“Tonight.”
“All right. Be here at ten. Now finish your spaghetti and tell me what’s been goin’ on with you these last few years.”
Mike called Marguerite at 9:30 and gave her the bad news.
“It’ll just have to do,” Marguerite told him. “I know where you’re getting it from too, Mike. Nobody expects you to get your brains beat out.” Mike didn’t respond. He had a picture of little Rudy in his mind. He wondered what he looked like all grown up. Will I ever see him?
Marguerite called Elena right away and gave her the scoop. “I’ll just have to talk her into taking five thousand,” Elena told her sister.
Marguerite paused before responding. She didn’t know if this was the appropriate time, but it needed to be said.
“You know he went to a loan shark to get this money.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I just think you should know, that’s all.”
Elena had arrived at Austin Reaves’s office a few minutes early so she could get the lie of the land before Tracey showed up. She was dressed in black, another purchase from the local thrift store. She’d read in a women’s magazine that it was a power color, and she wanted all the help she could get for the upcoming negotiation.
Tracey swept in promptly at nine. She also wore black, a suit. She invited Elena into the spare office and sat behind the desk, a definite power move. Elena could tell from the dark spots under her eyes that Tracey hadn’t slept well. That was a good sign. Maybe Rudy’s case was getting under that thick skin.
Tracey wanted to avoid Elena’s eyes as much as possible. She didn’t want to think of her mother and that one little picture on her father’s dresser. She didn’t want to recall the beautiful dark-haired woman of her childhood dreams. This was business. This was the essence of who she was. Or was it? Perhaps today would be the day she would find out. She took her father with her for insurance—perched him on her right shoulder. She needed his voice of reason in the event Elena’s eyes caught her off guard.
She began by reiterating how well the hearing had gone the day before. It was a move Elena had expected. She then talked about the additional evidence they could put on at trial.
“I think we can focus on this Geronimo guy. I believe he is the murderer. We can tie the police department’s failure to find Geronimo in with their desire to frame Rudy. I think the jury will pick up on that fat little detective’s lazy-ass methods. I don’t think it’ll be hard for them at all.”
It was a good speech and it had the desired effect. Once again, Tracey had raised Elena’s hopes. What she failed to mention was the fact that the only admissible evidence had Geronimo down the street drinking a beer. Joaquin Sanchez’s conversation with Pablo at Rosa’s bar was all hearsay and totally inadmissible.
Elena didn’t respond and they were both silent for a moment. The subject of money was floating around the room like a hawk hovering over a crafty prey. Finally, Tracey had to move in for the kill.
“Elena, we need to talk about the retainer. The money’s all used up and then some. You remember our agreement. The retainer has to be replenished.” Tracey was prepared to accept ten thousand but not right away.
Elena was ready with a rapid-fire response. “I’ve lost my job, had to move out of my home. I’ve got a lump in my breast and I can’t even afford to go to the doctor, for Christ’s sake.” She wasn’t putting her five on the table either. Tracey sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“Elena, I know this has been hard on you.” You don’t know shit! Elena wanted to scream, but she kept her composure. “But I’m running a business. I’ve got an office full of people and their families that I have to support. I can’t work without getting paid.” Tracey could hear the words coming out of her mouth. She knew how hollow they sounded. Knew this shouldn’t be about money for her either. But Daddy was whispering in her ear now, telling her she was doing the right thing. She had no choice. “A case like this, Elena, would normally cost at least fifty thousand dollars from start to finish. That’s why I normally require a twenty-five thousand dollar retainer up front. You’ve paid me fifteen thousand dollars. Pay me another ten and that’s all you’ll have to pay. You’re basically getting my services for half price. That’s the best I can do.”
Elena just sat there. Now was the time.
“I may be able to get five from my son’s father. He hasn’t seen his son in seventeen years but I think I could convince him to give me the money under these circumstances. He doesn’t have much, though.”
Tracey could see the play. She knew Elena already had the five but no more than that. She probably worked the phones last night. She’s a smart woman. She knew what was coming this morning. Deep in her heart, Tracey wanted to make it right for Elena. What was an extra five thousand dollars anyway? All she had to do was say yes. It was a win-win situation for both of them. But then there was Daddy. She could hear him sitting there on her right shoulder. Don’t take the bait, honey. Don’t let her get away with this! Another sigh.
“I’m sorry, Elena. Five thousand won’t do.” Tracey hoped that Elena had a few thousand more in her repertoire. If she did, Tracey would take it. Anything! Daddy be damned. But Elena just sat there silent. A moment later she stood up and walked out the door, leaving Tracey alone with her ghost.
Nineteen
JULY 1967
“Johnny, wake up!” Mikey whispered from his crouched position on the fire escape next to Johnny’s bed. It was 11:30 on Saturday night.
“Shhh. I’m awake,” Johnny replied. “My mom just went to bed about a half hour ago and my dad’s still watching TV.”
“C’mon, he ain’t gonna check on you before he goes to sleep. You’re fine.” Mikey could sound so convincing when he wanted to. But he was right. Johnny’s dad never came in to check on him before he went to bed.
“All right, gimme a second.” Two minutes later he was crawling out the window onto the fire escape. Then the two of them lit out down the stairs and up the alley to Lexington Avenue like tomcats on a midnight prowl. Ten minutes later, they were on Eighty-sixth Street.
The alley was often the boys’ method of travel in the neighborhood. It was the space between the backyards of the buildings on one street and those of the buildings on the next street over. Both backyards had fences that abutted each other. The fences were all different types and sizes. Travel in the alley consisted of negotiating the various fences while moving along. Both boys were expert alley climbers.
Earlier that evening on Eighty-sixth Street, they had helped fold the different sections of the Sunday paper into one giant sandwich. It was a ritual every Saturday night. Wooden tables were set up and the folding began. The boys weren’t paid and they didn’t even know who they worked for. It was just something to do.
There was a payoff of sorts. After the papers had been arranged in bundles and tied off with copper wiring—and after the boys had gone home and returned—they had the privilege of taking a ride with “Cuz.” Sometimes it was just the two of them. Some nights Eddie and Danny came along or the Curtins, two brothers who were friends from the neighborhood.
Cuz was a smallish man, always on the move, always talking, always smiling. He acquired his nickname simply because he called everybody Cuz. It was only natural that the boys responded in kind. Nobody knew his real name.
When Cuz was ready, they loaded the papers in the back of his truck, a smallish box truck with no back door, and hopped in. Cuz’s route was a rambling, no-holds-barred race from Eighty-sixth through the streets of Harlem. At every small candy store or newspaper stand, Cuz would stop and yell back to the boys how many bundles to unload. They’d throw the bundles onto the sidewalk and off they’d go again. It was the middle of the night, it was dangerous, and it was the ride of their lives. Cuz sped through the streets and the boys either sat on the bundles and smoked cigarettes or hung on to the handles on the back and played “bustin’ bronco” as Cuz hit every pothole on the rout
e. They didn’t appreciate that one slip and their lives might come to a tragic end. Neither did Cuz.
This Saturday night it was just Johnny and Mikey on board and they spent the entire trip riding the handles. Johnny’s foot slipped several times but he hung on. It was a rush. Afterwards, the boys were walking home still pumped up, still ready for some action. It was three o’clock in the morning.
“Hey, look at this!” Mikey called Johnny over to a little red Mustang convertible that was parked on the avenue. “The keys are in there.” He waited for Johnny to come over to look, waited for Johnny to make the suggestion. Johnny hesitated. It was a wild idea, but he was afraid. Mikey was still waiting. What the hell, Johnny thought.
“Whaddya say, Mikey, let’s go for a spin.” Mikey didn’t hear the commitment he was looking for. He decided to stall until he got it.
“I don’t know. It’s dangerous.”
“We’ll bring it back. Park it right back here. Nobody’s around. Nobody’ll ever know it was gone.”
“Are you gonna drive?” Mikey goaded him.
“Sure, I’ll drive.” Johnny had never driven a car before in his life.
The first few blocks were the roughest as the Mustang lurched forward and stopped, lurched forward and stopped. Finally, when he realized there was a very real possibility that he might go flying through the windshield, Mikey took over.
“Pull over here slowly. Put it in park. Easy.” Johnny took one last shot at killing them both before slamming on the brakes and easing the car into park.
“I’ll drive,” Mikey told him as he opened the passenger side door and got out. Mikey had driven a car many times on his uncle’s farm in Patchogue.
Pretty soon they were gliding down Lexington Avenue with the convertible top down and the stereo blaring. There were no other cars on the road at that hour, so the boys had the limelight to themselves.
The patrolman spotted them at the corner of Forty-fifth and Lex as they flew by. The speed wouldn’t have woken him but the music sure did. He also noticed that one of the headlights was out.
In the Mustang, the Stones were singing “Satisfaction” as loud as the radio could play it when Mikey just happened to glance in the mirror and saw the flashing lights—no way could he hear the siren. He wondered for a moment what he was doing wrong. He wasn’t speeding—maybe a few miles over the limit but that was supposed to be okay. Then reality set in: He was in a stolen car! There was probably an APB out! No time for rational thinking. Mikey gunned the engine.
Johnny was sitting in the passenger seat playing his imaginary drums as Mick wailed, oblivious to the crisis, until he was almost propelled into the back seat.
“What’s goin’ on?” he yelled at Mikey. The speedometer was rising: seventy, eighty. Suddenly Mikey lurched the car to the right and sped up Thirty-first Street to Park Avenue, where he made another right on two wheels and headed uptown. Johnny was in shock! What the hell was going on? Mikey hadn’t answered him. He was too intent on his driving. After a few seconds, Johnny looked behind. He counted four sets of flashing lights about three blocks back.
“Holy shit, Mikey!”
“How far back?” Mikey shouted.
“Three blocks but they’re gaining.”
“We gotta do something.” That sounded like a good idea to Johnny. They were doing ninety and the terror that eluded them on the back of Cuz’s truck had finally caught up with Johnny. “Get ready,” Mikey yelled over the still-blaring radio. “I’m gonna slam on the brakes. Then get out and run. Find an alley.”
As soon as he touched the brakes the back end started to fishtail. Mikey let up and stayed off the gas. When the car slowed up some he hit the brakes again and threw the shift into park. The car actually started to hop onto the sidewalk, sounding as if it was choking to death.
Johnny jumped out while the car was still in its death throes. He ran as fast as he could, heading east on Thirty-fifth, flew down some cellar stairs and then was out in the alley, with no sign of anyone behind him. He’d made it.
Mikey was not so lucky. He tried to jump out as the car was lurching but slipped and fell, slamming his shoulder into the pavement. The pain was almost unbearable. He struggled to get up, but the cops were already on him, guns drawn.
“Up against the wall, punk, hands over your head.”
“I can’t. I think my shoulder’s dislocated.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” one cop snarled as he grabbed Mikey’s left arm and yanked it over his head. Mikey let out a scream and passed out on the spot.
“Weren’t there two of them?” another officer asked as they waited for the ambulance.
“Not likely. We’d at least have seen the other one running away.”
Mikey was eighteen at the time, an adult legally, and was charged with the crime of grand theft auto. His lawyer convinced him and his parents to accept a plea of three to five years in prison. “He’ll be out in one, two at the max,” the lawyer told them.
Johnny’s name was never mentioned. He talked to Mikey a few times before the plea bargain but the conversation was always strained and awkward. Mikey was taking the rap for both of them—what else was there to say?
Twenty
Tracey had one more card to play before she filed her Motion to Withdraw. She sent Clay Evans a letter, attaching Joaquin Sanchez’s report on his conversation with Pablo Gonzalez.
You can see from this interview that the real killer is this Geronimo person. Find out who he is, check out his record—maybe he’s in prison somewhere right now—and you will find your killer. The boy you are holding right now is innocent and we both know it.
Release the boy or at least delay the trial until we can jointly investigate who and where this Geronimo person is. Let us work together to see that justice is accomplished.
Sincerely,
Tracey James
Tracey waited two weeks after that, hoping that Clay or Elena would call her. If Elena hadn’t just gotten up and walked out of their meeting, she might have relented and taken the five thousand, or at least that’s what she told herself. She might still take the five, she didn’t know, but Elena needed to call.
Elena had no intention of calling Tracey James. And Clay Evans—he had a good laugh over her letter. He was about to toss it but decided to take a walk over to Wesley Brume’s office first. He wanted to make sure that Brume didn’t have any information about this Geronimo character that he had conveniently forgotten to mention. Clay was still bristling from Brume’s lapses of memory at the suppression hearing. When Brume scoffed at the letter, Clay felt comfortable shredding it.
Tracey attached her written agreement with Elena, which spelled out the terms of her representation, to her Motion to Withdraw. The motion was granted by Judge Richardson, the new judge on the case, after a short hearing that Elena chose not to attend. Rudy’s life was now in the hands of Charley Peterson, the public defender.
Charley Peterson had been the public defender for the last ten years. He was a bright fellow, an honors graduate of Georgetown, but Charley had developed a void in his life over the years, a dry spot that constantly needed to be refreshed—with vodka. It was his drink of choice simply because he believed the myth that vodka didn’t smell. He kept a bottle in his desk and when he needed or wanted a drink, he locked his door and had one. He was fooling nobody but himself. His penchant for vodka was well known throughout the office and the courthouse. Word around the office was to catch Charley in the morning if you wanted to have a serious discussion about a case. In the afternoon, he was practically incoherent. Oh, he could talk without slurring his words and he could carry on a conversation that seemed to make sense. But if you wanted legitimate answers to questions, see him in the morning.
Perhaps Charley was miscast: Perhaps he should have been a tax lawyer. He certainly looked like one. A short, slightly built man with thinning blond hair, he certainly didn’t inspire confidence at first glance, although Charley had been a pretty good trial la
wyer in his early years. Good enough, at least, to secure the appointment as public defender without any political affiliations to speak of. But something happened along the way that caused Charley to fizzle and finally burn out. What it was, nobody knew.
Charley had been following Rudy’s case in the newspaper simply because it was there, usually on the front page. It held no particular interest for him and he had no feeling about Rudy’s guilt or innocence. The last thing he wanted was to be Rudy’s lawyer, but when Tracey James was removed from the case, it was transferred to the public defender’s office.
He could have assigned it to one of his four underlings, but only two of them had any felony experience and neither had ever tried a capital case. Try as he might, Charley couldn’t duck this one. People were watching. People who didn’t want to believe the courthouse scuttlebutt.
It took him two weeks to review the file, including the transcript of the suppression hearing. His first order of business as Rudy’s new attorney was to attend a status conference, at which he told Judge Richardson he would be ready to try the case in a month. Charley’s belief was that he could plea-bargain down to manslaughter or perhaps second-degree murder. After all, it was a circumstantial evidence case and a fairly weak one, although Charley had no idea how weak it really was. He never requested Tracey James’s file, never reviewed her investigative notes, and never saw her last letter to the Fourth. Still, he was confident something could be arranged. He had worked well with Clay Evans in the past, mainly because Clay was as lazy as Charley and they were both partial to working things out rather than having to undergo the ordeal of a trial. Charley didn’t realize until after the status conference that this case was different for Clay. Clay wanted the trial and the publicity.
“I won’t even accept a plea of second-degree murder,” Clay told Charley when they finally had their discussion.
The Mayor of Lexington Avenue Page 15