CHAPTER 9

“Counselor,” Boyd said an hour later, “your client is wasting my time.”

“I’m telling you everything I know,” Turi protested.

I motioned to Turi to keep silent.“Let’s you and I have a word outside in private,” I said to Boyd.

Jansen and Levy both nodded in agreement, and the four of us stood up and stepped into the hall, leaving Turi alone in the tight room. Jansen and Levy made for the vending machines at the end of the hallway, while Boyd crossed his arms and waited to hear what I had to say.

“Help me help my client help you,” I said. “We both know that the DEA doesn’t make a move until they’re certain they can nail the entire organization, top to bottom. So what is it you want confirmed?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Counselor. Maybe some dim-bulb state prosecutor might fall for your shit and play ball with you, but not me.”

I glanced over my shoulder down the hall; Jansen and Levy were nowhere in sight. “Every single question you asked my client was about Orlando Masonet. My client told you that he never spoke to him, never saw him. My client doesn’t even know what he looks like.”

“That’s too bad for all of us.”

I felt my cheeks glowing red under the fluorescent lights. “What evidence do you have that this guy even exists?”

“Oh, he exists—maybe not on paper—but that’s none of your concern, Counselor. But I will give you an idea as to why we’re moving on this now.” Boyd leaned in and lowered his voice. “We have word that Orlando Masonet is on this island right now, which according to everything else we know, is as rare as Halley’s Comet. So, if you want your client to have any chance at all at walking in this case, you’re going to have to get him to cooperate. And fast.”

“He’s been coopera—”

“Not that way,” Jansen said from behind me.

I spun, my heart pounding. Since the stabbing, I hated being snuck up on.

Jansen said, “We need your boy on the street. We need a CI.”

I swallowed hard; there was no way I was allowing Turi Ahina to act as a confidential informant. Not with what I already knew about Orlando Masonet and his organization.

“My client is no good to you in a coffin,” I said.

“And he’s no good to us behind bars,” Jansen volleyed. “But that’s where he’s going to be spending the next thirty years of his life if he doesn’t play ball. And that’s if he’s lucky. Because you, Mr. Corvelli, know as well as anybody that if someone wants to get to your client on the inside, it’s as easy as pie.”

The image of Brandon Glenn’s gravestone flashed through my mind. “Even if you put my client back on the street—even if he isn’t immediately killed—what makes you think he can get anywhere near Orlando Masonet?”

Jansen shot a glance at Boyd, then said, “Orlando Masonet is trapped on this island. We’re watching everything, every airfield, every harbor, every military base. Oahu is on lockdown, Counselor. Masonet won’t make a move until he knows it’s safe.”

“If you can’t identify Masonet,” I said, “what good does a lockdown do? And if Masonet knows you can’t identify him, why the hell does he have anything to fear stepping into an airport terminal?”

Boyd pursed his lips, no doubt weighing the odds of disclosing sensitive information to a defense attorney he wouldn’t trust pet-sitting his goldfish. Reluctantly he said, “We can’t identify Masonet by his face or even by any external markings such as tattoos or scars. But we do have information from a credible source that Masonet has a fraction of a large-caliber bullet lodged in his skull, an inch or so above the left ear. Too deep and too near the brain to risk surgery to remove it. It never presented much of a problem for him before, but now that the TSA can ostensibly subject every individual who boards a plane in this country to a full-body scan, it’s a whole new ballgame. Masonet knows we have this information; we know that because he slaughtered the doctor who provided it to us. So Masonet won’t risk leaving this island now that we know he’s here.”

“That’s where your client comes in,” Jansen added.

“And how’s that?” I said.

“Your client is going to offer Masonet an out.”

I stared at Jansen, smirked at Boyd. “Are you both out of your fucking minds? Turi sells forty-dollar bags of meth just to keep himself stuffed with kalua pig and poi. Masonet won’t believe for a second that Turi has the resources to transport him safely from Honolulu to the North Shore, let alone off the island entirely.”

“Of course not,” Jansen said. “And that’s where you come in, Counselor.”

“Me?” I said incredulously. “You are out of your fucking mind.”

As I started back toward the room holding Turi, Boyd grabbed my arm with such force that I nearly turned and cracked him across the face.

“You’ll want to hear Special Agent Jansen out,” he said firmly.

“I’m a lawyer,” I said quietly. “What incentive in hell could you possibly offer me to get me involved in this shit storm?”

“This is the only way your client walks,” Jansen said.

“Don’t believe everything you read in the racks at the airport,” I said, seething. “What makes you think I’d put my neck out for a client?”

“Not just any client,” Boyd said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Jansen said, “that we know that Alika Kapua didn’t fire two bullets into his own chest the night he attempted to kill you in Kailua three years ago.”