Fury kac-17

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "I think it would go a long way toward reestablishing this office's credibility with the public if you two took it upon yourselves to sign off on the motion in support of vacating the convictions, as well as demanding that these four men be released immediately from custody."

  Seeing the shocked looks on the other women's faces, Breman barely contained a giggle before adding, "It might mitigate some of the damages should they prevail in a lawsuit against this office."

  "Fuck you," Repass said.

  Smiling, Breman shook her head as if she didn't quite know what to do with such an unruly child. She cocked an eyebrow and looked at Russell, who nodded her head toward her colleague. "What she said."

  "Well then," Breman said, clasping her hands as if they'd all reached some mutually satisfying agreement, "that leaves me no choice but to place the two of you on administrative leave." She leaned forward and pressed the button on her intercom, "Teddy, could you come in here, please."

  A moment later, Theodore "Teddy" Chalk entered the room and glared at Repass and Russell. His boss had already told him what was up and that the women, especially the hotheaded Repass, might get violent.

  Teddy wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was one good-looking, square-jawed, dark-eyed, dark-haired, olive-skinned, bodybuilding hunk of former-cop-turned-bodyguard. He was also madly in love with Breman, and she'd occasionally allowed him to service her sexual needs, although that was more to ensure his absolute devotion than out of any genuine desire for him.

  "Teddy, would you please escort Ms. Repass and Ms. Russell to their offices, where they are allowed to remove a single box containing their personal belongings. However, they are not to take any legal paperwork or files. Can you do that for me?" She gave him her most beguiling smile, which made him blush and then straighten as if he'd been given an order by a superior officer. He'd been a marine for a couple of years out of high school, and once in a moment of passion she'd told him that it turned her on every time he snapped to attention when she spoke, so he'd stepped it up ever since. "Yes, ma'am."

  Teddy stepped forward as if to physically remove the women but stopped when Repass snarled, "Touch me and I'll kick your balls up around your shoulders." He looked confused, then glanced over at Breman, who rolled her eyes and nodded her head toward the door.

  The bodyguard and two angry women were gone from her office for only a minute when Hugh Louis stepped from the small antechamber where he'd remained out of sight during the discussion. "Well done, Krissy, well done," he said. "You go, girl. Good to hear that someone in government still believes in the Constitution and the concept of reasonable doubt." He shook a fat finger and looked at the ceiling as he recited, "…'better that a hundred guilty men'-not that my clients are guilty of these crimes-'than a single innocent man lose his freedom.'…I believe it was Jefferson or someone like him who said that."

  That had been that past summer. Now, as Teddy stood back from the car door and extended a hand to help her out into the frigid December air, Breman recalled how Louis's praise that day had made her skin crawl. Again the little voice was asking her to leave so that she had to remind herself that she was doing this because Louis could practically guarantee her the black vote. This is just a little thing, she thought, we're accomplishing a lot in the office getting bums off the streets and arresting graffiti taggers to make cleaner, nicer neighborhoods. And you can't do that sort of good if you're not in office, can you.

  Breman also had higher aspirations than the district attorney's office, and Louis could get her there, too. He'd hinted as much when inviting her to this late-night meeting in Harlem. "A person with your ability and charm could do a lot of good for this community as a district court judge," he said. "And I might be in a position to help a friend with those sorts of ambitions."

  Breman was certainly aware that Louis pulled a lot of strings behind the scenes when it came to political appointments. He was also known to have important contacts in the nation's capital. A spot on the bench was a nice dream, one she felt she deserved, but on the ride over she also couldn't get over the feeling that Louis had whistled and she'd obeyed like a well-trained dog.

  "Maybe I should go in with you, Kri…I mean, ma'am," Teddy said, glancing meaningfully at the big man standing on the sidewalk in front of the steps leading into the building. The skinny one had also come off the wall and moved onto the sidewalk.

  Breman wished more than anything that she could say yes to Teddy's request, but Louis had told her to come alone. He promised that she had nothing to worry about, even though he mentioned that Jayshon Sykes and perhaps another of the Coney Island Four would be present. Mustn't show fear. "No. I'll be all right, Teddy. I won't be long."

  As she walked over to the steps, the fat man turned and proceeded up the steps ahead of her. After she passed, the skinny man parked himself at the bottom of the steps and stared insolently at Teddy, who stood looking after Breman like a retriever waiting for its master to come home.

  At the top of the steps, Breman paused long enough to read the simple plaque on the outside of the building: Louis amp; Associates, Attorneys at Law. The inside of the office was nondescript, by all signs a no-frills, hardworking, underfunded legal firm.

  Beyond the outer reception area was another spartan office with a desk on which rested the nameplate for Hugh Louis, Esq. The chair behind the desk was functional but nothing special, as were the two chairs in front. What art there was in the room consisted of cheap African knockoffs of Zulu masks and Swahili spears and a fake lion's skin made of horsehide.

  Breman figured that this office was probably where Louis met most of his clients. She was sure of it when she was led into the inner sanctum-a richly appointed den done in teak and leather. The walls were adorned with expensive-looking art pieces, including what she believed might have been an original Jackson Pollock. A black-and-white photograph of Louis with his arm around an uncomfortable-looking Joe Namath hung behind the desk, signed Best Wishes, Joe.

  As she entered, Louis came out from around a bar where he'd been mixing "a root beer and rum…care to join me?"

  Breman shook her head. "No, thank you. It's been a long day and it would probably just make me sleepy." She laughed, wondering if it sounded as false as it felt.

  Louis mopped his forehead with the omnipresent handkerchief, which he then stuffed back into a pocket and held out his hand. "Good of you to make it, Krissy," he said. "Sorry to make you-I mean, ask you-to make the drive from Brooklyn, but I thought it would be good for us to meet away from prying eyes. There ain't many in this neighborhood, at least none who would say anything to anybody who might care." He released her hand and pointed behind and to her side. "I believe you know my clients here, Mr. Jayshon Sykes and Mr. Desmond Davis."

  Breman fought to keep the smile on her face as she turned in the direction Louis was pointing. She had not seen the two men slouching on the black leather couch in front of the wall of books. She nodded. "Of course. Good to see you again."

  Neither of the young men acknowledged her greeting. They both appeared to have found something infinitely more interesting on the wall and on the floor respectively. Louis pretended not to notice the slight and waved her toward the chair in front of his desk while he went around behind it and sat down. Establishing who's boss, Breman thought miserably as she noticed that her seat was several inches lower than Louis's, who appeared to tower over her.

  As a matter of fact, Louis was immensely pleased with himself. He'd filed a $250 million lawsuit against the City of New York and its police department, which he estimated might settle at one hundred million. He was contractually entitled to one-third of the settlement and by the time he added in expenses, including an apartment for his mistress, Tawnee, and the baubles she required to keep her happy, he'd get about half. And that didn't include the book and film rights.

  Over steaks and martinis at the Tribeca Grill, he'd cut a deal to do a book with the New York Times reporter Harriman, in exchange for
half the royalties and favorable stories in the Times. So far, the reporter, who had never met a scene he couldn't create out of thin air or a quote he couldn't manufacture, had kept up his end of the bargain.

  Louis and Harriman had a meeting set up the next week with three different publishing houses whose executive editors were already pissing all over themselves for the rights to The Coney Island Four: An American Tale of Racism and Injustice. As soon as they had a deal, Louis planned to fly to Hollywood and talk to a couple of producers he'd contacted about the film rights.

  Life was good, but he thought it could get better yet. He'd called Breman and told her to meet him at the office for two reasons. The first was-as Breman had surmised-to make sure she understood who was in charge. He figured that if she was willing to drive to Harlem on a cold night in December to be given marching orders, she was his whore for the duration.

  The second reason was that for all his meticulous planning, dangers remained dangers. The major difficulty was that for some inexplicable reason, Igor Kaminsky was still alive.

  The idiot brute Lynd was supposed to have taken care of the problem but now he was worm meat. Then the brain-dead ghetto niggers sitting on his couch couldn't count to two-the number of arms the man they'd shoved in front of the train had-and so the one-armed Kaminsky lived to rat on them another day.

  Otherwise, there was only one other loose end that he had to worry about-and he didn't think it was much of a concern. At the original trial, a teenage female named Hannah Little had testified that Kwasama Jones admitted to her over the telephone that Sykes and Davis had raped Liz Tyler. Hannah's brother, Kevin, had been one of the five originally charged for the attack on Liz Tyler, but he'd agreed to a plea deal and testified against the other four.

  Sykes had used his gang affiliations to find Kevin in California and have him killed in a staged drive-by shooting. He'd planned to have Hannah killed, too, but she'd disappeared from Bedford-Stuyvesant shortly after her brother's death and hadn't been heard from since. She could present a problem if the investigators working for the city found her, but given the long silence, Louis believed that she was too intimidated to come forward at this late date.

  Which brought him back to Breman. He knew she'd talked herself into believing that she was "doing the right thing" in the cause of justice; he'd pounded that notion at her enough. But what if the letter from Kaminsky made her think again about Villalobos's confession?

  Louis knew his clients were guilty of the crime and that Villalobos was lying-he'd insisted on knowing and Sykes had filled him in with a smirk. But Louis didn't care; some middle-class white bitch getting raped wasn't worth the millions he stood to make by representing the Coney Island Four. But he was worried that Breman might grow a conscience because of the Kaminsky letter. Or, if the little shit came forward, that she would find it politically expedient to turn on him. Louis needed to make sure she was his.

  Louis cleared his throat, took a sip of his drink, and asked, "Have you heard from that lying piece of shit Kaminsky fella who wrote you a while back?"

  The question elicited a pang of guilt from Breman. She'd read the letter when it first arrived and sat on it for a couple of days. If what Kaminsky said was true, and it came out, she was going to have a lot of explaining to do. All sorts of questions might be raised about why she had capitulated so quickly and not followed procedures in dealing with Villalobos. So she took the letter to her mentor, District Judge Marci Klinger, who also happened to be presiding over the Coney Island Four lawsuit.

  Klinger was another castoff from the New York District Attorney's Office. She'd come aboard in the waning days of Garrahy's reign, recommended by one of his colleagues who'd done it as a favor to a friend, her father. But the recommendation only went so far, and she'd proved to be a mediocre prosecutor at best. But, as she'd later taught her protegee Breman to emulate, Klinger had involved herself early and often in party politics and when a spot on the bench opened up as a result of the sudden and unexpected death of its owner, she'd inveigled the appointment with the help of her dad, a major contributor to the party.

  Even then she wasn't satisfied. She had her eye on becoming nothing less than the U.S. Attorney General. She and Breman sometimes got together at a private spa she belonged to in Manhattan for a "girl's day out" and a giggle about their aspirations. "You look so stunning in basic black…like a judge's robe," she hinted to Breman, who'd blushed and rolled her eyes.

  After looking the Kaminsky letter over, Klinger had dismissed it as just another inmate who thought he saw a way out of prison. "He probably thinks that you'd jump at the chance to impeach Villalobos and preserve the case against four black men. But there's no proof here-at best just a he said/he said." Both women knew that a copy of the letter should have been turned over to the defendant's lawyer, in this case the Corporation Counsel. But Klinger said, "I see no sense in letting a red herring like this stand in the way of the truth or cloud the issues. There's a trial coming up; let's let the jury decide whether to believe Villalobos based on his testimony." She offered to hold on to the letter "so that it isn't accidentally discovered in your files and raises questions."

  Breman had been only too happy to let Klinger have the letter. She was determined not to even remember its existence, except that in a moment of trying to one-up Louis, she casually mentioned it. At first she'd been pleased to see that he was shaken; after all, he'd done it to her often enough, but then she'd regretted telling him. He got surly and demanded to know who had the letter. She was relieved when he seemed to accept that the letter was in safekeeping with Klinger.

  She was happy to report to Louis that she had not heard from Kaminsky since the letter. She glanced over at the two young men. Desmond Davis, a brooding, dark-visaged throwback to mankind's primitive past, had his head on the back of the couch and was staring up at the ceiling. But Sykes was looking right at her with a smile. She smiled back-at least she could feel good about saving this one. He was so well spoken and polite, a shame that the police had ruined his potential.

  "Yo, Des, check out the bitch," he said. "She's afraid the big bad wolf might eat her." He leaned forward and made smacking noises with his mouth.

  "Jayshon!" Louis rebuked him. "It is important to remember who our friends are…and Ms. Breman is one of them." He turned to Breman, who refused to look anywhere except at Louis. She was in shock. Whatever happened to the nice young man?

  Sykes apologized, "I didn't mean anything by that-just the old prison defense mechanism, you know." He didn't like being lectured by the fat lawyer, but he did want to be a rich man. If he had to play the fucking game and listen to this fucked-up talk about trying to reintegrate him and his homies, he could deal. Just so long as after he got the money, nobody tried to tell him what cars he could and couldn't buy, or how many bitches he could have running around the mansion he planned to buy. Then he'd get a little payback on the people who locked him up and, if they weren't careful, the people who tried to boss him around now. The fat lawyer and this skinny bitch will get theirs if they keep pushing, he thought. Thinking about the other woman had been one of Sykes's favorite pastimes in prison. Exhausted by the long night of "wilding," he and his homies had been chilling beneath the pier that morning, drinking the last of the forties of malt liquor they'd stolen from a liquor store and smoking weed. He thought it was funny how easy it was to fool his teachers and others with his clean-cut, valedictorian act. This was the real Jayshon-the other guy was just a fake to get what he wanted.

  He was idly whacking at a piling with the piece of steel rebar he'd found the night before when Desmond spotted the woman running down the beach toward them. He'd ordered his comrades back into the shadows until she was just about upon them, then jumped out in front of her.

  "Boo!" he yelled in her face.

  The woman tried to get away but he jumped in front of her. "Say, where you going, bitch? Me and the homeboys was partyin' and thought maybe you should join us."

  Th
e woman tried to move around him. "Leave me alone!" she said in what was apparently meant to appear forceful but only made him laugh and taunt her more. He grabbed her by the arm and spun her around. Then to his surprise and rage, she'd reached out and clawed his face.

  Without thinking about it, his hand with the steel rebar came up and hit her on the side of her head. She'd looked stunned, as if just given bad news, and sank to her knees. "Fucking ho," he snarled and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her under the pier and out of sight from anyone strolling along the boardwalk.

  The pain of being dragged by her hair seemed to bring the woman back to her senses. She lunged up from the sand, screaming and scratching for his eyes. He'd felt fear and might have backed off, except Desmond kicked the woman in the small of the back, which knocked the wind out of her and sent her sprawling in the sand. She rose to her hands and knees, then paused, trying to catch her breath. Enraged by his fear, Sykes walked up to her and hit her on the head with the steel rebar again, only harder. The blow knocked her over onto her back, where she lay moaning.

  Sykes reached down and grabbed her running shorts and tore them off. Excited by the site of her half-nude body, he shouted, "Hold her" as he dropped his pants and got down between her legs.

  Kwasama Jones ended up at her head on his knees and leaned forward to pin her arms. Kevin Little and Packer Wilson each grabbed a leg.

  However, after having penetrated her, Sykes found he could not maintain an erection and ejaculate. This only served to anger him more and he punched her twice in the face before jumping up. "Yo, Des, your turn," he shouted and then egged his comrade on.

  After Davis was finished, Sykes ordered Wilson to rape her but the fifteen-year-old couldn't get an erection at all, which brought loud guffaws from Sykes. "Look at the little fucker, can't even get it up. Fuck her, homes, ain't you a man?"