Justice Hunter (27 page)
T
he adrenalin still coursed through Hunter’s veins as he hoofed it the dozen or so blocks to the main offices of the Human Relations Commission. The thought of cabbing it entered his mind, but that was short-lived. The concept of being confined and jostled around in the back of a barely roadworthy jalopy didn’t appeal to him. He was riding too high after confronting the mayor, reveling in a newfound sense of liberation—the kind that comes with pissing off the worst possible person in the midst of an idealistic crusade. Like a sleeping dragon stirring in its lair, the anticlimax was right around the corner. Yet for now, all there was to do was keep it at bay and bask in the euphoria of denial.
Upon entering the cavernous lobby of the office building that housed the city’s Human Relations Commission, Hunter glanced at his watch. The Georgian Revival building was known as The Curtis Center, named after the illustrious nineteenth-century publisher Cyrus Curtis. It was located in the posh historical section of town known as Society Hill. Hunter was nearly an hour late.
Perfect,
he thought to himself. The commission’s top dog, Doctor Thaddeus Wilson, was one arrogant son of a bitch, notorious for making everyone wait, just to make a point. His agenda, which seemed to be mostly political hobnobbing disguised as altruism, clearly took precedence. He dressed like a 1970s pimp and spoke with a preacher’s cadence. Rumor had it that he was somehow connected to Farrakhan and the rather notorious Nation of Islam, which wouldn’t have surprised Hunter in the least. Hunter would be there just in the nick of time, right after Wilson had finished spewing off his rhetoric of injustice and engineered diatribes. The usual dog and pony show. This time he wanted to turn the tables on Wilson—get him off kilter a bit. Shake things up. After all, this would likely be his last chance to unearth the true origins of the Vito’s case. He had to get to the bottom of precisely how this lawsuit had begun, once and for all.
Hunter was immediately escorted to the conference room by a nosy, fiftysomething Chatty Cathy type.
“Meeting over already?” he asked, setting his bag down gently, hyper-aware of the gun inside.
Stephanie, e-mailing on her BlackBerry with her back to the door, turned in her chair. “Does it look like it’s over?” She was visibly annoyed. The smallish conference room was littered with boxes of archived files.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Refused to start without you.”
“And why’s that?”
“Wouldn’t say.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You were totally right about this scoundrel.”
“Total prima donna, huh?” Hunter paused. “And you told him it was my idea to have you handle the interview?”
“Wouldn’t hear of it,” she said, sighing and arching her brow. “Unbelievable.” After a deliberate pause, “So, how did the power breakfast go? You’re looking pretty self-assured. Did he give you what you wanted?”
“Still too soon to tell.”
“But he saw you?”
Hunter nodded contemplatively.
“Wow. Pretty impressive.”
“That’s one way of characterizing it, I guess.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Let’s just say the meeting was cut short rather abruptly.”
“He threw you out?” she asked in disbelief.
“Sure did.”
“No way. That’s insane.”
“Tell me about it. That target on my back just got a whole helluva lot bigger. That’s for damn sure.”
“Hunter,” she replied, shaking her head empathetically.
“I’ll survive,” he replied, averse to pity.
“So did Mancini’s name come up?” she asked, pressing him more than usual. Hunter just chalked it up to her unwavering self-confidence and naiveté.
“In passing.”
“And how did he react?”
“It felt rehearsed—let’s put it that way. Played everything real close to the vest.”
“Of course.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind, though. He’s involved.”
“Incredible.”
“I know,” said Hunter, his focus elsewhere. “Stay here. I’ll be right back. Let me find out if this goofball ever intends on making an appearance.”
“And by the way, remind me to tell you about my meeting with Mr. Hayek,” she said as an afterthought, playing down its significance.
“Ruben?”
“Yes,” she replied, grinning as she basked in the glory of her success—the good soldier soaking up the admiration from her commanding officer.
“How’d you manage that?”
“I have my own connections,” she said slyly.
“Clearly. I want to hear every detail.”
“Of course.”
“Is he on board?”
“Yes.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Dead serious.”
“You’re a genius.”
Nearly a half hour later, Wilson was wiping his brow with a lavender silk handkerchief and fanning himself with the other hand, which was adorned with a diamond pinkie ring. The zoot-suit-style pinstriped jacket was draped over the chair next to him, and the sleeves of his coast-to-coast collared white dress shirt were rolled up, patches of sweat on his fleshy stomach adhering to the shiny polyester blend.
“Is it hot in here?” asked Wilson, looking around as if he expected to find a bonfire in the corner. Meanwhile, the sunlight, which typically penetrated the grimy street-side windows, was temporarily concealed by an ominous cloud mass. And the air conditioning was still blasting, keeping the room relatively cool on such an unseasonably humid day.
“I’m not,” said Hunter, shaking his head, holding back a smile. “Steph?”
“Cool as a cucumber.”
Wilson cocked his head, sensing he was being toyed with.
“But let’s get back to my question—Mr. Wilson, right?”
“Like I said—”
“It’s pretty straightforward,” said Hunter, interrupting him. “And you really haven’t answered the question.”
“Because I’ve got nothin’ more to say about it,” he responded, starting to get indignant. “We were perfectly within our rights to file the original complaint. And that’s precisely what we decided to do here.”
Hunter was still exploring the question of why the original suit didn’t make any reference to Ruben Hayek or even seem to contemplate Ruben’s allegations against Vito, for that matter. Instead, the original suit was amended, which created the distinct appearance that taking on Ruben’s story was little more than an afterthought, added simply for the purpose of bolstering the city’s case, incorporating that conspicuously absent element of human drama. In the commission’s history, this was the first and only time a suit initially had been pursued by the commission in its own name—confirmed.
“So that’s your explanation?” chimed in Stephanie. “Just because you can? And you expect us to believe that?”
Wilson managed a slightly sinister expression. “You’ve got no choice.” He was taunting her now. “Do you, lady?”
“Maybe not,” chimed in Hunter, “but the commissioners who will be deciding the case certainly will. And you’re kidding yourself if you think this won’t be a critical angle worked by the defense. They will make a fucking mountain out of this blunder.” Hunter went right back after him. “And save your sexist bullshit for somebody else. With all due respect, of course, Commissioner Wilson.” His tone was unmistakably facetious.
Stephanie mouthed, “Bitch slap,” basking in the satisfaction of watching Wilson get called out.
Suddenly, Dr. Wilson pushed himself away from the conference table like an immature teen at dinner reacting to allegations of degeneracy being slung by his parents. He quickly got to his feet, ready to storm out of the room any second. “I don’t have to put up with this shit.”
Hunter kept coming at him, though, standing himself and leaning forward over the table for impact. “Now you listen to me. I don’t give a crap who the hell you think you are or which corrupt politician handpicked you from God knows where. The simple fact is that you need us. And as your counsel, we urge you to sit your ass back down and do exactly what we say, starting with telling us the truth.” Suddenly, the commissioner’s mobile phone started to chirp out the disco beat of “Get Down Tonight.”
Do a little dance, make a little love.
Wilson immediately sent the call to voicemail, a cue that Hunter had finally gotten his attention. “Now if you decide to walk out of this room, that’s on you. And you better believe me, both you and rest of this commission will be the laughingstock of the agencies in the city and across the country. The black eye you’ve already brought upon yourself will seem like nothing by comparison. Is that what you want? Vito Armani hitting the national media circuit, laughing his rich ass off? Of course, that will be before he sues the shit out of the city for malicious prosecution.” Hunter paused, letting the hypothetical horrible marinate for a second in Wilson’s mind. “Because you can mark my words: you can kiss your sweetheart appointment and all its little perks behind. The government car, the fancy dinners, expense accounts. And that bloated city pension—the one funded by us hard-working taxpayers—that will be gone so fast you won’t even know what hit you.”
Wilson was back down now, cowering and attentive.
Much better
, Hunter thought.
“So who the hell put you up to it? And I want a name.”
“Put me up to what? You’re insane.”
“This is your last chance,” said Stephanie, echoing Hunter’s sentiment.
“Maybe this will help. We’ve analyzed the signatures on both complaints. You do recall signing off on these, right?”
“I do.”
“How is that possible?”
“Not sure—”
Hunter cut Wilson off, right back to playing dumb.
Whoever or whatever he was protecting,
thought Hunter to himself,
was pretty damn significant
. “The handwriting doesn’t match.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Is that so?” asked Hunter, nodding to Stephanie. Stephanie proceeded to remove the papers from a manila folder. She placed them atop the table, forcing Wilson to look.
“It’s amazing you have the audacity to sit here and deny what we’re saying. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a handwriting expert there tomorrow, just to impeach this entire office’s credibility. Of course, the very real threat of criminal forgery will come next.”
“It’s pretty obvious,” said Stephanie.
Hunter studied Wilson’s body language, which was fidgety and distracted. Wilson refused to make eye contact. Hunter just figured he was having some sort of internal debate about how much to reveal, if anything. He was clearly conflicted in a fess-up-now-and-save-my-sorry-ass sort of way.
“All right, all right.” A deliberate pause. Hunter perceived that to be a bad sign. Wilson had elected to invent a story as he went along as opposed to ’fessing up.
Stephanie and Hunter exchanged a quizzical glance.
“The signature on the original filing isn’t mine,” he admitted. “I had asked my secretary to sign my name. Strictly pro forma,” he said, raising his hands defensively. “And it was the first and only time I’d ever asked her to do something like that. She can vouch for any of this if we need her to.”
“Might I ask why?” questioned Hunter.
“Family emergency.” Wilson managed a clearly artificial and contrived look of distress—the kind that people use when they’re milking a family crisis in the workplace—justifying poor performance and the like.
“Family emergency?”
“Yeah,” stalled Wilson.
“So do you plan on sharing or just keeping us in suspense?”
“I’d rather not say,” he replied, momentarily shifting his gaze.
“That’s what I thought.”
“You realize that explanation won’t suffice when you’re under oath?” warned Stephanie.
“It’s gonna have to,” he said arrogantly, “because that’s the goddamn truth.”
“Go on,” instructed Hunter, keeping them on task, tired of wasting valuable time and getting worked over.
“What else do you want to know?” asked Wilson, feigning a willingness to talk.