A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal)

by William L. Myers Jr.

  “You should talk to some of her sorority sisters,” says Piper. “Outside her family, they’re the ones who’ll know the most about her.”

  “Way ahead of you,” Tommy says. “One of them agreed to meet me for lunch. She works in the provost’s office at Penn.”

  “Piper should go, too,” Mick tells his brother.

  He knows a twentysomething Ivy Leaguer will be more likely to open up to an attractive middle-aged woman than a hard case in his forties with prison tats creeping out of his collar.

  Tommy shrugs. “Sure, why not?”

  An hour later, Piper is in the back seat of a cab next to Tommy, heading west on Walnut Street. In her peripheral vision, she sees Tommy glance at her, then back at his cell phone.

  Time has partially chipped away the wedge the Hanson case drove between them, but they are nowhere near as close as they used to be. They still see each other frequently, of course, at the firm, and at her house when he comes over to visit, but long gone are their shared soul-searching sessions. She misses that, but every time she brings it up, Tommy denies that there’s any distance between them.

  “So, what sorority did she belong to?” Piper asks.

  Tommy pulls a small notepad from his jacket pocket. “Kappa Alpha Theta.”

  “Isn’t that the one Tiffany Trump was in?”

  “No idea.”

  The cab stops at the light on Thirty-Fifth Street, and Tommy tells the driver they’ll get out. “We’ll go down Locust Walk. She’s going to meet us at a Mexican place on the corner of Thirty-Sixth and Locust.”

  Tortas Frontera sits immediately off Locust Walk, a small place with five or six tables scattered around a brick patio. Inside, giant chalkboards list the offerings under the headings “Molletes” and “Soups and Salads” and “Cazuelas.” They pick up their food and go back outside. They’re digging in when an attractive young brunette walks up to the door and looks around. Tommy stands and waves her over.

  “I’m Tommy McFarland,” he says. “We talked on the phone.”

  Piper sees a wary look cross the young woman’s eyes. To compensate, Piper stands and smiles broadly. “Hi. I’m Piper McFarland. I work with Tommy.”

  The woman warms a little and accepts Piper’s hand, introducing herself as Amy Lewis.

  “Are you hungry?” Piper asks. “I’d be happy to go inside and get something for you. We figured we’d sit out here. It’s such a nice day.”

  Amy glances at Tommy, then says she’ll go in and pick up the food herself. When she returns, Piper does her best to engage her in small talk, asking about her family, where she was raised, what she studied at Penn. She’s about to broach the real subject when Amy beats her to the punch.

  “Fascinating as I am, I know you guys aren’t here to talk about me.” Turning to Tommy, she adds, “You said you work for Christina’s father. I know they’ve been in the news because of . . . that thing with her boyfriend. So you piqued my interest. I checked out your firm and learned that your brother does in fact represent Mr. Nunzio. My question is: Why do you need to know about Christina?”

  “We’re just looking for some background,” Tommy says. “We’re trying to get a sense for what might have happened in the warehouse that night.”

  “Why not just ask Christina and her father?”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” Piper says. “Unfortunately. The rules of ethics kind of bind an attorney if his client tells him something, but not necessarily if the attorney learns the information from another source.”

  Amy looks from Piper to Tommy. “Sounds kind of dumb, but whatever. So, what do you want to know?”

  “Just what kind of girl Christina was, how she got along with people, that sort of thing.”

  “Christina was great. A lot of fun.”

  “A party girl?” Tommy asks.

  “No more than anyone else. And she worked a lot harder than most of us. Christina’s the kind of girl who volunteered for everything. The sorority would decide to throw a party or run a charity event, and Christina would be the first person to raise her hand to organize it. She’d get other people to help, and it would be a roaring success, whatever it was. We elected her president of the sorority two years running. She declined in her senior year because she became president of the Panhellenic Council—that’s the executive board that oversees all the sororities.”

  “I read that she was on the soccer team,” Tommy says.

  “She was the captain of the soccer team.”

  “What was her relationship with her father like?”

  Amy’s eyes darken. She takes a breath. “Complicated.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We didn’t know who her father was, at first. Who he really was. When we found out, it blew some of us away. It blew me away. I mean, he’d show up from time to time, and he always seemed very serious. But a lot of the fathers were like that, especially the ones that ran big companies. Then, one day, one of the girls ran into our house with a newspaper that had a big story on him, and we found out he was, like, the Godfather, but of Philadelphia. And we were all, like, holy shit.”

  “Did anyone say anything to Christina?”

  “A couple of us did. Well, we didn’t come right out and say it. We just said, ‘Hey, Christina, did you see that story about your dad in the Inquirer? And she was, like, ‘Yeah, ho-hum.’ And that was it.”

  “Getting back to their relationship . . . ,” Tommy says.

  Amy pauses. “We got the impression that he was kind of smothering. You know, like, overprotective. He’d come by, and they’d go into her room and close the door. We could hear them arguing. Especially when we were juniors and seniors—that’s when me and Christina and Bailey and Lucy got an apartment together. Then he would leave, and we’d ask what it was all about. She’d say her dad didn’t ‘get’ her. And we all had fathers, too, so we knew that meant he was being controlling.”

  “Controlling is different from overprotective, isn’t it?” Tommy asks.

  “Yeah, but it was both. The thing with Tim Long proved how bad he could be.”

  “Tim Long?”

  “He was the captain of our football team. He and Christina were an item from the time they were sophomores. By the time we were seniors, he must’ve gotten tired of her. He started dating this other girl one day, out of the blue. It broke Christina’s heart. Her father got wind of it and had Tim beaten to a pulp. I mean, I went to see Tim in the hospital, and his face was so mangled I couldn’t even recognize him. He never came back to school after that. It caused a major rift between Christina and her dad. They had a huge shouting match, which I overheard. It was hard to understand everything they said, but Tim’s name kept coming up. I’m sure Christina was reaming him out for beating Tim up. She’d probably hoped she could get back together with him.”

  “Did you reach out to her about it?” asks Piper.

  “I tried, but she brushed me off. I think it was too painful for her to talk about.”

  Piper thinks for a minute, then asks, “Did anyone ever think of going to Christina’s father and talking to him yourselves? Try to get him to ease off a little, let her sprout her own wings?”

  Amy tilts her head. “Are you serious? Try to talk sense into Jimmy-effing-Nutzo?”

  Mick looks up from his desk as Tommy leads Piper into his office. They sit and explain what they learned from Amy Lewis.

  Mick processes it, then asks, “How does an honor student and the hardest-working girl on campus turn into Little Miss International Party Girl?”

  “Seems like she’s rebelling,” Tommy says. “Trying to break away from her father.”

  “Why doesn’t she use her degree from Wharton to get a high-powered job in New York, Chicago, LA? Make a life for herself?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want her to make her own life,” Tommy says. “Maybe he wants her close to him, where he can control her. So she fights back by jet-setting around the world. And when that doesn’t piss him off enough, she starts
dating his archenemy.”

  “It doesn’t feel right,” Piper says. “There’s something going on between those two, for sure, but I don’t think it’s just him trying to control her.”

  “Or protect her?” Mick wonders aloud.

  “That, either,” she says.

  Angie buzzes Mick on his speaker.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she says.

  “What?”

  “It’s Jimmy Nunzio. I think he’s calling from his jail cell.”

  Mick glances at Tommy, then at Piper. They both have the same sick look on their faces. He lifts the receiver.

  “I want you down here. Now,” the mobster tells him.

  The line goes dead.

  “At least in jail, he can’t kill you,” Tommy says with a shrug.

  “You sure about that? Last year, he had two guys killed in jail. And in case you’ve forgotten, they were both lawyers.”

  Mick doesn’t have to wait long. The guard ushers Nunzio, already uncuffed, into the attorney visiting room while Mick is still draping his jacket over the back of his chair.

  “Mind telling me how it is you can call me from your jail cell?”

  “Let me make something very clear to you, counselor: my daughter is off-limits.”

  Mick sees the menace in the crime lord’s eyes. He realizes their dance has entered a dangerous phase.

  “You want me to represent you, I need to know as much as I can about the players. That includes your daughter.”

  “Christina is not a ‘player.’ She’s a civilian, as are you—so far. Which means she’s not to be used or placed at risk.”

  “Placed at risk? Did you really just say that? You smashed your way into her boyfriend’s building, thinking it might be fun to kill him right in front of her. Maybe you did it to teach him a lesson for bringing her into things? The same way you taught her college boyfriend a lesson for cheating on her? Either way, you had to know it would cause a war. And if Frank and Angelo Valiante are the type of guys I think they are, one of the targets in that war will be Christina.”

  Nunzio stares at him.

  “Or maybe that wasn’t the plan. Maybe you got the call tipping you off that Christina and Valiante were there together, and you raced over to talk sense into them, break them up before somebody got hurt. You were only trying to protect her. But things got out of hand, and Antonio ended up dead. Is that what happened?”

  Nunzio sighs. “I think I can be forgiven for wanting to protect my daughter from someone like Antonio. As for what happened . . .”

  “Yeah, I know. When the time is right.”

  Nunzio studies him for an uncomfortable moment. “Is it so hard for you to believe that I went there to protect my daughter? Haven’t you ever heard of Occam’s razor? Sometimes the simplest solution is the solution.”

  “I don’t put a lot of stock in simple solutions. I find they rarely tell the whole story.”

  Looking tired, Nunzio takes a seat across the table. The two men sit in silence until Nunzio says, “My wife and I were blessed with two very sweet children. Alexander . . . I knew from the time he was a toddler that he wasn’t suited for the business. We’d walk down the street, and he’d stop and pet every dog we passed. I’d take him to the park to teach him how to throw a baseball, but all he did was look at the birds, chase butterflies. He wanted to be a writer. He studied literature in college.

  “As for Christina—you couldn’t imagine a lovelier little girl. Always wanting to help out with the chores, with her brother. Interested in everything. And so much energy.”

  Mick watches as Nunzio’s eyes get a faraway look in them.

  “And then she grew up,” Mick says.

  Nunzio nods but doesn’t answer.

  “Maybe you need to give her some space to be her own person.”

  “‘Be her own person,’ says the father of the nine-year-old girl. Wait until you’re the father of the nineteen-year-old girl.”

  Mick’s heart skips a beat. He doesn’t like that Nunzio knows how old Gabby is.

  What else does he know?

  “You can’t control her forever.”

  “Maybe not. But I can protect her. Or try to. Isn’t that my first duty as her father? To protect her? Isn’t that your first duty to Gabrielle?”

  Hearing his daughter’s name rolling off the murderer’s tongue brings Mick’s blood to a sudden boil. “If the reason you went to that warehouse was to protect your daughter, you really fucked up. No disrespect.”

  Nunzio’s eyes widen momentarily.

  “You keep talking to me like that, counselor, and you’ll find out what it means to fuck up.”

  Back in his cell, Nunzio lifts the picture of his daughter and stares at it. Christina was in fourth grade at the time. Her olive skin as smooth as silk. A smile that melted his heart. She’d sit in his lap when he came home from work, fall asleep to the TV. Such simpler times. Good times. When he and Rachel and Christina and Alexander still lived in the little row house in South Philly. Before he started to move up in the family. Before he met Uncle Ham and his business—his real business—took off and he bought the giant stone house on North Spring Mill Road in Villanova.

  He thinks back to his conversation with the lawyer. Stupid to have let his guard down like that . . . to wax nostalgic. But he saved it in the end by mentioning McFarland’s daughter’s name. That made the lawyer good and mad. And a little afraid, off-balance—the whole reason he’d ordered McFarland to come and see him.

  11

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, CONTINUED

  It’s 9:00 p.m. Frank Valiante sits behind his giant mahogany desk. He’s a big man, going 220 in the summer, 240 in the winter. Thick silver hair, black-framed glasses. He watches his second son, Angelo—a short, thin bundle of nerves—pace the floor of his office, hands waving in the air. Frank can’t help thinking how different the boy is from his older brother. Antonio was a thinker, a planner. The apple that didn’t fall far from the tree.

  The war with Nunzio and his crew is now a foregone conclusion. But it didn’t have to be that way. Sure, with Antonio moving in on Nunzio’s territory, there was inevitably going to be a problem between them. But the smart thing for Nunzio to have done would’ve been to approach him personally and try to work something out, divide things up. And Nunzio’s smart. Everyone knows that. All business.

  But this wasn’t business. This was Nunzio’s daughter. That’s the only explanation for his killing Tony. And he’d have probably gotten away with it—as far as the law was concerned—if the cops hadn’t shown up and caught him in the act.

  Then why did Nunzio call him from the warehouse, say what he said? Why strike the deal—suggesting their children should be off-limits—if he was going to break the promise as soon as he made it?

  None of it makes any sense. But it doesn’t matter. Nunzio’s a dead man. The only question is how soon Valiante will make that happen. For Angelo, it can’t come soon enough.

  “No more waiting,” says Angelo. “It’s been three weeks.”

  “I’m laying the plans.”

  “Tony would have hit back before he was even cold. He’s rolling in his grave, Pop.”

  He casts the boy the look, the one that tells him to shut up. “Listen to me. I’m working on getting someone into the jail to take out Nunzio. But it’s going to take some time, and it’s got to be the right guy. Remember, Philly’s still Nunzio’s backyard. He’s sure to have people inside that prison. We don’t do this right, he’ll get tipped off.”

  “What about his family? Starting with the daughter? I want her to die slow. She set Tony up, I’m sure of it.”

  Frank nods. It’s as good an explanation as any. He has no idea how Tony came to be mixed up with Nunzio’s daughter. What the hell was he thinking?

  “The time comes, you can take care of her yourself.”

  “Damn right, I will. And that Jew-bitch wife of his. I’ll fuck them both before I gouge their eyes out and slit their thro
ats.”

  “In the meantime,” the older man says, “I want to start in on his crew. I’m going to take out as many of them as I can. Starting with his gorilla, Giacobetti. That’ll send a message.”

  Angelo nods but doesn’t seem quite as sure.

  “And still no word from Sabatino and the others?” Valiante asks, referring to Antonio’s driver and bodyguards.

  “They gotta be dead.”

  “Or he turned them.”

  “No way. Tony handpicked those guys. Sabatino grew up with us.”

  “Then how do you explain the cops found no evidence of a struggle? They’re as loyal as you say, there’d have been a fight.”

  “I don’t know, Pop. I’m pulling my hair out.” He stops pacing for a moment. “If Nunzio walks, I swear I’ll go out of my mind.”

  “How could he walk? The cops caught him dead to rights.”

  “I heard some things about his lawyer.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he got some millionaire off for killing his girlfriend. The cops caught him in the act, too. But this lawyer, he put his own wife on the stand with some cock-and-bull story, and the case just went away.”

  “What do you mean it went away?”

  “The DA dismissed the charges.”

  “Sounds like the fix was in.”

  “We can’t let that happen with Nunzio.”

  “Get me more on the lawyer. He’s that good, maybe we add him to our list.”

  “I got no problem with that.”

  “I gotta make some calls,” he says, signaling it’s time for Angelo to leave his office.

  He watches his son turn to go, then shouts after him, “Hey! When you kill Nunzio’s bitches, I want it on video. I’ll smuggle it into the jail, get it in front of Nunzio. I want him to see how they die.”

  12

  THURSDAY, MAY 2

  Mick is in his office, buried to his shoulders in suppression motions. He’ll spend all afternoon and most of the next day in hearings, trying to persuade wary judges to exclude clearly relevant and damning evidence gathered by police because it was taken in an unconstitutional manner. A criminal-defense attorney expends as much effort safeguarding procedural fairness—keeping the other side honest—as working to keep defendants from imprisonment. Indeed, many of his clients have committed the crimes they’re charged with. Admittedly, seeking to exclude relevant evidence improperly secured by the police can cause substantive injustice. But the larger gain—protecting everyone’s right to a fair trial—is, in Mick’s eyes, worth the price.