Clever Fox

by Jeanine Pirro

Someone banged on the glass front door of our offices.

  “You expecting visitors?” I asked.

  “Not me,” O’Brien replied, rising from his chair. “I’ll handle it.” He walked down the long hallway to the storefront door and returned moments later with a FedEx package.

  “Saturday delivery,” he said. “Must be important.”

  The label identified the sender as Walter Coyle, Special Agent, New York Field Office.

  “The FBI’s logs,” I said excitedly, opening the box.

  There was a note inside.

  Dear Dani: This is information you need. You can thank me by accepting my dinner invitation. With much affection, Walter Coyle

  “That file doesn’t look like FBI logs,” O’Brien said, eyeing the two-inch-thick bundle.

  “It’s an FBI background investigation.”

  “On Persico or Nunzio?” he asked.

  “Neither,” I said. “It’s about Will Harris.”

  22

  O’Brien was hee-hawing.

  “A gangster says he likes your legs, then an FBI agent sends you a background investigation of your boyfriend,” he said. “What is it with you and men?”

  “I certainly didn’t ask Agent Coyle to investigate Will.”

  O’Brien checked his wristwatch and said, “I’d love to read about Will’s skeletons, but I got to drive over to the Midland Apartments to see when our stalker rented his apartment.”

  Continuing, O’Brien said, “But first, this being Saturday, I’m going to grab a bite with my backup girlfriend. You hungry?”

  He was referring to Ellen, a divorced waitress at a greasy spoon diner on the outskirts of White Plains. He’d taken me there once and I still wasn’t sure if it was the flirtatious Ellen or the fact that cops didn’t pay for their meals that drew him to the joint. I was certain it wasn’t the artery-clogging food.

  “No thanks,” I said. “All that grease and gravy is murder on the hips.”

  O’Brien reached down and jiggled his watermelon belly as he walked to the door. “A little gut on a man my age makes him even more attractive.”

  “To whom?” I said. “Your number-one girlfriend, Miss Potts? Or your backup, Ellen?”

  “So says the attorney with a reporter, a mobster, and an FBI agent chasing her tail.”

  Now alone, I began poring over the FBI file.

  In large letters across the top of the first page was an acronym: COINTELPRO, for Counter-Intelligence Program. Beginning in the late 1950s, the FBI used surveillance, wiretaps, anonymous letters, and other tactics to identify and disrupt groups that it considered anti-American. At first it targeted the Communist Party of the USA but by the 1960s, the program had spread to watching civil rights and antiwar groups. The page directly in front of me had a passport-size, black-and-white mug shot of Will, taken from his University of Chicago student ID. Back then he’d had shoulder-length, stringy hair and a mountain man beard.

  According to the file, Will had first caught the bureau’s eye when he participated in a three-day sit-in inside the university’s administration building in May 1965. He had belonged to Students for a Democratic Society, an organization that had declared war on the U.S. government and had planted bombs in federal buildings. Most of the field reports in the file described Will’s participation at various SDS protests against the Vietnam War. In one photograph, Will was burning an American flag. In another, he was giving the finger to a soldier in uniform returning from the war. About three pages into the report, there was a section marked personal relationships.

  The subject lives with Melissa Jamesforth in an apartment two blocks from the University of Chicago campus. Jamesforth, who goes by the name Moonbeams, and Harris are believed to be heavy marijuana smokers. But neither has been arrested for the use of illegal substances. They might have experimented with LSD. In 1969, Jamesforth gave birth to a baby girl out of wedlock. The baby is named Stardust and Harris is believed to be her biological father.

  I nearly dropped the file along with my jaw. Will had never told me that he had fathered a child. I knew that he’d been married briefly in college, but that was to a woman named Carol who had moved with him to White Plains and worked at the White Plains Daily. Will had never mentioned Jamesforth, aka Moonbeams.

  My phone rang. I thought it might be O’Brien so I answered.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Agent Coyle said.

  “How did you know I’m at work?” I asked.

  “Where else would an A.D.A. with three murders on her plate be on a Saturday?” he replied. “Did you like my present?”

  “If you’re talking about the roses, they’re beautiful but inappropriate,” I said. “If you’re asking me about Will’s COINTELPRO file, it pisses me off that you sent it.”

  “But you’re reading it, aren’t you?” he replied. “Listen, don’t kill the messenger. I thought you’d want to know what kind of man you’re dating.”

  “I already know what kind of man I’m dating,” I said. “Sending me this file violates Will’s privacy.”

  “You want to see my bureau file? I’ve got nothing to hide,” he replied. “Look, I don’t think you should be wasting your time with a schmuck who burns our flag and gives the finger to our country’s fighting men.”

  “Will’s not a schmuck,” I said defensively. “He was in college. It was a different time.”

  “You forgive him for walking in lockstep with Jane Fonda and Ho Chi Minh? I doubt your father or grandfather would approve.”

  I’d never mentioned both that my father and grandfather were World War II veterans and ardent patriots. Obviously, Agent Coyle had checked into my background, too.

  “I’m sending Will’s file back first thing Monday,” I said. “You’re lucky I don’t file a complaint against you.”

  “With whom? Jack Longhorn?” he replied. “Listen, Dani, the real reason I’m calling is to set up a time for us to go over the logbooks. I’m available tonight or any time next week for dinner.”

  “We’re not having dinner,” I said. “Will wasn’t happy that you sent me flowers and I’m not happy about you sending me this file.”

  “I don’t care what Will thinks,” he replied. “But I do care about your opinion, so let me clear up any misconceptions. Yes, I’m interested in dating you. I apologize if that’s too blunt, but I believe honesty is the foundation of all relationships, whether they are work related or romantic. And I hope ours will be the latter.”

  “I’m in a committed relationship,” I said. “I expect you to respect that. You can bring the logs to my office during regular working hours or Detective O’Brien and I will come into the city to read them.”

  “I don’t think you’ve finished reading Will’s file yet, have you?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure why that matters,” I replied.

  “Oh, it matters. If you read his entire file, I don’t think you’ll be in a committed relationship much longer. Check your calendar and call me back about the logs.”

  He hung up.

  For a moment, I thought about shoving Will’s file back into the FedEx envelope it came in. But I couldn’t do it. I quickly thumbed through several more pages about Will and SDS until I reached more personal information.

  On February 15, 1970, at 2 a.m., Chicago police were called to the apartment where Melissa Jamesforth, aka Moonbeams, and subject William Harris were residing. Neighbors had reported that a woman was screaming hysterically in the unit. Upon entering the apartment, they found Moonbeams distraught and collapsed on the floor wailing: “I just killed my baby.” The body of an infant, identified as Stardust Jamesforth, was found in a nearby crib. The child’s mother said that she had smothered Stardust. She and Harris had celebrated Valentine’s Day at an SDS party and had unknowingly eaten a brownie spiked with a hallucinatory substance, she said. During the night, she had been awakened by her baby’s crying and had put a pillow over the infant’s mouth to silence her, accidentally causing the child’s death. S
ubject Harris slept through the episode but had been awakened by Jamesforth’s screaming. Moonbeams Jamesforth was arrested and later convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison. William Harris was never charged.

  Will had never whispered a word about any of this to me. If he had kept this from me, what other secrets was he hiding? I was starting to feel as if I didn’t know Will at all.

  PART THREE

  MORE THAN

  MEETS THE EYE

  The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

  —ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  23

  Reporters at the White Plains Daily took turns once a month working a graveyard shift, just in case there was some late-breaking news worth a last-minute, page-one bulletin. Whenever Will worked Saturday nights, we didn’t bother getting together. It was Will’s turn to fulfill this late-night duty and I was glad. I needed time to sort things out. I focused on work that I’d fallen behind on completing. I didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t want to think about Will or Agent Coyle.

  Just after 5 p.m., my desk phone began ringing and wouldn’t stop. I decided to check my beeper in case there was an emergency, but I noticed I didn’t have it. I must have placed it on my bathroom counter while getting dressed that morning and left it there by accident.

  I heard the front door of our office open, followed by O’Brien’s booming voice. “Dani, you still here?”

  “In my office.”

  “Why the hell aren’t you answering your phone? We got another homicide!”

  “Who?”

  “Isabella’s husband, Marco Ricci. They whacked him in his own goddamn bedroom.”

  I rushed out with O’Brien to his unmarked car.

  O’Brien didn’t know much about Ricci’s murder, only that one of the security guards at Ricci’s house had found his body in the bedroom. “But someone gave him an Italian necktie last night,” O’Brien warned me.

  “Nunzio?” I asked.

  “Makes sense. What the hell did Ricci think would happen when he turned a mobster’s only daughter into a whore?”

  I drive too fast, but compared to O’Brien, I’m a snail. I’ve always suspected one reason why O’Brien became a cop was to avoid paying speeding fines. As he endlessly switched lanes, speeding up only to brake and change lanes again, O’Brien told me about his midmorning visit to the Midland Apartments.

  “The freak lied to us,” O”Brien said. “He moved into that building one week after her. He was stalking her.”

  “If you move your entire family into a building because you’re fixated on a woman, that’s more than stalking. It’s obsession and obsession over a woman who continues to reject you is—”

  O’Brien finished my sentence. “A damn good motive for murder.”

  I said, “Gilmore told us that he was home that day.”

  “I already checked with the post office,” O’Brien said, “and he was off all day from work.”

  “So he really could have seen Persico leave the apartment,” I said, “and slipped inside to confront her.”

  O’Brien said, “There’s something else you need to hear about him. Wanna take a wild guess?”

  I wasn’t in the mood. “Just tell me.”

  “Gilmore’s got a rap sheet. Five years ago, he got busted for rape, but the victim failed to show so the charge got kicked. The victim was a nineteen-year-old student, and get this, he’d threatened her with a knife.”

  When a man is arrested for raping a woman, there are a lot more unreported rapes in his past.

  O’Brien said, “He cut off her clothes—the rape victim.”

  O’Brien and I like to bounce theories off each other. It helps us see the flaws in our thinking. “Let’s assume for the moment that Donnie Gilmore—and not Persico—murdered Isabella. That solves her killing. Now who killed Roman and Maggie Mancini?”

  “Maybe Nunzio—like your FBI boyfriend says,” O’Brien said, teasingly. “Or Persico. To get rid of a witness. Take your pick.”

  “That leaves us with Marco Ricci?”

  “Oh, I don’t even need to see the scene to make that call. My money is on Tiny Nunzio,” O’Brien said. He hesitated and then added, “Whitaker is going to have a boner for months. If we’re right about any of this, his office will try Gilmore for Isabella’s murder, Persico for whacking the Mancinis, and Nunzio for taking revenge on Marco Ricci. He’ll be on TV so much people will think he’s a new anchorman.”

  I thought about what he’d just suggested. “Something isn’t right.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “The timing,” I said. “You said someone gave Marco Ricci an Italian necktie last night.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. But they just found his body a couple of hours ago.”

  “Will’s story didn’t come out until this morning,” I said. Once again, a murder had taken place before Will’s story hit the streets. This time the article was about Isabella’s swinging and Persico’s lineup.

  “I don’t think Tiny needed the newspaper to tell him that Marco was a sleaze,” O’Brien noted. “Or Nunzio could have someone at the paper on his payroll, feeding him tips.”

  An officer waved us through the gated entrance at Ricci’s estate. I followed O’Brien inside the French mansion to the cavernous living room, where detectives were interrogating Pete and his fellow security guards.

  As soon as Pete spotted us, he hollered at O’Brien. “Tommy Boy, thank God you’re here. They think we’re involved.”

  “Where’s the body?” I asked.

  Pete glanced toward a second-floor railing that overlooked the atrium great room. “Master’s on the left,” Pete said.

  “I’ll handle this,” O’Brien said, with a nod to Pete and the detectives. “You go ahead.”

  A double staircase led to the second floor, where a narrow walkway connected bedrooms that ringed the great room. I walked toward a police officer standing watch. He recognized me from a battered woman case and opened one of the bedroom’s double doors.

  I thought I’d stepped into a whorehouse or, at least, what I imagined one would look like. The bedroom’s walls were covered with a bright red velvet wallpaper, the ceiling was painted sunshine yellow, and the shag carpet was ink black with white animal skins tossed around the foot of a giant four-poster, king-size water bed. It had black satin sheets and a black fake fur bedspread. The ceiling above it was mirrored. The headboard was upholstered with alternating black and red leather stripes with gold buttons. On each side of the headboard were long, black leather straps and furry handcuffs.

  On the wall directly above the massive headboard was a painting of a nude couple—Marco and Isabella—posing as Adam and Eve, complete with a snake hanging from a branch. Isabella was reaching toward an apple that the serpent held in its fangs.

  On the bed, Marco Ricci was lying lifeless, tied with rope to the four bedposts. He was nude, spread eagle. His head had been pushed back, revealing the ugly slit where his throat had been cut and his tongue pulled through. But the Italian necktie was not the worst of it.

  His penis had been cut off.

  I heard O’Brien’s voice as he entered the bedroom.

  “Christ almighty!” he said. “Someone cut off his dick.”

  “We got a more specific time of death yet?” I asked.

  “Coroner estimates between midnight and six a.m., just like the Mancini murders.”

  “How’d the killer get past the guards?”

  “Pete don’t have a clue. He was out front. One guard was inside the house, the other out on the grounds.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said. I checked the master bedroom’s four windows. They were locked, plus the house had a sophisticated burglar alarm system.

  “The inside guard didn’t hear screams?” I asked. Marco’s mouth had not been gagged.

  “Television was playing too loud. He found Marco about an hour ago. He wondered why he hadn’t com
e out of his bedroom.”

  “Who turned off the TV?” Its screen was dark.

  “The guard. Turned it off so he could call it in.”

  I walked over and turned it on. The volume was turned up as high as possible.

  “The guard touched the television and the phone,” I said, turning off the set. “Anything else?”

  “He says no.”

  “What’d Pete tell you?”

  “Just another Friday night. Some punks racing through the neighborhood too fast in their cars. Dogs barking. No visitors. Ricci ate dinner with the guard inside around eight o’clock and then went upstairs. A couple of hours later, the guard hears the TV blasting. Stayed that way all night.”

  “Remind me to never hire Pete or his friends to protect me,” I said.

  Marco’s red bikini briefs and a black silk robe were lying on the shag carpet next to the water bed.

  O’Brien said, “Cutting his dick off sends a pretty clear message.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t cheat on my daughter.”

  “I agree, but how’d Nunzio know? I think it’s time for us to go across the river and ask him,” I said.

  “You’re getting a two-fer today. You started with Persico and now you want to question Nunzio. We bothering with a search warrant?”

  “What for?”

  O’Brien nodded toward Ricci’s body.

  “I don’t see his dick lying around. Somebody’s got to have it. Maybe Nunzio.”

  24

  Verona, New Jersey, is an hour’s drive from White Plains and is located across the Hudson River in a valley tucked between the First and Second Watchung Mountains. The town was once part of Caldwell Township, named after a preacher and local Revolutionary War hero, James Caldwell, who used burning pages from his church’s Bibles to ignite the ammo in soldiers’ cannons that helped drive the British troops from the valley. Verona’s image-conscious citizens later voted to secede from the township because they wanted to disassociate themselves from a well-known local insane asylum and reform school. Apparently, today’s residents weren’t as worried as they had been about their image, since they had welcomed Giuseppe “Tiny” Nunzio into their fold.