five-thirty in the morning on a date late last December, in the vicinity of four-eleven South Chicago Street, he had seen a man crouched in front of the main door of the erotic bookstore at that address. The man turned out to be the defendant, Quintus Ultimusque Kazmaryck, who had traces of iron filings on his fingertips. Quantities of iron filings had also been introduced into the lock of the porn shop’s door, and beyond suggesting that this was a remarkable coincidence, the defendant had had no explanation for any of these facts. Further investigation revealed that the owners of four other shops in the neighborhood discovered that iron filings had disabled their locks.

  Kuchinski had no questions.

  The ADA then called the manager of the smut shop, who looked like the manager of a smut shop. He testi
fied that when he tried to open the front door of his establishment on the morning in question he had found the lock jammed by iron filings. When he’d locked up the night before, the lock was working fine.

  Kuchinski had no questions. The prosecution rested. Kuchinski said that he’d like to make a motion.

  “I thought you might,” the judge sighed.

  After the clerk ushered the jury out, Kuchinski moved to dismiss the charges against Kazmaryk with prejudice because the prosecution had failed to prove venue. He noted that there are lots of South Chicago Streets outside Milwaukee County. Hence, proving that Kazmaryk had done something suspicious on that street didn’t necessarily mean he’d done anything at all in the City and County of Milwaukee.

  The young ADA opined sarcastically that Milwaukee police officers weren’t in the habit of conducting early morning street patrols in other cities. Kuchinski sprang to his feet, a package of Xeroxed cases in his left hand.

  “Skip it,” the judge said. “Motion granted. You don’t prove venue in a criminal case by asking the jury to assume that the police were doing their job properly. You prove it by asking the cop, ‘Is that the four-eleven South Chicago Street in the City and County of Milwaukee?’ No guesswork. Case dismissed.”

  If Q was expecting congratulations for successfully navigating the shoals and reefs of the American criminal justice system, he was disappointed. After disgustedly gathering up his papers, Kuchinski stalked toward the courtroom exit and glared over his shoulder at Kazmaryck.

  “What would your father do if he were alive today and knew you pulled a stunt like that?” he asked once they were in the corridor.

  “He would kick my ass,” Kazmaryck conceded gamely.

  “And a waste of damn good shoe leather that would be.”

  “I hope you’re not charging me for this rebuke,” Kazmaryck said.

  “I’m not only charging you, I view this as a value-billing situation.”

  Kuchinski dropped his trial bag on the floor and whipped out his cell-phone. Kazmaryck looked hopefully in the direction of Fletcher, who was approaching.

  “Seriously, Q, how could you do anything so goddamn stupid? If they hadn’t put some kid fresh out of Marquette on this thing you’d be eating baloney sandwiches for lunch from now until Labor Day.”

  “Give me a break, scribbler. Times are hard. Campaign finance money doesn’t go as far as it used to. The election boards have accountants now. I’m a locksmith. I was just trying to generate a little demand to keep my skills from getting rusty. Don’t think of it as burglary; think of it as business development.”

  Kazmaryck would have continued in this vein for several more paragraphs, but Fletcher suddenly shushed him. He braced himself against the marble wall and, oblivious to the pimp six feet to his left and the wife-beater a yard to his right, stared across the corridor in a kind of trance while his mind raced. Kazmaryck was certain that no sensory data could have penetrated the metaphysical fog surrounding Fletcher at that moment, but he was wrong. Fletcher did hear Kuchinski talking into his cell-phone.

  “St. Josephat’s, huh? Well, here’s what you do. Don’t take the freeway. Just get onto Sixth Street and turn south. There’s a brand new bridge over the Menomonee River Valley, and Mapquest probably hasn’t gotten the memo yet. That’ll take you practically to the front door. You’ll wanna give yourself twenty minutes to be safe, so leave about twelve-thirty.”

  “Are you all right, scribbler?” Kazmaryck asked anxiously. “You’re not flashing back to some of the drugs you did when you were a scribbling major at Madison, are you?”

  Fletcher ignored him. He took out his own cell-phone, punched in a number without looking at it and raised it to his face.

  “This is Fletcher.…Boone Fletcher, the famous reporter. I’m one of your goddamn employees. I’ll need a photographer to meet me at St. Josephat’s.”

  Chapter 33

  “Thirty-five minutes,” Melissa whispered to Clevenger as the priest and servers left the altar at St. Josephat’s. “Not quite as snappy as the masses Henry the Fourth’s chaplain managed, but not bad.”

  “Was it Henry the Fourth who said Paris is worth a mass?”

  “Yes. He became Catholic so that he could be king of France. His chaplain got daily mass done in twenty minutes flat. Short sermons.”

  “I guess you have to know what you want.” Clevenger suddenly swiveled in the pew and pointed toward the back of the church. “Is that Finnegan over there?”

  Startled, Melissa turned to look in the same direction. She felt a thud at her feet and heard the rattle of metal and plastic against flagstone.

  “What an oaf,” Clevenger said with a schoolmarmish cluck. “I knocked your purse off the pew.” She bent over to recover it.

  “I don’t see anyone who looks like Finnegan,” Melissa said as she scrutinized the knots of exiting congregants. “Was he going out?”

  “No, I thought I saw him coming in. No sign of him now. I think I’m just jumpy. We don’t usually do clandestine meetings in white collar criminal defense. Sorry about your purse.”

  “No problem.”

  “It was a good idea to get us here half-an-hour early. The wait is giving me a chance to calm down.”

  “It comes from studying hard-boiled private eye novels,” Melissa said. “The savvy, street-smart detective invariably gets a call about meeting a key witness at some out-of-the way place at a certain time. He always gets there right when he’s told to so that he can be predictably ambushed by bad guys. You’d think that just once one of these gumshoes would show up thirty minutes early to scope things out.”

  They were speaking in muted voices, just above a whisper. Melissa glanced around the basilica, quiet now except for footfalls echoing from the floor. She counted at least two-dozen people still in the nave, from widows lighting candles to spring their husbands from Purgatory to a cohort of bundled street people huddling here and there, presumably more interested in the basilica’s heating system than its spiritual grandeur.

  No trivial number, but they seemed lost in the church’s vast space, insignificant specks in the gothic light that bravely challenged the dim interior. An icy chill painted Melissa’s gut. The phone-message had talked about a public place for this meeting, but the basilica suddenly didn’t seem to qualify.

  ***

  Rep, at that moment, would have welcomed a touch of sheltering dimness. He was trying to stay inconspicuous, but as his watch ticked toward one and the crowd on St. Josephat’s steps rapidly thinned he didn’t think he was managing it. Although he was doing his best to look as if he were admiring the architecture or absorbing the ambience or something vaguely spiritual like that, he sensed that his pose was transparent. He imagined some cherubic altar boy striding up in cassock and surplice to expose his imposture by challenging him sternly to make the sign of the cross.

  HEL-LO.

  Rep’s eyes snapped all the way open. No sign of Gates or Mignon or Finnegan, but Hoeckstra’s satin black Lincoln Navigator pulled into the church’s parking lot, crunching effortlessly over the snow and ice accumulated there. He recognized the license plate number and, as the vehicle swung right into a parking space ten yards from the door, he spotted Hoeckstra at the wheel. Her blond hair shook impatiently above a parka with a blaze-orange tint that Rep associated with deer hunting and the deck crews of aircraft carriers.

  Focused on Hoeckstra, Rep didn’t notice Boone Fletcher and a rotund black guy in a Navy pea coat and watch cap get out of a well worn Civic at the far end of the lot. The black guy had a camera with a very long lens.

  Rep backed up three steps to just inside the doorway, where he hoped the relative darkness would hide him while he kept Hoeckstra in sight. She climbed down from the Navigator to the packed snow on the parking lot. She started to slam the door behind her, then seemed to think better of it and turned back toward the SUV’s interior. Rep’s pulse quickened as he watched what happened next. Ho
eckstra set her purse on the front seat, opened it, and casually transferred a pistol from the purse to her parka’s right pocket.

  Firearms definitely weren’t in today’s script. His mind raced. Had Melissa miscalculated? Was this Freud run amok? Love-hate thing with dad, killed him so the mom-substitute couldn’t have him, then aced Angstrom because he tumbled to it? Melissa didn’t go much for psychobabble, but sometimes the shrinks were onto something.

  Didn’t matter. The gun made the situation bad, and the closer that gun came to Melissa the worse it would get. So much for inconspicuous. Rep strode down the front steps, breaking into a trot so that he could intercept Hoeckstra before she got out from between the Navigator and a venerable Pontiac parked beside it. He blocked her path with two steps to spare.

  “Move it or lose it, shorty,” she said with dismissive impatience after a moment’s startled glance.

  “Five-nine is average height for European males,” Rep protested mildly. “More important, we need to talk.”

  “Talk to this.”

  “This” was a left shoulder block that she threw into his chest as she moved to step past him. Rep staggered backward, slipped, and nearly fell. Barely keeping his feet, he managed to stay in her path. They were now just beyond the Navigator’s bumper—and thus just within Fletcher’s field of vision.

  “What’s your problem?” Hoeckstra demanded.

  “The gun in your pocket.”

  She gaped at him. Neither of them noticed the rapid-fire clicks from the motor drive on the photographer’s camera forty feet away.

  “A stalker,” she said with a who’d-believe-it shrug. “I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “Look,” Rep said patiently, “why don’t you just lock the gun in your SUV, where it will at least be technically legal for a few minutes, and I’ll get out of your way and pretend I never saw it?”