Mean Streak (14 page)

“He's relevant, Your Honor,” I said, plunging ahead in spite of an inner misgiving that I didn't have the evidence to back up my claim, “because the defense has reason to believe that TJ had dealings with Detective Fitzgerald that might have tended to undermine his credibility.” I was deliberately couching my remarks in legalese; the judge disliked emotional outbursts, and I wanted Nick Lazarus to be the one who appeared irrationally angry, while I presented a picture of cool competence.

Lazarus blustered, but in the end, the judge signed the four subpoenas. “I'll reserve decision as to the admissibility of this material,” he said, “until after I've seen the reports themselves.”

I thanked the judge and hastened out of the courtroom, eager to place the subpoenas into the hands of my investigator. Angie was under instructions to get them served at the earliest opportunity. They were “forthwith” subpoenas, which meant the information could be in court as early as the next day.

“Don't worry, Carmelita,” she said in a stage whisper in the corridor outside the courtroom. “I'll get these served pronto. This is the Angelina express leaving right now.”

But the Mean Streak kept moving, its pace inexorable. I needed sleep; I needed coffee; I needed a viable defense. But what I got was a parade of secondary witnesses: waiters at the Chinese and Italian restaurants Eddie Fitz and Fat Jack had frequented; Paulie the Cork Corcoran, who admitted handing over grand jury minutes in return for cash.

On cross, Paulie admitted he'd never actually taken money from Matt, nor had he handed the manila envelope with the grand jury minutes to my client. All his dealings had been with Fat Jack; at most, he'd exchanged a little courthouse gossip and Chinese noodles with Riordan. I breathed a little easier when the disgraced court clerk stepped down; he hadn't laid a glove on us.

The real damage would be done after the lunch break, when Eddie Fitz would step up and take the oath.

I was stopped on the way out of the courthouse, not by the usual reporter, but by Annie Straub.

“I have to talk to you,” she said in a low voice.

Matt, standing next to me on top of the stone steps, said, “I'll grab lunch and meet you back here at two.” He strode down the stairway before I could respond.

I'd sensed that Annie and I could talk more freely woman-to-woman, and now I was going to have my chance.

“Shall we have lunch?” I asked.

She nodded. She turned and began the hazardous walk down the steep stone steps that had no railing. She wore a rayon print dress in royal blue, with an antique lace collar. It tied in the back like a little girl's dress, but the hemline was high enough to reveal shapely legs in caramel-colored hose.

I followed, making my way through the crowd with difficulty.

A voice behind me caught my attention. It was one of the print reporters from the trial. “Ms. Jameson,” he called as he raced toward me, his steno pad open. “Can you answer a question for me, please?”

I nodded. Much as I would have liked to brush him off, I was under orders from my client to maintain good relations with the press. I gave him a quick summary of the morning's activities, then turned back to Dwight Straub's wife.

“Sorry about that,” I said with a self-deprecatory shrug. “Maybe we should start walking, get away from this crowd.”

“I have an idea,” she said. “But it will only work if you're not really hungry.”

“Hungry? Me? Not at all,” I lied. It was more important to put Annie at ease than to take in calories.

“Then come with me,” she said. She walked purposefully toward the little church that lay hidden behind the skirts of the federal courthouse. It was a tiny brick building, dwarfed by the huge public edifices that towered over it. I glanced up at the portico above the simple columns and resolved to ask Riordan, the former altarboy, to translate the Latin motto:
Beati qui ambulant in lege Domini
.

I decided to ask Annie Straub instead.

She gave a small, indulgent smile. “It means ‘Blessed are they who walk in the law of the Lord,'” she translated. “It's not a real beatitude or anything, but I always liked walking past it.”

She turned right at the church and walked down the little alleyway that separated it from the Federal Correctional Center, which also housed the United States attorney's office. When she reached a gate leading to a side door, she pulled it open.

“We can go into the church?” I asked, surprised.

“There's a meeting room back here,” she explained. “I have a key.” She fished in her purse and pulled out a single key on a ring; there was a triangle within a circle on the emblem. She unlocked the door and pushed it open so we could enter.

The room was functional, undecorated. Perhaps fifty folding chairs were set up in a casual grouping; there was a table at what would have been a focal point of attention, and on another table in the back there was an unplugged coffee urn. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what kind of meetings took place here.

“I didn't know you were AA,” I said as I lowered myself onto one of the folding chairs.

She nodded. “Almost two years. I'm in charge of opening the room for the Tuesday meeting,” she explained. “Because I work so close by, I guess. And it's one of the things you do in the program—you do service.”

“Where do you work?” I asked, still trying to put her more at ease.

“I work for General Services,” she replied, naming the New York City agency responsible for purchasing. It was housed in the Municipal Building, on the other side of the plaza. “My office is all the way up on the nineteenth floor,” she added. “My boss has a great view of the harbor from his window.”

“It was a good idea, coming in here,” I said.

She gave a small laugh that echoed hollowly in the big room. “I guess I picked it because I've said a lot of things in these rooms that were pretty hard to say to another person. I thought maybe it would help me talk to you if I was in a place where I felt safe.” She took a deep breath and said the words I'd hoped to hear. “I don't want Dwight to take the rap for Eddie.”

My conscience gave me a little stab; in truth, she wasn't really safe with me. I had a client and an agenda, and I had just arranged to serve a subpoena on her husband. I decided it would be all right to continue this conversation if I made these facts as clear as possible.

“Look, I represent Matt Riordan,” I reminded her. “I can't give you legal advice, but I can sure as hell advise you to find an attorney you can trust, and put yourself in his hands.”

“You really think Dwight needs a lawyer?” She might as well have been asking a doctor if her husband needed brain surgery.

“Yes,” I said. “Especially if he's thinking of coming forward to testify against Eddie.”

“I'll tell Dwight what you said,” Annie replied. She gave a small sigh and went on. “He was so excited when he got the promotion and the assignment to Narcotics.” Her voice softened at the memory. “I got all dressed up and went over to the ceremony at One Police Plaza.”

She stopped and looked down at the chapped hands in her lap, then glanced up at me shyly. “I've been going down there ever since I was a kid,” she explained. “When my dad made sergeant, my mom dressed us kids up and we took off school to see him in his uniform, shaking the police commissioner's hand. I forget who it was back then, but it was a good long time ago. Then we all had lunch over in Chinatown with one of Dad's buddies and his family. It was a real high point; Dad has the promotion photo on his desk at home to this day.”

“Is your father still on the job?” I asked, careful to word it the way an insider would. Annie Straub was a cop's daughter; that meant something, but I wasn't sure what.

“My dad retired six, seven years ago. But he was real proud of Dwight when he made detective. He liked for Dwight to bring his buddies over for barbecues and football games. He liked Eddie—liked him a lot.” There was a wistful quality to her voice; had her father liked Eddie Fitz, the outgoing party boy, better than his own son-in-law?

It was worth a shot. “How does your husband get along with your dad?”

“Fine.” She said the word quickly. Too quickly. I said nothing, hoping the silence would become uncomfortable enough for her to want to fill it.

“He likes Dwight,” she finally said, lowering her eyes as if ashamed to betray her husband, “but I think Eddie reminded my dad of the way he was when he was a young cop. Eddie took chances, whereas Dwight is more—I don't know, careful.”

“And careful is not something your father values?”

Her lips twisted in rueful disdain. “Oh, he says he respects Dwight. He talks about how different it was in the old days, how a college guy couldn't hope to be a good cop back then, but now they need all the education they can get. But underneath, he thinks balls are better than brains. And if there's one thing Eddie Fitzgerald has, it's balls. Big brass ones that clank when he walks.”

Something in the set of her jaw put me on the alert. I took another wild shot. “Did Eddie ever come on to you?”

Her hand jumped to her bosom in an instinctive, protective gesture. “How the hell could you—” She broke off and gathered herself together. “It was at a party at our house. It was in honor of some guy's promotion. Eddie was at least half in the bag. He was drinking more than usual,” she said, raising her eyes to meet mine, “because he was being sent to Psych Services and it was making him crazy.”

My own eyes must have reflected something of what I was feeling, because Annie gave a quick, mirthless laugh and said, “Why am I making excuses for him? He was drunk and he came into the kitchen and started groping me. What really pissed me off was that he made damn sure Dwight saw what he was up to. He cornered me in the kitchen and stepped too close and put his hands all over me. And all the time Dwight was in the living room, right where he could see what was going on.”

“What happened?” I had visions of the night ending with .38 specials at dawn. The way many a cop party has ended.

She saw where my thoughts were going and shook her head. “Dwight came in and said something to Eddie. Eddie just laughed and said he couldn't help himself, I was so beautiful he had to make a move or Dwight would have felt insulted. It was total bullshit and I could see Dwight didn't like it any better than I did, but he laughed it off and the two of them went out into the yard with a bottle and two glasses.”

“Eddie sounds like a real prince,” I remarked.

“Prince of Assholes,” she muttered, then grinned like a teenager.

“If you feel that way about him,” I said, echoing Matt's words of the night before, “why not help bring him down?”

“That's just what I want to do,” she said with a grim smile. “But I have to be sure it doesn't hurt my Dwight,” she added, her jaw tight.

I couldn't honestly see a way that this whole situation wouldn't hurt her Dwight, no matter what he did or didn't do, but I didn't tell her that. What I did instead was repeat my earlier advice. “Get a lawyer. Right away.”

She nodded and swallowed hard. “I never thought the day Dwight was promoted that it would end like this.”

The food booths were right outside the church; I decided I had time for a quick slice of pizza before I met Matt. I got on line and in short order had a triangle of crust dripping with cheese in my hand. I leaned well forward as I bit into it, not wanting oil spots on my new designer clothes.

I decided I also had time to serve my own subpoena. I finished the slice and strode across Centre Street to 26 Federal Plaza.

Warren Zebart looked up with a scowl when I walked into the bullpen office where he sat in his shirtsleeves. “What do you want?” he said in a tone that could only be called a growl.

I gave him an innocent stare. “What's the matter?” I asked. “Aren't you used to dealing with the public in here?”

“You're not the public, Ms. Jameson. You're a lawyer and you ought to go through the proper channels.”

“Proper channels are for lawyers with money,” I replied with a smile I tried hard to make conciliatory. “I thought I'd save time and bucks by serving my own subpoena.” I set my briefcase on the edge of his desk without asking permission and clicked open the brass fasteners. His scowl deepened; every move I made signaled my intention to stay as long as I wanted.

I pulled out the subpoena and handed it over. He could have taken it without glancing at the documents called for, but I was banking on his natural curiosity.

He skimmed the subpoena. “What do you want this stuff for?” he asked.

“At the risk of sounding rude,” I replied, “all you have to know is that the judge signed it earlier this morning.”

I pushed my luck. “Hell, we both know TJ was killed because of his involvement with Eddie Fitz. The NYPD was called off the investigation on the grounds that TJ was a witness in a federal case. I'm going to get this stuff; the only question is when. I guess I'm wondering why I can't have it now—if the Bureau has nothing to hide.”

He gave it some thought. His lower teeth reached up and grabbed the ends of his graying mustache. He nibbled a bit and then stood up. “I'll have to make some phone calls,” he said.

“I can wait,” I replied, making ready to sit down in the straight chair next to his desk.

“Not here,” he said firmly. “You can sit in the waiting room.”

The waiting room consisted of one row of welded-plastic chairs in royal blue and a glass coffee table laden with outdated magazines. It looked like the office of a singularly unprosperous dentist. I picked up an ancient
New Yorker
and thumbed through it, looking for the cartoons.

Zebart summoned me back into the sanctum some fifteen minutes later. “Lazarus said I should give you everything,” he told me, his tone considerably more affable.