Blood Money (33 page)

There was no way out. No back door and no windows that would open. Besides, they were on the fifth floor—too high to jump even if they could. Carmen kicked the bathroom door open and pulled Lily inside. She locked it. She knew she had only a few seconds more to think of something. She frantically looked around for anything that might save their lives. She could find nothing.

Carmen pushed a stall door open. The stall was wide and had grab bars for the handicapped. It was perfect for the two of them. “Come on, Lily, up here,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Up onto the toilet seat. Hurry up,” she commanded.

The little girl obeyed although she was shaking from head to toe. She was speechless. Nothing would come out of her mouth even if she tried. Carmen urged her sister toward the back of the toilet, and Lily slipped.

“Careful, don’t fall.” Carmen held her hand, helping her sister regain her balance as Lily’s feet straddled the seat.

Carmen quickly locked the stall door and stepped up onto the seat. She held one of the grab bars as she carefully turned and faced the door. Now both were up on the toilet, their feet not visible in the opening at the bottom of the door.

But what now?
Carmen asked herself.
What to do? Think, think, think fast.

Then she saw it. She knew what to do. She jumped off the seat, unlocked the stall door, and grabbed Lily’s hand.

“Come on, Lily, get down for one minute.”

“No, I’m scared.”

Now, Lily. Now.” She pulled her sister off the seat and lifted the heavy lid off the toilet tank. “Get back up now. Just get up and face the wall,” she commanded.

Lily quickly obeyed, steadying herself with a hand against the stall wall. She whimpered pathetically.

“Shh.” Carmen balanced the heavy porcelain lid under her arm as she pulled herself onto the seat using her free hand and a grab bar. She balanced and turned herself around to face the door, holding the tank top up with both hands. She heard the outside door knob rattle, then a loud thump that sounded like a kick, then
phutt, phutt
, the dreaded sound of the silencer—the sound she had come to learn and fear during the last ten or so minutes.

Steps echoed on the tile floor as he slowly approached. She heard him open a stall door—the stall next to them. She saw his feet. They were huge in black, shiny shoes. He stopped.

She waited. Carmen could feel Lily’s breath and her trembling, little body behind her.

The door opened slowly and then—smash! Without hesitation Carmen swung the tank lid into Rudi’s face with a two-handed back swing. Her body crashed into the side of the stall from the momentum. She heard the cracking of bone as his nose and orbital socket shattered under the weight of the heavy porcelain lid. Blood sprayed everywhere as he fell backward, hitting the sink. The mirror was splattered with red, and so was Carmen. She dropped the blood-smeared lid, which shattered into large pieces as it hit the floor, and then wiped the greasy red residue from her face.

“Let’s go.” Carmen grabbed Lily’s hand, and they flew out of the bathroom into the carnage Rudi had left for them. There was blood everywhere, and she was disgusted by its feel and smell. But there was no time. “Come on!” she yelled.

Lily finally let out the scream she had been holding back for the last twenty minutes. It was ear-shattering. But it didn’t matter. No one could hear it. No one could respond.

Carmen and Lily skirted two bodies lying on the floor next to empty desks. Two secretaries with their faces shot off. Down the hall there were three more men in jeans, contorted in various positions on the floor, not moving, presumed dead. Carmen didn’t look into the offices as she ran through the narrow hall, deftly avoiding the
corpses. She picked up the first phone she saw behind an empty work station, its receiver dangling from a vacant desk, and dialed 911. “Don’t look,” she said as she covered Lily’s eyes. The worker who belonged in the now empty work station lay under the desk, her head gaping open at the brow. Brain matter was spattered over her chair and the surface behind it. Red globules dripped thickly down the white surround.

“Hello, is this the police?” Carmen had no patience. She cut through the questions of the 911 operator, which she considered wasteful and time consuming. “Look, just send the cops and an ambulance. No,” she paused, “send about five or six ambulances— because they’re all dead. And I killed one of them—myself.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, Mr. Ceratto, but I’m sanctioning you right now. You will pay this court five hundred dollars. And each time you pull a stunt like that, it will be a thousand more. And if you force me into calling a mistrial, I’ll have you confined for contempt. And then I’m going to file a complaint with the Disciplinary Board and see to it that you’re disbarred in Pennsylvania and every other state you try to set foot in.” Barnes, red-faced, drew in a breath and, choking on his own venom, coughed loudly.

“Are you all right, Judge?” Nick asked in a sincere tone while wishing the man in black would strangle on his own saliva.

“No, I’m not.”

“Look, Judge. There’s no need to be so upset with me. I’m only doing what I’m supposed to do as an attorney.”

“Sell your clients down the river?” The judge’s eyes bulged with hatred for the young man before him.

“No. Get to the truth.”

“Truth, shmuth. You’re trying to force a mistrial and your own ruin. I’m telling you, Ceratto. Don’t.”

“Judge, I’m an officer of the court like you, and my interest is that justice is served, not simply to win a case. And neither you
nor any other judge is going to threaten me on or
off the record
like you’re doing now.” Nick cocked his head to the side, wearing his best street corner smirk. “That doctor is not guilty. He didn’t do a fucking thing but try to save that cop’s life. I know for a fact that the cop was murdered—to set this case up—and the fucking bitch who did it is the one you let compose herself.”

“Mr. Ceratto, you’re beyond reprimand. You’re beyond sanctioning—you’re teetering on the edge of arrest. How dare you insult this court with foul language and slanderous accusations—unfounded accusations, I might add.” Barnes’s voice shook with anger, especially because Nick appeared so cool. He simply smiled and listened. “Either you have a death wish or you are totally insane. I prefer to think the latter. I prefer to think you are under pressure with a case you inherited that is simply too much for you, and that is the reason for these antics. So, Mr. Ceratto, which will it be, jail, a mental hospital or the courtroom? You choose.”

“No, Judge.
You
choose,” Nick snapped, still smiling. “You see, the way I look at is if you have me locked up, I’m safe. At least I won’t wind up in the morgue. And you’ll have to declare a mistrial. Then I’ll go to the press and your goose is cooked. The hospital? Those two murdering assholes out there, your buddies, would take care of me the same way they did Sean Riley. But the case still mistries and you lose your perfect record. The press will ask a million questions. They’ll eat up what I say, even from the loony bin. But you’ll never make the Supreme Court—not if this lunatic can help it! Or—” he took a long breath, cocking his head, squinting defiantly—”you let me try this case, the way I want to. If I win, you win. If I lose, you still win. But that jury out there…” he pointed to the door, “makes the decision, not you.”

“Are you threatening
me
, Mr. Ceratto?” The judge’s voice dropped two octaves. His expression changed.

“No, Judge, I’m just telling it like it is, that’s all. Threats never work. I learned that the hard way. You’ve got to walk the long walk, and I have good strong legs.”

“Then let’s talk, Mr. Ceratto and see where you’re headed.” The judge angrily smacked “0” on the speaker phone and barked at his secretary, “Get Mr. Asher in here.”

The second pot of coffee had been brought into the room where the jurors sat—or at least were supposed to sit—in quiet detachment. Juror number three checked her makeup in a compact mirror she always carried, adjusting her curls now and then. Two of the older men played cards—highly unusual and hardly permitted during Barnes’s trials, but this one was an exception.

Alonzo Hodge paced like a caged animal, arms folded, purposely not socializing with any other juror.

“Mr. Hodge, I’d appreciate your not walking about. You’re making me quite nervous and just making things worse for everyone,” Mrs. Carla Fisher, an English teacher at Central High said with her most tolerant, tutorial smile. She looked at him squarely, waiting for a response, the smile still pasted on her jowled face. She got none. She adjusted her tortoiseshell half-glasses, closing her hardback copy of Dickens’s
Hard Times
. “Mr. Hodge?”

“Look, teach,” snapped Alonzo, quickly pivoting to face her. “I’m not one of your students. I got a family to support and a job I probably lost to worry about. You bein’ paid your fifty thousand dollar salary while we wait for these assholes to get on with the case. So, shut the fuck up, OK?”

“Mr. Hodge. There’s no need to become vulgar and abusive,” she indignantly. “I didn’t know…”

A portly truck driver named Domenic DeMeo slowly rose to his feet. He was between thirty-five and forty. The ravioli and all his other favorite dishes had taken their toll, and he strained as he lifted his two hundred and seventy-five pounds from his chair. “Come on, all you people,” he interrupted. “We gotta get along here. We got important decisions to make.” His outstretched arms summoned peace. “Look, we all wanna get outta here, so let’s play nice, and when the game is up we vote guilty, give the widow lady a bunch a money, and get outta here.”

Mr. Hirsch puts his cards down and shook his gray head. “Highly irregular, Mr. DeMeo. We’re not supposed to discuss the case, let alone make decisions, until the end—until all the evidence is presented and the judge gives us our instructions. Then we deliberate and vote, and
then
and
only then
do we reach a verdict.”

“What are you—a lawyer?” mocked DeMeo, his stomach jiggling with laughter.

“No, but my son is. And I know a little bit about the process. And
I,
Mr. DeMeo, have a conscience.
I
don’t find people guilty and ruin their lives just because I want to go home.”

“Exactly,” chimed in Mrs. Fisher. “We’ve sworn an oath to uphold the law and do our duty as jurors. I will not be part of a biased jury.”

“OK, then let’s tell the judge and go home.” The curly blond pressed her lips together to evenly spread her newly applied lipstick. “I have a date tonight and I would like to pick up a new pair of shoes on the way home, sleep late, and not come back tomorrow. Does that sound like a plan?” she giggled, putting her recently sculpted, inch-long fingernails to her mouth.

“This is bullshit!” Alonzo smacked is hand on the chipped, brown table. “Look, Mr. Justice.” He pointed at Hirsh. Then he turned to DeMeo. “And you, Mr. Quick-fix.” Then looking at juror number three, “And you, Ms. Bubble-Brain.” She giggled, unfazed by the slur. “Teach is right. We swore an oath. I don’t like bein’ here. I don’t like losin’ my job. But what’s done is done. I don’t like this, but I gotta accept this shitty job they forced me to do. So do you. So let’s get together and do our job.” He paused, looked up at the stained ceiling, and began to pace. “I smell a rat here. Some shit’s goin’ down here and we better keep our eyes and ears open.”

All eleven sat upright and listened attentively as Alonzo Hodge pontificated, doing exactly as they had been admonished not to do.

The empty courtroom echoed with the crash of a heavy door forcefully flung open. The old bailiff appeared, holding his chest as he tried to catch his breath. He ran, half limping toward the door of Judge Barnes’s chambers.

Grace had been dozing in the hard chair in the back of the room. She was jarred out of her half sleep by the noise and found herself alone. She quickly looked at her watch and saw that Nick had been in the judge’s chambers for a half hour. She didn’t like it. She also didn’t like the action of the bailiff. She knew Louie, or at least had seen him in courtrooms before, and there was no way this old man—this seasoned beneficiary of old time Philadelphia patronage, would attempt to run anywhere—for any reason. Except, maybe to escape a nuclear blast.

Louie had disappeared into the rear sanctum. Grace quickly left the courtroom, hoping to find out whatever the bailiff knew or had seen that had jet propelled to Barnes’s chambers. She saw an empty hall. She found it particularly unusual that the newspeople had gone. She knew how they hung around day and night when they smelled blood. The only possible conclusion was that there was fresh meat somewhere else. Then from around a distant corner of the narrow, dingy hall, beyond her sight line, she heard noise—running feet clattering on the vinyl tile floor and muffled shouts. She picked up speed and hurried toward the noise.

A crowd of reporters milled around something, poking cameras and microphones toward the center of the crowd. Grace gathered that whoever or whatever it was, was important. Perhaps more important than what was happening in courtroom number 613.

At the outside of the ring of bodies she recognized Shoes.

“Shoes,” Grace called from a distance, her voice barely audible in the racket. “Shoes!”