Pardon the Ravens
Page 1
ADVANCE PRAISE
“Grabs readers and leaves them hanging on for dear life… excellent dialogue and non-stop action.”
— Suspense Magazine
“A classic legal thriller in the mold of Scott Turow, with a fiery heroine, a monster of a mobster, corporate villains, and a young lawyer fighting to win his first big case. The action is compelling in and out of the courtroom. Taut, lean storytelling with a great finish.”
— Michael Sears, award-winning author of Black Fridays and Mortal Bonds
“With the backdrop of Mad Men–era New York, Pardon the Ravens never fears to get dirty with style. Alan Hruska brings it all—sounds, smells, tastes, and attitude—to life with passion. Bravo!”
— Cara Black, author of the New York Times bestselling Aimée Leduc series
PRAISE FOR WRONG MAN RUNNING
“As good as the best offerings of Turow, Grisham, and other legal-thriller hitmakers.”
— Booklist
“Beautifully written and beautifully imagined, this dark, spiraling, Kafkaesque nightmare might be the best psychological suspense you’ll read this year—or this decade.”
— Lee Child, author of the New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher novels
Copyright © 2015 by Alan Hruska
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Prospect Park Books
2359 Lincoln Avenue
Altadena, California 91001
www.prospectparkbooks.com
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
www.cbsd.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hruska, Alan, author.
Pardon the Ravens : a novel / by Alan Hruska.
pages cm
Summary: “Gifted young New York lawyer Alec Brno gets the career boost of a lifetime: the opportunity to try a huge fraud case making international headlines. But he risks it all when he falls for an alluring young woman whose estranged husband is a sadistic Mafia don—and the criminal mastermind behind Alec’s case.”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-938849-41-1
1.Legal stories. 2.Suspense fiction.I. Title.
PS3558.R87P37 2015
813’.54--dc23
2014013284
Cover design by Howard Grossman.
Book layout and design by Amy Inouye.
For Julie
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
ONE
September 1961. New York. Wall Street. Center of the universe. Bounding up from the subway, Alec Brno sails forth.
He’s noticed and noticing, this gangly young man, his longish face questioning, his brown hair awry. Heading toward Water Street into the sun, he pauses at Broad. Rivers of boaters—white straw hats with bright silk bands—stream on currents of lawyers and brokers. And there are guys rushing, like Alec: hatless, eager. Guys thinking, I’m ready! Depression babies in their ill-fitting suits.
To the magazine columnists, they are “The Silent Generation,” which misses the point while unintentionally abetting it. Graduates of the Fifties aren’t shouting slogans down the corridors of power. They’re too busy quietly taking over what the Establishment has.
And Alec Brno is especially motivated. He’s a poor kid from Queens with an unpronounceable last name—the Czechs, for obscure reasons, having disdained the need to make explicit indispensable vowel sounds. To those in power, a person with such a name coming from such a place has sizable obstacles to overcome—a fact of life of which Alec is well aware.
In point of fact, Alec’s family is more Organized Labor than ethnic. Union Socialists, almost Communists, for whom Wall Street has particular abhorrence. These are people, Alec has always known, with big hearts, intolerance for injustice, and little understanding of economics. They would regard the firm employing him as the Mecca of depravity, and its presiding partner, former judge of the federal court of appeals Ben Braddock, as the socialist equivalent of the Antichrist. By their standards, those assessments would be dead accurate. Kendall, Blake, Steele & Braddock is not simply the most-feared legal weapon wielded by American big business; in important respects, it runs the institutions it services.
Two years earlier, Alec had signed on with Kendall, Blake right out of law school. Then, the firm had been housed at 25 Broad Street—a squat pile of some twenty floors, deco in style, serviced by elevators that made a great deal of clanking noise and took forever to go in either direction. But new buildings continually arise in the city, and its successful inhabitants grow into them. Now, every morning, Alec speeds soundlessly to the heights of a sixty-story glass tower on Water Street. He has his own small office on the fifty-eighth floor with a spectacular view of almost the entirety of Manhattan.
For the last several days, Alec has been covering for Mac, representing Biogram Pharmaceuticals in a five-defendant price-fixing trial, one of the few government actions brought under the state antitrust laws. Normally, Alec would be in court an hour beforehand to get everything ready for the first chair. As it is, he has to swing by the office first for Mac’s letters and messages. He leafs through them, then moves the stack to a corner of his desk. None requires immediate attention. He’s got the luxury of a few minutes to think about what the morning might bring about.
He leans back and visualizes the courtroom. He sees, facing the bench, a semicircle made up of six small tables. Behind each will sit the senior trial counsel for each party accompanied by one or more junior partners, or in the case of the state attorney general’s office, several less senior trial attorneys. Behind them will be their associates, and behind them, patent counsel, for there are charges in the case of monopolization by the fraudulent procurement of patents. And behind each of those tiers there will come and go the various experts, paralegals, and other support personnel for each team. At the table for Biogram, in splendid isolation, Alec Brno will reign: a second-year associate, first chair temporarily, at the first trial he’s ever seen firsthand, much less participated in.
The witness for the day, and probably several more, will be J.J. Tierney, the chief executive of Pharmex Pharmaceuticals, holder of the principal patent. According to the government, it was Tierney who masterminded the price fix. The possibilities that Alec might cross-examine the case’s pivotal witness in Mac’s absence are slim to none. What Tierney will say on direct examination has been heavily negotiated and agreed upon. If Alec were to speak at all, it would most likely be to read the statement that Mac wrote out for him with a smirk: “No questions for this witness, your Honor.” Alec hopes he can manage to get that out without embarrassing himself.
One of these days, he thinks, he’ll head up a litigation team and be comfortable enough in court to command attention, not let it command him. At his present level of inexperience, however, his view of trial practice is still influenced by the movies.
He packs his black leather litigation (“lit”) bag and makes for the elevators. The image in his head is of Raymond Burr’s district attorney in A Place in the Sun, slamming his cane on the counsel table. Were such histrionics even conceivable in State of New York vs. Pharmex Pharmaceuticals, et al.? Emerging from the elevator, Alec laughs out loud, almost in the face of Judge Braddock, a long, gaunt, white-haired man in a black homburg, waiting to get on. Disapproval flickers in the judge’s sharp gaze, with no sign he knows or cares who Alex is.
TWO
At a tower window of an oil storage facility in Bayonne, New Jersey, manager Whitman Poole stands riveted, watching. It is one thirty-seven in the morning.
Miles of marshland breathe in the night. Moonlight flares the tops of marsh reeds. In the yard, thirty-foot-high storage tanks row up like a mustering of UFOs.
Eventually, an oil truck appears, bumping along the potholed road to the facility. Front gates swing wide. The truck splashes through puddles and sidles up to a tank. Two men jump out. They attach a truck nozzle to the tank and open a tank valve. With each exertion, their breath fogs the air. They work fast, with an occasional glance over their shoulders.
Poole, a tanned, hair-combed-back dandy, observes intently. He looks jumpy, displeased that the men below aren’t moving faster.
Poole’s attention is diverted by a silver Cadillac Eldorado pulling into the compound. He remains fixed on the car as it stops near the tower. The driver springs forth to open the passenger door. Uncoiling from the seat is a tall, black-haired figure in a leather jacket, who, with indifference to his surroundings, carries a lighted cigar. As he looks up to Poole’s window, the power and pathology of the man are evident on his broad, flat face.
Poole, anxious to please, jerks his thumb upward in a gesture of success. The tall man grimaces, flips the cigar away in a splash of embers, and gets back in his car. His driver scurries to stamp out the sparks.
“Where to, Phil?” the driver asks through the open back window of the vehicle.
“I’m staying in town. Call a meeting for the morning—nine thirty.”
“Sure.” Still thinking, settling into the driver’s seat. “What’s up, boss?”
“Just call the meeting, Vito, all right?”
Vito blinks several times and cranes around. He’s a pear-shaped man with a large head, but with the sort of bulging muscularity that suggests serious devotion to a workout routine. He knows he’s slower than his boss in comprehending most anything, but he does like to have things explained.
“His face, Vito. I don’t like his face.”
“That’s it?” says Vito.
Phil’s frown shows the edge of his patience. “We’ve let it go too long. Everyone’s too fucking greedy. And smug. Okay?”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
“And another loose end.”
“How’s that?”
“Aaron Weinfeld,” says Phil.
“The lawyer?”
“He’s in Narragansett, Rhode Island. I’ll want you to go up there this weekend. The boat’s up there. The fifteen-footer. Or it’ll be out of Newport by the time you arrive. You can use the boat.”
“The boat,” repeats Vito.
“You know what I’m talking about, use the boat?”
“Like last time.”
“Exactly… like last time.”
“Why’s he in Rhode Island?”
Phil summons his patience. “He’s scared, Vito.”
“What’s he done?”
“I’ve seen the transcripts. He’s lost my trust. I think he knows.”
Vito heaves a sigh. “Okay.”
“Start the fucking car, will you?”
THREE
For a brief time, Carrie Madigan, wife of Phil Anwar, mob boss of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island, has some respite from the beatings her husband inflicts. She’s at the rehab facility of the Payne Whitney Hospital in Manhattan. They, too, administer pain. They call it detoxification, and they do it cold turkey. Rages like a toothache in the gut and every appendage. Lasts two weeks. Then she goes home for more drugs and sporadic beatings. She’s under no delusion about the nightmare quality of her life.
In the hospital she sometimes thinks of how it was when Phil had her heart, when she was barely nineteen, and he—smart, good-looking, powerful—flashed all the trappings of a romantic rogue. They met at a large gathering Phil hosted at a restaurant in the Fulton Fish Market called Sloppy Louie’s. The affair was meant as an offering to the mob boss of Staten Island. One of his lieutenants invited Carrie’s father, Conner Madigan, a small-time Staten Island lawyer who was known for a willingness to carry bags of cash to the local judges and politicians. Conner brought his daughter to the party and dangled her like bait.
Didn’t take much for Phil to lead her off to one side. “You give a party like this,” he said, “you don’t really expect much. Then what do you know! Out of the blue, an angel appears.”
“You’re referring to me, are you?” said Carrie.
“I see none other in this room.”
“Well, this room,” she said. “In this room, anyone normal would look angelic.”
Phil laughed. He liked clever women, especially those who bit. “So, is your being here a matter of coercion?”
“Coercion stopped working with me a long time ago.”
“You wanted to come.”
�
��I was curious.”
“About mobsters,” he said, brightening his eyes in self-dramatization.
“About you,” she said.
Later that night, Phil took her for a spin in his long, finned, sky-blue Caddy and showed her a Manhattan club life she’d only read about: the Stork Club, Birdland, the Copacabana, and a Bowery dive featuring lip-synching transvestites, with Judy Garland in the audience. Wherever they went, a table materialized next to the stage, with a bottle and two glasses, but never a check.
Phil was not quite forty and already the boss, the capofamiglia. She was a Loyola sophomore majoring in marketing, so he talked to her, in the weeks that followed, about his own principles of management—how he kept his teams small and delegated authority—and about his long-range plans for legitimatizing his businesses. He shared his early history: St. David’s, Lawrenceville, Brown, NYU Business School; as well as a revisionist history of his rise to power: his father’s death, his uncle’s abdication, Phil’s bloody coronation and the much bloodier warfare to solidify his reign. He took her to his apartment on Central Park West, his estate on the North Shore of Long Island, and his weekend retreat in Lyford Cay. It was like Gatsby flinging down his wardrobe of shirts. And he solicited her love with kindnesses and charm.
They were married in her family church near her home on Staten Island. On Phil’s tab, her dad was allowed to play the munificent host at the banquet following. Phil had been generous from the moment she’d met him. And he completely co-opted her parents.
Conner was easy. A weak man with a love of Irish whiskey, he was on the block for anyone feeding his appetite or his pride. Her mom, Katherine, however, was a sharp-tongued stalk of a woman, who initially regarded Phil with scorn. He wasn’t Irish—he was, in her words, a “fancy-man crook”—and he couldn’t possibly attain the gentility which she claimed as her own birthright and therefore her daughter’s. Phil understood her perfectly. He agreed that she had every reason to be resentful of her circumstances in this country and a perfectly appropriate need to return to Killarney as a woman of property. So he booked her first class on Aer Lingus for an all-expenses-paid three weeks at the Dunloe Castle Hotel.