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No longer Eddie Flynn the hustler, I became Eddie Flynn the lawyer. And the skills I’d learned on the street leaped into the courtroom mighty easily. Instead of hustling pit bosses, bookies, insurance companies, and drug dealers, I now plied my trade against judges and juries. But I’d never hustled a client. Until two days ago. The Ruger’s barrel angled toward my chest. This last con would cost me my life.
I didn’t hear the shot, didn’t see the muzzle flash or the recoil. I only felt the bullet ripping into my flesh. That fatal shot had become inevitable from the very moment I’d made the deal. How did I end up here? I thought. What was the deal that led me to take a bullet? Like most things, it had small beginnings. It all started forty-eight hours ago with a toothpick and a dime.
Special Agent Bill Kennedy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was addressing the men I’d assaulted, both of whom were on their knees. The one with a buzz cut gritted his teeth against the pain of his ruined fingers. The other, larger man in the leather jacket rolled around on the floor, holding his arm with his gun still safely holstered. Kennedy was the last person I’d expected to find in my office.
He looked at his men, then looked at me like I’d broken something belonging to him. The navy-blue pants of his suit rode up a little, enough for me to see his black silk socks and the backup piece strapped to his left ankle—a Ruger LCP.
He sipped lightly from the flask, then continued. “First, we will pay you one hundred thousand dollars. Cash. Tax free. Not bad for a morning’s work. Second, and more important for you, do this for me and I won’t send your wife to a federal prison for the rest of her life.”
I knew the story already. Had it laid out for me in detail around nine hours ago by Dell. Even so, I wanted to hear it from the client. 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. Trouble is, you need all of the information to make a judgment call on what really happened. And that’s without considering whether or not your storyteller is even telling the truth to begin with.
Lawyers don’t usually question whether or not a client is telling the truth. That way lies madness. You do what you have to and trust the system. So, the guilty plead guilty. The innocent fight their case and the jury decides. If a by-product of that process is the emergence of the truth, then so be it, but the truth is not the aim of the process. The verdict is the aim. Truth has no place in the trial because no one is concerned with finding it, least of all the lawyers or the judge.
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.
I don’t think any of them would kill somebody. But there’s one person I know who might.” “Who?” “Bernard Langhiemer.” “Who the hell is Bernard Langhiemer?” “A competitor. Somebody who once told me he’d destroy me. I can tell you everything you need to know about him.”
I saw through Dell’s game. It was a familiar one. It’s a game the justice system plays every single day in America—because sometimes it simply doesn’t matter if you’re really innocent of the crime; the only smart move is to plead guilty and make a deal for a lesser sentence. “You want me to read the new evidence and tell David that irrespective of his innocence, he will definitely be convicted and his only choice is to plead guilty and make a deal to cut his sentence.” “Bingo,” said Dell.
“The poet Robert Frost once said that a jury is twelve people chosen to decide who has the best lawyer.
The receptionist probably made more money in tips in a week than I made in a year. She was tall and blond with a warm face the same color as honeyed milk. Her nails were insanely red, to match lips that sat on her face like twin Ferraris on a Gold Coast beach.
