Later that morning, Sunday, Piper and I enjoy breakfast in the restaurant on the top floor of the hotel. The restaurant is a grand space, composed of two large rotundas with thirty-six-foot domes and floor-to-ceiling windows. We sit at a table for two next to one of the windows, drink mimosas, and gorge ourselves on Sunday brunch. We start with smoked Scottish salmon, cheeses, and salads from the café table. Then Piper has a Belgian waffle and I have the crab-cake Benedict. We finish off with mini cakes and parfaits. All the while, we gossip like schoolgirls about the dramas of the night before.
When we’re finished, I pick up an Inquirer from the front desk and carry it back to the room. While Piper packs, I open the paper and look for the article reporting David and Marcie Hanson’s extravagant gift to the American Way. It doesn’t take long to find it; the article is on page two, above the fold. The reporter, a name unfamiliar to me, gushes even more about the Hansons than Candace Stengel had the night before. And not just about last night’s gift. To the contrary, the article laundry-lists a dozen other sizable donations David and Marcie have made in the last decade to organizations as diverse as breastcancer.org, the Jewish Defense League, the United Negro College Fund, the Human Rights Campaign, Catholic Charities USA, Planned Parenthood, the Police Athletic League, Greenpeace, and the SPCA.
“What are you reading?” Piper asks me as she packs away her gown.
“The biographies of Saints David and Marcie,” I answer. Then I return to the article and the photographs of the Hansons. The editors have chosen two plain head shots. The pictures taken last night of David and Marcie in their formal wear and jewels have been deep-sixed.
I sit back and wonder what they’re planning next. And worry.
24
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24
It’s the Wednesday after the gala, just before five o’clock. I’m sitting in my office in front of my computer. Jury selection in the Hanson trial begins in three weeks, and I’m working around the clock getting the case ready. I’ve begun writing cross-examinations of the prosecution’s likely witnesses and direct examinations of my own witnesses. I’m satisfied that I can poke some serious holes in the prosecution’s case. Not enough to guarantee reasonable doubt, but that won’t matter if everything goes as I’m hoping and the jury never gets the chance to reach a verdict.
A loud knock at the door, and Vaughn rushes in.
“You’re not going to believe this.” He hands me what appears to be a legal brief, then drops into a visitor’s chair.
“What is it?”
“Devlin’s filed a motion seeking to disqualify you as David’s lawyer.”
“You’re fucking kidding me. On what grounds?”
“The phone calls from Jennifer Yamura’s cell phone to our office. Walker is claiming that they were from David, that they prove he was at Yamura’s house, using her cell, within the time period of her death.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “Those calls were from Jennifer herself. And even if they had been from David, they’d be privileged as attorney-client communications.”
Vaughn shakes his head. “Not if they were part of an effort to conceal a crime.”
“You’re not telling me—”
Vaughn answers before I can complete my question. “Walker’s posturing to set you up as an accessory after the fact.”
“I don’t believe this,” I say, bolting from my chair. “Wait a minute.” I move over to my phone and hit “0” for Angie. “The day Jennifer Yamura was killed,” I tell my secretary, “do you remember her calling here and asking for me? And you put her through?” Angie says of course she does. “There!” I say to Vaughn. “Devlin’s motion is bullshit, and we can prove it.”
But Vaughn, who has read Devlin’s motion, leans into the speaker and asks, “Both times?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Both times what?” Angie asks. “She called here once. I put her through to you, Mick, and you took the call. Tommy was in your office with you; he knows, too.”
“Shit,” I say. “Angie was at lunch the second time she called. I picked up the line myself. And Tommy had left by then.”
Vaughn frowns.
“When is the hearing set for?”
“Two days.”
I exhale. “I can’t believe Devlin is pulling this kind of crap. He knows Judge Henry isn’t going to buy into this. He’s up to something.”
I work with Vaughn for several hours on our answer to the prosecution’s motion to disqualify me. Once Vaughn’s gone, I start in on a mound of other work and don’t lift my head until the City Hall clock outside my window strikes midnight. On the way home, I stop at a Wawa. Piper had called me around ten, saying we had no skim milk for her coffee in the morning. An Inquirer deliveryman drops off the next day’s papers as I enter the store, and I take a look at the front page to find that David and Marcie continue to move full steam ahead on the PR campaign. The new article is just below the fold on the right-hand side. It’s a one-column article that carries over to the business section, where it takes up half the page. Its headline reads, “Hanson’s Quest for Philly Jobs,” and it tells how David’s singular focus at HWI has been to leverage the company’s burgeoning relationships in Asia to build Philadelphia’s own manufacturing base.
“There’s been too much foreign outsourcing of jobs,” David is quoted as saying. “My mission at HWI was, and will be again, to reverse that tide and bring jobs back home.”