The Defense: A Novel

by Steve Cavanagh

  A yellowed, framed print of the Mona Lisa sat above the desk.

  Beyond the couches, I saw an inner door to the chambers. I opened the door to the private quarters and saw, straight ahead of me, a long sash window. On the left, a bookcase ran the length of the room. It held law reports and out-of-date textbooks. A small desk and chair sat tight against the bookcase. On the other wall were two rather poor artworks depicting barren Irish countryside scenes set upon peeling, floral wallpaper. One couch sat sullenly below the paintings. The place smelled of old newspapers, and thick dust lay on every surface.

  I walked back into the reception room and saw Arturas taking a suit bag from the Samsonite case. He opened it and handed me a neatly folded pair of black suit pants. The jacket he placed on the chair. He then produced a white shirt, still in its packaging, and a new red tie.

  Apart from my overcoat, I wore light chinos and a navy blazer over a blue shirt.

  “Take off the coat,” said Arturas.

  I removed my overcoat, and as I did so, the thin jacket that contained the bomb came off as well and slid out of my coat. As it fell to the floor, its deadly contents dragging it earthward, I dove into the judge’s chambers and covered my head.

  Nothing.

  Then laughter.

  Feeling foolish, I got up and came back into the room. The jacket lay crumpled on the floor, and Arturas was smiling.

  “Don’t worry. You need a charge to set off the bomb. You could bounce it off the walls and it would not detonate. You need this to set it off.” He produced something small and black from the pocket of his brown overcoat. It looked like a central locking pad for a car: a little plastic oval about the same size as a matchbox. It had two buttons—one green, one red. “One button to arm it, one to set it off. The bomb is not very large. It has a kill zone of four or five feet, no more,” said Arturas.

  He picked up the thin jacket and laid it out flat on the reception desk.

  Someone knocked. Arturas opened the door to the tall, blond Russian I’d met in the limo, the one Volchek called Victor. The big man closed the door and fixed his eyes upon me.

  Arturas returned to the reception desk, opened the Velcro seam of the thin silk jacket, and removed the device that I’d felt through the material: two thin, rectangular blocks of hard putty with what looked to be a circuit board on top. Wires ran from the circuit board to something else. It could have been the inner workings of an old pager or something like that. More wires ran from this to the off-white plastic explosive. The whole thing looked to be around the same size as a pocket notepad. It was thin, and despite the damage it could do, it didn’t weigh much. Arturas lifted the suit jacket that he’d left on the chair. He placed it inside out on the desk and began running his hands along the lining. He’d known that I would need a suit for court. This one looked as though it had been custom tailored to conceal the device in a hidden pocket in the back of the jacket. He closed the seam after he secured the bomb, then lifted the jacket. I couldn’t tell there was something hidden in the back. It looked perfectly normal.

  “Get changed,” said Arturas.

  Lifting the pants, the shirt, the tie, and my overcoat, I moved into the chambers office. “You don’t mind?” I said.

  He shook his head.

  The pants were a good fit. The white shirt was way too big at the collar, but the blue button-down I was already wearing would do. I left the rest of my clothes and the tie in the chambers and went back into the reception room to try on the jacket. Arturas held it open for me, like a salesman. Turning, I held my arms out behind me and he slipped the sleeves onto my arms and threaded it up and over my shoulders. I thought it was a little big, like the shirt. Arturas strode around me, checking the angles, smoothing down the material, making sure it looked normal.

  “It will do well. The white shirt was too big?” he said.

  “Yeah. Too much room in the collar.”

  He nodded.

  Without another word, I went back into the chambers and folded my collar up so I could put on the tie. The Russians were in my peripheral vision. Arturas was closing up the large suitcase, which still looked plenty full. Victor watched Arturas. Before they could notice, I picked up my overcoat and drew out the wallet that I’d lifted from the big Russian in the limo. If the jacket were a size or two smaller, it would have been a problem concealing the wallet in the inside pocket of my new suit. With the extra width, no one would notice. I couldn’t risk taking a look at the wallet just yet; I would have to wait. It was likely that I would find nothing useful in the wallet. But I was damn glad that I had it. The mere fact that I’d been able to pocket it without being seen gave me some hope that the skills I’d learned so long ago had not deserted me completely. Opening and closing my fists and rolling my shoulders, I tried to calm myself and let my mind absorb the situation.

  A dirty mirror sat in the corner of the bookcase. I wiped the layer of dust from it and made sure my tie was straight.

  There was no denying it; every time I put on a suit and looked in the mirror, I didn’t see a lawyer. I saw a con man.

  A man just like my father.

  Lifting a wallet unobserved is no easy task. It takes a long time to learn how to complete the perfect pocket dip. You need quick, easy hands, steady nerves, and the ability to either take off or take down the mark. I learned from one of the best cannons in the business, a true pickpocket artist—my dad, Pat Flynn. Most pickpockets don’t like to be called “pickpockets,” and always refer to themselves as cannons. My abiding memory of my father is him sitting in his armchair in front of the TV, eyes heavy, breathing slowly, looking almost dead or asleep, and all the while he would be running a quarter over his knuckles like droplets of mercury slipping over a fork.

  For a big guy, he had dainty little hands, and each individual finger moved like a dancer: fast, fluid, clean. Much to my mother’s disapproval, my dad ran an illegal gambling ring out of the back of McGonagall’s Bar in Brooklyn. He’d been a con artist and a smuggler in Dublin until he’d saved enough to buy a ticket to America. When he got off the boat, he went straight to the nearest diner and ordered his first hamburger. He didn’t tip his nineteen-year-old waitress, and she chased him for four blocks before finally catching him. He gave her a huge tip, used his God-given charm, and they started dating. The waitress was a second-generation Italian girl named Isabella. My parents, Pat and Isabella, married in secret a year later.

  I would go down to the bar after school and drink a soda while I watched my dad run his crew. At the height of his little operation, he had maybe forty runners hustling the action on dogs, horses, boxing, and football. Once he’d dealt with his runners, we’d shoot a game of pool. Then he’d lift me up onto a barstool, plant his worn red book beside him, and teach me how to palm a card, a dime, a silver dollar, a watch, how to dip for leather while looking the mark in the eye, how to fold a ten-dollar bill and make it look like a hundred, how to signal your shill for the perfect distraction while you made the dip, how to hide money in your clothes so no one could find it, and more, much more. I still remember the taste of the Dr. Peppers, the citrus smell of his aftershave, the smoothness of the polished rosewood bar, and beneath it, my dad’s pretty hands working their magic.

  At first he had refused to teach me. Even then, at age eight, I could be persuasive, and eventually I wore him down. He agreed to teach me on two conditions. The first was that we kept the lessons secret; Mom was never to know. Second, if he was going to teach me, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop me from honing my skills on the street, so the next best thing in his mind was to make sure that if I did make a slip, I would be able to defend myself. After an hour or so working on my form at the bar, he’d take me to the gym and watch me learn how to box. Mom didn’t know about any of it. She worked late, waiting tables at a restaurant ten blocks away. It was our secret, me and my dad’s. When Mom came home from her shift, my dad always had something hot waiting for her. Then she’d curl up on the couch wit
h a romance novel, the trashier the better, and read until she fell asleep. By the time I’d turned fourteen, I’d beaten every decent fighter in the district, including kids two and three years older than me. I was fast, I hit hard, and I didn’t go down easy. My dad wanted me to get better, so after our session in the bar, we’d take the E train to Lexington Avenue and I’d spar in Mickey Hooley’s gym on 54th Street against the best young fighters that Hell’s Kitchen had to offer. That’s where I met most of the guys who ended up in my crew. And one particular guy, a squat little boy with a sledgehammer right cross, by the name of Jimmy Fellini, who quickly became my best pal. Jimmy would go on to be a promising amateur boxer, and I watched every one of his fights. We were brothers back then. But Jimmy missed out on his shot at turning pro.

  He had family commitments.

  Two years after I’d joined Mickey’s gym, my dad got sick. We weren’t poor, and my dad always paid the health insurance for the whole family, right on time, every month in life. The rare form of cancer that took him wasn’t covered under the policy. My dad hired a lawyer, the cheapest one he could find. The insurance company hired a big-city law firm, and the case went to court. I watched my dad’s lawyer get crucified. It wasn’t his fault; he was hopelessly outmatched. We lost the case, and even with money from friends and Jimmy’s family, we didn’t have enough to pay the hospital fees. Without proper treatment, my dad was dead within six months.

  I wasn’t there when he died. In his hospital room, I’d held his frail, skeletal hand in mine for eleven hours and then got up and left to get a soda from the machine. When I got back, I saw my mom waiting for me at the door to his room. I knew he was dead. She didn’t say anything. She just handed me his Saint Christopher medal and cried. After that, it was just me and my mom, and she looked after me as best she could. She even let me box as long as I got straight As. I kept my promise and graduated top of my class. I made sure to have mac and cheese or a plate of eggs waiting for her when she got home from the restaurant. Most nights she didn’t eat it, but she never failed to thank me. I couldn’t cook for shit, and she knew it, but she was thanking me for being the man of the house and keeping a little part of Dad alive. She’d stopped reading the romance novels. Instead she watched a little TV with me before turning in.

  When I’d completed school, I hit the illegal fight circuit for a year and ran a few scams on the side. Before the year was out, I had enough money to stake my operation. I hit the street at eighteen, ready to set up: a perfect con, a surefire way to steal every last cent that I could from the people who killed my dad—insurance companies and the rich lawyers who protected them.

  Looking back, they hadn’t stood a chance.

  “Lawyer,” said Arturas, from the reception room. “Time’s up. We have to go. The trial is about to start.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Leaving my coat and pants in the chambers office and sporting my new suit, I joined the Russians at the door. Arturas wheeled the suitcase behind him.

  “What’s in the case?” I asked.

  “Volchek’s files—all the papers that Jack prepared for the hearing.”

  “Is there a prosecution witness list?”

  “Yes, and Benny’s at the end of it.”

  I’d guessed about as much. The prosecution always saved their best witness till last.

  We rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor and court sixteen. The elevators opened up to a wide hall. The white stone walls were bedecked with four huge plaques listing the names of lawyers and judges who fought and died in World War II. Bathrooms and vending machines were scattered around the corners. To the left of the elevators, the long marble staircase rose to the upper floor.

  Directly ahead of us were the open, oak double doors that led to a packed courtroom.

  Court sixteen was the grandest courtroom in the building. Four large arched windows on the left-hand wall revealed a familiar skyline. The marble floor seemed to sip at the pale morning sun. Newly installed pine benches made up the public gallery. Two judges had threatened to quit if they didn’t get the new benches because the old theater-style seats had become infested with fleas over the years—no doubt due to the type of clientele that the criminal court attracted. When the infestation spread to the judges, replacement seating suddenly became a priority.

  There were around twenty-five rows of benches, which were split into two sections on either side of the central aisle. A rail separated the gallery from the legal tables: prosecution table on the left and defense on the right. Both tables faced the judge. The prosecution table sat empty. A small clump of gallery seats behind the defense table had been saved for Volchek and his entourage. I heard my name being whispered by a few people as I made my way to the defense table. At the back of the court, the judge’s leather seat waited behind a mahogany judicial bench. About fifteen feet in front of the prosecution table stood the witness box. Three steps led up to a small half door in the otherwise solid oak box that contained a single, straight-backed steel chair with a worn, upholstered seat. Directly opposite the witness box and ten feet to the right of the defense table was the jury stand with twelve empty chairs. The jury stand faced both the witness box and the windows behind it. A thought occurred to me as I took my seat.

  “Is jury selection complete?” I asked Arturas.

  “Yes, but…”

  Before Arturas could answer, Miriam Sullivan, acting district attorney for New York County, walked into court sixteen flanked by an entourage of assistant DAs and paralegals, who were quickly followed by another three guys in dark suits. From the way they moved and looked, I guessed the stragglers were FBI.

  I’d followed this case in the papers like every other New Yorker. A man in his forties with links to an Italian crime family had been found shot in his apartment two years ago. An unidentified man was arrested at the scene: the man I now knew to be Little Benny. Benny got caught red-handed with the murder weapon and the body. Filling in the blanks that Volchek had left, I guessed that the FBI had been watching Volchek for years and they stepped in to make a deal with Benny. They wanted to go light on the trigger man and get to the real boss. After Volchek got arrested, the Times reported that the judge set bail at five million dollars. Volchek paid that sum in cash within a half hour.

  The murder didn’t cross state lines and wasn’t, as far as I could tell, drug related, so the NYPD and the district attorney’s office held on to the case. The feds would hold the witness so they could keep an eye on proceedings. I remembered an unusual feature of the case, something that had grated on me from the first time I read the reports in the papers. There was only one charge—murder. Volchek hadn’t been indicted for drug running or racketeering or any of the usual organized crime charges. He faced a single charge of first-degree murder.

  The prosecution team heaved cardboard boxes full of files onto their table, grabbed extra seats, and built a fortress of paper on their desk. Psychological tactics for the jury—look at all the evidence we have against this guy. The state had an army of the top prosecutors, who’d had months to prepare a watertight case, and an unlimited budget.

  Miriam looked cool and professional, every inch the seasoned litigator. She wore a black suit with a skirt. She wasn’t classically beautiful, and I’d heard her described as having quite plain features. But her demeanor changed when she came to court; her eyes took on an intensity that was almost hypnotic. Throw in the legs, the shapely figure, and it was a good visual package for the jury. Not that she needed an advantage. She could’ve looked like Danny DeVito and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Miriam was just a devastating lawyer—period. She’d made her name in vice before moving to sex crimes. During the five years that Miriam prosecuted sexual offenders, the conviction rate for rape almost doubled. She’d graduated to homicide, and so far, she was on track for the DA’s job come election season.

  Arturas placed the suitcase on the floor underneath the defense table and took his seat at the end of the row behind me. I heard a
rumble of heavy footfalls and murmurs from the crowd, and I didn’t need to turn around to know that Volchek was making his entrance. I opened the suitcase and looked inside at the seven files that contained probably six or seven thousand pages in total.

  The rumble from the crowd became louder. I turned around to see Volchek walking down the central aisle, alone. Then a Hispanic male stood up in the middle of the crowd. He wore a red and blue bandana, a white shirt and track top. Tattoos spread from his neck up over his jaw and onto his face. It wasn’t the mere fact that he’d stood up that caught my eye; it was what he was doing. He clapped his hands in a slow cadence. An Asian guy in a dark suit got up and began to join in with the applause just as somebody else stood to attention. The third man was also Hispanic. He wore a maroon T-shirt and he also sported black, wiry tattoos on his bare arms and neck.

  Volchek nodded politely at each of the men as he passed them and sat down beside me at the defense table.

  “Friends of yours?” I said.

  “No. They are not friends. They are my enemies. They’ve come to watch me fall.”

  The slow, staccato applause for Volchek died down.

  “So exactly who are these enemies?” I asked.

  “The Puerto Ricans and the Mexicans run lines for the South American cartels here in New York. The other man is Yakuza. They are here to show me that if I go to prison, they are coming for me and my operation. They are in for a surprise,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jean Denver, one of the few female clerks, emerged from the entrance to the judge’s chambers. She winked at me. I liked Jean; she was intelligent, fun, and kept the court running efficiently. She wheeled a heavy trolley. It contained five binders that were thick with paper. The judge’s case files. Judge Pike must be ready to make her appearance. That meant I was about to get my first look at the jury. You can be the most knowledgeable lawyer in the world and be an amazing cross-examiner, but if you don’t know how to talk to a jury, you’re in big trouble. Before you talk to them, you have to understand them. Most jurors don’t want to be jurors. The minority that actively want to be jurors should be avoided at all costs.