“Okay, well, maybe I left,” Felix replied.
“Maybe you left?” Graziani scowled and looked meaningfully at Brock.
“Felix, remember how relieved you felt when you admitted that you killed Dolores Atkins and got that off your conscience?” Brock said.
Felix hesitated. He didn’t like this new detective; he acted like a bully. “Yes, sir.”
“Then think about how much better you’ll feel when you tell the truth here,” Graziani said. “And the truth is, after you raped Olivia Yancy, you killed her. Isn’t that right, Felix?”
Felix shrugged. “I guess.”
Graziani sat back down in his seat and stared at the ceiling. “You guess,” he said after a moment, “you fucking guess.” He leaned forward to look his subject in the eyes. “Well, I guess I’m going to have to walk out of that door, Felix, and whatever happens to you after that will be your own damn fault. Do you want me to walk out that door?”
Felix panicked. He had no idea what would happen to him if the detective left, but it couldn’t be good. “No. Please don’t go.”
“Well, then tell me the fucking truth,” Graziani snarled. “What did you do to Olivia after you raped her?”
“I killed her.”
Graziani smiled. “Well, now we’re getting somewhere. And how did you kill her?”
There was only one answer that made sense to Felix. “With a knife,” he said, making the same stabbing motion he’d imitated for Beth Jenkins.
“Was this the same knife you used to kill Dolores Atkins?” Graziani said. “The one you looked for with Detective Brock?”
“Yes. We couldn’t find it.”
“So I’m told,” Graziani replied. “So tell me about the ring.”
“The ring?”
“Yes, the little diamond ring that was found in your wallet.”
Felix brightened. “I told Detective Brock I bought it for my girlfriend, from Al in the park.”
“But you know what, Felix? I think you’re lying about that. I think you took the ring from Olivia Yancy,” Graziani said accusatorily.
Felix shook his head. “No, I bought it from Al. It’s for my girlfriend.”
“Your girlfriend Olivia?” Graziani asked.
“No. Maria Elena.”
“Cut the crap, Felix,” Graziani replied. “If you want us to help you, you need to start helping us. You cut the ring off Olivia Yancy’s finger. What did you do with it after that?”
“I filed Al’s name off,” Felix replied.
“Bullshit!” Graziani exploded. Felix jerked back in his chair, frightened, as the detective continued, “Olivia’s husband’s name is Dale. That’s what you filed off, isn’t it?”
Felix blinked back tears. “I bought it from Al and filed his name off.”
Graziani stood and acted as if he was going to leave the room. “That’s it, Felix. No more joking around with you. You got the ring from Olivia and put it in your wallet. And if you don’t fess up, any chance you have of us telling the judge that you cooperated with us will go out the window. Understand? We’re looking at the fucking death penalty, Felix.”
Swallowing hard, Felix struggled to speak and then started crying. “I bought it from Al for my girlfriend.”
“Suit yourself, Felix,” Graziani said. “Come on, Phil, let’s leave him to his fantasy world.”
The two detectives had almost reached the door when Felix yelled, “I took the ring from Olivia.”
Graziani stopped and stood for a moment without turning. When he did, he was smiling broadly. “And whose name did you file off the ring?”
“Dale,” Felix responded.
Graziani looked at Brock and smirked. “Well, thank you, Felix. I’m going to leave you for a bit. I need to make a telephone call to the New York district attorney’s office, but we’ll probably want to ask you some more questions later. Will that be okay?”
Felix sniffed and nodded his head. “Then can I go home?” he asked, looking from Graziani to Brock, who lowered his head.
“Sorry, Felix,” Brock said. “But that’s going to be a very long time from now.”
“A very long time,” Graziani repeated. “You’re a murdering son of a bitch, and they’re going to put you away for just about forever…. Hell, they’re probably going to put you down like a mad dog, and I’ll be there to watch ’em do it.”
12
MARLENE PAUSED AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE HOUSING Works Bookstore and turned to face the massive dog who sat down on his haunches at her feet. The expression on his broad face seemed to express puzzlement at why their evening walk had been interrupted after only a few blocks.
“Sorry, Gil,” she said apologetically as she tied his leash to an empty bike rack. The restraint was unnecessary, as the hundred-and-twenty-pound presa canario would have died before leaving any spot where Marlene left him. However, other pedestrians felt safer knowing the beast was not free to devour them should he be of that mind-set. “This shouldn’t take long, and I’ll make it up to you.”
Trained as a personal protection dog, Gilgamesh was Marlene’s baby. One of her pursuits since leaving the New York DAO many years earlier, after establishing and then selling a very lucrative VIP security service, was ownership of a security and bomb dog breeding and training facility on Long Island. The farm specialized in mastiffs and her current favorite, the presa. She loved the catlike movement and athleticism of the breed’s thick, muscular body, as well as its fierce loyalty.
Gilgamesh was absolutely devoted to Marlene and her family. And while gentle under normal circumstances, he would, and had, killed to protect them.
Marlene was no longer active at the dog farm, which she’d left in the capable hands of her head trainer. And the fact of the matter was she’d been feeling a bit lost of late; her eldest child, Lucy, lived in New Mexico, and the twin boys were in high school and no longer put up with much mothering. With their belated bar mitzvah coming up, she’d recently started brooding over the fact that before she knew it, they’d be off to college and she and Butch would be empty-nesters. Butch is at the height of his career, she thought, but what am I going to do that I find rewarding?
Since giving up the dog farm, she’d been involved in dangerous battles with terrorists and criminal masterminds that seemed to follow her family like sharks follow blood in the water. And, as much as she hated to admit it and worried about her family, she liked the occasional adrenaline rush of fighting for her life, as well as doing something good for her community and country. But it was all sort of haphazard and not something she could do as a career. She did enjoy painting at her art studio in the building across the street from the family loft; however, it wasn’t enough—not for her mind and, truth be told, not the level of excitement she needed.
Things had started to change a month earlier when she took on the case of a man who’d been unjustly accused of a murder and was being railroaded by the unethical Westchester County prosecutor Harley Chin. Marlene had not only cleared her client, she had helped catch the real killer—a professional hit man who murdered the victim in order to cover up another homicide of a call girl committed by a New York State supreme court trial judge.
Solving two murders and nailing two killers, all while serving the cause of justice, had certainly filled her spiritual, mental, and adrenaline-junkie voids. She felt more energized and involved than she had in years. And now it gave her the idea for a new avocation combining her law degree—which she’d kept current with the New York Bar Association—with her knack for private investigation. True, she couldn’t practice criminal law in Manhattan to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest with her husband’s position, but she could practice law in the remaining four boroughs of Gotham, each one a county of its own, and her private investigator credentials—which she’d kept since her days with the security firm—were good in Manhattan as well; she could always work with an attorney there.
The recent case had convinced her that there was a need
for her services as well. A district attorney like her husband—who insisted that his prosecutors play by the rules and who believed that it was the duty of his office to seek justice, not win at all costs—wasn’t the problem. Not that the New York DAO was infallible, but that sort of institutionalized ethics went a long ways toward preventing malicious or unwarranted prosecution.
Her husband was what the twins called “old-school,” an anomaly. As a first-year law student at Yale she took to heart a maxim of America’s justice system: it was better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be wrongfully convicted. Yet there were self-aggrandizing prosecutors, like Chin in Westchester, as well as overzealous cops, politicized judges, and lazy defense attorneys, who didn’t do their jobs, which meant that, regrettably, innocent people went to prison, and some were even sentenced to death.
And that’s where her inspiration came in. It was no accident that many of those for whom justice was truly blind were poor or disenfranchised and could not afford “dream teams” of lawyers, private investigators, and bevies of expert witnesses. Indigent defendants accused of homicide in New York had two private attorneys appointed to represent them; such attorneys belonged to a pool of “qualified” trial lawyers who applied to be in the group. However, they were paid at a much lower rate than their standard fees, and the only way to make money was to take on as many cases as a judge would assign them and then bill as many hours as the courts would allow. All the while, they were also working on more lucrative cases in their private practices. As a result, the time and energy devoted to the case of an indigent person accused of murder could be less than adequate.
As Marlene had explained to her husband when broaching the subject the previous week after their meeting with Stupenagel, she thought that maybe she’d take on a few cases a year where she believed there was a legitimate question about an injustice being done. She’d work pro bono—a Latin term meaning “for the good,” or more accurately “free of charge”—something she could easily afford as she’d made millions from the sale of the security firm, and the dog farm was quite profitable as well.
Although he’d teased her about whether he’d be comfortable “sleeping with the enemy,” Butch had not objected to her idea. She knew he wouldn’t. For one thing, he learned long ago that she was not easily dissuaded when she put her mind to something. But more importantly, he accepted that the job of the defense was to zealously and competently represent its client, and if the state couldn’t prove its case, then even a guilty defendant should be set free. So if Marlene put his colleagues in the other boroughs through the wringer, then so be it; they’d better be ready for a fight.
She didn’t have to wait for one either. That afternoon, Alejandro Garcia had called on her cell phone and asked if she could recommend a good attorney for a friend who was being unjustly accused of three murders. The irony was that when Marlene first met the then-budding rap artist, Garcia had been framed for a multiple homicide he didn’t commit.
When she pressed him for more information about the case, Garcia told her that his friend Felix was the young man she’d been reading about in the newspapers, the one the media was calling the Columbia U Slasher, with barely an attempt to preface the word “murderer” with “alleged.” He’d been arrested for the rape and murder of three women, two in Manhattan and one in the Bronx.
“Your husband’s office just indicted him,” said the former gang leader, who, although friendly with Butch, still had that street distrust of “the Man.” “But I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles, he didn’t do it.”
Marlene had frowned. Although she’d read about the arrest in the newspapers, she didn’t recall Butch talking about the case after the Monday meeting he had with his bureau chiefs and assistant district attorneys who presented their cases. He didn’t tell her about every case and had been preoccupied with some of the post–Jabbar trial fallout regarding jurisdictional issues with the feds. But the Columbia U Slasher case was fairly high-profile and he usually would have remarked on a case like that by now. Maybe it’s just such a slam-dunk case that it’s not worth talking about, she thought.
“If I remember right, the news reports were quoting anonymous cops saying he confessed,” Marlene told Garcia.
“Shit, Felix will confess to anything,” he replied. “It’s sort of weird, and probably because his old man beats the shit out of him for nothing, but he’d tell you he flew one of the jets into the World Trade Center on Nine-Eleven if he thought it would make you happy—or at least get you off his back. He’s been like that since I’ve known him.”
“Doesn’t he have an attorney?” Marlene asked.
Garcia had snorted with disgust. “No, Felix waived his rights,” he said. “I’m sure they had him convinced it was the right thing to do from the jump. So now he’s indicted for murder and won’t get an attorney appointed until his arraignment. Even then, who knows if he’ll get a good one and not some guy who talks him into taking a deal for somethin’ he didn’t do. He needs a good lawyer who’ll fight. But his family doesn’t have money, so I’m going to pay for it. That’s why I’m calling you. See if you know somebody who’ll fight for this kid.”
Marlene knew that the New York DAO’s assistant district attorneys, especially in the homicide bureau, were some of the best-trained and most skilled trial lawyers in the country. They were usually pretty damn sure that they were going to make their case at trial or they didn’t go to the grand jury for an indictment. Still, Garcia was a friend and asking for a favor, so she suggested that they meet first and then, if warranted, think of which defense lawyer to bring on board for the Manhattan case.
Garcia seemed relieved when she agreed, particularly after he also suggested that he bring Felix’s mother, Amelia, to the meeting. “She knows him better than anyone. I think if you talk to her, you’ll understand how he couldn’t have done this.”
Leaving Gilgamesh moping on the sidewalk, Marlene entered the bookstore, inhaling the musty aroma of old books and the smell of fresh coffee from the café at the rear of the building. Long and narrow, with its two floors of walls covered with row upon row of used books, as well as an eclectic collection of record albums, the bookstore subsisted on these donated items it then sold. All profits went to the Housing Works organization, which provided shelter, health care, and other services to homeless New Yorkers living with the AIDS virus.
During the day and even into the early evening, the bookstore was usually packed with browsers, readers, friends just having coffee, and sightseers, as the iconic shop, to the disgust of the locals, had become something of a tourist attraction. On weekday nights the environs were much quieter, as they were now, with just a few people scattered about, reading in one of the old leather chairs, working on their computer at a table with a latte, or gazing along the walls of books searching for an overlooked gem.
Marlene had offered to meet Garcia and Amelia Acevedo farther north, but he’d suggested somewhere closer to where Marlene lived in SoHo. “We don’t want to put you out,” he said. “And to be honest, Mrs. Acevedo doesn’t want to meet where someone she knows might see her and tell her husband. She has to take off from work for this, and he’d beat the hell out of her if he knew. The bastard sleeps all day, then drinks all night, gambles her money, and whores around while she’s at work.”
Marlene made her way back to where a bored barista made her a decaf Americano. She then took a seat in a nook and picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged that someone had left on the coffee table. She flipped open the book and noted one of the lines: The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Just then the bell above the door rang and a small, dark-haired woman entered, followed by a young Hispanic man. The woman wore the sort of drab ubiquitous uniform found on the army of men and women who cleaned the offices of the high and mighty of Manhattan during the night and then disappeared back to their homes before daybreak. She looked frightened and out of place.
The man was also short but built like a fireplug, with a thick chest and muscular shoulders that supported a round, clean-shaven head. In his baggy New York Knicks jersey and low-rider jeans, Alejandro Garcia still looked like a kid from the streets of Spanish Harlem despite two platinum records and a major recording deal. He had big brown, soulful eyes that always reminded her of a deer’s, though she’d seen them turn as hard, dark, and bright as obsidian when he was angry. He’d been the leader of the notorious Inca Boyz street gang, whose turf was most of Spanish Harlem. And yet a stint in a reformatory, as well as the guidance and love of the grandmother who’d raised him, helped him focus on his music and gradually allowed him to walk away from the hardscrabble streets.
Garcia spotted Marlene and revealed the Cheshire Cat grin that was his most charming feature. He steered the woman toward her. “I take it that’s your trained bear tied up outside?” he said with a laugh. “I tried to be nice but he just gave me a look like he wanted to eat me. Don’t you feed him?”
“Oh yeah, and Gilgamesh eats like a bear, too,” Marlene replied, chuckling. “But he’s a gentle giant … unless …”
She left it at that, which made Garcia laugh again. “Unless you sic him on some homeboy’s ass…. Anyway, Marlene Ciampi, this is Amelia Acevedo. Her son, Felix, is my friend I told you about.”
The three sat down and Garcia quickly filled in what he knew about Felix’s confession. “I haven’t seen him yet,” he said. “I’m not next of kin or a lawyer. So this is mostly from what he told his mom this morning after his indictment and what the cops told her. The story is the cops picked him up for some other mugging, which I’m sure he didn’t do either—just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time—and then they questioned him most of a day. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised he didn’t admit to every unsolved killing in the boroughs. But none of this adds up.”
“Like what?” Marlene asked.
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