by Lee Child
“But you agree with that assessment, don’t you? You like blaming the victim.” She knew she had him over a barrel and was pressing hard.
Paul Madriani, a criminal defense lawyer, knew that he’d be making a mistake if he allowed her to mention the case he currently had on trial in LA. Like stepping on the trigger of a land mine. He tried to figure some way to ease off and keep her focused on this exercise.
“Let’s just say that a jury is not likely to view the activities of your hypothetical victim as rising to the level of a holy calling. Can we just agree on that? Fair game?”
“The hypothetical deceased ran a top-tier advertising agency, Paul—a start-up she created with her own guts and brain.”
“She started up more male body parts than one could count, Alex. I’ll give you that,” Madriani said. “She also ran an escort service out of her Park Avenue offices.”
Some laughter from the audience, but none from Alex Cooper whose gaze at the moment consisted of two slits, both directed like lasers at Madriani’s Adam’s apple. To Cooper, a thirty-eight-year-old career prosecutor, head of a pioneering sex crimes unit in New York City, these were fighting words.
“So you think she deserved to die, Paul?”
“As I said earlier, you have to admit that the woman’s death may well have had to do with some of the lowlifes she encountered in the sex trade and nothing to do with my hypothetical client’s business strategies.”
“We have a question from the audience.” The moderator tried to break up the gender brawl with some Q & A.
“What you’re saying,” said Cooper, not quite ready to give up the fight, “is that a woman operating a legitimate portion of her company, perhaps more aggressively than her male competitors, deserves to be sexually assaulted, then bludgeoned—”
“That is not what I said.”
“She deserved the end she got, is that it? Is that the takeaway for the young lawyers here in the audience?”
Cooper and Madriani found themselves pitted against each other as speakers on a criminal-law panel of the New York State Bar Association, debating tactics in capital cases. In today’s session, they were using the example of a businesswoman in both legitimate and illegitimate realms, who’d been brutally sexually assaulted in her Manhattan office. As the defense attorney, Madriani was representing the hypothetical accused—a rival businessman—and his argument was that the deceased had many more unsavory enemies in her secondary “career” who may have killed her. In other words, he was casting aspersions on the dead victim’s character in order to create reasonable doubt for his client. And Alexandra Cooper wasn’t having any of it. Madriani had committed to the engagement months earlier, long before he had a trial date in a similarly high-profile case—People v. Mustaffa—which was supposed to be off-limits for the panel’s discussion since this matter was now pending, though Cooper was doing her best to rile him on it. He had taken the weekend off to fly to New York, and was now beginning to rue the day.
“Is that your pathetic attempt at a defense?” Cooper asked, before he could answer her last question.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Then perhaps you should explain yourself,” said Cooper.
“Paul Madriani never needs to explain himself,” the moderator said. “He’s a master in the well of the courtroom. In fact, Alex, since we’re almost out of time, I suggest you take our visiting dignitary down to the bar and buy the first round. Isn’t that your tradition during jury deliberations?”
“It was nothing personal, Alex,” Madriani added. “It has nothing to do with the victim’s gender.”
Alex was used to having the last word. She tried to interject another comment, but could see that some of the attendees were closing their notebooks, hoping to snag an introduction to the two lawyers before they could escape the conference ballroom.
Madriani was having none of it. “What I mean is that you don’t have the most sympathetic victim in this kind of a situation.”
“Really? You think anyone deserves to die in such a horrific way? Would it be better for you if it was a male victim who had his genitals mutilated?”
“No!” he said. “Well, maybe!”
Laughter from the audience. Right now Madriani was beginning to sense what that might feel like. Cooper offered up a smile, the gender card dropped on the table by a skilled prosecutor, showing him how it’s done. “Can I ask you a question, Ms. Cooper?”
“Be my guest,” said Alex.
“I take it you’re not on special assignment here, undercover so to speak, with the LA District Attorney’s Office, are you?” Lawyers in the audience laughed again.
Cooper just smiled. “Touché! I tried to get you off-mark, Paul, but I couldn’t budge you. Better to have met you here than in the courtroom. And thanks for coming to do this.”
Litigators started moving to the podium in the front of the room. Paul leaned over to Alex as she stuffed her notes into a folder. “The hotel bar in fifteen?”
“No.”
“Don’t be a bad sport.”
“I’m just being a good hostess, Paul. Lose your acolytes and I’ll take you to the best bar in Manhattan. Best steaks, too, knowing how you like to devour red meat.”
Madriani smiled and nodded to accept the invitation.
“I made a seven o’clock reservation at Patroon. It’s a few blocks away. I’ll meet you in the lobby and we can walk over.”
Alex recognized the first man—four or five years with the Legal Aid Society doing defense work—who had lined up in front of Madriani’s place at the table.
“Mr. Madriani,” he said, introducing himself and reaching up to shake hands. “You’re off the record now. I’m just curious to know how you plan to walk the tightrope in your trial, in the Mustaffa case. I’ve got something like that coming up in the fall.”
“Like what?”
“You know. The victim in your case. Carla Spinova.”
Madriani glanced at Cooper as if to say, You started this.
Anyone who saw the news on television knew that Spinova was part of the international paparazzi.
“The victim here probed people’s secrets with her camera. She rooted through their trash for a living, a provocative career to say the least. A good lawyer has got to use that against the prosecution, don’t you think?” said Paul.
“Oh, really?” Alex asked, resisting the wiser choice of walking away from the discussion. “According to the medical examiner, if I recall correctly, Spinova’s vagina was ripped in four places by a weapon with a sharp serrated edge.”
“Stick to the hypothetical,” Madriani said. “I’m in front of a judge in LA who’d sooner drop the hammer on me for violating a gag order than parse words after reading my comments in the newspaper.”
“Either way,” Cooper said, “a woman who lived on the margins is dead, and you’re the one representing her killer.”
“If there was a global ranking for those who invaded other people’s privacy with a camera, Carla Spinova surely would have been seeded no lower than one or two on that list,” Madriani said, lowering his head so that only Alex and the young man in front of him could hear him. “It’s not like there’s a shortage of potential suspects, people who harbored a great deal of ill will toward her. Other dudes who might have done it.”
“So you’re not just blaming the victim. You’re throwing up some red herrings?”
Madriani nodded and thanked the lawyer for his question, then turned to Alex. “I’m ready for that cocktail, before I get myself in trouble talking about Mustaffa.”
“You deserve it. And if I were prosecuting your case, Paul, I’d make do with the photographs from the ME’s postmortem and take my chances with your high-profile client,” Cooper said.
Ibid Mustaffa was indeed Madriani’s client, and at the moment the skilled attorney figured that God might be on his side. He only had a thousand or so prosecutors in the LA County DA’s Office to worry about. The fate
s had saved him from Alexandra Cooper.
· · ·
On their way out, Madriani greeted a few acquaintances and answered some generic questions about trial strategy. The last straggler asked whether his Southern California firm was hiring. Madriani laughed and waved the young woman off. “Try me again in a year.”
Cooper was waiting near the exit. Before Madriani could reach her, he was intercepted by a man who’d been seated in the rear of the audience.
“Excuse me, Mr. Madriani, but I was wondering whether you think the victim’s death might have had anything to do with her recent trip to North Africa?”
The man spoke with a slight British accent, as if he might have been schooled in the UK, but was not born there. He wore a white linen suit and held a Panama hat in one hand, something out of a Bogart movie—Casablanca—a throwback to the forties. And the victim he was referencing was not the hypothetical ad maven/madam of the mock trial.
“I’m sure you heard me say I’m not here to comment on Mr. Mustaffa’s case.” Madriani knew about Carla Spinova’s trip. He and his investigators had checked it out and found nothing significant to tie it to her death.
“But you know she was killed on the eve of her return to Africa,” the man said, running a hand around the brim of his hat.
“And your point is?” said the lawyer.
“Whether that could have anything to do with her murder.”
“Not that we’re aware of,” Madriani said, assuming the man with whom he was speaking was also a lawyer. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
The man shrugged a shoulder and sat down in the near-empty room.
Madriani felt an ice-cold finger on the back of his neck. He turned around to face Alex Cooper.
“I’m getting thirsty, Paul.”
“I hear you.”
“I see why you’re so formidable in the courtroom. And I hope I didn’t come down too heavily, but they told me they wanted the program to have a little heat.”
“Heat is one thing. Hell is another.”
She laughed.
“Just make sure the judge in Mustaffa doesn’t get a transcript.”
“Not to worry. I can always call the DA out there if he puts up a stink. He’s a good friend, and I’m the one who tried to make you go rogue. It’s the least I can do after taking advantage like that.”
They headed down the escalator and walked out onto Lexington Avenue, with Alex leading the way to the upscale eatery on Forty-sixth Street.
“Thanks.”
“Of course,” she countered with a grin, “it would help if I knew what you were up to as well.”
“Damn. Are you always on the meter, Alex?”
“Totally off the record. It will all be on the airwaves after you open on Monday. What’s the story?”
Paul Madriani was too smart to tip his hand to a prosecutor—a smart one—whom he’d just met hours ago.
“Ibid Mustaffa’s a taxi driver in West Los Angeles. Out of work. And Carla Spinova was a Russian émigré who carved notches in her camera case by taking titillating pictures of notables, often in scant attire and at times in compromising situations. She was raped and murdered. That’s the People’s case.”
“And that’s the part I know, Paul. Everyone does.”
Spinova had invaded the private grounds of numerous palaces and royal abodes in the UK so many times that security forces were beginning to think she had a complete set of the Beefeaters’ keys. She was known as the woman who always got her shot. That was, until the night she got her throat slit.
“That’s all I’ve got to say about it, Alex.”
“So we’re reduced to war stories for the entirety of an elegant dinner? I’ll be a total bore.”
“I’ll take my chances with that,” Madriani said. “I’ve got all the excitement I need once I hit the ground in LA this week.”
· · ·
The maître d’ greeted Alex warmly and took her leather folio as she introduced him to Paul Madriani.
“The usual, Ms. Cooper?” Stephane asked, guiding her to a table at the front of the smartly decorated room.
“Double-down on the Dewar’s. It’s been a long day.”
“And for you, Mr. Madriani?”
“I’d like a vodka martini, straight up.”
“Certainly.” Stephane handed them each a menu, which they put aside, making small talk about each other’s personal life and backstory till the cocktails arrived.
“Cheers, Paul. The committee asked me to thank you again for taking the time to do the panel. You put on a good show.”
“A pleasure to work with you. Hypothetically, that is,” Madriani said. “What do you recommend for dinner?”
Before Alex could answer, a shadow descended on the table, and they both looked up. The man in the white linen suit—the one who had asked Madriani the question about Carla Spinova’s trip to North Africa—hovered in front of them. He held a satchel under one arm, his hat in the other hand.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but if I might have a moment.” He was looking at Madriani. “I apologize for following you over here, but it’s rather important.”
“Perhaps I should leave,” said Alex. Her prosecutorial instincts were on high alert because of the man’s unexpected intrusion at the chic restaurant.
“No. No,” said the man. “Don’t get up.”
“Draw up a chair,” said Madriani, who was intrigued by the man’s persistence. “Join us.”
The man did so and sat down. “My name is Samir Rashid. Those who know me call me Sam.” He handed each of them a business card. It bore the emblem of the United Nations, UNESCO printed in embossed type across the face. His name, address, and phone number were in small bold type across the bottom.
“What can I do for you?” said Madriani.
“Perhaps it’s what I can do for you,” said Rashid. “You are lead counsel for Mr. Ibid Mustaffa?”
Madriani nodded. “Yes.”
“I believe I have valuable information that will prove, beyond any question or doubt, reasonable or otherwise, that your client did not murder Carla Spinova.”
“I think I should leave,” said Cooper.
“No. No,” said Rashid. He placed his hand on her wrist as if to insist that she stay. “What I have to say is in no way privileged. You are a prosecutor here in New York, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should hear me out as well. I don’t have much time right now as I have an engagement I must keep, but I will tell you this: Carla Spinova went to North Africa to take pictures that she thought would earn her a considerable amount of money. Instead that trip got her killed.”
“Go on,” said Madriani.
“On September 11, 2012, the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was attacked and burned. The U.S. ambassador and other Americans were killed.”
“Yes.” Paul remembered the tragedy well, as it made headlines with widespread political accusations that were still ongoing.
“For nearly three weeks following those events, the consulate building—what was still standing—was left unguarded and largely open,” said Rashid. “There is also information that confidential and classified documents remained in the rubble. I have it on good authority that Spinova traveled to Benghazi to obtain photographs of the building and its charred interior. She found something when she was there, a document that would have given her what you call a juicy story, which she intended to sell to the news media with her photographs. But before she could do so she was murdered, and not by your client.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Madriani.
“Trust me. I don’t have much time to talk right now, but perhaps we can meet tonight at my office at the UN Plaza.”
“It’s Saturday. The UN building is closed,” said Alex. Her initial skepticism was butting up against details about the horrific tragedy in Benghazi, and the fact that the Spinova murder might have had international consequences rather than simply prurient
ones.
“I will make arrangements for you to get in. Can you meet me there, say, nine o’clock?”
Madriani had a plane back to LA the following morning but his evening was free after this dinner, and to say that his curiosity was piqued was an understatement. “I’ll be there, just as soon as we’ve finished our meal.”
“And you, madam?” Rashid looked at Alex.
“I don’t have a stake in the Mustaffa case,” she said. “And I’m not sure that Mr. Madriani would want me . . .”
“You are a public prosecutor. You made a big deal in our discussion an hour ago about the court system not being a game, Alex. That’s your mantra, I think,” Madriani said. “You have a stake in doing justice, do you not?”
She nodded.
“Then please. You’ve been very outspoken about criticizing prosecutors who won’t consider exculpatory evidence right up till the time of a verdict.”
Alex hesitated as Madriani pressed the invitation. “Okay. Okay, I’ll go with you.”
Rashid gave them instructions to an underground parking facility at the UN building. He pulled a parking pass from his leather folio and gave it to Alex. “You have a car? Put this on your dash, it will get you past the guard.” He got up, bade them farewell. “Until tonight.”
· · ·
Nine o’clock behind the UN building, Alex and Paul walked toward the monolithic tower, home of the United Nations Secretariat. Before they had gone fifty yards, a figure stepped out of the shadows and raised his arm waving toward them. He was still wearing the wrinkled white linen suit from earlier in the day.
“I trust you had no difficulty parking?” said Rashid.
“None,” said Alex. “You keep long hours.”
“No rest for the weary,” he replied. He led them toward a side entrance to the main building. Before they got there Rashid hailed a janitor who had the door open and was just going inside. “Can you hold the door for us? Thank you.” Rashid slid his keys back into his pocket and led the way toward a service elevator at the back of the building. He turned, smiled, and said: “I cheat. I’m not supposed to use it but it’s so much closer to my office than the main elevators.”
Two minutes later they were in his office, a spacious corner room on the seventh floor with large windows on two sides, overlooking the East River. Rashid’s nameplate was on the desk, a university diploma on the wall and a photograph—Rashid with his family, wife and, Paul counted them, five children. Two of them appeared to be adults.