The Plea (Eddie Flynn #2)

by Steve Cavanagh

“Harland and Sinton is a front. They practice a little law, but really they’re running the largest money-laundering scheme ever conducted on US soil. The firm acts for companies that don’t really exist, except on paper. They get their legitimate clients to buy shares in the companies, and those clients make a guaranteed return of around twenty percent on their investment. What those clients are doing, without knowing it, is handing over clean money, and the dirty money flows back through the dummy company accounts, cleaning it through the books, to pay the investors. The dirty money comes from drug cartels, terrorists, you name it. And your wife countersigned a document deeply implicating her in this fraud.”

What the hell had Christine gotten herself into? She was the only woman I’d ever truly loved. Our wedding had been a small affair. My parents were both dead, and with the exception of Judge Harry Ford and my partner, Jack Halloran, all of my friends were either hustlers, hookers, or mob guys, but still, they were my friends.

There were always multiple versions of every story. We are our own little planets, and invariably we can only see things from our own perspective, which includes our prejudices, our vices, our talents, and our limited perceptions. No two people see the same thing.

A person will tell the same story differently depending on whether they’re talking to a man or a woman, a college professor or a cabdriver, a cop or a lawyer. We unconsciously tailor our speech and body language so that we can gain empathy and understanding from the listener.

It’s no easy thing to kill somebody. Most murders happen when the perp is drunk or high or both. Or an argument gets out of hand, or someone suffers an extreme emotional disturbance. Most people couldn’t even contemplate murder. But there are people who are simply immune to the psychological blocks that stop us from killing. They have no empathy.

The system that allowed a defendant to buy a hotshot lawyer to get him off was the same system that pitted seasoned prosecutors with unlimited resources against public defenders who couldn’t buy their clients a bus ticket to get them to court. The system was wrong. It allowed the players to rule.

Innocent people often don’t want to take the chance of losing and doing fifteen or twenty years when they could make a deal and be out in two. It’s mathematics—not justice, but that’s the reality.

“The poet Robert Frost once said that a jury is twelve people chosen to decide who has the best lawyer.

People believe what they can see. As long as you control their view, you control their mind.

No trial is ever about the truth. It’s about what can or can’t be proven. It’s a game. And tomorrow we’re playing to win.”