High Crimes Read online

  High Crimes

  William Deverell

  BOOKS BY WILLIAM DEVERELL

  Fiction

  Needles

  High Crimes

  Mecca

  The Dance of Shiva

  Platinum Blues

  Mindfield

  Street Legal: The Betrayal

  Trial of Passion

  Slander

  Kill All the Lawyers

  The Laughing Falcon

  Mind Games

  April Fool

  Non-Fiction

  A Life on Trial: The Case of Robert Frisbee

  Author’s Note

  After much inner debate, I decided not to single out for acknowledgment any of the persons who aided in my research. To name a few risks offense to many. (On the other hand, some of my informants will be much relieved to learn they have gone nameless.)

  But I must mention one source of inspiration, the writer Harold Horwood. He remains innocent of any conscious effort to assist me, but the short piece of history entitled “Rum-Runners and Masterless Men” in his engaging book Newfoundland introduced me to the original Peter Kerrivan.

  Peter Kerrivan was an Irish boy who in the mid-1700s had been impressed into the English Navy, where he was treated as cruelly as a slave. He jumped ship in Newfoundland and became leader of a band of Irish outlaws, themselves either victims of press gangs or indentured servants who had been abducted from Ireland and sold like animals to the wealthy English fishing merchants of the Newfoundland coast.

  They became known as the Masterless Men, and they learned to live like Indians in the wilderness, hunting caribou, raiding the stores of the rich merchants, and trading goods with poor settlers in remote villages. The English sent many expeditions of marines against these men, but inevitably their forays ended in bog or bush, along blind trails prepared for them by Kerrivan’s men. Only four of his band were ever captured, and these boys were taken on board an English frigate, quickly tried, and quickly hanged.

  But in their main camp atop a flat hill known as the Butter Pot, Kerrivan and his followers reigned for fifty years. Ultimately he and others of the Masterless Men married Irish girls from the coastal villages and raised families. Peter Kerrivan lived to a ripe age.

  “There are hundreds of Kerrivans living in the small fishing settlements today,” Horwood writes. “Some of them, at least, are proud to trace their ancestry to the Robin Hood of the Butter Pot who defied the King of England in the eighteenth century.”

  To Tekla, who keeps me afloat

  PART ONE

  Operation Crackpot

  Chapter One

  April the first. El primero de abril. A high mountain valley where the air is sharp and pungent.

  The cutters were walking the rows of the cannabis bushes, looking at the freshly sprung buds. The male plants, betrayed by the white and purple flowers which are the sign of their sex, fell swiftly to the whistling machetes. They were waste, and would be heaped and burned. Now the female plants would begin to weep a rich and intoxicating resin, red as blood.

  The female of this plant, this plant of the red leaf, has power and mystery.

  ***

  April the first. A villa on the Caribbean coast near the old walled city of Cartagena. Senator Publio Victor Paez was presiding over a family meeting while his cutters in the Sierra Nevada were toiling under the noon sun.

  The harvest was only weeks away. Senator Paez had hired Rudy Meyers, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency, to find him a ship and crew.

  “Bring me a norteamericano who knows the ocean, a man we can trust,” he said to Meyers. His voice was a whiskey growl. He was an old Colombian bull.

  “We have done well with our own ships,” said his brother, who was an army general. “At least then we are using our own sailors.”

  Senator Paez put his glass down on the table. “My countrymen are sapos, diseased with cheating and thievery. Colombia, my country, is dying under the weight of it. Por Dios, I could weep.”

  The senator reached across the table and roughly took the shoulders of Rudy Meyers between his hands. “Rudy,” he said, “bring me a gringo, a great ocean sailor. An honest man and an honest ship. I will make him rich.”

  Meyers could feel the old man’s hot and rancid breath, but he didn’t show his disgust.

  “And I will make you rich, too.”

  Meyers pulled away from the senator, who was known as El Patrón, and brushed at his shirt where Paez had wrinkled it. He sat upright in his chair. Meyers was as proud and hard as an ancient warrior king.

  “What is the crop worth, Senator?” Meyers’s voice was soft and without inflection.

  “Rudy, my good friend, you will see with your own eyes, and even then your eyes will not believe. An entire hectare. Ten thousand square meters. The man you bring us will command a ship that will be richer than all the galleons that sailed from here with pillaged gold five centuries ago.” He took a swallow of whiskey. “Sinsemilla. The female flower of punta roja marijuana.” His voice rose. “Twelve billion pesos, Rudy.”

  Meyers thought: three hundred million U.S. dollars. Christ!

  “Find me an honest gringo,” Paez said.

  “A la orden,” Meyers said. “At your service.” He snapped his briefcase shut and stood up to go.

  ***

  April the first, in the DEA offices in Miami. The end of Jessica Flaherty’s working day. At the age of thirty, she had begun to think of herself as a wilting flower, soon going to seed. Waiting for her tonight was a late-cut outfielder from the Red Sox. A loser. There had been one loser after another in her life recently.

  The CIA liaison man phoned just as she was about to leave the office.

  “I’ve got someone for you,” he said. “Big. Is this a safe phone?”

  “We’re wired to the intelligence room.”

  “Cut it. This is strict confidence.”

  Flaherty switched off the recording line. “Okay, just you and me. I suppose you’ve wrung him dry. What has he got? Does he want money?”

  “He couldn’t give us anything we didn’t know already,” the CIA man said. “I don’t think he wants money. He’s into the April Seventeen movement — he’s a Cuban — but we have hard orders not to touch those guys. That comes right from the State Department.”

  “No doubt.” Her voice was tinged with sarcasm. “What’s the drug connection? Why does he want to talk to us?”

  “I don’t know. He won’t tell me. He asked who the drug police were in this country. I said Drug Enforcement Administration. He asked me who the top man was here. I said you.”

  “I’m only acting top man,” she said. “If I agree to do a sex change, they’ll let me run Caribbean operations full-time. Has he got any samples?”

  “The name of a Colombian Mafia named Senator Publio Paez. Does that ring any bells for you?”

  “It does. That’s good for starters. We have a safe establishment back of Gadabout Tours. You know it; you’ve borrowed it. Set up a meeting for tomorrow night. What name does he use?”

  “We have him coded. Alfredo J. He speaks English.”

  ***

  April the first in Newfoundland: A flat and jagged rock that seems to have been flung casually into the Atlantic when the continents were formed. Its shape is a gnarled, closed hand, with an index finger pointing defiantly to the Labrador Sea. Soon the icebergs will start to move like battle cruisers down the eastern coast, carried by the cold waters of the Labrador Current, a current which meets the Gulf Stream and causes uprisings of fog. The people of Newfoundland have learned to live with this. Fog, rain, and stor
m have made them masters of the sea.

  On this day, the fog was sitting like a mattress on top of the capital city of St. John’s, enshrouding the buildings of Duckworth Street and the squat fortress there which was the courthouse.

  In that building the players in a long trial were moving wearily towards a verdict. The two men accused were sons of Newfoundland through many generations, and during their years they had carried on honored pursuits. They were sailors. And fishermen. And smugglers.

  Chapter Two

  “I don’t know what kind of behavior it is that you’re allowed in other courtrooms, Mr. Peddigrew, but you’re in a Newfoundland courtroom now. It happens to be my courtroom.”

  A fact that Judge Tilley kept reminding the young lawyer, who was from Toronto and who was quick of both mind and tongue but rarely in control of his arrogance.

  Peddigrew attempted to interrupt, but the judge held up his hands and continued: “We may be lacking in wit and subtlety of mind in this poor, simple part of the world. We may lack in great learning when it comes to the law. But, Mr. Peddigrew, we do try to be polite.”

  “Your Honor, I am saying this with the greatest respect, and I mean it, the greatest respect: you are dead wrong. Whether we’re in Newfoundland or Nairobi or New South Wales, the right to cross-examine is basic to British justice.”

  “I don’t know what the courts do in New South Wales, Mr. Peddigrew —”

  “The kangaroos run them, too.” That was a passing shot from Kerrivan, sotto voce, but heard quite clearly by Inspector Mitchell on the witness stand. Let him wise off, the inspector thought. Kerrivan was about to go to jail for the next dozen years of his life.

  Kerrivan’s comment had also been heard in the gallery, and laughter from Kerrivan’s people caused Judge Tilley to break stride for a moment. He glared towards the prisoner’s box. Kerrivan returned an innocent smile.

  The judge resumed. “I was going to say there isn’t a court in the world that doesn’t protect witnesses from bullies with law degrees.”

  But Mitchell didn’t want the judge shielding him. He wasn’t afraid of Peddigrew. He had seen him before, in Toronto, playing to the galleries, bearbaiting the cops. Peddigrew had achieved recent stardom in publicity-laden cases, and in a few years had risen close to the top of the list of the country’s high-flying drug lawyers. To the inspector, though, this was just another confrontation in a twenty-year career of coming under fire in the courtroom. As Canada’s chief narcotics man, he was the target for every potshot-happy defense lawyer in the country. He didn’t mind. He was good at this.

  Peddigrew’s lecture to the judge made Mitchell impatient. This was a trial which should have ended the day it began — sensibly, with guilty pleas. Behind his impatience this day, there was some anxiety of the possibility of a last-minute foul-up, some technicality that Peddigrew might slip into the gears of justice.

  This was a big one for Harold Evans Mitchell. At forty-one, already an inspector, he was driving hard for superintendent and keeping his eye on the long chance — the commissioner’s desk in Ottawa. Head cop of the country.

  He now had a string of nine straight big ones, and the Americans, the DEA, had agreed to let him head up Project Seawall, the two-government effort covering the Atlantic coast south to the 40th parallel. All of which made Mitchell a very upwardly mobile policeman.

  Mitchell was intrigued by the confrontation of opposite personalities in the courtroom. Judge Tilley was a tireless slugger, Peddigrew a fancy and quick-stepping boxer. There was a prosecutor, but he had been sent reeling in the early rounds, and now seemed out of it, slumped in his robes as if hiding. Tilley obviously considered Peddigrew a mainland dandy, with his hand-tailored silk shirt, his gold watch, and rings and emblems.

  The local guys had briefed Mitchell on Tilley before the trial. The judge was old Newfoundland, resentful of non-islanders, a fact that Mitchell, a mainlander, kept well in mind. The locals claimed as well that the judge had a bent and unpredictable mind.

  Peddigrew now had his index finger pointed at the judge and was jabbing his points home.

  “Atterly versus the Director of Public Prosecutions. Your Honor is undoubtedly acquainted with the famous words of Mr. Justice Wandsworth.”

  “I have never heard of that case, Mr. Pedigree.”

  “Peddigrew.”

  “Read it aloud if you wish. Educate me. . . .”

  From the witness stand, Mitchell was able to scan the whole expanse of the court. Judge Tilley was sitting back with eyes closed beneath his high canopy of oak. To Mitchell’s left was the prisoner’s dock, where Peter Kerrivan and Kevin Kelly sat under police guard. Kelly’s eyes at times would dart about the courtroom in wonder and disbelief. At other times he seemed to be in a calm and almost meditative state. Too much drugs, thought Mitchell. Causes permanent brain damage.

  Beside him was Captain Peter Kerrivan, Kelly’s pal, his guru. Mitchell became aware that Kerrivan was staring at him. Their eyes locked in an unfriendly embrace. Mitchell could not hold; he looked away, pretending to be distracted.

  Kerrivan — the notorious prince of the North Atlantic drug routes — had been the hole in Seawall.

  That hole was now plugged, after a year and a half of intense, driving work. Kerrivan and Kelly had somehow wiggled an old scallop dragger through the police net and had landed the pot with the help of a shore crew. But Mitchell had won the day, arresting Kelly at his home, then working on him during the two tiring twelve-hour sessions in a small room. Not once had Mitchell raised either his voice or his hand. He had employed all the techniques of a skilled and trained interrogator.

  Yet that was the issue this day. His techniques. It was Peddigrew’s claim that his gullible client had somehow been tricked by Mitchell into a confession. The lawyer was trying to get the confession thrown out.

  Mitchell’s thoughts were drifting, and Peddigrew arrested them, mentioning his name.

  “Inspector Mitchell, with a zeal misplaced, is himself guilty — of an obstruction of justice, an abuse of the criminal process. For all these reasons, I submit I should be allowed to question him without restriction.”

  Then a time of silence, magnified. The judge looked at Peddigrew, expressionless, his eyes half-lidded, a somnolent bear upon the bench.

  “That is my submission,” said Peddigrew.

  “Are you sure you have nothing more to say?”

  “That is my submission,” said Peddigrew.

  Judge Tilley had played with the lawyer as a cat would a mouse. A better analogy: He had played him as a fisherman would a fat salmon, letting him run, adding a little tension to the line, letting him run again, then quietly reeling him in.

  “I’m against you, Mr. Peddigrew,” he said.

  Peddigrew grew hot. “Is that your ruling?” His voice was pitched high. “Do you have reasons? For the record? In case I take this higher, will the court do me the courtesy of giving me some reasons?”

  “I do not allow lawyers to badger police witnesses. Those are my reasons. Now let’s get on with this. We have a jury. They have been in a stifling room for six hours. Please finish your cross-examination so we can have them back. But you are not to threaten the witness. And if you can avoid the tedium of repetition, please do that as well.”

  Peddigrew’s stiff, ungracious bow to the court was like a middle finger raised. “I thank Your Honor for the indulgence.” The tone was extravagant.

  “Sure, and you’re welcome,” said Tilley. His speech bore a touch of the local brogue.

  Mitchell looked at Kerrivan, searching for a signal of surrender in his eyes. But there was just the smile. And, as Kerrivan caught Mitchell’s eye, there was a soft wink.

  Peddigrew, a hired gun in a strange and hostile land, stood quietly, breathing slowly, seeming to summon his strength for another go at Mitchell.

  “All right, Inspect
or, it appears that I am allowed to ask a few more questions,” Peddigrew said, “as long as they don’t embarrass you. Let us summarize: You told Kelly that if he did not assist you, he would be, quote, stamping out license plates for the rest of his life.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you also mentioned to him something about the duty he owed his wife and baby son.”

  “I told him that if he had thought very much about his family, he wouldn’t be where he was, in jail. I said he owed them a duty to stay out of trouble.”

  “Let’s get to the meat of it,” Peddigrew said. “What you told him was this: ‘Tell me where the marijuana was offloaded, tell me where it’s stored, and you can go home, and your friend Kerrivan can go home, too.’ That’s what you said, yes? That’s true?”

  “Yes.”

  “And after twenty-four hours of questioning, he told you where the two hundred and forty bales of marijuana were hidden, even took you down to the warehouse here in St. John’s. And you didn’t drop the charges, did you?”

  “Well, I’d like to say something about that.”

  “I’m sure you would, but right now you’re answering my questions.”

  The judge, predictably, cut Peddigrew off. “I would like to hear what the officer has to say.”

  “He’s here to answer my questions, sir, not the court’s. With respect.”

  The judge was calm. “I have a little interest in this case.”

  “This is an adversary system, Your Honor, and although traditions of justice seem a little out of place here, it is customary that the prosecutor, not the court, plays adversary to the defense.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Tilley, “the prosecutor does not seem to be playing much of a role at all.” He sent a heavy look at the Crown attorney, who jumped to his feet.

  “Your Honor,” he said, “the witness should be allowed to give an explanation of his answer.”

  Tilley smiled. “Thank you, Mister Prosecutor. I find in your favor.” He turned to Mitchell. “Tell us, Inspector, what you want to tell us. You made a promise to Kelly that he would go free if he cooperated. But here he is, still a prisoner, if I am not mistaken. Unless he wandered into this courtroom by mistake.”