Life Sentence

by David Ellis

  I say semi-positive, because all is not wine and roses for Grant Tully with regard to this case. Aside from the fact that I am linked with him, the blackmail note refers to him:

  Or I suppose I could always just talk to the senator. Is that what you want?

  So the police have been trying to get at Senator Tully. They questioned him about why I was at Dale’s office and what “secret” I might have been holding from him. Grant hired a lawyer of his own and met with the prosecutors. He told them, essentially, nothing. Grant refused to disclose the subject matter of the discussion between Dale and me on the grounds of attorney-client privilege. And he properly noted that, if I was holding a secret from the senator, then how would he know what it is?

  The lawyers at Seaton, Hirsch sent me a gigantic card with words of comfort scribbled by all the partners. We believe in you. We know you’ll beat this. Stuff like that. It meant a lot, more than I could express. Bennett tells me that the attorneys at the firm are outraged, that they’re sure this is more a persecution than a prosecution, a phrase Ben has down quite well by now. That’s good to hear. I’m on an island of sorts at the firm, basically just Senator Tully’s guy, and I’m friendly with others but not very close. It’s nice to know they’re behind me.

  Today’s Friday. I got to spend last night in my own bed and with my dogs, so I’m feeling that much better. I haven’t really moved off my original mood—pissed off. But over the last day or two, the anger has mellowed and a growing fear has invaded. Not out-and-out terror, not panic, but an ever-present nervousness. I have tried to remove all the distractions, including the effect of this arrest on Grant Tully’s campaign for governor and my career, to focus on the who, what, and why of Dale Garrison’s death. That’s what I’m doing here with Bennett Carey, having lunch downtown at a sparsely populated pizza joint with a terrific chicken parmesan sandwich.

  Bennett has his jacket off, the standard crisp white shirt and yellow tie. “We’re running a check on any former clients of Garrison,” he says. “Ex-cons recently released from the penitentiary who might have a grudge.”

  “Killing his defense lawyer because he didn’t do a good enough job on his trial?”

  Bennett bobs his head. “A cliché, yes, but a standard line of inquiry whenever a cop or prosecutor is murdered. No reason it should be any different for a defense attorney.”

  “Can’t hurt. You’re using Cal Reedy?”

  “Yeah.” Cal Reedy does opposition research for the Democratic Party. It’s not something discussed at cocktail parties. I know of only a handful of party officials who have Reedy’s number, and I’ve rarely mentioned his name aloud. Nothing illegal, of course. We don’t tap phones or anything. But he can examine someone’s life inside out in short order.

  “Okay. What else?”

  “That phone call,” says Ben. “We’re gonna talk to that woman whose phone was stolen. We’ll see if we can’t find out who used her phone to call you.”

  “Right.” I shake my head. “That was so weird. It was Dale. I know his voice. Dale called me.”

  The waitress arrives with our food. Chicken parm for me, a plain breast of chicken in a heart-healthy lemon sauce for Bennett.

  Ben fiddles with his napkin. “Someone had a gun to his head? Forced Dale to call you, then killed him to set you up?”

  I laugh, not out of humor. “That’s so hard to believe.”

  “That’s why it’s perfect,” says Ben. “Now you have a story that you stepped out of the building for five or ten minutes, then came back in to find Dale strangled. It’s ridiculous.”

  I swallow hard. It does sound ridiculous. I have to concede the point.

  “The truth is bizarre sometimes,” Ben says, trying to lighten the impact.

  “So we’re saying I was set up.” My eyes move skyward. “Oh, God, that just sounds so pathetic.”

  “But plausible, Jon. If this was a plan, then he got it set up perfectly. Someone’s hiding in Dale’s offices somewhere, waits for you to leave, moves in and kills him, then brings you back to the scene with a call from an untraceable cell phone.”

  “Pathetic,” I repeat. “I’d never buy that in a million years.”

  “I disagree. You have to accept the premise that there was a plan, a setup. Once you do that, the rest makes perfect sense.”

  “Why don’t we move on?” I say. “Try cheering me up.”

  Ben cuts into his chicken. “Cause of death,” he says. “We go after the autopsy findings.”

  “Do we have an argument?”

  “I know a guy,” says Ben. “A guy I used a couple times when I prosecuted. A forensic pathologist downstate. If there’s anything to argue, he’ll find it.”

  “Will there be anything?”

  “Maybe.” Ben chews his food and points a fork at me. “I’ve seen better reports than this one.”

  I observe Bennett a moment. He is impressive physically, a real presence, and I saw him on the news ridiculing the prosecutors. An animation I’d never seen from him. And I know from what happened when someone broke into his house how Bennett Carey reacts when he’s cornered. I clear my throat. “Ben, I’m gonna be blunt with you a minute.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Can you handle this case? You’re a kid.”

  He allows a smile. He’s twenty-nine to my thirty-eight. “I prosecuted criminal cases for four years, Jon. They moved me to felony after six months, way ahead of schedule. I’ve tried exactly ten murder cases. All convictions. All cases told, I’ve had over fifty trials. I lost once.”

  “Tell me about the one you lost.”

  “Mail fraud case,” he says without hesitation. A good trial lawyer probably remembers the defeats more than the wins. “Should have been a federal prosecution but the U.S. Attorney passed. Some lady with four kids and no husband was running a scam through the mail. Selling nude photos for money, offering to meet the guys but then never showing.” He wipes at his mouth. “The defense attorney gets in the evidence of the four kids at home, no father. The jury didn’t want to put her kids in foster homes. They nullified.” He shrugs.

  “How’d they get that evidence in about the kids?” I ask.

  Ben opens a hand. “The attorney asked her, and she answered.”

  “You didn’t object?”

  “It slipped my mind.” Ben returns to his food with a wry smile.

  I smile but quickly grow serious. “No fucking around, though. You’ve been through some shit yourself, Ben. And this is going to be balls-to-the-wall. Are you up for it?”

  Bennett scoots his food away and drops his hands on the table. “No fucking around, Jon. I know I’m quiet and I don’t get out much, but that’s me in private. You haven’t seen me in court. You want a guy like Paul Riley—no problem, no offense taken. He’ll cost you two hundred grand but any amount of money is worth it. Really. Do it. But if I didn’t think I was the best man for the job, I’d say so.”

  I believe him. I believe that Ben is a terrific trial lawyer because that’s all I heard when I checked his credentials before hiring him. I wondered, in fact, why the hell he’d want to join up with me and do legislative and election law. A guy who thrives on being on his feet and showboating, now poring over campaign finance rules and the election statutes?

  More to the point, I believe that Ben would tell me if he thought someone else was better suited to the task. The guy doesn’t have a trace of ego that I’ve ever seen.

  “Plus I’m free of charge,” he adds.

  “You’re hired,” I say, offering a hand. He takes it heartily, and we enjoy a brief moment of optimism. Then Ben grows quiet, staring into his lunch.

  “Jon, we have to talk about this blackmail.”

  “I don’t have a damn clue,” I say. “I’m not hiding anything. Especially not from the senator.”

  “Think hard.” Ben stares me down. “Because the cops are.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve known the senator your whole life, right?” />
  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing over thirty-eight years? Nothing that the senator wouldn’t know about?”

  “Something worth two hundred fifty thousand dollars?” I ask. “Hell, no.”

  “Okay.” Ben speaks cautiously. “By the way, did I ever tell you the first rule of criminal defense?”

  “No.”

  “Tell your lawyer everything.” Ben places a finger straight down on the table. “Everything.”

  “Honest to God, Ben. I’ll think on it, but nothing comes to mind.”

  My lawyer lingers a moment before accepting my statement and attending to his food. I try to focus on my sandwich while I battle a memory from long ago.

  22

  LIFE HAS RETURNED, in many ways, to a state of near normalcy despite my arrest. It is astonishing, in a sense, that everyday life continues on just as it did. My bills still beckon me from their pile in the middle of my kitchen counter, an oversized breakfast bar. My dogs still need food and walks and attention. I still shower and shave and read the newspaper and watch the stock market.

  And the house is still empty, in any real sense. I thought of moving when Tracy walked out. I probably will at some point. The thought rings somewhat hollow, making the assumption that there will be a point in time down the road that I can move. In any event, this is not the time to consider it. Too much to do. Too busy. Always too busy.

  Too busy, I suppose, could be a two-word summary of the deterioration of my marriage. The job sends me downstate, to the capital, for most of the week for the six months or so the legislature is in session. Probably a big hole in which to start a marriage. I was too caught up in my work. Not selfish. She never called me selfish. “Self-absorbed,” was the word Tracy used. I thought what I was doing was more important than anything she did. More important than us.

  I never thought that. I never did. But I suppose my actions spoke louder than my thoughts. She resented me, I resented her for not accepting me—I did have this job when we met, after all—hell, we resented each other. She became consumed with her job—a PR firm in the city—to the point that she was out of town or working all hours the months that I was up here in the city. That was her right-back-atcha for my time in the capital. That was how I saw it. The way she saw it was, how is it okay for me to let work dominate my time but not okay for her to do the same thing?

  She had a point. I wish she could have known how I felt. The things I said to her, not when we were together, with gloves off in our respective corners, but when I was alone in a hotel room in the capital. Those, sadly, were my most intimate moments with Tracy. I told her how much I respected her, how much I admired her, how scared I was to lose her.

  The chasm became too wide. I knew that about two years ago or so. That was the low point. Everyone thinks the hardest part of a divorce is the moment the unspoken words are spoken, when the decision is made. That’s wrong. The lowest point is when you realize, in the depths of your soul, in a brutal moment of honesty with yourself, that neither of you will ever be happy in your marriage. Then you’re just sleepwalking, waiting for the other shoe to drop, anticipating the moment that one of you will have the courage to make the call.

  This is not to say the particulars of the breakup are a walk in the park. You don’t split apart physically right away, at least we didn’t. You coexist. You make plans, discuss them delicately, and almost go out of your way to avoid each other. There is an immediate distance—maybe the same distance that was already there, but now it’s more palpable. I brought up the subject of the house, who should move, or should both of us move? That’s when she told me—this, the day after we had decided to split—that she had taken a job on the East Coast. A real step up, she told me, a promotion, a very exciting opportunity for her, and I’m trying to be supportive while I’m thinking the whole time, She took the job while we were still together.

  In the end, we kept it amicable. We looked at each other and decided we would not hate each other. I told her I was excited about her career move, because she seemed pretty pumped about it. I imagine that was only partly true, that she’d taken the job less on its merits and more on its location. It’s probably better that we’re not in the same town. For Tracy more than me. Senator Tully’s name is in the news on a weekly basis, and a public-relations consultant follows the news. It would be a constant reminder to her of my presence, the reason we split, in her mind.

  I stop in the center of my kitchen, unsure why I walked in here to begin with. I’m starting to understand how my dogs feel.

  I’ll say this—there is nothing like a criminal indictment to keep your mind off your ex-wife. In some very bizarre ways, this is easier. There’s no guilt, because I didn’t do anything. I can get on my white horse. An innocent man accused. Something I can’t say about my marriage. There’s blame to pass around, life is too complex to nail it down to a single act or moment, but at the end of the day I take the fall for the breakup.

  A knock at my door. I look to the window on instinct but I have pulled the curtains shut. Let’s say it like this—the media has been less than respectful of my privacy. But I’m not the biggest news story going anymore, owing to a nuclear crisis in the former Soviet Union. Besides, anyone who wants my picture by now has taken it.

  “Who is it?”

  “Grant.”

  I open the door. I dutifully look over his shoulder. His car is parked in the driveway, no sign of reporters. Jason Tower, his chief of staff, is talking to another staffer in the backseat of the car.

  Grant steps inside, offers a hand, thinks better of it, and wraps me in an embrace. Then he holds me at arm’s length, sizes me up. “How ya doin’, Jonny?” A throwback to our youth, the blunt city-speak so easy to catch and hard to shake, a reminder of our history together. The senator bends over and greets the pugs, Jake and Maggie. He lets Maggie bite his fingers like a puppy does, just a little bit too hard, before rising again.

  “You’ve got better things to be doing,” I offer.

  “Aw.” He makes a face. “Too early to go full bore. Hey, I’m only down eighteen right now.” I’d heard about the poll through the grapevine, a private one commissioned by our campaign. The senator’s numbers are actually moving backward. It’s still too early, the figures are soft, but any way you slice it, he has an uphill road.

  I offer him a drink but he declines. He takes the chair, I go for the couch. My living room is what you’d expect, hardwood floors, simple grassy-brown furniture, oversized television, a fireplace. A former married home that’s been “bachelorized,” according to Grant’s wife, Audrey.

  “I told you to stay away,” I say, trying to scold. “You shouldn’t keep coming here.”

  He ignores me. His eyes drift to the fireplace mantel, the pictures. He’s in one of them, he and Audrey, Tracy and I at the pier after a boat ride on the lake about four summers ago. Another picture of Tracy alone, a posed portrait, has the prominent center position on the mantel. Grant’s expression registers his disapproval that I’m keeping her around, clinging to the past. He never really liked her anyway.

  “Tell me what to do, Jon,” he says. “Tell me what you need. You got it.”

  “My inclination was to get as far away from you as possible,” I say. “But you pretty much screwed that up.”

  Grant laughs. “No way Aidan was gonna look me in the eye and tell me my guarantee was insufficient,” he says, referring to the judge who gave me bail. The senator calms a moment, turns serious. “You’ll work as much as you want.” He nods his head slowly, about as emphatic as he’ll get. “You’re still the chief counsel. You’re still my number one guy on this campaign.”

  “Listen—I’d say no but it’s a condition of my bond.” I struggle for words. “I’ll keep the lowest profile possible. Won’t be seen in public. Not for now. Hopefully, we’ll get a quick trial and I’ll beat this.”

  A quick pep talk from Grant. You bet your ass, you’ll beat it. The jury won’t take five minutes to acquit. Nobod
y thinks I did this. The county attorney’s gonna be running for cover. “And listen,” he continues, “you work as much as you want. We’ll set up a fax line here. You can play as big a role as you want. I need you, pal. This isn’t just generosity. Plus, you know”—the senator wags a finger back and forth between us—“we have to look out for each other.”

  “Seems like you’re always doing the looking out, buddy.” I manage a weak smile.

  “Aw.” He waves his hand. To an outside observer, Grant and I have always had a bit of a strange relationship. Politics is one of the few places where friendship and business mix. Politicians keep their friends around. Which means that, in my case, your best friend is your boss. Best friend is the term I use, but in some sense, I always wondered if I became his brother after he lost his older sibling in the car accident. He protected me like his brother protected him. He’s kept me near him ever since. I carry my own weight, no doubt. I’m valuable to him. He doesn’t make a move without my legal assessment. But that’s because he chose me. He made me his chief counsel when his father, Simon, suggested someone else, an older attorney who’d been around the capital for over a decade. Grant insisted on me.

  “Anyway.” Senator Tully claps his hands together. “Do you have everything you need?”

  “I think so, boss.”

  “Bennett’s going to be your lawyer.”

  “Yeah. I feel good about that. I wish the evidence were a little more helpful.”

  “Yeah,” says Grant. “About that.” He opens his hands. “Blackmail? What the hell is that about?”

  “No idea,” I say.

  He looks away from me, toward the floor. “Could this have something to do with Trotter’s nominating papers?”

  The thought is obviously painful to Grant. He knows I hated using the Ace, at least the way Grant wanted to use it. Now I see why Grant’s aides were left to wait in the car outside. This is a very private conversation.

  “The Ace?” I ask. “I don’t see how.”

  Grant leans on his knees. “It just seems so odd. The two things happening so close together. That note—” He looks in my direction, though not at me. “You think he figured we wanted to use it privately with Trotter, and he was threatening to go public? Something like that?”