But I’ve returned to Eastside today in triumph. I’m endowing the school with a yearly scholarship, given in the name of my father. An assembly has been called to commemorate the occasion, and the principal tells me that my recent media exposure has actually created some student interest in the event.
My speech is a combination of self-deprecating humor and sincere exhortation to the students to make their lives productive. I don’t build myself up too much, because even though I’m a pretty good lawyer, the truth is that the only reason I’m standing here today is that my father died and left me a truckload of money.
When I mention my father’s nonfinancial influence on me, I get a little choked up. It’s been happening a lot lately. I’ve noticed that as I get older, I get more and more, sentimental. I also notice some other things as I age, like a couple of hairs growing on each of my ears. Now that I think about it, there could be a cause-and-effect relationship at work here. Maybe I should fund some medical research into studying the effect of ear hair on human emotional response.
The question-and-answer session afterward is surprisingly lively. Most of the students want to know about the Willie Miller case, though their interest seems centered on what it was like to visit Willie on death row.
The Garcia case is of less interest. Some of them know Oscar or know of him from the neighborhood, and to know Oscar is to be unconcerned about his fate.
But a decent round of applause sends me off, and I head down to the jail to meet with my client. He’s agitated and somewhat scared; for some reason his appearance in court this morning provided a sense of reality to his situation that the arrest and incarceration did not.
Oscar is not the type you make small talk with, so I ask him if he has any questions about, what took place in court today.
“That guy Campbell, he seemed out to get me.”
It wasn’t a question, but it’s close enough. “He wants to send you to prison for the rest of your life.”
“Son of a bitch …”
“You’ve obviously met him before,” I say. “Now, tell me everything you did the night of the murder, minute by minute, as best as you can remember. Don’t leave out a thing, no matter how small or unimportant it might seem.”
The sullen Oscar becomes even more so. “I hung out,” he mutters.
“That’s not quite the detail I need.”
“Hey, what do you want me to say, man?” he asks, clearly annoyed with my persistence.
“I want you to tell me where you were that night. Because if you don’t cooperate with me, I can tell you where you’re going to spend every night for the rest of your life.”
“I was doing business,” he mutters.
“Where? In the park?”
“No.”
It’s my turn to get annoyed. “Dammit, Oscar, where the hell were you?”
He proceeds to tell me a rather uneventful tale of retail drug peddling in and around the park, with a little pimping thrown in. All of this took place until about one A.M., and he claims that some of the people he mentions would testify if called upon, but even without meeting them I can safely assume that none would have any credibility before a jury.
After one A.M. the rendition gets fuzzy. Only through repeated questioning am I able to piece together that he went to make a payment to the entity that grants him permission to function. In other words, he had to pay his mob bosses their standard piece of the action, and he was doing just that after one A.M.
“I need names, Oscar. Of the people you saw while you were making this payment.”
Oscar actually laughs at the absurdity of the request. “Forget it. No fucking way. I give you those names, and you’re defending a dead man.”
I could give him another lecture on attorney-client privilege, and how the information would be safe with me, but I know it won’t help. So I try to get at it a different way. I ask him to tell me the neighborhood, the street, that he was on during this business transaction. Eventually, he does, though he doesn’t want to take any chances, so he narrows it to within a two-block radius. The area is a neighborhood that even I am aware is considered by organized crime to be home base.
“How long were you there?” I ask.
“’Bout three hours.”
“To make a payment?” It seems like an inordinately long time.
“They were busy,” he explains. “They kept me waiting.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Usually, it don’t take as long,” he says, then qualifies it with, “When I go to them.”
“You mean there are times they come to you?”
I can see him regain a measure of pride. “Sure. Most of the time.”
I take him through the three hours he spent in the neighborhood in question. Basically, he hung out in the cellar of the house he was visiting, except for about a half hour when he went out to get something to eat.
“Did you eat at a restaurant?” I ask.
“Nah, I went to one of those big supermarkets—Food Fair, I think it’s called. They make these really good sandwiches.”
“Did you pay with a credit card?”
“A credit card?” he asks, indicating how absurd the question is. I might as well have asked if he had paid with a walrus.
He doesn’t think anybody in the store would remember him, and the truth is, it’s not as if Brad Pitt had come in that night for the sandwich. Oscar is a number of things, but memorable is not one of them. I let him off the hook with no more questions for now and tell him we’ll be meeting again in a day or two.
As I’m leaving, he asks, “Man, I got things to work on. Am I gonna be stuck in here long?”
“I think it makes sense to go ahead and order furniture and drapes, if that’s what you’re asking.”
It turns out that wasn’t what he was asking.
GEOFFREY STYNES IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND.
Not that I’m spending a lot of time looking for him. But I’ve more than half expected him to look me up, to complain about my taking on Garcia as a form of breaking privilege, or at least a conflict of interest. I don’t think such claims would have merit, but I did expect him to make them.
These kinds of thoughts are running through my mind as Laurie and I are having dinner at my house. She mentions that I’m being quiet, but doesn’t push to find out what’s on my mind.
We are just finishing dinner when Vince Sanders calls. “I checked out Geoffrey Stynes,” he says.
“And?” I ask.
“And I also checked out the tooth fairy, Rumpelstiltskin, and Tinker Bell. They don’t really exist either.”
“You’re losing me.”
“That must happen to you a lot,” he says. “Maybe you should wear a bell around your neck.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Vince can be somewhat difficult to chat with.
“There are two registered Geoffrey Stynes with that spelling,” he says. “One was born four months ago Wednesday, and the other is ninety-two and in a rest home. In addition to that, none of the sources I checked, and I checked a shitload of sources, have heard of him. Which causes me to wonder why the hell you’re wasting my time.”
I can’t say too much, because Laurie is sitting right near me and I don’t want to answer a lot of questions. “Interesting” is all I can muse out loud.
“You sure you want to share a major piece of news like that?” Vince asks. “What if I got captured and tortured? They might force out of me the fact that Andy Carpenter thought it was interesting.”
“Hold out as long as you can. Your country needs you.”
“Don’t forget,” he says, “if there’s a story here, it’s mine.”
“You know, for some people, doing a favor for a friend is payment enough.”
“Then you should have asked them,” he snarls, just before he hangs up.
The rest of the evening is quiet. Laurie reads, and I pretend to read while all the time thinking about the case. It’s uncomfortable for me that
there is a great deal I can’t share with her, it’s the first time I’ve had this experience. My sense is also that there are things she isn’t sharing with me, most of them centering around Oscar Garcia.
In fact, for all I know, she might also be pretending to read. If she is, then she’s more intellectual than I am; she fake-reads higher-quality stuff. Tara is more honest than either of us; she doesn’t just pretend to chew on a toy, she actually chews on it.
It’s about eleven o’clock when I get tired of fake-reading and Laurie and I go to bed. Once we get into bed, we go to sleep. We have passed the point in our relationship where we have sex at every opportunity. We’re still up in the eighty percent range, but sometimes I find myself longing for the good old days.
I get up earlier than Laurie, because I had arranged to meet with Kevin at eight in the office. When I arrive, he is polishing off his standard breakfast: one bagel, toasted, with cream cheese, one bagel, not toasted, with butter. There are people who can stuff their faces and not gain a pound; Kevin is most definitely not one of those people. The main eating difference between Kevin and Vince Sanders is that Vince overeats only fattening, unhealthful foods. Kevin will eat anything: put a barrel of wheat germ in front of him and he’ll inhale it.
Kevin and I are alone; Edna isn’t in yet. We could have met at ten and we’d still be alone. Since Edna doesn’t do any actual work, she doesn’t see the need to put in long hours. There’s an irrefutable logic to that which I have given up trying to refute.
Kevin met with the coroner yesterday, and even though there isn’t much information of value, he is confident that he got all there was to get. The condition of the body makes it impossible to be definitive in the findings, but it appears that the cause of death was the decapitation, that Dorsey was alive when it was done. The lividity, and the resulting effects of the fire, make the coroner quite confident that death came within an hour before the fire. This fits in neatly with my knowledge that the murder took place behind Hinchcliffe Stadium, which is about forty-five minutes from the warehouse.
Since the police know when the fire was set, they can make their estimate of the time of death unusually precise: Dorsey was murdered between two-thirty and three A.M. Right in the middle of the time Oscar says he was all the way on the other side of town, making his weekly payment to the mob.
It is there that Laurie and I meet to begin the process. I am the attorney and Laurie is the investigator; I have no illusions about our roles and no desire to reverse them. But I like to be present at the scene at the beginning of each investigation; it connects me to the case in a way that feels helpful.
The area itself is reminiscent of an earlier Paterson. The houses are modest and very well kept, and the streets have maintained their neighborhood feel. Kids play on the street in a carefree fashion; any criminal who would ply his trade by victimizing the people on these streets would have a built-in insanity defense.
The head of northern New Jersey’s version of what may or may not still be called the family is Dominic Petrone. I’ve met Petrone at various boring city functions which I’ve been coerced into attending. He’s a gray-haired, well-mannered, obviously intelligent man who looks like a typical corporate CEO, which is exactly what he is. His corporation’s products and services include drugs, prostitution, loan-sharking, money laundering, and an occasional murder or two. It’s not easy work, but hell, somebody’s got to do it.
I’ve brought along a picture of Oscar, and I show it to some people on the street, asking if they recognize him. It’s counterproductive; it makes them think we’re part of law enforcement, which means we’re anti-Petrone, which means we’re the enemy. These people have no need or use for the police; all the protection they need lives right in their neighborhood. They would sooner rat out God than Dominic Petrone, and asking them questions only causes them to view us with suspicion.
Of course, there is no chance that the person Oscar came to see was Petrone. Petrone is far too high on the totem pole for that; he would have people who would have people who would have people who would have people to deal with a roach like Oscar. And even they wouldn’t be thrilled about it.
Since we don’t know which house Oscar came to, and we can’t find anybody who remembers seeing him, what we basically do is wander aimlessly about, accomplishing nothing. The investigation is really heating up.
We’re about to leave when we see the Food Fair supermarket that Oscar said he had visited. The first thing we do is confirm that a different shift of employees would have been on that night, so there’s no chance any of these people would remember him. Laurie will have to come back during the night and cover that base.
We ask to speak to the manager, so that we can see if there are security camera tapes that covered the evening in question. If Oscar was here that night, he could have been part of a taped record.
The manager is on a coffee break, so while we wait, Laurie decides to do a little food shopping. She goes off to get some things, while I walk over to the cash machine so I can at least offer to pay for it. They actually have a small bank branch right there within the supermarket, with three machines for additional service.
I know from a similar situation on another case that our chances of finding anything on the store taping system are slim. Most stores simply run the tapes on a twenty-four- or forty-eight-hour cycle and then tape over them. But it’s worth a try, and when the manager, Wally, comes back, we ask him about it. I know his name is Wally, and I know he’s the manager, because above the pocket of his shirt it says, “Wally,” and just below that it says, “Manager.” These are the kinds of tricks I’ve picked up by accompanying Laurie on these investigations.
“How long do you keep the security tapes after they’re used?” I ask.
“You cops?” Wally asks.
His response isn’t exactly on point, and he says “cops” in such a way that, if we were in fact cops, he would try to lead us to our demise in the pesticide department. My sense is that somebody got the word to him that we’ve been snooping around, asking questions.
“No,” I say.
“Then what?”
“Then what what?” I counter. This repartee is on a very sophisticated level; I hope Laurie can follow it. A cashier within earshot is yawning; it’s obviously over her head.
“What are you?” he demands.
“Tired of this conversation,” I answer, just before Laurie sighs loudly and intervenes.
“He’s a lawyer and I’m a private investigator. We can get a subpoena and you can spend an entire day being deposed, or you can answer a couple of easy questions and then go back to stacking cans in aisle seven. Your choice.”
“Yeah,” I say to add emphasis, but I refrain from sticking my tongue out at him.
He’s annoyed, but recognizes the futility of resisting a force as powerful as mine. “We run the tapes for twenty-four hours, then tape over them.”
I show him a picture of Oscar. “Have you ever seen him?”
“No,” he says immediately. He’s not giving anything at all. Had I shown him pictures of Michael Jordan, George Bush, and Heather Locklear, his “no” would have been just as quick.
“Do you wish you could be more helpful, because as a good citizen it’s important to you that justice be done?” I counter.
Laurie drags me off before he can answer, which is a shame, because I could tell he was just about to crack.
On the way out, I keep in charitable practice by dropping a twenty-dollar bill in the March of Dimes canister, and then Laurie and I go our separate ways. She is going to snoop around Oscar’s neighborhood, while I’m going back to my office for a meeting. Laurie doesn’t ask for Oscar’s address, which means she knows where he lives. This is curious, since I know from the police reports that he’s only lived there two months. This means that Laurie’s knowledge can’t come from when she was on the force. Oscar had mentioned in court that she had been near his apartment, watching him. I don’t ask her about an
y of this, and I don’t ask myself why I don’t ask her about any of this.
The meeting scheduled in my office is one I’m actually looking forward to. It’s with Willie Miller, and we are going to discuss the lawsuit I have filed on his behalf against my former father-in-law, Philip Gant, and the estate of Victor Markham.
Victor and Philip committed a murder thirty-five years ago, and then committed another long after to cover it up. They arranged to frame Willie for the second murder, and he spent seven years on death row before he was cleared in the retrial. Philip wound up in jail and Victor took his own life. It was a terrible tragedy for all concerned, especially Willie, but there is one ray of sunshine: Both Philip and Victor were incredibly wealthy.
There is no suspense attached to the winning or losing of this lawsuit, we are going to win. It’s a slam dunk, and both sides know it. The only question is how much money Willie will get, and the other side is very concerned about a jury’s actions in this regard, since they have asked for settlement discussions. Today Willie and I are going to talk about our position in advance of those discussions.
In the months since his trial, and especially in the first few weeks, Willie became something of a media celebrity. He made the talk show circuit and brought a new twist to it. A street-smart kid who never left the inner city, Willie had no occasion to develop that filter through which most people talk to the media. So in these sessions he was just Willie Miller, and he spoke to interviewers in exactly the same fashion he spoke to friends on the street.
The results were both refreshing and hilarious. Willie interrupted one interview to ask, “Hey, am I getting paid for this?” He asked another questioner about a female camera operator, and when told she was single, he asked her out on the air. She declined, but changed her mind and accepted after the show.
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