Life Sentence

by David Ellis

  “Feeling any better?” I ask.

  He’s still standing by the doorway, looking awkward and antsy. That sort of fits him. First glance, you make Bennett Carey for a lady-killer, a charming, well-manicured, well-dressed corporate attorney ready to set the world on fire. You expect the deep voice, the confident presence, the playful charm. What you get instead is a very soft-spoken, shy man with rather limited social skills. He has almost no sense of humor, first of all, which means my ever-present sarcasm often leads to blank stares. He doesn’t partake in office banter, almost overtly ignores flirtatious advances from the women in the firm. His clothes are very neat—crisply ironed white shirts, subdued ties perfectly knotted—but anything but flashy. The only hint of creativity he ever shows is in his work, when he needs to craft a legal argument. Even then, his personality shows through—his words are simple, his argument concise and to the point.

  “Don’t really know what to do with myself,” Ben says. “Don’t want to be here, don’t want to be home.”

  “You can stay at my place,” I say. “As long as you want.”

  “Oh—well, thanks, Jon. I’ll be fine.” He shuffles his feet, still standing in the doorway. “Talk to the senator?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s here today?”

  “Sure. In between appearances.”

  Bennett scratches his face. “Did you tell him?”

  “I told him.”

  “How’d he react?”

  I open my hand to a chair across from my desk. “Hey, you know Tully. ‘It is what it is, we’ll deal with it.’” I do my best impression of our boss. “Nobody’s blaming you, Ben. For Christ’s sake, how could they?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Bennett takes a chair, collapses in it. He has splashed on some cologne, a hint of medicine in the scent. He missed a spot shaving below his chin. “I keep seeing that guy’s face. When I turned on the light and saw him lying there on the floor.”

  “The detective was right,” I say. “That guy didn’t give you a choice.”

  Bennett’s eyes run past me to the face of the computer behind me. “What’s that?”

  “Front page of the Internet edition,” I say with a half-smile to lighten the impact.

  “Great.” Bennett shakes his head.

  “Do not worry about this, Ben. This is a nonissue. A news cycle or two, tops.”

  Bennett waves a hand. I have not convinced him. “Paper say anything interesting?”

  “They got the perp’s name.”

  Bennett sits up. “What’s his name?”

  “Brian Denning O’Shea.”

  Bennett’s eyes drift. His face turns sober, loses some color. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers.

  “You know him?” I ask.

  Bennett inhales deeply, then shakes his head. “Brian O’Shea,” he says to himself.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “Brian O’Shea.” He grimaces. “Back when I was prosecuting at the county attorney’s office. One of my last cases, maybe five years ago. I put away O’Shea’s brother for possession with intent. Sean O’Shea, his name was. We were cleaning up the southeast side, hitting a lot of dealers. Found over twenty grams in Sean’s place.”

  “So you put away his brother.”

  “Goes beyond that,” Ben says. “I was at the scene, y’know? They were having the assistants go with. We’d come in after the cops secured it, but they wanted the lawyers there to ensure everything was handled properly. Search warrants were carried out only to their limits, evidence was handled appropriately—that kind of thing.”

  I remember back then. That was at the height of the call throughout the city for an independent body to take over the collection and evaluation of evidence obtained at crime scenes. Defense lawyers and civil-rights activists were complaining that the cops were tampering with evidence. This problem is what led to the county attorney’s office creating a technical unit—the CAT unit—which today has authority over such things, instead of the city police.

  “Sean O’Shea’s lawyers claimed that there wasn’t any coke in his place until we showed up,” Ben continues.

  “He said it was planted?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Ben smiles weakly. “The prosecutors planted twenty grams of coke, and a scale, and a pager, and a wad of cash.” He waves a hand. “Defense attorneys say stuff like that all the time. You’ve tried as many of these cases as I have, you start hearing the claims of planting and tampering in your dreams.” He blows out a sigh. “So we nail Sean O’Shea on possession with intent. He has a sheet already, so he goes away for—what—I think twenty-five to forty.”

  “Ouch,” I manage.

  “Yeah, they don’t fuck around with that stuff.” Bennett takes a moment with that. I always wondered if prosecutors felt bad sometimes about the stuff they do. “Anyway, Sean’s brother gets a lawyer, and they file a civil-rights case against me. A Section 1983 action in federal court. They say I violated Sean O’Shea’s civil rights and planted evidence in his place.” Ben makes a small circle with his index finger. “He filed the case about three years ago. The case was ultimately thrown out in the district court. The ruling was upheld on appeal. The Supreme Court just denied cert—so the case is over.”

  “Okay.” I lean back in my chair. “So Brian’s ticked off about his brother going away for most of his adult life and the fact that you beat him in court.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You didn’t recognize him at your house?”

  “Brian O’Shea?” Bennett shrugs. “If I’ve ever laid eyes on him, I didn’t know it. He might have been at his brother’s trial, but I didn’t notice. That case he filed against me in federal court, it never went to trial or anything. It’s not like I appeared in court. The county attorney’s civil division handled it.”

  To say nothing of the fact that the guy broke into Ben’s house in the middle of the night, in the pitch darkness. It’s not as if he and Ben had a pleasant conversation over tea. “Well, okay.” I come forward and lay my hands on the desk. “So you feel better now? This guy was trying to hurt you. You didn’t have a choice.”

  Ben plays with his hair a moment, brushing at some stray locks that have fallen into his eyes. “I suppose it helps to know.”

  “Good,” I say. “I’ll give a call to that detective. Paley. He’ll figure it out soon enough, but might as well save him the investigating.”

  “Okay.”

  I come around the desk and grab Ben’s shoulder. “Hopefully, you can put this behind you now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll get word to the big man, too,” I say. Ben rolls his eyes and makes his way out.

  5

  WALKING INTO SENATOR Grant Tully’s office is like walking into a museum. Plenty to admire, nothing to touch. The office is rectangular; oak cabinets on the long wall below the windows feature framed photographs of the senator with various political figures of the last ten years. Two large black leather chairs sit by a desk more notable for its size than anything else. It is a large, ancient piece of hickory, with iron handles on the drawers, that dwarfs the senator in his high-backed chair.

  Senator Tully spins around, raises a hand and nods to me. “Keep them where they are for now and run another poll. If she’s above forty percent we’ll pull them from Isaac.” He grimaces as he listens to his caller. “Yes, all three, but forty percent, right? Not thirty-nine.” The senator hangs up the phone and looks at me.

  “Good news,” I tell him.

  The senator raises his chin.

  “The guy who broke into Ben’s house,” I say. “It was the brother of someone he put away for drug dealing. It was a revenge thing. So we’re okay.”

  “You call the press?”

  “I talked to the police. I’ll call the guy at the Watch next.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Grant Tully grabs a pencil and twirls it in his hand as he leans back in his chair. “Raycroft could play with this.”

  “He could but he won’t
,” I answer. The senator is referring to Elliot Raycroft, the county attorney—the top prosecutor in the city. Elliot Raycroft is a Republican, of all things, the first Republican to be elected countywide in the last seventy years. There was a special runoff election four years ago when the incumbent county attorney died. The Democrats were feuding back then with the African-Americans, who formed their own party for the runoff and split the Democratic vote. So the unthinkable happened. A Republican won a race in the city. Raycroft managed not to screw up the job and won re-election to a full term two years ago, owing to the power of incumbency.

  If you had to pick one office that the local Dems would not want to be held by the opposition party, it’s the office of county attorney. There are plenty of behind-the-scenes shenanigans in city politics, and the last thing they want is for a prosecutor with the power to issue subpoenas and convene grand juries to start shoving his nose into the pigsty. This is especially true because Raycroft knows he’ll lose re-election one of these times, so he needs to make a name for himself so he can move elsewhere, maybe statewide.

  It’s bad enough that Raycroft is in the wrong party. To add to that, the county attorney’s political patron is none other than Attorney General Langdon Trotter. That’s what the senator is talking about when he says Raycroft could use this situation for political gain.

  “Raycroft’s not dumb enough to take the side of a drug dealer’s criminal brother over a former prosecutor who put the guy away.” I open my hand. “It wouldn’t sell. Trotter would never sign off on it.”

  “All right,” says the senator. “You’re right. So tell me about our other thing.”

  “The Ace,” I say.

  The senator stifles a smile. He’s not one for nicknames or informality. Ever since I discovered that flaw with Lang Trotter’s nominating papers—and ran back to tell the senator—I have referred to the whole thing as our “Ace.”

  I could understand how the mistake with Trotter’s papers happened. He probably signed in black ink, and it was hard to tell the original from the photocopy. People do it all the time. You’re supposed to file originals of all court documents, too, but sometimes only the photocopies get filed. Nobody ever balks. No judge would ever throw out a court filing because the original wasn’t filed. It would be elevating form over substance. A lawyer would look foolish arguing the point in court.

  But we aren’t talking about court. We’re talking about election law. The law says the statement of candidacy has to be “signed,” and that means the original. A photocopy is not a signed document—it’s a photograph of a signed document. I explain it this way—a photocopy of a document is no more the document itself than a photograph of a tree is the tree itself.

  Form over substance? Absolutely. But I argued the point several years ago in a race for county sheriff downstate—it was a particularly nasty election and the senator wanted to help out the Democrat. And I won the argument. Some poor Republican got knocked off the ballot because he handed in a photocopy of a statement of candidacy. That guy and his lawyer walked out of the election board hearing looking like they’d had their pockets picked.

  It’s a very subtle, obscure point in election law, but like I say, that’s my specialty. If we put this argument before the board of elections, they will have no choice. The long and short: Langdon Trotter’s statement of candidacy is invalid. Thus, he is not entitled to run for governor.

  When I found out about the mistake, I raced back to the city. The senator was nowhere to be found, so I ran into Bennett’s office and gave him the news. I was damn sure of my position, but we opened up the election statutes anyway, read a couple of court decisions. There was a palpable sense of urgency the moment we looked at each other and realized we had Langdon Trotter’s number.

  “What does Dale say?” Grant asks.

  I let my frown show. He’s talking about Dale Garrison, the guy who wrote the memorandum that agreed with my conclusion that Lang Trotter was disqualified from running for office. Dale is a lawyer in town, one of the old horses in the legal community, a guy who’s been around so long you’d think he passed the bar during Prohibition. He’s a longtime friend of the Tully family, their personal lawyer for some things. He does some lobbying work, if reluctantly, in the state capital. He’s one of a handful of people who has the senator’s ear.

  I don’t have a problem with him. He’s too chummy with me, but I have to give him his due. The thing is, I’m not too thrilled with the senator seeking a second opinion on my legal judgment.

  “Don’t give me that look,” says Grant, reading my mind. The intercom buzzes. The senator’s secretary tells him it’s one of his guys, one of our state senators. Grant rolls his eyes but takes the call. I get out of my chair and pace, find myself peeking at a stack of greeting cards on the credenza behind the senator’s desk.

  Damn. I completely forgot. Yesterday was Grant’s birthday. Just turned thirty-nine; he has a few months on me. Typically of Grant Tully, he pooh-poohs the thing, never allows a party in his honor. But here’s a group of people who remembered, a good twenty cards at least. I stand at the credenza and leaf through them. A card from the governor, a U.S. senator, various other state legislators, a television news anchor, various attorneys in the community, including Dale Garrison. Garrison’s card is brief—“Enjoy your day”—in his handwriting and just “Dale” for a signature. Like anyone else with the slightest political sense, Dale has obviously kept up with the senator, recorded his birthday as well as his wife’s and children’s. The rest of the cards are pretty standard—“Best wishes,” “Good luck on the race,” “Anything I can do to help.” One of them even refers to him as “Governor Tully.”

  Grant hangs up the phone and makes a noise. “Fucking D’Angelo,” he says. “First challenger he’s had in sixteen years. He’ll get seventy percent, minimum, you’d think he’s in the race of his life.” He looks at me as I return to my seat. “So where were we?”

  “You were telling me that you want Dale to tell you I’m right.”

  He cocks his head. “Come on now, Mr. Soliday. It’s not like that. Dale”—he waves a hand in the air—“Dale knows the courts. Half the judges used to work for him. I don’t need a second opinion on the election laws. I need to know what a judge would do.”

  “Fine. Well, Dale thinks I’m right, by the way. You saw his memo.”

  “Did I?”

  “He sent it to me. But Bennett was supposed to get you a copy.”

  The senator looks over his desk. “I probably have it here somewhere,” he says.

  “Bennett was supposed to make you a copy.”

  Grant Tully grimaces. “Bennett,” he repeats. “I thought we were keeping this just between us.”

  I open my hands. “Ben’s my guy. I ran the idea past him.”

  “Well, let’s keep this under the radar, Jon. Okay?” His voice carries a hint of rebuke.

  “What’s the damn secret? When we file a complaint with the board of elections, everyone in the state’s going to know about it.”

  Grant purses his lips but doesn’t respond.

  “You had something else in mind?” I ask.

  Grant chews his bottom lip a moment. After a lifetime of political upbringing, Grant Tully is pretty good at getting ahead of the curve. Sometimes I don’t even see where he’s headed. “Maybe,” he says.

  “What in the hell else could there be? We privately ask Lang Trotter, pretty please, to drop out of the race he’s been preparing for his entire life?”

  My remark brings a hint of a smile to Grant’s lips. “You’re getting warmer.”

  “Tell me, Grant.”

  “You were right about the private part.” He waves at me. “Give me a nutshell of the argument.”

  “You know the argument.”

  But he waves at me again.

  “Everyone has to have a statement of candidacy to run for office,” I say. “You fill out the form and sign it, turn it in with all your voter petitions and everyth
ing else. Trotter’s people screwed up. They made photocopies of everything, of course, but when they turned in the papers, they put the photocopy of the statement of candidacy in with the original petitions. A photocopy is not the original document. It’s like he never turned in a statement of candidacy at all.”

  “Great,” says the senator. “Now explain it to a voter.”

  I sigh. “That’s why we have Don—”

  “Senator Tully knocked off the Republican candidate on a technicality,” says Grant. “Everyone knows he signed a statement of candidacy, everyone knows he wants to run, but because of a paper shuffle, now the voters don’t get him as a choice.” Grant shakes his head. “Sounds great.”

  “Well—”

  “And what do I get for that? For the voters knowing I used some legal bullshit to knock off my opponent? For editorials across the state lambasting me? I’ll tell you what I get. The Republicans get to nominate someone else in Trotter’s absence. Am I right?”

  “Well, sure.” Under state election law, if a nominated candidate withdraws or is removed from the race, that political party is permitted to nominate someone else. The relevant political committee—in this case, the directors of the state Republican Party—simply takes a vote, and whoever wins is the Republican nominee. “You’re going to have to run against someone, Grant.”

  He makes a face. In my experience, I find that state senators and representatives find it imminently distasteful when they actually have to put up a fight to win re-election. No one has tried to run against Senator Tully. This is his first contested race.

  “They won’t appoint someone like Trotter,” says the senator. “They’ll put a moderate in there. Pro-choice, to offset us. Someone who never could have won their primary but is a good candidate for the general election.”

  “Jody Thayer,” I say. Jody Thayer is the lieutenant governor currently. She wanted to run in the Republican primary, but the party elders deemed Langdon Trotter the better candidate. So she’s running for Trotter’s job, attorney general. She is pro-choice, pro–gun control, had a very moderate voting record during her time in the state senate. She would be the best candidate against a pro-life, socially conservative guy like Grant Tully.