A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal)

by William L. Myers Jr.

  “Reason I ask is I had an interesting phone call today,” Tredesco says, keeping close behind him. “From a US attorney, name of Martin Brenner?”

  He stops and turns.

  Tredesco smiles. “Got your attention.”

  “You’re aware that your boss Pagano doesn’t want the feds anywhere near this case.”

  “No shit. Nunzio’s conviction is his ticket to the DA’s desk. Least, that’s what I’m thinking.”

  “What did Brenner want?”

  “That’s the funny thing. He wasn’t real clear about it. He started out by saying he was looking for cooperation between the police and his office. Then he said something about convening a grand jury. Then he brought you up. Asked me all about you. What kind of lawyer you were, what kind of guy.”

  “What did he say about the grand jury, exactly? Is he going in that direction for sure?”

  “You know, if Johnny G. and Christina came in, gave me statements, he might see no need for a grand jury.”

  “This is getting tiresome.”

  “I told him you were a good lawyer. Great, even. I didn’t answer about what kind of person you were.”

  Mick turns to leave.

  “Then he asked me about how you and Susan got along.”

  He turns back. “What? What did he ask?”

  “He wanted to know, do you see eye to eye? Or are you like the ’74 Oakland A’s, always winning but cats and dogs in the locker room?”

  Mick remembers Angie telling him that Brenner called the office yesterday, asking for Susan.

  So he’s trying to drive a wedge between us? Go behind my back and get Susan to talk to Nunzio about joining up with the feds?

  But why? Brenner has to know that Nunzio will never turn state’s evidence against his New York boss. Then he thinks about Uncle Ham and Nunzio’s role in HML. If Nunzio’s real game is shipping contraband internationally, as the reporter Haltzman claimed, maybe he would be willing to sell out the “little boys fighting in the backyard,” as Rachel called them.

  “You need to tell Pagano about the call,” Mick says, turning away. “Have him fight Brenner on this.”

  “Talk about cats and dogs,” Tredesco calls after him.

  The detective’s remark is the last thing he hears before he exits the building.

  Out on Filbert Street, walking toward Broad, he dials the office.

  “It’s me,” he says when Angie picks up. He’d asked her to get Brenner on the phone yesterday, but she’d told him she couldn’t get past his voice mail. “Listen. That federal prosecutor who called yesterday. Brenner. If he calls—”

  “Oh, we’re way past calls. He’s here now. With Susan. In her office. I don’t think it’s going well.”

  “I’ll be there in three minutes,” he says, picking up his pace.

  “What the hell, Brenner?” he says, throwing open the door to Susan’s office. Brenner is sitting in front of Susan’s desk. Susan is standing behind it, her arms crossed.

  Brenner turns and smiles. “Whoa, cowboy.”

  “I’m done,” Susan says, walking from behind her desk and past Mick. In the doorway, she turns toward Mick. “You talk to him.”

  She leaves, and he closes the door behind her.

  “What’s going on?” Mick demands. “I’ve made my client’s position very clear. He’s not cooperating. Period. That’s number one. Number two is that this is my case, not Susan’s. Anything that has to do with Nunzio goes through me, not her. You get that?”

  Brenner stands, the smile gone. They face off. Brenner is taller than Mick, and strongly built. He moves into Mick’s space, pressing his physical advantage.

  “Hey, Mick. I don’t tell you how to do your job, you don’t tell me how to do mine.”

  “You’re crossing a line,” Mick says, not backing away.

  “A funny thing for someone with your reputation to say.”

  He feels the heat rising in his face. “And why were you asking a police detective about me? And my partner?”

  “You don’t do recon on your opponents?”

  “We’re not opponents, Brenner. You’re not in the case, remember?”

  “If that’s what you think, you’re not paying attention.”

  “You need to leave. Now.”

  Brenner’s mouth smiles, but his blue eyes are cold. He walks to the door, then turns. “When the roof comes down on your client’s head, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Mick follows the prosecutor down the hall to the reception area. He opens the door and waves Brenner out. Halfway through the doorway, Brenner stops.

  “Tell Susan I’ll see her around.”

  It’s close to 7:00 p.m. when Mick makes the turn from Kelly Drive to the Falls River Bridge, the halfway point of his run. After the bridge, he’ll head east on Martin Luther King, past the Museum of Art onto Ben Franklin Parkway to Sixteenth Street. Eleven miles, round-trip. When the weather’s good, he does the run two times a week. More if he’s stressed out.

  The day began badly—the encounter with Tredesco followed immediately by his run-in with Martin Brenner. And when he found Susan in the small conference room, things didn’t go well with her, either.

  “You said Brenner was relentless,” he said, taking a seat at the conference table. “But this is something else.”

  “You’re blaming me because he’s acting like an asshole?”

  The sharpness in her voice took him aback.

  “Hey, I’m not blaming you for anything. You’re not the bad guy here. But neither am I. I didn’t invite Brenner to bring you into the Nunzio case.”

  “I want nothing to do with that case, or him.”

  He took a breath, tried to project calm. “I heard your father’s still giving you a hard time.”

  “He’s the least of my worries.”

  “Uh-huh. You ready to talk about whatever it is that’s the worst of your worries?”

  “Did I ask for your help, Mick?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I can handle it. I told you I could handle it, and I will.”

  With that, she stood and left the room.

  Powered by sheer stress and anxiety, he races through the last five and a half miles and makes it back to the firm in thirty-five minutes. He cools his face, wipes off the sweat in the bathroom, then heads for his office and places a call. It’s been a week and a half since he asked Tommy to look into Susan’s boyfriend, the soccer player. He’s seen Susan flustered before. It usually turned out to have something to do with some guy she was seeing. Tommy hasn’t gotten back to him with any news, which must mean that his brother hasn’t learned anything from Romero.

  “Come on, Tommy,” he says as the phone rings. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

  28

  FRIDAY, JUNE 7

  Mick is in his office just before lunch when Angie rings through.

  “Rachel Nunzio’s on the phone for you. She sounds upset.”

  “I’ll take it.” He takes a deep breath, then picks up the receiver.

  “We have a problem,” she says. “A United States attorney just showed up at my home. He brought a subpoena. You need to get over here.” She gives him an address on North Spring Mill Road in Villanova; then the line goes dead.

  Angie was right. Rachel Nunzio is upset. Her sharp tone was a far cry from the air of calm nonchalance she affected at his office and at the lodge. Having a federal prosecutor on your doorstep serving subpoenas tends to have that effect on people.

  Forty-five minutes later, he pulls his car onto a cobblestone driveway guarded by a black wrought-iron gate hung on two stone columns. He sees that the same fencing surrounds the entire perimeter of the front yard, which looks to be at least three acres. He’s about to get out of the car and look for an intercom when the gate swings open on its own. The smooth driveway curves first to the right, then to the left, passing a stone wall backed by trees that hide the front of the house from anyone who might want to see it from the ro
ad. He stops beyond the wall and walks across a red-and-white brick patio that stretches the length of the house. The house itself is three stories of Old World stone topped by a red slate roof.

  He rings the bell beside the ten-foot front door and is greeted by a middle-aged Hispanic woman in a maid’s uniform, who directs him to follow her. She leads him through a marble foyer, down a long hall past rooms of rich, dark wood paneling, and stops before an arched doorway.

  “Please make yourself at home,” she says, extending her arm.

  He passes through the doorway as she turns and walks away. The living room looks like pictures he’s seen of European castles—almost large enough to accommodate a full-court basketball game; the floor covered by giant, plush Oriental rugs; the walls hung with tapestries and oil paintings. The space is filled with couches and high-backed chairs, giant coffee tables decorated with books and keepsakes, desks, and a game table. Unlike the rooms in Old World estate homes, however, this one doesn’t feel heavy and worn, because the furniture is modern, all beiges and whites. The paintings are splashes of boldly colored paint—abstract expressionist and cubist works. Even the silk rugs are bright. The space is flooded with light from the floor-to-ceiling windows stretching the length of the back wall.

  In the center of the wall adjacent to the hallway is a large white-marble fireplace, and he walks over to it. The mantel is covered with photographs. Jimmy and Rachel on their wedding day. Jimmy on a golf course with a group of men. Christina’s college graduation picture, and an identical photograph of a young man, handsome and smiling in his cap and gown. Alexander, the son who perished in the train crash two years earlier. He thinks back to the criminal case that followed the crash, and Jimmy Nunzio’s quest for vengeance against those responsible—a quest that imperiled both Vaughn and his cousin Eddy.

  He leans into the mantel, studies a series of older photographs on the left-hand side. Some he doesn’t recognize, though he can see Hiram Marx in the face of a younger man. In the back, he spots a photograph of Rachel Nunzio in an old-fashioned chorus girl’s dancing costume. But, of course, he realizes, it isn’t Rachel. It’s her grandmother, Jade. They could be twins, they look so much alike: the same olive skin, full lips, dark hair, and facial structure. It’s the eyes that distinguish them. Jade’s eyes smile, giving off a devilish gleam, but it is lighthearted, light-spirited. The luminosity in Rachel’s eyes is darker, more malevolent than mischievous.

  “The story goes that my grandfather fell for her the instant he first spotted her onstage.”

  He turns to find Rachel Nunzio behind him.

  “Do you believe in love at first sight, Mick?”

  He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. His mind is brought to a halt by the madness of talking about love with someone like Rachel Nunzio.

  “I wonder if that’s what happened with Christina,” she continues. “She hasn’t opened up to me about Antonio yet. Maybe she never will. Perhaps she holds me to blame as much as she does my husband for what befell her lover.”

  “Befell? That’s an interesting way to put it.”

  “Follow me,” she says, ignoring him.

  She leads him out of the room and down the hall to a back door that opens onto a courtyard complex adorned with plantings and trimmed hedges of various designs. He follows her through a second rear courtyard into a third area, where a large swimming pool is set into a spacious flagstone patio. On the other side of the pool, set back from it, are three canopied, double-chaise pool beds of the type he’s seen at luxury hotels.

  On the near side of the pool are tables and chairs. Rachel leads him to the farthest table, where Christina Nunzio sits with Hiram Marx. Johnny Giacobetti’s mastiffs are lounging nearby, in the sun.

  “Mick, you remember my uncle,” Rachel says as Uncle Ham, now standing, extends his hand.

  “Of course,” he says, shaking hands with the old man. He greets Christina, and they all sit.

  “Would you like some iced tea?” Christina asks, pouring.

  He accepts the glass and takes a sip. “It’s very good.”

  “I called Jimmy, told him what’s going on,” Rachel says.

  Mick nods.

  “He doesn’t like it. And neither do I.”

  Rachel slides the subpoena across the table, along with two business cards. He reaches for the cards and sees that one is Martin Brenner’s. The other belongs to an FBI special agent. Brenner probably brought the agent as a prop to increase the intimidation factor. Mick has seen the tactic before.

  “Brenner did all the talking,” Rachel says.

  He nods. “What did Brenner say, exactly?”

  “He said he was hauling Christina in front of a grand jury.”

  He turns to Christina and opens his mouth to address her. Before he gets the chance, Rachel turns to Christina herself.

  “Christina,” Rachel says, “I think this would be a good time for you to leave us.”

  Mick’s on his feet as well. “You must be kidding. Your daughter is a material witness to what happened that night. I need to talk with her, find out what she would say if she were called to the stand. Or before a grand jury.”

  Her jaw clenched, Rachel says. “It’s not time for you to know yet.”

  “We’re two weeks from trial! And there’s no telling how soon Brenner will put her before the grand jury.”

  “There’s no need to raise our voices.” Hiram Marx’s own voice is quiet, but hard and unyielding as stone.

  Mick sits again and exhales. Christina takes that as her cue to leave, and he watches her make her way past the pool through a stone archway leading toward the house. The hounds follow her.

  “Mrs. Nunzio, I mean no disrespect. But if I’m going to have any chance of helping your husband at trial, someone’s got to let me in on whatever story you all are planning on having me sell. And I have to know that story before Brenner tosses Christina to his own wolves.”

  In his peripheral vision, he sees Hiram smile at his use of the word “story.”

  “I don’t even know who to call to testify on our behalf. Is your husband going to allow me to call Christina? Giacobetti? Is he hiding some other witness in his back pocket?”

  “Why would you think there’s another witness?” Hiram asks.

  “Well, given that your . . . nephew-in-law refuses to plead, I have to think he has reason to believe he’s going to win a verdict of not guilty. The only way that’s going to happen is if he has an ace in the hole I don’t know about.”

  A sliver of a smile spreads slowly across the old man’s bloodless lips again. “That would make sense.”

  “So?”

  “It’s not time, Mr. McFarland,” Rachel Nunzio repeats. With that, she stands. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  He watches her disappear through the stone archway, then turns toward Hiram Marx. They lock eyes, and he keeps his face expressionless, as does the old man. He wonders how he should play this, and decides to go on the offensive, see if he can rattle Marx.

  “So,” he says, “tell me about HML.”

  The old man’s eyes widen, then narrow, and he presses his thin lips together. “Is it normal for a defense attorney to research his own client? Shouldn’t you be focusing your efforts on the prosecution?”

  “Nothing about this case is normal. And I already know the prosecution’s take on the case, and what they intend to do about it.”

  “And what exactly is the prosecution’s plan?”

  “To take the case to trial and get a guilty verdict.”

  The old man’s mouth twists into a smile, though his eyes remain cold. “You should have more faith in yourself, Mr. McFarland. My nephew has total confidence in you.”

  “Your nephew is playing me. I just haven’t figured out how yet.”

  Hiram Marx takes a long sip of iced tea. “Cash, gold, weapons, and people.”

  “What?”

  “In reverse order of importance, those are HML’s most profitable payloads.”r />
  He considers this. “You’re telling me that shipping people is your largest cash cow.”

  “Government leaders, corporate executives, Middle Eastern princes . . . It’s amazing how powerful men so often feel compelled to be somewhere they’re not supposed to be.” He shakes his head, leans forward. “You want to know who are the worst? United States senators.”

  “And how much do you charge a senator?”

  “Oh, the plane ride is free. Down the line, of course . . .”

  “You blackmail them.”

  “We remind them how important their anonymity is. And we ask a favor.”

  “Is that why the US Attorney’s Office in New York didn’t move against your nephew?”

  He shrugs, smiles.

  “Couldn’t you put the same pressure on our Pennsylvania senators to derail Martin Brenner?”

  “I didn’t say all senators availed themselves of our services.”

  They sit quietly for a few moments, both men swirling the ice in their glasses.

  There’s so much he wants to ask the old man about the Nunzios. What comes out is, “The story about Jimmy killing a man when he was twelve . . . is it true?”

  “His bar mitzvah.” The old man smiles, and this time it’s genuine.

  “You seriously call it that?”

  “Just a joke. Jimmy doesn’t like when I say it. He’s a good Catholic, you know.”

  The old man waves away the topic and asks Mick why Brenner’s so hot on the case.

  “He wants your nephew to turn on his boss. That would be a huge feather in his cap. So he threatens Rachel with a grand jury subpoena, trying to get her to panic, to persuade Jimmy to cooperate.”

  “Rachel, panic?” He chuckles.

  “She seemed pretty worried to me.”

  He leans forward. “She has no reason to worry. She knows that Jimmy and I would never let any harm come to her.”

  “Uh-huh. Speaking of which, let’s talk about the lodge and what happened to Valiante’s crew.”

  “Let’s not.”

  “The six white vans I saw parked in the lot. Were those yours? HML’s?”

  “Those, and the other six you didn’t see.” Hiram Marx stands. “Thank you for coming, Mr. McFarland. I’ll walk you out.”