They were snitches, the caption said.
A confidential informant was a kind of snitch.
This video had a sound track. A type of Mexican folk song called narcocorrido: guitars and trumpet and accordion, set to a polka beat. Narcocorrido ballads were odes to the murderers and torturers of the drug cartels. The folk heroes.
Somehow that made it worse, the jaunty, galumphing happy narcocorrido sound track instead of the victim’s screams.
Within a couple of minutes he’d seen photographs of fourteen cartel soldiers chainsawed into sections, legs and heads and torsos, arrayed on the ground like the parts of an expertly carved Thanksgiving turkey.
Well and truly screwed.
He needed to talk to someone, an expert. A criminal defense lawyer. But he didn’t know any.
Sarah’s ex-husband was a lawyer. His ex-wife’s ex-husband. That was complicated and fraught enough to make his head hurt.
No, thanks.
Lucy’s college roommate was a corporate lawyer, a big shot in DC. Lawyers always knew other lawyers. Sometimes they knew only other lawyers. He took out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for Lucy.
Then hit END before the call went through.
Telling Lucy what kind of trouble he was in was a major decision, one he couldn’t undo. He needed to think that over.
Not yet.
He knew someone. A guy who’d lived across the hall freshman year. Jay Poskanzer spent most of his life in Butler, Columbia’s great library. Nerdy, tightly wound, brilliant, acerbic. He’d gone to Harvard Law and clerked for a Supreme Court justice and later became a hotshot lawyer in private practice.
His specialty, Danny was pretty sure, was criminal law.
He needed someone in criminal law. Someone really good.
He picked up his phone again and made the call.
16
Jay Poskanzer was considered one of the best criminal defense attorneys in Boston. He regularly appeared on Boston magazine’s list of the city’s Top Power Lawyers.
He was a partner at Batten Schechter, a powerhouse firm on the forty-eighth floor of the Hancock Tower. From the plate-glass windows of his office, you could see the Back Bay and the Charles River and the Financial District, arrayed in miniature like a raised-relief map. His office was cluttered with sports memorabilia: signed broken baseball bats, framed signed photos of Red Sox players in action, a framed piece of the old Boston Garden parquet floor.
Poskanzer had frizzy reddish-brown hair with a lot of gray in it, balding on top. He had tortoiseshell glasses, a nasal voice, and a caustic manner. He was a successful lawyer now, but he was still every bit the nerd he’d been as a freshman in college.
There was the obligatory small talk about their families. Poskanzer had a couple of sons a bit younger than Abby, one at Fessenden and the other at Belmont Hill, both private boys’ schools, “brother” schools to Lyman.
“Hey, listen, I owe you a thank-you,” Danny said.
“For what?”
“For… Sarah-you know, your contribution. Sorry I didn’t have my shit together enough to send you a note.”
At Sarah’s funeral, guests were asked to make donations to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, in lieu of flowers. Poskanzer had given something like a thousand dollars in Sarah’s name.
“Don’t worry about it. I mean, least I could do and all that. You still… seeing… Lucy Lindstrom?”
Danny nodded. He wondered if even Jay Poskanzer had privately lusted after the It Girl back in the day.
“Lucky guy.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“So,” Poskanzer said behind his glass-topped desk, tenting his fingers. “I can see you’re nervous, Danny. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”
Danny took a deep breath, leaned forward in his chair, and started in, telling Poskanzer about the events of the past couple of days-his money troubles, the loan, the mysterious call, and the stunning discovery that the DEA was monitoring his bank records because of an ongoing investigation into Tom Galvin.
“Wait a second,” Poskanzer said. “Thomas Galvin?”
Danny nodded, unsettled by the urgency in Poskanzer’s voice.
“You know him?”
Danny nodded again.
“So they’re saying-so Galvin is suspected of laundering money for Sinaloa-a Mexican drug cartel?”
“Something like that.”
Poskanzer put a hand out like a traffic cop. “Sorry, I’m trying to wrap my mind around that.”
“It’s crazy, right?”
He gave a low whistle. “Oh, Jesus, Danny. This isn’t good, Danny. This is bad.”
Not what Danny wanted to hear. It hit him like a punch in the gut. Of course it was bad, but it was ominous to hear a criminal defense attorney say that. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“When Galvin transferred the funds, did you give him any kind of written understanding, a note, something?”
“It was a loan. I’m going to pay him back.”
“You have it in writing?”
Danny shook his head slowly. “A friend lends a friend money, you usually don’t sign a contract, right?”
“So the fifty thousand-it could be anything. A payment of some kind.”
“It could be, but it’s not.”
“You can’t prove it was a loan?”
“They can’t prove it wasn’t.”
“They don’t have to.” There was a long pause. “If the government suspects Galvin of laundering money for the Sinaloa cartel, or trafficking, or whatever-they’re going to use every weapon in their arsenal. Which means that sometimes the innocent bystander gets caught in the thresher.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You borrowed money from the wrong guy.”
“Okay, but I don’t know the first damned thing about drugs or Mexican cartels or… I didn’t do a damned thing wrong! Isn’t that all that really counts here?”
He exhaled slowly. “Unfortunately, no. You got caught in a major drug-trafficking investigation that has nothing to do with you. Like I said, the government’s gonna use every weapon they have, and in this case it means pressuring you until you agree to cooperate. The power, the advantage-it’s all on their side. It’s unfair, but there it is. You’re in a no-win situation. That’s the ugly truth.”
Danny swallowed hard. “Jay, you’re supposed to be the best lawyer in Boston.”
Poskanzer allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “Arguably.”
“So you’re saying, what, we can’t fight this?”
“Danny. Of course we can fight it. I’m here for you-whatever you want to do, I’ll do. But let me lay out the plain facts. The way the law works in this case, you do business with a criminal, the presumption is you’re a criminal. You can fight it, sure. But the odds are against you. When the US government decides to prosecute someone on narcotics charges? They almost always win. Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Do you know what the federal narcotics conviction rate is?”
Danny shook his head impatiently.
“Over ninety percent.” Poskanzer turned slightly and began tapping on his keyboard. “Here it is-ninety-three percent. That means ninety-three percent of people charged with ‘drug trafficking,’ however that’s defined, got convicted. Almost all of them did prison time. That means you have a nine in ten chance of ending up in prison. That’s the reality.”
Danny almost leaped out of his chair. “Prison?” he sputtered. “Did you say prison? Are you freaking kidding me?”
Poskanzer shook his head slowly. “Danny, come on, sit down, okay? All I’m saying is-if we choose to fight it in the legal system, the odds are extremely high you end up in prison.”
Bitterly, Danny said: “So basically, I can get prison time for… just accepting a loan from a guy?”