Mortal Allies (11 page)

The attorney believed his client. He put all his considerable legal brilliance into the case. He labored fifteen-hour days, ignored his other clients, borrowed money from the bank to keep his practice going, and worked solely, completely, singly on this case. It became his obsession. He gambled dangerously with his financial future. He traded his entire client base for this one man, this one trial.

The day before the trial opened, the attorney and his client went through their preparations one final time. The attorney was so utterly convinced of his client’s innocence, and was so sure of the fine, wholesome impression he’d make with the jury, that he decided to take a great legal risk. He decided to put his client on the stand. They were rehearsing his testimony when they got to the part where the attorney asked his client about the tiny bone shards in the furnace.

“Oh, those,” the client said with the kind of infectious chuckle the lawyer was sure would warm the hearts of even the most hardhearted jury. “See, I had a dog named Max. A cute little schnauzer, a real great dog. I loved him dearly. He died and so I cremated him.”

The lawyer was gifted, or in this case cursed, with a fly-trap memory. Six months before, his client had told him the dog was named Jackie, only now the name was Max. And before the dog was a beagle; now it was a schnauzer. For the first time, he had grave doubts. If the story about the dog wasn’t true, maybe nothing else was true, either.

He lost a great deal of sleep over the following week. The trial progressed. The prosecutor threw his best punches and the defense lawyer counterattacked with a vengeance. He was superbly prepared. He had a convincing rebuttal for everything. He poked holes of doubt every which way.

On the seventh day, the prosecutor was scheduled to call the witness the defense attorney most dreaded — the police officer who’d performed the initial search of his client’s home. In the backyard, discarded behind some overgrown bushes, the officer had discovered some children’s clothing. A mother who lived four blocks away had identified a red shirt as being the same type her son wore on the very day he disappeared. The boy had been missing for four months.

The clothing could have been hidden there by any Tom, Dick, or Harry who’d passed by, and the shirt might or might not have been her son’s, since it was unmarked, and it was a popular generic brand. But the mere fact that it was there would be very damning with the jury. Everything about the prosecutor’s case was circumstantial, but one thing every criminal lawyer knows is that the weight of two pieces of circumstantial evidence is far greater than the sum of the parts.

The problem for the prosecutor was that he couldn’t introduce the shirt into evidence because in a pretrial ruling the defense attorney had convinced the libertarian judge that since the clothes had been discovered outside the premises of the dwelling, and the search warrant had specified the house itself, they were inadmissible.

The judge, however, wasn’t a complete dolt, so he limited his ruling to say the clothing was inadmissible only so long as the issue of what was discovered outside the home was never raised. The prosecutor was then instructed that he was barred, under any circumstances, from
initiating
discussion about the evidence found outside the home. Sounds loopy, but you have to understand that legal rulings have a perverse logic all of their own.

The quandary was this: The defense attorney was suddenly shattered by self-doubt. He suspected his client had misled and manipulated him for six long months. He just wasn’t sure. He’d built a strong defense. He’d covered every base. He was confident of his ability to neutralize the prosecutor’s case. All the key evidence was either inadmissible or easily refuted.

That is, unless the defense attorney in his cross-examination of the investigating officer inadvertently triggered a discussion about the evidence found outside the house. That would allow the prosecutor to get the shirt introduced as evidence. It would compound the case against his client. It would place his client at great peril. It would also devastate his own legal career, which was hovering on the verge of bankruptcy.

The attorney couldn’t sleep the whole night before. The nice, clean-cut young man he’d come to like so much might actually have murdered and then eaten twelve people, including six young boys. The thought sickened him. To rectify the situation, all he had to do was make one small verbal slip the next day, to allude in any way to the search of the grounds around his client’s home. The prosecutor would hear the slip and pounce.

He was still wrestling with himself when it came his turn to cross-examine the police officer. The officer’s name was Sergeant Curtis Lincoln, a big Black man with deep-set, uncompromising eyes who looked positively tortured, no doubt because the prosecutor’s case was falling apart. The defense attorney got up. He stood for nearly half a minute, so miserably conflicted that he became tongue-tied. The judge called his name three times. He looked at the police officer and Curtis Lincoln stared back searchingly. He looked at his client and the young man stared back even more searchingly.

In that instant, the attorney concluded that his lawyer’s oath took precedence over his own deeply held personal convictions. He told the judge he had no questions and fell back into his chair.

His client was found not guilty. It was an incredible victory. The press lauded the attorney as the second coming. He was interviewed on talk shows and heralded as the most promising legal mind in the city, probably the state, maybe the whole damned country. Offers poured in from firms promising instant partnerships, from wealthy suspects who wanted to pay top dollar for his services, from publishing houses wanting to ghostwrite his story.

Within a year six more people disappeared. Sergeant Curtis Lincoln got another warrant, did another search, found six sets of bones in the client’s basement, all neatly picked clean of meat. The client was arrested again, and the first thing he did was call the same lawyer.

Most everybody in the class chuckled when old Harold Maladroit III outlined this case. The irony was too excruciating, the story too perfect. It had to be fabricated. It simply couldn’t be true.

I wasn’t chuckling, though. I was watching old Maladroit’s eyes.

As soon as the class was done, I rushed down to the law library and researched for four hours. I finally found the right case; it was named
State
vs.
Homison
. It concerned an accused cannibal named William Homison who was brilliantly defended by an attorney named Harold Maladroit III. The reason the case made the law books was because of the groundbreaking argument Maladroit constructed to get the clothing excluded as evidence. No wonder the old coot fled from the practice of law to teach legal ethics.

Like lots of ethical issues faced by lawyers, the lesson of this one took you into all kinds of dark, twisted back alleys. Maladroit had done what his oath required him to do. He’d steamrolled his own conscience and forged ahead. He’d also sentenced six more people to death.

My
oath now dictated that I should follow Carlson’s instructions to the letter and do everything in my power to prove my client innocent. Only, if I did, I might help sentence Whitehall to death. There were no guarantees either way, but a lawyer must appease his own sense of right and wrong. All attorneys gamble with the fates and lives of their clients: The trick is to gauge the odds, and make the bet you can live with regardless of the consequences.

The best bet for Whitehall was to pick apart the prosecutor’s case. To do that, though, I needed to learn a great deal more about what had happened. So I got on the phone. I called Imelda and told her to have the case materials delivered to my room at noon. I would’ve told her to bring them up right away, but I intended to be present when Whitehall was transferred from American custody to the Koreans.

Carlson was going to be in for a rude shock, and I needed to be there to stabilize her. I called her next and made an appointment to accompany her to the military holding facility at nine-thirty.

That settled, I flipped on CNN and watched the coverage of the Antigay March on Washington. It was a sobering sight. Over a million marchers participated. There was a very dramatic shot taken at the Mall of a tightly crammed crowd that seemed to stretch off into infinity. There were quick glimpses of one frenzied preacher after another standing at a lectern, haranguing the crowd, and condemning the President, homosexuals, and about anybody who liked or supported either of them.

Thousands of placards were visible. Nearly all of them had a big photograph of a single face. I recognized the face, of course: Thomas Whitehall. The common motto on the signs read ASK, TELL, GO TO HELL, a surprisingly un-Christian sentiment, if you ask me.

By nine-thirty, I was standing at the front entrance of the Dragon Hill Lodge when Katherine appeared beside me. Neither of us said a word. We exchanged cold, surly nods and climbed into the sedan.

A big black paddy wagon and ten sedans filled with Korean police were parked outside the holding facility. The Koreans must’ve been worried about being ambushed by a crowd of angry vigilantes and having Whitehall lynched in the streets of Seoul. It wasn’t reassuring that they had to be concerned about that kind of thing.

Inside, a surprisingly tall, frightfully tough-looking Korean in a cheap-looking black silk suit was standing beside the Army captain in charge of the facility. The Korean had wide, knobby shoulders and a face that was more scuffed and scarred than the inside heels of my shoes. He was signing some papers I assumed were the transfer documents.

A sergeant led us to Whitehall’s cell so we could exchange some brief words before he was taken away. Whitehall got up as we entered and coolly shook our hands. He didn’t look the least bit anxious or concerned. He should’ve, though. He should’ve been quaking in his boots.

I opened with, “Good day, Captain Whitehall. You know anything about South Korean prisons?”

He offhandedly said, “I’ve heard stories.”

“They’re nasty places,” I warned him. “But I guess they’ll isolate you for your own safety. The accommodations, though, and the food, aren’t nearly as swank as you get here.”

“I went to West Point,” he said, like that accounted for everything. “I can handle it.”

I wanted to say, Oh boy, buddy, are you in for a surprise: Comparing West Point to a South Korean prison is like comparing the Waldorf-Astoria to a Bowery homeless shelter. But why throw fuel on a fire that was already lit? He’d feel the heat soon enough.

A moment later, the tall, oxlike Korean strutted into the cell, accompanied by two only slightly smaller thugs in blue uniforms. He gave an indifferent glance in our direction as he roughly shoved Whitehall against a wall, efficiently patted him down, then signaled the two policemen to come over. With the kind of lightning speed that comes only from ample practice, they cuffed Whitehall’s hands and feet. The cuffs were connected by heavy black chains that were not nearly as elegant as the American variety.

They forcefully swung Whitehall back around and started pushing him toward the door.

“Stop this right now!” Carlson yelled.

They ignored her. Or actually, they didn’t ignore her. They shoved him harder.

With a ferocious snarl, she stepped courageously into their path. She held up her business card and waved it across their faces. “I’m his attorney. I’m ordering you to stop shoving my client. Right now!”

One of the policemen looked over at the tall Korean in the black suit. A cold, peremptory nod was bestowed before the cop reached out and shoved Carlson so hard she flew against the wall and landed on her tush.

My manly ego told me to step in and clobber the officer who’d shoved her. And I started to, too. Then I heard the sound of a pistol being cocked. The tall guy in the dark suit, I now noticed, had a nasty-looking .38-caliber revolver pointed at my chest.

I smiled and humbly stepped back. Then Whitehall was whisked out of the cell by a series of more hard shoves.

Katherine was just lifting herself off the ground. I offered a hand, but she stared at it like it was the last thing on earth she’d ever touch.

I said, “I warned you they were rough.”

She wasn’t the type who liked I-told-you-so’s. She just gave me a sullen glance before we rushed out to follow Whitehall’s convoy. Our driver fell in at the end of the procession and we rode for the next forty minutes without exchanging a word.

The convoy turned off onto a street about midway between Seoul and Inchon, two cities that had grown so spasmodically they’d become all but connected. The huge, forbidding front gate of the prison swung open and the black paddy wagon, followed by eleven cars, proceeded inside. The Korean cars formed a ring and an army of police officers climbed out like ants and assembled into a cordon.

Two overeager Korean camera crews were already set up and ready to roll. They had their lenses focused on the black paddy wagon, so that all of Korea could witness the accused American getting his righteous comeuppance. Suddenly I noticed two of the blue-suited police officers step directly in front of the cameras to block their view.

Then the rear doors of the paddy wagon flew open and a body came sailing out. Whitehall landed on the ground with a loud
whoompf
and lay there a moment, perfectly still, like he was unconscious. Nice try. It didn’t work.

Three of the Korean cops came over and roughly yanked him off the ground. I looked at him closely. I didn’t see any visible damage, but maybe they’d limited themselves to body blows on the ride over.

His composure had evaporated. He looked scared as hell. I didn’t blame him. This was the moment when the two police officers blocking the cameras’ views stepped away and let the film roll. What the whole of Korea saw was a very frightened prisoner being dragged on both feet through some menacing-looking double doors. It was a picture sure to bring merriment to all those Koreans who wanted the homo rapist-murderer humbled and punished.

Katherine and I tried to follow him through the doors, but the tall cop with the linebacker’s shoulders stepped into our path.