Vaughn considers this. “I think I have to try.”
“I want to go on record as being very strongly against this. Unless I’m in your will. Vaughn?”
He hangs up his cell and lifts the receiver of his office phone. “Angie, what was the number Nunzio’s secretary gave you?”
“You’re gonna go?”
“Don’t tell Mick.”
8
MONDAY, JUNE 23, CONTINUED
Vaughn sits in the second-row seat of a black Cadillac Escalade. In the front are a driver and another man, both very large, both very tough-looking, both dressed in grays and blacks. Sitting to Vaughn’s right is a true giant of a man. After a couple of sidelong glances, he realizes the large man is John Giacobetti, Jimmy Nunzio’s infamous enforcer.
The Escalade is heading south on Broad Street. No one is smiling. No one is talking. Vaughn expects the driver to turn any minute onto some small South Philly side street and park in front of a dark corner bar, where he’ll be ushered inside and taken to a back room that has no windows. As a criminal-defense attorney, he’s heard about this sort of thing. But the Caddy keeps heading south, eventually making its way into the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, which has been redeveloped into a bustling mixed-use campus.
The driver pulls the Escalade into a parking lot. Vaughn is escorted to a modern four-story building clad in brick and glass. He does a double take because he’s actually been here before—last year, for a minor elective procedure. Jefferson Hospital has a surgery center in the building. The 76ers also have office space here. And so, too, apparently, does James Nunzio, the most infamous underboss in the Philly mob.
The elevator opens onto the third floor, and Vaughn’s honor guard marches him down the hall to a pair of glass doors. Through the doors, Vaughn sees an attractive woman sitting behind a modern desk of blond wood and glass. The sign on the doors identifies the suite as belonging to Modern Innovations, Inc. Vaughn is escorted through the lobby, down a hall, and into a conference room. He was searched before he was put into the car, and now he is searched again. Two of the men leave the conference room, closing the door behind them. Giacobetti stays with Vaughn.
“Have a seat,” says the big man.
Vaughn sits at the table, and Giacobetti sits next to him, between Vaughn and the door. Ten minutes later, the door opens and Vaughn is escorted to an office at the end of the hall. Vaughn takes in the room as he passes through the doorway. It is large and bright, and light washes through two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows. The furniture is tasteful and modern, constructed of light woods, as is the shelving built into the two interior walls. Vaughn is directed to one of the guest chairs. His guards arrange themselves so that one sits beside him, one stands behind him. Giacobetti takes up a position behind and to the left of the desk.
After a minute, the bookcase in the wall behind the desk opens, and James Francis Xavier Nunzio seizes the room. He is well dressed, in an Italian suit that precisely fits his trim physique. Though in his late forties or perhaps early fifties, Nunzio still has jet-black hair, neatly trimmed. His square jaw is clean-shaven.
Vaughn takes a deep breath and starts to stand, but a firm hand on his shoulder tells him to stay where he is.
Vaughn tries to read the expression on Jimmy Nutzo’s face as the gang boss’s eyes bore into him, but he can’t, and realizes it’s because there’s no expression to read. Nunzio’s face is set in stone. It betrays no anger or joy, no love or hate. Nothing.
“So, Mr. Coburn. Thank you for accepting my invitation. It’s always a pleasure to meet with a distinguished member of the defense bar, even one as young as yourself.”
Vaughn is surprised at Nunzio’s diction. He was expecting the dialect and pronunciation of a South Philly “yo boy.” But the gangster speaks with perfect pronunciation and no hint of an accent.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Nunzio continues, “but I’ve done a little checking up on you.” Here, Nunzio nods to a manila folder sitting on the center of his desktop. “Raised in North Philly. Son of a barkeep, nephew of a police officer turned gym owner. Trained to box. Not a tennis-club-and-cucumber-sandwich man; that weighs strongly in your favor, in my eyes. Education: undergrad at Temple, my own alma mater, and Temple Law, where you were on Law Review. Career: two years with the public defender’s office followed by five years in a defense firm. You’re one of the good guys.”
Nunzio pauses, and Vaughn can see that he’s being studied. The gangster’s eyes are dark and deep, and Vaughn senses a keen intelligence behind them. Keen—and predatory.
“Single, no children. Are you looking to get married?”
“Uh, no sir. Not right now.” Vaughn does his best to keep his voice steady.
“Well, you never know who’s going to turn the corner.” Nunzio winks and Vaughn forces a nervous smile.
The mobster pauses a minute, leans back in his chair. He smiles again and says, “So, guess what I did this weekend?”
Vaughn looks at Nunzio, then at Johnny Giacobetti, then back at Nunzio. “I don’t know. I—”
“I buried my son!” Nunzio lunges forward so quickly and slaps the palms of his hands on the desktop so violently that Vaughn leaps from his seat and stumbles backward, toppling the chair. Before Vaughn can do so himself, the man standing behind him rights the chair and presses Vaughn back down into it.
The darkness in Jimmy Nutzo’s eyes makes Vaughn shiver.
“Twenty years old, my Alexander. His whole life ahead of him. He gets on the Amtrak to New York. Ten minutes out of the station, and he’s dead. Dead!”
Nunzio eases back into his seat, takes a minute to compose himself, lower his voice. “My beautiful son is dead, Mr. Coburn, because he was riding in a train that your cousin decided to run into a piece of railroad equipment. I say he decided to do this because I don’t see how this awful thing could have been done other than deliberately. The TracVac he crashed into sitting on the track, in open view, in broad fucking daylight. And your cousin, Mr. Coburn, not only didn’t stop the train in time, he didn’t even try.”
Nunzio stops and glares at Vaughn for what seems like days. Then, “Tell me, Mr. Coburn, have I correctly stated the facts? Or did I get something wrong?”
Vaughn’s heart pounds in his chest. He gulps hard and answers. “Everything you said is true. But there are some additional facts—”
“Best you tell me what they are. And hurry.”
“Well, first, my client’s blood was clean. He wasn’t under the influence. Second, he wasn’t talking on the phone, or texting. The NTSB confirmed both of those facts for me. What is also important, I think, is that my client—”
“Your cousin. Fast Eddy,” Nunzio interrupts.
“He got that nickname from running track. Not the car crash.”
“The car crash where he was racing down Kelly Drive, ran a cop off the road, and killed him.”
Vaughn exhales. “He . . . he was young then, and—”
“So was my son.”
Vaughn takes a deep breath. “About that . . . Can I ask a question? Why was your son riding on a train? Instead of—”
“Instead of in a limo, surrounded by guards? Because he wasn’t like me. And he wasn’t ever going to be. That was the plan.” The mobster’s eyes fix their gaze elsewhere, and, for an instant, he seems to be far away.
Vaughn is sweating now. This is not going well. “I know it looks bad. I get it. I really do. But Eddy wasn’t speeding. He wasn’t high, or talking on the phone. My cousin is a careful engineer. His coworkers will all attest to that. He won a safety award for—”
“Then what’s the explanation? What’s the missing piece of the puzzle here, Mr. Coburn, that makes this accident make sense? The piece that makes me stop hating your cousin, stops my head from filling with visions of awful things happening to him? The piece that maybe you and your cousin know but haven’t shared yet with anyone else.”
Vaughn glances at Giacobetti, then back to Nunzio. “I wish I ha
d something to give you. The problem is that my cousin doesn’t remember anything about the crash itself. The last thing he can recall is when he was entering the curve.”
Nunzio stares at Vaughn, the gangster’s eyes growing blacker by the second.
“The NTSB is looking at the crash from every angle,” Vaughn continues. “Their investigation—”
Nunzio puts up his hand, stopping Vaughn cold. “The NTSB investigation will take a year, or longer. I’m not waiting a year to get justice for my son.”
Vaughn opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. What can he say? What can he offer this notorious murderer to keep him from whacking Eddy in the very near future? His mind searches frantically for some small crumb. “Eddy’s wife is pregnant. She’s due any day.” Vaughn pauses so the words can sink in.
“You’re telling me I should overlook the death of my son because the man who killed him is going to be a father himself?”
“No. What I’m saying is that Eddy had a damn good reason to be careful. There’s no way he was taking chances with the train.”
Nunzio studies Vaughn. “I’m not waiting a year,” he repeats. Then he nods his head, and the man behind Vaughn raps him on the shoulder. Time to go.
Vaughn rises from the chair. He turns to leave, then turns back. “I’ll find out what happened, and I will tell you as soon as I know.”
“Move fast, Mr. Coburn. As my own father once told me, ‘Soon isn’t always soon enough.’”
Vaughn’s guards escort him out of the building. He expects them to walk him to the Escalade, but they turn away as soon as they deposit him on the sidewalk.
Filling the doorway behind him, Giacobetti says, “Mr. Nunzio’s travel service only offers one-way trips.”
Vaughn turns and begins the long walk to the SEPTA station.
9
MONDAY, JUNE 30
The day had been bright and clear, perfect for shooting. Fifty-five-year-old Royce Badgett knelt on his right knee, lifted the rifle, and put his eye to the Bausch & Lomb Tactical 10x40 scope. The rifle itself was a semiautomatic M25 Sniper Weapon System developed by the 10th Special Forces Group out of Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and manufactured by Springfield Armory. Royce had fallen in love with the rifle when he used it in the Gulf War.
The M25’s maximum firing distance of 980 yards would be more than sufficient for the shots Royce would be making. And he had absolute confidence in his ability to make the shots, even with the pain in his left forearm from his new tattoo and the too-close-for-comfort overhead buzzing from the drone.
“Whose fuckin’ idea was it to have that damned thing flyin’ over our heads?” he’d asked, his eye still raised to the scope.
The tall kid standing next to him hadn’t answered. Probably afraid to. Damned yuppies. Royce didn’t like the kid being there any more than he liked the drone. But the boss was the boss, and his orders were orders. Plus, there had to be a second man to make the phone call.
“Do it now,” Royce ordered, and the kid pressed on his iPhone. After a moment, he talked into the phone, uttering the magic words Royce was told he would say. Then, Royce fired. Five shots, at two-second intervals. When he was finished, Royce lowered the rifle and stood up. “Come on,” he told the kid as the train whooshed past. A few seconds later, the air down the track exploded with the sound of the crash. Royce hadn’t looked back; he had felt no need to watch the show.
Sitting in the Llanerch Diner, remembering it now, Royce remains pleased with his work. It was a complicated operation, and it went off without a hitch. The boss was satisfied, and Royce got the full $5,500 they’d agreed to. The only bad thing that happened was that his tattoo had gotten infected. He’d ignored it for a couple of days, hoping that rubbing alcohol and Father Time would do the trick. But the infection got worse, and he’d had to see a doctor, something Royce hated doing.
“The usual?” asks the waitress as she sets a coffee mug on the table.
“You bet, Ellen.” Royce smiles. “With lots of gravy.”
As Ellen walks away, Royce watches her ass; she’s the best thing about the place. The diner is down-at-the-heels. But it’s a local place, and that means a lot to Royce Badgett. It’s also cool, Royce thinks, that they filmed Silver Linings Playbook there. Imagine Bradley fuckin’ Cooper and that pouty girl from Hunger Games sitting at this very booth. Which made the Llanerch Diner his second connection to Cooper, as he had also played a sniper in the movies, and Royce had been a real sniper in the Gulf War. The third connection was that Cooper had been born in Philly, and Royce right outside, in Upper Darby.
Royce studies his reflection in the window. That girl he met the other week was right; he does look like Vladimir Putin. She thought she was insulting him, he could tell. But what she said was actually a compliment, because that little prick Putin was one tough son of a bitch.
Waiting for Ellen to bring his open-faced turkey sandwich, Royce stares at the tattoos on each of his forearms. The one he’d done a month back, on his right forearm, depicts geometric designs that almost look Egyptian. Unlike that monochromatic design, the one on his left forearm—the infected one—was done in several different colors. It depicts a deer head with a twelve-point rack. Royce chose that design in honor of a buck he’d taken the year before.
Royce came late to tattoos. He always liked them, just never thought to get one himself. Then, about two years ago, he passed a parlor on Frankford Avenue and thought, What the hell. He turned around, went in, and the next thing he knew, he had a big ol’ American eagle on his chest. After that, he got each of his calves tatted. Then he had them tat his back with a saying: “Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight.” Royce liked that. It was inspirational.
Getting tatted always hurts like hell but, weirdly, Royce Badgett has found that he’s come to like the pain. It makes him think of those crazy Fifty Shades movies all the housewives are getting wet over.
People are so strange.
10
TUESDAY, JULY 1, AND THURSDAY, JULY 3
Fifteen days after the accident, Eddy Coburn finally leaves the hospital. His head is bandaged, his right arm casted. His face is still swollen and discolored. When his wheelchair reaches the front door of the hospital, Eddy rises and walks gingerly because of the pain from the injuries to his internal organs and the healing fractures in his ribs. Vaughn helps him into the back seat of Tommy McFarland’s car. Kate puts some belongings in the trunk and then slides into the car next to Eddy. Vaughn sits shotgun, and Tommy pulls away.
There’s little conversation on the two-hour ride to the small farmhouse that Tommy found for Eddy and Kate in southern Lancaster County. With the press still surrounding their house in north-central New Jersey, they wouldn’t be able to return there, at least for some time. Another reason Vaughn himself wanted them moved was the ever-present threat of Jimmy Nunzio—something Vaughn decided not to share with Eddy or Kate. They are under enough stress as it is. Fortunately, Tommy knows a guy who knows a guy who farms corn on a hundred-acre spread in Lancaster County. The absentee owner leases the land to a big co-op. No one lives in the farmhouse.
Tommy pulls the car off the winding two-lane road onto a dirt-and-gravel driveway. After a minute, the house comes into view. It’s a two-story white-clapboard structure with a sagging wooden porch. The paint on the house is peeling. The small lawn is overgrown with weeds.
Vaughn senses Kate stiffen in the seat behind him. He can’t see it, but Eddy reaches over and pats his wife’s hands. It’ll be okay, Eddy tells her with his eyes. Kate forces a smile.
Tommy and Vaughn unload the suitcases from the trunk and carry them into the house. The air inside is stale and musty and carries the faint smell of something dead. Maybe a possum that found its way inside, thinks Vaughn.
Eddy gingerly escorts Kate through the threshold and looks around. “Some dusting, a little paint, and this place will look like new,” Eddy says. Vaughn looks at his cousin and says he agrees. They both know it’s bullshit.
Vaughn and Tommy stay for a couple of hours, helping Kate clean dishes, mop the floors, dust, and clear out the cobwebs. Because of his injuries, all Eddy can do is replace the light bulbs. After he’s done, he sits around feeling useless. Vaughn glances Eddy’s way every now and then, feeling sorry for his cousin and wondering how Eddy is going to hold up over time. What worries him most is that Eddy will fall back into the bottle, which is where he ended up after he was let out of prison. He’s already spoken to Kate about it, and she agreed to reach out to him if she sees Eddy about to go down that road. Not that there’s much danger right now—there’s no booze in the house, and Eddy’s in no shape to drive anywhere to get it.
With the sun about to set, everyone heads out to the front porch, where Vaughn and Tommy say their goodbyes to Kate and Eddy. Kate is going to stay at the farmhouse until she gets close to her due date, at which point she’ll return to Philadelphia to stay with Vaughn’s parents.
Vaughn turns to Eddy and says, “I’ll see you Thursday.” That’s when Vaughn agreed to let the NTSB interview his cousin. Vaughn talked it out at length with Mick, the pros and cons of making Eddy available. On the one hand, you face the risk that he’ll say something to inculpate himself, something that could be used down the road as a basis for criminal prosecution. Vaughn has decided that the risk is minimal, given that Eddy’s blood was clean and his phone was tucked away at the time of the accident.
On the other hand, Vaughn decided, the optics of Eddy’s refusing to talk would be terrible. It would look like he was hiding something. Talking to the NTSB would give the press something positive to focus on, at long last. It’s a small thing, but they need every edge they can find in their battle against the personal-injury lawyers who want to make Eddy into a scapegoat. And the fact is, Eddy wants to talk to the NTSB, wants to help them figure out what happened. Wants to clear his name.
An Engineered Injustice Page 6