“Well, that wasn’t very aloha of him,” says Jake, eyeing the bruises Palani tattooed on my face. Jake has a look on his own face as if he just discovered a long, black hair in his soup. “That shiner will get worse before it gets better,” he adds helpfully.
This morning we sit in the conference room waiting for Flan. I’ve told Jake about my entire yesterday, from the point I left him here to go out for my run.
“Let Flan interview the professor’s prostitute,” he says, taking a hit off his flask. “He’s doing a fine job with Carlie Douglas so far as we know. Besides, at the rate you’re going, she and her pimp will be bitch-slapping you all the way down Kuhio if you show up at the Leilani Inn for a chat.”
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll let him interview the bellhops, too. And J. J. Fitzpatrick. We’ll need to know where he went after he left the Waikiki Winds that night. Or at least, where he’ll say he went.”
“So, we have the professor, who has four alibis. We have Evil Knievel and his moped. We have J. J. Fitzpatrick, who has no discernible motive or opportunity. I’ve got to tell you, son, it doesn’t look good.”
“And we have the mob.”
“Are you kidding me? After what the Feds told you? The agents were watching Lopardi and Antonazzo like hawks. You can’t finger those two as suspects anymore.”
“There was a third man,” I tell Jake, “one the agents didn’t mention last night.”
“You said there were only two goons at the aquarium.”
“Someone else pulled Nikki away by asking her for help feeding the sea lions. Then he disappeared. That’s how Lopardi and Antonazzo were able to get me alone for so long.”
“How do you know it wasn’t just a coincidence, son?”
“There are no coincidences. Right, Jake?”
“I believe I said juries don’t buy into coincidences.”
“Well,” I say, “this was no coincidence. In fact, the woman at the front desk at the aquarium also said she saw three men leave together.”
“Your girlfriend, Nikki, saw this third guy. Can she identify him from the photographs Cashman had sent to you?”
I pause at the mention of her name, but more so at her being labeled my girlfriend. I haven’t thought of her as my girlfriend; I simply don’t think in those dimensions. I don’t want Nikki to become involved in Joey’s murder case. She knows I represent Joey and she knows what she has read in the papers, but that is essentially all she knows. I never talk to her about the case. She doesn’t know about the Mafia soldiers at the aquarium. She doesn’t know Palani roughed me up. She doesn’t know about my late-night run-in with the Feds. But she may be the only one who can identify this third man.
I nod my head solemnly. “I’ll ask her.”
The mood in the conference room has suddenly shifted, and Jake’s voice takes on a serious tone. “Kevin.” It is, perhaps, the first time Jake’s used my first name. Not that I mind him calling me son. He puts the flask to his lips to help him say whatever he has to say. “I’m sorry I got you involved in all of this.”
“You have no reason to apologize.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What is it, Jake?”
“I owe you a tremendous apology, Kevin.” He finishes off his flask. His eyes are moist, his voice strained. “When you walked in here two weeks ago today, you breathed new life into this office. There I was, on the brink of retirement, handling petty crimes, misdemeanors, traffic tickets, jaywalking citations. And I saw in you a possibility, a possibility to get back in the game. I knew I couldn’t do it myself. Not at my age. Not with my drinking.”
“Jake, you didn’t hold a gun to my head.”
“I might as well have. The way I dangled that fifty-thousand-dollar check in front of you.”
“You were right to do it. I needed the money, Jake. Joey’s parents came to you, and you were good enough to offer them to me.”
He eyes his empty flask, wishing it full. “That’s not quite how it happened, son.”
“What do you mean, Jake?”
“Before we left for Sand Bar with Hoshi that first day, I told you I had to make one phone call. The phone call I made was to a friend of mine at the jail. A deputy sheriff. I had read about Joey’s arrest in the newspaper. I asked my friend if the Gianforte boy was lawyered up yet. He told me no, the boy’s parents had just arrived at the jail. I told him to give the parents my number, to tell them that there’s an aggressive, young attorney from New York in town. A hotshot that specializes in violent felonies. I told my friend to tell the parents that his name is Kevin Corvelli.”
I sit stone still, silent as a tomb. He waits for my reaction, his eyes holding back tears, his face full of regret. I lean forward on the conference-room table. I stare him dead in the eyes.
And let out a long, hearty laugh.
“Jake, the reason I wanted to forgo felonies for misdemeanors wasn’t that I disliked the work. I disliked myself. And I disliked the way I handled the work. In New York, I was a criminal attorney for all the wrong reasons. The money and the spotlight were all that mattered to me. The client was nothing more than a means to an end. I felt like a fraud. Hell, I was a fraud. I wanted to win only so I could say I won. I was scared to pick up here in Honolulu right where I left off in Manhattan. But I don’t think I have.
“My priorities have changed a lot, even in the past two weeks. Just as you said they would. I am handling Joey’s case in a way I’m comfortable with. I made a promise to him, and I’m sticking to it. I am glad that I took this case. And no Mafia soldier or federal agent or local punk with a good right hook is going to change that. And they sure as hell aren’t going to succeed in scaring me off. My greatest fear was that Joey Gianforte was my next Brandon Glenn. But I think Joey is more like me than anyone else. So I suppose my utter selfishness will be an asset to him. Because I don’t think either of us deserve to spend the rest of our lives rotting in prison.”
Jake fiddles with his empty flask. I sit back and get comfortable in my conference-room chair. Despite everything that’s happened, I feel oddly at ease.
“I admire you for that,” says Jake, “and I sympathize with your plight. But you can’t let your own future hang on the fate of this case. The cards are stacked against us. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming, and we’d be fools to think some physical evidence is not forthcoming. Prosecutors can be crafty sons of bitches, whether in New York or in Houston, or even in Honolulu.”
“I realize that, Jake. We’re conferencing the case before the judge the day after tomorrow. In all likelihood, that’s when we’ll see their hand.”
Jake and I push the file aside and wait for Flan. We take the time to talk about the things men talk about when they’re not talking about homicide. We talk baseball and beer, starlets and hard liquor. In the middle of a full-throttle belly laugh over Buckner’s error in ’86, we are interrupted by Hoshi’s voice over the intercom.
“Mr. Corvelli, Mr. Flanagan is here to see you and Mr. Harper.”
“Mahalo, Hoshi,” I say. “Send Mr. Flanagan directly to the conference room.”
Sixty seconds later, the conference-room door opens and a somber Ryan Flanagan steps in.
“Gentlemen,” he says, “we have a serious problem.”