Wiseguys in the Woods

by John P. M. Wappett

Judge Ginola then turned back to Peter. “What is your best estimate on the length of the People’s direct case?”

  “Overall, I expect that the trial will be rather short, given that we have a defendant who won’t speak and an eyewitness who can’t remember. Aside from the store owner, Ms. Smith, the rest of my witnesses are professionals and experts, so I would guess that I can present my case in four to five days. Obviously, if New York still had the death penalty, the presentation would be entirely different, but we don’t have to worry about that, thank God.”

  Peter’s opposition to the death penalty was as well known as it was unusual for a prosecutor. Aside from the morality of it, Peter always insisted that he had never come across a murderer who had given a moment’s thought to the possibility of punishment, with the possible exception of a killer-for-hire, who would simply raise his rates in the face of a death penalty possibility.

  “So he won’t even consider any plea bargain?” Judge Ginola could not seem to fathom this unusual stance.

  “No. He refuses to discuss it. Based on what Peter has just told us, I wonder if it is somehow connected with the fact that we now have two people in this case that we cannot identify,” opined Gary.

  Peter nodded in agreement, trying to envision how this might affect the jury’s impression of this incident. Logically it had nothing to do with the robbery and subsequent death of the store clerk, but Peter had been doing trial work long enough to know that a group of twelve strangers locked in a room together are not always the most logical of folk.

  The conference wrapped up with the customary discussion of the ground rules for the selection of the jury, and that the jury would be instructed at the outset, that they could not draw any unfavorable inference from the fact that the defendant had chosen not to testify on his own behalf or to even identify himself.

  Peter was, of course, going to prepare an outline of a cross-examination for Doe, just in case he changed his mind. This thought brought to mind an old military adage that retired Judge Manningham, himself a former Marine officer, was fond of quoting:

  Never try to anticipate your enemy’s intentions, rather gauge his capabilities

  There was no substitute for thorough preparation, but the realities of the hectic workplace that was a District Attorney’s Office sometimes made that difficult and Peter had learned that it would inevitably happen that if he neglected any part of the preparation, it would be that particular portion of the case that would become pivotal. He had experienced this perverse luck all his life, even noting that, as a child, by the time he managed to get his playing piece around the board and collected his first $200 in Monopoly, his opponents were placing hotels on their properties.

  By mid-afternoon, Peter had made a good start on the outlines of his direct examination of Jennifer Smith and the cross of John Doe when the phone rang, and he was propelled back into one of the other Sica cases, the one involving “Wally”.

  “Hey Tanner. What’s up?”

  Tanner Saint said, “We’ve got some results back on Wally. When would you like to get the run down?”

  “I am in the middle of prepping for the wine store trial at the moment. How about I come by first thing tomorrow, and you can fill me in then?”

  “Sure thing, but I just want you to know that we have another unnamed foreigner in our little community.”

  “Great! Just what we need!”

  As he wrapped up his workday, Peter looked outside and saw that the wind had kicked up, tossing the early leaf drop around in swirls, and the gloomy clouds scudding across the sky promising that real North Country autumn had arrived. Down in Albany, Peter assumed that a number of local store owners with large display windows were noting the same warning weather and bracing for the annual assault on their property.

  A homeless man, known affectionately as “Brick Brad” would soon be on the prowl in Albany, the state capital, searching for a large unguarded plate of glass through which he would send the handiest brick, stone or other projectile. No one who was aware of this annual ritual thought that “Brick Brad” harbored any ill will toward the owner of the window.

  Rather, it was understood and generally accepted that, through this expedient, he assured his comfortable survival during the winter months by gratefully surrendering himself to the police in return for the opportunity to plead guilty and accept a six-month jail sentence. With time off for good behavior, which he always earned, he would be released in time to welcome the early signs of spring in the park next to the State Capitol. So long as Brad set aside some of his disability and veteran benefits to make restitution to the store owner before the end of summer, the criminal justice community went along with this year after year, privately justifying the arrangement as being a way to take care of a military veteran.

  Peter had had to drop off his coat in his office before making his way down to Tanner Saint’s office for his “Wally” briefing. This was the first morning that Peter had needed an outer coat, and he was already looking forward to the time when he could come to work without one, which in this neck of the woods would occur in six months or so.

  “First off, Dr. Haggard sends his ‘hello’ and wants you to know that this is the most interesting case he has had in quite some time,” said Tanner, sipping his coffee.

  “Everything that has come back from labs confirms that “Wally” is from Italy and died here round about 1958. The receipt that Dr. Haggard found in the wallet did have a date of June 5, 1958. Turns out, it was the receipt for a custom-made suit – possibly even the suit he was wearing when we found him. The report on the suit, which was prepared with the help of some elderly European tailors, concluded that the suit was hand sewn in 1958, or thereabouts, and was done by a well known tailor in Naples, as evidenced by the tailor’s initials sewn into the lining. It would have been fairly expensive.”

  “Well, that adds to the weight of the evidence, but he could still be a German who bought a suit in a second-hand store in the late 60’s,” observed Peter as he played the Devil’s advocate, a role he always relished.

  Tanner held up his hand. “Not so fast! We’re not done. Dr. Haggard has been asking the same questions as you. He went back and examined ‘Wally’s’ shoes and feet. After looking at the shoes, he asked us to send them off for examination, too. It turns out that they are also hand-made, Italian, and from around the same time as the suit. What are the odds of finding the whole hand-made outfit, including shoes, that fits correctly, in Good Will? He also noted that what remains of his toenails suggest a pedicure.”

  Peter smiled, “I feel better already. What else?”

  “We also received a report from Dr Lewis, who examined the molar that was found in ‘Wally’s’ throat. He was also asked to examine the mouth and jaw area. He agrees with Dr. Haggard about the damage to the mouth as being caused by blows from something hard with a square or rectangular end, measuring about ¾ inches in width. The filling in the tooth is, according to Dr. Lewis, definitely the work of a south European dentist, from the mid 1930s, based upon the work performed, the material used to prepare the tooth for the filling and the material used for the filling. Unfortunately, he cannot be any more definite than that. At least it doesn’t contradict anything we know so far.

  “I still think that we might be talking about the back of a hatchet, especially as Dr. Haggard’s magnified examination of ‘Wally’s’ wrists confirm that the blade was consistent with a fairly sharp ax or hatchet. The angle of the blade edge is too wide for a knife, even a butcher’s cleaver. The examination of that odd piece of wood found that it was most likely a part of a tool handle. Something substantial, for use outdoors.”

  Flipping through the notes in his spiral pad, Tanner continued, “The examination of the pendant didn’t give us much, other than to confirm that it was a broken off half of a larger item, so there is a mate to it somewhere. The bits of gold in the pile of ground up hands were collected and examined and weighed. Definitely, a fairly costly gold ring, a
nd likely a wedding band.”

  “What about the tattoo that Dr. Haggard thought he had found?”

  Tanner shook his head, “He still has not been able to raise any impression yet, but he is still working on it. On the other hand, he was able to extract some bone marrow, so that the FBI might someday do up a DNA profile, whatever that is.”

  “Well, I don’t pretend to fully understand it, but basically, the human genome contains the blueprint of our body, with the pieces of the chromosomes dictating everything down to our eye color. Most of human DNA is the same for all of us, so we all have one head, two ears, and don’t breath with gills. The little bit that makes each of us unique can be isolated and compared with other samples. The only person with identical DNA is an identical twin and they will soon be able to identify parents of a subject, siblings and such, because of the percentages of shared DNA.”

  “So what good will it do us in this case?”

  “It’s a long shot, but if we develop a possible ID on ‘Wally’, we can try to locate a close relative and do a tentative comparison. They say that someday, this will be a common part of all investigations.”

  “Sounds like one more thing for defense attorneys to pick apart, to me.”

  Peter smiled, “I bet that’s exactly what was initially said about fingerprints when they first came into use. So now we know how Wally died and probably when. What’s next?”

  I have located the son of Alphonso Santon, who owned the restaurant in ‘Wally’s’ storefront back in the 50’s. His name is Vito. I’m going to go to his home in Yonkers and see if I can jog his memory about what may have been going on at the restaurant back then. He told me on the phone that he worked in the kitchen starting at a young age. I didn’t tell him anymore about what I was calling about, I want to hit him with it in person and gauge his reaction.”

  “I wonder if he would have any recollection back that far.”

  “I don’t know, but he did remember that there were a lot of magazines and candy bars in his home when he was growing up,” laughed Tanner. Peter responded in adult fashion, giving Tanner the raspberries.

  ***

  The remaining preparation for the John Doe trial went smoothly and Peter wrapped it up with a couple of days to spare. He figured he’d better touch base with the people engaged in the other Sica cases, because once he mentally shifted into trial mode, there was no breaking his concentration. In fact, Peter found that this was one of his real strengths in this work.

  In his very first trial, while still an intern in the Albany County DA’s Office, he had been certified by the appellate court, allowing him to perform some of the duties of an Assistant DA, including prosecuting misdemeanor trials under the supervision of a prosecutor. He had begun the direct examination of the arresting officer in a DWI case, in a completely empty courtroom in the town of New Scotland. At the end of his questioning, he turned to return to his chair and stopped short. The empty courtroom now had twenty or so law school students sitting in the front, watching him.

  He found out during a break, that his Chief Assistant DA Patrick O’Donnell, who also taught a trial tactics course at Albany Law School, had sent his class to watch Peter’s trial, and Peter had never noticed them come into the courtroom and take seats directly behind him.

  A couple days later, Dave Grace, from INS, showed up unannounced to brief Peter, just as Peter got called down to County Court to handle an arraignment on a sealed drug sale indictment. This method of commencing a prosecution was often used in situations where it was unwise to give a defendant a chance to appear in a local court and perhaps get the judge there to set low bail. In drug cases and some violent felonies, the result might well be defendants who would flee and forfeit their bail money. With a direct presentation to a Grand Jury, the defendant would have no idea of what was about to happen until he was scooped up on an arrest warrant from a county court judge. Faced with an indictment, as opposed to just a newly arrested defendant picked up off street, a judge would tend to set much higher bail or deny it altogether.

  When Peter, accompanied by Dave Grace, who wanted to make sure that he and Peter had a chance to talk, entered the county courtroom, he found that there were a fair number of persons in the room awaiting their turn before the judge. Dave and Peter sat in the front row, chatting quietly for a few minutes until Judge Ginola called up Peter to the bench. The arraignment process began and it was soon apparent that the Hispanic defendant was insisting that he only spoke Spanish.

  “We are going to have to postpone the arraignment, Mr. Drake, unless you have a translator handy,” pronounced the judge.

  “Actually, I may have one available, Judge. Can you give me a couple of minutes?”

  “Go ahead”

  While the judge called another set of attorneys up to handle a matter, Peter went back to his seat and whispered to Dave Grace, “You learned Spanish during your time down on the Mexican border, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, enough to make myself understood.”

  “Feel like taking a rip at translating the arraignment for this guy?”

  “Sure. I’ll help you explain things to that tonk.”

  Peter, who had been watching the judge as he spoke, snapped his head around to face Grace. He urgently whispered, “What? What the hell is a tonk?”

  Peter caught the amused sparkle in Dave’s eyes as he measured his answer, “Actually, it is the sound you get when you hit one of them across the back of the head as he is sneaking across the border.”

  Caught between the embarrassed surprise of the imprudent comment and the image of a Maglite creating such a sound, Peter was just getting past the shock, when a voice called from the front of the court.

  “Mr. Drake. Are you ready to proceed?”

  As Peter was torn between laughing and chastising the agent, he managed to croak out,

  “Ready, your Honor.” Followed by a whisper directed at Dave,

  “I’ll get you for that.”

  Judge Ginola was confused by the two of them walking toward his bench, laughing quietly. Somehow, they made it through the arraignment without breaking up completely.

  When they returned to Peter’s office, Agent Grace explained that INTERPOL had not yet had any success in identifying Sica. Part of the problem was that they were communicating with the Federal Police in Rome, rather than in Naples. In addition, the Italians did not yet have a centralized fingerprint identification center like the FBI. Each regional police headquarters maintained its own collection of fingerprints.

  “Henry decided the other day that enough was enough, and has gone ahead with his Plan B. He has friends he’s worked with in INS Rome and he reached out to them to take a road trip down to Naples with the prints and photos we gave them. If Sica is as significant as we think he is, those guys should be able to connect the dots and ID him in a few days. We think this is likely, based on what we have just learned from a confidential informant that Mike and Guy have developed, who claims she is from Sica’s home town outside Naples.”

  Grace continued, “She is scared shitless of him, but told us that his first name is really Enrico and that he is a lawyer in Naples. She claims that he is the best lawyer that money can buy and that he works for the Mafia there. According to her, this is not the Sicilian Mafia, but a separate, Neapolitan version.”

  “Well that would put a different twist on everything. Any idea if she is telling even a partial truth?”

  Dave shrugged his shoulders, “It is consistent with what we saw during the Lake George surveillance. And the report from the lab in McLean, Virginia was just faxed up and it confirms that the documents are counterfeits. Top quality manufacturing, but still bogus. The green card that he was carrying in the name of Enzo Vinci, is fraudulent. The registration number has never been issued. The Social Security number stub in the name Enzo Vinci, had a number that had been issued to a woman who was born in the Soviet Union in 1948.”

  Peter sat forward in his chair. “If he is some sor
t of hot shit in organized crime, we probably should not be allowing him to wander about free. Has he done anything interesting in the past few days since he left the hospital?”

  “The surveillance teams report that he is laying low, rarely leaving the apartment and only then to go to the store and back again. The consensus in the task force is the same as what you just said. Let’s go ahead and lock him up before he bolts and we lose him.”

  Peter nodded agreement. “Okay. We have a grand jury sitting tomorrow, so I will book us some time for a presentation. Let’s have you and Henry here tomorrow at 9 A.M. with a certified copy of that report and the two original documents. We’ll also need the officer who located the documents in Sica’s clothing at the hospital, so we can establish a chain of custody.

  Peter was warming up to the task ahead. “I will submit two counts of Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree. After the vote, I’ll arrange to hand up the sealed indictment and get an arrest warrant signed by Judge Ginola by 2 P.M. or so, and then you guys can do your thing and scoop him up by close of business.”