An Insignificant Case, page 1
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Publishing Group ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
For Judy Margolin, who has earned her nickname “Saint Judy.” Fingers crossed.
PART ONE
THE MARTYR
CHAPTER ONE
Guido Sabatini walked into La Bella Roma Italian Ristorante a few moments before Gretchen Hall left her office to tell her maître d’ that she had resolved a problem with one of their suppliers. Guido looked like some of the religious paintings of Jesus that Gretchen had seen in cathedrals and churches. He was six foot four and dressed in a white floor-length caftan that was secured at the waist by a gold rope. His thick blond hair flowed over his shoulders, and his downy beard and mustache framed a beatific smile that beamed at Salvatore Borelli while the maître d’ berated him.
Gretchen, the owner of La Bella Roma, was on the downside of forty, but she could have passed for someone much younger. Her hair was as blond as the biblical figure who was standing in front of her maître d’, and her black pantsuit and white, man-tailored silk blouse clung to a figure that a teenage girl would have envied.
“What’s the problem, Sal?” Gretchen asked.
Borelli turned toward his boss. “This guy came in last week. He’s trying to hawk his pictures to our customers. I told him to get lost then, and I’m telling him again. If he’s not outta here in two seconds, I’m calling the cops.”
It was the height of the lunch hour, and a restless crowd was stacking up behind the artist. Gretchen saw that the object of Borelli’s ire was holding a portfolio. To avoid a scene, Gretchen opted for diplomacy.
“What kind of pictures do you have for sale?” Gretchen asked.
“Not pictures, signora, works of art,” the man said in a poor imitation of an Italian accent. “Paintings of martyred saints, landscapes of Tuscan hill towns, depictions of the canals of Venice.”
“Why don’t we go to my office so I can take a look?”
Gretchen turned, and the artist followed her to the back of the restaurant between tables of gawking diners.
Gretchen’s office was starkly modern and windowless. She had decorated it with a granite-topped desk, a black leather sofa, and black-and-white photographs of the Colosseum, the Via Veneto, the Piazza Navona, and other landmarks of the Eternal City. The only anomaly was a mirror with an ornate gold frame that had belonged to a mistress of one of the doges. Hall had found it in an antique store in Milan during Fashion Week and had fallen in love with the story of its origin. The mirror was mounted on the wall across from a photograph of the Trevi Fountain.
“I’m Gretchen Hall, and I own La Bella Roma,” she said when they were inside her office. “Who might you be?”
“I am Guido Sabatini, signora.”
A small glass-topped coffee table covered with menus, invoices, and other papers stood under the photograph of the fountain. Gretchen cleared the tabletop.
“Well, Guido, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Sabatini opened his portfolio, and Gretchen was stunned. The artist had created the optical illusion of a Saint Sebastian who writhed in pain from the arrows that pierced him. The crowds wandering the street of a Tuscan hill town actually seemed to move. But it was a moonlit view of a Venice canal that Gretchen decided she had to have.
“They’re not bad,” said Gretchen, who had been taught how to bargain at an early age by her attorney father. “What do you want for the Venice canal painting?”
“One thousand dollars, signora,” Guido said.
“Oh, well. I really like it, but one thousand dollars…” She shrugged. “I could manage two hundred and fifty.”
Guido knew what Gretchen was doing, and he didn’t really care about money. His art was his passion, and seeing it displayed where others could be awed by it was what really motivated him.
“For you, signora, I will make a sacrifice. You can have my painting for five hundred dollars.”
Five hundred dollars was nothing to Gretchen, and Guido looked like he could use the money.
“Done,” she said as she moved the painting to her desk. “I don’t suppose you take credit cards?”
Guido smiled. “Cash only, signora.”
Gretchen returned the smile. “Of course.”
While Guido gathered up his other paintings and returned them to his portfolio, Gretchen took down the photo of the Trevi Fountain, revealing a wall safe. She punched in the combination on the keypad, opened the safe, and reached inside. When her hand came out, it was wrapped around a wad of bills. Gretchen counted out five hundred dollars, put the rest back in the safe, closed it, and hung the photo back on the wall.
“Do me a favor, Guido,” Gretchen said as she held out the money. “Don’t come back to La Bella Roma. I appreciate your talent, but Sal has a hard-on for you, and a scene is not good for business.”
“No problem,” Guido promised as he pushed the money into a pocket in the caftan.
“I’m glad you came in. I really like the painting.”
Guido bowed and left. As soon as the door closed behind him, Gretchen held up the painting in front of the wall safe. She liked the photo of the fountain, but she loved the scene from one of her favorite places.
* * *
Guido drove into the yard in front of his farmhouse and went up to his bedroom. He opened the top drawer in his chest of drawers and took out a metal box where he kept his money. Five hundred was a good sale, but he hadn’t sold enough paintings to pay his expenses for the month. That meant he would have to become Lawrence Weiss tonight, something he only did when there was an emergency.
As soon as the sun went down, Guido traded his caftan for faded jeans, a plaid shirt, and a Seattle Mariners baseball cap. Then he drove to a store that sold guns in a strip mall in Clackamas County.
Guido walked over to the cashier and gave him the password. The cashier nodded toward a door at the back of the store. A large man with a day-old beard and a bouncer’s build opened the door, and Guido repeated the password. The man stepped aside and let Guido into a back room where men and a few women sat around three tables playing poker.
Guido had played against a few of them after the casinos had blackballed him and forced him out of the high-stakes games. They would be easy pickings, but he had to be careful about how much money he won, because some of the players were sore losers and could be violent.
Guido took a seat at one of the tables and played modestly while he sized up the opposition. There was one old-timer who played a decent game, two players who had no idea what they were doing but thought they did, and Brad and Brent Atkins, two brothers who had tells that flashed like a neon sign whenever they were bluffing. The brothers looked like hard cases, so Guido only took advantage of them a few times, but the pots he won from them were the biggest of the night.
Guido acted like he wasn’t sure he would win those pots and apologized to the loser as if he were embarrassed by his luck, but one of the brothers didn’t look like he was buying the aw-shucks routine.
When Guido had cleared $3,000, he decided it was time to quit. There was another game in Washington County he could hit tomorrow that had slightly higher stakes.
“Night, boys,” Guido said. “Thanks for letting me play in your game.”
Guido heard two chairs scraping against the floor just before he left the back room. When he was outside and hidden in the shadows at the side of the building, he focused on the door to the gun store. Seconds later, the brothers walked into the parking lot.
“I have a gun and I will shoot you,” Guido said.
The brothers whirled toward the sound of Guido’s voice, but they couldn’t see Guido until he stepped out of the shadows with his gun trained on them.
“You play poker as poorly as you play the role of robbers. Please go back to the game and don’t come out for twenty minutes.”
Brad hesitated, but Brent moved his hand toward his coat.
“I can see you going for the poorly concealed gun you’re hiding under your coat. Please stop and go inside.”
“You ain’t gonna shoot us,” Brent said.
Guido pointed his pistol at Brent’s heart.
“You have a tell that let me know every time you were bluffing. That’s how I won those hands from you. Were you able to tell when I was bluffing? If you can, go for your gun. If you can’t, go inside so I don’t have to shoot you.”
Brad touched his sibling’s shoulder. “Let’s go, Brent. It ain’t worth it.”
Brent glared at Guido. “You better not show your face here again,” he threatened before following his brother inside.
Moments later, Guido drove away from the strip mall and headed home.
CHAPTER TWO
If Charlie Webb were a grade, he would have b
Charlie never raised his hand in class, and his teachers rarely called on him. He wasn’t in any extracurricular activities, except football. He was always big for his age, so his high school coach put him on the offensive line. Charlie was a serviceable guard without the talent it took to get a college scholarship, so he started at a community college, then got his four-year degree at Portland State University, where he graduated—surprise—in the middle of his class.
Charlie watched a lot of lawyer shows on TV, so he applied to law school. He was self-aware enough to forget Harvard, Yale, and any other school in the top fifty, but it was discouraging to be rejected by every second-tier school to which he applied. Then, just when it looked like he was going to have to figure out another way to earn a living, he was accepted at Oxford School of Law, a third-tier law school that had no connection to the Oxford University and gave its students loans at suspiciously high interest rates. Three years later, Charlie passed the bar and was forced to hang out a shingle when nobody offered him a job.
Charlie’s law practice limped along on court appointments, divorce clients referred by family members, and referrals from two of his fellow high school linemen, who were members of the Barbarians motorcycle club. The Barbarians were always running afoul of the law and supplied his only steady customers.
On Monday morning, Charlie was assigned to the courtroom of the Honorable Iris Carter, who was going to hear the case of State of Oregon v. Peter Easley.
Peter Easley’s gift was the ability to blend in. His height and weight were average. His hair was a dull brown shade, and he had no tattoos, scars, or other features that would attract anyone’s attention.
Easley’s nickname among the Barbarians was “the Ghost” because of his supernatural ability to move illegal drugs without being detected. Unfortunately, Easley had run into some Ghostbusters during a traffic stop, and a packet of cocaine had been found in a secret pocket in the headrest on the driver’s side of his dull brown Toyota.
Charlie had filed a pretrial motion to suppress the evidence on the grounds that the cocaine had been found during an illegal and unconstitutional warrantless search of Peter’s car that had been conducted without probable cause. His motion had been met with disdain and derision by Bridget Fournier, the Multnomah County deputy district attorney who had been assigned Easley’s case.
Charlie hadn’t slept very well the night before the hearing. This was the biggest criminal case he’d handled for the Barbarians or any other client, and Bridget Fournier had a terrifying reputation. Charlie had asked some of his friends in the criminal defense bar about her, and they all gave their condolences. The consensus was that Fournier was very, very smart, had no sense of humor, and gave no quarter.
Many of the members of the Barbarians were waiting for Charlie and his client in the corridor outside Judge Carter’s courtroom. They wore their colors, sported beards and tattoos, and would have seemed very scary to the average citizen. Charlie was on friendly terms with many members of the gang, but he was always on his toes around them because he was well aware of their capacity for violence.
Bob Malone and Gary Schwartz had played on the offensive line with Charlie in high school. They clapped him on the back and gave Charlie a thumbs-up. Then they yelled, “Go, Stallions!” the nickname of their high school football team, before following Charlie and Easley into the courtroom, where they found seats on the spectator benches with other members of the club.
Charlie said hello to Bridget Fournier when he walked through the bar of the court on the way to his seat at the defense counsel table. She returned the greeting with a terse reply before turning her eyes back to the memo she had written in opposition to Charlie’s motion.
Fournier, who was in her early thirties, used the bare minimum of makeup and wore no jewelry. She had pale blue eyes, a straight nose, thin lips, and a full figure that would have been sexy in the fifties when movie stars like Marilyn Monroe carried a few extra pounds. Fournier’s courtroom ensemble consisted of a white blouse and a gray pantsuit. Her straight black hair fell just below the shoulders of her suit jacket. Charlie didn’t think Fournier was pretty, but she wasn’t plain. He did think that a touch of makeup, a brighter outfit, and some nice jewelry might have tipped the balance to the pretty side.
Easley’s case had been assigned to Iris Carter, a slender African American in her early fifties who had been appointed to the Multnomah County Circuit Court ten years earlier after a successful career in private practice.
“The State calls Portland police officer Garrett Strom,” Fournier said as soon as Judge Carter took the bench.
Charlie had made a motion to have the witnesses, who were all police officers, wait outside the courtroom so they couldn’t hear one another’s testimony. He’d made an exception for Strom, who was the first witness.
Strom was a shade over six feet with a compact build, a buzz cut, and dark brown eyes.
“Officer Strom, how long have you been on the force?” Fournier asked.
“Ten years.”
“On the evening of December tenth of last year, were you on patrol in Southeast Portland?”
“I was.”
“Did you come in contact with the defendant, Peter Easley?”
“I did.”
“Did you know Mr. Easley?”
“Only by his reputation as a drug dealer. Before that evening, I’d never met him.”
Judge Carter looked at Charlie, waiting for him to object to Strom’s characterization of his client, but Charlie stayed silent.
“Please tell Judge Carter about your interaction with the defendant on the evening of December 10.”
The officer turned toward the judge. “Mr. Easley’s Toyota was parked outside the Bald Eagle Tavern between two other cars. I was on patrol in the area with Dennis Newsome, a recent academy graduate, when I saw the defendant get in his vehicle and start it. Then he backed into the car behind him with enough force to dent the bumper. He pulled forward and rammed into the car in front of him. Then he managed to get out of the space and drive away.
“I put on my lights and siren and followed him two blocks before he pulled over and jumped out of his car. I had broadcast the defendant’s name and the make of his car when I followed him, because I wasn’t sure if he would pull over.
“Mr. Easley was belligerent, and I suspected that he had been drinking. He swore at me and asked me in a very loud voice why I had stopped him. I told him that he had hit two cars and driven away without leaving insurance information. He denied damaging the cars and began screaming about police harassment. I became concerned about his behavior. I was also nervous because a crowd was starting to form.”
“Did any other officers arrive on the scene?”
“Yes. Sergeant Malcom Broadstreet drove up with Anthony Townes, a rookie he was training.”
“What happened then?” Fournier asked.
“Sergeant Broadstreet asked me why I had stopped the defendant, and I told him what I’d seen. The sergeant appeared to know the defendant, and they got into a verbal confrontation. The crowd was getting unruly, and I was occupied with keeping order. At some point, Sergeant Broadstreet handcuffed the defendant and put him in the back of his patrol car.”
“Did he give you any instructions concerning Mr. Easley’s car?”
“Yes. He told me to have officers Townes and Newsome conduct an inventory search of Mr. Easley’s car, then have it towed to the impound lot.”
“What is an inventory search?”
“When we impound a car, we go through it to record the contents so we have a list of valuables and other things that are in the car in case there is a problem later on with the owner claiming that something is missing.”
“Do you need a search warrant or probable cause to conduct an inventory search?”
“No, ma’am.”
Charlie had researched inventory searches after reading Fournier’s memo, and he knew this was true. He also knew that he would lose his motion if the plan he’d formulated failed.
