A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal)

by William L. Myers Jr.

  Still, who can ever tell what’s going on inside another person’s head? A professor Piper had in college used to joke that everyone has two sides: the outside and the dark side. She saw her own dark side a few years back, learned what she was capable of when Jennifer Yamura was killed and David Hanson was tried for her murder. She learned what Mick was capable of, too. It still makes her shudder just to think of it. And it scares the hell out of her that Jimmy Nunzio seems to know the ins and outs of the Hanson case. That psychopath could destroy everything if he really looked into it, unearthed the crimes covered over by Mick’s legal maneuvering. Mick says that’s one of the reasons he’s intent on learning as much as he can about the mobster; he might need something to hang over Nunzio’s head.

  How many secrets does a person end up hiding over a lifetime?

  “You want me to move the trial date to when?” The Honorable Gene Braverman is a big man with thick dark hair and a five-o’clock shadow that typically makes its appearance just after breakfast. He’s reputed to smoke five cigars a day, and his voice sounds like gravel.

  Under normal circumstances, no defense attorney would agree to rushing the date of a murder trial, because they’d want as much time as possible to prepare and investigate. Mick ran Pagano’s request by Nunzio, expecting the capo to reject being hurried to trial. But his client surprised him by agreeing—more than agreeing. He pushed for it.

  Mick immediately pushed back, telling Nunzio that the cards were stacked against him, that his only hope was the sudden appearance of some sort of dramatic and favorable evidence, something no one could envision. Which is why it was better to delay the trial as long as possible. Nunzio simply shook his head and ordered Mick to ask the court to move up the date. Mick agreed only after Nunzio signed a written approval.

  Consequently, Pagano and Mick broached the issue with Braverman, the homicide supervising judge.

  “To June seventeenth, a little more than a month from now,” Max Pagano responds.

  The judge looks at Mick.

  “The defense is in agreement,” Mick says.

  “What, you’re both so confident you’re going to win the race you can’t wait to get your horse to the track?”

  “We have all the evidence we need to move forward,” Pagano says.

  “The sooner the case is tried, the sooner Mr. Nunzio can rejoin his family and move forward with his life,” Mick says.

  Braverman looks from one to the other. “I want to see both of you in chambers. Ten minutes.” He bangs the gavel and leaves the bench.

  Mick glances at Pagano, then back into the gallery. The courtroom is unusually crowded for a motion hearing. Pagano must’ve leaked that something big was going to happen with the Nunzio case.

  Ten minutes later, Mick is sitting next to Pagano in front of Braverman’s desk. The judge’s chambers are fitted out with modern office furniture and are bathed in bright light, thanks to two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows. To Mick, the space seems ill-suited to Braverman, who looks like he belongs in a dark, smoke-filled study.

  “What’s really going on here?”

  Pagano leans forward. “It’s like we said, Your Honor—”

  “Cut the crap, Pagano. I smell gamesmanship.”

  Pagano leans back, shrugs.

  “Let me guess: The DA is hungry for the conviction. He wants it to boost his poll numbers if you win, but he wants the verdict soon in case you lose, to give himself time to recover by November.”

  “We can’t lose this case, Judge. Nutzo was caught with the knife in his hand.”

  “I know the facts.” He looks to Mick. “Your turn.”

  “The DA’s afraid Valiante’s going to get to Nunzio before the trial.”

  “Get to him? You mean kill him in jail?”

  Mick nods.

  “I see. And you’re afraid of the same thing, so you want the trial moved up to get your client out before that can happen?”

  “Something like that,” Mick says.

  “I think you’re both nuts. You’ve only had a month to build your case,” he says to Pagano. “And”—turning to Mick—“without commenting on the merits, your client has about as much a chance of walking as a catfish.”

  “We don’t see it that way, Your Honor,” Mick says.

  The judge looks from Mick to Pagano and nods. “All right. You two are so eager for your day in court, I’ll advance the trial to June seventeenth. But hear me on this,” he adds, leaning forward, “once I enter my order, that’s it. I’m not changing the date again unless somebody dies. And there’s only one somebody I’m talking about here. You understand me, Mr. Pagano? Mr. McFarland? Good. Let’s go back to the courtroom, and I’ll make this official.”

  Back on the bench, Judge Braverman rules on the motion, and the reporters all start tapping the new trial date into their iPhones. Mick isn’t even out of the courtroom when his phone alerts him with the Philly.com news headline: RUSH TO JUDGMENT.

  Mick waits for the crowd to clear, then walks into the elevator. Pagano, right behind him, waits for the doors to close. Then he turns to him.

  “Oh, look. It’s almost noon. My associate is down at the clerk’s office, filing the notice that we’ll be seeking the death penalty.”

  Mick steps back. “You son of a bitch.”

  Pagano smiles. “Nunzio is going to be killed in jail. But it won’t be by a shiv in county lockup. It’ll be upstate, by lethal injection.”

  The elevator doors open, and Mick hangs back until Pagano leaves. The last thing he wants is to be the one to tell Jimmy Nutzo that the state is planning on killing him.

  Piper spots Darlene as soon as she and Susan enter the large visitors’ room. Darlene stands, and Piper sees a light in her eyes that wasn’t there the first time they met. Darlene walks toward them, arms extended, and gives each a hug. Piper glances at Susan and sees that even she’s moved by Darlene’s open display of affection.

  “Did you get my letters?” Darlene asks.

  “Yes, we did. We both did,” Piper says. “We were very touched.”

  “I meant every word.” Darlene’s eyes tear up. “The two of you have literally changed my life. I feel like my faith in people has been restored.”

  Piper glances at Susan, who says, “Let’s sit down.”

  They position themselves around the small, round table, and Piper says, “The reason we wanted to meet is to go over some things our investigator learned—”

  “You found Lois?”

  “Not yet,” Piper says, seeing some of the light go out of Darlene’s eyes, “but we’re working on it. We’ll find her,” she adds, touching Darlene’s hand.

  Piper tells Darlene what Tommy learned about the poker games at Elwood Stumpf’s place, including that her father was there the night he was killed.

  “I knew he was at the card game. It was a regular thing. He went about once a month.”

  “So did a lot of the other locals,” Piper says, watching Darlene closely. “Like Tim Powell, who’s now a real estate agent, and Buck Forney, who owns the local Chrysler dealership.”

  At the mention of Buck and the dealership, Darlene’s eyes narrow slightly. Piper takes note of it and waits for Darlene to say something, but she doesn’t. Piper looks at Susan, who’s looking back at her. They’re both thinking, Not a good sign.

  “We also learned that Buck’s son, Dale, was a regular at the poker games, but he wasn’t there that night.”

  Darlene stiffens at the mention of Dale’s name but, again, offers nothing.

  Piper exhales. “Darlene, we know about you and Dale—”

  Darlene’s eyes widen.

  “There was something going on between you.”

  “Were you with Dale the night your father was killed, instead of by yourself in some field?” asks Susan.

  “Our investigator asked Dale, but he wouldn’t answer,” Piper adds.

  Darlene deflates. She sits still, with her eyes closed, for what seems to Piper a very long ti
me.

  “It was over between us by then. Not that there was much to begin with,” Darlene says. “Can I have a Pepsi?”

  Susan fetches a can from the vending machine.

  Darlene takes a sip, then sets down the can. “I wanted to get away, leave home for good, but I didn’t have any money. So I took a part-time job at the dealership, at the customer-service desk. It was just three days a week. I saw an ad for it in the paper. Of course, Dale worked there, too.” She pauses and takes another sip. “He was very nice. He always said nice things to me. Like that my eyes were pretty, I had a nice smile. His father said things, too, but he creeped me out.”

  “Did you start dating?” Susan asks.

  Darlene laughs—bitterly, it seems to Piper.

  “We never made it to actual dating. We spent some time together. He took me to a movie once, on a night I knew my father wouldn’t be home. He’d have freaked out if he knew I was with a boy.”

  “But he approved of you having a job?” asks Susan.

  “He thought I was bringing all the money home for the family. But I lied to him about how much I was making, and I kept some for myself. My bus money, I called it.”

  “Why didn’t things go further between you and Dale?” Piper asks, though she’s sure she knows why.

  Darlene shakes her head. “I wasn’t ready. I thought I was. But he went to kiss me one time . . . I turned away, even though I wanted him to kiss me. I knew then that I needed more time. He was very kind about it, told me he was patient. He said to let him know if I ever wanted to go out with him.” Darlene looks at her lap, then up at Piper. “Is this bad? Any of it?”

  “No,” Piper says. “But if you had been with Dale at the time of the murder, well, of course, that would be an alibi.”

  They sit quietly for a moment, and Piper sees Susan studying Darlene.

  “Did you tell Dale about what your father was doing to you?” Susan asks.

  “God, no! I didn’t tell anyone. Did Dale say I did?”

  “No,” Piper says. She leaves out that Dale told Tommy that Darlene was messed up.

  “If you find Lois, I won’t need another alibi witness,” Darlene says. “Right?”

  “We’ll have to see what she has to say,” Susan says.

  Darlene nods and gets a faraway look in her eyes. Piper can see the hope draining out of her, and it breaks her heart.

  On the way back, the car is quiet until Susan says, “She’s lying.”

  “About what?” Piper asks.

  “I don’t know. But she’s holding something back.”

  Piper thinks for a minute.

  “When she was talking about Dale Forney, saying how kind he was, she sounded like she was still sweet on him. Do you think she could be protecting him?”

  Susan considers this. “If you’re asking whether I think Dale was involved in the murder and she’s helping to cover it up . . . no. She might still have feelings for him, but I can’t imagine she’d keep herself locked up for something a casual date did. Not now, and not back then, either.”

  “She was pretty screwed up,” Piper says. “Her father was a monster to her. Dale was kind. Maybe he did know what was going on, and he did it to save her.”

  “But she didn’t tell Dale what her father was doing to her,” Susan says. “She and Dale both said so.”

  “Maybe he found out on his own.”

  “I think you’re grasping at straws,” says Susan. “You want to believe she’s innocent. I get that. So do I. But we have to go where the evidence takes us.”

  Piper gives Susan a curt nod. “We have to go where Lois Beal is.”

  18

  MONDAY, MAY 20

  It is just before 8:00 a.m., and Mick is in his office, editing an appellate brief. The phone rings, but Angie isn’t in yet to pick it up. The caller ID shows that the call is local, from a 215 area code. The brief is due today, and he hates being interrupted when he’s concentrating. But the call could be from a panicked client. He lifts the receiver.

  “Mick? Martin Brenner. Have you reconsidered my offer to bring Nunzio in from the cold?”

  He sighs. “Why are you wasting my time?”

  “Let me have an hour alone with him.”

  “You must be joking.”

  “I’m serious as hell about this. Nunzio could be the key to bringing down the whole Giansante crime family.”

  “I’m going to hang up now, and—”

  “Don’t test me!”

  Mick is startled by the heat in Brenner’s voice. His own hackles rise, and he growls, “Don’t you test me. Nunzio’s not going to talk to you. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”

  “Then I’ll bring in his daughter and that freak Giacobetti and make them tell me what went down in the warehouse.”

  “They don’t have to talk to you, and you know it.”

  “They will if I haul them before a grand jury.”

  Mick’s heart races. Brenner could convene a grand jury and subpoena Christina and Johnny G. to testify. They’d be legally obligated to answer his questions, or face contempt charges and possible imprisonment. And no matter what they did or didn’t do, he could charge them as co-conspirators or accessories after the fact. This is the main reason Mick has wanted Giacobetti to stay underground—at least until Nunzio is ready to tell him what Giacobetti’s role will be in Nunzio’s endgame.

  “That has you thinking, doesn’t it?”

  “Martin, you have to know that neither Nunzio’s daughter nor his enforcer will turn on him, no matter what you do. They’re hardwired not to do that. And as for Christina . . . don’t you think she’s suffered enough?”

  He hears Brenner chuckle on the other end. “What I think is that our little Queen of Clubs would sober up at the thought of spending a year in jail.”

  They go around and around, neither budging, until Mick suddenly hangs up. He sits for a minute, then places a call to Max Pagano. He asks Pagano if Brenner is still pressuring him about taking over the Nunzio case.

  “He hounded me for a while,” Pagano says. “But I haven’t heard from him in a couple weeks. I guess he got tired of hearing me describe all the sex acts I’d engage in with his mother and sisters if he kept it up.”

  Mick shakes his head.

  Pagano’s a piece of work.

  “What I don’t get is why the feds are coming at us out of Philadelphia instead of New York on this.”

  He senses Pagano thinking, trying to decide what to say.

  “Look, I made some calls about that myself,” Pagano says. “First, I called a friend at the US Attorney’s Office in Philly. Someone very high up. He told me they give Brenner a lot of leeway because he gets results. He’s undertaken some prosecutions everyone thought were long shots and won big. You remember those congressmen who got sent up a couple years ago? And the bigwigs at GSK? That was all Brenner’s work. I called another friend in the Southern District of New York who told me that when Nunzio was first arrested, there was a lot of buzz about trying to bring him in, use him against Moretti or some of Moretti’s other underbosses. But the word came down from on high to nix it.”

  “On high?”

  “Washington.”

  Mick does a double take. “DC?”

  “No, fucking Seattle.”

  Mick hears the line go dead. He sits back in his chair, his head spinning with questions. Who was the Justice Department protecting by stopping the effort to turn Nunzio? Nunzio? His boss, Moretti? But why protect them? And if Washington quashed the New York investigation, why was Brenner being allowed to move forward in Philadelphia? It’s one thing to accord leeway to a good prosecutor. Another thing entirely to disregard the attorney general.

  Mick is still stewing a half hour later when Angie appears in his doorway.

  “We have a problem,” she says.

  “Oh?”

  “I just got a call from PBI,” she says, referring to the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, an organization that holds continuing-education c
lasses for attorneys. Most of the speakers are lawyers brought in to discuss topics in their areas of expertise. Susan speaks on panels three or four times a year on various issues related to criminal defense.

  Angie comes in and stands in front of Mick’s desk. “Susan’s panel for today is already on stage, but she’s nowhere to be found.”

  Mick is shocked. Susan enjoys the CLE presentations, and it’s a point of pride for her that she’s recognized as an authority among her peers. Susan is also hyper-responsible, the kind of person who would never fail to honor a commitment.

  “I’ll call her,” he says, lifting the phone. He dials her cell number, but the phone goes immediately to voice mail. He dials her apartment number and is treated to an endless dial tone.

  “What’s going on with her?” he says to Angie, though he thinks he knows. Piper told him about her conversation with Susan on the way to see Darlene Dowd, including how Susan shut Piper down when she asked how Susan was doing. And Susan’s claim that she needed to work things out for herself.

  “I’m going to her apartment. Call PBI back and cover for her. Say she’s sick as a dog. Hundred-and-three-degree fever. Shingles, meningitis, bubonic plague, whatever.”

  “How about I say the dog ate her homework?” Angie calls, but he’s already out the door.

  A few minutes later, Mick is in a cab headed for Old Town and Susan’s condo in the north building of Society Hill Towers. It takes him a full minute to persuade the scowling woman behind the front desk to buzz Susan’s apartment. It takes almost as long for Susan to answer. She’s not happy to learn that he is in the lobby. She reluctantly agrees to let him up.

  Susan answers her door in rumpled pajamas and turns away as soon as he’s inside. He follows her down the hall. He can’t believe what he sees when he enters the living room. The whole place looks like it’s been ransacked. The white leather sofa and chairs have all been ripped open, their stuffing pulled out. Her one original oil painting has been slashed, up and down, left and right. The top of her cherry desk has been carved up, the drawers pulled out, their contents strewn across the floor. On Susan’s glass-topped dining table are piles of smashed porcelain—the remains of her dishware. As with her desk, all the kitchen-cabinet drawers have been pulled out. He doesn’t ask about what’s been done in the bedroom.