The Cutline (An Alex Vane Media Thriller, Book 0)

by Fuller, A. C.

  He texted Bearon that he’d be at least half an hour late and, a few minutes later, the five of them were sitting at a table that looked down onto the open floor plan of Bar 76. The Mariners-Yankees game wouldn’t start for another hour, but the bar was already bustling below them. The music was so loud that it was difficult to hear each other without leaning in, so, after awkward introductions, they broke off into two groups. Alex sat on one side of the table next to Joey, and the three members of the prosecution team sat on the other.

  At first, Alex had taken the distrustful glance from the assistant for romantic jealousy. But, if he was reading it right, Joey was not involved with him. Alex decided he probably just hated reporters.

  Alex knew that Joey wasn’t married, but didn’t know anything beyond that. And by the time she took the first sip of her second martini, Joey was leaning in close, allowing her elbow to graze the edge of his knee.

  "How do you think the trial is going?" she asked.

  "Good. I mean, I don’t have anything to compare it to, but—"

  "Congratulations, by the way. It’s not every day you get your first big reporting gig."

  Alex tried to think of something humble to say, but he just smiled. As good as he was at feigning confidence, he was jittery as hell on the inside.

  Joey asked, "What are you hearing about Dos Santos?"

  "I hear all sorts of things about all sorts of things."

  "You’re not hearing anything interesting?"

  Alex was used to this dance. He had five conversations a day that were somewhere between flirtation and information-swapping, but rarely with anyone as alluring as Joey Bonner. "Ms. Bonner, is there any chance you’re flirting with me to get information that could aid the prosecution?"

  She eased an olive off of its plastic toothpick between her front teeth and rolled it around with her tongue before biting down. "I am, but no more than you are flirting with me in hopes that I’ll leak you something you can run in The Standard tomorrow."

  "That’s where you’re wrong," Alex said. "I filed already."

  "Already? I assumed you were going back to the office tonight."

  "They let me file from the field."

  "Aren’t you the little golden boy?"

  Alex just let it hang there.

  She swallowed the olive and leaned in closer, so close that Alex could smell the salty brine on her breath. "But seriously, why aren’t you guys running anything on him?"

  "Dos Santos?"

  "Who else?"

  "We did."

  The Standard had run a couple pieces on Dos Santos over the last few weeks, including a 2,000-word feature Alex himself had written. But lawyers were always trying to make their opposition look bad, so it was no surprise that Joey would be prodding him.

  She said, "You barely scratched the surface, though. He’s—"

  "I may be new, but I’m not that new. You’ve been trying to get him off the case since before the case even started. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the great Diego Blanco?"

  She smirked and turned to her colleagues. "Guys, Alex wants to know if we’re afraid of Dos Santos."

  One of the women had her phone pressed to her ear, the other didn’t respond, and the man shrugged like he couldn’t hear her.

  "Maybe you’re not afraid," Alex said. "But you certainly wouldn’t have minded facing someone else."

  "If you knew what we knew…let’s just say…never mind, I shouldn’t." She stood abruptly and excused herself to use the restroom. Alex pulled out his phone and saw a new text from Bearon:

  I’m running late, too. Be there in twenty.

  Alex texted him back:

  I’m at a table on the inside balcony. With JOEY BONNER!!! Can’t decide what I love about her more: her smile or her information.

  Joey had good reason to fear Dos Santos. After attending Saint Thomas University School of Law—the lowest-ranked law school in the Miami area—Dos Santos got his start defending Cuban immigrants against DUIs, public drunkenness, and other minor crimes. In his early years, he’d earned a reputation as a fighter for the little guy, but things changed after he successfully defended a Florida Marlins outfielder against a cocaine arrest. Dos Santos had used the case as a stepping stone to the big time. He’d made a career out of defending drug cases, usually with successful plea bargains but occasionally with high-profile trials. The Miami papers had dubbed him "Diego Blanco," or Diego White, because of his expertise in defending people caught with Miami’s drug of choice. In the mid-90s he’d risen to national celebrity by defending a few major drug traffickers, then had relocated to New York City in 1997. He was now thought of as one of the best defense attorneys in the five boroughs.

  When the facts were on his side, he had a knack for explaining them in a way that resonated with juries. Dos Santos had come from nothing and was living the American Dream. A dream the jurors wanted to live as well. They admired and trusted him, despite the fact that he was often defending people who had already been found guilty in the court of public opinion. And when the facts weren’t on his side, he was brilliant at drawing out a trial—obscuring, obfuscating, and running misdirections until the jurors were so confused, they no longer cared if the defendant was guilty.

  He was hypnotic.

  Alex’s phone buzzed with a text from Bearon.

  Tell her you’ll look into him if she gives you something on him. Something real.

  Dos Santos also had a reputation for playing fast and loose with ethical and legal lines. Alex had written of his multiple run-ins with ethics tribunals for conflict of interest violations, but he’d never done anything that earned him more than a slap on the wrist. In one case, a conflict of interest had arisen after taking on a client and his firm had failed to report it to the judge. In another, he’d defended two men in a rape trial and, after finding out that one was the instigator of the attack, he’d thrown him under the bus while using the knowledge to land a sweet plea deal for the other. He’d also gotten romantically involved with at least one client and the mother of another. Nothing illegal about that, but it had raised some eyebrows and won him the reputation as someone who operated by his own rules.

  Joey’s efforts to get Dos Santos removed from the Mendoza case had started before jury selection. Back in Miami, Dos Santos had once defended the victim, Victor Alvarado, in a domestic violence case. Representing the man accused of killing a former client was called “successive representation,” and it was rare. The main issue was whether the lawyer had learned anything while representing the victim that would hinder his ability to represent the new client. But since the case had been seven years earlier, and a minor one, there was not enough evidence to determine that a conflict existed. Joey had raised the issue with Judge Butcher in the pre-trial phase, but Supreme Court precedent allowed judges wide discretion when it came to conflict of interest cases. Since Mendoza had signed a form acknowledging and dismissing the potential conflict, Butcher had sided with Dos Santos and allowed him to lead the trial.

  When Joey returned, Alex had his question ready. "Is there something you’re trying to tell me, Prosecutor Bonner?"

  She finished her martini with one long sip and waved the empty glass at a busboy. "Just that I need another one of these." She strung out and swallowed the middle "e" in "these.” Her Mississippi drawl coming out. "Southern gals can drink, you know."

  Alex’s heart almost melted, but he was trying to play it cool. "You know, Prosecutor Bonner, your accent comes out when you get tipsy."

  She leaned in again, closer this time. "Alex, I’m telling you. I can’t say much more, but if you look into Dos Santos, you’ll find out he’s worse than the worst rumors you’ve heard about him. Worse than anything you’ve reported yet."

  "What if I asked him about you? You have a reputation as a bit of a pit bull." His mouth was only a few inches from her ear.

  "I went to Mississippi State. I’m a bulldog."

  The male assistant, whose name Alex had already
forgotten, slid his chair around and wedged it between them. Alex sat back and watched him whisper to her for a long time. Joey’s smile turned to an expression of stoic seriousness, then to a frown.

  The assistant stood and said, "I’ll get the check."

  "What is it?" Alex asked.

  "Nothing I can’t handle. You’ll find out tomorrow in court. Nice talking with you, handsome."

  With that, she was up and gone, and Alex was scanning the bar for Bearon.

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday

  Alex learned what had pulled Joey out of the bar before court began the next morning.

  He’d met Bearon downstairs at Bar 76 and the two of them had spent a long night watching baseball, drinking beer, and flirting poorly with young professional women. But he’d gotten to sleep at a reasonable hour and, as he made his way north up Lombard Street, Alex knew Bearon would already be there, doing his walk around the perimeter of the courthouse. The morning was cool and a little muggy, but not the moss and cedar mugginess Alex and Bearon had known back on Bainbridge Island. This air was stale.

  They’d played high school basketball against each other, Alex at forward and Bearon at guard. Alex was a couple inches taller but Bearon was the much better player, and had turned down an opportunity to play local college ball to come to NYU with Alex. He’d majored in criminal justice and gotten his first job as a security guard at the courthouse a little over a year ago.

  Now he was Alex’s number one source.

  In fact, he’d been partially responsible for Alex landing the job at the The Standard. Bearon didn’t have access to any confidential information, but he kept an eye out. He listened to the lawyers chatting in the hallways, and he always knew who was in the building. Which meant that Alex always knew who was in the building. Lawyers, judges, police officers, journalists, and witnesses. Reporting was sometimes about having hard facts, concrete evidence and sources. But often it required triangulating the truth, figuring out what probably happened based on a series of apparently disconnected facts. And Bearon was excellent at providing those facts.

  Alex spotted him from half a block away, shooing a homeless man away from a grate on the north end of the courthouse while handing him a card that listed the nearest homeless shelters. One aspect of Bearon’s job was to make sure that no one was sleeping or standing too close to the building, part of the city’s new anti-terrorism plan after the World Trade Center bombing of 1993. Alex knew he hated doing it but, for now, he needed the paycheck.

  Bearon saw Alex approaching and said, "Did you hear yet?"

  "I’m still half asleep. Haven’t even checked my email."

  A group of a half-dozen men in suits approached from behind and Bearon nodded toward the courthouse steps. "Let’s talk up there," he said.

  They started walking back toward the front of the building. Bearon said, "That was a good night, but maybe we ought to start hanging out at bars where the women aren’t—"

  "Way out of our league?"

  "I felt like they were all looking at me like I was…a threat."

  "You’re the Native American Fabio, with the intellect of Vine Deloria and the heart of Winnie the Pooh. Screw them if they don’t see it."

  Bearon was a member of the Suquamish Tribe, which occupied nearly 8,000 acres about an hour outside of Seattle, ten minutes from where Alex grew up. He had made Pacific Northwest women swoon. He usually wore his hair loose but would sometimes wear it in one or two long black braids. He was certainly good looking, but there was no doubt that he stuck out in the mostly-white bars of Lower Manhattan. And he didn’t have Alex’s ability to "turn on the bullshit.”

  "If you want to meet the women here,” Alex said, “you have to learn how to talk to them. Just talk fast, be boastful, talk about whatever. This isn’t like back home."

  "Maybe we just need to start hanging out uptown. Dive Bar is about five miles closer to home.”

  They made their way up the steps and stood close against the building. Bearon glanced around and waited for a group of people to get through the revolving door. "Remember Brittney Deerborn?"

  "Remember her? She haunts my journalistic dreams."

  "She’s back."

  From time to time, Bearon tried to mess with Alex by giving him fake information, like "the judge threw out the case" or "the prosecutor is sleeping with the defendant" or “it turns out O.J. did it.”

  Alex wasn’t buying it this time. "Don’t screw with me."

  "Alex. This is real."

  Alex studied his face for a moment and knew he wasn’t lying. He hadn’t looked at the papers that morning and his first instinct was to reach for his cell phone, to call Susan to find out if anyone had reported it yet. He pulled it out, but Bearon put a hand on his arm before he could look.

  "Alex, wait, there’s more. I don’t know for sure, but from what I can gather, it’s not a sure thing that they’re going to let her testify."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Joey and her team were here early. They—"

  "They heard about it last night. Joey got some call and the mood changed while we were out having drinks."

  "But anyway, they want to keep her from testifying."

  Another security guard started making his way up the steps toward the courthouse door and Bearon turned abruptly. "I gotta get back," he said.

  "Thanks," Alex whispered.

  He sat on the top step, extended his legs out in front of him, and pulled out his phone.

  Brittney Deerborn was the Holy Grail, the missing witness the defense team had been searching for since the moment the case began. She was Manny Mendoza’s get-out-of-jail-free card.

  The prosecution’s case hinged on what took place inside Vinny’s restaurant during a half-hour period, when only seven people were present: the defendant, Manny Mendoza, the victim, Victor Alvarado, the driver, Damien Woodrow, the owner, Vinny Consigliola, and three kitchen staff, all of whom had testified earlier in the week that they hadn’t seen or heard anything. They’d been trained to stay in the kitchen at all times, like most back-of-the-house guys, and the noise from the exhaust system in the tiny kitchen made it plausible that they hadn’t heard anything.

  But who had served the food?

  It had been the first question the police had asked, the first question the prosecution had asked, and the first question the press and the public had asked. Vinny himself was famous for standing around the tiny bar, reading the sports pages by the light of an old brass lamp his grandmother had brought over from Sicily. He’d shake hands, offer a complimentary grappa or Campari, but he never brought out food.

  But it turned out there was a server. Britney Deerborn. She was an aspiring actor only three years out of high school, and she’d been on the schedule for the night in question. She’d clocked in at 5 p.m. but never clocked out. Investigators from both the NYPD and the defense team had searched for her all through the discovery and deposition phases of the trial, but she hadn’t been located. No one knew where she was.

  Dos Santos had made a point of leaking, to anyone who would listen, the claim that she was there when Alvarado had come into the restaurant drunk and attacked the defendant. That she could corroborate Woodrow’s story of self-defense. And just as the defense had leaked that she was the witness who could clear Mendoza, the prosecution had started rumors that she was their best witness. Many were speculating that Mendoza had killed her as well. But no one had heard from her.

  Until now.

  Alex still had an hour before court would start so he walked to the nearest deli and bought copies of The Post, the Daily News, and The Times. He read their stories on the Mendoza trial with interest—comparing his work to theirs as he always did—but found nothing on the Deerborn revelations. Next, he called Susan at The Standard. She checked the wires and cable news for him and confirmed that, so far, nothing had been reported about Brittney Deerborn.

  He had a scoop no one else had, or at least one that no one else had publish
ed.

  He called his editor, Samuel Baxton, as he walked back to the courthouse.

  "Colonel, it’s Alex." He always called him Colonel because Baxton had been a Lieutenant in the Vietnam War. It was Alex’s way of acknowledging his authority while also making fun of it just a little.

  "Alex, what’s up?"

  "I have something. Brittney Deerborn is back."

  "Do you have a story?"

  "Not yet."

  "Then why are you calling me?"

  "Can’t we put it up on the web, or write a quick thing that…" He trailed off. He hadn’t thought this through. Like all the other papers, The Standard was grappling with how to deal with breaking news as more and more readers moved online. Their website was still just a digital representation of their physical paper, and was thus always half a day behind the cable news networks. There was nothing Baxton could do with a nugget of news with no story and no context.

  "Alex, I’m getting tired of this. Do you actually have anything at all, or is this another courthouse rumor you’re…wait. Something just came up on CNN."

  There was a long pause but, as Alex turned the corner and saw the courthouse in the distance, he knew what Baxton was watching. Alex sprinted up the street and stopped behind the cameraman from CNN. He tried to listen to what the reporter was saying, but Baxton was in his ear. "You got beat, Alex."

  Alex mashed the "End Call" button and listened to the reporter, who was just finishing her stand-up. "It’s unclear what effect the emergence of Ms. Deerborn will have on the trial of Manny Mendoza, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on the story throughout the day and in the days to come. Back to you, Bob."

  A producer next to the cameraman said, "Annnd…we’re out." Everyone around the CNN crew relaxed, and Alex bolted up the steps. He needed a good seat today.