“Which of the two would you home in on?”
“Moran. He’s big and he’s powerful. Lee No Tae wasn’t any weakling himself, and his body was covered with welts and scrapes and bruises. The doc told me the stomach bruises looked like they were done by a piledriver. Whole ribs were shattered. Whoever subdued him was probably pretty big, and damned strong.”
“Unless Lee was so drunk he couldn’t fend anyone off.”
“The problem with that,” I countered, “was that his blood-alcohol level was only.051. Maybe he was technically drunk at midnight, but by the time he was killed he’d sobered up enough to fend for himself.”
“Okay, good point,” she said. “And the autopsy showed no contusions on his head, like he’d been knocked out?”
“Nope. There were contusions all over his stomach, his arms, his hands, his shins, and his feet tops, but none on his head or face.”
“None anywhere on his face?” Katherine asked, sounding surprised, although I suspected this was a ruse, because she was too diligent not to have already reviewed the autopsy results.
“That’s right,” I admitted.
“Isn’t that odd?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Well, figure that he’s in a fight with his attacker. They’re struggling and Lee’s doing everything he can to get away. Why no blows to the face?”
She had a good point, but I had a better one. “Think about it, Katherine. If a guy was trying to rape him, he’d be coming at him from behind. That’s how the geometry works out between men.”
“Then how did his stomach and shins get bruised?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe the assault started from his front, then the attacker wrestled himself behind him. Remember, too, that somebody got a web belt around his neck, and the autopsy shows that the belt was being held from behind him.”
“Maybe,” she said, but without the slightest trace of conviction, mainly, I figured, because she was grasping at straws to build her frame defense and didn’t want to be particularly bothered by any distractions, like conflicting evidence, or good common sense.
I said, “Look, I know you don’t want to get into this again, but the more I learn about this case, the more dubious your frame defense looks.”
“Then you stay dubious,” she said. “Maybe it’ll do me some good to have an in-house skeptic.”
“Maybe. But you think about what you’ll do to our client if it turns out you’re wrong.”
“Speaking of which,” she said, taking a deep gulp from her beer, “are you up for visiting Thomas again?”
“For what purpose?”
“A health-and-welfare visit. He could probably use some cheer.”
“I’ll go with you,” I muttered, “but if I had my druthers, I’d rather bean him with a baseball bat than cheer him up.”
The car was out front and it took us about two hours and more wrong turns than I can remember before we found the prison again. All the signs were written in Korean, and Katherine kept berating me, like it was my fault this country was filled with folks who put those goofy sticklike symbols on their signs. Some women are that way.
It was turning dark when we pulled into the courtyard. We left the driver with the car idling. It took a few more minutes to explain to a guard at a desk who didn’t speak any English why we were there. He kept looking at us like we were door-to-door salespeople, while I kept trying to use sign language to explain what we wanted. I was pointing at the white wall, and repeating “Whitehall,” over and over. I thought it was pretty clever, but Katherine kept glaring at me like I was a complete dolt. At least until the guard finally grinned and started shaking his head up and down, like an overeager puppy who finally got it.
Then he left us there a few moments till he came back accompanied by the big goon with shoulders like an ox.
“You wish to see Whitehall?” he asked, giving us that toothy grin.
“Please,” I humbly said. “Only for a few minutes.”
He crossed his thick arms across his huge chest. “You should’ve called ahead.”
“So sorry about that,” I said. “We are relying on your overabundant generosity to allow us to see him.”
He scowled at me a few seconds, like he thought I was pulling his leg, or maybe he didn’t like being called a generous person, but then he dropped his arms and indicated for us to follow him. We made the same trek. Again, it was so eerily quiet, I swear I heard a guy break wind up on the third floor.
“What’s this, reading hour again?” I remarked.
“No, this is prayer hour.”
“How’s that one work?”
“They pray to God for forgiveness.”
“They’re all Christian?”
“Not when they get here. But they all leave Christian.”
We were at Whitehall’s cell by that time, and the big Korean was digging through his pockets for the key.
“I am the only one with one of these,” he said, as he stuck it in and gave it a hard twist. “It is for Whitehall’s safety. There are many men here who would gladly kill him. Even guards.”
I let that one pass as Katherine and I stuck our heads inside the cell. What I didn’t say was that I wouldn’t mind killing him myself.
It took a moment to adjust our eyes. The dim light in the overhead cage barely emitted enough rays to make it to the floor.
“Thomas?” Katherine said.
There was a slight rustling in the corner of the tiny cell. “Katherine, is that you?”
“Yes. How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” he said. “Come in.”
So we did. The room stank. Obviously Whitehall was using the little metal bowl for his toilet, and just as obviously the bowl wasn’t being emptied.
“Excuse me,” Katherine said, talking to the big Korean, “why don’t you have someone collect his waste? For God’s sake, this is disgusting. He’ll catch some terrible disease.”
“Not to worry,” the man assured her. “We collect the bowl every third day. He shouldn’t have eaten so much before he entered. Soon his body will be purged, and his new diet will correct the problem.”
In other words, pretty soon Whitehall would be getting only small portions of rice and water, so he wouldn’t be producing much human waste. Very economical, these Korean prison officials.
I said, “Could you relocate about fifty feet away? We have to discuss a few things with our client, and American law affords us the privilege of confidentiality.”
“Certainly,” he said, smiling like it was a particularly stupid request.
My eyes were now fully adjusted and I carefully examined our client. He was wearing Korean prison garb that consisted of some coarse gray cotton pajamas and a pair of cloth slippers. His lips and face seemed oddly misshapen, and either he had two pretty serious black eyes or he was turning into a raccoon.
“Pretty rough?” I asked him.
“Very rough,” he said.
“Who did this to you?” Katherine demanded, sounding pissed to beat the band.
“Don’t worry about it,” Whitehall said.
“No, I won’t ignore this. I-”
“I said, forget it!” Whitehall yelled, so insistently I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had reached out and punched her.
“Damn it, Thomas, they can’t do this to you.”
“Katherine, they can do much worse than this to me. Don’t make them angry.”
Katherine said, “I’ll go see the minister of justice. If I have to, I’ll hold a press conference and tell the whole world what’s happening here.”
Whitehall collapsed onto his sleeping mat. “What in the hell do you think caused this in the first place? They dragged me out of my cell in the middle of the night, took me to a room to watch you on CNN, then beat the crap
