“I understand you have some guns,” I say.
“I got one gun” is how he corrects me. “But don’t worry, man, I ain’t gonna shoot you.”
“I’ll get back to you,” I say, then hang up and tell Captain Dessens about Schilling’s request.
“Good,” he says, standing up. “Let’s get this thing moving.”
“What thing?” I ask. “You think I’m going in there? Why would I possibly go in there?”
Dessens seems unperturbed. “You want a live client or a dead one?”
“He’s not my client. Just now was the first time I’ve ever spoken to him. He didn’t even know it was me.”
“On the other hand, he’s got a lot of money to pay your bills, Counselor.” He says “Counselor” with the same respect he might have said “Fuehrer.”
Dessens is really pissing me off; I don’t need this aggravation. “On the other hand, you’re an asshole,” I say.
“So you’re not going?” Dessens asks. The smirk on his face seems to say that he knows I’m a coward and I’m just looking for an excuse to stay out of danger. He’s both arrogant and correct.
Willie comes over to me and talks softly. “Schill’s good people, Andy. They got the wrong guy.”
I’m instantly sorry I didn’t leave Willie at the airport. Now if I don’t go in, I’m not just letting down a stranger accused of murder, I’m letting down a friend. “Okay,” I say to Dessens, “but while I’m out there, everybody has their guns on safety.”
Dessens shakes his head. “Can’t do it, but I’ll have them pointed down.”
I nod. “And I get a bulletproof vest.”
Dessens agrees to the vest, and they have one on me in seconds. He and I work out a signal for me to come out of the house with Schilling without some trigger-happy, Jets-fan officer taking a shot at us.
Willie offers to come in with me, but Dessens refuses. Within five minutes I’m walking across the street toward a quite beautiful ranch-style home, complete with manicured lawn and circular driveway. I can see a swimming pool behind the house to the right side, but since I didn’t bring my bathing suit, I probably won’t be able to take advantage of it. Besides, I don’t think this bulletproof vest would make a good flotation device.
As I walk, I notice that the street has gotten totally, eerily silent. I’m sure that every eye is on me, waiting to storm the house if Schilling blows my unprotected head off. “The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife” suddenly doesn’t seem like a cliché anymore.
Four hours ago my biggest problem was how to ask the first-class flight attendant for a vodkaless Bloody Mary without using the embarrassing term “Virgin Mary,” and now I’ve got half a million sharpshooters just waiting for me to trigger a firefight. I’m sure there are also television cameras trained on me, and I can only hope I don’t piss in my pants on national television.
As I step onto the porch, I see that the door is partially open. I take a step inside, but I don’t see anything. Schilling’s voice tells me to “Come in and close the door behind you,” which is what I do.
The first thing I’m struck by is how sparsely furnished the place is and how absent the touches of home. There are a number of large unopened cardboard boxes, and my sense is that Schilling must have only recently moved in. This makes sense, since I saw on ESPN a few weeks ago that the Giants just signed him to a fourteen-million, three-year deal, a reward for his taking over the starting running back job late last season.
Schilling sits on the floor in the far corner of the room, pointing a handgun at me. He is a twenty-five-year-old African-American, six three, two hundred thirty pounds, with Ali-like charismatic good looks. Yet now he seems exhausted and defeated, as if his next move might be to turn the gun on himself. When I saw him on ESPN, he was thanking his wife, teammates, and God for helping him achieve his success, but he doesn’t look too thankful right now. “How many are out there?” he asks.
Why? Is he so delusional as to think he can shoot his way out? “Enough to invade North Korea,” I say.
He sags slightly, as if this is the final confirmation that his situation is hopeless. I suddenly feel a surge of pity for him, which is not the normal feeling I have for an accused killer pointing a gun at me. “What’s going on here, Kenny?”
He makes a slight head motion toward a hallway. “Look in there. Second door on the left.”
I head down the hall as instructed and enter what looks like a guest bedroom. There are five or six regular-size moving cartons, three of which have been opened. I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to be looking for, so I take a few moments to look around.
I see a stain under the door to the closet, and a feeling of dread comes over me. I reluctantly open the door and look inside. What I see is a torso, folded over with a large red stain on its back. I don’t need Al Michaels to tell me that this is Troy Preston, wide receiver for the Jets. And I don’t need anybody to tell me that he is dead.
I walk back into the living room, where Kenny hasn’t moved. “I didn’t do it,” he says.
“Do you know who did?”
He just shakes his head. “What the hell am I gonna do?”
I sit down on the floor next to him. “Look,” I say, “I’m going to have a million questions for you, and then we’re going to have to figure out the best way to help you. But right now we have to deal with them.” I point toward the street, in case he didn’t know I was talking about the police. “This is not the way to handle it.”
“I don’t see no other way.”
I shake my head. “You know better than that. You asked for me… I’m a lawyer. If you were going to go down fighting, you’d have asked for a priest.”
He wears the fear on his face like a mask. “They’ll kill me.”
“No. You’ll be treated well. They wouldn’t try anything… there’s media all over this. We’re going to walk out together, and you’ll be taken into custody. It’ll take some time to process you into the system, and I probably won’t see you until tomorrow morning. Until then you are to talk to no one-not the police, not the guy in the next cell, no one. Do you understand?”
He nods uncertainly. “Are you going to help me?”
“I’m going to help you.” It’s not really a lie; I certainly haven’t decided to take this case, but for the time being I will get him through the opening phase. If I decide not to represent him, which basically means if I believe he’s guilty, I’ll help him get another attorney.
“They won’t let me talk to my wife.”
He seems to be trying to delay the inevitable surrender. “Where is she?” I ask.
“In Seattle, at her mother’s. They said she’s flying back. They won’t let me talk to her.”
“You’ll talk to her, but not right now. Now it’s time to end this.” I say it as firmly as I can, and he nods in resignation and stands up.
I walk outside first, as previously planned, and make a motion to Dessens to indicate that Kenny is following me, without his gun. It goes smoothly and professionally, and within a few minutes Kenny has been read his rights and is on the way downtown.
He’s scared, and he should be. No matter how this turns out, life as he knows it is over.
* * * * *
I PICK UP TARA at Kevin’s house. She seems a little miffed that I had abandoned her but grudgingly accepts my peace offering of a biscuit. As a further way of getting on her good side, I tell her that I’ll recommend she be allowed to play herself in the movie.
Kevin has followed the day’s events on television, and we make plans to meet in the office at eight A.M. I’m starting to get used to high-profile cases; they have a life of their own, and it’s vitally important to get on top of them immediately. And if one star football player goes on trial for murdering another, it’s going to make my previous cases look like tiffs in small-claims court.
As I enter my house, I’m struck by the now familiar feeling of comfort that envelops me. Two years ago, after my father’s death, I moved back to Paterson, New Jersey, to live in the house in which I grew up. Except for rescuing and adopting Tara from the animal shelter, coming back to this house is the single best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve hardly changed the interior at all; the house was already perfectly furnished with memories and emotions that only I can see and feel.
I’ve barely had time to put a frozen pizza in the oven when Laurie calls from Findlay. Such was the intensity of today’s events that I haven’t thought about her in hours.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “I saw what happened on television. I’ve been trying you all day on your cell phone.”
I left my cell phone in my suitcase, which the airline has delivered and is in the living room. “I’m fine. But we may have ourselves a client.”