Justice Hunter (19 page)
Junior nodded and blinked rapidly, digesting the hypothetical horribles. Found in the back of a trunk naked, bullet in the head, and a wad of hundreds stuffed into his empty eye sockets.
Mancini smiled viciously and then turned to Hunter. “Shall we? Leave Junior alone here so he can work miracles.”
“Okay.”
“And just one word of friendly advice,” Mancini added. Junior was all ears now. “Why make everything so hard on yourself? Talk to your old man. We hear the shop’s going gangbusters these days.”
“He cut me off,” he replied bitterly. “How should I know?”
“I’m no therapist. But I think it’ll be much healthier for both of you if you put aside your differences and figure something out,” threatened Mancini. Hunter, feeling sorry for the guy, caught one final glimpse of Junior, who was on the verge of a breakdown. And then he followed his boss-slash-pseudo-mob-boss out of the room, considering what might happen if the real Mafia got wind of their little impersonation.
The Honorable Harlan Russo’s most productive hours tended to be in the evening, well after his staffers and clerks had called it quits for the day. Russo was incredibly intelligent, no doubt about that. His superior work ethic distinguished him from his contemporaries, however, most of whom had become exceedingly good at delegating out the most tedious facets of their job, such as drafting opinions and poring over the mediocre and oftentimes long-winded briefs submitted by the blubbering lawyers who appeared before them. A few years back, when a vacancy for supervising judge opened up, Russo was the obvious choice. He had a couple decades of experience on the bench and was willing to shoulder far more responsibility for only a small salary increase. The ideal candidate. Plus, he would get the status he needed to finally make a bid for an opening on the appeals court a few years down the line.
Once the five o’clock mass exodus had ended, unpaid overtime to city employees being like a stake in the heart of a vampire, he would generally put the finishing touches on the outstanding orders of the day and then amuse himself with some of his colleagues’ decisions as reported in
The Legal Intelligencer
. Admittedly, Russo also took great pleasure in reading the shameless publicity by some of the local firms, usually chuckling as he considered how deceiving appearances could be, familiar with most of the smug expressions and generally underwhelmed by their trial advocacy skills. Next he would turn on his wood-encased Tivoli radio, permanently set to his favorite classical music station, and pour himself his first of three glasses of scotch, just to take the edge off.
Like any great leader, he had to maintain a look of unwavering strength at all times, but the job had taken its toll. And like everyone else, he needed a diversion from the constant hostility of litigation. He felt the stress leave his aging frame, his atrophied muscles relaxing, even his bowels loosening. Religiously, he would make his way to the public restroom at the opposite end of the dingy corridor, carrying status reports just to review the dockets of the other judges and make sure the loads were distributed evenly and things were moving along respectably. During the walk to and from the men’s room, he tended to see the same familiar faces, one or two of his colleagues scurrying off to dinner reservations, the cleaning crew maneuvering their carts, bracing for another long night of minimum wage and solitude.
A bit lighter, his hemorrhoids burning, he would unlock the door to his chambers and walk back to his office, eager to sink his teeth into drafting. He was famous for his opinions, his own signature style. Well-reasoned and controversial, he loved to weave in witty innuendo and double entendres, especially of the sexual variety. He was always curious to know who picked up on them, separate the intellectual wheat from the chaff.
Tonight, his mind was already reeling with ideas. He had to get this opinion finished. It had been on his plate for a week longer than he preferred, and he had his clerk to thank for that. The case was about a botched boob job on a stripper, another in a long string of crappy medical malpractice suits. Suddenly the strangest thing happened. The smell of alcohol…had he spilled his scotch and traipsed it onto the carpet? That wasn’t it. Tragically, it was the smell of leather and ammonia flooding his nasal cavity. He gasped for breath but couldn’t get any oxygen through the black racing glove sealing his mouth and nose. He was too shocked to react. By the time he tried to flail his arms, put up any sort of struggle, it was already too late. His limbs had gone limp with paralysis, as if they’d been encased in lead. The last thing he saw before being forced into his chambers was the glint of a long metal blade as it hovered near his throat. It was over, and he knew it. Now came the pain. His only salvation was that by the time the warm blood began to coat his neck, the burning was being anaesthetized by a deprivation of oxygen to his panicked brain.
“I
still don’t know if I buy it, though,” said Hunter, who was sitting bedside in a stiff, light wood hospital chair near the windows of Andy’s outdated hospital room. It was first thing Tuesday morning, and Hunter had already run four miles.
Anything to blow off steam
. The gnawing anxiety and frustration over not having any real answers in the Vito’s case had been wearing on him. He was having bouts of insomnia and nausea. And Mancini, who pledged his accessibility for the sake of lending a helping hand, only confused matters. They hadn’t gotten back until around dinner time the night before, which barely left Hunter with any time to do any of his own snooping around. He endeavored to concentrate on witnesses for the remainder of the evening. But like a serious case of lazy eye, his mind kept wandering.
“Agreed,” replied Andy with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. Still resembling the Grim Reaper himself, he contorted his lanky body awkwardly. He was propped up in the Spartan bed, his back nearly vertical. “Fifty K is peanuts for those people. They’re not gonna waste that kind of energy on a deadbeat like that. Think about it.” Andy continued to squirm, reaching for a pillow tucked beneath his lower back.
Hunter started to stand, offering a hand.
“I’m all right.” Andy gave the pillow one last tug. “There,” he said, smiling. “That’s better.”
“So when are they discharging you?” It was obvious Andy was pent up as all hell.
“I find out today. But the earliest is Friday morning, if I’m lucky. Make sure I’ve still got all my faculties.” Andy tried to make light of it, but his eyes betrayed an unmistakable sadness. “That’s assuming I ever did, of course.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth.”
“You’re not one to talk,” he joked. The two friends shared a moment.
Life is just a bunch a peaks and valleys.
“If you ask me, though, the doc’s just covering his ass. Wants to run a battery of tests. In other words, rack up a small fortune in medical bills and steer clear of any malpractice claims.” Andy reached for a hospital-issued orange juice container. “Not that I’m the litigious type.”
“Sure you’re not.”
Pointing to the juice, “You see this juice? It’s like the military. The hospital probably paid a hundred dollars for it,” he joked as he sipped through a straw. “God bless America and the Republican party.”
“Wow! You’re either under the influence of massive amounts of painkillers or all those years of wearing you down are finally starting to pay off. Looks as if I’ll make a Democrat out of you yet.” Everyone was talking politics these days, with the presidential election looming in the fall.
Andy forced a smile. The morning light, which was starting to flood the room, illuminated the purple bruising beneath his eyes. Despite his good spirits, he still looked like absolute crap.
“Anyway. It’ll be fun. You can hang around here and be the subject of various experiments for the next few days.”
“Yippee,” Andy replied bitterly.
“I’m sure you just can’t wait to get back to Whitman. Back to the grindstone,” Hunter said sarcastically.
“Actually, it’s weird, but I really am kind of missing it.”
“I bet you are.” Some people worked to live, and others, like Andy, lived to work. He was one of the truly lucky ones who’d discovered his calling in life. And thanks to that passion, his results were on par with the best of them. In Hunter’s eyes, Andy was the most deserving of a partnership nod out of the four of them being considered. Dillon’s IQ was probably the highest, but he was a slacker through and through. Todd Stevens, the resident Brooks Brothers’ mannequin, could barely spell his own name. If it weren’t for nepotism and the obscene amounts of business that flowed from his connections, rainmaking nonetheless, he would’ve been shit-canned a long time ago. And what was there to say about Hunter?
Mediacast. The one about to blow the Vito’s case and lose the city as a client. Enough said.
“Look, this might sound nuts, and you know it doesn’t mean I don’t love my family, but the hardest thing about Sunday was never making it to the office. There isn’t a day that goes by when I can’t wait to get in there.” There was a time, not so long ago, when Hunter used to feel the same way. He wondered if he’d ever feel that again. Instead it was dread that wasn’t about to dissipate anytime soon, though, courtesy of Mancini and his own ego.
“It doesn’t sound nuts,” replied Hunter understandingly.
“You’re probably the only one I can tell that to.” Andy paused. “Hey, you should get going. It sounds as if you’ve got your work cut out for you on that Vito’s case,” he added, detecting Hunter’s anxiety.
“I’ve got another minute or two,” said Hunter, trying to stay calm.
“So you know the attack wasn’t random, right?” said Andy.
“I know.” Hunter had been trying to avoid the subject, just in case Andy wasn’t ready to talk about it. Things like this were more than a little traumatic. Andy would almost certainly need months of therapy once he was discharged.
“Don’t let that detective or anyone else tell you otherwise,” Andy warned stoically.
“Why? Is that what they’re saying?” Hunter asked.
“Detective Risotto, who’s actually not a bad guy, hasn’t really said one way or the other. But he’s been asking a boatload of questions, trying to make sense of everything in terms of the other subway attacks. And obviously Pam is stuck on that theory too, at least from what I can tell.”
Andy’s wife Pam, who was extremely sweet, was also rigid in her beliefs and opinions. And she was the kind of person who could convince herself of anything, even if that meant living a life of denial. “There’s no way on earth she could handle the concept of the mob targeting me.”
“Look. I’m…” Hunter started to apologize for getting Andy into this mess, but Andy cut him off.
“Don’t say it. It’s not your fault.” Andy shook his head resolutely. “No way. You’re just doing your job. And you’re one of the only people I know who has the balls to do this case.”
“Thanks.”
“Just do me one favor,” Andy requested.
“Sure. Anything.”
“Just make sure these fuckers get caught.”
“You’ve got it,” vowed Hunter. “You’ve got my word.” Although seeing Andy like that fueled the fire within him, Hunter knew he’d made a promise he just might not be able to keep.
There were a few quick knocks, and then the door to the room swung open. A pleasant-looking, heavy-set nurse barged in. She placed a small container of pills on the bedside table and, with a Jamaican accent, briefed Andy on his morning regimen. Hunter, considering his own plan of attack for the day, slipped out. As he walked along the sterile corridor, he wondered whether Andy would truly be safe there for the next week.
Fucking fish in a barrel! Shouldn’t there be a cop stationed at the door twenty-four seven or something? What about Pam and their daughter home alone? Maybe that’s why the mob is so wildly fierce. By the time anyone has the guts to suspect them, it is too late.
D
etective Mitch Risotto appeared out of nowhere, like an illusionist making believers out of his harshest critics. Ever since Hunter started being tailed by the Mafia, he’d become hyperaware of his surroundings, to the point of becoming borderline paranoid schizophrenic. Clearly the Zoloft was having the opposite of its intended effect. Life as a litigator had gone from nerve-racking to downright horrifying. He no longer felt safe in his apartment or on the street. In fact, he constantly found himself scanning clusters of random people and pedestrians, probing the city’s congested streets for any sign, even the slightest clue, of some random act of violence about to befall him.
Yet Hunter’s power of observation, so finely tuned from his litigation training, was no match for Detective Risotto’s. His soft, composed voice greeted Hunter just before he passed through the revolving door at the Whitman offices right off of Market Street.
“Mr. Gray. A word?”
The unfamiliar voice, oddly comforting, stopped Hunter dead in his tracks. He paused helplessly, trying to catch a glimpse of the man behind him in the massive wall of glass that was the façade of Whitman’s building. The glare was too harsh, though, the morning sun poised to make another global warming PSA that day, another in a string of unseasonably humid days. There was no way to see whether the voice’s owner had a gun at the ready for one of those ruthless, we’re-above-the-law public executions, the variety only the Mafia could pull off.
“Yes,” Hunter replied, turning on a scuffed brown loafer with no other alternative but to give chase, something he had no intention of doing.
“I’ve been trying to catch up with you. You’re a very busy man.” The detective paused, reading Hunter’s reaction for even the faintest sign of weakness.
“Not sure I…”
But Detective Mitch Risotto, the thirtysomething detective working Andy’s case and the spate of other recent subway attacks, was standing there, all six feet of him. Everything he wore was black, from the one-button suit to the cotton crewneck tee to the black, rubber-soled shoes. And with the head of neatly trimmed black hair, piercing dark brown eyes, well-proportioned features, and strong jawline, he resembled David Copperfield, the Michael Jordan of magic.
“I’m Detective Risotto,” he said, revealing a perfect smile as he extended a professional hand. The detective’s words, ever-so slightly dubious and accusatorial at the same time, in that experienced, uncontrollable detective sort of way, quelled Hunter’s fears almost instantaneously. It wasn’t until that moment that Hunter truly realized how valuable someone like Detective Risotto had the potential to be.
Finally, another good guy.
Hunter stared into the dark, unmistakably compassionate eyes of Risotto. Hunter had been expecting a middle-aged, veteran detective—one of those with slicked-back hair and a cigarette dangling from thick, Italian liver lips. The voice should’ve been raspy and tough; the suit double-breasted, somewhat outdated, not youthful and hip. Thanks to the cast of cliché movie detectives occupying his imagination, Hunter had not only expected someone who was like a wise guy but would’ve probably wound up with one if the natural order of things had been allowed to run its course. Somehow, though, he would’ve managed to break away from the pack of his boyhood friends and avoid succumbing to the temptation of boarding the first-class cabin of that shimmering train of corruption altogether, despite being ticketless.
Instead it was an up-and-comer with a conscience and a graduate degree, someone who could’ve just as easily been a lawyer—or an illusionist, for that matter. As the men shook hands, Hunter detected Risotto was there for something even bigger than the subway attacks.
Holy shit! What if this has something to do with my little frolic and detour to Atlantic City?
“Is there somewhere we can go that’s a little more private?” Risotto asked discreetly. Hunter, in his peripheral line of sight, also noted the curious stares of other Whitman employees who were just entering another humdrum workday and of course, craving any little piece of drama they could wrap their bored minds around.
“Sure,” replied Hunter, suggesting a closed-door meeting in his office. That was the first thing that came to mind.
“Actually,” said Risotto, balking, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why?” Hunter’s mind started to race.
He really is here to accuse me of something.
“Well,” he said, intentionally pausing again, unlocking that window into his soul. “It involves you.” Hunter felt like a sober driver being administered a field-sobriety test, under suspicion of DUI, choking from nerves and giving the false appearance of intoxication.
“Me?”
Risotto just nodded.
“Well, in that case, why don’t you pick a place?”
“I’m not sure how much time you have, but I was thinking we could grab a cup of coffee down the street, at the Aztec Club,” suggested Risotto. The Aztec Club, generally reserved for pretentious banker and lawyer types, was a relatively accessible yet elitist meeting place for center city’s moderately successful professionals, located at the top of a skyscraper in the heart of the central business district. Hunter had never met a detective who belonged there. Networking somehow seemed a tad superfluous when it came to putting criminals behind bars.
Hunter checked his TAG for fear of seeming guilty or overly engaged, although he knew precisely what time it was and that every second away from the Vito’s case couldn’t be too helpful in the grand scheme of things. Glancing up casually, Hunter said, “Sure. I guess I can spare a couple minutes.”
“Excellent.”
Hunter and the detective helped themselves to coffee and took a table in the back corner of a side room, which brimmed with corporate antique furnishings. Risotto ensured that Hunter’s back was to the wall of glare-proof windows, giving the detective a dizzying view of the city from the clouds and an excuse to keep his eye on Hunter’s demeanor, without coming across as too overt. Hunter awkwardly lifted the smallish, white porcelain china cup, sipping on the flavorless, piping hot coffee, his third cup that morning. And after a few more niceties and a bit of conversation foreplay, Risotto dropped the proverbial A-bomb on Hunter’s world.