“I don’t know where to begin exactly. For the past six months or so there’s been a kind of task force in the Special Prosecutor’s office dedicated to one thing—nailing Charlie Blackwell.”
“Then everything Parma said about the case being over and done with and forgotten was pure bullshit?” The word didn’t go with my dress, but what the hell. You can take the girl out of the pits, but.…
“If that’s what he said,” Dave grinned, “that’s what it was. Oh, we did other work, had our regular cases and all, but getting Blackwell in a position where he’d have to play ball with us was our A-number-one priority.”
“Why? Sheer revenge? I mean, sure, Parma was mad about losing the Stone case, but why make a big deal now?”
“Don’t you read the papers?” Dave looked appalled when I shook my head. It’s true; what Dan Rather doesn’t tell me, I don’t know. “Parma’s being considered for an appointment as counsel to a congressional committee. Congressman Gebhardt of Nassau County’s going to head a Kefauver-style committee to look into organized crime. If it’s handled right, it’s the kind of thing that can make a lot of careers. And Del wants it to make his. He wants it so bad he can taste it.”
“What’s Charlie Blackwell got to do with it?”
“The Stone case was Parma’s biggest failure. Oh, we’ve had a few setbacks—cases reversed on appeal, verdicts set aside after trial—you can’t go after the biggies without getting people mad. But the Stone trial was different. It was a slap in the face for Del personally. He started to get paranoid that the congressional committee would hold it against him. So his plan was to nail Charlie and force him to admit he threw the case. This would clear away any suspicion that Parma lost the case through incompetence. Then, if he could get Charlie to give him the goods on Riordan, he’d be scoring a real coup that should impress the hell out of the committee and insure his appointment. Get the picture?”
I nodded. Now it was my turn to be thoughtful. With a nice sense of timing, Dave went to the bar for more drinks. Try as I might, all I could make out of this was that Del had lied in his teeth when he claimed Charlie was ancient history. Which wasn’t a crime.
Dave came back, set down the drinks, and said, “The upshot of all this is that my task force engineered the drug bust your friend represented Charlie on.”
“What! You’re kidding!” I took a gulp of Scotch. “You mean—but wait—”
“Come on, Counselor,” Dave laughed. “You’ve been around the block. Do you mean to sit there and tell me you never thought of that? We jerked on Blackwell’s chain to get him to roll over on Riordan. Happens every day.” Once again the contrast between the genteel voice, the mild features, the well-cut clothes, and the tough, streetwise manner grated on me. Which was the role, which was the reality?
I had recovered a little. “Even dealing with the Kings County D.A.’s office hasn’t made me cynical enough for your outfit,” I told him. “I’m out of my depth here. Let me get this straight. You guys were totally responsible for Charlie being involved in the drug deal. That was a setup to get him in custody because once he was in custody he’d be so afraid of his enemies in prison he’d do anything to make a deal. Right?”
“Right. We were willing to drop the drug rap—or see to it the Brooklyn D.A. dropped it—in return for the truth about Riordan’s fixing the Stone case.”
“But don’t you see what this means? If the only reason Charlie was in jail was because you guys put him there, and you put him there because of his role in the Stone case, then it’s one hell of a coincidence if he was iced by someone else for some totally unrelated reason. Isn’t it?”
“Is that what the police think?”
“That’s what Detective Button said when I told him I thought Blackwell had been murdered. He said Charlie had enemies coming out of his ears and that even if he was murdered, it wasn’t necessarily because of the Stone case. But now—”
“Now you know the only reason he was there at all was because of the Stone case.”
“Which makes it unlikely that somebody else took advantage of the situation. The connection is clear. And it connects with Nathan too. If someone killed Charlie because of what he knew, Nathan knew the same things.”
“Now you see why I felt I had to tell you all this. It supports your thinking about why your friend was killed.”
“Yes,” I agreed thoughtfully. “If Nathan was killed by someone else, it was one hell of a lucky break for someone.”
“For Riordan.” Dave’s pale blue eyes were grim. I shivered a little. It was one thing to believe Nathan had been murdered because of what Blackwell had told him. It was another to put a name to the murderer.
I remembered what Emily had said. “If you guys were keeping such close tabs on Charlie, how come he ended up in the system at all?”
Dave looked blank. I spelled it out. “If you thought you could squeeze him, wouldn’t you have brought him straight to your office instead of letting him go through arraignments? I mean, first of all, every minute he spent in custody was a risk—he was vulnerable as hell in jail. Plus it would have been easier to do a deal without a lawyer in the room, right? So why—”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Counselor,” Dave interrupted, an angry, set look on his face. “My office doesn’t do things that way, I don’t care who told you we do.”
I didn’t believe him. Maybe he didn’t, but his colleagues did. Only not this time. But why? Why had Charlie, so important to Parma that he’d been the subject of a private vendetta, been allowed to slip through the Special Prosecutor’s fingers just when he ought to have been given the ultimate in protection?
NINETEEN
“I can’t be droppin’ no dime on that dude, you dig? Man, he too heavy for me. I don’t wanna end up under no pier, you dig where I’m comin’ from?”
It was Tuesday morning; Tyrone’s old case was on in AP4. I walked up just as Tyrone and the cop started dealing. I knew he was a cop as soon as I got off the elevator; even in plain clothes, he could be nothing else. Steel-gray hair, a face the color of rare steak, built like a longshoreman. But the toughness in his stance wasn’t a macho pose, it was a way of life.
I came up behind them and said quietly, “Officer, if you’ve got something to offer my client in return for information, I’d like to hear it too.” As he wheeled around, I held out my hand. “I’m Cassandra Jameson, Tyrone’s attorney.”
He didn’t take the hand. Things were not going to be friendly.
Tyrone, meanwhile, was looking over his shoulder, worried. “Hey, man, like we can’t be talkin’ here. I don’t want nobody to get the wrong idea, you dig?”
I nodded. “He’s got a point,” I told the cop. “You want to talk, let’s go inside.” I pointed to the pen area.
The cop, without a word, grabbed Tyrone, threw him against the wall, and cuffed him.
“Whatcha doin’ that for, man?” Tyrone squealed. “I ain’t did nothin’.”
“Hey,” I shouted. “You can’t bust my client.”
The cop gave me a malevolent grin. “Can’t I, girlie?” he said. “Just watch me.” Then he shoved Tyrone through the pen doors.
I started to follow, but the whole hall had seen it. A middle-aged black man shook his head. “Seems like them cops just do what they please,” he said sadly.
“Ain’t right,” a girl added. Her hair was done in little braids, and when she shook her head, the pink beads rattled.
As I slammed through the door, I turned on the cop. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Calm down, girlie,” he said, grinning. “I got him in here, didn’t I? Do you think anybody out there suspects us of talking deal after that?”
He had a point. “Don’t call me girlie,” I said.
He uncuffed Tyrone, and they started talking. In a foreign language.
“Who’s cuttin’?” the cop asked.
“Lotta dudes,” Tyrone said, “but the biggest cutting
joint, man, it belong to Spanish Nick.”
“Where’s it at?”
“Man, I done told you, I can’t be fuckin’ that dude up or he do me for sure.”
“Tyrone,” the cop said softly, “you wanna help yourself here or what?”
That was my cue. “Hold it, officer. What can you offer? And will the D.A. go along with it? Tyrone’s got two cases—a promise of probation on the old one, and this new one’s open. What are we talking about if he gives you good information?”
“I’ll recommend probation on both,” the cop answered. I nodded. Best we could do.
“Okay,” I answered. “Get me a D.A. to agree to it, and you’re on.”
When the cop went out to the courtroom, I turned to Tyrone. “That okay with you?”
He nodded. “I can’t be doin’ no time, Miss Jameson. Just keep me out of Riker’s, that’s all.”
“Can you give the cop what he wants?”
“I don’t like to be hurtin’ nobody, but I gotta help myself, right?”
“Right,” I sighed. At seventeen, Tyrone was already starting a career as an informant. I wondered if it would someday get him what it had gotten Charlie Blackwell.
The cop was back, accompanied by A.D.A. Hagerty. Her face was red, and she kept her eyes down, but she mumbled, “He’ll get the deal if Officer Brennan tells us the information was good.” Then she left.
Brennan laughed. “Stupid bitch wouldn’t buy it,” he said. “Got on her high horse about how could she make a deal with a criminal? So I picked up the phone, called her supervisor, and he explained the facts of life to her. She doesn’t much like the facts of life, does she?”
“I’m not thrilled with them either,” I retorted. “I’ve just been in the system longer than she has.” My God, I’m defending her, I realized. Just like Nathan did the night we worked together.
The cop shrugged, and he and Tyrone went to work. The jargon flowed thick and fast. Who was doing tag jobs? Where were the chop shops? Where were they shipping cars? Tyrone knew his stuff. The cop knew he knew it. There was a bond of mutual interest and respect between cop and skell that left me, a mere lawyer, out in the cold. Finally, Tyrone asked shyly whether the cop had heard of him on the street.
“Sure,” the cop nodded. “Everybody in the detail knew you was up-and-coming. Somebody to watch.”
Tyrone beamed. The cop had just made his whole day.
After Tyrone copped out, I did a preliminary hearing. My client was a thin, wasted junkie with a face the color of oatmeal. He sat in the chair, cuffed hands picking at his worn, dirty pants. His once-white T-shirt had holes in it, as did his high-topped sneakers. He looked as though he’d already done twenty years, and he hadn’t even been indicted yet.
The complainant was a blond boy of about twelve. His story was that my guy grabbed him in a schoolyard. He was wearing a St. Christopher medal on a chain around his neck. My guy snapped it off. Then he began to shake the kid, demanding, pleading with him, to have something else—money, a watch, something. The kid had nothing. As he said, “I’m only a kid, what could I have?” But the guy kept shaking him. The way you kick a candy machine when it won’t give you your change.
My guy just sat there. No denials. No “he lyin’.” He knew it was the end of the line. The case would go upstairs, he’d get three-to-six, and there was nothing to be done about it. And as soon as he got out of prison, the need would come on him again, he’d rob again, he’d do time again. Until he died. “And nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope. So now and never any different.” Robert Frost had it right.
I was about to leave the courtroom when the phone lit up. It was Jackie Bohan in AR2, the youth arraignment part. I asked her what was up.
“There’s a kid here returned on a warrant,” she began. I had to strain to hear her voice. Court must be in session, I thought. “It’s one of Nathan’s clients. Flaherty said you had all Nathan’s cases now.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but I was getting a little sick of covering Nathan’s entire caseload as well as my own. “What’s the story?”
“Kid was supposed to be in AP5 last week for sentencing. He didn’t show and they picked him up on a warrant. The thing is there are detectives here who want to arrest him on a new charge.”
“I’ll be right down,” I said.
Jackie motioned me into the back, by the pens. “There he is,” she said, pointing to a Puerto Rican kid with a face like a Renaissance angel. “The cops who want him are from Homicide. And, Cass,” she went on, “one of them is Detective Button.”
It figured. I looked at the court papers Jackie handed me. Judge Di Anci had taken the kid’s plea. The last adjournment before the bench warrant was marked “For defense counsel to contact Hope House.” Just as Nathan had told me the night we worked together. The kid bench warranted the day Nathan died.
I looked at the kid’s rap sheet. Prostitution. Button hadn’t been bluffing. He had a suspect.
The irony struck me, hard. Here I’d been busting my ass to get to the truth of Nathan’s death, researching the Stone case, running to talk to Parma, suspecting the hell out of Matt Riordan and now maybe—just maybe—Nathan’s murderer was standing in the AR2 pens waiting to be interviewed by his Legal Aid lawyer.
Me.
TWENTY
It was worse than anything I could have imagined. The kid looked like Dondi from the comic strip—honey-colored skin, big dark eyes, a mass of wavy black hair. He had “chicken” written all over him.
I couldn’t think. I especially couldn’t think with the kid eight feet away, his huge dark eyes burning into me. I walked to the other side, around the elevator that took the prisoners to the ninth-floor lockup, and sat in one of the chairs they handcuffed female prisoners to. It was as good a place as any.
I tried to convince myself the whole thing was a coincidence, that Button had more than one case, for God’s sake, and this kid had probably stabbed some guy in a barroom brawl. But deep down I knew it was no good. Button couldn’t have invented a more perfect suspect. This was the kid whose name Milt had mentioned that day in his office. The kid Button had been looking for.
So now what? No way I could represent the kid. Not just because I was Nathan’s lover, either. He’d have to have a lawyer from the 18-b panel. The one headed by Stan Willburton, Emily’s husband. I jotted a reminder in my pocket notebook to call Stan as soon as I could.
But now? Could I walk into the pen, interview the kid like any other client, and stand up on the case for bail purposes?
I could think of a hundred reasons why not. Conflict of interest. Ethics. Personal feelings. Nobody in the world could blame me if I walked away from this one. I could comb the courthouse for an 18-b lawyer. I could ask Jackie to stand up on the case, I could call Milt and dump the whole mess in his lap.
A large part of me wanted to. I’d been full of energy, willing to do whatever it took, so long as the evidence led me away from Button’s Midnight Cowboy theory. As long as I was exploring the Burton Stone-Matt Riordan connection. But now—did I have the guts to look Button’s evidence full in the face? To risk the possibility that he’d been right all along?
To hell with ethics. That was the real question—how much did I really believe in Nathan? Enough to confront the facts, whatever they were? Enough to see the kid and find out for myself what he and Nathan had been to each other?
Put that way, I had no choice. I stood up, stretched and yawned like one of Dorinda’s cats, and walked toward the pen. I was ready to talk to Heriberto Diaz.
The pen was empty. The courtroom was nearly so. Tired of waiting, the judge had called a recess. The summonses were finished; my case was the only one left.
It was an anticlimax. I was geared up for a confrontation I couldn’t have until the kid was brought back into the interview pen.
I was standing around uncertainly when I heard a voice behind me.
I had a split second to decide how to handle it. I could flat-out contradict him, give him my pitch about the Stone case, and lose him. Or I could concede at least the possibility that he was right and the kid was guilty and maybe learn something. I wanted very badly to learn something.
“You’re pretty sure he’s the one, then?” I asked. “You must have solid evidence.”
“That’s right, Counselor,” he said cheerfully. “We got this kid nailed. A smart defense lawyer would start working on a good plea.”
“Maybe his 18-b lawyer will do just that,” I replied. “I can’t stay on the case, of course. Even if I wanted to,” I added for good measure.
There was a sober look on Button’s face as he answered, “Yeah, I don’t envy you your job. Imagine having to represent the punk who killed your boyfriend. I couldn’t do it, not in a million years.”
Neither could I, I thought. Not if I really believed this kid killed Nathan. Perhaps the fact that my guts didn’t rebel at the thought of standing up on this kid meant something. I hope I haven’t been in the system so long I could just arraign Nathan’s murderer and then say, “Next case.”
“Look, Detective Button,” I said, fixing him with a straight, eyeball-to-eyeball stare, “can I be frank with you?” This was a little like saying “with all due respect” to a judge—whenever you hear a lawyer say that, you know he’s about to come out with something highly disrespectful, if not totally outrageous.
The detective cocked his head to one side like an inquisitive Yorkshire terrier, then nodded. I proceeded. “You know how I felt about Nathan. You know I don’t want to believe this kid’s guilty, but, hell, I’m a lawyer. I can accept facts. If the evidence is there, I can deal with it. Now, I’m going to have to get relieved on this case. So can’t you give me an idea of what you’ve got? I really need to know—not as a lawyer, but as Nathan’s friend.”
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