5

The defense attorney, Linda Ames, had three passions: her son, Ethan; Weight Watchers; and defending criminals.

Ethan, nine, was the product of a three-beer fling with a roofing contractor who’d dropped by one winter evening to discuss her leaky porch. Ames had considered terminating the pregnancy, but she figured (a) at age forty-one, it was probably her last chance at motherhood and (b) Charlie Buchannon was a healthy, easygoing man who looked like he had decent genes. Charlie soon drifted to the margin of her life, never more than sorta-kinda acknowledging that Ethan was his, which was fine with Ames. The baby, however, plopped right down in the center of her world: the absolute coolest person Linda Ames had ever known.

Ames’s romantic life over the years had been a patchwork of both men and women. She never understood why a person had to choose. It was like Chinese versus Italian food. Depending on the quality of the ingredients and the skill in preparation, they could both be delicious. For a while now, things in that department had been in suspension anyway. The fires had died down, and she was too busy with her fabulous boy and her creepy clients to worry much about Valentine’s Day.

A second time-sucker was Ames’s obsession with Weight Watchers, which had her counting points and filling a small wire-rimmed notebook with scribbles in her endless campaign to drop ten pounds. On the morning of Sid Cranmer’s arraignment, Ames was on a roll—low-fat yogurt with berries, two tablespoons of sliced almonds, and black coffee for breakfast, leaving her twenty-one of her twenty-six points available for the rest of the day. With salmon and peach salad and a Diet Coke for lunch, she’d have space for a five-ounce glass of Australian red (four points) with her bunless veggie burger at dinner.

Unfortunately, her meager breakfast had provoked in Ames a yearning for sugar so intense it was reaching what saints must feel for God. Sitting in court, she reflected that she would have given anything for a sticky bun, even if it meant she’d be on celery and herbal tea until a week from Wednesday.

Ames acquired her third passion, criminal law, while watching Perry Mason reruns as a grade-schooler. She was a patient person who moved slowly but thought fast, and she had the rare ability to ask blunt questions without being offensive—all of which made her very good in the courtroom. In law school, she took every criminal law course available, and she summered at the public defender’s office. After graduation, she worked for two years for Bill Redpath, a very skillful Boston defense lawyer, before moving to the greener pastures, and the smaller pond, of Amherst. The one drawback in her professional life was that in twenty-five years defending criminals, she’d had to adjust to the fact that, unlike her hero Perry, she nearly always represented guilty people.

Innocent clients, in her practice at least, came along about as often as buffalo nickels, and Professor Sidney Cranmer did not look like one of them. The big tip-off was that he was obviously holding out on her. Ames’s rare innocent clients were usually so outraged and hysterical she couldn’t shut them up. Guilty clients tended to be vague and cagey, surrendering the truth in teaspoonfuls, which was what Sid Cranmer seemed to be doing. On the other hand, she only liked about a quarter of her creeps, and she was getting concerned that poor Sid might end up being one of these. Hard to say why. The charge against him was certainly putrid, and she assumed he was guilty. Maybe it was just that he had half a brain, which most of her clients did not, or that he was so totally screwed. It was always painful when one of her guys, even someone disgusting, fell into the yawning black mouth of the Bureau of Prisons, and for Sid it was going to be a very long drop.

The Amherst College Dean’s Office had put Professor Cranmer in touch with Ames after his arrest, based on her recent victories with two college faculty members facing DUI charges. This was rash, since DUIs were Pop-Tarts compared to federal child porn trials, but they’d been lucky to stumble onto her. She actually had handled porn cases, one in federal court in Worcester, one in state court up in Greenfield, both guilty pleas with decent outcomes (prison terms, but survivable), and she had plenty of experience before Norcross doing drug and gun cases. He wasn’t going to give her any special breaks—he didn’t give anyone special breaks—but she could tell he respected her, and the feeling was mutual.

The U.S. Marshal’s area on the first floor of the courthouse contained a row of cubicles and an array of surveillance monitors and electronic equipment along one wall. Making her way past the desks, Ames nodded to the deputies, all of whom knew her. As she turned down the windowless corridor leading to the attorney-client conference rooms, she breathed in the aroma of hot coffee. It made her think of pecan rolls.

Sid was waiting in the room set aside for them, slumping to one side as though someone had tapped all the blood out of him. The area, roughly eight by six feet, was arranged so that the detainee came in through one door and the attorney entered through another on the opposite side. The air was stuffy and smelled of Lysol. Sid was seated on a round metal stool that was bolted to the floor to keep it from being used as a weapon. Ames eased herself into one of the two chairs on the attorney’s side. A scratched steel counter and a heavy mesh screen separated them.

If the screen hadn’t been there, Ames might have been tempted to pat Sid on the shiny crown of his head, which was tipped toward her dolefully. His meager hair hung in gray commas over his collar. Some helpful deputy must have shown him that morning’s Republican story, detailing the child porn charges and the news that Amherst College had suspended him.

“How you doing?” Ames asked.

“I’m alive.” He looked up at her. “That’s about it.” He squirmed on the metal stool, and the humming fluorescent light reflected off his glasses. “One night in the slammer, and I’m already picking up some new vocabulary. My fellow inmates refer to me as a ‘diddler,’ which seems to be their word for a pedophile.”

“Are they getting on you? I can talk to the sheriff …”

Criminals, Linda knew, had a harsh code of morality, and the drug dealers and gang members bunking with Sid could be very tough on sex offenders, especially child abusers.

“So far, so good.” Sid pushed his glasses up his nose and blinked. “What are my chances of getting out of here, Linda? Tell the truth, it’s a fucking nightmare. I already miss …” The face he tipped up to her was painful to see. He looked like a man struggling to bend his mind around a terminal cancer diagnosis. “There isn’t a single thing I don’t miss.” He breathed in shakily. “The bed is killing my back, the cell smells like puke, and most of the other men I’ve seen scare me to death, even the guards.”

“I can’t promise anything.” Ames shook her head. “Campanella’s a world-class drip. He can’t seriously think you’re going to flee or endanger anybody. My guess is, one, he’s showing off for his FBI agent up from Washington, who’s trying to frighten me with his big, intimidating game face. And, two, he wants you detained to soften you up so you’ll plead. Problem is, Norcross might just buy what he’s selling. I can’t …” Ames paused to emphasize the bad news. “I can’t honestly predict what he’ll do, Sid.”

Her client’s detention would make trial preparation much harder. Worse, after seven or eight months moldering inside a cell, the professor, even if somehow he were innocent, would look exactly like the pasty-faced pervert the government wanted the jury to think he was.

“It’s just …” Sid dropped his eyes and shook his head again. “I know it sounds silly, but the cats will be freaking out. My intern is feeding them. The poor girl was there when they showed up. The problem is, she can only come by every other day or so, and the cats are Siamese. They hate being alone.” He broke off, staring straight ahead but obviously seeing nothing. “I still can’t believe what’s happening. It’s a cliché, I know, but I keep hoping it’s just some bad dream, and I’ll wake up.”

“It’s horrible. It always is.” Ames leaned forward, placing her hands on the cool metal counter. “We don’t have much time here, though. I need your help on a couple things if we’re going to have a chance at getting you out.” Ames watched Sid as he looked back at her warily. This was only their second meeting. She was still trying to figure him out, and he was still deciding whether he could trust her. How hard should she push?

“Tell me some more about this DVD.”

“Like I told you, I do remember getting a flyer about it with an order form.”

“And you didn’t just toss it?”

“I couldn’t figure out where it came from. It weirded me out.”

“The postal inspectors must have gotten wind somehow that you were interested in this sort of stuff. Maybe from a chat room they were monitoring?”

Sid groaned. “Chat rooms.” He put his hands over his face and talked through his fingers. “I spent a lot of time in them after my mother died. Late at night.” He dropped his hands. “I can’t even remember half the places I went, or the stuff I said. A lot of idiotic things, I know that.”

“Campanella showed me a couple juicy passages they recovered. Not good. They must have seen what you were saying and decided to mail you the brochure, toss you some bait as part of their sting operation. Its code name is ‘Window Pane.’ It’s all over the country.”

“Can they do that? Isn’t that, like, entrapment or something?”

“Not if they just give you the opportunity to commit the crime and you bite. It’s only entrapment if they keep pushing you to do something you don’t really want to do.” This was a quick and dirty explanation of the law; Ames was more interested in other things. “I’m just trying to figure out what I can say when Campanella tells the judge you deliberately ordered that DVD.”

“I can’t believe I ordered it.” He shook his head.

“Really.”

Sid’s answer had two possible meanings: (1) He didn’t think he ordered the DVD, or (2) he knew he ordered it, but he couldn’t believe how stupid he was for having done it. This sort of roundabout bibble-babble was typical of Linda’s white-collar clients. Whether it was a Ponzi scheme, embezzlement, or child porn, it took these clients forever to cough up what they’d done. She’d have to give it time.

“I don’t know.” Sid looked at her. “Like I told you, I’ve been pretty … I haven’t been myself for a while. I could have done a lot of things, I guess, but I honestly can’t believe I ordered that DVD.”

“Okay.” Ames let Sid see she was examining him carefully. His nonexplanation was not going to do him any good with Norcross, let alone with a jury. “Campanella told me before court that you admitted to the raid team that you were expecting the DVD, that it was yours.”

Sid looked shocked. “That’s bullshit! I never admitted anything of the sort. I couldn’t have.” He looked into the distance again, trying to absorb this new blow. After a few seconds, he turned to her, glaring. “Can they just lie like that?”

“Campanella says his agent will testify that you said you weren’t surprised when it arrived, or something like that.” Ames paused, continuing to keep her eyes on Sid, who had collapsed back into his six-weeks-to-live stare. “Could be Campanella’s pretending he’s got more than he has.” She pushed on. “But they’ve got the form, Sid, filled in with your credit card number and security code, your address, et cetera. Any memory of that?”

“Zip. I don’t see how …” He started to say something, then stopped and shook his head. “I just don’t see how I could have done that. I’m not into that stuff.”

This all sounded pretty soupy. If she were forced to bet, Ames would put her money on Sid’s having ordered the DVD deliberately. In the one-in-a-hundred chance that he really was innocent, or the one-in-ten chance he couldn’t stand up and admit he was guilty, which would knock out any possible plea deal, this case was going to be a back—and heart—breaker.

Ames decided to move on to a more pressing issue and leaned forward, dropping her voice.

“You don’t have any other material like this sitting around anywhere they didn’t think to look, do you? Any stuff they missed?” The Marshals’ attorney-client conference room was supposed to be private, no cameras and no microphones, but Ames never entirely trusted that.

Sid’s face twitched up to her. “No, for heaven’s sake, I don’t think I ever had any. …”

“Campanella tells me they dug out a fair amount of porn on your home computer, including some underage material. How about a work computer or an iPad? Hard copies stuffed in a folder somewhere?”

Sid jumped at the sound of a sharp clang in the distance followed by a male voice shouting.

Ames recognized the groan of the big steel door that opened on the courthouse’s sally port. The Marshals must be bringing in more prisoners.

“They’ll find some fairly …” He hesitated. “Some fairly ugly pictures and video clips, okay? I’m not even sure what.” Sid looked anxiously in the direction of the noise, which now had a sinister, metallic tone, as though it were a huge, dying robot.

“It’s okay,” Ames said. “Just the sally port with some more customers.”

“But nothing like the DVD, okay? I’m not into that.”

She pressed a little harder. “Nothing you’ve ordered on its way to you in the mail?”

“No fucking way.” He hesitated, flushing. “They’ll probably, like I say, find …” He paused again, struggling. “Some, probably some pictures, probably some videos, on my computer. I can remember sites, I think, like ‘Barely Legal’ and ‘Horny Teens.’ That kind of crap.” He looked up at her with a pained expression. “But doesn’t everyone look at that stuff once in a while? In the army, porn was like comic books at summer camp. Nobody thought twice about it.”

“Adult porn’s not a problem, Sid. Even I’ve checked it out once or twice.” Ames sniffed. “Heck, I bet even our buddy Campanella has, if he’s human. I’m talking about little kids.”

“No. There was some of that in Saigon, underage Asian prostitutes and that sort of thing. It didn’t shock me—people needed money—but it never did anything for me. I …”

“Sex with a minor in a foreign country gets you fifteen years nowadays, mandatory minimum.”

“Well, that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about.” He hesitated and swallowed. “I paid for sex a couple times over there—everyone did—but never with a child. Jesus!”

“I hear you, but I also need you to understand. Patterson and his team will be on the lookout, and if they find more pictures or videos like this DVD, you will be, pardon my French, shit on a stick.”

There was a long silence. Finally, Sid just said, “They’ll find evidence on my hard drive that I’ve visited porn sites, okay? Adult porn sites. It’s embarrassing enough to have to admit that.” He paused and a look of disgust came over his face. “I flat out lied to my intern when I finally got her on the phone about the cats. Told her I wasn’t into porn at all. But I honestly can’t believe I ordered that video.”

“Okay, fine. We’ll leave it at that.” Ames nodded. “New topic: Have you got a mortgage on your …”

A deputy marshal, a Hispanic woman with dark, curly hair, poked her head through the door behind Sid. She’d obviously been monitoring the room, just out of earshot. She tossed Sid a sandwich in a plastic baggie.

“I’d eat up,” she said. “Judge sends you back to Ludlow, and this will be your last bite until dinner. You’re going to miss lunch.”

Sid stared down at the sandwich as if it had just landed from outer space.

Ames broke in. “Give us a minute, okay, Carmen?” The deputy disappeared, and Ames turned back to Sid. “Have you got a mortgage on your house?”

Sid looked surprised. “No, I … I paid it off with mother’s insurance.”

“Any problem giving the government a deed to secure your appearance and good behavior if we have to?”

“I don’t understand.”

Ames spoke quickly. “You sign a deed transferring your house to the government. They don’t record the deed, just keep it in their files. But if you skip out, or get into any monkey business, they trot down to the Registry, record the deed, and they own your house. Simple as that. It’s a form of bail. If there are no problems, they tear the deed up once the case is over. You willing to do that?”

“The house is about all I have, Linda, but I’ll do anything to get out of here.”

“Even if Norcross goes for it, you won’t get out today. We’ll need time to get the paperwork done and a good real-estate lawyer, my friend Bruce Brown.” Ames’s retainer was $50,000, and with extra expenses, it would evaporate quickly even at her below-market rate of $350 an hour. If the case went to trial, Sid would probably end up paying her at least $300,000, probably more, and even then Ames could end up taking a bath on the case.

“How do you feel about home confinement?” she continued.

“It would be a big improvement.” Sid shrugged. “Except for classes, I haven’t been getting out much lately anyway.”