Mortal Allies (8 page)

“Get what?” I asked derisively.

“The press is our best weapon. The system’s against us, and using the press is the only way we can level the playing field.”

“Look,” I said, as condescendingly as I could. “I know you all have this thing against the military, but I don’t. It happens to be where I make my living. The Army’s not perfect, but it’s a damned sight better than you give it credit for.”

Katherine and her coterie all did hairy eye-rolls for a brief second.

“Drummond,” Katherine said, like she was talking to somebody who’d just said something a few leagues below stupid. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it. You come from the other side of the line. You have no idea how your side plays.”

“Wrong. I’m from the other side. I know exactly how we play.”

Katherine started to say something and I cut her off. “Besides, like my mother always says, a good threat’s like a good steak: Let it marinate awhile. Give ’em three hours; then feel free to start babbling with your buddies in the fourth estate.”

Katherine, Allie, Keith, and Maria all huddled together in a corner and began discussing it. I clearly was not welcome. I clearly was not part of the team. It took nearly two minutes before they reached some sort of consensus and Katherine walked back in my direction.

“All right, we’ll wait,” she said. “In the meanwhile, it’s time for you to meet our client.”

Like I couldn’t guess what was behind this. She and the others thought I was finding it too effortless to barter our client’s fate, since I’d never met him and therefore hadn’t developed the sympathetic bond that often forms between an attorney and his customer. In their view, this whole thing was too impersonal for me.

They were making a big blunder, though. The truth is, I was probably more lenient on his behalf
because
I hadn’t met him. Given the crimes he was accused of, I dreaded how partial I’d be if I met him and became completely persuaded he’d actually done it.

But anyhow, there was no way I could turn them down, so I followed along behind Katherine and Maria as they walked out the door and climbed into one of the sedans Imelda, the traitor, had commandeered.

It took only ten minutes to reach the holding facility on base, an old, drab, one-floored building constructed of concrete blocks, very small, with your standard-issue black metal mesh on the windows. An Army captain with military police brass came into the front office and escorted us past a heavy iron door, then down a short hallway with about six cells on each side. Like most military facilities, the place was spotlessly clean. It reeked of disinfectant, but also cooked bacon. The captain informed us the prisoners had just finished lunch. It was BLT day.

We went down to the end and stopped in front of the last cell on the right. The door was made of steel, and the captain occupied himself for nearly a minute fumbling around for the right key. I paced nervously, because I didn’t know what to expect, although I was anticipating the worst. Murder, rape, and necrophilia are as ghoulish as it gets. I was having flashbacks from that movie
The Silence of the Lambs
.

The door finally opened and I spotted a figure lying on a metal bunk on the backside of the cell. He got slowly to his feet and approached us with his right hand extended.

He looked youthful, maybe twenty-nine, maybe thirty, with short black hair, intense green eyes, thick eyebrows, a long, straight nose, a strong, narrow jaw, and thin lips that gave an impression of unhappiness. He was very fit-looking, with a lean, sculpted body that could come only from a steady regimen of weight lifting and heavy jogging.

“Katherine, Maria, I’m glad you’re here,” he said, shaking hands with the two of them.

“I’m sorry we didn’t come earlier,” Katherine said. “As soon as we heard, we rushed straight to the embassy to try to get it reversed.”

“And did you?”

“We don’t know yet. We put a good scare into them, but it’s hard to tell which way it’ll go.”

Then there was an awkward moment as Whitehall studied me in apparent confusion.

Katherine finally said, “Thomas, this is Major Sean Drummond. You remember I told you I was firing the military co-counsel the command provided and requesting my own. This is him.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Whitehall said, thrusting out his right hand again.

I hesitated for only a brief moment before I shook it, but long enough for him to get the message. I then mumbled something incoherent that might’ve sounded like “Pleased to meet you, too,” or “You make me sick.” Whichever.

Whitehall sat on his bunk. Katherine and Maria followed and fell onto the bunk beside him. Me? I chose to prop myself against a wall in prickly isolation.

But I never took my eyes off my client. My first impression had been made the moment I heard the details of his crime, and I wanted to see how it squared with his physical presence. His uniform was sharply pressed and creased and his boots glistened as though he spent twenty hours a day rubbing polish on them. Maybe he did; what else are you going to do when you’re sitting on your ass in a cell? The emblem on his collar identified him as an infantry officer, and the ring on the third finger of his left hand was an Academy ring with a big red ruby. He looked like a model young officer: handsome, fit, and meticulously tidy.

But he wasn’t a model officer. He raped dead people.

“So,” Whitehall asked, intensely studying me right back, “where do you come from, Major?”

“I’m assigned to a court just outside Washington. An appeals court.”

That was a lie, but I had my reasons for misleading him.

“Have you ever defended an accused murderer before?”

“A few times.”

“How about rape?”

“Plenty.”

“Necrophilia?”

“No. None. Never.”

“Then we have something in common.”

“Really? And what could that possibly be, Captain?” I nastily replied, thinking we had nothing at all in common, except we were both in the Army. And we were both males. Well, he was sort of a male. Maybe.

“I’ve never been accused of necrophilia before,” he assured me with a very bitter smile on his lips.

“You went to West Point?” I asked, avoiding that with a ten-foot pole.

“Class of ’91.”

“Are you gay?” I asked, deliberately diving right into it, a neat little lawyer’s trick I’d learned, because I suspected he wouldn’t be truthful and I wanted to see if the quick leap made him blush, or stammer, or emit some nonverbal clue that betrayed his true sexual druthers.

I needn’t have bothered.

“In fact, I am,” he said, sounding unaffected, like he wasn’t embarrassed by it. Then he quickly added, “But you’re not allowed to disclose that. Since you’re my attorney, you’re bound by attorney-client privilege, and I’ll tell you what you can and can’t divulge.”

“And what if Miss Carlson and I decide an admission of sexual preference is in your best interest?”

Katherine was looking at me with a queasy expression, and it suddenly struck me what was going on here.

Whitehall said, “I’ll reiterate again, Major. I’ll tell you what you can and can’t disclose. I was first in my class in military law at West Point, and like many gay soldiers, I’ve continued to study the law a great deal since. My life and career are on the line.”

“Are you unhappy with us?” I asked. “Do you lack confidence in our abilities?”

“No, I guess you’ll do fine. Just say I’m confident in my own judgment and abilities and leave it at that.”

Katherine was now nervously running a hand through that long, black, luxurious hair of hers. Her eyes were darting around at some invisible specks on the ceiling like the last thing she wanted to do was look at my face.

There’s a term used in prisons:“jailhouse lawyer.” The Army has its own version, “barracks lawyer.” Both refer to a specific kind of foolish creature who stuffs his nose inside a few law books and suddenly thinks he’s been reincarnated as Clarence Darrow or Perry Mason. They’re a real lawyer’s worst nightmare, because all of a sudden your client thinks he’s smarter than you, which he very well might be, only he lacks a few essentials called experience and education, and in any regard is trying to transform a worm’s-eye view of the world into an all-encompassing galactic perspective.

The great danger with barracks lawyers is that they very often don’t comprehend their own gaping shortcomings until the words “guilty as charged” come tumbling out of the jury foreman’s lips. Even then, some don’t learn. Appeals court dockets are overloaded with motions launched by barracks lawyers, who graduate into jailhouse lawyers, who continue to believe the only reason they lost was because of the bungling attorney who took up space at the defense table with them.

I said, “Do I take it that you intend to direct the defense?”

“Mostly, yes,” he said. “On all key decisions, I expect you to confer with me. And I have the final vote.”

The law certainly gave him this authority, and by Katherine’s pained expression I guessed this topic had already been broached at some length with our client. I decided not to press. Whitehall didn’t know me, or trust me, so I wasn’t likely to disabuse him at this early stage in our relationship. Depending on how full of himself he was, or how our relationship matured, maybe I’d never disabuse him.

I merely said, “You certainly have that right.”

He said, “I know.”

“May I ask a few questions pertaining to the case?”

“Uh . . . all right,” he answered, as though he were doing me some big favor.

“What was your position on base?”

“The headquarters company commander.”

“And how long were you in that position?”

“Eleven months. I’m on a one-year rotation. I was scheduled to change command in one more month.”

“How were your ratings?”

“Outstanding. All of my ratings, my whole career, have always been outstanding.”

“Uh-huh,” I murmured, making a mental note to check that. Lots of officers lie and tell you they’ve got outstanding records, and because their personnel jackets are kept in sealed files in D.C., the layman has no way of checking. I’m not a layman, though. I’m a lawyer. I can check.

I asked, “So what were you and First Sergeant Moran, Private Jackson, and Lee No Tae doing at that apartment?”

He relaxed back against the wall. “They were my friends. I know officers aren’t supposed to mingle with enlisted troops, but none of them were under my command. I figured it was harmless. I invited them over for a party.”

“Could you elaborate on the nature of your friendship? Exactly what does that word mean to you?”

“You mean . . . was I romantically involved with them?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

He quickly bent forward. “You haven’t tried any gay cases before, have you?”

“Nope,” I admitted. “This is my first.”

“In gay cases, Major, always direct your question more narrowly. Some gays are wildly promiscuous. Romantic entanglements can be irrelevant, even undesirable. You must always ask, was there a physical relationship, because often that’s all there was.”

Whitehall then studied me very carefully to see how I’d respond. I had the sense there was something here that was very weighty to him. He’d just lectured me on a point of law as though I were a first-year law student, so there was the matter of one-upsmanship to contend with. But he’d also made a somewhat provocative claim about gays — was this some kind of test?

At any rate, I coldly said, “Point taken. Did you have either a romantic or physical relationship with any of those men?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he bent farther forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and said, “Tell me something, Major. I’ve read that some defense attorneys would rather not know if their clients are guilty or innocent. In the dark, they give every client every benefit of the doubt. They throw their hearts and souls into the defense. Do you subscribe to that theory?”

“Nope. I sure don’t.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, any decent defense attorney puts his feelings aside. For a second, it diffuses your strategy. If you believe your client’s innocent, you spend all your time trying to prove that to everybody else. If you know or suspect he’s guilty, you spend every second trying to invalidate or hinder the prosecutor’s case. It’s like what they taught you in military art about focusing the main effort on a battlefield, and economizing elsewhere. We’ve only got two weeks here. We can’t afford to be diffused.”

“But tell me truthfully. If you thought I was guilty of these crimes — murder, rape, necrophilia, engaging in homosexual acts, consorting with enlisted troops — would you put your heart and soul into my defense?”

“I’ve taken an oath as an officer of the court to provide you the most able defense I can offer.”

That was a rhetorical sidestep and he knew it. And that seemed to tell him something important, because he leaned back against the wall and his expression got suddenly chilly.

“Okay,” he said, “here’s the way we’ll work this. You go find out everything you can. Collect the facts, analyze what you’ve got, then come back to me with your questions.”

“Will you answer them?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that. Just bring your questions when you’re ready.”

We left Captain Thomas Whitehall in his cell and departed the holding facility. Neither Katherine nor Maria asked me what I thought. I figured they already knew what I thought. They knew, because they had to be thinking the exact same thing.

I
melda had already accomplished an all-out miracle. Four desks with computers were up and running, giving the place the look of a long-established law office, barring the contradictory presence of hair supplies cluttered all over the counters. One of her clerks was typing, another was filing, and the third was taking dictation from Keith.

Imelda was seated in one of the four parlor chairs, feet kicked up, proofreading some legal document, slashing away with a thick red pen, looking like the Queen of Sheba. I swore I’d never forgive her.

A message awaited us, too. It was from the embassy and said that Katherine and I were invited to a powwow in the office of the Republic of Korea’s minister of justice at 1:00 P.M. It being twenty till, the two of us frantically dashed outside and jumped into a sedan. We raced for the front gate, and it wasn’t until we were almost there before I realized we were completely screwed. The gate was bound to be choked up with protesters.