The Defense by Steve Cavanagh

Author:Steve Cavanagh [Cavanagh, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller, Mystery, Adult
ISBN: 9781250090713
Amazon: B016I8G61Y
Barnesnoble: B016I8G61Y
Goodreads: 27158731
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Published: 2015-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I couldn’t sleep.

The small couch in the old chambers felt lumpy and sunken in places. Broken springs and broken supports dug into my legs, but even if I’d been lying on a king-sized bed in the Waldorf, I would’ve had the same problem trying to sleep. I couldn’t stop turning everything over in my mind. In a way, it helped. Thinking through the problems helped keep my mind off Amy. My head raced with theories, most of them probably crazy, some close to home, one or two could be right on the money.

I’d never heard of a mobster turning state’s evidence for anything less than full immunity bought by the witness providing a sworn statement on every last detail of the organization: These are the suppliers; this is our distribution network; this is who launders our money, who killed who, when, and where. Usually all of this would be accompanied by a heavily pinned map showing exactly where the bodies were buried. Just like the Penditi.

We were very far from that situation here. Little Benny coughed to one murder, that’s it, and he wasn’t going into the witness protection program after this trial. He still had time to serve. So far he’d been serving that time in FBI protective custody.

I couldn’t understand why Little Benny would be stupid enough to do any time at all. Why didn’t he give up everybody, get himself an immunity agreement, then get the government to set him up for life in witness protection?

There had to be good reasons. First among my theories was family. The statements were silent on this, but if Little Benny did have a family, I was pretty sure they were in Mother Russia. Not even the feds would be stupid enough to try to offer protection there. No, Benny wasn’t worried about family in Russia; if he had family there, he wouldn’t have opened his mouth about Volchek at all, as there would be no way to protect his loved ones back home. If he had family in the United States, he would spill his guts for the whole operation and get his family into witness protection—or he would say absolutely nothing. Family considerations didn’t fit my theory.

What would be his primary motivation? I wondered.

Staying out of jail had to be his only motivation.

Again this didn’t sit well with the facts. Little Benny had another eleven or so years on his sentence. Why not give up Volchek for a payday and no time? Why give up enough to put a price on your head but not enough to get you paid or out of prison?

Of course, I was ignoring the ultimate game changer—stupidity.

As an intelligent, rational human being, you can always see another angle when in fact there is no angle. I was just rationalizing what I would do when the situation might have been that the person was just plain stupid and you can’t rationalize their kind of decisions.

But was Benny that stupid?

He got caught red-handed.

The answer that Volchek gave me seemed closest to the truth, that Little Benny was still loyal to some—Arturas.

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