The Reformers: A Matt Blake Novel (The Matt Blake legal thriller series Book 2) (6 page)

Chapter 13

“Hi, Matt, it’s Georgina Rice. Remember me? I’m the lady whose ass you kicked a few years ago on that
Andres
case.”

“Georgi, how the heck are you? I hear that you took a big job in New York. Senior partner at Jones, Brown, and Bingham, if I recall from the
Law Bulletin
. Congratulations. So to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

“Matt, I’m freaking out about something, and I think we need to talk. I read all about you representing that guy Ali Yamani, the man accused of the Water Tower Mall bombing. The
National Law Journal
did a good job of covering the story. To get right to the point, my firm represents the guy who is accused of the big mall bombing on Long Island last week. Just like Blake & Randolph we take on some
pro bono
criminal cases. The
Law Journal
went into a lot of details about the evidence against your client. Hell, it’s been all over the TV news as well. This is going to blow your mind, Matt. The evidence against my guy includes a thumbprint on the bomb detonator and a video of him standing next to the parcel that contained the bomb. They haven’t gone public with this stuff yet, but within a day or two you’ll see it on television. Matt, a fucking thumbprint and a video. This is too weird to be a coincidence. I have to be in Chicago the day after tomorrow. Can I see you so we can compare some notes?”

“You said that you were going to blow my mind, Georgi, and you just did. You have my total attention. How about the day after tomorrow at my office at 10 a.m.? I’ll have Woody Donovan there and my wife, Diana, who’s working with me on this case?”

“Great, Matt. Prepare to have your brain stretched even more.”

***

“Georgina Rice is here to see you, Matt,” Barbara said over the intercom. Diana and Woody were already in my office.

“Great to see you, Matt. You too Woody.” She gave us both hugs. “So this is the beautiful woman you married. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You know I had a big crush on your husband after the
Andres
case, Diana. There was something about getting my ass kicked on a big case that made my heart go aflutter.”

Diana laughed. “I sat in on the
Andres
trial, Georgina. When I saw you give Matt a hug and a kiss after the verdict, I knew I had to act fast.”

She squeezed Dee’s hand. “You two make a beautiful couple.”

“Okay, stop guys. You’re embarrassing me,” I said.

“And you’re boring me,” said Woody.

“I know we have a lot to talk about, but just bring me up to date on yourself, Georgi.”

“Well, as you know, I moved to New York to accept a partnership at Jones, Brown, and Bingham. I got married two years ago to a wonderful guy. He’s a federal judge.”

“What’s his name?” I asked, not that I expected to recognize it.

“Earl Lonergan.”

Diana and I looked at each other. Then we cracked up laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“Judge Lonergan officiated at our wedding three years ago.”

“Earl? My Earl? What were you doing in New York?”

“Matt and I were in the Witness Protection Program,” Diana said. “Long story. Judge Lonergan married us in a secret rooftop ceremony.”

I walked over to my bookshelf and took down a photo of the judge posing with us after the wedding.

It was Georgi’s turn to laugh. “Earl told me about performing a wedding for a couple in the Witness Protection Program, but of course he didn’t mention any names. As a matter of fact, it was right after your wedding that Earl called me and said an old friend of his from Jones, Brown and Bingham was looking for a litigation partner. After I moved to New York, Earl and I got married.”

“Georgi,” Diana said, “Matt and I are big believers in guardian angels. Maybe we’re your guardian angels and brought you and Earl together.”

“Oh, God, that so sweet. I can’t wait to tell Earl about this. Before I go on, I’m dying to know something. The typical lawyer in me had to do some research before I came here to meet you. I noticed that Diana’s name is on the firm roster as a paralegal. But I did some further checking and found out that Diana’s a full professor at Northwestern. I know that Blake & Randolph likes to hire talented people, but a full professor as a paralegal?”

“Matt and I love to work with each other,” Diana said. “He edits my articles and I help him with his cases. They me hired as a paralegal so we could talk about cases and not run afoul of client confidentiality.”

“Earl is going to love this.”

“So, Georgi,” I said, “tell us all about your criminal client and your thoughts on the
Yamani
matter.”

“I’ll start from the top. Okay, guys, I told Matt that I have something shocking to tell you, and I’m about to follow through on that promise. Mickey’s a 29-year-old library clerk.”

“Mickey? Is that his Muslim name?” Woody asked.

“No, his real name is Muhammed Sidduq.”

“My guy’s name is Al, short for Ali Yamani,” I said.

“Mickey is a college graduate, with a degree from the University of Cairo. And here’s something interesting. He’s also a writer. He’s self-published six novels, and all of them are critical of radical Islam. I started reading one of them last night. It’s entitled
A Culture of Death
. He’s not a bad writer, but somewhat preachy when he wants to make a point. He tells me that he’s gotten a lot of death threats because of his writings. As he said, he’s not popular with jihadis, and if you read his stuff you’ll see why. I’ll email you his author page on Facebook. You may want to start reading his books. I think it will help you with the
Yamani
matter.”

“Holy shit,” Woody said. “Pardon my language, but when I was at the jail yesterday to go over some facts with Al Yamani, he mentioned that he was a writer. He said that he’s written three novels.”

“He never mentioned that to me,” I said.

“When was the last time you interviewed a criminal defendant and asked him if he had written any books? It only came up in conversation when I asked if he wanted some reading material. That’s when he mentioned that he was working on his latest book. Now, he’s writing on yellow pads, if you can believe that.”

“Did you get the name of any of his books, Woody?” Diana asked.

“Yeah, his first novel is called
The Sands of Destruction
. I bought it on my Kindle last night. Only $2.99.”

“And did you say that your client’s book is on your Kindle, Georgi?”

Georgina nodded.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Diana said. “Let’s read the first few pages of our clients’ books. It may give us some insights.”

“Great idea, Diana,” Georgina said. “I’ll go first. Here’s the first chapter of Mickey’s
A Culture of Death
.” It’s very short. Too short for a chapter if you ask me, but I’m not reading this as a literary critic.”

“Mahmood had grown accustomed to hiding. He had a price on his head for years, a price that someone was willing to pay to shut him up. A few years before, while kneeling at his mosque and listening to the imam call for death to infidels, and especially Jews, he opened his mouth and shouted, ‘Why do you preach nothing but hatred? Does not Allah have any message of love or kindness?’

Every eye in the mosque suddenly focused on him. So this how I shall die, he thought. Because he was seated near the rear entrance, he ran out the door as soon as the service ended. Mahmood never returned, and his life has been one of hiding in the shadows ever since.

‘Islam is not a religion of peace,’ he wrote on a wall on the outskirts of town. ‘It is a culture of death.’ ”

“Georgi, did you not say that he gets death threats all the time?”

“Yes, and I think you just heard why.”

“Diana,” I said. “Would you please read to us from Al’s book,
The Sands of Destruction
.” Woody handed her his Kindle.

She quickly perused the first couple of pages.

“This book has a preface. It may tell us something interesting. It’s the part of a book where an author often gives an idea what the book is about.”

She read from the preface of
The Sands of Destruction
by Ali Yamani. 

“I entitled this book
The Sands of Destruction,
because the word destruction is what the story is all about. This is not a book about religion; it is a book about the perversion of a religion, and it’s transformation from a way to worship a supreme being, to a way of merciless killing. The perversion began over 700 years ago in the Dark Ages. Enlightenment has yet to pay a visit to the precincts of Islam.”

“And what did Al do for a living?” Georgina asked.

“He was a high school teacher,” I said.

“And my guy was a library clerk.”

“So we have two guys from modest occupations who are both quite literate and use their minds for writing fiction,” I said. “From what I’ve heard I don’t think we’re going to see any National Book Awards, but they both know how to write. Hey, it’s time we start to make a chart.”

I walked over to the white board and grabbed the marker.

“That’s my job, counselor,” Dee said. “I can’t read your chicken scratch.”

Dee approached the board.

“Diana, please put across the top the names of our clients, Al and Mickey, and under that put ‘similarities’ on one side and ‘dissimilarities’ on the other. The first entry under similarities should read ‘literate writers.’ ”

“How about next you put, ‘critical of Islam,’ ” Woody suggested.

“Both in their twenties” Diana wrote on the board.

“This seems like a good place to start talking about the comparisons between their criminal cases,” Georgina said. “Number one, both cases involved the bombing of shopping malls.”

“How about the thumbprints on the detonators,” I said.

“And let’s not forget to list ‘detonators in plain sight and not discarded,’ ” Woody said.

“Video,” Diana said as she wrote on the board. “And right under that I’ll put ‘time and date stamp.’ ”

“DNA from blood,” I said. “A dissimilarity. It only applies to Al Yamani.”

“No,” Georgi yelled. “They have DNA on my guy too. I forgot to mention it.”

“Al had a physical exam a few days before the bombing,” Diana said. “I think that’s an obvious dissimilarity.”

“No it isn’t,” Georgina said as she stood up. “I cannot believe I didn’t mention this. Mickey had a job physical a few days before the bombing. Somebody told him it was routine. He was told to go to a clinic in Flushing.”

Woody asked her for the name of Mickey’s employer. She told him it was the Bay Shore Public Library located near the mall that was bombed. Woody excused himself and went to the next office to make a phone call. He returned in five minutes.

“I just spoke to the director of the library. They don’t have a policy of giving physicals.”

“Did Mickey tell you how the physical was arranged, Georgi?” I asked.

“Yeah, he got a phone call telling him it was a routine physical for his job and he was given directions to the clinic.”

“So we have two bogus physicals” I said. “ No way is this coincidental.”

Diana had just finished jotting notes under the caption, “Physicals.”

“No disguises, even though they are supposed terrorists in a public place,” Diana said as she wrote on the board.

“Arrested days after the event,” Georgina said.

“Okay, guys, let’s pull together what we’ve discovered so far,” I said. “We have two highly literate writers in their 20s in modest occupations and have been accused of bombing a shopping mall in two different states. The evidence against them is so similar it’s scary. They both had thumbprints on the detonators which were found in plain sight. They weren’t arrested until days after the event. Then we have the convenient videos that were leaked from unknown sources. And today we discovered that they both underwent rigged physicals at which they gave blood and thumbprints. They both insist they were framed. What the hell is going on?”

“Somebody’s out to get these guys,” Diana said. “That seems obvious, at least to me. And I don’t think it’s the local Chamber of Commerce that has it in for them. With their books they’ve managed to piss off some segment of radical Islam, especially if you consider the death threats against Georgina’s client.”

Diana put “enemies of Islam?” on the board.

“But here’s the weirdest thing of all, folks,” Woody said. “Neither of these guys will open up to us on the big question—why? They’re both charged with capital murder, but both of them are holding back on the one thing that could lead us in the right direction.”

Diana put “Won’t tell us why they’re being framed” on the board.

“Please email the video of your guy to me, Georgi. Then I’m going to make a phone call,” Woody said.

***

As we ate sandwiches that had just been delivered from the deli, Woody walked, well, stormed was more like it, back into the room.