A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal)

by William L. Myers Jr.

  Mick steps back, gives her time to gather herself, exactly as the script instructed.

  “What happened next?”

  “My father stood up and kind of stumbled backward. He was out of breath, and he bent over. I ran to Tony and sat down on the floor, and I pulled him to me. I couldn’t stop crying, shouting at my father. The next thing I knew, the police were there.”

  By this time, Mick has moved right up alongside the witness box. When Christina stops talking, he waits a moment, then reaches over and covers her hand with his own. He looks up at the judge.

  “Nothing further.”

  The judge waits for Mick to sit, then looks at the prosecution table. Before she even says his name, Pagano is on his feet, marching toward the witness box, his face contorted in anger.

  “So your father’s completely innocent, and it’s all your fault? That’s the story you’ve come up with?”

  “Objection!” Mick growls. “He’s harassing the witness.”

  “Ramp it down, Mr. Pagano,” the judge instructs.

  Pagano stands still, his chest heaving. He asks his next question through his teeth. “There wasn’t a mark on your father, do you know that?”

  She shakes her head.

  “No punch wounds or scratches or anything on the victim, either.”

  “They weren’t hitting each other. They were, like, wrestling.”

  Pagano attacks for another five minutes, but all he accomplishes is to make Christina look more and more pathetic and reveal himself as a heartless bully. Finally, exasperated, he turns his back on her and sits.

  “We’re going to take a break now,” the judge says. “I want everyone back in twenty minutes. The witness may leave the stand to use the restroom if she so desires.”

  Christina slowly rises, steps down from the witness stand, and walks out of the courtroom. No one moves until the courtroom door closes behind her.

  The deputies move up to take Nunzio back to his holding cell.

  “A minute, please, with my lawyer,” Nunzio tells them. They stand back.

  Mick knows that it’s not him Nunzio really wants to talk to; together they wait for Rachel Nunzio and Lauren Zito to pass through the bar and gather around the defense table.

  “Well?” Nunzio asks Zito.

  She looks down, slowly shakes her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “They didn’t buy it?” Nunzio asks.

  “Not to the point that you can stake the next twenty years on it.”

  Nunzio turns away from the jury-whisperer. Mick watches the mobster and his wife stare at each other for a long moment. Then, Nunzio nods and moves toward the deputies, who take him to his holding cell.

  When he’s gone, Lauren Zito says, “The jury may not have fallen for it, but it sure seems like he did.”

  Mick follows her gaze to Max Pagano, who paces back and forth in front of the prosecutor’s table.

  “I think he believes it went down just like Christina testified,” she says in a low voice. “I think he believes Jimmy killed Valiante in self-defense. It’s why he’s so pissed off. He knows he has to put Jimmy in jail—his career depends on it.”

  His eyes glued to Pagano, Mick says, “I don’t get it. What the hell is he seeing that we’re not seeing?”

  Pagano turns and sees McFarland staring at him. Then he strides out of the courtroom and takes the stairs down to the ninth floor, where he pulls out his cell phone. He dials Emlin Fellner’s cell number. When the district attorney answers, he lays it out.

  “We’re fucked.”

  “What?”

  “The daughter testified, and we lost the fucking jury. They believe Nunzio killed Valiante in self-defense. Worse yet, I think it’s true.” He explains Christina’s testimony, sensing Fellner’s panic rise by the minute on the other end of the phone. “I think he’s going to walk.”

  “Fuck that. I promised the whole city Nunzio was going to prison.”

  Pagano listens but doesn’t answer.

  “Get him to plead!”

  “He’ll never plead now. Not after what I just saw.”

  “He’ll plead to something! He’s facing the needle. Get it done!”

  Pagano hears the phone go dead. He stands for a long moment, then walks back up the stairs and enters the courtroom. McFarland is behind the bar now, standing with his hard-case brother and his associate, Coburn. He approaches them and looks at Mick.

  “Let’s talk.”

  Two hours later, the news of Nunzio’s plea to involuntary manslaughter sweeps the city. It’s the top story on the local midday news programs, both cable and network, and the lead on Philly.com, the internet site of the Inquirer and Daily News. Trying to jump out ahead of the story, a pale Emlin Fellner holds a press conference, declaring that the eighteen-to-twenty-four-month sentence Nunzio will likely get is “the victory over organized crime our city has been waiting for.” No one believes him, and his poll numbers drop precipitously.

  It’s 7:00 p.m. when Mick enters the Ranstead Room. It’s light outside, but the upscale, speakeasy-style bar is dark, and it takes his eyes a while to adjust. It’s early enough that the bar is almost empty, which adds to the sense that it’s a real hideaway. He makes his way to one of the red-chaired booths and waits.

  The courtroom thug enters at the same time the waiter brings Mick his tumbler of Macallan 18.

  “Whatever he’s having,” Pagano tells the waiter as he walks up, “bring me something better.”

  Mick takes a sip of the single-malt scotch and waits.

  “How did you know?” Pagano asks.

  “After we were done with the judge, I saw you glance back at Rachel and Lauren, and something passed between the three of you. Then it hit me. You were Nunzio’s ace. The whole thing with the jury consultant was a feint. Well, not a complete feint. The Nunzios hired Zito to tell them whether Christina’s story worked with the jury. If it did—if they were certain it did—Jimmy would take the verdict. But if they weren’t sure the jury bought it, you were in the wings, ready to tell Fellner you’d lost the jury, that the case was about to crash and burn. He’d panic and tell you to take a plea, any plea, that would get Jimmy jail time.” Mick takes a sip. “Did I get it right?”

  “Pretty close.” Pagano smiles. “How’d you like my act on cross?”

  “It was good. You seemed crazy, pissed off, scared. Lauren Zito said it looked like you actually believed Christina was telling the truth.” He pauses. “I did some checking on you after the trial. You grew up in South Philly, same as Nunzio and Zito. But he’s ten years older than you, and she’s five. Any chance you knew them growing up?”

  “I knew of Nunzio, of course.” He smiles. “As for Lauren, she was the best babysitter I ever had. She let me sip my old man’s booze. Even showed me her tits sometimes. All I had to do was keep quiet about her having her boyfriend over. Man, those two would screw for hours.”

  Mick shakes his head. “The story they finally came up with . . . ?”

  “Took a lot of work, from what I understand. Lauren and Rachel flew Christina to the West Coast, where no one knows about the case. Lauren ran a bunch of mock juries, had Christina up on the stand selling a bunch of different stories. There was a jealous-Giacobetti tale, and a version where Valiante set it all up as a trap for Nunzio. But the story that sold the best was the one you heard today: naïve Christina sues for peace.”

  “Meanwhile, the real story—that Nunzio used his daughter to lure Valiante into a trap—gets buried.”

  Pagano shrugs.

  Mick shakes his head. “Christina . . .”

  “I feel bad for her. I really do. Still . . .”

  “A pit of fucking snakes I fell into,” Mick says.

  “You walked into it. Willingly. How much did the Nunzios lay out? A hundred K? Two hundred?”

  “Nowhere near enough.”

  The waiter brings Pagano a glass of high-end scotch, and he takes a long swallow.

  “Do the Nunzios know you figured
it out?”

  “No,” Mick answers. “And I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell them.”

  “That might be a problem. I just tendered my resignation to the DA. I’m one of Jimmy’s lawyers now. I’ll be on the QT about it for a while, of course.”

  “So that’s what it was about for you? Money?”

  “I have three daughters. Each one smarter than the next. You know what college costs these days?”

  Mick stares at him.

  Pagano takes another sip. Then: “It’s been what, ten years since you switched sides, sold your soul?”

  “I didn’t lose my soul when I left the DA’s office,” Mick answers.

  That came later.

  They sit in silence until their glasses are empty. Mick tosses a fifty on the table and stands.

  “Be careful, Mick,” Pagano says, looking up at him.

  “You’re the one has to be careful. I’m done with the Nunzios.”

  Pagano smiles ruefully. “You’re never done.”

  Mick can see from the look in Pagano’s eyes that he knows the price he’s going to pay for his daughters’ education.

  41

  FRIDAY, JUNE 29

  Tommy sits on his screened-in porch, throwing back a Budweiser. A storm is blowing in from the west, and the skies are growing darker. Earlier that morning, he spoke with Mick. The Nunzio thing is weighing heavily on his brother. He can’t seem to get past what Jimmy Nunzio did to his own daughter. First subjecting her to the horror of Tony Valiante’s murder, then throwing her under the bus at trial.

  “He’s a monster, and I let myself become his stooge,” Mick said.

  “You were his lawyer, and you did your job. That’s all.”

  They went back and forth about it, but the call ended with Mick seeming to feel as bad as he had at the start.

  Fortunately, Susan and Piper are another story. The Darlene Dowd ordeal has helped bridge the divide that opened between Piper and Tommy as a result of the David Hanson fiasco. He came clean to her about the anger he harbored and apologized for being such a jerk.

  “It just got to the point for me that I didn’t know how to come back to you,” he told her. “Our friendship saved me when I was in prison and helped me rejoin the living once I got out, and I value it more than anything. I guess it’s a sad testament to me that I was willing to throw it away the first time it was tested.”

  He asked for her forgiveness, and Piper granted it without hesitation.

  He thinks about calling her now, but he knows she’s on her way to the women’s prison in Muncy with Susan, and that they probably need time together to talk about that mess. He wonders whether, as part of it, Susan will open up to Piper about her own issues, much as she did with Tommy in her apartment the night he and Mick confronted Martin Brenner.

  Susan’s life was defined by her father’s abandonment when she was young. It left her feeling unprotected and unsafe, even as she despised her father’s weakness. Apparently, Susan compensated for this by seeking out alpha males in relationships, which resulted in a long series of self-involved lovers who had little interest in anything but themselves.

  They talked some more about it at the office, after the Darlene Dowd hearing. Susan told him about her decision to save Darlene even though she knew Darlene was guilty of killing her father. Even though it meant betraying her own principles by misleading the court.

  “It’s hard enough to do the right thing to save someone,” she told him. “It’s even harder to do the wrong thing to save them. It was for me, anyway.”

  “You certainly pay a high price for it,” he said.

  She waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. She didn’t press.

  He empties his beer and shakes his head, thinking about the terrible things he’s done for the people he loves. But maybe that’s the test of love: that you care so much for someone you’ll risk your very soul for them.

  About 170 miles northwest, Piper and Susan are sitting in Piper’s Range Rover, waiting for Darlene Dowd to walk through the gates of SCI Muncy. It’s pouring rain, and the wipers move noisily back and forth across the windshield.

  Piper shipped a duffel bag with a change of clothes to the prison earlier in the week so Darlene would have something decent to wear. On the way to the prison, she and Susan stopped at the Lycoming Mall and bought her some more clothes, along with toiletries and a few pieces of inexpensive jewelry.

  During their calls following the hearing, Piper offered to put Darlene up for a few weeks or more near Philadelphia, help her find a job, then an apartment. Darlene thanked her profusely but told Piper that she was going to make it on her own—all she wanted was a ride to the Greyhound bus station in Williamsport.

  “There she is,” Susan says.

  Piper gets out and runs to Darlene. She covers them both with her umbrella. They walk back to the car, and Piper starts the sixteen-mile trip to Williamsport.

  “The suitcase on the seat is for you,” Susan says. “Some more clothes and personal items.”

  Darlene thanks them and they make small talk, Piper and Susan telling Darlene she looks great, Darlene saying she’s been working hard to lose weight and is planning to join a gym when she settles down.

  After a while, she says, “I feel terrible about Lois—I mean, Megan.”

  Megan Corbett, a.k.a. Lois Beal, a.k.a. Terri Petrini will likely spend the rest of her life in prison. Alan Kane, the United States attorney for the Central District of California, is a Bush II law-and-order appointee who made it clear to Megan that unless she quickly pled to one count of felony murder, he would try her on two counts and a dozen other offenses as well. She gave in and will formally plead and be sentenced a few weeks hence.

  “I spoke with her by phone on Wednesday,” Piper tells Darlene. “She told me she’s at peace. She said for the first time in decades she feels like she’s not living life as an impostor. That she’s back to being Megan Corbett. That people can see her for who she is.”

  Darlene thinks this over, and they sit quietly for a few minutes. Then Piper pulls the car up to the bus-station underpass. All three get out. They hug, and Piper and Susan watch as Darlene turns away. She takes a couple of steps, then turns back.

  “It’s funny,” Darlene says. “Megan is happy to finally be herself. What I want is just the opposite. I want to go someplace where no one knows who I am. Where I can look into someone’s eyes and not see pity, or fear. Someplace where I can reinvent myself and leave Darlene Dowd and all of the rest of it behind me.”

  She thinks a minute, and it seems as if she’s going to say something more, but she doesn’t. Darlene Dowd simply turns, walks into the station, and disappears.

  42

  FRIDAY, JULY 18; WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10

  “I really don’t feel comfortable with this,” Piper says, glancing at Mick from the passenger seat. They’re in his car, driving south on I-476.

  “I don’t, either,” he says. “But I think we should just look and see what’s out there.”

  They are on their way to a small gun shop located in Prospect Park, about twenty miles south of Mick and Piper’s house in Wayne. Mick first brought up the idea of them arming themselves the week after the Nunzio trial. He was still unnerved by how easy it was for Nunzio’s goons to waltz into his house the night they forced Gabby and him to go to the lodge in the Poconos.

  They went around and around over the idea of bringing guns into their home. Neither felt good about it, but both thought that maybe it was time they opened their eyes. They knew that a fair number of their friends owned guns for self-protection, and many even had licenses to carry. In the end, they agreed to meet with someone knowledgeable about firearms who could fit them with the proper weapons in case they decided to move forward. Mick’s former client has a brother, Butch, who owns a gun shop. Mick called him to set up a visit.

  Mick pulls into a small space beside the gun store, which is housed in a white stucco building with a red door. Butch has the door
open before they reach it. He’s a large man in his fifties, with a ruddy face and a big smile. He shakes hands with Mick and Piper and welcomes them inside.

  Mick already explained his situation over the phone, so Butch knows they may or may not actually buy any weapons. He tells them now that he’s good with that and says, “This will be more of an educational session.”

  On the glass counter, Butch has already laid out two sets of weapons, one for Mick and one for Piper. He asks who he should start with, and Mick tells him to begin with Piper.

  “Okay. Well, I’ve got four pieces here. There’s the Glock 43, the Ruger LC9s, the Kahr CW9. And, my favorite for a woman, the Sig Sauer P938 Nitron.”

  The same gun found on Nunzio at the warehouse.

  Butch lifts the Nitron and explains that it’s the smallest .9 mm weapon Sig Sauer makes, perfect for a purse. He explains its features, but none of it is registering with Mick. His mind has carried him to the Nunzios’ swimming pool, where Uncle Ham told him about Jimmy’s “bar mitzvah,” when his father put a gun into his hand and told him to kill a man. He sees Christina on the sofa at the lodge, telling him it’s not fair to try to make someone into something they’re not. And what she said about her father not “seeing” her. He remembers what he was told about Christina being the president of her sorority, then the head of all the sororities.

  He knows now what Nunzio was hiding. What he didn’t want him to see.

  “Monster.”

  “Mick?” Piper grabs his hands. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  “Come on,” he tells Piper, grabbing her hand. “We have to go. Now.”

  He leads her to the car and races back home. On the way, she presses him to tell her what’s going on, but all he says is, “I know what happened that night. What really happened at that warehouse.”

  He drops Piper off, then retraces his tracks down 476 toward the airport, turning onto I-95 North, toward the Naval Yard. An hour after leaving the gun shop, he’s moving down the hallway toward the offices of Modern Innovations, Inc. Through the glass door, the pretty receptionist watches him, wide-eyed, the whole way.