Blunt Darts (23 page)

Judge Elam asked Smolina if he had anything to add. “He’s not a bad boy, your honor. And he’s from a good family,” said the lawyer, gesturing with a sweep of his hand that reluctantly included Marco.

Judge Elam set bail at $250,000, no cash equivalent.

I wanted to speak briefly with the assistant district attorney, who had in front of her three or four more manila files to deal with that morning. I stayed seated and debated waiting for her to finish. The D’Amicos, lawyer in lead, came down the middle aisle. Father D’Amico was consoling his wife, Marco hanging back a bit. As Marco pulled even with my row, he paused and leaned over to me. He muttered, “If I was you, I’d have somebody else start my car for me,” and then continued on.

I decided I would wait to speak with the assistant district attorney.

She was about 5-foot-8, slim in a two-piece, skirt-and-jacket, gray suit. She had long black hair pulled into a bun. From where I sat in the courtroom, I could see her face only in partial profile. She handled two more bail disputes and a short probable-cause hearing before the luncheon recess. Everyone stood as Judge Elam left the bench. As she reached my row, I fell in beside her.

“My name’s John Cuddy,” I said, “and I’d like to buy you lunch.”

She looked up at me, then down at her watch. “Nancy Meagher. I’ve got twenty-five minutes and I brought a sandwich.”

“Can I have half? Or both?”

We stopped and she smiled. “You’re the PI who shot D’Amico, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Shame about your second bullet.”

“You’ve been reading about me.”

“Yes. And wondering how much pressure you had to apply to pal Joey to get him to admit Weeks hired him.”

“It was within constitutionally permissible limits.”

She glanced down at her wrist. “I now have twenty-four minutes but still a whole sandwich. Halfsies still O.K.?”

“You bet,” I said.

We sat in her shared cubicle, her officemate being out.

“Don’t Superior Court prosecutors usually cover bail hearings in heavy cases?” I asked.

“Usually,” she replied, neatly tamping a bit of errant tuna into a gap in the corner of her mouth. “But I’ve been here nine months, and I’m good.” She smiled without showing her teeth. An open, Irish maiden face, with widely set, soft blue eyes and a straight slim nose. A smattering of freckles that would reach epidemic proportions with summer’s sun. As a girl, she must have been cute. As a woman, she was damned attractive. I felt a little glow.

“Good tuna,” I said.

She wiped her mouth with a patterned paper napkin from home and pitched it into a wastebasket.

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Cuddy?”

I had no napkin so I used my handkerchief. “D’Amico. More precisely, brother Marco. Connected?”

She shook her head. “Peripherally, at most. He’s a numb-nuts, maybe some high school friends who are approaching ‘management level,’ but no established contacts. Why?”

“A couple helped me out indirectly in busting Joey. I don’t want Marco to pick up their scent to square things, and I wanted to know his likely troop strength.”

“What makes you think Marco would do something?”

I reviewed his general appearance and repeated his comment to me in the courtroom.

“Hmmm. I’d say the Coopers could be in trouble.”

I lurched forward in my seat. “I never gave their name to the investigating officer. How did you know it?”

She rummaged through a file and handed me a police report. “Seems the Coopers gave their name to the fire department when they called in the flames, and the fire captain mentioned it to the cop who arrived on the scene.”

I read Jesse and Emily’s name, address, and telephone number from the last paragraph of the report. “Damn,” I said. “I assume the D’Amico lawyer has a copy of this?”

“Got one the first night at the arresting station, as soon as he identified himself as Joey’s attorney. Per office procedure.”

“Maybe I should have a talk with Marco,” I said.

She cleared her throat. “Let me be official, Mr. Cuddy. You go shaking down Marco, and it will weaken you as a witness for the prosecution. I don’t want Joey’s case riding on old Weeks’ ‘I hired him’ testimony.”

“And unofficially?” I asked.

She smiled, using her teeth this time. Nice, even teeth. “Unofficially, mightn’t you be giving Marco ideas he hasn’t stumbled on himself yet, since he seems to view you as enemy number one-and-only right now?”

I considered it. “I’m not sure you’re right, Ms. Meagher. But yours is the better percentage right now.” I stood up. “Thanks for lunch.”

She stayed seated. “You’re from Southie originally, right?”

South Boston is an old Irish/Italian neighborhood of brick and wood three-deckers just past the South Station train terminus. Beth and I both grew up there.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Me, too,” she replied. “In fact, I still live there. On Fourth Street, number 746.” She smiled. “Third floor.”

I cleared my throat. “I still don’t deal with this gracefully,” I said, “but I was married a long time and then widowed. I’m still not … well … ready.…”

Nancy blinked a few times and stood up. “I think that’s the most graceful ‘Thanks anyway’ I’ve ever heard.” She gave my right arm a quick squeeze. “But keep me in mind, O.K.?”

“O.K.” I squeezed back and left.

A
S
I
SAT OUTSIDE
trial courtroom 924, my mind kept skipping from the night of the fire to how much I was looking forward to seeing Nancy Meagher again. We had not met since the bail hearing, although she called me once a few weeks ago to review my version of what happened. Over the telephone, her voice sounded softer than I remembered, and she had advanced to the DA’s Superior Court office. She was assisting the head of the Homicide Division in prosecuting Joey D’Amico, who so far had refused to cop a plea.

I had not seen Joey either, not since the night at the warehouse. I did see Marco two days after the bail hearing, through the lens of my Pentax K1000 as I sat in a rental car outside the D’Amico house on Hanover Street. I brought the photos to the Coopers with the insurance company’s final check for their help. I told Jesse and Emily over tea and cookies that they were to call me if they ever saw Marco anywhere around them or their house. They promised they would, but I called them several times in the intervening months just to be sure. No Marco.

A long-fingered freckled hand gave my arm a squeeze as Nancy settled in beside me on the bench.

“What are you in for?” she asked with, I swear, a twinkle in her eye.

“The vice squad caught me doing funny things with turtles.”

She laughed, a deep throaty laugh. “Lucky turtles.”

I shook my head and turned to business. “How does it look?”

She glanced around to be sure no one she knew was within earshot. “Frankly, it couldn’t look better for us. We’ve got your contact at the insurance company to lead off with the surrounding circumstances, Weeks to describe the ‘contract,’ you to put Joey in the warehouse with his statements and Craigie alive shortly before, and a lab man who took specimens off the butt of Joey’s gun that match Craigie’s blood type and color hair.”

I considered her summary. “Why no plea?”

Her turn to shake the head. “Makes no sense to me. Speaking professional to professional, Joey’s lawyer is a hack. Very little pretrial stuff, at which Joey could have testified to try to suppress his statements to you under any number of theories. With his record, Joey doesn’t dare testify at trial because we’d nail him to the cross with his prior convictions.”

“Maybe they figure the deal from your side might be better if they push you to the verge of trial?”

“Maybe, but we’re not going to be very generous on this one.”

I became aware of people shuffling their feet a little distance away from us, and I turned to look at them. The Coopers. In their Sunday best and scared.

I whipped my head back to Nancy. “Did you call them?”

She turned the way I had. “No, who are … oh, the Coopers, huh?”

I nodded.

“Must have been D’Amico’s lawyer, though what help they’ll be …”

“I’m going to calm them down. See you inside.”

“You’ve got some time. You’re witness number three, right after Weeks.”

I went up to the Coopers and took Emily’s outstretched hand. She mustered a smile.

“Why are you here?”

Jesse produced a paper from his inside jacket pocket and unfolded it carefully. “We got this. Last night. It was late, so we didn’t want to call you.”

It was a subpoena. The signature of the issuing notary public was illegible, but it looked to be in proper form.

“A surly man in a porkpie hat brought it,” said Emily. “Along with this.” She held open an envelope with some currency in it.

“That’s your witness fee, Emily,” I said. “You can keep that.”

Jesse’s hands shook as he refolded the subpoena. “What do they want us for?”

“I don’t know,” I said as the court officer, uniformed and side-armed, boomed, “Trial session, trial session, court coming in.”

I guided the Coopers into the courtroom.

We sat on the left-hand side of the middle aisle, halfway back. On our side of the courtroom was the prosecutor’s table, near the as-yet empty jury box. Nancy and a tall, fiftyish man with red-gray hair were conferring. The D’Amico family sat on the right-hand side of the aisle, several rows in front of us but still behind the defense table, at which Smolina sat scribbling on a legal pad. Friend of the Bride, Friend of the Groom.

A clerk of court was shuffling papers in front of the bench, and a stenographer was assembling her miniature transcriber to his right. A side door opened, and two court officers brought in a cuffed Joey D’Amico. He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He’d had a haircut but looked pale as a ghost after his six months in jail.

The officers led him to the defense table, unshackled him, and took up positions to his right and behind. At least his lawyer had had sense enough to move that his client not be seated in the dock. The dock is a square, isolated, and elevated box which some say gives jurors a pejorative impression of the dangerousness of the defendant whose fate they decide.

The judge was announced and entered from a different side door. I did not recognize him, but he was about sixty, white-haired, and judgelike. D’Amico’s case was called by the clerk. Nancy, her compatriot (who did not introduce himself), and Smolina approached the bench and exchanged preliminaries. The judge asked for witness lists. Nancy handed the prosecution’s to the clerk. Smolina, looking perplexed, excused himself and scurried back to his table. He began flipping nervously through his file. Joey looked back at Marco, whose head was down and shaking left to right. Smolina closed his file, apologized to the judge, and said that his only witnesses would be several members of the D’Amico family and “Jerry” and “Emma” Cooper. The judge lectured Smolina on the need for full names and addresses now so they could be read to the jury during selection. Smolina said of course, of course but …

At which point Marco stood up and said, “Judge, if it’ll help, I can give you everybody’s name and address.”

The judge was off-balance for a moment, then said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Marco D’Amico, the defendant’s brother, and I live at 767 Hanover Street, North End.” Marco went on to list his other family and a priest, speaking the names and addresses slowly enough for the clerk to transcribe them. Marco concluded by saying, “And by the way, the first names of the Coopers are Jesse and Emily and they live at 230 Beech Street, Dorchester.”

I felt Emily tense and shudder beside me as we all realized Marco had their names and address memorized. When Marco finished, the judge thanked him and told Smolina he should be as prepared as his witnesses. As Marco sat back down, he turned his head toward us and smiled unpleasantly. I could sense Jesse and Emily grasping each other’s hands a little harder. I was thinking of Marco’s throat.

The trial, or more accurately Smolina’s attempted defense, was laughable. The jury was picked within twenty minutes, Smolina forgetting which side got to challenge prospective jurors first. Nancy’s superior, whose name was McClean, made an opening statement that persuaded half the jurors without seeming to press them. Smolina waived an opening, and several jurors looked at each other with surprise. McClean presented my contact, who barely arrived in time, and Smolina asked him no questions.

McClean then put on Harvey Weeks, a miserable, flabby man, with a bald head and horn-rimmed glasses. Weeks described his retention of Joey. Smolina objected a few times, unsuccessfully. Then Smolina cross-examined Weeks, with McClean objecting frequently and usually successfully. The judge even began to suggest questions to Smolina (“Mr. Smolina, why don’t you ask him …”) to try to move the case along. Smolina’s thrust seemed to be toward getting Weeks to say he’d hired someone other than Joey.

When Weeks left the stand, I was called. I told my story in response to McClean’s nicely paced questions. I’d had a year of evening division law school, and I’d been in a lot of courtrooms for Empire, but McClean was the best I’d ever seen. Why he was taking something around forty thousand from the DA instead of four or five times that from a downtown civil litigation firm was beyond me.

When Smolina began his cross-examination, the defense “strategy” began to unfold. He was trying to create the impression that I was the arsonist Weeks had hired, and that D’Amico had been in the neighborhood, seen the open window and gone in to investigate, only to be framed by me. Instead of objecting, McClean let Smolina go on, and I sensed that the jury was nearly as incredulous as I was.

After Smolina finished, McClean on redirect asked me one question. “Have you ever been convicted of a crime, Mr. Cuddy?”

I said, “No.”

“Thank you,” McClean said, smiling at Smolina. “No further questions.”

After I left the stand, the police lab expert testified. As he described the blood-and-hair evidence, I tried to sort out McClean’s strategy. I guessed that McClean felt Smolina’s version of the arson plot held no hope unless Joey confirmed it. If Joey testified, however, McClean would impeach him with his prior convictions and then argue “Who should you believe?” to the jury.