A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal)

by William L. Myers Jr.

  “I hope not. War isn’t good for anyone. Valiante knows that.”

  “But this was his son who died,” the lawyer says.

  “The Commission would never stand for an all-out war.”

  “They’d have to approve it?” McFarland asks.

  “Again, the Commission would never allow a war.”

  This time, though, they’re willing to look the other way.

  “So there’s no chance my firm, my people, will end up in the middle of something?”

  A 100 percent chance. Smack-dab in the middle. The lawyers, anyway.

  “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

  Nunzio opens his face to let McFarland study him, find the reassurance he’s seeking.

  “All right,” the lawyer says. “Let’s get to the case, then. One of the detectives paid a visit to my office today. He was fishing for information.”

  “And of course you gave him nothing.”

  “Duh.”

  Nunzio smiles. Few people have the balls to address him so casually.

  “He asked about Johnny Giacobetti. He says the guard in the building next door saw both of you that night, running for the parking lot.”

  It’s Nunzio’s turn to stare.

  “So you’re not taking a position on whether he was at the warehouse with you or not.”

  “Did the guard see Johnny in the warehouse? Did he even see him getting into the car?”

  “How about Antonio Valiante’s bodyguards? What happened to them? The detective said Valiante always had soldiers around him. And you told me yourself that Valiante was very careful, and smart.”

  Nunzio shrugs.

  “You know that, sooner or later, the police are going to put these same questions to your daughter.”

  “And she won’t answer them. No one is obligated to talk to the police. Not even a witness to a crime. As you know.”

  Mick considers this. “The prosecutor could always empanel an investigating grand jury, which could subpoena Christina. If she refuses to talk, a judge could hold her in contempt, sentence her to up to six months in jail.”

  Nunzio feels his eyes narrow. “That’s not going to happen. My daughter . . . She’s not doing well. Her mother wants to fly her out of the country, to some chalet in Switzerland. She might even be on her way already.”

  “Unless you want to get on the stand yourself—”

  Nunzio puts up his hand. “Also not going to happen.”

  “Then Christina’s your only hope. She’s the only one who can give the jury a narrative that might exonerate you.” Mick pauses. “If there is such a redeeming story to tell.”

  There’ll be a story, all right. And you’ll hear it the same time the jury does.

  Mick sighs. “Just keep me informed of everything the detective—and the DA—tell you.”

  They sit silently for a few more moments. Then, “Anything else, counselor?”

  The lawyer shakes his head, stands. “I’ll see you Monday morning, before the hearing. To prepare you.”

  “No need. I know what’s going to happen. I’ll meet you in the courtroom.”

  The lawyer signals the guard through the door that they’re finished. The guard enters and takes Nunzio back to his cell.

  Alone again, Nunzio sits on the bunk and shakes his head.

  All these years doing what I do and the law never even got close. Then this shit happens. It was rotten luck the cops came up to the warehouse.

  He knew he should’ve had Johnny pull the car in back; if he’d done so, the cops would’ve kept on going down Admiral Peary Way. Tony Valiante would still have been dead, and there would still have been a war, but he wouldn’t have had to watch it happen from a jail cell.

  Thank God for Rachel, and for Uncle Ham. Those two.

  He smiles, lets his mind drift back twenty-eight years. He was twenty-three, a young buck; Rachel only twenty, a sophomore at Penn. They met at Smokey Joe’s, him and his crew there looking to pick up pretty undergrads. Rachel and her Jewish girlfriends looking for a little danger, taking their chances with real men, not Ivy League pencil-necks. He bought her drinks, traded jabs with her, was impressed with her ability to go toe-to-toe with him. As smart as she was good-looking, and, man, was she good-looking. At the end of the night, she let him walk her back to her dorm room—something he’d done with a dozen girls before. Let him make out with her, too. Until she didn’t. He crossed the line, and she stopped him. He crossed the line again, and she smacked him. Hard. Him. And she knew who he was!

  That really impressed him. He backed off and asked her out proper, and they started dating. Then, he found out about Rachel’s history. Her blood. That sealed it for him. He and Rachel were married. And it had been smooth sailing ever since.

  Or at least until seven days ago.

  He shakes his head again. Then lowers it.

  “Christina, Christina. What am I going to do with you?”

  But he already knows the answer.

  God help me.

  8

  MONDAY, APRIL 22

  Mick sits at the defense table in Courtroom 306. To his right, Max Pagano is removing papers from his leather satchel at the prosecutor’s table. The gruff ADA did little more than grunt his acknowledgment at Mick when he came in. Behind them both, a bulletproof Plexiglas wall separates the well of the courtroom from the gallery. Mick glances back, sees that the wooden benches are filled. The arrest of Jimmy Nunzio has caused a stir in Philadelphia, and everyone wants to see the show. Mick recognizes half a dozen members of the press, a handful of other criminal-defense attorneys, some junior ADAs, courthouse employees, and a handful of mob-o-philes from South Philly. Also present are a few guys Mick suspects are part of Nunzio’s crew. Noticeably not among them is Nunzio’s enforcer and personal bodyguard, Johnny Giacobetti.

  A door to Mick’s left opens, and Jimmy Nunzio is escorted into the courtroom by two chief deputies. His cuffs have already been removed, and he’s wearing a form-fitting Italian suit—a remarkable sartorial upgrade from the jeans and T-shirts worn by most prisoners. Mick rises and shakes Nunzio’s hand; then they both sit down. Nunzio turns his seat sideways, giving him a view of the entire courtroom. Mick studies his legal pad, noticing in his peripheral vision that Nunzio is scanning the gallery, taking in everyone present.

  After a few minutes, the Honorable Marvin Montgomery, the judge who will preside over the preliminary hearing, enters and takes the bench. Fifty years old, pasty white and rail thin, Marvin is new to the criminal world, having spent his entire career at a large corporate law firm. He took the bench only a year before and, like many new judges, will have to spend his first years in criminal court before moving over to the slightly more refined world of civil litigation. The judge does his best to affect an air of cool control but doesn’t quite pull it off.

  The court crier has Mick and Pagano state their names, after which Judge Montgomery turns to the prosecutor, who offers up the death certificate for Antonio Valiante. Mick doesn’t object, and Montgomery accepts the document into the record.

  “Defense counsel and I have agreed on a stipulation, which I’ll read,” Pagano announces.

  The judge asks, “Don’t you just want to submit the writing into the record? How long is it?”

  “It’s short,” Pagano says, launching immediately into the stipulation. “On Wednesday, April tenth, of this year, at 11:45 p.m., Antonio Valiante, aged thirty, was pronounced dead at the scene in a warehouse building located off Admiral Peary Way in South Philadelphia. The body was transported to the Philadelphia medical examiner’s office, where the medical examiner determined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death was exsanguination—massive blood loss—from a wound to the decedent’s throat.”

  Pagano hands the stipulation to the tipstaff and then says to the judge: “I offer exhibits C-1 to C-20, a series of photographs depicting the decedent and the crime scene.”

  “Objection.” Mick stands. “Your Honor
, I’ve already stipulated to the cause of death. There is no purpose to showing the photographs, which are gratuitously inflammatory.”

  “Inflammatory to who?” Pagano asks. “There’s no jury here. I’m sure we can trust the court not to be overcome by emotion.”

  “With the stipulation, there’s no need for the photographs,” Judge Montgomery says. “The objection is sustained.”

  Pagano turns away from the bench while the judge is still talking. Pagano’s rudeness is legendary, but Mick is still surprised to see him snub a sitting judge. Glancing at the bench, Mick sees that Judge Montgomery is none too happy with the prosecutor. Nunzio, on the other hand, is smiling.

  “Call your first witness,” says the judge, pretending not to notice Pagano’s disrespectful behavior.

  “The Commonwealth calls Jake Trumbull.”

  The patrolman is a big kid in his early twenties. Mick predicts Pagano will keep his testimony short and to the point, offering up as little detail as he thinks is necessary to persuade the judge to bind Nunzio for trial.

  “Have you ever seen the defendant, James Nunzio, before?” Pagano asks.

  “Yes.”

  “What was the date? What was the time?”

  “April tenth. Between 10:30 and 11:00 p.m.”

  “Tell the court how you came to see the defendant, James Nunzio, on April tenth.”

  “Me and my partner, Officer Piccone, were patrolling east of the Naval Yard. It’s that big area that hasn’t been redeveloped yet. We were on Admiral Peary, and I noticed a Cadillac Escalade sitting outside a building that was supposed to be vacant. So I thought we should take a look, and we drove up to it.”

  “What happened next?”

  “We got out and examined the Caddy. It looked brand-new. Then we went over to the front of the building. The door was all dented, and the wood frame was busted up. It looked like someone had kicked it open. There was light coming from inside, too.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “Crying. A woman was crying. So we unholstered our weapons and went inside.”

  “And that’s where you saw the defendant?”

  “Objection. Leading.” A pointless objection, Mick knows, and Pagano will simply rephrase because there’s no dispute that Nunzio was inside the building.

  Still, I’m not going to let Pagano cruise through this on autopilot.

  Pagano casts him a nasty look.

  “Where was the defendant standing when—”

  “Objection. Leading.”

  “Really?” Pagano snarls.

  Mick smiles inside. Pagano’s pissed. Good.

  “Gentlemen . . . ,” the court admonishes both of them.

  “Just tell us what happened when you got inside. What you saw and what you did.”

  “The first thing I saw was the girl on the floor, holding the dead guy. She was crying.”

  “Was she saying anything?”

  “Like, ‘Why? Why?’”

  “Did she say, ‘Why, Daddy?’”

  “Objection!” Mick’s on his feet. “Putting words in the witness’s mouth.”

  The judge sustains the objection and tells Pagano to continue.

  “Did the woman say anything other than ‘Why? Why?’”

  “She did say, ‘Why, Daddy?’ And she went on about how she loved him. The dead guy, I mean.”

  “So it was the decedent she loved, not her father?”

  Mick doesn’t glance at Nunzio, but he feels the gangster’s eyes darken. He stands. “Objection.”

  “Sustained. Keep to the point, counselor.”

  “How was the woman holding the decedent?”

  “She was sitting on the floor, and she had him, like, leaning up against her. His head was tucked into her shoulder, and she was rocking back and forth.”

  Pagano pauses. It seems to Mick that he’s waiting for Trumbull to say something more, something the prosecutor and the cop had rehearsed.

  “The blood was still coming out of his throat. There was a giant slit. A gash.”

  Pagano smiles slightly, and Mick knows Trumbull gave him what he was looking for.

  “What did you do, or see, next?”

  “I started to go over to her. That’s when I saw a guy standing in the shadows. Him,” he adds, nodding at Nunzio. “He had a knife in his hand, and I ordered him to drop it. My partner started yelling, too. When he dropped the knife, we had him put his hands behind his back. Then I cuffed him.”

  “What did you do with the knife?”

  “Me? Nothing. I didn’t touch it. That was for CSU.”

  Pagano pauses a moment. “Did you notice any blood on the defendant?”

  “Are you kidding? It was all over him.”

  Mick glances at Nunzio. His face is stone.

  “Nothing further, Your Honor,” Pagano says.

  Mick considers how to handle the direct examination. There was no mention of Johnny Giacobetti, despite what Tredesco said about the security guard seeing Giacobetti and Nunzio racing out of Nunzio’s building on the night of the murder. Mick knows that’s because Pagano has no idea how Johnny G. fits into this yet. Pagano also didn’t touch upon the cell-phone call that apparently caused Nunzio to show up in the first place—another thing the prosecutor hasn’t decided how to fit into his narrative. Not that Pagano needs to bring any of this up; he’s presented more than enough evidence to persuade the judge to hold Nunzio for trial.

  Judge Montgomery looks at Mick. “Do you have any questions?”

  “Just a few.”

  To send a message to the press.

  “After you cuffed Mr. Nunzio, I assume you checked him for a gun.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Did you find one?”

  “Yes. Tucked into the back of his pants. A nine-millimeter.”

  “A Sig Sauer P938 Nitron?”

  “I guess.”

  “So why would he have used the knife? Why not just shoot the decedent and skip getting covered in blood?”

  Pagano doesn’t bother to stand. “Objection! Calls for speculation.”

  “I withdraw the question, Your Honor.”

  Turning from the bench to the witness, Mick says, “Did you ask Mr. Nunzio what happened in the warehouse?”

  “It was obvious what happened.”

  “Was this a case of self-defense?”

  “Self-defense?” The officer’s voice is thick with incredulity.

  “Do you know whether Antonio Valiante attacked Mr. Nunzio first?”

  “How could I know that?”

  “Uh . . . by asking.”

  Trumbull stares. Then a light bulb goes off in his head. “After I cuffed him, I read him his rights. So we couldn’t ask him anything.”

  “How long after you handcuffed him was this?”

  “I don’t know, maybe ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes during which you could’ve asked him for his side of the story.”

  “Well . . .”

  “So, what happened after you read him his rights?”

  “My partner was asking him if he was all right. If he needed water.”

  Mick glances at Pagano, who rolls his eyes. They both know what had happened: Piccone, the older cop, recognized Nunzio and knew to treat him with respect.

  “Let me get this straight. A young woman is weeping on the floor as she holds the bleeding body of her lover, but your partner is spending his time taking care of Mr. Nunzio?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Sounds like Officer Piccone thought maybe the situation wasn’t as obvious as it seemed to you.”

  “Objection!” cries Pagano again.

  The judge leans over the bench. “This isn’t trial, Mr. McFarland. You can score all the points you want, but you already know the prosecution has made out its prima facie case.”

  Mick thinks for a moment. “Officer Trumbull, is there anything else you remember that sticks out in your mind? Anything you noticed, anything you saw?”

  �
�Saw, or noticed?”

  Mick does a double take. “Either.”

  “There was one thing that seemed odd. It smelled like pasta. In the warehouse. There were no dishes out or anything, but it smelled like they’d just had dinner.”

  Mick glances at Pagano, sees him look away.

  Another thing he hasn’t figured out.

  After the preliminary hearing, Nunzio waits for his attorney in the holding cell. He enjoyed McFarland’s sparring with the cop, but it was all grandstanding; there’s no question he’s going to face a jury. He looks at his hands and shakes his head. Damn. If he’d had more time to think before the cops showed up, he’d have used the knife to stab his own hands, make it look like he’d sustained some defensive wounds. Self-defense is what it’s all going to come down to at trial. Still, it could’ve been much worse.

  If I hadn’t seen the cops’ headlights through the busted doorframe . . . The thought makes him shudder.

  The guard opens the door, and the attorney enters.

  “You had a little fun out there,” Nunzio says.

  “The cop will be better prepared at trial,” Mick says. “All of Pagano’s witnesses will be.”

  Nunzio shrugs.

  “Have you given any thought to a plea?”

  “There will be no plea. I want my day in court.”

  “You’re going to trust your fate to a jury? Twelve people you’ve never met? Most of them having grown up hearing stories about you?”

  Those would include the most notorious tale: of him locking his cheating fiancée and her lover—his own boss—inside a coffin until they both starved to death. That yarn has an element of truth to it: He did seal his boss and the woman inside the box. But not in a fit of jealous rage. It was a fully sanctioned hit. The higher-ups wanted that guy gone. And the woman wasn’t his fiancée but a floozy he started nailing after she was already seeing the boss. He eliminated them both as part of a carefully calculated plan to advance. It didn’t hurt that it enhanced his image as a hair-trigger hood.

  “Let go, let God.” He smiles.

  “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough.”

  He shoots to his feet, leans into the lawyer’s space so their faces are inches apart. “I know the stakes. Believe me. I’m taking this as serious as hell. And you better be, too. Don’t think that just because they caught me dead to rights, I’m going to roll over. I’m not. And neither are you. I expect nothing less than the fight of your life. Because that’s what this is!”