The Mayor of Lexington Avenue jt-1

by James Sheehan

  “I don’t know. It’s part of their defense strategy, I guess.”

  “Think about it, Jack. Your opposing counsel is Jimmy DiCarlo. Jimmy DiCarlo is a gangster. I know, technically he only represents gangsters, but we all know he’s either a gangster himself or he’s very close to those who kill people for a living.” Joaquin paused for a breath and Dick jumped in. It was like the old days when they’d teamed on so many homicide cases.

  “If you were hit-murdered, that is-the obvious suspect before this article would have been either Evans or Brume. That kept the risk you and Maria and Pat are facing at a more manageable level.”

  Jack was starting to get it. “Oh, so you think they planted this article to provide a little cover. Create a few more suspects. Come on, guys, isn’t that a little far-fetched?”

  “Not really, Jack.” It was Joaquin again.

  Jack just looked at them. “You guys are serious, aren’t you?”

  “Dead serious,” they said, almost in unison.

  “All right, all right, let’s just suppose you’re right. What are we going to do about it?”

  “If they’re going to take you out,” Dick explained, “it will probably be on the ride to or from work.” Jack could tell now that the two of them had already discussed this. “Catch you on a side street or something,” Dick continued. “We’ve always felt that’s been the most vulnerable part of your day.”

  “And Maria’s too, and whoever was driving!” Jack exclaimed. Both Dick and Joaquin nodded. “Oh no! This is getting way too dangerous. I’ve got to call this off.” Just then Maria came out of her room and joined them.

  “What’s all this commotion about?” she asked. Pat was walking down the stairs from her bedroom.

  “Yeah, what’s going on?” she added.

  “These guys think Jimmy DiCarlo is going to have me whacked,” Jack said as nonchalantly as if he were asking somebody to pass the toast.

  “What!” Pat cried out.

  “You’re kidding!” Maria exclaimed.

  “No we’re not,” Dick said. “We think it’s a real possibility.” Maria and Pat looked at each other in shock.

  “I’m going to call this whole thing off,” Jack said. “I’m going to dismiss the case today.”

  “Don’t we have a say about that?” Maria asked. They all looked at her, more than a little surprised. “Look, I didn’t want to be a part of this thing originally, but now I’m in it and I can’t explain it but I feel good about it. I think it’s the right thing to do.” Pat stole a glance at Jack as if to say I told you so. “Besides, as you told me once before, Jack, they’re not going to stop just because this case is dismissed. They’re still going to come after me at some point.”

  Jack looked at Joaquin, who nodded in agreement. Dick nodded his assent too. “So what do we do?” he asked.

  “One of my many jobs after retirement was being a bodyguard to the rich and famous,” Joaquin told them. “Many of them had these special cars that were bulletproof head to toe. You can order them in New York. They’ll deliver them in a week, even sooner if you pay extra. They’re expensive, though, and I’d want to include some extra modifications.”

  Jack didn’t ask about the modifications-that was Dick and Joaquin’s specialty. Overall safety was his responsibility. “Never mind about the money,” he said. “Will this modified car solve the problem?”

  “Partially,” Dick replied. “You’re safe at the office but this house has always been a bit of a problem. We’re sitting ducks here, although I can’t see us being attacked with that crowd outside. It’ll happen in the middle of the night if it happens here. We need extra guns, too. I can take care of that.”

  “I’m already working on the house problem, though it was supposed to be for a different reason,” Jack said, looking over at Pat. “I have a friend who might have a vacant ranch house. It’s big enough for us and it’s fenced and gated.”

  “That’ll work,” Joaquin nodded. “How soon can we move in?”

  “I’ll call him today.”

  “And I’ll call the car place,” Joaquin said.

  Before he left the table, Jack looked at each one of them.

  “Are you all sure this is what you want to do?”

  Everyone nodded their assent.

  Forty-three

  Clay Evans and Wesley Brume were never arrested the way people like Rudy were. They were afforded the special courtesies reserved for celebrities and people from the upper crust of society. At a predetermined time, they appeared in court, whereupon they were formally arrested, a plea of not guilty was entered and bail was set at two hundred fifty thousand dollars each, a sum that the bail bondsman, who was also present, immediately paid. They never even came downwind of a jail cell. They simply had to face a gaggle of reporters and television cameras outside the courthouse, as well as a gathering of ordinary citizens, many of whom were actually cheering for them.

  At this initial hearing, Jimmy DiCarlo took the opportunity to file a Motion to Dismiss the entire indictment, a motion that Jack had expected. Outside the courthouse, basking in his newfound fame, Jimmy told the press that he had filed the motion, which sent them into a feeding frenzy. They had no idea what the motion was about; they just knew there was action, and action caused a reaction, and they could report on all of it-Jimmy on the steps of the courthouse talking about the motion, Jack at his office commenting on it. It was kind of like a tennis match or some other sporting event, only the stakes were just a little higher.

  From the outset, Jack knew he had some legal hurdles to overcome to get his case before a jury. The biggest problem was the question of immunity. A prosecutor enjoys absolute immunity for any actions he takes in prosecuting a case, regardless of his or her motive. A police officer is a little farther down on the totem pole and has only limited immunity. The long and the short of it was that Jack could probably prosecute the Grunt with the evidence he had but not Clay Evans unless he could convince the judge there was an exception to the rule. He had a basis for making the argument. It just depended on whether the judge would buy it or not. The judge-that was another part of the problem. He had no idea who the judge was going to be. Bill Sampson had handled the preliminary hearing, but he was not going to hear the case, Jack was sure of that. Bill had been the former state attorney of Cobb County. He had replaced Clay Evans in the job and he had worked very closely with Wesley Brume, which normally might not have been such a bad thing: To know Wesley was to despise him. But Bill was too fresh in the job and this case was a political hot potato. He was definitely going to hand it off. But to who?

  That question was uppermost in Jack’s mind as he read Jimmy DiCarlo’s Motion to Dismiss. It was based totally on the immunity question. Something else was bothering Jack as well, something Jimmy had said to the press-that Jack himself should be removed from the case. His prior representation of Rudy was a sticky issue. The court could rule that having been Rudy’s lawyer at one time, he couldn’t now prosecute Rudy’s prosecutor: He was on too many sides of the case. The judge probably wouldn’t address that issue unless Jimmy objected in court, and his statements to the media gave every indication that he was heading in that direction.

  Jack decided to try to handle the representation issue outside the courtroom. When a reporter asked him about Jimmy’s comments, Jack replied by taunting Jimmy.

  “It sounds like he doesn’t want to face me in the courtroom. If he gets rid of me, he’ll probably get somebody with less experience. That’s an understandable approach.”

  Jack figured that by appealing to Jimmy’s manhood and calling him a coward, albeit in a very nice way, he could cause Jimmy to backtrack on that issue. The strategy worked.

  When the young female reporter raced to Jimmy’s office to tell him Jack had called him a coward in so many words, Jimmy fell right into the trap.

  “There’s no way I want Jack Tobin off this case,” he told her. “I’m going to enjoy taking him apart-er, I mean taking his cas
e apart in the courtroom.”

  Jack smiled when he saw the interview on the eleven o’clock news. He was glad that Clay Evans had picked Jimmy to represent him, not that Jimmy was stupid or anything. He was a very capable attorney. But Jimmy was the proverbial bull in the china shop. He usually succeeded through aggressiveness and intimidation. Jack hoped to win by using Jimmy’s aggressiveness to trap and outmaneuver him. He was off to a good start.

  Of course, there was another guy he had to worry about and that was Clay Evans. Evans was admittedly lazy. He’d used his political connections to get every job he’d ever had, but he was no idiot. Evans had a brain and he knew how to strategize behind the scenes. Jack could see his hand already in this case. It was obviously Evans’s decision to have Jimmy DiCarlo represent both himself and Wesley Brume. The Grunt could never afford DiCarlo’s fees. Evans undoubtedly figured out that the Grunt was his biggest problem in the case. If the Grunt agreed to testify against him in return for a deal, Evans could be in serious trouble. Since Chief Brume had some real exposure, that scenario was not out of the question. By having Jimmy represent both of them, Evans prevented that sort of deal from ever being made. It was a shrewd move-one that deserved respect. When Jack set the bait, he had to set it for Evans as well as big Jimmy.

  Jack called Steve Preston not long after his meeting with the other members of the household. Steve was delighted to hear from him. Yes, his son’s house was still empty. Jack could rent it if he wanted. He understood the circumstances and assured Jack that nobody who worked at the ranch would mention that he or his people were there.

  “It’s partially furnished, Jack-the living room, one bedroom, and there’s a workout room. My son was kind of a physical fitness nut. You may want to come over and look at it and see what else you need. It’s ready right away. The front gate is electronically operated and I’ll give you some electronic keys when you get here.”

  Jack drove over with Pat and Dick. Steve’s house was a quarter of a mile from the front gate, and they had to buzz him from there.

  “God, this is quite a spread,” Dick exclaimed after they had exchanged pleasantries with Steve and were driving across the open plains to their new home, which was some two miles southwest of the front gate.

  “Most people don’t know there are ranches like this in Florida,” Jack told him. “I certainly didn’t until I met Steve.”

  “What’s that smell?” Pat asked, scrunching up her nose.

  “That’s the cows, city girl,” Jack teased her. “You’re going to have to get used to them. They won’t get close to the house, though. You’ll only really get hit with the smell on the drive in and out.”

  “This is just about perfect, Jack,” Dick raved. “Only one road in and out. We can see someone coming for miles.”

  “Steve says he’ll show us the back roads to Bass Creek so nobody will be able to follow us from town.”

  “That’s great,” Dick said, but he knew the professionals they were dealing with would find out where they were living and how they traveled back and forth. He didn’t mention it, though. The most important thing was to be able to see them coming.

  The house was indeed enormous, and they spent about an hour figuring out where everybody was going to stay. Pat had brought along a pad and was ferociously writing down everything they’d need to fully furnish the place.

  She left the next morning at four for Miami and spent the day ordering linens, furniture, kitchen supplies, and the like. Two days later, an eighteen-wheeler pulled up and, under Pat’s direction, moving men began unloading everything.

  The car didn’t arrive for two weeks. Apparently, Joaquin’s special modifications took longer than expected. It was a black Mercedes limousine and it cost two hundred thousand dollars.

  “This will stick out like a sore thumb in Bass Creek,” Jack remarked.

  “It won’t matter,” Joaquin said. “It’s a fortress. Nothing can penetrate it.”

  “I still think we’re taking this way too far. I’ve thought a lot about it since our initial conversation. Jimmy DiCarlo thinks he has a great case. Hell, he’s looking forward to suing me when it’s over. He’s filed a Motion to Dismiss that he thinks he’s going to win. Why in God’s name would he or his clients risk all that to try and kill me? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Joaquin answered for himself and Dick. “Our job isn’t to make sense of all the nuances in your case, Jack. Our job is to react to the facts presented, and that newspaper article told us that you were being set up for a possible hit. And you may be right. As a matter of fact, you probably are right-they’re probably not going to hit you now. But I’ve been involved in enough criminal cases to know they can go south in a heartbeat, and if this case goes bad on them, they’re going to try to kill you and they’re going to try to kill my Maria. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  Jack still wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know. It just seems so unreal.”

  “Trust us, Jack,” Dick chimed in. “We’ve lived in that unreal world.”

  Jack discovered Joaquin’s special modifications on his first ride from the ranch into town.

  “What are those holes for?” he asked, noticing that there was a hole in the middle of the windshield and the rear window, in the front passenger side window, and in the rear driver’s side window. The holes were covered by small glass disks that could be moved from side to side like a peephole cover, only these holes were much bigger.

  Dick was driving that day. “Think about it, Jack. We’re on the road. We get ambushed. We have these guns but how are we going to fire them? Roll the windows down?”

  “What guns?”

  “Look under the backwards-facing seat behind the front seats.”

  Jack pulled up the seat and saw what appeared to be four submachine guns and boxes of ammunition.

  “What are those, AK-47s?”

  “Yup.”

  “What are those other contraptions?”

  “Night-vision goggles.”

  “Why are there four sets?”

  “Because there may be as many as four of us in the car at one time. While we’re lounging out here on the range in the middle of nowhere, Joaquin and I are going to teach you, Pat and Maria how to use an AK-47,” Dick said with a big smile.

  Jack just closed his eyes and slowly shook his head a couple of times. He’d left security up to these guys because he wanted to make sure everyone was safe. Now he felt like a star performer in the theater of the absurd.

  While Jack and the others were rearranging their home life, the case against Wesley Brume and Clay Evans was moving right along. As Jack had suspected, Bill Sampson punted and asked the state’s Supreme Court to appoint a retired judge to hear the case. There were hundreds of retired judges in Florida, most of whom had stepped down at the mandatory age of seventy but were still willing to work. They filled in where there were shortages caused by illness, death, vacation, or in special circumstances like this one. It was up to the Supreme Court to appoint a judge to hear the case. They chose Judge Harold Stanton from Miami.

  Jack obviously knew who Judge Stanton was, but he’d only tried two cases before him and they were both many years ago. Judge Stanton had made his name on the criminal bench, and it was quite a name. He was known as Hang ’Em High Harry. It was said of him-behind his back, of course-that he never gave less than the maximum sentence and that he never met a defendant who was innocent. Both statements were exaggerations of Harry Stanton’s very conservative record.

  At first glance, Jack thought Hang ’Em High Harry might be perfect for this case, but he decided to check him out. He called his old friend Harley Booker.

  Harley Booker was eighty years old and had practiced criminal and civil law in Miami for over fifty years. In his heyday, Harley had often been referred to as a lawyer’s lawyer because he was the first person any experienced trial lawyer in trouble would call. Harley had simply been the best.

  He was almost retired now, still puttering
around his office for a couple of hours a day.

  “Haalo,” Harley’s deep Southern accent resonated on the other end of the line. His secretary had retired years ago.

  “Hi, Harley, this is Jack Tobin.”

  “Jackson, my boy, how the hell are ya?” Harley’s vocabulary-outside the courtroom-was as colorful as his personality. Inside the bar, he was a polished, homespun philosopher.

  “Fine, Harley, just fine, but I need some help.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. I never met anybody as competent as you in the courtroom-except for myself, of course.”

  “As I well know from experience. You’ve taken my pants down a few times.”

  “That’s when you were a young ’un, Jackson. You needed a little learning, and not the book kind. So what’s the problem?”

  “Well, I don’t know if you know this, Harley, but I’m the state attorney in Cobb County now.”

  “I didn’t know it until I started seeing you and Jimmy DiCarlo trading blows on the news every night. Don’t know much about the case, but I can tell you’re already inside his head.”

  “It’s a murder case.”

  “Only kiddin’, pardner, I know all about it. I’ve always thought Clay Evans was a crook. Got to be honest, though, I didn’t know he was a murderer. Serves him right to have Jimmy DiCarlo as his lawyer-Jimmy’s been payin’ that sum-bitch for years. The money’s goin’ to be flowin’ the other way now. I’m sorry, what was your question?”

  “We just got Hang ’Em High Harry appointed as our judge. I just wanted to know if that was good news or bad news.”

  Harley thought about it for a minute. “Well, it might look good for you, pardner, off the top, but I think you’ve just got your ass stuck in a bucket of cowshit.”

  Nobody could spell it out like Harley.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, pardner, he’s a law and order guy, but he’s a guy who likes to stay in the box, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “He’s so straight he starches his undershorts. He’s always been on the right side of things. Middle of the road-God, the law, and apple pie. He hated me because I played outside the lines. He once asked me, ‘Harley, why do you represent all them criminals?’”