Devil's Defender: My Odyssey Through American Criminal Justice from Ted Bundy to the Kandahar Massacre by John Browne

Author:John Browne [Browne, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2016-08-01T06:00:00+00:00

15

“THE FLOOR IS SUPPOSED

TO BE GREEN”

The sky had just begun to pale on a February morning when I stepped out of the house of a friend and fellow lawyer in the Leschi neighborhood, just a few blocks from the shores of Lake Washington. The tree branches overhead looked like arteries running through the sky. My head still rang with cocaine, and my tongue, dehydrated from sipping cognac all night, felt like a slab of pumice in my mouth. Another all-nighter. At least it was Saturday.

I folded myself into my black Mercedes and cut over to Yesler Avenue, bound for State Route 509 and, ultimately, my waterfront house fifteen miles away in Normandy Park, where coffee and a hot shower awaited. Along the way I slid past the King County courthouse and the police station, and, shit . . . there were a dozen police cruisers, marked and unmarked, and other emergency vehicles pulling in and out. Something big had happened. I was in no condition to stop and talk to a bunch of cops to find out what it was. A car full of homicide detectives, all of whom I knew, passed me. Sgt. Joe Sanford looked me right in the eye and nodded. I responded with a blank, dazed stare. They wheeled toward Chinatown, and I steered in the opposite direction, toward 509 and home.

I cleaned up, brewed a pot of coffee, and around 7:00 AM turned on the television. All the local stations were broadcasting live from the mouth of a dank, garbage-strewn alley off King Street (around the corner from the popular Asian food joints I frequented). The news anchors were unusually grim and obviously moved by the events they were reporting. I could see medical examiner trucks and men carrying what were unmistakably body bags through the alley. There was no end to the parade of bags, it seemed. Donald Reay, Seattle’s internationally known coroner, and his staff streamed in and out of a four-story brick building.

Slowly I pieced together the story flashing on the screen. Earlier that morning, February 19, 1983, a little after midnight, fourteen Chinese residents of Seattle, many well known and influential, were found shot in the Wah Mee Club, a not-so-secret underground gambling establishment. Most had been hog-tied and shot in the back of the head. There was one survivor, an eyewitness. Thirteen dead. The reporters were calling it the largest-ever mass murder on the West Coast.

I stayed rapt in front of the screen for hours until, around noon, I received a phone call from my answering service. On the line was Steven Ng, whose brother Benjamin I’d previously represented in juvenile court in a minor theft case. Steven told me Ben had been arrested for the murders, and asked if I’d go see his little brother at the police station immediately.

Benjamin was twenty years old, short and slight, with almost feminine good looks and the perpetual appearance of a trapped kitten about to be eaten by a pit bull. He and his family had emigrated from Hong Kong in 1975.

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