Chapter 1 Eddie

1

Eddie

In the beginning, and in the end, it all comes down to money.

New York City runs on the stuff like no other place on earth. Everything is about the green. What you can make. How you can get over. Kickbacks and greenbacks. Everything. And everyone.

All the damn time.

Before I became a lawyer, I was a con artist. When I worked the bars, the hotels, the businesses, seeking out my targets for short-cons, I looked for men who wanted to make a fast buck and didn't care who they hurt in the process. I went after those who had taken a wrong turn in life and never looked back. As a lawyer, I was on the lookout for the same kind of people.

Once you realize that cash is king in this city, things get a lot easier and much clearer.

The case in front of me right now had to be looked at through the lens of this city. My client Jayden Carter and his pal Smokehouse had been driving through the Bronx late one night in Jayden's brand-new Lexus. Unsurprisingly, they hadn't gotten very far before they saw the flashing berries and cherries of a cop car behind them. A single whoop of the siren was all it took for Jayden to pull over. The cops said the rear of his Lexus was dirty, obscuring the license plate. A valid reason for a stop. Jayden had washed the car that morning. Far as he was concerned, this was bullshit.

Officers Ben Gray and Linton Coffee, already pissed off that they were on the lobster shift at their precinct, searched the vehicle and found an unlicensed firearm in Jayden's car. He was arrested, charged and, after being stupid enough to carry an illegal weapon, even if it was just for protection, he made the right decision.

He called me.

That was six weeks ago.

Jayden sat beside me at the defense table in a brand-new navy suit, white button-down shirt and a navy tie. He was twenty-six. Single. Ran his own business – a furniture store in East Tremont. Smokehouse, Jayden's childhood friend, sat in the gallery beside my assistant, and secretary, Denise. He wore his best Canadian tuxedo – a baggy denim jacket and matching oversized blue jeans with a white tee beneath. His real name was Philip Martin, but he preferred Smokehouse, on account of his burgeoning hip-hop career. Both Jayden and Smokehouse were college graduates, well read, smart. And they had both done the right thing during the traffic stop – they complied with the NYPD instructions and let their lawyer do the fighting later.

Denise was in her black pant suit and white blouse. She dressed up whenever I needed her to come help me in court. Always professional, smarter than me and most lawyers.

‘Mr. Flynn, you have a motion before the court?' said the judge.

His Honor Judge Leonard Hightower was one of the best judges in the city. He wasn't a genius. He didn't even have a particularly brilliant mind. The respect he had among the defense attorneys of the New York legal profession stemmed from two factors.

His interpretation of the law was accurate.

He wasn't biased in favor of the district attorney.

Not much to ask from a judge, really. But the fact that he fulfilled these basic requirements put Judge Hightower in the top rank of the judiciary in New York City.

‘I do have a motion, Your Honor,' I said, getting to my feet.

At this point, the assistant district attorney, Thomas Baker, broke from the prosecution table and came over to see me.

‘If we could have just one moment, please, Your Honor,' he said.

Baker was a young, hungry ADA, with three years in the office and a thousand convictions under his belt. His fresh face and brassy blues eyes were zeroed in on a senior position.

He didn't want to try this case. Didn't want me to make this motion. Baker wanted to settle.

‘Last chance, Flynn,' he whispered. ‘Two-hundred-dollar fine, two years' parole, no jail time.'

Criminal possession of a firearm without a license is a felony in New York. If Jayden was convicted, he would go to prison. This was a sweet deal. The last offer I got from Baker was a five-hundred-dollar fine, ninety days' prison time and two years' parole, but this was the best deal I'd ever been offered by a prosecutor.

A small fine. No prison time. Two years' parole.

It wasn't a get-out-of-jail-free card, but it was the next best thing. Baker had two cops waiting in the wings to testify that the license plate was muddy, obscuring some of the lettering. If they could prove the stop was legal, Jayden was going to jail.

Easy. Two veteran cops. Their word against the word of Jayden and Smokehouse who said the plate was clean. You didn't need to be a legal expert to know which way this was going to play out.

Only problem was the offer.

Baker didn't want this case to settle. He really wanted it to settle.

That was what made me uneasy about the case right away. My suspicions were confirmed once I'd gotten all the paperwork from Jayden – his arrest sheet and all the legal docs that come with it – property seizure of the firearm and towing receipt.

That was all I needed.

‘Hey, man,' said Jayden, ‘that's not a bad deal. No jail time?'

‘It's your call,' I said. I looked over at Baker. He was talking to his first witness. Officer Ben Gray. Only, he was no longer patrolman Gray. The three blue stripes on the arm of his uniform meant he had gone up in the world since this stop.

That clinched it.

‘If you want my advice, we fight. You won't do time with this deal, but you'll be a convicted felon. That brings a ton of shit that you have to carry around. You can't ever legally possess a firearm, you won't get a loan or credit card, you won't get a mortgage, you'll lose your driver's license and that's just the beginning.'

He nodded, said, ‘I hear you, man, but this white judge is never going to believe that license plate was clean. Not when there's two white cops saying my plate was dirty.'

‘I agree,' I said.

‘You what?'

‘You're right. He won't believe you over two white cops.'

‘So why are we fighting this?'

‘Because I'm not going to call you as a witness to testify that your license plate was clean. We're going to get one of the cops to do it for us.'

Jayden looked at me like I'd just told him I'd bought the Brooklyn Bridge for a nickel.

I asked him to trust me. He nodded.

‘Mr. Baker, Mr. Flynn,' said the judge. ‘Are you ready to proceed?'

‘I am, Your Honor, Mr. Baker has agreed to call Officer Ben Gray to speak to the single issue in this case. I will have questions for the officer afterwards.'

‘Proceed,' said Judge Hightower.

The tall cop in the new sergeant's stripes came forward, took the oath, sat down and gave fast, clean answers to Baker's questions. Gray and his partner were on the night shift, they saw a Lexus drive past with mud on the license plate, obscuring the lettering. They stopped the car, informed the driver why he'd been pulled over. Got his license and registration and ran a check on both.

‘During the stop, Sergeant Gray, was there anything else suspicious about Mr. Carter or his vehicle?' asked Baker.

‘Yes, I could smell marijuana. It was a pungent smell coming out of the car. While it's legal to carry it for personal use, I suspected, given how strong the smell was, that there may be a large quantity of marijuana in the vehicle – enough for illegal distribution of narcotics.'

Since the legalization of marijuana, cops looking for an excuse to search a vehicle will either say they thought they saw a gun on the back seat, or say they caught an immensely strong smell of dope from the car. Needless to say, there were no drugs in Jayden's car. Didn't matter that they didn't find any – they did find a gun.

‘I see, and having formed a reasonable suspicion, did you then search the vehicle?'

‘We both did. I found the pistol in the glove box. Mr. Carter did not have a license to carry that firearm and he was given his rights and arrested. I called in the arrest, arranged for a truck to tow the defendant's vehicle.'

‘Thank you, Sergeant Gray. Mr. Flynn will have some questions.'

I could have a dozen questions now. The truth is I already knew exactly what had happened.

Gray and Coffee had made a racially motivated traffic stop. Simple as that. There was no mud on the license plate when they stopped the car, but while Gray talked to Jayden, I guessed his partner could smear all the mud and dirt he wanted onto the license plate. There was no smell of drugs. They were looking for a reason to arrest Jayden. If they hadn't found a gun, I suspected both cops would've gotten physical with him and said Jayden struggled, then he would've been arrested for resisting a police officer.

Street cops live and die by their arrest record. They need to keep those numbers high. And what started as racial profiling quickly turned into an opportunity to make some money. There are five tow companies who have contracts with the city. Once the cops arrest a driver at a traffic stop the car can't be left on the street – it has to be towed. There's a randomizer on their cruiser's computer – so once they input that a car needs a tow, the program randomly selects one of the five towing companies. That's who they're supposed to call for the tow. Only some cops forget to press the button, or ignore the result. They call their guy in the towing company who will kick back fifty bucks to the cop for the call-out – usually, the same company who keeps a lot in Long Island, or Jamaica, or Bed Stuy, so they can charge the extra mileage for towing and are likely to keep the car longer because it will make it hard for the owner to get a ride out there.

Greenbacks and kickbacks.

Even those sergeant's stripes.

The officers who are under investigation, or have a large number of citizen complaints against them, normally get a promotion instead of booted off the force. The police commission and the union don't want cops prosecuted nor any successful complaints from the public, because they hate cops getting fired. Gives the boys in blue a bad name. Instead, it's easier to take problematic cops off the street by putting them behind a sergeant's desk. A rotten NYPD cop is far more likely to get a promotion, and the pay rise and pension benefits that come with it, than get fired.

I wasn't going to ask Sergeant Gray about any of this. Not the complaints against him, not the promotion.

I was going to focus on the illegal stop and tow.

I had no proof of any of Gray's criminal activity, other than his promotion, and the fact that on the face of it this was a slam dunk case for a prosecutor, but Baker didn't want to be in court. He was offering me the shirt off his back just to plead this case out.

I guessed he suspected I knew what had really happened.

And they knew I must've had a good reason to throw away the plea deal of a lifetime. Baker suspected I had evidence that would blow them away.

I stood, picked up a folder off the desk and took out the thick wad of documents inside. About a hundred pages. Stapled together. I flicked through them, studying the pages, then found what I was looking for, ran my finger along a line of text, then gave Sergeant Gray a big smile.

‘Sergeant, when you make an arrest from a traffic stop and the vehicle has to be towed, what is standard NYPD protocol?'

‘You secure the vehicle, hit the randomizer on the cruiser and call the tow company that comes up onscreen. Then I make sure the vehicle is transferred into their custody.'

I turned, nodded to Denise. She got up, left the court. I could have done this sooner, but I wanted to make sure Sergeant Gray saw me signal to Denise. And that he saw Denise leave.

‘So the tow company who comes to collect the vehicle, that's always chosen at random by the computer?'

‘Not necessarily. We have a duty to convey the suspect to central booking as soon as possible. If we happen to see an unloaded tow truck passing by, we can flag it down.'

‘Does that happen often?'

‘Sometimes.'

The courtroom doors opened and Denise led in four men. Two wore dirt- and grease-strained gray overalls. The other two blue overalls were in roughly the same state. All four wore work boots, their hands dark with traces of oil, and were between forty and fifty years old. They could all have been from the same industrial rock band, but a distinctive individual logo on their overalls, and the same logo on a ball cap that one of them wore, spelled out exactly where they were from – they wore the insignia of the other four city-approved towing companies.

‘Is there a record of the randomizer results?'

‘Mr. Flynn, is this relevant to your client's case?' asked the judge. Hightower was listening, but he liked things to move swiftly in court.

‘If you allow me a few more questions, I believe this will be crucial.'

‘Go on, but bring this to a point soon,' said the judge.

‘Sergeant Gray, is there a record of the randomizer results?'

Gray, keeping his lips tight, smiled and locked his fingers together before saying, ‘There are no records of randomizer results.'

‘But we do have your arrest records,' I said, holding up the heavy bundle of documents in my right hand. I reached over, took another pile of pages from the table with my left, held those up too, and said, ‘And we have the towing records for the other four towing companies approved by the city. What would happen if we matched up those records, Sergeant Gray?'

I couldn't resist glancing behind me at the gallery. One of the men in overalls was smiling and nodding. All four of them stared intensely at Gray – like he was juicy prime rib and they were getting ready to devour him.

‘I'm not sure what you mean,' said Gray, his eyes furtively moving between the bundle of documents in my hand and the four tow-truck drivers in the gallery beside Denise. He sat up in his chair and his eyes grew wider as I let the silence, and his anxiety, build.

‘I mean, what are the odds the randomizer gives you the name of the same tow company for every single one of your arrests?'

Sergeant Gray grew very pale. Then his skin color changed again. He looked almost green, like he was about to throw up.

‘Before we get into these records in detail, Sergeant Gray, I'm going to ask you once more, and for the final time – is it possible that my client's license plate was a little dirty, but that the plate numbers were not fully obscured?'

I could hear the pine bench creaking as all four men in overalls leaned forward. Their gaze locked on Gray.

Sweat broke out on his forehead. He started chewing on his lip, then swallowed, took a sip of water. I was giving him a way out. A path that would cause some immediate embarrassment, but it was better than facing another internal-affairs investigation.

‘Now that I think of it,' he said, and then coughed and sat up straighter in his chair. ‘Now that I have had time to properly consider it, maybe my recollection of that license plate was not one hundred percent accurate.'

‘What?' asked Judge Hightower. ‘Speak clearly, Sergeant. Was the defendant's license plate obscured by dirt or not?'

‘I can't be sure any longer,' said Gray, shaking his head.

Judge Hightower leaned back in his seat and stared at me.

‘Mr. Flynn, I have no idea what just happened, but this officer has just confirmed your client was illegally stopped. That means the search of your client's vehicle was also illegal and any items recovered from that search were unlawfully obtained. This prosecution is dismissed,' said Judge Hightower, and he stood up and left the court.

By the time Sergeant Gray was on his feet, the DA had already angrily stuffed his papers into his faux leather briefcase and was stomping out of the courtroom. Gray looked unsteady on his feet. He joined his partner, they whispered together then followed the DA out of court.

I felt Jayden's arms round me. They were shaking.

‘It was luck,' I said. ‘I know you've got that weapon for protection, but it's gone now. Trust me – you're safer without it.'

‘I know. I'm sorry, Eddie. Thank you for this.'

We hugged it out, and then Jayden and Smokehouse bounced out of the back doors.

I met Denise and our four tow truckers in the lobby.

‘Good job,' I said, and gave each of them a hundred bucks.

‘Do we get to keep the overalls?' said Bugs.

Bugs wore one of the gray uniforms. Denise said her sewing skills weren't what they used to be, and the badge on this pair of overalls was crooked, with black threads trailing from it.

‘Sure. Keep the overalls and the boots. Just don't go pretending to be tow-truck drivers. And take off the badges.'

Bugs, Karl, Johnny and Little Sacks pulled the badges off the overalls I'd bought on eBay last week. I'd represented Bugs some years back on a breaking-and-entering charge. One in a long line of missteps. He promised if he got another chance he would change. I got him off, didn't charge him a cent and we became friends. I helped out Bugs and his pals whenever I could. Usually Bugs and the guys hung out at the Bowery Mission in Tribeca, a homeless shelter that was fast becoming a regular home.

‘If you want lunch, you know my tab is always open at Lexi's Deli on 10 th .'

‘I think we might stretch to a grilled cheese today, if that's alright, Eddie?'

‘Whatever you guys need.'

Being homeless in any city is tough. In New York, it's hell. But Bugs was proud. Even though I told him he and his pals could eat every day at the deli, on me, they only went occasionally. Didn't want to exploit any kind of generosity – no matter how small.

‘Thanks, guys. We couldn't have done it without you,' said Denise.

We watched Bugs and his pals pocket the cash, and leave the court building with something of a spring in their step.

‘You're a lousy seamstress,' I said.

‘You should try my cooking,' said Denise.

‘No, thanks. You brought me leftover meatloaf last month. Do you remember?'

‘Not my finest piece of cooking.'

‘I disagree. It's great. It's still holding open that heavy door to the office storeroom.'

Denise laughed, punched me in the arm. We started to follow Bugs toward the exit.

‘I meant to ask, how did you get Sergeant Gray's arrest records and towing information?' she said.

I opened my leather messenger bag, took out the two bundles of documents.

I held both bundles aloft, then dumped them in a garbage basket as we walked past. ‘Two Xeroxed copies of the TV Guide for last December.'

Right then, Denise stopped, reached into her jacket.

Her phone was ringing. Mine was still switched off.

She took the call, listened, hung up and said, ‘Kate needs you back at the office right now. She's caught a whale.'

A whale, in legal terms, is a client with extremely deep pockets.

‘What's he on the line for? Divorce?'

Denise shook her head, said, ‘Murder.'