a good idea?”
“I do.”
“Well… okay… but you know I have a vacation planned.”
Edna spends seventy percent of every day doing crossword puzzles, and she is an unmatched genius in that area. The other thirty percent she spends planning vacations with her family that they never take. When she adds up all the nieces, cousins, and the like, there are seventy-two people, and they won’t go away until all of them can make it. Suffice it to say that seventy-two schedules don’t ever match up that perfectly.
“Where are you going?”
“Either on a cruise to the Caribbean or Mount Rushmore,” she says.
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
I ask Edna to call Dylan’s office and make an appointment for me to see him regarding Noah’s case. How quickly he sees me will be a sure indicator as to how strong he considers his position. Fast means he’s confident, slow means he doesn’t completely have his act together, and there are holes to be plugged.
Edna calls me back five minutes later, to tell me that Dylan is available now if I’m so inclined. I’m not at all inclined, but I suck it up and tell her to advise him that I’m on the way.
There is pretty much nothing I like about Dylan Campbell. For one thing, he’s at least six foot two, maybe two hundred pounds, and in outstanding shape. He probably gets up at three-thirty in the morning to do calisthenics and eat wheat germ.
He was a quarterback at Duke, which is why I bet against them every chance I get. Unfortunately, this childishness extends to my betting against their basketball team, not a very profitable thing to do.
He’s got one of those cleft-things in his chin, which I’ve never trusted. Even his teeth, which I would like to knock out of his mouth, are pure white and perfectly spaced.
To my knowledge, only two things really bother Dylan. One is that his ambition has been at least temporarily thwarted. He has always seen his job as prosecutor as a stepping stone for his political career, and even made noise about running for Congress last year. His party establishment chose a different candidate, and Dylan was said to be livid about it.
The other source of pain for Dylan is the fact that he has faced me in two major cases and lost both times. This not only damaged his reputation, but particularly galled him because he hates me. Most prosecutors hate me, but Dylan’s hatred rises above the others’.
The distressing topper to all of this is that Dylan is smart and tough. He comes in prepared and focused, not a good combination for us inhabitants of the defense table.
Dylan is of course all fake smiles when I arrive, and he comes out to the corridor to greet me. He shakes my hand with a powerful grip and says, “Andy, good to see you. It’s been too long… way too long.”
“Really? You think? I thought it felt just right.”
He laughs, as if I’m kidding, though he knows I’m not. I silently admonish myself; for Noah’s sake I need to be on my best behavior, since Dylan holds all the cards.
He brings me into his office, and he gets right to the point. “You’ve got a tough one here, Andy.”
“Not the way I see it.”
“Then you’re not looking too carefully. This guy is going down with a thud.”
“What have you got?” I’m going to see what he has in detail when I get the discovery documents; I’m just looking for a preview now.
“Twice as much as we need, including a confession.”
“He allowed himself to be interrogated?”
Dylan shakes his head. “No. But we’ve got someone he confessed to a few weeks after the crime.”
“Who might that be?” I ask, cringing.
“A friend of his at the time. Galloway told him chapter and verse how he did it. The chemicals he used, how he set it off, locked the doors, and who he was after.”
A key part of lawyering, both in and out of the courtroom, is to never look surprised. It’s even better never to actually be surprised, but if that’s impossible, then appearance will have to do. What Dylan has just said is stunning to me and makes little sense. How could Noah have remembered something in such detail then, but have no recollection of it now? Could it be a result of his drug-taking?
“When will I get discovery?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Day or so. We’re putting it together.”
“Can I get the documents relating to this witness now? Seems like it would be an important piece in deciding which direction to go with this.”
“No problem.” He picks up the phone and gives directions to his assistant to copy those particular documents right away.
All kinds of theories are going through my mind, but I put them on hold to finish this conversation. There is still information to be gathered, and impressions to be left.
“So what are you looking for on this?” I ask.
He smiles an annoying smile. “Justice.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Andy, twenty-six people died a horrible death. The guy who did it is never going to see the sun again. Life… no parole.”
It is exactly what I expected, but I don’t tell him that. I also don’t tell him that Noah would be fine with that outcome. There’s nothing for me to say until I see the witness statement.
Dylan’s assistant brings in a folder with the statement documents in it, and I thank him, make some noises about talking to my client about all this, and leave.
Your mother was wrong, Brett Fowler would tell you.
Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.
Lunch is where the action is. It’s where deals are brokered, alliances are forged, careers are made, lies are told, backs are stabbed, and lives are ruined.
And then it’s time to get the check.
Fowler was not someone who would be considered to be at the center of the political world. He wasn’t an elected representative; he never ran for office, introduced a bill, or voted on an amendment. He was an outlier, an appendage who contributed to the process, and certainly profited from it.
He was a political consultant.
Political consultants, especially in Washington, D.C., have gotten a bad name as a group. Not quite as bad as lobbyists, or lawyers, or politicians themselves, but pretty bad nonetheless.
The truth is there are few things one can be in Washington and still have a good name, since the city itself has become the subject of scorn. Politicians who’ve served in Washington for twenty years try to reinvent themselves as “outsiders,” and they go home to give speeches that decry “Washington politics.”
So the bad-mouthing that was done of political consultants didn’t bother Brett much. In fact, it didn’t bother him at all.
The trend in political consulting was toward large firms, but Brett had long ago decided he would never go that route. He believed in operating on his own, no restrictions. If was better for himself and for his clients. Especially for himself.
Of course, that was when political consulting was his main occupation, when helping people succeed was his stock-in-trade. That was before he became an executive in another operation, which also helped people, but which then owned and used them from that time forward.
Almost everybody, even the wealthy or powerful, reached a point in their lives when they needed or wanted something that they couldn’t get. Very often accomplishing that goal would be very embarrassing, very illegal, and nearly impossible. So Fowler’s “team” provided the money or the muscle necessary to make it happen.
And from that moment they owned that person, as surely as anyone can own anything.
It reminded Fowler of that line from
That is how Fowler saw his own situation, with one difference.
