EDDIE
Harper called me just after she left Sofia's place around five in the afternoon. She didn't get much out of her, and she was tired. We arranged to meet for breakfast the next day after my meeting with the DA.
In all my time as an attorney I'd never had a good experience with plea bargains. Even if the prosecution are offering your client a great deal on a guilty plea, with reduced jail time for saving the city the cost of a trial, it always carries a tinge of regret for me. In a plea deal, the prosecutor is the one sentencing the client, not the judge. Sure, you can bargain a little, but normally you don't have a lot of power in that situation. Harry Ford, before he became a judge, once told me that it was the plea bargains that get you into trouble with the client. Sure, they like the deal to begin with – one year of jail time on a plea, or run the risk of a trial and conviction that carried a fifteen-year sentence. That's a no brainer even for those clients whose brains don't work so good. But after six months of the Department of Correction's hospitality in a double cell at Sing Sing, with another six to go, it's surprising how many clients begin to complain about their lawyer forcing them to take a plea – that they're really innocent after all. Unfortunately, a lot of them are telling the truth. Innocent people plead guilty every day in every city in America because the prosecutor dangles a deal that means they can serve a little time and then get out and get on with their lives. Take a deal and serve one year or risk twenty-five-to-life? It ain't hard to see why people take a plea.
And while I'd never enjoyed plea bargains, I enjoyed visiting Hogan Place even less. The DA's office felt like enemy territory. Always had. Always will.
The elevator door opened at the District Attorney's office reception, and there, behind the desk, was Herb Goldman. Sometimes I think he's part of the furniture, and not just because of his longevity in the job. His skin could have been stretched across a couch and passed for fine Italian leather. Still, even at his age, not much gets past Herb. He knows all the gossip in the office, and he's older than God. Probably wiser too. I approached Herb's garish purple tie and broad smile. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.
'How come you still haven't been struck off, Eddie?' said Herb. 'They haven't caught me yet. I thought you were dead.'
'Me? Nah, only the good die young.'
'In that case, that tie will live longer than you. What are those things on it, turtles?' I said, leaning in for a closer look at Herb's tie. I quickly decided I didn't want to get that close to it, and retreated a step.
'My wife bought me this tie.'
'You should get a divorce.'
'Do you know any good lawyers?' he said, shading his eyes and looking all
around the office like a cowboy surveying a barren prairie.
'You should be in one of those Florida retirement homes, making people your
own age miserable.'
'Don't tempt me. I'd love to retire, but I can't. The DA's office keeps
threatening to give me a gold clock every now and again, and I tell them the same thing – I can't retire. It's a death sentence – my wife would kill me if I was in the house all day. The DA that canned my ass would be an accessory to murder.'
'If your wife murdered you the DA would send her flowers and a thank-you card.'
Herb had a laugh that started somewhere in his belly and rumbled up through hissing pipes before escaping his lips in a high-pitched cacophonous wheeze. Like Mutley from the cartoons.
'I got you down to see Dreyer, with this crew,' he said, pointing with his pen to the other side of the room.
I hadn't noticed when I came in but seated to my left, on the couch, sat Levy, accompanied by the young lawyer I'd met outside the precinct – Kate. On the other chair was another young face, a guy with keen eyes who couldn't be more than twenty-five – the lawyer I'd seen with Levy visiting Alexandra's holding cell some days ago.
The presence of Levy and his team meant there was about to be a whole lot of trouble.
They got to their feet as I approached.
'Eddie, good to see you again,' said Levy, in a tone that didn't even get close to sincerity, and didn't care either. 'This is my associate, Scott Helmsley.'
He pointed to the fair-haired kid in the tight suit to his left. I'd seen him in the precinct on the night of the arrest but didn't get much of a chance to appraise him. He didn't look old enough to shave and yet he busted out a movie-star smile and extended a hand from a silk, double-cuff shirt.
'It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance,' said Scott, and he took my hand in the firm grip that some men use. I always thought the hard-handshake guys were compensating for something. The guys who can really crush your knuckles
without thinking about it don't need to prove their strength in the way they say hi.
The woman on his right, Kate, bowed her head and angled the toe of her shoe to the ceiling and moved it around using the heel to pivot. She was dressed in a gray business skirt, white blouse and black jacket. Her hands were clasped in front of her and I could only see the top of her head. She looked up at me.
There was an awkward pause. Not long. Maybe four or five seconds, but long enough for Levy to pretend he'd forgotten about her. He had caught sight of Kate swinging the toe of her shoe, he was simply making sure she and I knew Levy's pecking order when it came to his staff.
'Oh, I'm sorry, and this is—' he said, without turning toward her, just extending a palm in her direction, highlighting the afterthought.
'Kate Brooks,' I said, loudly, stepping past Levy and Scott. 'We met at the precinct. How are you?'
'I'm fine, thanks, Mr. Flynn.'
'Call me Eddie,' I said.
Levy bit his lip. I could smell bullshit office power plays from fifty yards. 'How's your client?' she said.
'Better. She's out of the hospital, and out of jail. Yours too, I understand.' 'Yea—'
'That's right,' said Levy stepping between us, cutting off Kate mid-sentence.
He hitched up his pants, maneuvering them side to side as he hauled them over his stomach like he was screwing them into place.
'So how do you want to play it with Dreyer? I say we let him do the talking, take everything out of the room and mull it over. No decisions in the room. Only thing we're set on is splitting the trial. We must have separate trials – our clients are blaming each other so we don't have a choice,' said Levy.
I nodded, said nothing. Over his shoulder Kate stepped back a pace, lowered her head again as Scott sidled up to Levy and nodded along with every word Levy said, like his boss was spilling the gospel. Two seconds ago I was talking to Kate, now the boys had basically trampled over her, taking control of the space and the conversation.
I wondered how small Levy's dick had to be for him to get this kind of enjoyment from degrading a female employee.
Pretty damn small, I concluded.
Then Herb hollered over from behind the desk, 'Mr. Dreyer will see you all in the conference room. Go on through, he's waiting. Nice to see you, Eddie.'
'You too, Herb,' I said.
Levy turned toward the double doors just beyond the couches in the reception
area, waved a hand over his shoulder as if he was calling his troops to him. Scott trotted alongside him, and Kate followed last, clutching a legal pad. She reached up and took a pen from the knot in her hair. Holding open the conference room doors, Levy ushered Scott in first, without even looking at him. As Kate passed him, I saw Levy's eyes fall low to her calves. He watched Kate from behind, his fat lips puckered in a distasteful way that said he liked what he saw.
He let the door go and was about to move inside when I skipped ahead, grabbing the closing door and bumping into him. He rocked back on his feet a few steps, waving his little arms to regain his balance. Managing to grab a chair, he shot me an angry look. The heat in his gaze fed from his embarrassment. I saw Kate covering her mouth, trying not to laugh.
'Sorry, Theo, I thought you had the door. My bad,' I said.
He turned away from me in a huff, dragged out a chair and sat down.
The oval conference table seated ten. Four on one side, four on the opposite
side. One at either end. A door at the rear of the room opened and in came Wesley Dreyer. He had a slow, confident stride, thin lips and receding hair. Genetic male-pattern baldness must have kicked in for Wesley in his early twenties. What remained up top had been carefully combed even though it looked thin almost to the point of transparency. He wore a different suit to the one he had on this morning at Sofia's arraignment. This one was pale blue, with a similarly colored shirt and a navy tie.
'Sit down, please, gentlemen, and lady,' said Dreyer, careful to acknowledge Kate with a polite nod.
Dreyer pulled out the chair at the head of the table. I walked around the table and took a position opposite Levy and his team. Before he sat down Dreyer unbuttoned his jacket, smoothed down his tie and gracefully put his ass in the chair. He could've been a ballet dancer. From his jacket pocket he took a fountain pen, unscrewed the top and began making careful notes in a flowing script on a legal pad. He wrote down who was in the meeting, swept his arm up in front of his face and noted down the time from his Citizen watch. He then put down his pen, adjusted his cuffs just so, and carefully laced his fingers together. Some of his movements, although graceful, had a reptilian feel. Like a snake coiling itself, ready to strike.
'I'll be brief, and I won't repeat myself so you may want to take notes,' said Dreyer.
Kate, Scott and Levy had pens at the ready, hovering over their legal pads which had the name of the firm embossed at the top of their pages in gold lettering.
I folded my arms, sniffed and waited. Without moving his head, Dreyer's eyes
slotted to the left, locking onto me. While the others had their heads down, ready to write, I kept eye contact with Dreyer. Anything I could do to unnerve a prosecutor was mandatory in my playbook. It didn't seem to work. Dreyer looked right back at me like he was holding aces and he knew I had a pair of eights.
'Trial will be in January. We have most of the evidence and we have motive. You already have basic discovery, which I hope to complete soon. All I'm waiting for are full reports from forensics and a witness statement from the deceased's lawyer, Mr. Modine. I'm already in possession of the preliminary forensic results. You'll get the full reports in time, but the short version is I have forensic evidence linking both of your clients to the murder. And only your clients.'
'What do you mean by only our clients?' said Kate.
Soon as she'd said it, Levy tutted, and Kate looked down at her legal pad, swallowed. Levy didn't appreciate his staff speaking up in a meeting with a prosecutor. I thought it was a fair question. One that instantly came to my mind. Kate had good instincts. I liked her. With Levy, it didn't matter that she had asked a good question, it was the mere fact that she had the audacity to open her mouth at all.
'Well, Miss Brooks, I would ask that any questions you have you keep to the end of the meeting, but I'll take this one now since you've asked,' said Dreyer, not looking at Kate. Instead he looked at Levy as if to acknowledge Levy's seniority. 'Your clients were both arrested in the property. No one else inside. The medical examiner puts the time of death around the same time as the 911 calls. We're not looking for any other suspects – forensics link your clients not only to the scene, but the murder.'
Kate wrote down the answer, and lowered her shoulders to the desk, as if to appear as small as possible. She mouthed a 'sorry' to Levy who rolled his eyes and put his index finger to his lips. It didn't matter that it wasn't worth the time and energy; if I worked for Levy I would have put my fist through those fat lips a long time ago.
I thought about this new information and how it fit with Sofia's story. Frank's house was practically a mansion. Lots of rooms over three tall floors. It's entirely possible Sofia and Alexandra could both be in the house at the same time and be unaware of each other's presence.
'One, or both, of your clients murdered the victim. In that case, considering the forensics and the prosecution witnesses, this will be a joint trial. There's an overlap in all of the evidence,' said Dreyer.
A joint trial in a case like this is a prosecutor's wet dream. With two
defendants blaming each other, it's likely the jury believes neither of them and both will get convicted. If one of them pulls off a miracle and manages to persuade a jury they're innocent, the other defendant takes the hit. It guarantees the prosecutor a win – no matter what.
Levy shot first.
'There's no chance in hell you're getting a joint trial. When one defendant is implicating the other, the criminal code and case law dictates we split the trials. Mr. Flynn doesn't have to call his client to testify, and if he chooses not to then it's a violation of my client's constitutional right to face her accuser. It's unfair. It's a no to a split trial – right off the bat. Is that clear?' asked Levy.
If he was rattled by this, Dreyer didn't show it.
He pulled at the cuffs of his shirt again, making sure they protruded from the bottom of his jacket sleeves, before picking up his pen and noting down Levy's objection.
'The fact is we would need to run almost two identical prosecution cases against your clients, and that puts unnecessary financial strain on the city. It will be a joint trial. I am pushing very hard for this.'
'Pushing who?' I said.
Levy didn't mind me asking a question, in fact he nodded along. We waited for the answer. It never came.
'Mr. Flynn, Mr. Levy, if either of you want to split the trial you'll need to apply to the court with the proper motion. We will resist that motion. That's all I'll say on that matter. I want to get to the substance of this meeting if you don't mind.'
He looked at both sides of the table. Levy and his team were quiet, I leaned forward ready to listen.
'Thank you. The District Attorney's office recognizes that your clients are both blaming each other for the murder. We feel that a joint trial will result in at least one conviction. It will be open to the jury to convict both defendants and you don't need me to tell you that a joint conviction is the most likely verdict. I'm offering a one-time deal. Twelve years in exchange for a full confession and a statement implicating the co-defendant. If one of the sisters confesses, they walk out of jail in six years, maybe four, with good behavior, while the other will be there for life. This is a one-time deal, available to only one of the defendants. This offer is on the table for forty-eight hours, starting now.'
And people wonder why ordinary citizens plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit. Dreyer had called it pretty well. It was likely both women would be convicted in a joint trial. The odds of one of them winning was very small when both would call each other liars and murderers. Most juries in joint trials don't
believe either defendant, and convict both. In that situation, it made sense to take a plea – do four years instead of a life sentence.
Neither Levy nor I spoke. I watched Dreyer pinch the sides of his watch, and it took me a second to realize he was actually setting a timer. For real. Both Levy and I had a professional obligation to take this offer to our clients. Let them make the decision. I didn't want Sofia under that kind of pressure, not this early, but it looked like I didn't have a choice.
'If neither defendant pleads guilty, confesses and assists in the prosecution of the co-defendant, then we go to trial. There will be no more offers and no extensions. Forty-eight hours. If there's no confession, and we're going to a joint trial, then I expect both of your clients to take a polygraph test.'
'What?' said Levy.
'You heard me.'
'Polygraph results are not admissible evidence in this state,' I said.
'The old methods of polygraph testing were not admissible. Technology has
moved on. Polygraphs are admissible evidence in eighteen states now. We're pretty sure we can prove our examiner's expertise in New York. As it stands, they are recognized as an important investigative tool for law enforcement. So much in this case comes down to the credibility of your clients. Who will the jury believe? One or neither of them? We will inform the court that a polygraph was offered and if it is refused we'll exploit that refusal. The judge can refer to it in his summing up to the jury.'
I'd underestimated Dreyer. That was damn smart. A real chess move. If one sister refused the polygraph, it made her look guilty. If both refused it, then it would appear as if both were in on the murder together. If one passed the polygraph, and one failed, then Dreyer could use it to convict the sister who failed it.
I put my hand in my inside jacket pocket while I watched Levy's face turn purple. He looked how I felt. Except I didn't show it. I kept my cards tight and close. A murder trial required the ultimate poker face. Levy was talking so loud and so fast at Dreyer that spittle catapulted from his lips and landed in small white clouds on the desk. I put my elbows on my knees, and beneath the table, out of sight of Dreyer and Alexandra's defense team, I opened Levy's wallet and began going through it. I'd lifted it when I bumped into him. I genuinely didn't mean to collide with him that hard. My pocket dip was executed clumsily and if I hadn't tipped him off balance he would've felt the move. As it was, he hadn't noticed a thing. I'd meant to grab his phone, but I felt it vibrate just as I put my fingers close. No way to lift a vibrating phone without him feeling it. His wallet would have to do.
Inside the brown leather wallet I found four one-hundred-dollar bills, two twenties and a five-spot. The usual array of credit and debit cards. There were membership cards for a gym, loyalty cards for different stores and a business card that read 'Discretion Supplies.' As business cards went, it looked expensive and well designed. The 'D' and the 'S' were large and in an ornate spidery font. The card itself was textured and plastic. There was no phone number and no website on the card. On the back there was a barcode for a smart phone. I put the card in my pocket, then closed the wallet and tossed it a few feet to the floor, beneath the table.
I raised my head, Levy was still in full flow, pointing a finger at Dreyer who looked on with composed distance.
'Mr. Levy—' said Dreyer.
'I'm not finished, not by a long way, the Mayor will hear about this abuse of —'
'Mr. Levy, you are finished. This meeting is over ...' said Dreyer, inching back his chair.
'Wait, Levy, shut the hell up for a second,' I said.
The look on Levy's face amused Dreyer enough to keep him in his seat. I saw Levy's lackey, Scott, furrow his brows in a scowl vaguely aimed at me. Kate bit her lip, suppressing a satisfied smile.
With Levy still catching flies in his open mouth, I got down to the main reason I came here.
'Whatever offer you've made won't have any weight in court if you don't share some more of the prosecution evidence. The accused have a right to know the case against them. Let us see what you've got – that way our clients can make an informed choice.'
'Agreed,' said Dreyer, simply, and got up. He left the room, but only for a few seconds. When he opened the door he revealed half a dozen Assistant District Attorneys gathered in the corridor outside. They must have heard Levy's rant and come to listen. They quickly dispersed when Dreyer came out, except one of them who handed Dreyer two thick brown envelopes. He thanked the assistant, then stepped back through the open door and gave an envelope to me and one to Levy. Without another word, he left.
I left the table and said, 'Someone's wallet is under the conference table. Better pick it up. There isn't an honest man in this building who would hand it in. I'll see you folks later. I'll give you a call, Theo. One word of advice – if you want something, ask for it. It's a lot easier than pounding your little fists on a desk.'
He began to say something, but I was already out of the room. I wanted Theo
in fighting mode. As long as a lawyer's blood was up, they weren't thinking, they were raging. I needed time to think. Theo didn't look like a trial lawyer. He looked to me like a pleader. He would put the deal in front of his client and tell her it was good.
I wanted to see Sofia's reaction to the deal. I needed to know for sure Sofia was not involved in her father's death. On a deep level I felt she was innocent, but there was always a small flame of doubt in some cases. I wanted her to blow out that candle.
This trial had nightmare written all over it. Dreyer was having some problems though – he had a missing witness. He hadn't tracked down Mike Modine, Frank's lawyer. When he said he didn't have that statement I had detected something in his voice, a wrinkle of frustration. Modine, whoever he was, wouldn't want to get involved as a witness in a murder trial and he was probably giving the DA's office the runaround. And there was no doubt this was a bad case to be involved in.
The worst cases all come down to who is telling the truth.
A polygraph test was a hand grenade in a case like this. It was going to blow up in someone's face. Either Sofia, or Alexandra. No matter which way you cut it – one of them was a killer. I just hoped it wasn't Sofia.
I had an idea I was about to find out.