No Time To Run (Legal Thriller Featuring Michael Collins, Book 1) (3 page)

“
A call would suggest I liked you, Francis.” Michael knew that Agent Frank Vatch hated the name Francis.

He kept walking. He continued into the terminal’s main corridor, putting his hands in his pockets, so that Vatch wouldn’t see them shake.

“
My sources tell me you are going back to the original scene of the crime.” Vatch wheeled faster to keep pace with Michael.

Michael still didn’t respond. He followed the exit signs. His eyes straight ahead, ignoring the chain restaurants, vending machines, and shoeshine stands.

“
You couldn’t need the money so soon,” Vatch laughed, while Michael kept going.

Michael walked up to the customs desk, handed the official his passport, said he didn’t have anything to declare, and was waved through.

Vatch flashed his badge and followed behind.

“
Or could it be that you do need the money?” Vatch whistled. “Now, that would be something, burning through all that dough in just over two years. What was the grand total, again?”

“
Don’t know what you're talking about.” Michael kept going. His head was cloudy from the Valium, and he wondered if he was really having this conversation. Michael knew that he would have to deal with Vatch at some point, but not like this, not so soon.

A man in a long, black coat stood in front of the door holding a white sign with Michael’s name on it, and Michael remembered Lowell’s offer to arrange for a car.

“
Thank you, God,” Michael mumbled under his breath. He pointed at the sign. “That’s me. Let’s go.”

The driver hesitated as he noticed the man in the wheelchair ten yards behind giving chase and saying something about secret bank accounts.

“
He’s not with me,” Michael said to the driver. “Just a crack-pot.”

“
Fine, sir.” The driver took Michael’s knapsack into his hand, his eyes lingered for a moment on Michael’s sandals, torn pants, and wrinkled shirt. “Gonna be cold,” the driver said, and then started walking.

Michael followed him out of the terminal to a shiny black Crown Vic. The sun was setting, and everything was cast in an orange tint, even the inch of New York slush that had settled into the nooks and crooks of the otherwise cleared sidewalk.

The driver opened the door and Michael got in.

“
See you, Francis.” Michael closed the door, and Agent Frank Vatch flashed an obscene gesture. He also shouted something that likely went along with that gesture, but Michael couldn’t hear it.

The driver put the key in the ignition, and started the car. He began to shift the car into gear, but stopped.

“
You an internet guy?”

Michael thought about it, and then nodded.

“
Yeah.” He saw no sense in disturbing the only rational explanation the driver could think of for helping a thirty-something hippie escape in a limousine from an angry paraplegic.

“
Lost my f’n shirt in the bubble,” the driver said. “You mus’ be one of the only ones left.”

The driver reached down, and then pulled up a thick manila envelope. He handed it to Michael.

“
Supposed to give you this.”

On the outside, was the logo of Wabash, Kramer & Moore, and inside was a binder of paper with a cover memorandum written by some first-year associate summarizing the contents.

It was Andie’s police file.

“
Mind if we make an extra stop?”

“
You got me for the night.” The driver pulled away.

When they merged into traffic, Michael briefly looked up from the papers at a group of people standing in line for a taxi.

That was when he saw him. Michael couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but they talked once or twice when he stayed at the resort. He loved using big words, and always wanted to play Scrabble with other people in the cantina. He was odd at the time, but the beaches around Playa del Carmen were filled with odd people, particularly the Sunset.

Shaped like a barrel—six foot, maybe just over, balding, goatee― every part of his body - from his legs to his neck to his fingers - was thick. That was really the best description for him: Thick.

He must have been on the same flight as Michael, but how co
uld he have missed him? Michael thought about asking the driver to stop, but then thought better of it. He didn’t know what he would do.

Michael stared as they drove past. And then, at the last possible moment, the thick man looked at Michael, smiled, and waved.

CHAPTER FIVE

Adjacent to LaGuardia Airport, ten mismatched buildings, collectively known as Riker’s Island, sat on a small patch of land in the middle of the East River. They housed over 130,000 men and women who had been arrested, imprisoned or otherwise just plain thrown away. In the 1990s, the prisons on the island were so crowded that the mayor anchored a barge in the river to house another 800 inmates.

Riker’s Island was Andie Larone’s new home. 

It had been almost ten years since Michael came to Riker’s Island every week as part of Columbia Law School’s free legal clinic, but the path through the island’s maze of buildings and service roads quickly came back to him.

He directed the driver down one street and up another until finally arriving at the building they wanted, the Rose M. Singer Center for Women. It was a squat, concrete building put up in the late 1980s, and, as if to reflect the women who resided there, the outside of the building was a dirty, faded pink.

“
I’m going to stay right here.” The driver slowed the Crown Vic to a stop.

“
Good,” Michael said. “I’m not sure if I can even get in at this hour.”

He collected the papers and put them back into the Wabash, Kramer & Moore envelope, and then took a breath. Michael tried to clear his mind, pushing Agent Vatch and everybody else to the side. He forced himself to concentrate on Andie. She deserved that much.

Michael got out and hustled toward the door. A hard wind came off the river and Michael conceded that the stewardess was right. He needed to buy a jacket.

The front door of the Singer Center closed behind him, and Michael walked up to the security desk. He told the large, male guard who he was and who he wanted to see, but the guard didn’t move. He gave Michael a once-over and said, “Do what now?”

###

A half-dozen forms, four dirty looks, one condescending sneer, and a dismissive laugh later, he found himself in a small room set aside for attorneys and their clients. Michael sat in one of its two hard, wooden chairs. A three-by-three graffitied table was between the chairs, pressed against and bolted to the wall. A plastic pitcher of warm water and two dirty glasses rested on the table, daring someone to take a drink.

Sitting alone and waiting, Michael read and reread the file.

Andie Larone was the strongest person he knew, man or woman. Like Michael, she didn’t have an easy time growing up. She was one of six kids, all removed by social services and shipped from one foster home to another. Some of the homes were good and some were very, very bad, but none were ever permanent. Andie learned to be independent before she learned her ABCs.

Even knowing Andie’s strength, Michael wasn’t sure how she would survive this. Seeing the case set forth in the police reports made Michael realize just how hard it was going to be to get her home.

Michael flipped through the papers and looked at the first two counts in the charging document: Count 1: First Degree Murder pursuant to Chapter 40 of the New York Penal Code Article 125; Count 2: Possession of an Illegal Substance with Intent To Sell pursuant to Chapter 40 of the New York Penal Code Article 220; Count 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and so on, fourteen counts  total. Each one was a quick jab to his stomach, getting stronger and harder as he went. By the end, the charges had blurred into a rapid succession of punches until finally Michael had to set the documents down and push them away.

He glanced back at the door, wondering what was taking so long.

He looked back at the papers spread out in front of him. He looked for a mistake, something the police had done that tainted the rest of the investigation. A mistake that would allow him to prevent the prosecutor from using the evidence found in Andie’s rental car at trial. In legal jargon, it was called “suppressing the fruit of a poisonous tree,” but it was more like a “get out of jail free” card in Monopoly.

The door buzzed and a bell rang.

Michael looked up.

“
Andie,” he said, standing.

It had only been three days, but Andie looked pale. With no make-up, there was nothing to disguise the dark circles under her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping.

Then there was the necklace.

Andie’s simple necklace with the four beads and burnt gold key was gone, probably tucked away in a plastic bag somewhere with the rest of her clothes. He had never seen her without it.

Walking slowly through the door, Andie stopped a few feet in front of him as Michael came toward her. She put out her arms, and then wrapped around him. She squeezed tight for a second, and then melted.

Nothing felt more right, and Michael let the guilt and anxiety that had dogged him since the airport fade away. She was his only friend, and he was going to stay in New York for as long as it took. “Save her or die trying,” Michael thought, knowing it was a far more apt summary of the situation than he would ever admit to anybody, especially Andie. 

CHAPTER SIX

In one of Michael’s first cases as a lawyer, he and Lowell Moore had defended a surgeon in a medical malpractice case. The surgeon had been in his mid-50s, and had performed thousands of surgeries, some big and some small. He had been well respected in the medical community and had even served as an adjunct professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine
― a success. And then one day, he glanced at a chart too quickly and amputated the wrong leg of a man with diabetes.

When Michael had asked questions about it, the surgeon was unemotional. “I made a mistake,” he had said, but there was no feeling in his e
yes. There had been no remorse or empathy. Cutting people had become just a job; the unconscious body on the table was an inanimate object, not a father or a mother, or a grandfather or a friend. To him, cutting the wrong leg off had been the same as missing a meeting.

Michael sat across the table from Andie and felt like that surgeon. His emotions had been compartmentalized, and he went about his job, cutting and dissecting the facts presented to him and placing those facts within a legal framework. For the moment, he had convinced himself that it was the only way to help her. Although he knew, deep down, that wasn’t true.

Michael let Andie speak. Every question he asked was weighed against the need for information. It wasn’t about getting a complete record this time. It was about listening, digesting the facts. There would be time to circle back and fill in the holes.

“
They showed me photos,” Andie continued. “The cop called them the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures.”

“
Trying to shock you into saying something,” Michael said. He was tempted to continue his thought, but held back. “Did you recognize the man in the photos?”

“
I don’t think so.” Andie’s eyes wandered away. “But I don’t know.”

“
The file says that he came to the Sunset about five months ago, stayed four days, and then left.”

Andie shook her head.

“
Where’d they get that from? I don’t know who comes and goes. I just scribble the names in a guest book; sometimes I don’t even do that.”

Andie closed her eyes. A tear worked its way down her cheek. She rocked back and forth, and then became still.

“
This is bad,” she said. “Isn’t it? It’s bad.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The dead guy in the photo was Helix Johannson, a drug dealer from the Netherlands who immigrated to the United States by stating that he would “invest” over a million dollars in the local economy, and of course, pay a nice fee to the federal government in the process. It was a legalized form of bribery and bias deep within the immigration code, where rich foreigners leap-frogged over the thousands of other people who had been waiting for years to come into the country.

All you needed was an affidavit, a bank account statement, and a cashier’s check made out to Uncle Sam. God bless America.

Helix filed his papers in June 1989. A few months later he received his travel documents, a visa, and a brief letter from the State Department welcoming him to the greatest economy in the world.

To satisfy the immigration officials and the terms of his visa, Helix did invest. He set up a real estate company and bought properties in affluent neighborhoods in and around New York, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Reno, and Los Angeles. They were the perfect tax write-off. They were also the perfect network of houses and apartments to distribute large quantities of pain killers, ecstasy, cocaine, and pot to his select clientele.