“So,” I say, handing Lawrence his bottle, “about Tommy.”
Lawrence unscrews the cap, takes a long swallow, then looks at me hard.
“Don’t judge him, Mick. He’s had a tough road.”
“I know all about Tommy’s problems, and I don’t judge him.”
Something flickers in Lawrence’s eyes. My brother clearly has problems I don’t know about, and he’s going to tell me about them, at least some of them, right now.
Before he has a chance to start, I jump in. “I’m still wondering what brings you here specifically. How do you and Tommy know each other?”
Lawrence smiles. “Got a nephew—Kyle. Shit for brains. High school dropout. A rap sheet longer than your leg before he was sixteen. A mouth that got him into trouble every time he opened it. At nineteen, the fool got sent up for hard time for aggravated assault and robbery. One day in the big house, he says the wrong thing to the wrong guys. Next thing you know, everyone’s playing kickball, and Kyle’s the ball. In the middle of the game, a white guy walks by. Big guy. Thick as a redwood tree. Doesn’t like the whole five-on-one thing and decides to break it up. Few minutes later, lots of guys lying on the floor, broken noses, cracked ribs, busted jaws. Redwood’s caused some damage. But he’s on the floor, too. There were five of them, after all.”
Lawrence takes a long draw on his beer, then continues. “Fast-forward about three years. Shit-for-brains Kyle’s on the street, one of his many short vacations from the state correctional system. My sister Catherine has prevailed upon me to take the boy under my wing, spend some time with him. So one night, I take my nephew to McCraven’s in North Philly. Cop bar, you know the place.”
I nod, thinking of the late Stanley Lipinski dying outside the same tavern’s front door.
“We’re there for a while when Kyle gets all excited, says, ‘That’s him!’ It was the guy who saved his ass inside.”
“Tommy.” I recall the one time I visited my brother in the prison infirmary. Now I know what put him there.
Lawrence nods. “So Kyle and I go over to your brother. I thank him. Buy him a beer, and we get to talking. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, we’re friends.”
Lawrence and I sit in silence, until he says, “I owed him.”
“Meaning what? You brought Tommy in on it? On the drug thing? You owed him so you thought you’d help him make some easy cash?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Lawrence throws me a sharp look, stares until I look away. “You’ve heard of Jimmy Nutso.”
It’s a statement, not a question. James “Nutso” Nunzio is a powerful underboss in the Delaguardia crime family, whose turf includes all of South Jersey and Philadelphia. Every defense attorney in town—and every Philly resident who can read a newspaper—knows about Jimmy Nutso.
I nod.
“One of Jimmy’s guys who makes book is a gentleman by the name of Tony Oliviella, who works out of a storefront right over on . . . well, let’s just say he’s not too far away from the Melrose Diner. Now Tony’s own menu features the regular fare: ponies, boxing, college football, all the pro sports.”
I can see where this is going. Tommy gambled more than he should have, got himself in deep hock to the mob. He needed cash to pay his tab. I say as much to Lawrence, who confirms it.
“So one day, Jimmy Nutso himself placed a call to Tommy. No threats, of course—you never know when a line is being tapped. He just said, ‘Hi, Tommy. How you doin’? Maybe we can meet sometime. Or maybe there’s no need for that. It’s up to you.’ The message was loud and clear.”
“Jesus,” I exhale.
“Now, Tommy always has his ear to the ground. He hears things he probably shouldn’t. One of the things your brother found out about was our little escapade out of the Thirteenth. Tommy came to me one day and asked to be let in. I said no. He said I owed him, and I said I know I do, and that’s why I’m not letting you anywhere near this. Then he explained why he needed the money. I cursed him up and down, just like my shit-for-brains nephew. But, of course, I knew then that I had no choice but to bring him on board, because he’d be doing the Schuylkill River face-float otherwise.”
I think for a minute. “Has Tommy been inculpated, before the grand jury?”
“No, sir. And there’s no way he can be. I was Tommy’s only contact. My people knew I’d brought someone in to help transport the goods, but they didn’t know who it was.”
I lean back, exhale a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. At the same time, I hear tires crunching over gravel behind me. I turn and see headlights approaching us from a little way down the road.
Lawrence stands. “I’ll let you two alone so Tommy can finish the story himself.”
“There’s more?”
Lawrence smiles. Sadly, it seems to me. “There’s always more.”
With that he takes his paper plate and paper towels, empties and deposits them into a big plastic trash can near the end of the trailer. Then he walks up the two wooden steps leading to the door of the trailer and disappears inside.
Tommy stops his pickup behind my car, gets out, and walks up the gravel driveway. He walks past me without saying anything and goes into the trailer. He’s inside with Lawrence for a good ten minutes. Then Tommy comes back outside, walks to the cooler. He pulls out two Miller Genuine Drafts and hands one to me.
“So,” Tommy says.
“So.” I look across the table at him. I’m feeling hurt and angry. He’d gotten himself into trouble. Again. I understand that. I can see how that would happen with Tommy. I don’t like it, but I get it. But instead of turning to me to help bail him out, my brother sought out Lawrence, a dirty cop he met one night in a bar. As I mull this over, Lawrence’s words come back to me: Don’t judge him. Tommy pulls an opened pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his dark-blue T-shirt. He taps one out, puts it to his lips, and lights it with a Zippo. He inhales deeply and coughs. We look hard at each other.
“So,” I repeat.
“Jennifer Yamura,” Tommy says.
Here comes the rest of the story.
“You were fucking her.”
“For a while, sometime back. Met her at O’Dwyer’s,” he says. Another cop bar. “Girl was a hard drinker. Whiskey, straight up. We had some laughs. She invited me back to her place.”
“To the house on Addison Street.” Now I know why Tommy suggested we get in for a scene inspection before the forensic guys came back. Somewhere in the house, there would be evidence of Tommy’s presence. Hair, prints, something. Now I also understand why Tommy showed such animus toward David.
Tommy smiles. “She showed me her kimonos.”
“And a whole lot more.”
Tommy smiles again. At least his mouth is smiling. His eyes look tired and beaten down. I can see that he isn’t getting a lot of sleep. “It’s all my fault,” he says. “The whole mess.”
I ask him what he’s talking about.
Tommy sighs. “That girl could screw,” he says. “But it was more than that. I thought so anyway. We talked. About everything. Her rich brother. Her parents. The shitheads she worked with. My fucked-up life. Her wacky relationship with your friend David, that piece of shit.” Tommy pauses, lights another cigarette, takes a couple of deep drags. “She had a way of pulling you in, making you feel like she was really into you. Like you could trust her. So I did. Bad move. Bad fucking move. I told her about my troubles with the mob. And how I was working to get free of them.”
“You told her about the drug ring.”
Tommy closes his eyes and nods. “And the grand jury. Devlin had a full head of steam by then. Lawrence had already testified.”
“You’re the source that Devlin Walker’s been after. The source of Jennifer’s story.”
“Yes. And no. I didn’t know a lot of what she wrote about in her story. Like who else besides Lawrence had testified before the grand jury.”
I think about what Tommy has just told me. “So you w
ere the springboard. Once Jennifer knew from you that there was a story, she went out and got her hands on someone else. Someone who knew a lot more than you did about the details of the investigation.”
“Way I figure it.”
“Still, if Walker finds out about you, he’ll crucify you.”
Tommy’s eyes flatten. “He wouldn’t be the only one.”
“The bad guys,” I say, thinking of Lipinski being disemboweled by gunfire.
“The bad guys,” Tommy repeats.
Tommy and I sit at the table for a long time, neither of us saying anything. Until Tommy looks at me and asks, “So, Mick, what’s your take on all of this? How does it all fit together?”
I spread my hands. “I don’t know yet,” I say. “There’s still so much we don’t know. Like who the second source was. Who mowed down Lipinski? Why did Devlin Walker act so fast to nail David for murder one? Why’s Devlin so hot to get David to plead?”
“And, of course,” says Tommy, “who pushed Jennifer Yamura down the stairs.”
“Of course,” I say as something—I’m not sure what—flashes across Tommy’s eyes.
We sit there, looking at each other in silence. Then, abruptly, Tommy stands and walks into the trailer.
10
SATURDAY, AUGUST 11
I bolt upright in bed. My chest is pounding. I’m hyperventilating. Piper sits up next to me, grabs hold of my arm.
“Mick. Mick. Are you all right?”
I take a couple of deep breaths, tell Piper I’m okay. “Just a bad dream,” I say.
Piper lies back down as I get off the bed, grab my robe. The blue neon numbers read 4:15. It’s Saturday morning. I’ve only been asleep a couple of hours. By the time I got back from Tommy’s trailer in Jim Thorpe, it was well after midnight. My head was spinning when I went to bed, and it seemed like I lay there forever before sleep reached up and pulled me down.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, I use our Keurig to make myself a cup of coffee. I take the mug onto the back patio and sit down at the table. My hand shakes as I lift the mug to my lips.
What a mess.
“What a fucking mess.” I say it out loud this time. The murder, the crime ring, the grand-jury investigation. Tommy and Jennifer Yamura. David Hanson. All of them mixed up in it now. And Piper moving away from me, maybe soon lost to me forever.
I have to find a way to make this turn out well for all of us. A lone tear slides down the right side of my face. My mouth starts to quiver. But I stop it. I stop it cold.
“No,” I say. “No more.”
And deep inside my head, I hear the iron gears turning, tightening the hard-closed doors of my mind’s many compartments. I finish my coffee and make my way to the basement, pull some running shorts and a shirt from the dryer.
It’s not even 6:30 when I return, but Piper is already up and making breakfast. The table is set for just the two of us, which means Gabby is still in bed. She’s set out a large glass of orange juice for each of us. The bacon has already been cooked and is nestled in paper towels to absorb the grease. She’s working on the eggs.
“How was your run?” she asks.
“Good. You’re up and at ’em this morning.”
Piper uses a spatula to scramble the eggs. “How was Tommy?”
I nod my head. “He’s fine. They’re both fine,” I add. That Piper doesn’t ask me who I’m talking about tells me that she knows all about Lawrence Washington. A bubble of anger rises inside me, but I push it down.
Piper stares at me for a long minute. “Is Tommy in trouble? Are they going to find out about him? The district attorney? The bad cops?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “They haven’t found out about him so far.”
“But they just searched that reporter’s house again.”
Jesus. She knows not only about Tommy’s involvement in the drug ring, but about his affair with Jennifer Yamura as well. The anger rises again, and this time I don’t try to stop it. “What the hell, Piper? I’m just finding out all this shit about Tommy, and you’ve known all along?”
She shrugs, maddeningly calm. “You’re not his counselor.”
“I’m his brother! And I’m your husband! He should confide in me. And so should you. How can I help if I don’t know what’s going on?”
Piper laughs. She actually laughs. “How can you help?”
Now I’m really stewing. I don’t deserve this. But I hold my peace while Piper finishes cooking the eggs and puts them and the bacon onto my plate, lays it on the table without looking at me. Then she turns away and begins eating at the counter.
Still with her back to me, she says, “I got a second estimate on the roof. It’s five thousand less than the first one.”
The roof? I thought this had been settled. “It could be ten thousand less, but we still can’t afford it right now.”
Piper whips around. “We can’t afford to have our roof blow off, either. The whole house will be destroyed.”
“There’s nothing wrong with our roof. It’s only eight years old.”
“The last windstorm tore off half the Shabses’ shingles. And their roof was no older than ours.”
“The Shabs? Who are they?”
“You don’t pay attention to anything. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t know a single one of our neighbors!” With that, she grabs her plate and juice and leaves the kitchen.
As far as I can tell, and I’ve thought about this a million times, the crack in my marriage first opened five years ago, when I left the DA’s office. Piper and I had first met during the infamous neurologist murder case and the flush of victory that came with the conviction. In quick succession, I won guilty verdicts in two other high-profile murder cases and was becoming one of the city’s better-known crime fighters. The DA himself invited me to his home in Chestnut Hill for dinner. The mayor requested that I stand next to him on a dais and offer some remarks at a turn-in-your-handguns rally in North Philadelphia.
Those were intoxicating days, for Piper and me both. And for someone else: Piper’s father, who was watching my ascent closely. Several times, Thatcher Gray referred to me in company as “our future district attorney.” I laughed it off at the time. But it quickly became clear to me that my father-in-law wasn’t joking. He fully expected me one day to become Philadelphia’s DA. I tried to explain to him that I was one of a hundred, a small cog in a big machine. That there were many fantastic and committed prosecutors in the district attorney’s office, and that, in any event, I had no political aspirations and even less political skill. Thatcher downplayed my protests, waving his hand as if shooing away so many pesky flies.
“Don’t you worry about political skill,” he said. “That’s why campaigns hire consultants. And don’t worry about the money to pay for them,” he added. “I have powerful friends with deep pockets.”
My father-in-law’s encouragement had the opposite effect on me, cementing a decision I was already leaning toward—hanging up my prosecutor’s spurs and going into private practice.
Before I made the leap, though, I tested the waters with Piper. I asked her to sit with me at our kitchen table and ran it by her.
“You mean you want to start representing the criminals?” she asked me.
“They’re not all criminals,” I answered. “Innocent people are charged, too.” It was a weak argument, and I knew it. But I let the words hang in the air for a minute, then said, “The money will be a lot better. We could move to a bigger house, on the Main Line, near your parents. Your mother could help you with Gabby,” I added. Our daughter was a year old and giving Piper, by then a stay-at-home mom, a real run for her money.
Piper sat for a long minute, staring at the floor. Then she looked up at me and asked, “Is this about Tommy?”
The month before, toward the end of my time off with Piper and the new baby, I had received a call from the prison that Tommy had been beaten up pretty badly. I drove up to the prison in Frackville to see him. Lying in the infirm
ary, Tommy could barely talk because his jaw was wired. His nose was broken. His left eye was swollen shut. Both of his hands were wrapped in bandages. When he saw me looking at his injured hands, he said between his teeth, “That’s from what I did to the other guys.”
I returned home shaken, more scared for my brother than I’d ever been.
“That’s part of it,” I answered. “The other part is . . . well . . .”
“My father. How he’s pressuring you about becoming district attorney.”
I nodded.
Piper looked past me, out the kitchen windows. Then she put her hand over mine, looked me in the eyes, and said, “You do what you think is right.” And she meant it. Of that I’m certain, even looking back on it now. Of course, at that point, neither Piper nor I had been subjected to her father’s wrath.
I broke the news to Thatcher that I was leaving the district attorney’s office for a private criminal-defense practice just after I gave my notice. The four of us were having dinner one night at the Capital Grille on Broad Street. We were halfway through our first course when I announced my plans.
Thatcher dropped his spoon into his lobster bisque and turned his head toward me so deliberately that it looked like he was moving in slow motion. After a long minute, he looked to Piper and asked through his clenched jaw, “How could you let him do this?”
It was all Piper could do to maintain her composure. She always obeyed her father. I don’t think I’d ever seen them exchange a cross word. I could feel her own anger rising inside her. She held her tongue at dinner, but railed to me about her father once we got home. Soon enough, though, she focused her anger on me instead.
I think about all this on Saturday night as I drive Piper and Gabby to the Grays’ house for dinner. The trip from Wayne to Villanova takes only about ten minutes, but the tension between Piper and me makes the drive seem interminable.
I turn the car into a wide cobblestone driveway. The precisely manicured lawn spreads out on either side like twin emerald oceans. Annuals are arrayed in perfectly ordered rows, Prussian soldiers on a parade ground. The Grays’ house is an imposing stone Normandy with crimson shutters and a dark slate roof. It’s positioned squarely in the middle of their two-acre property. It was hard for me to believe that someone as joyful as Piper was when I first met her could have been raised in such a forbidding structure.
A Criminal Defense Page 10