by Tom Straw
Jackson Hall wagged his head side to side. “Rú was all right with it,” he lied.
“Fair enough,” she lied. Something more for her to come back to next time. “I want a list of the places you broke into.”
“You think I’m nuts?”
“I think you’re innocent of a murder. Let me do what I need to do to build your case.”
He averted his gaze again. Macie had experienced this twice now and waited him out, letting the silence do its work. His eyes darted back to hers, but for only a lick. “Ai’ght. I’ll tell you one. The Barksdale. And I’ll tell you only because the police already know that one. They connected me and Pinto to that job, don’t ask me how. Which is why I think they bagged me for his murder.”
“Why?”
“Laziness. Pure and simple. Easier to go after me because I knew him and I’m this career breaker. Why give yourself a hernia when you can just bust me?”
It wasn’t a defense she would ever mount, but Wild had to admit to the grain of truth. “OK, The Barksdale, got it. Why won’t you tell me the others?”
“Two reasons. I won’t set up my crew chief to get pinched. And second, most of the apartment owners don’t even know they were robbed yet. I say, let it be.”
“Jackson, look at me.” She waited until he did. “We have to be a team, understand? I can’t help you if you don’t share everything. You’re holding back.”
He scoffed. “Everybody holds something back.”
“Don’t. Not with me.”
“’K,” he said. Then he tore a sheet from his notepad and blew his nose in it, another way to disconnect from her. Impatient, she waited him out while he turned away to pick his nostrils.
As often happened in that room, her thoughts drifted back to visiting her brother there when he was arrested in one of the Occupy protests. Unlike Jackson Hall and most of her other clients, Walter hadn’t asked how soon he’d get out. Instead he asked her to check on his parishioners. Mrs. Montez had a broken hip and needed a meal delivered. Juan Regades was kicking and needed a ride to the clinic for his Suboxone. Five years ago, young Father Walt had gazed at his lawyer-sister from behind that glass, exhilarated—a radical priest fulfilling his destiny of civil disobedience. Justice was also his pursuit. It got him killed.
When Hall finally settled, Macie shifted gears to the murder victim, figuring he’d be less protective of a dead man. “Did Pinto have any enemies that you know of?”
“Enemies is kind of strong. He did just go through an ugly breakup with a girlfriend. What else . . . ?” Hall scanned the top of the window frame that separated them. “There was a guy he did time with up at Fishkill. Wouldn’t call him an enemy though. They had this sibling rivalry thing, for sure. Lots of bickering. Under it all I think the dude was pissed because Pinto asked me to join the crew instead of him.”
Of course he wouldn’t give up the names of the girlfriend or the cellmate either. “And what about you? Did Pinto get under your skin too?”
Again, that hesitation. “Hey, I roll with it, ya know?”
“Just so I have it, when was the last time you saw Rúben Pinto?”
His reply came sharply. “Jeez, woman, what are you, a cop? Two days ago. We had breakfast.”
“And do you have anyone who can vouch for your whereabouts when he was killed?”
“Kinda tough,” he said. “Since nobody told me when that happened. Or where. Or how.” Because the DA hadn’t released a coroner’s report with time of death, Macie asked him to start with a list of places he’d been the twenty-four hours before his arrest plus the names of anyone who could vouch. It included an off-the-books gambling parlor, his fishing pier on the Harlem River, a movie theater, a supermarket on East 101st, and a bodega in his neighborhood.
“Tell me about your arrest.”
“Came late yesterday afternoon. I’m walking from my place to get smokes and a scratcher, and four cop cars roll up on me and they come out all ‘get the fuck down’ with guns drawn.”
“Did they say how they found you?”
“Didn’t tell me shit. Just under arrest for the murder of my man— Didn’t even know Rúben was dead till I had my nose on the sidewalk. Then they went up to my place and made my girlfriend stand outside while they went through it.”
Macie got a new pencil and said, “What’s her name? I’d like to ask her some questions.”
Somewhere inside him a primal switch flipped and he snapped at Wild. “No, she’s out of this.” Of course Macie would find the girlfriend on her own. He switched the phone to his other ear and said, “Can you tell me? How’d he die and where?”
“I heard he was killed in his apartment. Beaten and stabbed.”
“The cops tell you all that?”
Macie had to make a difficult admission of the truth to a man about to go on trial for murder. The police had shut her out. So had the DA. “I got it from the TV news,” she said.
He quieted himself, then his eyes met hers, melting her through the ballistic glass when he asked, “We did the right thing, turning down that plea deal, right? Ms. Wild . . . right?”
This time, it was Macie who averted her gaze.
C H A P T E R • 3
* * *
The elevator ride to the seventh-floor offices of the Manhattan Center for Public Defense took forever. The doors couldn’t part fast enough and Macie slammed into one on her charge out of the box and into the lobby. At the sound of the collision, a half-dozen clients all turned from where they waited in a corner grouping of worn leatherette chairs. Lenard, the receptionist, gauged Macie’s hurry and pressed the automatic door release to the inside offices before her palm reached the handle. The hard snap of the steel deadbolt behind her carried a Rikers echo. Behind bars, or places people go to stay outside them, sturdy locks were simply facts.
After a quick pit stop to wash the jail off her hands, she extracted her notes, ditched her briefcase on her desk, and strode across the secretarial bull pen to the small conference room. Macie had called ahead from the RFK bridge with the thirty-minute warning, and her team sat waiting around the maple laminated conference table, ready to dive in. The room carried a tang of whiteboard cleaner thanks to her paralegal, Tiger Foley, who had just wiped the Dry Erase ghosts off the new Case Board at the head of the table. The young Australian, named not for the golfer but his own famous aboriginal ancestor from an 1860s cricket team, may have been the most perfectly suited Macie Wild had seen in the role. Intelligent, well trained, and detail oriented, her paralegal possessed the greatest talent of all: anticipation. If she could just get him to slow down so she could weed through the Melbourne accent, he’d be perfect.
She exchanged quick greetings with him and the other three: her friend and social worker, Soledad Esteves Torres; Jonathan Monheit, her team investigator; and, at the far end of the table, Chip Ross, the summer intern from Louisiana State University Law.
Macie pumped coffee from the thermal pot on the sideboard. Stirring in her Equal, she began her briefing on the jailhouse interview with their client. As the team took notes, she rose from time to time, logging key points on the whiteboard. “I think it’s especially notable that Jackson Hall got himself involved in this so-called elite B&E crew. He’s not exactly a sophisticated thief, and reading Rúben Pinto’s file from when we represented him years ago, his CV is on the scruffy side: Juvenile delinquencies growing up in Fall River, in and out of prison for home burglaries, larceny, receiving stolen goods, trafficking in stolen property, et cetera, et cetera. It makes you wonder if these two got in over their heads breaking into multimillion-dollar condos with a serious pro. That much money is tinder for infighting. Especially with a lopsided split.”
The social worker, as usual, asked the first question. And as usual, it was about the well-being of the client. “How’s Mr. Hall doing in there?”
The lawyer waggled a hand. “Dicey, Sol. Last night he took a blindside punch to the back of his head. This morning somebody tried to
cut him.”
Soledad traced an imaginary diagonal down her cheek, same as Hall had done an hour before. When Macie affirmed her educated guess, Soledad said, “It’s gladiator school in there. Some kid’s going to make a name off a target like him.”
“I already spoke to the DW about expediting his turf to the West Complex.”
“Deputy Warden Bohannon? I’d better follow up with Population Management just to make another wheel squeak.”
“Jonathan, is that case-related?” asked Macie with a gaze down the table to the team’s investigator. Busted for texting, verboten during a homicide briefing, Monheit dropped his grin and pocketed the iPhone he’d been concealing under the table.
To Wild this was one more reason to be pissed about her boss’s new hiring profile for investigators. Historically the Manhattan Center had employed retired NYPD detectives who, still only in their forties, brought a couple decades of case-hardened experience to the job. Unfortunately, some of them—especially the ex-Internal Affairs cops—also radiated a harsh ’tude toward clients and palpable disdain for the more liberal-minded attorneys in the office. Recently the executive director swapped out what he called “the Popeye Doyles” in favor of new college grads with an investigative bent. So into Macie’s world came Jonathan Monheit: Twenty-four, a business major who minored in human rights, with a master’s in forensic accounting from the University of Washington, and a learn-as-you-go approach to street work. “Question about the crime scene,” he said, either out of curiosity or to act like he was focused. “Any progress securing permission to go in?”
“That would be a no.”
Chip Ross got a puzzled look and raised one finger to be called on. “Sorry, but I’ve just gotta ask.” The Chattanooga native turned to the investigator, merely two years his senior. “Y’all haven’t been to the crime scene yet?” When Monheit answered with a grimace, the L-1 intern turned up table. “I’m not dissing anyone’s performance. Truly. It’s just . . .”
As he let it hang there, Macie finished for him. “Kind of insane we haven’t been to the crime scene by now?”
“Mad as a cut snake,” blurted Tiger with a laugh that Macie and Soledad both joined. “Welcome to Big Apple justice, southern man.”
The intern waited out their chuckles. “Guess I’m missing the joke.”
“No, Chip, you’re good. In fact,” explained Macie, “it’s no joke. You see, the DA here in New York City is legendarily hard-line. They typically stonewall all defense attempts to do discovery. They shut us completely out of our own cases.”
He eyed them warily. “Seriously, this is a joke, right?”
“I wish,” said Macie. “The law states the district attorney’s office only needs to share its evidence with defense counsel ‘prior to trial.’ Prior means as little as one hour before we go to court.”
Foley, the paralegal, picked it up from there. “That means the prosecutor has all the goodies. All the witness interviews, all the crime scene photos, all the forensics, all the ballistics, all the surveillance video—everything we need to mount a defense.”
“Doesn’t get more hardball,” said Macie. “I will file a request for discovery . . .” Without even looking, she held out her hand and the paralegal slipped the formal request into it, everything already completed by him, flagged for her signature. As she inked it in with the cherished Parker 75 that her father had used in law school, Wild said, “I’m sitting down with the prosecutor later. I’ll see what I can worm out of her. And after the grand jury meets and we have the arraignment on the indictment, I’ll file a motion for a pretrial statement hearing to suppress any comments our client might have made to the police, citing violation of the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel.”
“A stall?” asked Chip.
Tiger jumped in. “No, to force them to call in the detective who’s handling the case, which allows Ms. Wild to examine him under oath to learn what he or she knows and to have the right to subpoena the case files and notes the DA’s wowsers won’t give up.”
“Sweet.”
Macie smiled. “It’ll be crumbs and peels at best, but anything we can get, we get.”
“I’m stuck on the whole bludgeoning and stabbing part of this,” said Soledad. “You and I both know Jackson Hall. He’s all about no confrontation and no weapons.”
“There’s a first for everything,” said Monheit.
“You speaking from your years of vast street experience?” asked Tiger. The paralegal had a short fuse for this rookie investigator and his hipster sense of entitlement.
Monheit walked it back. “I’m just saying what the DA will. He and the victim had a beef, and he snapped.”
“All right, first of all, the victim has a name.” Macie got up and wrote “Rúben Pinto” in block letters in the top left corner of the Case Board then posted a print of his latest mug shot under it. “We’re doing this for him too.” She directed Monheit to go to the precinct that took Hall into custody. “See what you can find out there. A line on the arresting officers would be nice. Also—”
“Hang on, let me catch up,” said Monheit. While he scribbled furiously, Tiger caught her eye and shook his head. Her investigator nodded. “Ready.”
“Also dig into Rúben Pinto.” Wild shared what little Hall had given up about him then continued, “I hear he had a broken romance. Find out whatever else you can. Other enemies, vices, money problems, do an X-ray.” Wild slowed down and watched Monheit’s head bob as he jotted.
“I’ve got all this, constable.” The paralegal indicated his laptop on which he not only keyed in the minutes, but also kept a Pear Note audio record, in case he needed to go back for transcript-level accuracy. “I’ll AirDrop it after I make it all pretty.”
♢ ♢ ♢
Assistant District Attorney Theresa Fontanelli had agreed to meet Macie Wild in Foley Square at four forty-five. At ten minutes after five p.m., there was still no sign of the ADA. When the exodus of attorneys, defendants, and trial buffs streaming down the steps of the New York Supreme Court slowed to a trickle, the attorney checked her phone again for the late e-mail or missed phone message she knew wouldn’t be there. Macie needed this meeting more than the prosecutor, so she waited, knowing that was the power balance. And so began the game.
It was June but the humidity was low. Nonetheless Macie’s blouse clung to her skin when she leaned forward off the back of the park bench to stretch. Peering across Centre Street over a rack of Citi Bikes, she reflected, as she often did, on George Washington’s quotation chiseled into the granite frieze: “The True Administration of Justice is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government.” Then a lone figure in a navy-blue power suit appeared from behind one of the Corinthian colonnades under the Founding Father’s inscription. Macie regarded Theresa Fontanelli and wondered if the ADA ever noticed it.
“You’re sweating through your blouse,” was the opener from the prosecutor. “Let’s get into some AC.” Without seeking agreement, without apology for being late, the assistant district attorney set a course across the square to a deli. “I missed lunch stuck in chambers with a dickhead judge who likes to hold court.”
“As if court isn’t court enough,” joked Macie. If ADA Fontanelli caught it, she didn’t let on, just pushed through the door and strode into the café ahead of her.
Wild, who had no appetite, sat across the linoleum table from the government lawyer, watching her excavate unwanted tomatoes out of her Caesar wrap with a plastic fork as she spoke. “You must have time to burn if you’re meeting with me to push for discovery.”
“I came for the atmosphere. And the shoulder I knew I could lean on.” The ADA’s eyes lifted slowly from the tabletop carnage to her. Most defense lawyers and DAs had cordial relationships. But Theresa Fontanelli, whose initials were said to be short for “WTF,” lived combat ready. She also bore a special hardness toward Wild because Fontanelli had been rejected by the Park Avenue law firm that had accepted Macie. Fontanelli went on to join the d
istrict attorney’s office, and, even though the recession forced Levine & Isaacs to downsize and platoon Wild to the public defender’s office on a fellowship, WTF always felt obliged to prove herself better than the lawyer who got the job she didn’t.
Macie had her own issue, slightly larger: Fontanelli had botched her brother’s murder case. As lead prosecutor, her foot dragging and ineptitude caused so many trial delays that the murderer himself was killed in a jail escape before critical questions could be answered about the motive behind the crime. The power nature of their relationship forced Macie to swallow her resentment, but there was a jumbo elephant’s trunk draped across their table.
“Tell you what.” The ADA rerolled her wrap and took a bite, forcing Macie to wait while she chewed. After she eventually swallowed, Fontanelli set the thing down and napkinned before continuing. “I’m going to do you a favor, this once, and share.” She must have read something on Macie’s face because she did smile a little before adding, “What? I’m not allowed to be collegial?”
“No, collegial is good,” said Wild. “I’m listening.”
The ADA withdrew a file from her briefcase and fanned it open like a menu so only she could see its contents. “I have here select photos the Crime Scene Unit took of the decedent, Mr. Pinto, at the crime scene.” She knew she had Macie’s attention and milked the moment. “Oh, you’d like to see? Fine. I hope you have a strong gag reflex.” Fontanelli doled out the digital prints one by one on the table in front of her like a casino dealer. Each color five-by-seven was more shocking and ghastly than the one before. Wild swallowed hard as she studied the images of a grisly, violent death with blood spray, protruding bones, and unfurled intestines. In the final shot—of the victim’s head—his face was a meaty pulp, unrecognizable as Rúben Pinto. Even though Macie made no move to touch them, the ADA scooped them up and put them back in her file. “No, you can’t keep these. Nor can you have a coroner’s report yet.” Fontanelli winked. Actually winked. WTF?