William Lashner - Hostile witness

When he hung up he shook his head. "Some lawyers are so timid about opinion letters it's amazing that any deal ever gets done. Valley Hunt Estates. We have the interim financing and we're ready to go. It's going to be a killer deal. Too bad you're not a part of it anymore."

I shrugged.

"But you'll be gratified to know that we gave the business to your friend Sam Guthrie over at Blaine, Cox," said Prescott. "He, at least, seems grateful for the opportunity. So, Victor, what brings you unbidden once again to our offices?"

I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a manila envelope, which I tossed onto his desk. "I wanted to personally serve our motion for a new trial that we're filing today with Judge Gimbel. In it I lay out in detail everything that happened from the moment I was hired to defend Chester Concannon."

"I see," said Prescott as he opened the envelope and scanned the lengthy motion inside. "I expected as much. And frankly, Victor, I wish you luck. Jimmy's been acquitted in the federal trial and the murder charges against him have been dropped. Nothing would please me more than for Chester to get off also."

"I don't think the judge will see it so benignly."

He shrugged his shoulders as he continued leafing through the motion.

"You set me up," I said.

"Yes," said Prescott. "It wasn't so hard to do."

"You figured the only way to really clear Jimmy of the charges was to put them off on Chet, and the surest way to get the jury to believe it all was to get Chet's lawyer to do the dirty work for you. If you had called Veronica to lie on the stand it would have looked obvious and no one would have bought it. But for Chet's lawyer to put her on and to have her bury him, well, that clinched it."

"Effective, wouldn't you say?"

"And totally improper."

"No, Victor, that is where you're wrong. We were doing everything in our power to defend our client. The Sixth Amendment requires no less. Were you following the same high standard, hmmm?"

"It's patently improper to have a witness perjure herself, even if you don't call her."

"But who's to say it was perjury?"

"She told me the truth when I subpoenaed her."

"Maybe that was the lie."

"I don't think so."

"What you think and what you can prove are two very different things. I must say, Victor, you surprised me. The whole Veronica thing was very risky. I thought all our inducements for you to cooperate would stop you from going after Jimmy. I assumed that was our surest way to win, to just have Chester sit there and eat whatever we handed him. I hired you because I thought you'd come cheap, but Jimmy suspected you'd turn into a crusader. I guess he's a better judge of character than I. So to be safe he dangled Veronica before you just in case you decided to play it noble. It worked out better than we could have hoped. You snapped at her like a trout at a perfectly tied fly. We actually expected that she'd have to tell you everything, but your investigation was amazingly thorough. The more you found out, the easier it was for us. But then when you put her on the stand, that was the riskiest part of all. You see, Victor, you seemed to have a great influence on that poor girl, greater than you know. We weren't sure what she was going to say until she said it. Her actual testimony was a great relief to all of us."

"You planned it all from the day you hired me."

"From the day Pete McCrae died, yes. Pete we knew we could trust but with his inconvenient death, well, then we needed you, or someone like you. It was too big a case to count on luck. We had all kinds of strategies and contingency plans but in the end we needed something dramatic to win it, and you certainly gave us that, Victor."

"In fact, you had been setting up Concannon even before the indictment. It was you who told Jimmy to open the bank account with Chester's name on it."

"Now you're guessing," said Prescott.

"It was the amount of the deposits and withdrawals that clued me. Federal regulations require cash transactions of over ten grand to be reported to the Treasury Department. Which means you knew all along that Jimmy was giving the money to Goodwin, capitalizing a drug dealer to set up a steady stream of funds for his rehabilitation projects. That's why Goodwin killed Chuckie, to keep him from telling me about it, and why Goodwin tried to stop Veronica from testifying. It must have been Henry who told Goodwin where Veronica was hiding. Goodwin sent his henchmen after her, fearing she would disclose the arrangement, not knowing all the time that she was in your pocket."

"I'm certainly not going to confirm such scurrilous accusations," said Prescott. "One never knows who is taping what, hmmm? But if it all were true, think of the beauty of it. Drug consumers are going to buy drugs no matter what. It is an inelastic demand. But with just a little venture capital, effectively applied, a piece of the profits of the sales would go to helping victims and to drying up the market. The more successful the marketing venture, the more active it would be in sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Pure pragmatism, Victor, a free-market solution to a previously intractable problem."

"And the kids dying from stray bullets as Goodwin battles to expand his turf?"

"Collateral damage," said Prescott. "Unavoidable."

"Jimmy is preying on the weak, profiting from murder to salve the wound of his daughter's death," I said. "It's immoral."

"Morality is a mere luxury in this world, Victor," said Prescott. "It is the enemy of achievement, the last bastion of the failed. Learn that and someday you might learn what it is to be a lawyer."

"If that's what it takes I'd sooner cut lawns."

"As you wish. But I'm actually glad you're here, Victor. I've been trying to reach you."

"I've been out of town."

"I can understand. The embarrassment. I've talked it over with CUP and, with the trial finished, they've decided that they won't sue you for the retainer so long as you give up your claim to any additional fees."

"That doesn't even cover half of what I'm owed."

"Some is better than none, Victor, any day of the week."

"I think I'll hold out for it all."

"That's fine. I understand Sam Guthrie has already drafted the complaint."

"So I'll counterclaim, then. Save me the filing fees."

"You shouldn't take it all so personally, Victor. It was only business. Actually, you were better in court than I expected. It's too bad it had to conclude like it did. I'm sure we could have worked very profitably together."

"I don't think so," I said. "By the way, I'll be shortly filing a motion to amend the complaint in Saltz v. Metropolitan Investors."

"A little late, Victor. Trial's in less than two weeks."

"Oh, I think the judge will let me amend the complaint to add two new defendants."

"New defendants?" he asked, the crow's-feet around his eyes deepening. "Who?"

"Well, Billy, I told you I was out of town. Where I was, actually, was in Corpus Christi, Texas, with my partner, visiting the Downtown Marina. Maybe you've heard of it?"

By the frozen expression on his face I could tell that he had.

"Well, it seems that our mutual accountant friend Frederick Stocker was docking his pretty new sailboat at that very marina. We showed up there just yesterday, Billy, and, in an amazing coincidence, we arrived at the marina pretty much at the same time as the FBI. And somehow in all the fuss of his arrest and my dropping a subpoena in his lap Mr. Stocker seemed to think that you were somehow mixed up in the Feds finding out where he was, though I haven't a clue, really, as to how he got that idea, unless it was something I said. Do you think that might have been it?"

His whole face seemed to harden and contract, every muscle tensing one against the other. His blue eyes turned cold and steely but still he didn't move.