Mortal Dilemma

by H. Terrell Griffin

  My marriage had ended badly, but that was my fault. I drank too much, worked too hard, involved myself in all the things young lawyers do as they are trying to build a practice and a reputation. I kept putting off having children, something my wife wanted desperately. Finally, she’d had enough of me and my ego, and although she professed to still love me, she moved on. We remained friends after the divorce, and she married a good man and raised his children and then died way too early. I suspect J.D. and I were both gun-shy, but for different reasons.

  At the station, we sat in a room filled with audio and video equipment. The geek’s lair, it was called. One wall held a sixty-inch flat screen TV that showed a fidgety D. Wesley Gilbert sitting in a chair in front of a small table that held a bottle of water. The room he was in had bare walls and no furniture that I could see, other than the table at which he sat. We were getting the live feed from the video camera perched high on the wall of the interview room.

  J.D. was on the phone with Parrish. He told her that the documents she’d had Reuben send him the afternoon before were full of good information, enough for the FBI to arrest Wally Delmer in Tallahassee at daybreak. Parrish told her they were ready to start the interview and we watched a man in a suit walk into the room and introduce himself to D. Wesley as FBI agent Sam McFarland. He sat across from Gilbert and asked some preliminary questions, such as name, age, today’s date, their location. It was standard procedure designed to show that Gilbert was not mentally impaired. That he was fully capable of answering the questions put to him.

  “Why am I here?” Gilbert asked, letting a little outrage build. “I want a lawyer.”

  McFarland said, “You’re here, Mr. Gilbert, because you’ve been arrested on terrorism charges and you aren’t entitled to a lawyer.”

  “That’s absurd. Get my lawyer in here.”

  “Can they do that?” J.D. asked me. “Refuse him a lawyer?”

  “No,” I said. “But the courts let law enforcement officers lie and use subterfuge when dealing with suspects.”

  “I know that, but can they refuse him access to a lawyer when he asks for one?” J.D. asked.

  “No. He’s got a constitutional right to a lawyer,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll be able to use anything they get out of this interview in a court of law.”

  “I guess they think they’ve got enough to prosecute without having to use anything they find out today,” J.D. said, and turned her attention back to the TV screen.

  “Ishmael’s Children,” McFarland was saying.

  “Who?”

  “The charity you’re involved with.”

  “How does supporting a charity amount to terrorism?”

  “It does when the charity isn’t a charity; when it’s a terrorist group.”

  “I’m an attorney. I know my rights. You’re way off base. I want my lawyer. Now.”

  “I’ve already told you, you don’t get a lawyer.”

  “Then I’ve got nothing more to say to you.”

  “Mr. Gilbert, let’s be reasonable. I—”

  Gilbert interrupted. “I’ll get reasonable when I see my lawyer walk through that door.”

  “Okay, Mr. Gilbert, but that may take a while.”

  “His office is just down the street. He can be here in a few minutes.”

  “You don’t understand,” McFarland said. “We’ll have to get permission from the FISA court, and that might take a while.”

  “How long?”

  “Couple of months, maybe.”

  “Okay. When it’s done, let me know, and my lawyer and I will come back and talk to you.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Mr. Gilbert. We’ll house you in the federal lockup, which is part of the Seminole County jail up in Sanford. You’ll be held in isolation, of course, for your own safety. If the government doesn’t prevail and decides to appeal, which we will, well, that could take a couple of years.”

  Gilbert had that deflated look, like all the bombast and bullshit had leaked out of him. He wasn’t much of a lawyer and he’d forgotten some of the most basic tenets of American constitutional law, if he’d ever learned them at all. He was lost, a man adrift in a sea of law that he could not comprehend.

  Gilbert took a deep breath. “I didn’t do anything,” he said.

  “Last Tuesday you withdrew ten thousand dollars from an account jointly held by you and Peter Fortson. Some of that money ended up in the possession of a man up in Franklin County who was hired to put a locator device on the car of a Longboat Key detective so that armed men could track her and kill her. That makes you guilty of attempted murder of a police officer.”

  “I thought this was about Ishmael’s Children.”

  “We’ll get to that. Let’s talk about that five grand.”

  “I certainly didn’t know that it was going to be used to kill a police officer.”

  “How did the money get to Franklin County?”

  “FedEx.”

  “Who did you send it to?”

  “A friend of mine.”

  “Who?”

  “Wally Delmer.”

  “Why would you send Wally five grand in cash?”

  “He asked me to.”

  “What was it for?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “It looks like you’ve sent him a lot of checks over the years.”

  “Yeah.”

  “For what?”

  “I never asked. It wasn’t my money in the account.”

  “I noticed that,” McFarland said. “Why was Peter Fortson putting money in that account?”

  “I think I should avail myself of my constitutional right to refuse to answer that question.”

  “Mr. Gilbert,” McFarland said in an exasperated voice, “you gave up your constitutional rights the minute you decided to engage in terrorist activities.”

  “Then I want to make a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell you what you want to know if you’ll give me immunity.”

  McFarland closed his file and stood up. “Nice talking to you, Mr. Gilbert.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We’re finished here.”

  “What about a deal?”

  “Mr. Gilbert,” McFarland said, “You’ve been watching too much television. I’ve got enough to put you in a supermax prison for the rest of your life. There will be no deals. You tell me what you know and I’ll let the U.S. attorney know that you cooperated. He might be able to shave some time off your sentence, maybe even get you sent to one of the country club lockups that we have for white-collar criminals. But there are no guarantees.”

  “Give me a minute,” Gilbert said.

  “I’ll be back,” McFarland said, and left the room.

  J.D. turned to me. “He’s going to let him stew for a while. Interrogation 101 at the police academy. Will that work on a psychopath?”

  I smiled. “I guess we’ll see in a few minutes.”

  Gilbert sat quietly, an aura of sadness and despair surrounding him. He was done, and the realization that he’d reached the end of life as he knew it was overwhelming. I thought he’d probably known at the time of his arrest that he was caught up in something he couldn’t escape. I wondered how long he’d been involved in this mess and I actually felt a bit sorry for him.

  He had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth and he must have been a great disappointment to his father. Yet, for years he’d lived a good life. Even if it was a dissolute and self-indulgent lifestyle, he had hurt no one but himself. At some point, when he’d gotten involved with some very nasty people, probably as a direct result of his gambling, his lifestyle caught up with him. He’d turned from a pitiable caricature of a successful lawyer into a contemptible bagman for the worst elements of our society. He deserved whatever was coming.

  McFarland waited him out, giving him time to decide whether to continue blustering or start owning up to his misdeeds. Ten minutes went by and Gilbert sip
ped on his bottle of water and fidgeted some more. He looked at his wrist several times, forgetting his watch had been taken from him.

  Finally, McFarland came back into the room. “Have you had enough time to decide what you want to do, Mr. Gilbert?” he asked. “If not, I can go to lunch and come back later.”

  Gilbert waved him into his chair, sighed and said, “It’s a long story. I have an illness, an addiction to gambling. About four years ago, I lost a lot of money and became indebted to some loan sharks. I couldn’t pay them back, and my life was in danger. They made me an offer. I would become what they called a financial facilitator. I would work closely with a very rich man, Peter Fortson, in delivering money to whomever they designated. In return, the sharks forgave my debt.”

  “Who is Wally Delmer?” McFarland asked.

  “He’s a private investigator in Tallahassee. I don’t think he investigates anything much, but he’s kind of the manager for the people who run the gambling and loan-sharking operations. He was my bookie.”

  “Who’re the guys behind the curtain? The ones who really run things.”

  “I don’t know. The only name I ever heard, other than Delmer, is Thomason.”

  “Who is he?” McFarland asked.

  “I don’t know. It was just a name that Delmer let slip into a conversation once.”

  “Did you get the impression that he was important?”

  “Yes. I don’t remember in what context the name came up, but for some reason I thought he was very important, maybe the top guy.”

  “Do you know anything else about him?”

  “No. I never heard the name again.”

  “Your bank records show that you also sent some personal checks to Ishmael’s Children.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I was told to do it.”

  “By whom?”

  “Wally,” Gilbert said.

  “Some of those checks were pretty substantial.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did the money to cover the checks come from?”

  “Gambling.”

  “You’re still gambling?” McFarland seemed shocked.

  “Well, I go to the tables in New Jersey, but I don’t actually win.”

  “Explain that.”

  “I think it’s part of what they call skimming. The house rigs the table so that I win, but then I have to give the money back to the people who run the casino.”

  “So, it comes into your account as gambling winnings and you send it out to the charity.”

  “Sometimes. Other times I’d just write checks to whoever Wally told me to.”

  “I assume the same people who control the gambling control the charity. Am I right?”

  “That’s the way I understand it.”

  “Do you pay federal income taxes on the gambling proceeds?”

  “Of course. Wally insists on it. They don’t want to get caught up in an IRS investigation.”

  “Do you deduct the charitable contributions to Ishmael’s Children on your federal income tax returns?”

  “No. I was told not to. Nobody wants to fool with the IRS. That’s the way they got Al Capone, you know.”

  “Who is Thomason?”

  “I told you I don’t know.”

  “I thought you might change your mind after you’d had some time to think on it.”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

  “You withdrew ten thousand dollars in cash from that account you held jointly with Fortson, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You sent five grand to Wally Delmer?”

  Gilbert nodded.

  “What happened to the other five grand?”

  “I was instructed to contact a man who was supposed to kill somebody and give him the other five thousand dollars.”

  “Skeeter Evans?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who instructed you to get in touch with Skeeter?”

  “Wally Delmer.”

  “How did you know Skeeter?”

  “I didn’t. Wally gave me a name and a phone number.”

  “Who was he supposed to kill?”

  “Some woman. I don’t know who she was.”

  “Mr. Gilbert, we’ve talked to Skeeter. He gave you up. Don’t try to bullshit me.”

  “I don’t care what he said. I didn’t know her.”

  “But you were okay with killing her?”

  “Wasn’t my call. I just do what I’m told.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6

  FRANK THOMASON WAS lying on a chaise lounge beside his heated pool, bundled up against the weather. He was not a big man, but he carried more weight than was healthy. He had sharp facial features softened by chubby cheeks and reddened by the wind. His head was mostly devoid of hair. He was fifty-four years old and known for his unpleasantness. It was rumored that if you got on his wrong side, your lifespan would be shortened precipitously.

  He lived in a mansion crammed onto a small lot fronting the ocean a few miles south of Atlantic City, New Jersey. The pool was situated between the beach and the house, giving Thomason a spectacular view of the ocean, which on this day was gray and angry. Large waves slapped against the shore, delivering salt spray to the frozen beach. An icy wind blew across the water, carrying flurries of snow and sleet. A fog of vapor rose from the pool, the result of the cold air conflating with the heated water.

  He picked up a glass cup in his gloved hand, blew across the rim, and drank the last of his hot toddy. He watched as two men, dressed much as he was, walked along the beach. They stopped in front of his house and seemed to be carrying on a heated conversation. Thomason shrugged. None of his business. He lay back on the chaise and thought some more about his problem.

  It was already after ten in the morning. He had not heard from Wally Delmer who was required to check in with him no later than eight every morning. Thomason tried to phone him, but got no answer, except for a recording telling him that Delmer wasn’t available and his voice mailbox was full. The lack of communication was worrisome, but not alarming. Not yet, anyway. If he had not heard from Delmer by midafternoon, it would be time to panic.

  Frank Thomason walked a tightrope, always balancing his life and his lifestyle against the whims of his bosses. One misstep and he would be dead. There’d be no questions asked, no apology sought or accepted, no mercy offered. There was only death, and probably a difficult one, at the hands of a true believer, one of the young converts who would be hanging on street corners dealing drugs if not for the brainwashing they’d endured on social media sites. These youngsters were all looking for some form of salvation, and they began to believe that their own deaths, their martyrdom as they saw it, would earn them immediate entrance into heaven. This was, after all, the ultimate reward for doing the bidding of the Imams who preached hate and had nothing but disdain for Western civilization and the infidels who inhabited it. Well, that and the virgins, if there were any left, Thomason thought, a wry grin creasing his face.

  The last four years had been his ruination. He’d been doing quite well, loan sharking, gambling at crooked tables, importing and wholesaling drugs, and murdering, for a price, the occasional miscreant whom the bosses decided needed killing. Then he’d fallen in love with a Syrian woman half his age, and his life went to hell, spiraling down a rathole at the speed of sound. He’d watched it happen, knew what was happening, and was powerless to stop it.

  But, what the hell. He was living in an oceanfront mansion, had a chauffeur-driven Mercedes that was about a block long, a beautiful woman whenever he felt the need, a whore to be sure, but one paid by the bosses, a fringe benefit of sorts. Still, he missed the Syrian girl, who was perhaps the only person, including his parents, that he had ever loved.

  Her disappearance from his life had been sudden and shocking. A little more than three years before, he had left home early one morning, leaving her in his bed snuggled under the covers. He kissed her forehead an
d went out the door, intent on some long-forgotten mission. He never saw her again.

  Thomason had, some years before the Syrian girl’s disappearance, entered into an agreement with a group of Middle Eastern thugs who were working along the entire eastern seaboard, importing cocaine from South America and heroin from South Asia. They had a well-developed and secure pipeline that Thomason could never replicate, so it seemed like good business to become the street distributor of the drugs the Arabs brought into the country.

  Thomason was making a lot of money and decided to give loan sharking a try. He loaned out money at exorbitant rates to the marks who were constantly losing money in his New Jersey gambling parlor. Their addictions were played out on rigged games and tables, and they could never beat the house. Their debts mounted as their families fell apart and descended into poverty. None of this bothered Thomason. He was living the good life and raking in huge amounts of money.

  Almost four years ago, he had been spending an evening in one of his small casinos when the Syrian girl appeared. She was with another woman and they took a table next to the one Thomason was occupying. He didn’t pay too much attention to either of them, knowing full well that they were out of his league. He was fifty years old, and the women appeared to be in their mid-twenties. He was pudgy and balding and they were beautiful.

  As the night wore on and the drinks flowed, a conversation was struck between Thomason and the women. At some point, one of the women left and the other moved to Thomason’s table. Her name was Rahima and she was the American-born daughter of Syrian immigrants. Her family lived in Brooklyn, where she had been raised, and her father was a butcher in a local supermarket. She was in Atlantic City visiting a friend from college, the woman who had just left. She would get a taxi back to the friend’s apartment when this wonderful evening wound down.