Linda Fairstein - The Kills

"You writing a brief, Alex?"

I looked up and saw a familiar face. Justin Feldman, a prominent litigator in the city who also had a home on the Vineyard, sat opposite me across the narrow aisle.

"No, only a list," I answered. "I'm just letting off steam. I'm afraid I unloaded on one of the young lawyers in the office. Now I'm trying to repair the damage."

"Nothing terminal, I hope."

I respected Justin and had sought his advice in the past, especially on situations that involved ethical considerations, since he had chaired the bar association's prestigious committee. "Depends on your point of view. You know anything about shadow counsel?" I asked.

"Never heard the term."

"That's because you practice in a better place," I said, referring to the federal courts, where judges rarely tolerated the shenanigans that were commonplace stateside. "I'm only aware of one decision on point."

"What jurisdiction?" Justin asked.

"A Manhattan case a few years back. The perp was incarcerated, pending trial or plea. One day, he calls the prosecutor out of the blue. Claims he's ready to cooperate and give up his codefendants, but his lawyer has refused to let him do it."

"What was the lawyer's beef?"

"Turns out the defendant claims his lawyer was hired and paid for by somebody else-a major drug kingpin. When the defendant decides to accept the prosecutor's deal, he tells the judge that his lawyer actually said that the head of the drug ring would have him killed if he cooperated. That word would go back through the lawyer."

"What did the judge do?" Justin asked again.

"Set up this charade, this complete fiction. He made the defendant create a record in court saying that he feared for his life if he fired his lawyer and played ball with the prosecution. So the case actually went forward with two defense attorneys."

"Two? And the first one never knew the second one existed?"

"Exactly," I said. "There was the original lawyer, who was being paid by the kingpin and who told her own client that his life and the life of his family were in danger. The judge kept her on the case, but completely in the dark about the truth of the transactions. Then he went ahead and assigned someone new to do the deal with the prosecution."

"The so-called shadow counsel?"

"Yes. The judge used the lawyer he appointed to take the real plea, which was a deal with cooperation, all the while continuing to pretend that what happened in the presence of lawyer number one-a mock plea allocution, a sentence, and a resentence-was true."

"Creating a complete illusion. Violating all your disclosure obligations, derogating your ethical responsibilities, communicating with the court ex parte to set this up, and falsifying the judicial process all along the way." Justin ticked off every repugnant feature of the arrangement.

"I'm not totally crazy, am I, to tell my colleague I won't go along with something like that?" I asked, as the pilot started up the starboard engine.

"You'd be insane to do it," Justin said, shaking his head back and forth. "I wonder where some of these lawyers lose their senses," he said. "You know Marty London, don't you?"

He was referring to another giant of the New York bar. "Sure."

"I had lunch with him today. The very same kind of conversation about a bright young lawyer came up. Marty's representing a guy who's in over his head-runs the corporate department at a white-shoe law firm. Kept telling his partners that to keep high-rolling clients happy, he was making contributions to their favorite charities. Big bucks."

"Some kind of scam?"

"That's putting it mildly. He'd tell the managing partner he'd written a personal check for, say, fifty thousand dollars to some tug-at-your-heartstrings cause. Say it's children of some war-torn part of the world. Or a struggling dance company. Or an inner-city art museum. Had to be a personal check, so he'd get credit with the client for being a mensch. Who'd second-guess him for a good deed like that? Then, he asked the firm to reimburse him-and they did."

"I think I see this one coming," I said. "He never wrote the check to any such charity."

"How about that the charity never existed in the first place?" Justin said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Battaglia's going to make mincemeat out of this guy when he gets his hands on this case. Fifty thousand dollars of the firm's money in his own pocket every couple of months, on top of his draw of a few million a year. I don't understand these people, Alex."

Both propellers were geared up now, and it was impossible to hear over the din. He settled in with his newspaper and I continued making lists of things to do.

The small aircraft lifted up from the runway. Within minutes, we had flown into the enormous billow of cloud cover that had settled over the New York area. I pulled my seat belt tighter around my waist as the plane bucked in the rough currents. I tried to concentrate on organizing my evening calls, but the severe weather made any work effort impossible.

I stuck my pen in my pocket and stared out the window at the inner lining of the storm cloud. There were only five passengers on the flight, and all looked as gloomy as the skies around us. I watched as the woman in front of Justin's seat fumbled for the airsickness bag, hoping that she would not need to use it in the close confines of the still cabin.

The pilot broke in with a short message. "Sorry about the bumps in the road, ladies and gents. We've got that hurricane blowing in behind us, so we'll rock and roll like this all the way to the Vineyard. Be another thirty-five minutes till touchdown. Thanks for flying with us tonight."

I closed my eyes and tried to think about something pleasant. My lover was in Washington, altogether too pleased with the freedom of our new arrangement, my precious home was about to be battered by sixty-mile-an-hour winds, and the tangle of investigations on my professional plate seemed hopeless. I opened my eyes and stared off into the wild gray yonder.

I was as relieved as the woman clutching the paper bag against her chest when the pilot descended out of the clouds and I could see the lights on the landing strip glistening in the evening mist. We taxied to a stop and I trotted from the bottom of the steps into the shelter of the airport terminal. I walked to the parking lot, where my caretaker had left my car earlier in the week when he'd gone off-island. Soon I was heading up-island on the slick roadway that curved through the pastures and meadows of Chilmark.

It was close to nine o'clock. I was looking for something to eat, but there weren't many choices. I drove in the direction of Dutcher Dock, but both the Galley and the Homeport were dark.

I made a U-turn in front of the old red-roofed coast guard station, now the Chilmark Police Headquarters, going to the far end of the main road toward the gas station. Larsen's Fish Market had closed hours ago, so my last hope was the Bite, a two-hundred-square-foot gray-shingled kitchen from which the Quinn sisters put forth the best chowder and fried clams on the face of the earth.

There were two pickup trucks parked in front-drivers eating in their cabs-and I squeezed my little red convertible in between them. I ducked under the roof of the small porch to get out of the rain, and Karen spotted me when I picked my head up.

"Alex? That you? Haven't got a clam or oyster left. Wiped out."

"Just a cup of soup." My stomach was still settling down. "To go."

Her dialect was more Boston Southie than islander. "Better close your house up tight. Gonna be a wicked bad storm."

"That's what I came up to do."

She handed me a brown bag much larger than a pint container of soup. "Take some with you for tomorrow. Extra chowder, some chicken wings, and my mother's brownies. You'll be glad you've got this goody bag if nobody opens up during the hurricane."