Black Water Transit (42 page)

“
Salud,
” said Frank.

“Now what?” asked Jack.

“Up to you.”

Jack looked over his shoulder at Carmine. Carmine was staring at them both. Behind him Fabrizio Senza stood in the half shadow, staring down at the back of Carmine’s head, the blade in his right hand shimmering like a little silver flame.

“You got your cell phone with you?”

Frank pulled it out of the pocket in his bathrobe.

“Give it to Carmine.”

“Carmine?”

“Yeah. He’s gonna make a call.”

“I’m calling nobody, you fuck,” said Carmine. Nobody looked at him. Carmine was over. Frank raised his right eyebrow.

“So who?”

“Pike,” said Jack.

Frank was quiet for a while.

“You think that’s safe?”

“No,” said Jack.

“Then why?”

“I owe him.”

“Owe him for what?”

“Carmine’s not the only rat in the room, Frank.”

Nicky Cicero and Dexter Zarnas had spent two hours sitting in the outer offices of the district attorneys assigned to cross-jurisdictional cases in New York State, waiting to see which way a three-way tug-of-war was going to snap loose. Inside the glass-walled offices, the two cops could see at least seven different lawyers representing three different agencies, the United States attorney’s office, the state DA, and two ADAs for the city of New York. Pete LeTourneau was in there as well, along with some senior police officials from the NYPD and even a lawyer representing the District of Columbia. The argument was loud and angry and right now it looked as if everybody but the state lawyers was winning.

Dexter was leaning back in the wooden chair with his feet propped up on a trash can and sipping at a cup of black coffee. Nicky was sitting opposite him, stretched
out on a slatted wood bench, his hands folded behind his head. He was … conflicted.

Casey had called him a little after five, just as they were getting Pike processed and into a state-federal lockup in the basement of Central Booking. Nicky listened to her story with a great sense of relief—the briefcase was back in her hands and Casey’s mother hadn’t OD’d. But the stuff about her mother’s change of heart, Nicky found that less than convincing. He’d heard that kind of thing many times before, and it always ended up in a Friday night jail cell, a crowded ER on Saturday, or the city morgue on a rainy Monday. The call had ended with Casey telling him she’d try to call him at home—at his hotel room in Yonkers—later this evening. No, she wasn’t coming back in today. She figured he and Dexter could handle the rest of the Pike arraignment. If they needed a statement, she’d be on the job tomorrow. She and her mother had a lot to talk about. Good-bye, Nicky, was what he heard. What he was still hearing.

“Whaddya thinking, Nicky?”

Nicky looked over at Dexter.

“What?”

“You look like somebody buggered your cat.”

“I don’t have a cat.”

“Buggered your hamster, then.”

“These are mental pictures I do not need to have, Dexter. How long are these weasels going to bat this thing around?”

“They’re lawyers. We could die here.”

“Who’ll win, you think?”

“You will. The only thing the rest of the jurisdictions have on Pike is suspicion. Until the ATF finds that Barrett Fifty and links it to Pike or gets somebody at Crisis Control Systems to rat Pike out, they got nothing going. The witness at Beach Haven never saw Pike there, and so far they haven’t come up with the Smith that Pike
is supposed to have used on those two guards. This guy’s a hired killer, Nicky. A professional assassin. That’s what he did in the army, it’s what he’s doing now. And CCS is protecting him.”

“Why? Why would his firm go the distance, take a chance on an obstruction charge or accessory after?”

“I figure Pike has as much on them as they have on him. These guys work the gray areas between the CIA and the FBI. Companies like Executive Outcomes, Military Professionals, the rest, they work for private companies or third-world governments in places where due process is a midnight wake-up, a free ride in a white van, and a bullet in the back of the head. Pike’s probably insane, but he’s not crazy. He had all the angles figured before he went after any of these guys. He had his route in and his route out and what he’d say later all planned, right down to the distance between Red Hook and LaGuardia. Compared to him, these federal mutts are Teletubbies.”

“Then how’d we get him?”

“We didn’t. He came in.”

“Yeah,” said Nicky. “That’s what I was thinking about.”

“Me too, kid. Oops, here we go.”

One of the suits was walking toward the glass door, one of the women representing the state and the Criminal Investigation Division of the State Police, a blonde-haired beauty with wide cheekbones and a big sport-model frame tucked into a two-piece silk suit in emerald-green. She put her hand out as she came toward Nicky and Dexter, who were on their feet by then.

“How are you, Officers? You must be Officer Cicero, and you’re Sergeant Zarnas of the NYPD. I’m Bridget McCarthy, the ADA for New York State. I’d like to congratulate you on bringing in Mr. Pike. As you can see, he’s quite the wanted man.”

“You’re welcome,” said Dexter. McCarthy beamed at them both and turned away, began to walk down the long terrazzo hallway toward the door. Halfway there she stopped, looked back.

“Well, boys? Let’s go.”

“Where we going?” asked Dexter.

“To chambers, of course. The Pike defense has asked for a hearing, and we’re going to give them one.”

“What kind of a hearing?” asked Nicky.

McCarthy smiled at him over her shoulder.

“A short one, I hope.”

She led them out of the building and out across the deserted parks and sidewalks of Centre Street until they got to the courts. She jogged up the steps and pushed through the brass-bound doors, waved to a couple of guards on her way through the metal detector—Dexter and Nicky at a jog right behind her—and up a curve of marble stairs to a long hallway lined with offices. She stopped in front of a large wooden door with gold lettering:

“Here we are, boys. You can come in, but sit quiet. This is for lawyers and other grown-ups. Whatever you think, say nothing.”

She knocked on the door and opened it. The room was small and lined with law books and framed artworks in heavy gilded wood. There was a worn Persian carpet in front of a battered mahogany desk, and four chairs on the carpet. One of the chairs was filled with a small elderly black man in a three-piece navy-blue suit and shiny black shoes. He was tiny, wrinkled, and his salt-and-pepper hair was mostly salt. His eyes were crinkled up in a permanent squint and were surrounded
with smile lines. He looked like a cheerful man, in general, who had something particularly pleasing planned for later.

The woman behind the desk, leaning back in her tattered leather wing chair and puffing on a cigarette, was a lean-faced black woman in her fifties, a serious knockout, with fine snow-white hair brushed back from her strong face and held in place with a red ribbon at the back of her neck. Her eyes were soft and calm, and she had an air around her that some judges have, of having seen it all at least three times and been shocked only once. She rose as Bridget McCarthy came over with her hand out.

“Ms. McCarthy, how nice to see you. I think you know S. Walter Kendall.”

“I do, of course. I was in Professor Kendall’s moot court at Yale several times. I don’t suppose you remember me?”

“Oh but I do,” said Kendall, rising unsteadily out of his chair and extending a firm but bony hand. “And these two young men?”

McCarthy introduced Nicky and Dexter and got them arranged around the desk. As she sat down beside Professor Kendall, she sent Nicky and Dexter one warning look and then settled in. The judge leaned forward, crossed her arms, and nodded to Professor Kendall.

“I think we can begin if you wish, Professor Kendall.”

“Thanks. I know we’re all tired, and I do want to express my own appreciation, and that of my client, for the favor of this unusual Sunday evening hearing.”

“I was available. I am intrigued,” said Judge Bethune.

“Intrigued?” put in Bridget McCarthy. “Why intrigued?”

Kendall laughed softly and gave them all a benevolent look over his thin gold-framed glasses.

“I’ll explain. Now, for the benefit of these young officers who have chosen to be present, I’ll just skip all the legalese and say, in the plainest possible terms, that one of the bulwarks of freedom is the Fourth Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable search or seizure. I think this is a principle upon which we may all concur. I also want to point out, off the record, that I deeply regret having to make this argument in the case of our Mr. Pike, who is an individual with whom I share very little in the way of ethics and beliefs. Personally, I’d like to see the brute chained to a wall and stoned. But I must make it. The canon of ethics compels me.”

“And your argument?” asked Judge Bethune.

“The foundation of the state’s case against Mr. Pike is the DNA evidence found upon the body, is it not?”

“Not the foundation,” said McCarthy. “We have also seized Mr. Pike’s Mercedes-Benz and are subjecting it to a very close forensic analysis, which has proved, I might say, very fruitful.”

Kendall showed her a gnome’s rueful smile.

“Perhaps, but according to Elstad and other rulings with which I will not burden you, since you are quite aware of them, whatever you find that can be shown to have been what we call the fruits of a poisoned tree cannot be offered to the court.”

McCarthy was getting jumpy. Nicky was having a hard time staying in his seat. Every instinct he had was on full alert.

“Everyone here understands Elstad and the Fourth Amendment. We’re all professionals. Perhaps Professor Kendall can be more specific?”

“I’d be delighted. As I understand the chain of evidence, the DNA that seems to implicate Mr. Pike came from a razor blade extracted from Mr. Pike’s hotel room at the United Nations Plaza Hotel on Forty-fourth Street. Correct me if I misstate the facts.”

“No. That’s right.”

“DNA, it is stated in the information filed by your office, that was legally and properly collected by our handsome young policeman over here. DNA that was a product of a fortuitously cooperative maid at the UN Plaza Hotel, who was no doubt beguiled by Officer Cicero’s striking good looks and irresistible charm.”

McCarthy nodded, looking at Nicky and raising an eyebrow. Kendall grinned at Nicky and then winked at him.

“Yes, I thought I recognized him.”

“Recognized him?” said McCarthy. “Have you met?”

“Not personally, no. Although I am delighted to make his acquaintance today, I admit that I know the young man only by his memorable work on the silver screen.”

It wasn’t hard for Nicky to see what was coming at him. What was hard was to get out of the way. He swallowed with difficulty and hoped for a miracle. He didn’t get it. Professor Kendall was rooting around in a baggy leather satchel on his knees. He fumbled around in the interior and lifted out a small Sony camcorder.

McCarthy jumped in.

“Your Honor, if my colleague has evidence he wishes to introduce, this is not the venue—”

“Your Honor, this is not evidence. Not evidence in this case, at any rate. Let’s call this an exculpatory demonstration.”

“This was why I said I was intrigued,” said Judge Bethune, smiling at Bridget McCarthy. “Go ahead, Walter. Get on with it. You’ve dragged this performance out long enough.”

Kendall placed the camcorder on the desk where they could all see it. He reached out, popped open the tiny LCD screen, and carefully pressed a button. The screen lit up with the word
play
and a date/time marker. The
screen stayed black for about ten seconds, and then burst into light. Nicky watched as his own face appeared on the screen, huge, distorted by the camera lens, but very recognizable. He looked at McCarthy, who was staring at the screen as if she had found a freshly severed finger in her Cobb salad.

“Oh jeez,” said Dexter in a hoarse whisper.

The video ran for less than forty seconds. In it they could clearly see Nicky’s face, his fingers looming large as tree trunks in the foreshortened image, picking his way through the contents of Earl Pike’s medicine cabinet until he settled on the razor blade.

“I draw your attention to that,” said Kendall.

The video image showed Nicky considering the blade, holding it up to the light over the cabinet, and then plucking the blade off the handle, replacing it with a new one, and then putting the razor back in position on the shelf. He reached out for the door then, and blackness came down on the image. The tiny recorder showed the word
end
and then shut off. The silence in the room was fairly complete, other than the rustle of the old man’s breathing and the sound of a guard walking the halls and whistling the theme from
Dr. Zhivago
. Finally McCarthy got to her feet.

“Your Honor, I think I need to consult with my superiors.”

“Of course,” said Judge Bethune, inclining her Sphinx-like head.

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Professor Kendall.

“Thank you,” McCarthy said, and walked out of the room. The two police officers followed behind, Dexter closing the door after him as softly as he could manage. Judge Bethune could not hear all of the conversation that took place immediately outside her door. The best way to characterize it would be to call it vigorous. Earl Pike was back on the street two hours later.

He looked untouched and calm in his navy-blue Armani as if he had never been arrested at all. The night was cool, the sky still streaked with the sunset streaming out from the Jersey flatlands. He walked a few blocks north along Centre Street, past the tangled alleyways of Chinatown, along Broome to Mott, where he stopped in at Il Grand Ticino and had a quiet meal of angel-hair pasta and some mussels in a white wine reduction, along with a very nice Soave. Halfway through the meal, his cell phone rang. It was Carmine DaJulia. Carmine sounded tired. Carmine had a tip for him. He knew where Jack Vermillion was going to be later tonight. Did Pike want to know?