J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 03 - No Time To Hide

by J. D. Trafford

  Andie checked her cell phone. She looked at the time, waiting.

  She watched the joggers and the walkers. She watched a young woman sketch a planting of grasses, Liatris, and coneflowers. She waited some more, and eventually Brea Krane arrived.

  Brea wore a pair of running shoes, yoga pants, and a sweatshirt. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses. She sat down next to Andie, but didn’t look at her. She fiddled with the volume of her iPhone and removed the buds from her ears. “Wait long?”

  “Not too long.” Andie looked at her, but Brea looked straight ahead. “How do I know you’re not recording this?”

  Brea shrugged. “About to ask you the same thing.”

  The question hung between them. Neither answered, and so Andie continued. “With Michael in jail until the trial, you’re going to have to deal with me now.”

  Brea nodded. “Figured. How much do you know?”

  “Some,” Andie lied. She wanted to see if Brea had changed her offer. It was test.

  “Well, it’s pretty simple,” Brea stood up and started stretching. She did it in a way that nobody who had a camera with a zoom could read her lips.

  She was smart. Andie conceded that.

  “I want money,” Brea said. “The more money you give me, the more I help.”

  “Like what?” Andie played dumb.

  “Like, I’m the victim’s daughter. I’m consulted on any plea offers that Brenda Gadd makes to your boyfriend. I can influence them up or down, because the prosecutor — if there is a plea — has to tell the judge whether the victim’s family is in agreement.” Brea stood and started rolling her head side to side. “That little service is for the bargain basement price of $1 million.”

  “$1 million.” Andie narrowed her eyes. “For that?”

  “Could mean five or ten years less in prison, or maybe just one. How much is that worth? How much is a year of Michael’s life worth to him and you?”

  “I don’t know.” Andie shook her head. “I don’t know if we have that sort of money.”

  “Well, you’d better find it.” Brea was running out of patience. “I know he’s got it. He has to.” Then she leaned in closer. “For $50 million I become your witness.”

  “$50 million?” Andie looked away. “What can you say that would be worth $50 million?”

  “That’s the great thing about this offer,” Brea said. “I will say whatever you want me to say. For example, I could swear under oath that it was all a set-up. That my father and Lowell Moore had your boyfriend framed. I can say that Agent Vatch is crazy and made it all up. I can say that my brother did it. I don’t care.”

  Brea sat back down next to Andie Larone. She put her arm around Andie, then she whispered. “I don’t care what I say. You tell me. Long as I get my money.”

  “I understand.” Andie nodded. “In the meantime, it’d be nice if we got rid of your brother.”

  Brea nodded. “That’s taken care of. Free of charge.”

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  Brent Krane had made a realization. It was early in the morning. He had been up all night. Drugs and the crowd hadn’t permitted the sleep to come, and so he had been forced to cut. He made a half-dozen cuts to the back of his leg, releasing the pressure inside himself. It mollified the crowd.

  The silence was pure. Then the realization had come.

  He sat on the couch in his little apartment, surrounded by filth. There was no future here. Beyond revenge, there was nothing he needed to accomplish. This reality had been there for a long time, but Brent hadn’t put the pieces together. He hadn’t drawn the necessary conclusion. But now it was so obvious.

  The epiphany absolved him of worry.

  The opinions of the crowd seemed less important.

  He was simply going to do whatever he needed to do, and he knew that the crowd would understand. They would probably like it. They liked action.

  Brent Krane decided that he was finish getting a gun. He’d fill out the forms. He’d wait as long as it took. And then, if they denied him, he’d try to buy it some other way or he’d steal it. He didn’t care.

  That was the realization. That was the epiphany: He didn’t care. Brent Krane just wanted it all to end.

  His sister told him that he needed to get out of the city. Brea said that Michael Collins and his friends knew about his trip to Mexico. She claimed that they got access to his passport file. He wasn’t sure he believed it, but Brent didn’t care anymore.

  He wasn’t going to fight her.

  Brent decided he’d go to the beach rental in Montauk. If his sister was going pay for it, he’d humor her and get out of the filth for a few months. Then when the trial was going to start, he’d come back.

  It wouldn’t be hard, and the time away would give him a chance to plan for the end.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  Agent Frank Vatch knew that the visit was coming. The government’s dysfunction was well known and reported. The dysfunction started with the elected officials and then trickled down and through the bureaucracy.

  Every federal agency had been squeezed, including law enforcement. They were looking to save money. Vatch had seen the boss work his way down the hall. He had visited each of the senior cogs in the bureaucratic machine and made them an offer that most couldn’t refuse.

  Now it was Vatch’s turn.

  The knock on the door was perfunctory.

  Martin Nix was the Special Agent In Charge of the New York Field office. Vatch had been supervised by seven different special agents over the course of his career, and Vatch had discerned that there were only two types: gunners and caretakers. The gunners were young and ambitious. They came in from outside the New York Office with big ideas and a burning desire to be promoted to something better in Washington, D.C. The caretakers came in after the gunners. They cleaned up the mess, soothed the troops’ ruffled feathers, and then retired a few years later.

  Nix was a caretaker.

  He came into Vatch’s office. Nix sat down in the chair across from Vatch. Nix looked at Vatch, apologies in his eyes. “You know why I’m here.”

  Vatch nodded.

  “Gotta do it.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if the head of the FBI was watching him. “Orders.”

  “Well you’re wasting your time.” Vatch was short with him, but Vatch wasn’t as rude to Nix as he was to his other colleagues. The fact that Nix was his boss didn’t matter. Vatch didn’t care much about his place on the organizational chart. Vatch simply appreciated Nix’s management style, which was to leave him alone.

  “Gotta do it.” Nix repeated, and then put his hands on his knees. “Because of the cuts, every field office has a target that we have to meet. Rather than lay people off, I got the authorization to offer buy-outs to the old-timers.”

  “Get rid of the experienced investigators and leave everything to the rookies.” Vatch shook his head. “Sounds like a plan that the politicians would love”

  “Hey.” Nix raised his hands. “Not here for a debate.” Nix wasn’t interested in a fight. He just needed to make his pitch and move on to the next office. “The offer is $30,000 in cash, and then full retirement benefits if you’ve got enough years of service. People with less years get the cash and maybe a little less benefits, but you have enough credit. You qualify for the full boat.”

  “A bribe?”

  “We prefer to call the $30,000 an ‘incentive.’”

  “Well, I don’t want it.”

  Nix stood. “Figured.” He walked toward the door. “But you got some time to think.” Nix shrugged his shoulders. “I’m taking the money. Then I’m taking my wife on a cruise, getting the hell out of New Jersey and kissing that damn commute good-bye.” Nix paused at the door. He turned back. “Frank, you’re an asshole, but give it a little more thought.” Nix’s eyes took in Frank Vatch’s spartan office. “There’s real life out there in the real world. Might be time to hang it up after bringing down Michael Collins.”

  Vatch
shook his head. “Collins isn’t down yet.”

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  Andie sat across from Michael at a small table in the corner of the visiting room. They held hands, and Michael told her about the boredom and routine of life in the MDC. Then Andie talked about their mutual friend.

  “You know my cousin Nicole was in town.”

  “Yeah.” Michael knew that Andie didn’t have a cousin, Nicole. Andie didn’t have any family. She grew up in foster care until she was old enough to run away. “How’s she doing?”

  “The same,” Andie said. “She’s always looking to get paid, but nobody’s got any money.”

  “I thought you had that list of people that were looking for nannies or cooks or whatever.”

  “Maybe.” Andie shrugged her shoulders. “Couldn’t find it in my bag.”

  Michael shook his head. “I think it may have been put in my bag, because there wasn’t much room in yours.” He thought of the dry-box and the list of account numbers. “Go down the list with her. See if anybody’s willing to hire her. Might get lucky.”

  “Really?”

  “Might be a little something to keep her interested.” Michael squeezed her hand. “Keep her busy.” Then Michael stood up. Andie stood, too.

  He wanted to touch her, caress her, but the rules didn’t allow it. So he leaned in. He kissed her quick on the lips, and then whispered in her ear. “Don’t trust Brea Krane. Play along. Give her a little money, if there is any. But stick with our other plan.”

  Andie pulled away. “Sounds good.” She nodded.

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  Michael lay flat on his back with his eyes open. The thin mattress was coated in thick plastic. The intent was to easily repel blood and other bodily fluids. The plastic crackled underneath him as he stared at the picture.

  It was a black and white photograph of his namesake. The Irish revolutionary stared back down at him. It was out of the frame. Glass and wood weren’t allowed. But the picture didn’t violate any of the MDC’s rules, so he was allowed to have it.

  Michael thought about the days back in his mom’s apartment in Boston, staring up at the picture of the Irish revolutionary, Michael John Collins. It had hung on the wall above the kitchen table. It was next to the pictures of John F. Kennedy and the Pope.

  Michael loved the fight and the honor that the photograph represented. When life in the MDC became dark, the photograph provided him a little light. He just needed patience.

  Michael Collins had a Constitutional right to a “speedy trial.” It was a right derived from the Magna Carta; written in 1215, developed over time by English judges, and eventually enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Various state courts interpreted the word “speedy” differently, but, in federal court, the definition of “speedy” was clear. The government had seventy days.

  Seventy days, in the abstract, may have sounded fast, but the trial could not start quickly enough. Every day in Pod 3, Michael felt his spirit die a little bit.

  He was being institutionalized. His routine never varied, and he wondered how he could survive if he was convicted. He’d be sentenced to at least twenty years.

  The only thing that kept him going was the picture of the Irish revolutionary and the little, growing stack of paper near his bed.

  PART THREE: TRIALS

  “To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.”

  –George Orwell

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  It was remarkable how fast the city changed with the season. The pavement no longer sizzled. The air became easier to breathe. People became a little more relaxed. The collective sought to enjoy the final days in a park or a long lunch at a sidewalk cafe before winter came and the mood changed again.

  Michael, however, could only experience it in the abstract. He only knew the seasons were changing by the calendar on his wall. Michael kept socializing to a minimum. The nature of the MDC meant that there was a constant shuffle of people. Accused men rotated through the MDC by the hundreds: intake, transfer, release, repeat.

  Michael had watched the faces change every day for over two months, feeling more and more like a lifer each time a new face appeared or a familiar person disappeared.

  Time passed slowly. Life fell into a routine. Every day Michael got up, ate breakfast, and then he spent the rest of the morning at one of the six computers in the MDC’s library.

  He’d then eat lunch, go to the small yard and run around the loop, regardless of whether it was raining or cold. Then he’d either go back to the library or meet with Andie, Kermit, or Quentin in the visitors room. After dinner, he printed.

  There were no exceptions, especially with regard to the last activity of the day. He always printed after dinner. He needed to build the stack of paper in his cell.

  There was usually an hour and a half between dinner and lights out. Michael used that time to print all of the Securities and Exchange Commission documents that he had found that day related to Joshua Krane and his various engineering and manufacturing companies. These were dense legal documents and mind-numbing financial disclosures, exactly what Michael was looking for.

  There were thousands of them posted on the Securities and Exchange website. Michael knew that he wasn’t going to get every document. But he was going to try.

  In the beginning, library staff had found it amusing. After a week, however, they were concerned.

  Michael used an inordinate amount of paper. The laser printer’s toner cartridge had to be replaced, and Michael was blowing through the library’s tiny budget for supplies.

  During the second week, library staff had told Michael that he could not print any more documents. Michael politely complied, knowing that Quentin would intervene.

  The next day Quentin informed the staff and the Director of the MDC that Michael had a constitutional right to participate in his own legal defense. Michael was a lawyer, and he was researching the charges against him as well as the man that he was accused of stealing from. The MDC wasn’t persuaded.

  Then Quentin offered a compromise that no government agency would ever turn down: Quentin offered to pay.

  With an agreement that the MDC would send Quentin a bill every week for Michael’s expenses, there was nothing more that they could do. No more interference.

  Michael knew that the MDC guards and library staff wanted to see what he was printing. Michael knew that they were curious. But because it was for his legal defense, the documents were privileged. He had a right to confidentiality, and so the jail staff watched helplessly as Michael brought a new stack of papers from the library to his cell at the end of every day.

  In the corner, by his bed, Michael put each new stack on top of the old. When the stack on the floor became ten to twelve inches high, Michael brought the paper to a meeting with Quentin.

  Quentin then took them back to the rental, and Michael started a new stack.

  It was tedious and repetitive, but it was Michael’s only chance.

  Although Michael used the Sixth Amendment to get the earliest possible trial date, his future actually depended on the Fifth Amendment.

  The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution prohibited any criminal defendant from being put on trial twice for the same offense. It meant that if Michael and Quentin could get the jury to say two words — not guilty — he would never stand trial again.

  Agent Vatch could do nothing. The government couldn’t continue to prosecute him. There would be no second chances for Brenda Gadd. It was the rule that prohibited double jeopardy. The government cannot prosecute an individual twice for the same crimes or any crime alleged to have arisen from the same conduct.

  The Founding Fathers, of whom Michael had grown quite fond during his time at the MDC, had been concerned about a tyrannical government. The only exception to the rule was when the jury could not agree on a verdict and a mistrial was declared.

  Michael wasn’t interested in a mistrial o
r a “hung jury.” He wanted a unanimous “not guilty.” Either his plan was going to work or it wasn’t. He was betting everything.

  He had made his choice. It was done. Michael pushed the doubts aside. He’d do whatever it took to get out. Whatever it took to be free. He wasn’t going to play fair. The truth didn’t matter. The truth was the government’s problem, not his.

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  Michael looked at the clock on the far wall of the MDC’s library. It was early afternoon. Quentin was scheduled to arrive in an hour and a half.

  Michael glanced over at the librarians at the desk, and then at his computer screen. It was time to vary the routine, slightly.

  He placed his notepad on the desk next to the keyboard. On the notepad, he had fifteen pages of handwritten notes. It was a legal document he had been thinking about for months.

  Hundreds of times, he had written and re-written the document in his head. Michael had always resisting the urge to write it down. He feared that it would be discovered.

  Then, finally, last night he had to put pen to paper.

  He worked through the night. The language had to be exact. It needed to be worthy of the bright young associate attorney at Wabash, Kramer and Moore, which Michael John Collins once was.

  Michael took a deep breath, and then clicked over to the computer’s word processing program.

  Although what he did in the library was supposed to be confidential, Michael didn’t trust anybody. He wasn’t going to save any drafts. He was just going to type, review, print, and delete, hoping that nobody would ever go to the trouble or expense of finding the clicks and keyboard strokes buried deep within the computer’s hard-drive.

  His freedom depended on this.