CHAPTER XXV
It was coming through loud and clear. Marty Silvio and Harry Levin listened intently as Donna Price told her story in fits and starts between sobs. The bug, hidden in the ceiling above her head, picked up every word with amazing clarity. Neither she nor the others in the room with her knew that she was broadcasting live across the country.
“He was a police officer. Dr. Manin said he wanted to see Captain Riley through the surgery. He wanted to do it himself. Dr. Manin always took a special interest in cops. His father had been one. He said that he owed something to the people who protect us. He was going to perform the surgery himself, he said, even though he was on his way out of the hospital when Captain Riley was brought in. He told one of the nurses to call his wife and tell her that he had an emergency and she was to go on ahead without him. He’d meet her at the dinner party later. Then he told me to get scrubbed and get to the OR right away. Captain Riley was already in there. He’d lost a lot of blood, but his leg had been tourniqueted and the bleeding stopped. The wound was clean and his vitals were good. He was in good spirits, although a little groggy from morphine. But he was aware of us before the general anesthetic was given. He even smiled and said hi, and thanked us for helping him—for saving his life.”
She stopped and asked for a glass of water and more tissues. Grace was quick to supply her with both and squeezed her hand for encouragement.
“The surgery went fine. It wasn’t complex. The artery wasn’t mangled. It was a clean cut. All we had to do was clamp it and suture it, which Dr. Manin did carefully, as usual. I watched. He’s been doing this kind of surgery for years. I’ve seen artists like Manin as well as butchers, but I won’t mention who. This op was as perfect as you could get. The wound was irrigated and Manin did the close himself. Captain Riley was sent to recovery in great shape. Everything—his vitals—perfect.” She took a shuddering breath, and a quick sip of water. “I’m…I’m so afraid to go on…” Her hands shook as she clutched the glass.
Nick’s enthusiasm for the case waned with each glowing reference to Dr. Manin. Dr. Manin’s loyalty, Dr. Manin’s selflessness, Dr. Manin’s perfection. Shit, he thought, the last thing he needed was her on the stand. She was poison, death to the plaintiff’s case. All she had to do was smile at the jury with her dimples and show a tear in her pretty blue eyes, and he was done—finished. She would hardly have to say a word. Nick knew how it worked with a jury. They either fell in love with you and believed every word out of your mouth, or they hated you—or, just as bad, dismissed you as boring.
He got up and started to roll his shirt sleeves down and then put on his jacket
“Nick, where are you going?” Grace asked.
“I really don’t need to hear more.” He picked up the subpoenas. “Forget this. Forget you were ever served. We’re sorry to have bothered you.”
“Sorry!” Donna sprang up, her expression instantly changed. She turned on Nick like a wild animal. “You break into my apartment. Scare me half to death. Jeopardize my life by forcing me to talk, and now you say sorry, forget about it? No.” She shook her head violently. “No. You sit down,” she commanded, pointing to the sofa, “and have the decency to let me finish. Because you don’t know anything.”
Nick, amazed at the change in her demeanor, began to worry how he could hide her from the defense. Asher would have a field day with her testimony. Fuck, he thought. She was right. It was the least he could do—listen to the truth for a change.
“OK, but make it short. We have a plane to catch.” He looked at his watch.
She turned away from Nick and Grace and started to pace as she talked. “After the operation, Dr. Manin said he was going to change and go meet his wife, and would I please tell someone at the nurses’ station to call her. I left the OR. I was behind him. Captain Riley had already been taken to recovery. I took off my mask and phoned Mrs. Manin’s cell phone myself. I gave her the message and we joked for a few minutes about how unreliable Victor was. When it came to his home life, he always put his patients before family time and social life. I hung up and for some reason I decided to look in on Captain Riley before changing. I had planned to take a break in the nurse’s lounge. I went into recovery and there he was, asleep and looking fine. Nurse Doletov, the other nurse on duty, was with him. Nobody else was in the room. I lifted the sheet up to check the op site.” She turned quickly and stared directly at Nick. “He was bleeding badly. I yelled at Doletov to call Dr. Manin. I was going to call a code when she came at me. She dropped a pair of scissors and grabbed me. I saw blood on the scissors. I yelled at her to stop. She knocked me onto the floor and I saw her pull a syringe from her pocket. I knew it was meant to put me out, possibly permanently. I lay still for a second, and when she bent to give me the injection, I grabbed her foot and pulled it out from under her. She fell and the wind got knocked out of her. I ran to the nearest station for help— nobody was there—I called a code. No one responded. Somebody should have responded. And then Doletov came out of the room, yelling in Russian. And then they came at me—out of nowhere.”
“Wait—who came at you?” Nick found her story hard to believe.
“I don’t know who. They just started coming—two, maybe three men. I ran to an open elevator. Hit the down button. Two of the men came after me. I pushed a gurney into them—I thought I was trapped, but the gurney was heavy enough to knock the two of them off the elevator. As the doors started to close, the other one tried to hold the doors open and grab me with his other hand, so I bit it. He let go of the door, and the elevator went down. There was blood all over me and I had to spit out a piece of his skin. My uniform was torn, and I just held it together and ran off the elevator on the first floor. I never went home. I knew they’d be waiting for me. I ran and walked four miles to my friend’s house. She lived by the art museum. She gave me a credit card, some cash, and a change of clothes. Her name was Victoria Grant…Vicki, yes, Vicki…my friend, Vicki…” Donna’s eyes had a faraway, glazed look.
“Was? Where is she now?” Grace asked gently.
“Dead. She was found murdered in her apartment the next day. I saw it in the papers. It was headlined in the Daily News. I saw at a newsstand in the airport just before I got a plane out of Philadelphia. It was supposed to be a rape-murder. They said the person was in her apartment waiting for her—like you were in mine.” She half laughed and half sobbed, wiping her eyes. “I figured you would have killed me already if you were one of them. They said some things were stolen, like her purse, jewelry. But I knew better. Vicki didn’t have any jewelry worth stealing. She was a simple person—a physical therapist just making ends meet. She tried to help me and she died. They killed her because they knew I told her what happened. They couldn’t get to me because I caught a cab from her apartment to the airport and got the first plane out. I knew I had to cover my tracks, so I went to a MAC machine with the card Vicki had given me and drew out as much cash as I could. I used cash to pay for everything. I went to Chicago, transferred to Memphis, Seattle, and then L.A. I rented a car and drove to Pasadena. I got a new driver’s license in L.A., ID, Social Security number, everything.” She laughed. “It’s amazing what you can do with cash. I bought Jane Welles, a thirty-two-year-old nurse, five feet seven inches, blond, blue eyes. And see, I even have her nursing diploma from Stanford University. Impressive, isn’t it?” she laughed tearfully.
No one said a word when she stopped. Donna reached into her purse for a cigarette. After lighting it, she drew in the smoke without inhaling. She offered the pack. “Want one? Don’t worry, these won’t kill you. If they know you’re here, you won’t have time to get cancer.” She paused. “So, Mr. Ceratto—what now?” She exhaled. “Now that I’ve contaminated you with the information that’s going to get us all killed—do you still want me to testify?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Be at the Complex Litigation Center in Philadelphia at the Wanamaker Building on Friday at nine a.m.” He held out his hand. “Gimme one of thos
e.” He took a cigarette from the offered pack, put it in his mouth, and then guided Donna’s hand with the lit match as she held it to the tip.
Rudi had heard the match being struck and Nick drawing in on the cigarette as he watched the black sedan from his hotel room across the street. Everything had gone according to plan. He had been on a six a.m. flight out of Philadelphia, ahead of Ceratto by two hours. After locating the Jane Welles apartment, he had only needed twenty minutes to install the digital bug and transmitter that had transmitted everything said in Donna Price’s apartment to the laptop in Rudi’s hotel room. The laptop had, in turn, transmitted in real time over the Internet to the conference room computer at Silvio and Levin, P.C.
Rudi had been able to watch them carefully from the moment they had stepped out of the car and had broken into the gate and gone to the third floor apartment. He chuckled at the amateurish comings and goings of Nick, Grace, and the stupid hood. Probably couldn’t shoot straight if his life depended on it, he thought. It was clear that they were all amateurs. His high-powered telescope picked up every movement made from the outside, and the bug picked up every sound from inside. His equipment was the best— state-of-the-art, the envy of spies the world over. They were the tools of his trade, expensive and worth every penny he paid to contacts who inventoried equipment for the CIA.
Silvio and Levin were ecstatic, high-fiving each other. This bitch had eluded them for two years, and now they had the break they had been waiting for. They had paid Jerry Fisher handsomely for the information he had given to Grace. Fisher had become suspicious when Grace had asked him to say nothing to anyone at the firm. Loyal to the source that always paid his inflated bills, he went to Silvio to find out what was going on. He was paid a hundred times the normal rate for this address and the phone number to match.
Rudi saw the elevator door open on the ground level as the threesome emerged. He typed a simple command into the laptop. The screen flickered for a second and then filled with a view of the interior of Donna Price’s apartment, transmitted from the cigarette package sized box that he had taped under the coffee table when he had placed the bug in the overhead light. The lens, the size of a pin head and the thin fiber-optic filament connecting it to the transmitter was invisible as it lay under the lip of the table, but it showed a 180-degree view of the room. He watched, fascinated as he saw Donna close the door behind them.
Donna’s nightmare had become a reality. She pulled the barrette from her hair and sat on the sofa, looking bewildered. She unlaced her white shoes, and then undressed down to her bra and panties. She lay on the sofa and closed her eyes. Her long, blond hair spread out loosely over the sofa arm. Her body was white and sinewy, a Nordic type, much like Christy Maglio’s.
He found the type beautiful. It was pure. It was cold and distant. Shame, he thought. The cell phone rang. “Yeah,” he said. “Good stuff, right? I know what you want, but I can’t be two places at the same time. So who do you want me to do first?” He smiled as he received his orders. “Fine. Consider it done.”
CHAPTER XXVI
Mike Rosa flipped his copy of the Raiders video cassette over on his desk as he talked to Muriel Gates on the telephone. It was tagged with an orange label marked “MAGLIO.”
“I think we have to work together on this one, Muriel. Our suspicion right now is that Maglio was murdered. The powder burns were on his right hand. He was left-handed. No way could he handle a gun with his right hand. I had forgotten about it until recently, until I saw the videotape of him—yes, I was his friend. I also went to law school with him. We used to kid him about being a lefty. When he broke his left arm in a softball game and tried to write with his right hand, his classroom notes were illegible. Even he couldn’t read them.”
“Where’s the connection with the Lopez murder?” she challenged. “I just don’t see it, Mike. Just because she worked in the same office doesn’t mean all the deaths are connected. Your guy and his family lived in a mansion in Gladwyne. My lady lived in a ghetto. Her purse was stolen and then emptied. I understand that none of the Maglio possessions were missing.”
Gates eyed the pretty young woman sitting on the couch across from her desk. She was dressed in tight jeans and a pink angora cable-knit turtleneck. Gates couldn’t wait to get her hands on all that soft material and what was under it.
“True. But we have a suspiciously blank video tape in the security system,” Rosa quickly responded.
“But there was no burglary, right?”
“Right.”
“Well that’s enough for me. Case closed.” She wanted the pretty woman.
“Muriel, you’re going to look like shit if my investigation leads to a connection you’re ignoring. The press will devour you. And how will it look come campaign time? The Republicans will call you incompetent. Or better yet, they accuse you of conspiracy. You know how those law-and-order types can be, and how far they’ll go.
“You threatening me, Rosa?” The DA frowned deeply and her voice dropped an octave. She wanted to pull him through the phone line and squeeze his neck until his eyes popped.
“No, Gates. I’m warning you. This case is a lot bigger than you think. And I’m asking for your help—as politely as I can. I want to work with you, not against you. I don’t want to step on your toes. That’s why I’m talking to you first and not the attorney general— not just yet. But I will if I have to, and you’ll wind up looking like a smacked ass if I do.”
Rosa knew that he had gotten her attention. She hadn’t interrupted him, and then there was silence when he finished. Did she have nothing to say for the first time in the fifteen years he had known her? Was that possible? “Muriel, you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Prick, she thought. He has me where he wants me. Then she thought again. “Let me think about what you’re asking.”
“No, Muriel. What I’m telling you is that you have twenty-four hours to pick up the ball before I call the attorney general. I’d like to tell him you’re cooperating on this case.”
“I need to look at the file again.”
“Files, Muriel. Files.”
“What do you mean—files?” She crumpled the Styrofoam cup she had been holding, wishing it were Rosa’s neck that she was squeezing.
“Maria Elena Maglio is one you should look at.”
“Who?”
“Muriel, aren’t you aware that she was Joe’s relative—his cousin to be exact. She’s a Maglio. Her last name was Maglio. Doesn’t that ring a bell with you?”
“The hit and run? The girl who was run over by a gypsy cab that fled the scene and couldn’t be traced? You think that was intentional—that was a murder?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why? Because her last name was the same as Joe’s?”
“No—because she knew too much, that’s why. She came to the States to do her own investigation since we weren’t interested, she said. Committing suicide and murdering one’s own wife and kids is frowned on there, especially by the Catholic Church, and particularly within Italian families. It’s a disgrace the family carries with it forever. She wanted his name cleared to protect their name and reputation.”
“Mike, this is all too much, right now. You know—conspiracy around every corner, Italian culture mandates and their sense of justice. But I promise to pull the files if that’ll make you happy”— she exaggerated the s in files—“and I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Does that satisfy you?”
“Tomorrow morning, OK? Get your staff to do some work for a change.” He thought that would get her blood pressure up and that she’d react in her normal, loud-mouthed, pushy fashion.
Instead, she chuckled. “By the way, Rosa, how did you know all this about the woman? Her mission, her purpose, and all that?”
“Because I met with her, personally. She came to me for help.”
The DA laughed deeply. “I see. And on how many occasions did you meet with her?”
“None of your business,” he snapped. Rosa wa
s about to sign off and avoid Gates’ verbal abuse. He had touched a nerve and knew she wanted to touch his.
“Did you fuck her, Mike?” she laughed.
“What the Christ are you asking, Muriel? If you’re trying to piss me off, you are. What I do with my personal life is none of your goddamn business. Do I ask you which woman you’re sleeping with?”
Rosa’s blood boiled. He hated the bitch. Had she sensed his personal involvement? Had she picked up on his tone when he talked about Maria Elena? Had she read his mind? Had she had Maria followed? Was he just transparent, or did she actually know?
“Oh, touchy, touchy,” she said mockingly and winking at the young woman. “Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. Sorry, Rosa. I just had to give you some of your own medicine.”
“I’ll expect your call by nine a.m. tomorrow.” Rosa hung up, wondering what the dyke had up her sleeve. And why would she have asked him that question? That is, unless she knew much more than he gave her credit for.
“He’s going to stir up a lot of shit,” Gates said, getting up from her desk and walking over to the couch.
“I know,” Margo Griffin responded, kissing Muriel Gates’ caressing hand as it swept across her pink angora sweater.
CHAPTER XXVII
It had been a terrible trip. The seat belt sign lit again, as it had throughout most of the miserable flight. But this time it signaled that the plane was finally going to land after circling JFK for an hour. There were mounds of snow piled up along the recently plowed runway, which was quickly becoming slick with fine snow mixed with ice. Nick Ceratto simply stared out of the window into the blackness, not really caring whether the fucking thing crashed. He was too tired and too strung out to worry about a simple thing like an air disaster. The Boeing 747 finally touched down and fought to stay on the runway as its brakes engaged, slowing the forward motion of the aircraft.
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