Notorious (13 page)

T
he separation order wasn't
due to take effect until the next morning, and Vashon Clark was looking over his shoulder with every step. His cell mate was a Latin King, a Puerto Rican from Marcy Projects named Freddy Moreno who knew exactly how many trips Vashon had made to “court.” Freddy didn't buy that the trips had been to argue an appeal. Freddy told Vashon you don't show up for your appeal, your lawyer does that shit on his own. He knew that for a fact, because he himself had three strikes, and three appeals to go along with them. When his lawyer lost the last one, Freddy got locked up for twenty years, and now he had nothing to do but watch TV and beat the shit out of whoever annoyed him. Rats annoyed him.

In the cafeteria for supper, Vashon sat down at his usual table. American chop suey tonight. It looked decent enough, but the burned crust of cheese on top smelled like puke. On the inside, you stuck with your own kind. Everybody at Vashon's table had black skin and was locked up for slinging dope in Bed-Stuy or East New York. The Bed-Stuy guys sat on one side of the table and the East
New York guys on the other. Vashon had known a few of 'em since he was four feet tall, but if they thought he was snitching, they'd shiv him in the back without a second thought and smile when they wiped off the blade.

A big motherfucker with a shaved head sat down next to him. He was called Eight Ball because he'd started in the cocaine trade before moving to heroin. Vashon didn't say a word, just looked at his plate and moved the food around.

Eight Ball started shoveling in big piles of the shit. “Word is you snitching,” he said through a mouthful of macaroni.

Vashon pulled a face. “Who say that? Whosever talking shit about me, I'll pound 'em into the fucking concrete.”

“It's comin' from a lotta places. I'm thinking you might could use some protection.”

Vashon gave a clipped nod. They were talking out of the sides of their mouths, not making eye contact.

“Maybe that,” he said, “if what you saying is true. What you gonna ask from me if I decide I want you to help me out?”

“Twenty large, payable like so. A grand in my commissary account and nineteen to my moms in the Louis Armstrong Houses.”

“Fuck that. You think I got that kind of cash?”

Eight Ball glanced at him, cool indifference in his eyes. “Funny. The people who want you dead do.”

“I got a bounty?”

Eight Ball had finished inhaling his food. He ignored the question, burped, and started walking away with his tray. Vashon thought he might throw up, which helped him see an opportunity.

The room was enormous, row after row of long tables filled with hundreds of inmates, and only a few COs scattered around the perimeter. Vashon saw that he would have to be loud to attract their attention.

He dropped to the floor, writhing and holding his stomach and
moaning at top volume. Medical care was so bad here that inmates did everything they could to avoid the infirmary. It would be empty tonight, and safe.

“Motherfucker's a rat!” somebody shouted.

In an instant, he was surrounded. Inmates were issued slip-on canvas shoes with rubber bottoms because the Bureau of Prisons recognized hard soles for the deadly weapons they were. But if enough motherfuckers kicked and stomped on you with their soft shoes, you'd still die. As the first foot sailed toward his head, Vashon Clark pulled himself into a fetal position and screamed at the top of his lungs.

M
elanie had enough to
do on the trial that she knew she needed to put Brenda Gould's overdose death out of her mind. The autopsy report's conclusion that the death had been accidental definitely helped. Yet the photograph of the syringe protruding from Brenda's arm stood in such contrast to the cogent woman Melanie had met mere hours earlier, and the fact that the OD had stopped Brenda from snitching to the FBI about Evan Diamond was suspicious enough that a small, nagging doubt still persisted. Gary Nussbaum had told Melanie that Brenda Gould was a junkie of long standing. Maybe if she could find some evidence of that, Melanie could silence the alarm bells once and for all.

As Sunday afternoon drew to a close and she found herself with fifteen minutes to spare, Melanie logged onto Nexis, which archived news stories going further back in time than the Internet did, and searched Brenda's name. A vast panoply of information came up. As she systematically made her way through the articles, her mental image of Brenda—and by extension, of Lester—changed dramatically.

Melanie had imagined Brenda indulging in chic designer drugs, going a little too far, and winding up with a ladylike stint in rehab at a place like Betty Ford from which she would emerge fully recovered. All suitably jet-setty and within the boundaries tolerated by high society for its “creative” members. That was the impression Brenda had given her. But the reality was far uglier.

Brenda had suffered a truly public and dramatic breakdown over a period of years. She'd been arrested for possession of every substance under the sun—cocaine, heroin, methadone, painkillers, you name it. She'd also been found wandering, more than once—unwashed, disoriented, even naked. Some of these episodes had occurred during the period when Lester and Brenda were divorced. But others had happened while they were still together. Melanie spent some time matching up the decades, and discovered that Lester was just as likely to be in Cannes with some starlet as arguing before the Supreme Court during his wife's drug binges. Instead of looking like the hero for taking care of his befuddled wife after her collapse, Lester was starting to seem absent, neglectful, or worse.

As her research continued, the picture darkened further. Apparently Brenda's messy decline was not the worst scandal attached to Lester's name.

D
EBUTANTE
F
OUND
D
EAD AT
L
AWYER'S
H
AMPTONS
M
ANSION
, the first article read. The stories were from 1986, right before Brenda and Lester divorced, but the squalid phrases leaped out at Melanie as if they'd been written yesterday.
Suspicious circumstances. Girl's nude body discovered in swimming pool. Lawyer's son questioned. Famed civil rights lawyer questioned over girl's death. Lawyer's alleged affair with debutante.
With every story, there were photographs, grainy and blurred yet packing a punch. The girl—lovely, slim and blond, tawny-skinned, with an effervescent smile. Lester's son, whose name was Philippe, a skinny, brooding kid with a shock of black hair whose
miseries went far beyond the average teen woes over girls and acne. And of course, Lester himself, gorgeous and commanding, yet, in these photos, closed somehow, even secretive, or was that just Melanie's imagination? Shouldn't she give him the benefit of the doubt, given that he wasn't here to defend himself?

Melanie devoured everything she could find about the case. Charity Bishop was the girl's name, and she came from a wealthy family that had made a stink over her death. The story stayed in the news for the better part of a year. But slowly, over time, the worm turned. The spin started to go Lester's way. Did Melanie detect the hand of a talented publicist at work?

Details emerged that cast doubt on the girl's character. Charity had been a regular at some of the seedier bars in Southampton. She'd had relations with lots of men that summer, including one known drug dealer and a few local blue-collar types with criminal records, some of whom couldn't account for their whereabouts on the night of her death. Earlier that night, she'd been pulled over by a town cop when her Triumph Spitfire had been spotted weaving on Montauk Highway. That encounter failed to produce any official action—no arrest, no ticket, not even a warning—and one news story came right out and said that Charity had bought off the cop with sexual favors.

After that story made the rounds, the authorities seemed considerably less enthusiastic about pursuing Lester Poe or his son. As Lester had been known to say, a strong offense was the best defense.

Besides, Lester and Philippe had alibis. Rather, they had
an
alibi, one that required the two of them to back each other up. They said they'd been at dinner together at a popular roadside burger joint in Southampton. There was no independent evidence to corroborate their claim, but given the nature of the restaurant, there wouldn't be. The place didn't take reservations, so there was no written record that
they'd been there. And the restaurant was so swamped every night that when the college-kid waitresses couldn't remember seeing them, it didn't strike anybody as odd.

One thing that did strike Melanie as odd—why Charity Bishop had been swimming at their house when both Lester and Philippe were out—was never explained in anything she read.

Brenda Gould, however, admitted she'd been home at the hour when Charity Bishop was believed to have died, but claimed she hadn't seen or heard anything. When interviewed by the local police, Brenda said that she'd fallen asleep watching television in the media room and awoken to find that her husband and stepson had gone out. She'd gotten up to fix herself something to eat, and noticed that the patio lights were on, so she turned them off using the switch inside the kitchen, next to the sliding glass door leading to the patio. She certainly hadn't seen a body floating in the pool, or she would have called the police immediately. Instead, she finished her sandwich and went off to bed. She had no idea that Charity was in the swimming pool until the pool man discovered her body the next morning and raised the alarm. Brenda claimed not to have heard anything unusual that night. Indeed, she said she hadn't even known that Charity was at the house.

Shortly after Charity's death, Brenda disappeared into rehab again. She and Lester were divorced by the end of that year, and Brenda dropped from public view, spending most of her time in Big Sur.

As time went on, the scandal simply faded from the news. It didn't appear as if anybody had ever been charged. Lester kept quiet for a while, resurfacing a year or two later arguing cases, dating beautiful women, and bailing out his increasingly hopeless ex-wife, whose problems with drugs and the law grew ever worse.

Melanie had kept Lester's Saint Jude's medal with her since the afternoon Brenda gave it to her. Now she unzipped the internal com
partment of her handbag and withdrew the chain, letting it swing between her fingers, catching the light, before dropping it into her desk drawer and slamming it shut.

That night, for the first time since the bomb had exploded, Lester's ghost left Melanie alone to enjoy a dreamless sleep.

M
onday morning, Melanie arrived
at her desk refreshed and ready for action, only to be met by the first in a series of major disasters. She'd just hung up her coat and turned on her computer when the phone rang, caller ID displaying a Bureau of Prisons exchange.

“Melanie Vargas.”

“AUSA Vargas?”

“Yes.”

“Roland Hughes from BOP. I'm looking at a separation request that came in over the weekend regarding inmate 463483–053, one Vashon Emilio Clark. You're the authorizing AUSA?”

“That's right.”

“Bad news. When I plugged the number into the computer, I got that the inmate has been transferred to intensive care at Bellevue Hospital.”

“Oh my God, what happened?”

“From what I gather, he was attacked in the cafeteria last night by a bunch of prisoners yelling ‘rat.' Nearly caused a riot. If the COs hadn't intervened, he'd be dead now.”

“Why the hell do you people have to be closed on the weekends?” Melanie cried.

“Don't blame me, ma'am,” Hughes said calmly. “I don't know your case. Why didn't you put in your separation request sooner?”

“There hadn't been any direct threats.”

“Well, we're not mind readers. If there were no threats, how are we supposed to know to separate your inmate?”

“Ugh, you're right. I'm sorry, Roland. I'm upset. He's in intensive care, you said?”

“Yes, ma'am, but he's gonna pull through. They'll be upgrading him from critical to serious condition shortly, the doctor said.”

“What'll this do to my trial? He won't testify now.”

“I can't help you there. But I do have information on where he's located, if you're interested.”

“Yes, I want that. But what I really want is to figure out what happened and who's responsible. Do you have the names of the COs who were present during the incident? I'd like to interview them.”

“I can give you the two guys who were closest to the action when the attack began.”

Melanie scribbled down their names and took the information on how to find Vashon Clark.

“What kind of security do they have in the prison ward over at Bellevue?” she asked.

“It's all right, but if somebody wants your witness dead, it's not enough. If they can get him in the MCC, they can get him just the same in Bellevue. Easier, probably. I was you, I'd have one of your cops show up and stand by his door.”

Roland Hughes's idea was a sound one, and Melanie hung up and immediately beeped Agent Papo West with a 911. Papo was on his way to Melanie's office to do trial prep. They agreed to meet at Bellevue instead.

Melanie caught a cab easily in front of the courthouse, since
everybody else was on their way in for the morning calendar, and soon she was standing at Vashon Clark's bedside with her hands clenched into fists. She'd seen it many times, the ugly face of witness intimidation. Vashon's babyish features were swollen beyond all recognition, his limbs swathed in casts and bandages. The bad guys were so ruthless that Melanie was beginning to believe they'd win in the end. How could they not, when they were willing to do whatever it took to silence their accusers? They had no fear. Why should they? They got away with it. They shut people up, sometimes permanently. Vashon Clark was lucky. On past cases, witnesses had died. Looking down at his face, Melanie saw other faces. Rosario Sangrador, the brave housekeeper who'd agreed to testify against that madman Slice on the Benson case. “Fabulous Deon” Green, the flamboyant party promoter who'd taken on a drug-dealing nightclub owner on the schoolgirls case and paid the price for doing the right thing. Even David Harris, a wealthy lawyer living in a secure cocoon, who'd been an eyewitness to a murder, was tracked down by the killer. Vashon Clark was a murderous thug, and yet Melanie liked the kid. He was also somebody she'd believed could handle the pressure, navigate the system. Seeing him brought low made her wonder whether
anybody
could handle this kind of pressure, or whether she should be worrying about her own safety. Prosecutors loved to believe that just because a bad guy went after a witness didn't mean he'd look to hurt the people bringing the charges. It was one thing to reach out for your homeboy who'd betrayed you, but retaliating against the prosecution was a whole lot riskier and took a much more brazen character. It wasn't likely to happen. At least, that's what she told herself.

But who had done this to Vashon? Atari Briggs himself? Evan Diamond? Or was it simply the law of the street asserting itself? Criminals policing their own? She'd find out, but at the moment,
with Vashon unconscious, there was little to be gained by standing here. Hopefully, when he woke up he'd remember the incident well enough to tell her who was behind it.

Melanie had had a frank discussion with the attending physician about Vashon's injuries. He had several broken ribs, a fractured femur, and numerous cuts and contusions. But the good news was, the attack had focused on his midsection, and he'd taken remarkably few blows to the head. He'd suffered a minor concussion, which wouldn't cause anything worse than a bad headache. There'd been no brain damage, and if Vashon had any remaining interest in testifying, he would have the mental capacity to do so. As to when he could appear in court—something she desperately needed to know—if he went in a wheelchair with his casts still on, it might be as soon as two weeks.

When Papo West showed up, Melanie filled him in. Her biggest concern was ensuring that no further harm came to Vashon.

“Don't worry,” Papo said. “We'll have a guy on his door twenty-four/seven. Nothing else is gonna happen to this kid. We need him healthy for trial. How much extra time you think the judge is going to give us?”

“With Diamond yelling and screaming about speedy trial rights, I'm not convinced we'll get any postponement.”

“How can that be? Diamond's got to be behind this. He can beat our witness and make it so he can't testify, and we have to go to trial anyway?”

“We need proof. Right now it sounds like this was a jailhouse smack-down that has nothing to do with Atari Briggs or his lawyer. If that's the case, Atari can't be penalized for it. It's
our
tough luck.”

“Give me the names of those guards. I'll go interview 'em the second my boys show up to watch this door,” Papo said.

“I'll come with you.”

 

O
vercrowded conditions meant that space was tight at the MCC. For their interviews with the two guards later that afternoon, Melanie and Papo were assigned a visiting room in the basement normally used by defense lawyers to meet with incarcerated clients. It consisted of a minuscule space with only one chair, separated by a reinforced glass barrier from an equally tiny space where the prisoner normally sat. They waited for about ten minutes before a knock came on the metal door behind them.

Corrections Officer Jack Quinn was in his fifties, paunchy and bald with a red face, and had been doing prison work for over thirty years. There were two ways to go when you spent your career in corrections—cynical and bitter, or cynical and amused—and Quinn had chosen the latter.

“Jeez, we're a bunch of sardines here. Mind if I keep the door open?” Quinn asked after they'd shaken hands.

They ended up doing the entire interview standing up, spilling out into the brightly lit acid-yellow hallway.

“These bozos, always up to something,” Quinn said. “You can always count on the Bed-Stuy table for entertainment.”

“Bed-Stuy table?” Melanie asked.

“Where your boy Vashon was sitting last night. They're a bunch of players who know each other from back in the hood, in Bed-Stuy and East New York. I was about thirty feet away along the north wall, but I had my eye on 'em because there are some known troublemakers in the bunch, and one in particular, a real mean mother they call Eight Ball. His real name's Bryce Timmons, and he's doing twenty-to-life for a drug-related homicide. Long story short, Timmons sat down next to Vashon last night, and right away I got the feeling something nasty was coming. They try to keep it on the down low, but I can always tell from the body language. So I'm watching, but
then Timmons faked me out. He got up and walked away with his tray, and I'm thinking, problem resolved. Not so fast. Thirty seconds later, your boy Vashon's lying on the floor clutching his stomach and howling.”

“Did Timmons hit him?” Melanie asked.

“I'd looked away, so I didn't see, but once Vashon was down on the floor, Eight Ball turned around and started shouting that Clark was a rat, and him and about ten other guys converged and started kicking the shit out of Clark. We had to get in there and really crack heads to pull the bozos off.”

Other than telling them that a confrontation with Eight Ball had preceded the attack, Quinn had little of value to offer. None of the inmates involved had breathed a word to him about what set off the incident in the first place.

The second guard, a heavyset African-American guy whose name was Isaiah Carter, told a similar story. He hadn't noticed anything until the moment Vashon Clark dropped to the floor grabbing his stomach, but he seconded Quinn's statement that Eight Ball—Bryce Timmons—had been the one to start the attack by crying rat. But Carter seemed to have a better rapport with the inmates, and when Melanie asked whether he had any idea what had prompted the attack, he dropped a bombshell.

“Word on my cell block this morning,” Carter said, “is Eight Ball was paid off—twenty large to organize an attack on Clark. A grand to his commissary, nineteen to his mother is what I heard. I got a few prisoners who I keep close to the vest, do 'em favors so they'll keep me in the loop. They're both saying it was well known that Atari Briggs's peoples put a bounty on Clark, because he was their rat.”

“Can we talk to your informants?” Melanie asked.

“Given current circumstances, no, ma'am. I'm sorry, it would expose them to too great a risk of retaliation. Besides, they don't know anything firsthand. It's all just hearsay, gossip, what's the word
in general population. The only one who's gonna know firsthand is Eight Ball himself. My feeling is, the offer came to him directly. He's an enforcer, see. He's somebody you'd turn to first if you wanted to bounty somebody.”

“Will Eight Ball talk to us?” Melanie asked.

“Normally I'd say no,” Carter replied. “He's not the cooperative type. On the other hand, he just got sixty days in the hole for this incident. That's twenty-three hour lockdown. Now, if anybody could eat that without cracking, Eight Ball can. On the other hand, it ain't no fun. You never know, maybe he could be incentivized.”

“Reduce his punishment?” she asked.

“Yes. We'd need approval from the deputy warden.”

The deputy warden was available and agreeable. Half an hour later, back in the basement interview room, Melanie and Papo watched as the door on the other side of the glass opened. Two COs escorted an enormous man with a shaved head into the prisoner area. He was shackled and covered in cuts and bruises, but he carried himself like he was the one running the show.

Papo slid open a small window in the glass, revealing a wire screen that made it easier for them to hear one another. Melanie pulled the single chair up to the window as Eight Ball was pushed down into the chair opposite.

“This is Bryce Timmons,” one of the guards said.

“Who's she?” Eight Ball demanded of the guards, tossing his head back and refusing to make eye contact with Melanie.

“Mr. Timmons, I'm Melanie Vargas. I'm a prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney's Office, and I want to talk to you about the incident in the cafeteria last night.”

“I know my rights. I don't have to talk to nobody.”

“That's correct, you don't have to. But I'm prepared to offer you thirty days off your sixty-day sentence of isolation if you choose to. We know you were offered a bounty of twenty thousand dollars
to attack Vashon Clark. We want to know who offered you that money.”

In response, Eight Ball merely snorted and continued not to look at her. Melanie let thirty seconds go by. When it was apparent he didn't plan to speak, she said, “If you don't tell us, we go about our day, but you go back to the hole. Sixty days in there is a long time.”

Finally, he looked at her. His eyes were cold and dead. They made her wonder how many men he'd killed.

“There wasn't no brawl last night,” he said. “The COs are lying. They beat us all senseless for no reason, and they're lying to cover up. I'm gonna sue every last one of 'em.”

Melanie saw that she'd never get through to Timmons. He was a hard case, past reaching now if he'd ever been reachable at all. Reluctantly, she told the guards to take him back to solitary.

Melanie and Papo were making their way slowly out through endless barred doors and holding areas when they were stopped and told that the deputy warden would like to speak to them. A squat female CO handed Melanie a greasy telephone.

“Ms. Vargas, Deputy Warden Tony Vasquez.”

“Hi, Tony. No luck. He wouldn't talk. We got nothing.”

“I'm glad I caught you, then. You'll want to hear this. Somebody just deposited a thousand dollars into Bryce Timmons's commissary account.”