Mean Streak (11 page)

“Good,” the fat man replied. “I'll tell Matty as soon as we leave here. So how soon can we see this stuff?”

I had my summation line ready. Fat Jack was blowing smoke, Fat Jack was doing what we in the trade called “puffing”—he was pretending to have contacts he didn't really have. He was playing big shot, throwing Matt's name into the conversation to make Eddie Fitz think he was a big man.

Paulie the Cork came to the table the next time out. The food was Italian again, but this time they were up in Little Italy, at the Luna.

And this time, Fat Jack insisted on frisking his new cop friend.

“Hey, what is this?” Eddie said. “Take your hands off me, you little—”

“Don't take this wrong, Eddie,” the new voice identified as Paulie the Cork's pleaded, “but Jack says I gotta search you.”

“Jack says, huh?” Eddie retorted. “Jack don't trust me, he can tell me so himself, not make you put your hands all over me like some faggot. I'll tell that fat sonavabitch what I think of him.”

“Hey, Eddie, don't take this wrong,” Fat Jack repeated. “It's just business, that's all.”

“If that's the way you do business, you can keep your business to yourself. I'm outa here.”

“Ah, sit down, Eddie,” Jack told him, his voice coated with olive oil. “You're not going anywhere. You need us, we need you. The people I work for just get a little nervous about discussing business with cops, that's all. Too many stupid fuckers have hung themselves on tape—you know that.”

Considering that the entire courtroom was listening to the product of the wire Eddie had been wearing, Judge de Freitas had to pound his gavel a few times to stop the derisive laughter. Fat Jack and Paulie the Cork had hung themselves on tape, all right—but I made a note to remind the jurors that Matt Riordan hadn't even been in the room at the time.

“Yeah, you gotta admit—” Paulie started.

“Shut up, Paulie,” Jack cut in. “Sit down,” he went on, switching back to the cajoling tone he used with Eddie Fitz. “Have a little vino, some fettucine. You'll feel better after you eat a little something.”

Jack's idea of “a little something” for lunch had Juror Number Four stifling a giggle. By the time the three men had thoroughly discussed the respective merits of
zuppa de pesce
versus
tortellini in brodo
, most of the jurors were smiling.

Eddie apparently sat down at the table, but he wasn't about to let the matter of the frisk go. “You sure you want me to sit here, Jack? We're pretty close to the jukebox. All I'm gonna get is Sinatra, I sit over here.”

“Ah, just sit the fuck down, Eddie.”

Eddie wasn't about to let the joke die. “See that waitress over there?” he asked. “The one with the big tits. Wanna know why they're so big? On account of she's got a microphone hidden in the left one. Yeah, talk into the left one, you want Lazarus to hear nice and loud.”

“Ah, cut the crap, Eddie,” Jack begged.

By the time the three men started in on the
zabaglione
, a fee had been agreed to and another meeting set up to make the exchange.

Matt came to the next meeting. They were back in Chinatown; there was talk of ordering a whole carp in black bean sauce. There was also talk of another frisk, before Matt joined them.

“You gonna read me my fucking rights while you're at it?” Eddie demanded. “You're makin' me feel like a skel here, patting me down all the fucking time.”

“Don't be like that, Eddie,” Jack replied, his tone weary. “Matt says I got to search you, he's gonna come to the table.”

“It's just business, Eddie,” Paulie the Cork contributed, his voice a sycophantic whine.

“That's the way you mopes do business,” Eddie retorted, “I'm outa here. You can keep your business to yourselves.”

The argument ceased when Matt stepped up to the table.

“Word in the courthouse says Nick Lazarus wants your ass real bad,” Eddie said for openers.

I allowed myself the ghost of a smile. This was precisely the theme my summation would center on. Lazarus wanted Riordan's ass real bad—and he wasn't above using a crooked cop to get it. How nice of Eddie Fitz to give me a line I could build my final speech to the jury around.

“Nick isn't fit to shine your shoes, Matty,” Paulie the Cork chimed in. “He can't try a case, is his problem. So every time he loses, he puts the blame on you.”

Nick Lazarus sat in the front row of the courtroom, directly behind Davia Singer's chair. A dull red crept into his sallow cheeks as he listened to the assessment of the former court clerk. True or not, those words were going to end up in the lead paragraph of every story to hit the papers tomorrow.

Nobody said Shut up, Paulie, but everyone at the table was thinking it. I knew this because I was thinking it, just listening to the tape.

“I hear Nunzie may have made a deal with Lazarus,” Matt said in his deep voice.

“What I hear,” Eddie Fitz replied, “is that Lazarus promised him a walk. A clean walk, if he'd roll over on you. I hear he walked Nunzie over to the grand jury, and Nunz gave it all up. Told Lazarus everything he knows about you and Frankie C. and the Lou Berger thing.”

Singer rose to explain to the jury exactly who Frankie C. was. In case the jurors were too stupid to realize that Eddie had just named Don Scaniello's successor, Frank Cretella, who just happened to be Matt Riordan's longtime client.

“I wish I knew exactly what Nunzie told them,” Matt said.

I made a note:
Wish I knew not same as would pay to know
. But I wished I had something stronger than that to say.

Judge de Freitas cut us loose at precisely 5:00
P.M.,
with two more tapes to go.

I felt as if I'd run a marathon; I hadn't even stood up to cross-examine Boatman yet, and I was as wiped out as I'd ever been after a day of trial. I'd overdosed on adrenaline and I hadn't really begun to try this case.

It was pouring. All the pent-up humidity of the day had given way to a slashing rain that dumped a river onto the slick stone steps of the courthouse. I didn't want to walk down those steps in my expensive new shoes, but the minicams waited at the bottom, undeterred by the downpour. I shrugged at Matt and headed down the steps, unfurling my umbrella as I went.

“All we've heard so far,” I told Ginger Hsu, “is that Jack Vance likes sesame chicken and Eddie Fitz prefers jumbo shrimp.” Matt and I had decided never to use the nickname Fat Jack when talking to reporters; we didn't want to offend weight-challenged viewers.

“There has been nothing offered today to indicate that Matt Riordan had the slightest idea what Jack Vance was doing—and there won't be any evidence like that tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day,” I promised. “This whole thing is exactly what the government's chief witness just said it was: Nick Lazarus wanting to nail Matt Riordan's you-know-what.”

Behind me, Carlos Ruiz tossed a challenge at the United States attorney. “So, Lazarus,” he began, “is it true what they say—you can't try a case?”

I didn't wait to hear the answer; the question itself filled me with elation. Matt shepherded me toward a cab—how he managed to snag an empty one in a rainstorm was one of those unexplained miracles—and in a matter of minutes we were on our way up the Bowery to McSorley's to meet Angie.

There was a certain irony in going to McSorley's. It had been a males-only tavern for over a hundred years, and had been integrated by women within my lifetime as a New Yorker. And now a female lawyer was going there to meet her female investigator, a former Housing cop.

The place was cool and dark and yeasty, a perfect sanctuary on a wet summer evening. Matt hustled me inside and ordered us both a Watney's. I picked up my mug and took a grateful sip, letting its malty flavor linger on my tongue.

“God, that was an ordeal,” I said when half the brew had disappeared down my dry throat. And if it was dry today, when I'd done virtually nothing in court except listen to tapes, how would I feel after a bruising cross?

“I'm exhausted,” I went on, “and we've just started this thing. How in hell do you do this, week in and week out? Year in and year out?”

I never got to hear the answer. The door flew open and a very soggy investigator pushed her way in. Her hair was sopping and her clothes hung on her as if she'd put them on straight from the washing machine, without benefit of dryer.

She was out of breath. She tossed her bag onto an empty chair and plopped down next to me.

“I found him,” she said. Then she grabbed another lungful of air. “I ran all the way here from the subway,” she explained. “No umbrella.”

My exhaustion fell away at once; I felt alive again, ready to go. Should we abandon our beers and head for Bedford-Stuyvesant, nail down an interview with TJ as soon as possible? Had he admitted that he and Eddie Fitz were partners? Would he testify?

“Where is he?” I asked.

“When can we see him?” Matt demanded.

“You can't,” my investigator replied decisively. “He's in the morgue.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX

Riordan slammed his fist down on the table so hard the beer mugs jumped. “I knew it!” he cried in a voice torn between anguish and triumph.” I knew that bastard would stop at nothing. He must have found out we were close to bringing TJ into court, and he—”

“Wait a second here,” Angie cut in. “Not so fast, Jose.” One of Angie's peculiarities was her penchant for giving everyone Spanish names. “This guy happens to have been dead a month already. Found in the trunk of a car over on Bushwick Avenue.”

“Just like Nunzie,” I murmured. “I wonder if the people who iced Nunzie also took out TJ.”

“No way,” Matt said in a decisive voice that brooked no argument. “No way this guy's death is a coincidence. He's the only credible witness who could prove Eddie Fitz is a lying scumbag, and he turns up dead on the eve of our calling him to the stand, and it's a coincidence?” He shook his head and repeated his earlier pronouncement: “No way.”

“Look, I can see where our chief witness ending up wearing a toe tag is upsetting,” I began, trying to sound more conciliatory than I felt, “but, face it, the guy was a drug dealer. A lot of people might have wanted him dead.”

“You think his murder has nothing to do with this trial?” The edge in Matt's voice questioned my sanity; as far as he was concerned, everything about this case, up to and including the death of our intended surprise witness, was personal in the extreme.

“All I'm saying,” I pointed out, “is that we didn't even know there was a TJ a month ago. If Angie's right, he'd been dead about a week when I first heard his name from Deke Fischer.”

“That doesn't mean squat,” Riordan pronounced. The trial was taking its toll on him. He didn't use vulgarity as a rule, preferring a rapier to a broadsword, but lately he'd been larding his speech with crude expressions, reverting to the Hell's Kitchen street fighter he'd been before Fordham Law.

“If we're right about TJ being Eddie's front man on the street, then he not only could have brought down Eddie Fitz, he could have blown Lazarus' whole career. Think about it, Cass,” Matt went on, building his case as thoroughly as he would have in front of a jury. “TJ visits Lazarus, tells him what a piece of shit his star witness is, and then turns up dead. If we could prove it,” he finished, “we'd have Lazarus on trial for his professional life.”

I sighed. Matt's insistence that Lazarus must be destroyed was getting in the way. “Look,” I said, not bothering to conceal my annoyance, “you may be right. Lazarus might personally have put a gun to this guy's head and blown his brains all over Bushwick Avenue. I don't know. What I do know,” I went on, “is that I am going to appear before Judge de Freitas in less than fifteen hours. Eddie Fitz is going to step up to the witness stand, and I am going to have nothing—
nada
, zip,
rien
—to hit him with on cross. TJ's getting dead doesn't do us a damned bit of good in court unless we can nail down his killer by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. And the reality is,” I finished, “we can't.”

We stared each other down like two kids on the playground. Mine were the first eyes to veer away. “Okay,” I conceded with a sigh, “I'll get the police reports as soon as I—”

“I'm way ahead of you, Rosita,” Angie cut in. She reached into the hand-woven Guatemalan basket she used as a briefcase and pulled out a piece of paper. “I got the M.E.'s autopsy report. You gotta remember who you're dealin' with, chica,” she reminded me with a snap of her gum. “I don't come here with bad news and no sugar on the spoon.”

Riordan grabbed the report before I could.

“Two shots,” he read. “One to the head, one in the mouth.”

I echoed the words he'd said after telling me how Nunzie Aiello had died: “Classic. A classic mob hit.”

Matt raised his eyes from the page for a single second and retorted, “Or someone who wants the murder to look like a classic mob hit.”

A waiter wandered over and inquired about a second round. Matt and I agreed, and Angie ordered a cuba libre with dark Jamaican rum.

“… nine millimeter bullets,” Matt murmured as his eyes scanned the report. “Mushroomed upon impact,” he went on. He raised his eyes. “They must have used hollow-points,” he said.

“Did they find the gun?” I began, then withdrew the question. “I guess we won't know that until we get the police reports,” I amended.

Angie shook her head. “No,” she said, “I talked to a guy at the M.E.'s office. He told me that whoever shot your witness took the gun with him. No shell casings either. They think the dude was shot outside the car, then shoved into the trunk. Not enough blood in the trunk, is what the medical examiner says.”