She tugged the halter back up, spun on her heels, and with a loud triumphant clack of high heels departed the room.
"Poor man," Elena remarked with a sympathetic frown after the tumult died down.
Alex bent forward and shook his head. "That's Eddie Carminza. He's up for bigamy. Five years in the joint, the max. She's one of four wives."
"My God, this place is crazy, Alex. You have to get out."
"Well, there is one thing we can try. Move the case out of immigration channels into a federal court. It's premature, though, and incredibly risky."
"You might prematurely die in here if we don't try something."
"I know. But there are two problems. Serious problems. One, federal court means different rules and procedures. MP isn't a criminal lawyer. Also he has no experience in the federal system. The rules of evidence and admissibility are stricter. It's too late to replace him, though."
"Can he handle it?"
"I'm not sure any lawyer can and MP is already holding a bad hand. And who knows how much ammunition our friends in Russia have provided the prosecutor over the past year."
"But Mikhail-"
"Mikhail hasn't found us the silver bullet. There's no legally acceptable proof that my money was stolen. No proof I'm being framed. Nothing to keep me from being shipped back to Russia."
"All right, what's two?"
"If we rush into federal court, and I lose, I'll be shipped right back here. We can try an appeal, and we will. But that takes time. I'll probably be dead long before."
"So it's a choice between very bad and awful?"
"More like between certain death and probable death."
"So what's this idea?"
"It's called a motion for habeas corpus. Technically, by shoving me into the federal prison system, they've created a loophole we should be able to exploit. It forces the government to show cause for my imprisonment. If a judge accepts it, the process happens very fast."
"How fast?"
"Three days after we launch it, we'll be in court."
"Oh… that fast." Elena stared at her shoes a moment. She began fidgeting with her hands. "Is it too fast?"
"Possibly," Alex told her. "We have a lot of enemies, here and in Russia. Everything has to happen at once. And everything has to succeed, or as my friend Benny puts it, it's game over. Also Mikhail will have to move up his time schedule. And we'll have to pray for a legal miracle."
"We're overdue for a miracle."
"I don't think it works that way. We'll have to produce our own."
"I'll call Mikhail the second I'm out of here."
"You have a busy weekend ahead of you. It's time to share everything with MP, then pray it's enough."
30
On September 18, 1996, one year and two months to the day since Alex's incarceration in federal prison, MP Jones bounced up the steps of the D.C. Federal Courthouse, one of the loveliest, most impressive buildings in a city littered to the gills with marble monuments. The day alternated between warmth and chill, the first hint that another long, humid summer in a city built in a swamp was coming to a close. Elena, along with a stout paralegal hauling a box of documents, accompanied him.
Two days before, Elena had called and frantically insisted on an emergency meeting. MP dropped everything and Elena arrived, pale, tired, angry, upset, and wildly determined. She told him Alex's idea and MP instantly launched a hundred objections.
It was too fast. Too risky. Federal court wasn't his thing. Besides, who knew what the Russian prosecutors and INS had cooked up, how much damning material they could throw at Alex? Elena insisted that she and Alex had entertained all the same reservations, told him about the four attempts on Alex's life, and that ended the discussion. MP called his clients with pressing cases over the next week and foisted their files off on other immigration specialists around town.
So they moved with deep nervousness through the wide, well-lit corridors, straight to the office of the federal clerk. MP signed in at the front desk, moved to the rear of the room, and waited patiently with Elena and his paralegal amid a clutter of other nervous lawyers until the clerk called his name.
He nearly sprinted to her desk. He proudly threw down a document and with a show of intense formality informed her, "I am introducing a motion for habeas corpus on behalf of my client Alex Konevitch. I ask the court for expeditious handling on behalf of said client, who has been incarcerated beyond any reasonable length and forced to endure immeasurable suffering."
The clerk, a large, feisty black woman, lifted up MP's motion and automatically plunked it into a deep wooden in-box, a vast reservoir filled to capacity with other such requests, motions, and lawyerly stuff. "First time here?" she asked without looking up.
"Uh… yes."
"This ain't no courtroom. Plain English works fine in here."
MP looked slightly deflated. "It's a habeas corpus motion." She chewed a stick of gum with great energy and stared intently into a computer screen. The sign on her desk suggested she was named Thelma Parker.
"I heard what you said," Thelma noted. "How long's your guy been in?"
"A year and two months."
"Uh-huh." Thelma did not appear overly impressed. "What facility he at?"
"At the moment, based on a federal contract, the state prison in Yuma. It's his third prison."
The reaction was delayed, but she slowly shifted her gaze from the screen and directed it at MP. "His third? Inside a year? That what you sayin'?"
"To be precise, inside fourteen months."
"What'd he do? Kill a warden?"
"An alleged visa violation."
"Come on, you bullshittin' me."
"On my momma's grave."
"That's an immigration matter. What's your guy doin' in a federal joint?"
"That's what we'd like the government to explain."
"He a U.S. resident?"
"That's one point of contention. The government said yes. Now it's saying no."
She poised her chin on a pencil. "That prison in Yuma, it's a badass place."
"So Alex tells me. He's locked up in D Wing, mixed in with the most rotten apples."
She leaned forward, almost across the desk. In a low, conspiring, all-knowing whisper, she said, "Truth now. Who'd your boy piss off?"
MP played along. He bent over and whispered back, "John Tromble."
"Figures." She picked MP's motion out of the pile and smacked it down on her blotter. She paged through it, frowning and considering the request with some care for a moment. "Gotta cousin works over at the Bureau," she eventually remarked.
A sharp pain suddenly erupted in MP's chest. Idiot. Why hadn't he just kept his big mouth shut?
After a moment Thelma Parker added, "He hates that Tromble. Says he's the worst thing happened since J. Edgar pranced around in a skirt. Tell you what, you done this before?"
After manning this desk for fifteen years, she had seen thousands of lawyers pass in and out of her office. One sniff and she could smell a cherry a mile away.
MP allowed as, "My usual cases are in immigration court."
"Thought so. You never done this before?"
"Pretty much."
A large, plump elbow landed on her desk and her large chin ended up poised on a curled fist. "Now, don't you worry. Way this works is, your motion goes to a judge. Now, you could maybe get lucky and it might end up in the box of, say, oh, Judge Elton Willis. He's a fair and judicious man. Then, assuming this thing gets stamped expeditious"-she winked at MP-"which might maybe happen about three seconds after you walk outta here… well, then the government gets three days to respond. Got all that?"