screwed.
He signed on to the Internet. Googled “sinaloa cartel.”
Google’s autocomplete feature suggested a few similar searches:
sinaloa cartel
chainsaw
sinaloa cartel
members
sinaloa cartel
news
Unable to stop himself, he selected “sinaloa cartel chainsaw .” He clicked on that link and clicked ENTER to confirm he was eighteen years of age or older, and a video started to play.
It showed a couple of paunchy shirtless guys in Mexico. Talking in Spanish. Probably dope dealers or hit men for the Sinaloa cartel. Very bad guys, looking scared as children, tied up on the ground, against an adobe wall.
Then someone comes out wearing military camo fatigues and starts up a chain saw, the kind you’d use to cut down a tree. In a few seconds, he beheads both of them. Once second they’re alive, the next they’re decapitated.
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
J ay 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
He signed on to the Internet. Googled “sinaloa cartel.”
Google’s autocomplete feature suggested a few similar searches:
sinaloa cartel
chainsaw
sinaloa cartel
members
sinaloa cartel
news
Unable to stop himself, he selected “sinaloa cartel chainsaw .” He clicked on that link and clicked ENTER to confirm he was eighteen years of age or older, and a video started to play.
It showed a couple of paunchy shirtless guys in Mexico. Talking in Spanish. Probably dope dealers or hit men for the Sinaloa cartel. Very bad guys, looking scared as children, tied up on the ground, against an adobe wall.
Then someone comes out wearing military camo fatigues and starts up a chain saw, the kind you’d use to cut down a tree. In a few seconds, he beheads both of them. Once second they’re alive, the next they’re decapitated.
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
J ay 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
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