One Man's Paradise Read online

Brandon Glenn was a premed student at Pace University’s Manhattan campus when he was charged with murdering his biology professor. The professor, Samuel Moss, was openly gay, and witnesses attested that he’d made overt sexual advances on Brandon in the months preceding his death. Witnesses further stated that the advances infuriated Brandon, who was a homophobic marine reserve born and raised in the Bible Belt. The professor was found dead on Valentine’s Day in his East Village apartment with a screwdriver embedded in his throat.

  Milt Cashman was conflicted out of the case, having represented the victim on previous marijuana charges. Of course, his past representation of the victim wouldn’t have adversely affected his representation of Brandon Glenn, but no assistant DA in Manhattan wanted to lock horns with Not Guilty Milty, so the office zealously moved the court to have Milt removed from the case. The DA’s office succeeded and the result was my first stint defending a high-profile accused killer.

  Brandon had been in the professor’s home, there was no doubt of that. His fingerprints were found on a light switch, on a doorknob, and on a glass coffee table in the living room. Carpet fibers from the professor’s apartment were on Brandon’s clothes when he was arrested, and likewise, fibers from Brandon’s clothes were found in the professor’s humble abode.

  Science isn’t sexy, doesn’t get the adrenaline pumping, and isn’t something I realized I was signing on for when I first decided to defend criminals for a living. During the trial I found myself feeling like a fraud, wishing I had paid at least some attention to my professor when I took a forensic-science class in college.

  Brandon didn’t take the stand. He didn’t tell the jury what he told me: that he went to the professor’s apartment to threaten him with an administrative complaint if the sexual advances didn’t immediately cease. I knew it was a lie, but that isn’t why I refused to put Brandon on the stand. I refused to allow him to testify because it was a lie that the jury wouldn’t believe.

  I dismissed Brandon’s protests of innocence and attacked the case on the assumption that he was as guilty as hell, just like the rest of my clients. The assistant DA presented a strong case, hitting us steadily with a fierce series of punches, a left jab of motive here, a right hook of opportunity there. I tried to put their case down with a single punch. And I missed.

  The professor’s ex-boyfriend, Carson Reese, had both motive and opportunity and thus was dubbed around the office as our Reasonable Doubt Fairy. I had interviewed Reese and I was convinced he wasn’t the killer. Yet his being dateless on Valentine’s Day gave my client a chance at freedom, and me a chance at a dramatic victory that would adorn the covers of every major newspaper in New York.

  I was playing for the press. With the media decorating the front row I posed for the courtroom sketches and concerned myself more with making the defense dramatic than with making it effective. After I put on what the Daily News called a “brilliant defense,” the assistant DA called a rebuttal witness, a priest of all things, who testified that he was with Carson Reese on the night of the murder and he had the used condoms to prove it. Father Thomas White hadn’t come forward earlier for obvious reasons, and of course because no one had asked him to. The priest put the final nail in my client’s coffin when he testified that my client was romantically involved with the victim, that he had seen them kissing in Central Park. Yes, his testimony buried my client. And I had handed him the shovel.

  It took the jury less than an hour to return the guilty verdict. Father White had been on the prosecution’s lengthy witness list, I assumed as a smoke screen, and I’d never bothered to interview him. I was too busy deciding which tie would look best in a black-and-white photograph.

  Thirty minutes after the verdict was read, Brandon Glenn confessed to me. He was having an affair with Professor Moss. He was at the professor’s apartment often, but Brandon insisted he was not at the professor’s apartment on the day he was murdered. He would rather let the world think him a killer, he said, than know he was as queer as an $8 bill.

  The day after the verdict I got just what I wished for. My face was plastered on the front page of the Post, along with the headline he blows it! and an inset photograph of Father White positioned conveniently by my crotch.

  Five days after the sentencing, I received a telephone call from Rikers Island. Brandon Glenn had been raped and murdered while in general population awaiting transfer to an upstate facility.

  I didn’t leave the office for the following three days. I decorated the conference room with the Brandon Glenn file as if I were preparing for trial and pored through every piece of evidence I had to assure myself of his guilt. Alone in my office I prosecuted him again posthumously to unburden myself of the overwhelming guilt I felt over his death.

  After those three days I received a telephone call that convinced me I needn’t continue. It was the assistant district attorney who had prosecuted Brandon Glenn’s case. A Bronx man charged with multiple murders on the Lower East Side had confessed to the killing of Professor Samuel Moss.

  The media circus reopened and pitched its big-top tent right in front of my office. Milt was none too pleased anymore at being labeled my mentor and put some distance between us. New clients stopped calling, and the clients I did have watched me with a wary eye, as though I were the criminal. All I thought about was Brandon and how I’d failed him. I didn’t force the truth, not even from Brandon himself. I looked innocence in the eye and blinked. I didn’t recognize it, and an innocent man was dead for my shortcomings. Had I believed in his innocence, I might have looked a bit harder. I might have been able to convince the jury, if only I were able to convince myself. But I was a liar, a fraud, and I’d just figured everyone else was, too.

  A firm believer in running away from my problems, I sold my practice for practically nothing, tucked my tail between my legs, and headed as far west as I could without sacrificing my ability to practice law, which translates into my ability to pay my student loans.

  “That’s some story, son,” Jake says, removing his feet from the desk. “Are you gonna continue practicing criminal law?”

  “Yeah. But I’m sticking to misdemeanors. No more rapes, no more murders. The stakes are much too high and I don’t want that kind of responsibility anymore. Any client whose case might pique the media’s interest is walking right back out my door and finding another attorney. I intend to refer all felony cases elsewhere.”

  “Well, son, we’ll see about that.” Jake lifts himself off the chair and places the flask back home in its drawer. “C’mon. Let me show you around your new office.”

  Jake leads me to the large empty space across the hall and I feel a twinge of excitement, that short-lived high that comes with something new. A new car, a new home, a new girl. He points toward the colossal window centered on the back wall.

  “You have a mauka view,” he says. “Means your office looks out on the mountains. It’s a stunning view, even when the clouds gather over them. You’ll see more rainbows than you can count.”

  “The only rainbows I ever saw in New York were in puddles, right before a taxi would plow through and splash my suit pants on the way to court.”

  “You’re in a different world now, son,” he says, resting a hand on my shoulder. “My office has a makai view. I considered turning my desk around to take advantage of the view of the Pacific.”

  “Too awkward for you to have your back to the door?”

  “Nah, I just figured I’d daydream all day while my clients sat in jail exchanging cigarettes for blow jobs. By the way, did you bring a girlfriend with you here to the islands?”

  I give him a slight shake of the head and a look that lets him know I’m uncomfortable with the subject. I have commitment issues, deep-seated difficulties in sustaining relationships for longer than a couple of weeks. Once that new-girl smell is gone, so are they. I move on. I’m not proud of it, and my shrink and I were working on it when I left New York. I have found, however, that the mechanisms of psychotherapy can turn
as slowly as the wheels of justice.

  “How about you, Jake? Are you married?”

  “Nah. There are very few women, especially in Houston, who fancy a man who comes home from work late every night, mad and frustrated as hell because he can’t keep his clients alive. A man that spends his life fighting losing battles for shit pay, all the while getting criticized by yellow journalists who wouldn’t know a lethal injection from a blood test even if they had a front-row seat.”

  Outside my new office window is a picture-postcard view. Rolling green mountains kissing soft, white clouds. I press my nose up against the glass and know that I’ll never again stand in awe of the New York City skyline, or anything else man-made for that matter.

  “C’mon,” says Jake, peeling me away from the glass. “Let me introduce you to Hoshi, our beautiful, young, brilliant, bilingual receptionist.”

  After introductions are made, Hoshi leaves us in the conference room, an immense space lined with five-foot-high windows, the length of two walls. Jake points out a few landmark buildings but my eyes focus on the natural beauty behind them all.

  Jake sits down and motions for me to do the same. I look at my watch, but a different body language is spoken here, so I sit.

  “These islands,” Jake says, “are populated with thousands of people who came here to escape something on the mainland. Some came to escape their stressful jobs, some their overbearing families, some their abusive spouses. Some created worlds for themselves on the mainland that they could just no longer bear to live in. Some made mistakes larger than those mountains that cast shadows so far, the only land they felt they could stand tall on was here on the most remote archipelago in the world. Many of my clients escaped from their home states on the continental U.S. figuring the law would never catch up to them here. And most of them were right. The problem was that they repeated their mistakes and ended up in jail having to pay my fees.

  “So the first thing I tell people who just moved here is to make it a point not to repeat the mistakes that led them here to begin with, and to avoid at all costs placing themselves in that same kind of situation they escaped from on the mainland. For me, that was easy, since Hawaii is enlightened enough not to have the death penalty.

  “The second thing I tell them is to make sure whatever they escaped from doesn’t follow them to the islands. For example, the DEA or that abusive spouse, or that fucking mother-in-law they left in Scottsdale.

  “The third and most important thing I tell them is to constantly remind themselves that we are malihini, newcomers to these islands. Don’t be misled. We use U.S. currency and have American laws. English is the primary language. Still, we live in a world very foreign to mainlanders. Be conscious and considerate of where you are. We’re not in Houston. We’re not in Manhattan. We live in a tropical paradise, but don’t allow that to lull you into a false sense of invincibility. Sometimes bad things happen on these islands, which is lucky for us or we’d be out of work.

  “Now, I have to make one quick phone call, son. Then what do you say we grab Hoshi and the three of us head over to the Sand Bar for some mai tais?”

  CHAPTER 3

  I wake the next morning with my first island hangover, a sickly sour stomach and a headful of hurt. I consider returning to sleep but the tropical sun is already peeking through my blinds, tapping me on the shoulder like a mother pestering her child to get up and get ready for school. I fall out of bed, hoping a hot shower will wash the sick away, but this kind of sick is as clingy as a one-night stand that doesn’t realize she’s worn out her welcome.

  I drank last night on an empty stomach, unwittingly extending my hunger strike until the restaurants here scrap what they pass off as food in favor of something acceptable to my discerning New York palate. I’m finicky, I know, fussy as a prep school girl. I’ve lost twelve pounds since my arrival and I didn’t have twelve extra pounds to lose. It’s just that every night I go out, I have my heart set on a thick, juicy, ten-ounce filet mignon, cooked medium rare with a warm, pink center, topped with mushrooms, and a side of steak fries. Instead I get an overcooked hamburger without the bun, dripping with a watery brown sauce that looks like . . .

  Shit. A wave of nausea that would easily dwarf the twenty-foot waves up North Shore hits me like a ton of bricks. Stubbing my big right toe along the way, I barely make it to the bathroom on time. The rum isn’t nearly as sweet coming up as it was going down. On my knees, sweat pouring from my forehead, staring at last night’s liquid dinner, I’ve reached a new low point in my life. I deserve this. As the acrid taste of bile lingers in my mouth and the stench hits me in the face, I vomit again. Welcome to the island of Oahu.

  Okay, I’m now at least another pound lighter and I had to brush my teeth three times.

  I step barefoot onto the lanai and let the gentle trade winds wash over me, cooling the surface of my skin. I live in Waikiki, on the twenty-ninth floor of an older but well-renovated high-rise two blocks from the beach. It’s 7:00 a.m. and the balmy Pacific sea is already littered with tourists and their playthings. It’s the same scene every day, rain or shine, they are out in droves: kids hopping around wildly in the surf, surfers riding six-foot waves, the less ambitious sunning on the beach or lounging in the water on inflatable neon rafts.

  The sun crawls over me like a newborn kitten, painting my skin with yet another coat of bronze. I close my eyes and tune out the sounds of nearby construction, wish away the tourists, merchants, and hotels.

  I moved to Waikiki to ease the transition to island life, certain I’d be soothed by the familiar lines of cars stuck in traffic, the masses of people pushing their way to nowhere in particular, and the musical sound of police and ambulance sirens. Waikiki is a veritable mecca for families and honeymooners, all of whom parade up and down Kalakaua Avenue in their aloha shirts and muumuus with the price tags still hanging out, searching for the next Kodak moment. Mimes and musicians, hucksters and prostitutes, line the streets at night, providing a little New York flavor without the New York steak.

  I don’t pretend to know a man until I’ve drunk with him, and last night I got to know Jake Harper really well. He doesn’t have the charisma or business sense of Milt Cashman but he does have something Milt sorely lacks. Selflessness. Sure, Milt does the occasional good deed. He even takes on some pro bono clients whenever the New York Bar threatens to suspend his license. He hands out favors the way Planned Parenthood hands out condoms, only the favors are handed out in typical Godfather fashion. Someday, and this day may never come, I will call upon you to do me a service.

  Jake has offered to show me around the courts, introduce me to some of the local players in the Oahu justice system, though he doesn’t claim to have the least bit of clout here himself. Still, it’s a selfless act that gives me some hope that my tenancy on South King Street will work out well. So long as Jake doesn’t camp out in my office expecting lengthy fireside chats.

  The freight train blazing around in my head speeds up with the goddamn drilling going on halfway up the block. I pop two more aspirin and chase them with some Pepto, sit at the kitchen table with yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser spread out before me. I peruse the articles on a copter crash on Kauai, rising home prices on Maui, and an editorial on the state Supreme Court decision that recently decided the fate of Hawaii Superferry.

  A headline on the front page of the local section catches my eye. NEW JERSEY MAN ARRESTED IN WAIKIKI SLAYING. With homicides averaging only twenty per year on the entire island of Oahu, this one is a real treat. I study the booking photograph of the accused, one Joseph Gianforte Jr., a twenty-four-year-old Hoboken man charged with murdering his former girlfriend.

  The photo sends a shiver down my spine because Gianforte reminds me of someone I’ve had a love-hate relationship with for the past thirty-one years. Myself. The look in his eyes is familiar, not much unlike the look in the eyes of Brandon Glenn, the look displayed in the booking photo now tattooed on my mind. It’s the look of a man suddenly fac
ed with the specter of a forever confinement.

  Not all men charged with murder have that look. Many have eyes that are vacant. Their look says only one thing: I knew this was coming. Some know it from their early teens, from the mere fact of where they live, who their family and friends are, by fact of the wares they peddle. Others, those like Gianforte and Brandon Glenn, never see it coming. They have jobs or go to school. They live in high-rises or costly houses in wealthy suburban neighborhoods. They call their mothers and volunteer in local elections. Some are innocent, others are prone to fits of rage, a single propensity that can end two promising lives in one fell swoop.

  According to police, Gianforte boarded a flight early Sunday from Newark to Honolulu to follow Shannon Douglas after the couple had broken up. Police speculate that Gianforte discovered his ex-girlfriend with a local man, who had been seen leaving a bar with the victim earlier that night. The local man, twenty-eight-year-old Palani Kanno, a former suspect in the case, told police he left the victim alive in a secluded area on Waikiki Beach just hours before her body was discovered. Shannon Douglas was found dead by a band of surfers shortly after sunrise Monday morning, apparently killed by being struck with a blunt object to the head.

  A police affidavit states that Gianforte has a history of domestic violence against the victim with one misdemeanor conviction in New York, where Shannon Douglas was studying law. Gianforte was arrested without incident late Monday night at his Waikiki hotel and is being held in lieu of $3 million bail.

  I fold the paper and my mind shifts back to Brandon Glenn. My fingernail tastes like newsprint, so I pull it from my teeth. An airplane descends in the distance and I wonder if it’s coming from New York. I wonder if it carries anyone I know or anyone I will someday know. I wonder if it carries anyone who could tell me how to clear my conscience of Brandon’s death.

  __________

  My hangover finally subsiding, I find myself outside my new office building for my first day of work. With no clients, I have little to do but prepare for the day I will have clients. My furniture and computer should arrive by week’s end, along with a small treasure of office supplies. My marketing strategy includes an elaborate Web site and several cost-effective advertisements in the local publications. Without Milt and his army of referring attorneys, I fear my finicky eating habits will soon not be the only reason I’m going hungry.