Mean Streak

by Carolyn Wheat

  Why was Di Blasi throwing a monkey wrench into Nick Lazarus’ careful plans? Was it just sibling rivalry between the sister cities, or was there something more sinister going on? And what about TJ? He’d had things to get off his chest. He’d gone to Lazarus and Lazarus hadn’t listened.

  Had he taken his information across the river? The more I thought about that possibility, the more I liked it. It made sense.

  But would Di Blasi admit he’d talked to the dead drug dealer? Would he admit he’d intended to use TJ to bring down his rival in Manhattan?

  Thinking about Di Blasi and Lazarus kept my mind off my feet. Or so I fondly believed. By the time I reached the Brooklyn side of the bridge, I had bleeding blisters on the backs of both heels. I slipped the shoes off again and walked down the stairs, eager for the touch of grass on my burning soles.

  The walk across the little park was sheer heaven. My toes dug into the lush grass; its coolness soothed me. It was the first time since Riordan’s trial began that I’d been anywhere near green, growing things. My whole life had become interiors: courtrooms, offices, apartments. I didn’t know until I stood in the park how much I’d missed nature.

  It was a short vacation. I was on the other side of the park in no time, facing the Disneyland castle that was the main post office. Next to the castle stood the undistinguished office building that housed the IRS and the Eastern District courthouse.

  My feet hated me for it, but I thrust them back into the shoes. I hobbled across the street and made my way into the building, showing my lawyer’s identification to the guard at the door. I bypassed the metal detector and walked over to the directory, resisting the impulse to find out how good the cool marble floor would feel on bare feet.

  Dominic Di Blasi’s office was on the third floor. I walked to the elevator and pushed the button. On the way up, I thought about what I was going to say, how I was going to approach the situation. One thing was certain: No matter how much Di Blasi hated Lazarus, he hated Riordan more. He wasn’t going to help me without a damned good reason. I had two minutes to think of one.

  I stopped in the Ladies’ Room on the way, a choice I regretted the minute I looked in the mirror. The walk across the bridge had disheveled me beyond belief; my face was red and my hair was a tangled mess. I ran a comb through it and dabbed on some lipstick. I put on my suit jacket and raised my skirt, pulling the blouse down under the waistband. I’d done what I could, and I still looked like a rag doll who’d been run through the washing machine too many times.

  Di Blasi was in. Whether or not he would see me was something the receptionist had to inquire about. I gave my name and added that I was Matt Riordan’s lawyer. If that didn’t open the door, I’d take my aching body home and put it into a cool bath. In fact, the cool bath sounded like such a good idea that I was tempted to get up and walk out before the receptionist came back. I could always talk to Di Blasi some other time, call him on the phone, maybe.

  It was too late to leave. The hennaed receptionist was followed by her boss, who thrust a meaty hand toward me and introduced himself. “Dom Di Blasi. I’ve been following the trial. You should be proud, Ms. Jameson,” he said with a politician’s grin. “You’re doing one hell of a job over there. One hell of a job.”

  Flattery will get you everywhere. I stood up with renewed vigor and took Di Blasi’s proffered hand. I followed him into the recesses of the office complex, ignoring my blistered feet. The air conditioning was nice and cold; I felt myself coming to life again after the blazing heat outside.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Jameson?” Di Blasi asked as he made his way to his oversized leather chair. He was a Great Dane of a man, big and hefty, but without fat. Solid, yet with the ability to move quickly and gracefully. He seemed a man who carefully curbed his tendency to dominate with his physical presence, always monitoring his effect on others, sensing that too much intensity could be read as intimidation. Some men would have worked that intimidation, would have gloried in their ability to push people around. But not Di Blasi; in the world he’d chosen, you dominated through brains, not brawn. By holding back, he gave people a chance to see his intelligence at work.

  It was working now. He leaned back in his chair and waved me into an equally comfortable chair on the other side of his desk. “Would you care for some coffee?” he asked, then really won my heart. “I have some in the fridge; in the summertime, I can’t get enough iced coffee.”

  “Me either,” I said. My throat felt parched; my taste buds eagerly anticipated the rush of mocha. I gratefully accepted the glass he handed me and let the first sip roll around in my mouth, then sat back in the chair and heaved a contented sigh.

  Di Blasi had won the first round, hands down. I didn’t mind; the coffee was worth it. But I had to win round two, or admit it had been a major mistake to face him on impulse, without scripting the encounter in advance.

  Should I start with TJ or Fat Jack? Which would he be less likely to expect? Which would he be more reluctant to talk about? I wanted Di Blasi off-balance, but so far he was the one in control of the interview. That had to change.

  “When did you first see TJ?” I asked. I held the cold glass with both hands, swirling the coffee around a little, hearing the clink of ice cubes. “Was it before or after he went to Lazarus with his accusations?”

  His answering smile was a well-crafted piece of armor. “What makes you think I saw TJ at all? I don’t talk to every street-level drug dealer that makes his way to this office.”

  “You would have seen this one,” I retorted, projecting more confidence than I felt. What if the whole explanation was that some brainless assistant spoke to TJ and never bothered to tell the boss? That assistant would probably be parking cars in Bensonhurst, but Di Blasi would have plausible deniability.

  “You would have seen anybody who told you he could bring down Nick Lazarus,” I went on. “And from what I’ve been hearing about TJ, he could have done it. Lazarus blew him off because he had too much invested in Eddie Fitz. Now TJ’s dead. Very conveniently dead, since if he were alive he’d be in a position to cause Lazarus a lot of problems with the judge and the ethics committee. What I can’t bring myself to believe is that you’d let a guy like that get away from you without making a detailed record of everything he knew.”

  “Assuming arguendo,” Di Blasi answered, a complacent smile on his lips, “that I had such a record, I can’t think of a theory of evidence under which it would be admissible.” His dark eyes twinkled at me; he resembled an oversized, younger Mario Cuomo, delighting in argument for its own sake. “Can you, Counselor?”

  “Let me worry about admissibility,” I shot back. “Right now I just want to know that such a record exists. And if it does exist, I’d like to see it.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Di Blasi replied. His voice was a purr. “But can you think of one good reason why I should let you?”

  “Because you’d like nothing better than to see Nick Lazarus grovel in front of Judge de Freitas?” I said the words with a cheerful lilt. “Because you wanted Riordan on trial over here and Lazarus beat you to it? Because you let Davia Singer leave your office and now she’s a star in the Southern District, getting the headlines you wanted for yourself? How about all of the above?”

  The mention of Davia Singer wiped the smile off my host’s face. For a brief moment his control slipped and I saw a glint of rage in the hitherto inscrutable eyes.

  “Don’t mention that little bitch to me,” he said with feeling. “She spent three years sucking up and then walked out and took everything she’d learned about Matt Riordan over to Lazarus. I taught her how to gather evidence, how to try a case, and now she’s using everything she knows for the greater glory of Nick Lazarus. I can’t tell you how much I’d like to see her fall on her face over there.”

  “Then let me see the stuff you have on TJ,” I urged. “I promise to use it to nail Singer to the wall. You get what you want, and I get what I want. Where’s the downside?”<
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  While he considered the proposition, I swallowed the rest of the iced coffee.

  His answering grin was half-amused, half-exasperated. “You know better than that, Counselor. I can’t be party to screwing a fellow prosecutor in the middle of a case. When it’s over, one way or the other, I can and will make public whatever I know about TJ, but before that, none of this can come back to me. Nobody likes a sore loser, and that’s what I’ll look like if I sabotage Lazarus while he’s going after Matt Riordan.”

  “So what you’re saying is you’d like to see Lazarus and Singer get theirs, but you don’t want your fingerprints on the weapon.” I pretended to give this dilemma serious thought. “That’s doable,” I said with cheerful insouciance. “I don’t have to tell Judge de Freitas where I got this stuff.”

  “You forget that Ms. Singer will know immediately where you got it,” Di Blasi pointed out.

  I pursed my lips. “Not necessarily,” I replied. “Not if there was someone else in the room, someone else who could have told me all about it. Maybe another assistant, maybe the court reporter or the videotape operator. I’m assuming you made a record that includes either a transcript or a video or both. Why couldn’t my investigator have found that person and made it worth their while to get us a copy of the record?”

  “You have a devious mind, Ms. Jameson,” the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York replied. “Are you sure you’ve never been a prosecutor?”

  “Never,” I said with a mock shudder. “Don’t even suggest such a thing. It makes me ill to think about it.”

  I limped home along Court Street with a huge smile on my face in spite of my bleeding feet. I carried a bulging accordion folder and shopping bag containing videocassettes of the late TJ telling all to Dom Di Blasi. My plans included a cool bath with lemon soap and an evening in front of the VCR, air conditioner on high.

  CHAPTER NINE

  What TJ had to say to Dom Di Blasi was hearsay, pure and simple, since TJ was no longer available to be cross-examined. Judge de Freitas was never going to let the jurors hear the man’s firm, uncompromising statement that he and Eddie Fitz had sold drugs together in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The information was useless as far as impeaching Eddie was concerned.

  But it would go a long way toward achieving Matt’s goal of destroying Nick Lazarus. How could he explain blowing off a man Dom Di Blasi had taken seriously, a man who’d given detailed accounts of corruption that would have brought down Eddie’s entire precinct if the Mollen Commission had heard it? How could he justify letting Eddie tell the jury under oath that he’d only crossed the line twice in his career as a street cop?

  I walked to court with a bounce in my step, having had a good night’s sleep for the first time since the Mean Streak had left the starting gate. We were in the home stretch, and I was going to make it to the end without losing my lunch or my dignity.

  Davia Singer’s accusing eyes met mine as I approached the door to the courtroom. She pushed it open for me; it slid slowly and quietly, like the door to a secret passage in a twenties mystery novel.

  “Did you hear?” she asked. It wasn’t said in a gossipy tone; she sounded like someone with very bad news.

  “Hear what?”

  The solemn look on her pallid face was joined for a split second by the unholy glee of being the first to pass on information. “Dwight Straub killed himself this morning.”

  The front car of the Mean Streak hurtled right off the tracks and into the wide blue sky above the whitecapped lake.

  “My God,” I whispered. My hand flew to my mouth. “I can’t believe it.”

  But I could. God help me, I could. Dwight Straub had been a man on the edge, and it wasn’t all that surprising to find out he’d toppled over.

  “How?” I asked, my voice a croak. It was probably the least relevant question I could have asked, but it seemed important to know.

  Davia Singer’s answering tone was hard as coal. “He drove his car to Orient Point, out on the Island. He sat in the front seat, then put his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

  He ate his gun. That was the way other cops would tell the story: He ate his gun.

  Singer twisted the knife a little deeper into my guts. “He left a note on the passenger’s seat,” she informed me. “Right next to the subpoena you served on him.”

  I had a quick flash of myself sitting in the Straubs’ living room, trying to convince Dwight that his only hope lay in the truth.

  And now the truth had killed him.

  Or was it only the truth that killed him? Had I helped push him over the edge? If I hadn’t gone after him with that subpoena, would he be walking around today?

  Maybe. That was the only honest answer: Maybe.

  But walking around for how long? The net was closing in on Stan and Dwight. It was only a matter of time before the Hero Cop nailed his buddies in the grand jury.

  Singer strode toward the back door of the courtroom, the one behind the bench that led to the rear corridors where the public never went. “I have to inform His Honor,” she muttered to no one in particular.

  I made my way to counsel table and sat down, shivering as if the temperature had plunged twenty degrees. I felt sick; for a panicky moment I was afraid my half-digested breakfast was going to come up and land right on my case folders.

  I’d known we were playing for keeps. Lazarus wanted Riordan professionally dead, and he was willing to do whatever it took to see that his old adversary was not just convicted of bribery, but ruined. Riordan stood by his motto: Lazarus delenda est.

  But now a man was dead. A man who’d stood in the doorway to his living room and looked at me as if I were the angel of death come to claim his firstborn had put a gun in his mouth rather than come to court and face my questions.

  Hell, I do a mean cross, but this is—

  The bile rose in my throat again. No amount of sick joking was going to erase the memory of Dwight’s pale blue eyes begging me for mercy, his voice faltering as he refused to rat out the man he’d considered a friend.

  He’d seen the inevitable, and he couldn’t face it.

  It was a hell of a way to admit guilt.

  And it wasn’t admissible.

  There was no way I could say to the jury: Dwight Straub killed himself so he wouldn’t have to take the stand and admit the truth about what he did with Eddie Fitz. Consider that when you deliberate upon the guilt or innocence of Matt Riordan.

  A man was dead, and I was mentally rewriting my summation to include his suicide.

  The law is a cold business. Dwight Straub was dead, but my client was alive and he needed me on top of things.

  I glanced at Riordan, who’d slipped into the courtroom and now sat silently beside me in the defendant’s chair. Was he thinking along the same lines? Had I become him, in my quest to make it to the big time?

  The door behind the bench opened and Nick Lazarus strode into the courtroom. He was followed by Judge de Freitas, who stepped up to the bench and signaled the court reporter that we were about to go back on the record. The jury remained outside; this matter was not for their ears.

  Someone told the press people out in the hall, and in a matter of seconds the first row filled with reporters and sketch artists. Everyone wore an air of subdued expectation; Straub’s suicide was hot news, but it was also a sobering reminder that this case involved real people who could bleed and die.

  “It appears,” the judge began in his dry, thin voice, “that a witness the defense intended to call has become unavailable. I am told that Mr. Lazarus, of the United States attorney’s office, wishes to make a statement for the record. Mr. Lazarus, you may proceed.”

  Lazarus’ tone was heavy with irony. “The witness is more than unavailable, Your Honor,” he began. “The witness is dead. The witness is dead because the defense chose to go on a fishing expedition, interrogating this man without a shred of evidence that he had anything to contribute to this trial. The defense showed i
tself both irresponsible and ruthless in its efforts to deflect the attention of this jury from the facts and to distract it with forays into irrelevant matters. Your Honor may recall that this office opposed the issuance of subpoenas for Detectives Stanley Krieger and Dwight Straub.”

  Judge de Freitas shook his head. “Mr. Lazarus, all that is water under the bridge. The only thing this court intends to concern itself with is the progress of the trial before it.”

  But Lazarus wasn’t about to let himself be dismissed so cavalierly. “Your Honor, this office demands that Ms. Jameson be admonished that in future she is to—”

  I leapt to my feet. Lazarus wanted me admonished. The man who had listened to TJ tell him all about Eddie Fitz’s street action wanted me admonished. The man who’d had every intention of indicting Dwight Straub as soon as he was finished with Riordan’s trial wanted me blamed for Straub’s suicide.

  “Speaking of dead witnesses,” I began, not bothering to modify the sarcasm in my tone, “this court should hear about a man known as TJ, a man the defense had every intention of calling to the stand. Your Honor may recall that I asked Detective Fitzgerald more than once if he knew TJ; his name is in the record. Well, Your Honor, the defense has reason to believe that Mr. Lazarus met with TJ, that TJ told Mr. Lazarus things about Detective Fitzgerald’s conduct as a police officer that would have had an adverse effect upon his credibility as a witness in this case. And the defense has reason to believe that Mr. Lazarus deliberately suppressed this information, that he permitted Detective Fitzgerald to testify under oath and deny wrongdoing when the prosecution in fact knew he had engaged in many acts of misconduct. In addition, the prosecution never turned over information about TJ to the defense in spite of the fact that it constitutes Brady material.”