Mean Streak (19 page)

There was a For Rent sign in the corner of the window, no sign of activity within. No “girls” answering phones, no phones ringing. No clients' families sitting on the edge of chairs, sipping bad coffee from plastic cups. No Jack Vance, come to that, but he could be in his office in the back. I knocked on the window and waited.

Fat Jack lumbered toward the door, listing from one side to the other as his weight shifted from leg to leg. His belly was an enormous burden, lopping over his pants, straining against the huge expanse of white shirt-front. Beads of sweat stood out on his domelike forehead; the effort of walking from his office to the door had taken a lot out of him.

I hoped we could finish the interview before he had the coronary that was so clearly in his future.

“Ms. Jameson?” he asked, his voice weakened by a wheeze. Asthma, on top of everything else. I nodded; he motioned me inside, opening the door just wide enough to let me slip through. As if he were afraid someone or something bigger and stronger would follow me in.

The desks were clean. Not a paper in sight. No telephones either. Jack was closing down, winding up his business. Getting ready to face the sentence soon to be imposed by the Eastern District judge.

Who had his papers?

I decided to ask, to open discussion before we sat down, before Fat Jack reached his office, his turf.

“Did Nick Lazarus subpoena your records, or did you just turn over anything he wanted?” I addressed my question to Jack's broad back, which was crisscrossed by suspenders that were fashionable back in his grandfather's day.

All I got for an answer was a wheeze. It hadn't occurred to me that he couldn't walk and talk at the same time.

His office was as stripped as the rest of the place. There was a battered wooden desk that looked as if it had been purchased at a city auction. On the top sat a multiple-line phone, one pristine yellow legal pad, and a Far Side coffee mug filled with sharp yellow pencils. Gone were the stacks of papers that must have buried the desk at one time.

The only decoration left on the wall was a framed copy of the
Post
's famous headline about an early Riordan case: LOUIE NEEDS A WITNESS, the banner screamed. Matt had been defending a low-level mobster, a Nunzie Aiello clone, who'd told the jury he was playing poker with his pals at the Little Flower Social Club on the night of the crime. When the D.A. asked Matt's alibi witness how and why he'd come forward to testify the man had shrugged and told the jury, “Because someone told me Louie needed a witness.”

The city had had a good laugh, and Matt's client had gone down in flames, but the style and grace with which Matt had laughed along with the press and the public helped forge his reputation as a class act.

The clipping was still on the wall. Was that because it held some meaning for the fat man, or did he intend leaving it there when he moved out, as a signal that his friendship with the man who'd engendered the headline was a thing of the past?

I sat in the straight-backed chair and tried not to stare as Fat Jack lowered himself, inch by inch, into the sagging leather chair behind the desk.

“Now, Ms. Jameson,” he said, his needy voice edged with something I couldn't identify. Sarcasm? Triumph? Something not quite pleasant, something I'd better figure out before I left this place.

“You ask whether or not I betrayed the man I worked for.” His restatement of my question was meant to elicit a protest: Oh, no, that's not what I meant at all.

I didn't protest. I stared straight at him and gave a small nod;
yes, that's exactly what I meant. Did you give ammunition against Riordan to Lazarus, or did you make him work for it? And is there anything you held back, anything Lazarus doesn't have that might help us? And what happened after you met TJ at the Brooklyn House of Detention on the last night of his life? Did you drive him to Lazarus' office? Did you shoot him in the head and hide the body in the trunk of a car
?

It occurred to me that there were a few land mines on the ground that stretched between Fat Jack and me. He was not being called as a witness for the other side, so there was technically no reason why I couldn't talk to him in the absence of his lawyer, but I was definitely searching for evidence of a crime, evidence I might have a legal obligation to turn over to the authorities.

I opened my mouth to rephrase the question; a small smile at the corner of Jack's thin lips told me he'd followed my train of thought with a swiftness that could only have come from years of association with lawyers.

The direct approach was not, I reflected, always the best one. I stepped back, shifted ground, went for the conversational instead of the confrontational. The course I should have taken in the first place.

“Looks like you're closing down,” I remarked, looking around at the empty shelves, the clean desk.

“Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out,” Jack said. He sat back in his chair, which rocked under his weight. “Nick Lazarus set out to break the Baxter Street Gang, and I guess he succeeded.”

“The Baxter Street Gang,” I repeated. The sleazy little street outside was probably the least desirable section of Baxter Street. “Who else on this street did he go after?”

Jack gave a shrug. “It's kind of like a figure of speech. Matty started out here, had an office two doors down. So even though he's been gone from Baxter Street a long time, Lazarus still thinks of him as part of some kind of gang, some kind of conspiracy to make him look like an asshole. Personally,” Fat Jack confided, inclining his head forward an inch or two, “I never thought Nicky Lazarus needed any help in looking like an asshole.”

The use of the nickname gave me an opening. “In Brooklyn, we call Nick Lazarus, Jr., Nicky. He's an assistant D.A.—and a real pain in the ass.”

Jack nodded. “Chip off the old block. Just like Nick trying to fill his father's shoes. Sid Lazarus was maybe the best prosecutor this city ever saw. Between him and Hogan, anyway. Don't even mention Tom Dewey in the same breath, you ask me.”

“Tom Dewey became governor,” I said. “And almost president.”

“Yeah, and Rudy Giuliani's the mayor now,” Jack commented. “Seems like being a U.S. attorney for the Southern District is a ticket to a political future.”

“And Nick Lazarus? What job is he angling for?” I asked. “Would mayor be enough, or does he want to go higher?”

“What he wants and what he can get are two different things,” Fat Jack pronounced.

“He's been getting a lot of ink on this Riordan case,” I pointed out.

“Counselor,” Jack said, his thin voice weary, “you didn't come to the ass-end of Baxter Street to talk politics. Why not cut to the chase here, okay?”

“You could testify for Riordan,” I said, giving the fat man the blunt truth he'd asked for. “Unless, of course, that was part of the deal you made with Lazarus. Did they let you plead on the condition that you stay off the stand during Matt's trial?”

Vance shook his head; his jowls waggled. “I could testify if you want,” he said. Then the thin little smile returned. “But you don't want. Trust me, Ms. J., you don't want.”

Why the hell not
? I wanted to shout.
What could you possibly say that would make things any worse than they are now
?

And then he told me. “See, you gotta understand, once I found that memo, everything changed. Everything turned around.”

“What memo?” I leaned forward on my chair, not bothering to conceal my eagerness. “Jack, what memo?”

“You didn't get the memo?” The bondsman's eyes widened with surprise. “I thought for sure Lazarus would have to turn that over to the defense. It was a memo from Nick Lazarus to some undercover cop, and I found it in an envelope Eddie Fitz gave me. So it didn't take a rocket scientist,” the fat man continued, using a favorite expression, “to figure out that Eddie was working undercover for Lazarus. I nearly shit my pants,” he confided. “I was that fucking stunned. I just looked at the damned thing like it was gonna explode in my face, and then I realized he must have taped our conversations. We were fucked, me and Paulie and Matty.”

“When was this?” Fat Jack's legal instincts were correct; the defense absolutely should have been told about this. I was going back into the courtroom loaded for bear.

“I don't know, sometime after I gave Paulie the money for the grand jury minutes, though. In fact,” he admitted after a moment's thought, “it was after the Riordan thing was over with. I was trying to get some information on a wholly different matter at the time, nothing to do with Matty.”

“But at some point, you knew about Eddie working for Lazarus, and you never told Riordan?” I persisted.

“Hey, it was after the fact, you know. It was after I paid the money. And I wanted to tell Matty, I really did, but Lazarus had my balls in a wringer. He said, ‘You breathe a word to Riordan, I'll see to it you do heavy time in that Brooklyn case.' So I had no choice. I had no fucking choice.”

“But you have a choice now,” I shot back. “You could come to court and tell the jury that you paid Paulie for those minutes on your own hook, that Matt had nothing to do with it.”

“No, I can't, Ms. J.,” Fat Jack replied, his voice a mournful dirge. “Because when I gave that money to Paulie the Cork, I was just doing what Matt Riordan told me to do.”

This was not the answer I wanted; the only thing that made it tolerable was that I didn't believe it for a second.

“How about when you posted bond for a man named TJ?” I countered. “Were you just doing what Nick Lazarus asked you to do?”

If the question hit a nerve, Fat Jack didn't let it show.

“That's what I do,” he said simply. “I write bonds. I must have wrote a thousand bonds this year, and it's only summer. So maybe I wrote one for a guy known as TJ. I could have done that.”

“And maybe you could also have gone to the Brooklyn House of Detention to post the money in person,” I went on. “And maybe you also walked out of BHD with TJ. And maybe you were the last guy to see TJ alive.”

The fat man shook his head; the jowls waggled again. “No, I wasn't, Ms. J.,” he said in his wheezy voice. “I wasn't the last man to see TJ alive. Because I delivered TJ to the man who actually paid the bond-piece.”

“Nick Lazarus,” I guessed. “Did you take him to the U.S. attorney's office, or did you—”

“Who said anything about Lazarus?” Fat Jack cut in, his huge face wreathed in a smile meant to convey innocence. “I took him to the cops who registered him as an informant. I took him to Stan Krieger and Dwight Straub.”

C
HAPTER
T
EN

“I can't believe the way those reporters turned that poor guy's death into a feeding frenzy this morning,” I said morosely. Matt and I had agreed to meet in the cool interior of McSorley's for a much needed drink. “How do you suppose Straub's wife is feeling?”

“You can't let yourself worry about that,” my companion replied. “You were brilliant back there,” he went on. “The way you shifted the focus in the courtroom from Straub to TJ, the way you had Lazarus on the defensive. You really came out slugging, Cass—just the way I would have done.”

“Praise from Riordan is praise indeed,” I murmured, savoring the irony as much as I savored the vodka and cranberry juice he'd ordered for me. “I'm glad you appreciate my sacrificing my career on the altar of your acquittal.”

“Your career is safe, babe,” Matt assured me with an indulgent smile. “We've got Lazarus on the run and he knows it.”

“Meanwhile,” I mused aloud, “poor Dwight Straub shoots himself because he thinks I'm about to pin TJ's murder on him, when the truth is I had no real evidence until Fat Jack gave me the whole thing on a silver platter.”

“Somebody would have found out sometime,” Matt replied. He placed his warm hand over mine and gave a gentle squeeze.

We sat in silence for a moment, a silence that might almost have been a moment of remembrance for the terrified man who'd left my subpoena with his suicide note. Then Riordan said, “And we still have to cross Eddie tomorrow on that bullshit about Jack nearly killing him.”

“I'd forgotten about that,” I admitted. It was partly the nature of trials and partly the nature of life: What had seemed so vitally important earlier now meant little or nothing, in the context of Dwight's suicide. But Matt was right. The trial would continue, and we'd have to wipe from the jurors' minds the image of the Hero Cop narrowly escaping with his life.

“There's something off about that, don't you think?” Matt said. He leaned forward on his chair, a predatory look on his face. “He's got Fat Jack going on about killing him if he rats them out, but then when Jack has real evidence that Fitz is a rat, he just stands there and makes more threats. Why didn't Jack pull the trigger in that alley?”

“Are you really asking why your former associate didn't kill this guy?” I asked incredulously. “That would make a nice comment for the jury. Besides,” I went on, “are you saying you think Fat Jack is capable of murder?”

“To save his own ass? Of course he is.” Matt lifted his glass of Irish whiskey and held it in the air. “And what I'm wondering is, why didn't he take advantage of a perfectly good opportunity to plug the little shit and walk away?”

“Because that uniformed cop came along,” I replied.

“Not for a good ten minutes,” my client countered. “Jack had plenty of time to kill Eddie if he really wanted to. I can't help but wonder if the whole episode wasn't a show.”

“A show for the jury?” I was thinking aloud.

Riordan shook his head. “A show for Paulie the Cork,” he said.

I thought about it. “You think Jack and Eddie planned the whole thing? You think Fat Jack pretended to threaten Eddie? Then what about—”