Notorious (19 page)

M
elanie and Papo had
an hour to kill before their scheduled rendezvous with Andre Ferris's informant, so they hung around the DEA office and made phone calls back east. Melanie managed to catch Susan Charlton and Jennifer Lamont still in Susan's office despite the fact that it was nearly ten o'clock in New York. She gave them a full run-down of what she'd learned in the past twelve hours, including the fact that Evan Diamond had been house counsel to Briggs's drug organization back in the day and might have been involved in a drug war, and the possibility that the redheaded man surveilled meeting with Vegas Bo over the weekend at the stash location in Pahrump had been in court in New York the day before.

“The guy's face is clear as day in the surveillance photo,” Melanie said. “I'm going to fax it to you.”

Melanie sent the fax through, and within minutes Susan and Jennifer had the picture in their hands.

“Sorry, Mel,” Susan said. “Neither of us recognizes him. I can ask around with the marshals if you want.”

“Yes, good idea. And keep your eyes open for him. The status
conference yesterday was closed to the public. So either he came in with the defense team—”

“Or he's press,” Susan said.

“Right.”

“Doesn't it make more sense that he'd be with the press?” Jennifer asked.

“What would a reporter be doing out in the middle of nowhere meeting with a drug dealer?” Melanie asked.

“Trying to get an interview?” Jennifer suggested.

“Who knows,” Susan said. “Let's hope the Marshals' Service kept some kind of list so we can find out. But let's assume for a minute he
is
one of Atari's people.”

“Or one of Diamond's,” Melanie said.

“Either way, what does that mean for the case?”

“That there's ongoing contact between Vegas Bo and the defense,” Melanie said. “That wouldn't be surprising, I suppose. Atari and Bo were close associates for years. But it's worth keeping in mind as we pursue Vegas Bo as a witness. Vashon Clark told us Bo has a grudge against Atari, but he may be more hostile than we think.”

“If they're still working together, Bo won't cooperate,” Susan said.

“Probably not.”

“You know what we should do? We should pull phone records on Atari and Evan Diamond, both. See if they're calling any Nevada numbers,” Susan said.

“Great idea,” Melanie said, “but it could take a while. We have to jump through extra hoops to get lawyer phone records, don't we?”

“There is extra red tape involved,” Susan said. “We have to get authorization from Main Justice before we issue any subpoenas for telephone records. It's never too early to learn how to massage the bureaucracy. What do you say, Jennifer? Are you up for taking charge of getting Evan Diamond's phone records?”

 

N
ext, Papo West dialed the home number of an agent named Eddie Carlucci, a longtime street narcotics agent who was on the verge of retirement.

“Eddie knows every back alley from East New York to Red Hook,” Papo said as the rings sounded on the speakerphone. “If anybody can give us the history between Briggs and Diamond, he can.”

They found Carlucci in a voluble mood, with the loose tongue of somebody who had a few too many beers in him.

“Atari Briggs…and Evan Diamond,” he repeated aloud. “Oh, yeah. Two winners! Briggs was a young kid at the time, eighteen, twenty maybe, but he ran a bunch of spots in East New York. Diamond was a real flashy cartel lawyer. Dark hair, fancy suits. House counsel to Atari and his boys. There was a war, and a bunch of players went down. Fro Joe was the biggest to get hit in that incident.”

“Exactly. I told Melanie you were the man to ask. We're doing the trial against Atari Briggs, and Diamond's representing him. We heard there was a history there.”

“They're together again? That surprises me, because Diamond was in the thick of that war, and he was lined up against Briggs. It got ugly. Lotta bodies dropping.”

Melanie and Papo exchanged glances.

“Keep going. This sounds right,” Papo said.

“It went like this. Atari, if I remember right, had three lieutenants. Two Ton Tyrone, who was there for muscle, dumb as a rock. Shake and Bake, fucking psychopath, impossible to control. And Vegas Bo, who was a mean motherfucker but the only one of the three who was worth his salt. I mean Bo was a smart kid, and
cold
. Real kingpin material.”

“That's all foursquare with what we're hearing,” Papo said.

“Well, they were making money hand over fist, but Atari wasn't
paying down the chain like he should have. He was keeping too much for himself, and people were unhappy. Meanwhile, he was all distracted with the rap bullshit, too. They'd have a problem down at the spot, and you couldn't find the guy because he was off in some goddamn recording studio. He wasn't keeping tabs on his own corners. Naturally, somebody of Vegas Bo's caliber, he saw an opportunity.”

“He moved in to take over the candy store.”

“Exx-actly. Thought he deserved it. And Diamond was in on it with him. They arranged a hit on Atari at this nightclub in Canarsie where they all hung out. It was supposed to go down when Atari was leaving, but see, not everybody was as fed up with Atari as Bo was. He still had his loyalists, and somebody tipped him off to what was coming. He pulled a team together at the last minute, and they ambushed the shooters. There was a big battle.”

“You know, I'm remembering this,” Papo said.

“It was all over the papers at the time. Five bodies dropped, including Fro Joe. Atari got away without a scratch. But he knew the game was up. After that, he took the money and ran. Shut down his spots. Went off to do his music.”

“What happened to Vegas Bo and Diamond?” Papo asked.

“Nothing. The guys who could've substantiated their involvement died in the gun battle, and we couldn't prove anything.”

“The smart ones always get away. Atari never struck back at Diamond?”

“No. He talked a big game, but never retaliated that I heard of. You ask me, Atari was scared of the lawyer.”

“High time Evan Diamond got his comeuppance,” Papo said.

“There's something I'd pay money to see. He pretends to be respectable, but he's worse than his clients. Here's an example for you. I had two cases where he sold phony paperwork.”

“Paperwork? What, like fake IDs?”

“No, forged legal paperwork. For a while, every scumbag in Brooklyn knew that anything you needed to get along in the life, you could get from Evan Diamond for a price. If you wanted to rob drugs from your kingpin, he'd give you a phony search warrant and a seizure receipt documenting that the feds took the drugs. You hand that to the boss and say, hey, I got hit by the cops, and you don't get whacked. There were some big-time stash-house robberies that used Diamond's paperwork for cover until word got around and the bosses wised up. He was selling the package for ten grand a pop.”

“No kidding.”

“Yeah, I'm telling you, it happened on one of my cases. Oh, and here's another one. This is priceless. Diamond phonied up a sentencing reduction order for one of his scumbag clients and had the client mail it to the Bureau of Prisons in an envelope from the Clerk's Office to get released early. It almost worked, too. They caught it at the last minute. The client was charged with attempted escape. So he flipped and told me Diamond was behind the whole scheme, but the U.S. Attorney's Office wouldn't prosecute on the word of a drug dealer against a member of the bar. I tried to have the guy make a recorded call to Diamond.”

“And?” Papo asked.

“Didn't work. Diamond's too smart, and he's too cautious. He recognizes that anybody he commits a crime with might turn on him, so he's very careful on the phone. We could never get him on tape. We dusted the forged paperwork, and the only prints we found were the client's. No way the guy could've managed the forgery with the supplies he had access to inside. It was too professional a job. We believed him that Diamond forged the documents, but we couldn't prove it. Diamond must've worn gloves. The point I'm trying to make is, you'll never get this guy. He's too damn careful.”

J
ennifer Lamont lived way
the hell out in Carroll Gardens, the heart of brownstone Brooklyn, in a dark, cozy basement apartment with an old-fashioned marble mantel and original woodwork. She loved the apartment for its charm and affordability, but centrally located it was not. When she went out, which she did occasionally, she would meet her date or her friends, such as they were, in Manhattan, and so in the year plus she'd lived there, nobody had ever come to visit. This was why, as she stood at the kitchen counter in her sweatpants eating Cap'n Crunch for dinner, she failed to recognize the buzzer when it first sounded.

“Was that the…?” she asked her cat.

It sounded again. “Oh my God, Snickers, it
was
the doorbell. It's after eleven. Who could it be?”

In her heart of hearts, Jennifer knew exactly who it was. So she stopped pretending for the benefit of the cat, and screamed, “Just a minute!” Then she rushed to her bedroom, tore off her sweatpants and ratty old Yale T-shirt, yanked on the only cute pj's she owned—
pink cotton with a camisole top, bought on sale at Victoria's Secret—and squirted on some perfume. She raced back to her front door and took a deep breath to compose herself.

“Who is it?”

“It's Evan. Open up.”

She cracked the door wide enough to peek out. His face was so perfect that it dazzled her eyes, but she'd keep her distance. Just because she'd changed her clothes, just because she wanted to look nice in case she let him in, didn't mean she'd
decided
to let him in. She needed to figure out a way to stop herself from doing stuff with him. Doing something like what she was thinking about doing with a man like Evan Diamond was not only stupid and self-destructive, it was crazy.

“How—how'd you get my address?” she asked. “I'm unlisted.”

“I'm not an amateur. It's cold out here. Let me in.”

And he put his hand on the door and shoved past her. He was wearing an expensive-looking cashmere overcoat, and carrying a greasy brown paper bag that gave off an aroma of cilantro and garlic.

“What's in the bag?” she called after him.

But he'd already disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later, he emerged, threw his coat down on the sofa, and came over to where she stood at the open door.

“Close it already. You're letting the cold air in.”

She remained silent, her eyes huge and fixed on his, which were impenetrable in their blackness.

“What are you, afraid of me or something?” He paused. “You are, aren't you?”

Evan smiled like the thought pleased him, then removed her hand from the door, shut and bolted it.

He was inside now; so much for her resolution. What next? Jennifer's heart was hammering so hard that the lace-trimmed edge of
her camisole quivered with each beat. He was tall and gorgeous, and he smelled clean from the cold outside. But those things were merely the inert ingredients of his appeal; the magic was supplied by something else entirely. He was dangerous, so dangerous that she couldn't predict how far he'd go. With him, she was falling with no safety net, and it thrilled her to the core.
We're alone here,
she thought, and then:
He could do things to me and nobody would stop him.
She certainly wouldn't stop him herself.

Evan watched her chest heave up and down with a calm, scientific interest, then ran his fingertip along the lace and down the curve of her breast. Not only did she not slap his hand away; Jennifer instinctively threw her shoulders back and offered her body to him. But it wasn't clear he wanted it. He turned away and started taking off his tie.

“To answer your question from a minute ago, dinner's in the bag. Are you hungry?” he asked.

He tossed the tie onto the demi-lune table where she kept her mail. She tried to pay attention to his question, but the sliver of aqua-blue silk enthralled and distracted her. What could he mean by taking off his tie? What did he intend? Did he want to make love or was he merely getting ready to eat?

“No,” she managed. “No, thank you. I just ate some cereal.”

He turned back and twisted his finger in one of the straps of her camisole, pulling it off her shoulder. “Victoria's Secret, right?”

“Yes.”

“You went and put them on for me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her against the wall so suddenly that her head banged. She gave a soft grunt, half pain, half desire.

“For future reference, if I want you to wear something in par
ticular, I'll tell you,” he said, looming over her. “Don't ever leave me standing in the cold again. Do you understand?”

And he took her gently by the throat with one powerful hand, pressing his thumb into her windpipe, not so hard that he cut off her air supply, but hard enough to show her that he could. She couldn't tell if this was a game or not, but she didn't care. She loved knowing that he was in control. She didn't have to decide anything anymore, not even whether to live or die. He would tell her what to do. Her only fear was that he wouldn't care enough to do so.

“Jennifer, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl.”

He let go, and took her face ever so gently between his hands, giving her the tenderest, most loving kiss. His lips were still cold from outside, but his tongue was warm. She thought she might faint. She went limp, her body relaxing against his, impatient to feel his hands all over her. But he pulled away.

“Let's eat now,” he said. “That food smells good.”

“But…but can't that wait?” she pleaded.

He smiled sympathetically and caressed her cheek. “You'll get what you need, baby. But first I want my dinner. It's been a long day.”

“Okay.”

He went and sat down at the white laminate café table in the corner—an IKEA special that she never actually used, preferring as she did to eat standing up at the counter—and looked up at her like she was the waitress and he was the customer waiting for his food. It amazed her that he'd walked away from sex like that. She'd been so obviously willing, but Evan was unmoved. He'd rather eat his dinner. His indifference humiliated her. Jennifer wanted to yell at him, to scream at him to get out.

Instead, she went into the kitchen to get the food like he'd told her to. She moved as if in a dream, taking dishes from the cabinets and forgetting where she'd put them, pulling foil containers from the bag and staring at them like she couldn't understand what they were. All she could think about was what he'd promised, the words he'd used.
You'll get what you need.
What did that mean? Did he plan to hurt her? To rip off her clothes and ravish her? To make love to her tenderly? She needed all of those things. She felt dizzy thinking about his voice saying the words, about the possibilities. Her legs were trembling. She grabbed the counter to hold herself up.

“Poor Dixie. You're in a bad way, aren't you?” he said from the doorway.

She closed her eyes tight and didn't say anything. Coming up behind her, he ran his hands lightly over the bare skin of her arms, and leaned down, his lips against her ear, pressing her tight against the counter with his body. Relief flooded through her at the thought that he wanted her.

“You don't need to be afraid,” he whispered, his breath warm against her hair.

She began rocking back and forth against him in slow motion.

“I don't?”

“No. I'll take good care of you.”

Tears began to leak from her eyes. “You will?”

“Of course, baby. Daddy loves you. You want me to show you how much?”

“Yes,” she whispered, “please.”

“Are you a good girl?” he said into her ear. “Do you deserve it?”

“You mean will I bring you your food?”

Without warning, he twisted her arm sharply behind her back and pressed against her. That's when she knew that this would be the
most exquisite sex she'd ever experienced, the first time a man had truly possessed her. Until now she'd only been with stupid boys.

“Not the food,” he said. “What do you know that I should know? Don't you care about my problems?”

“Yes. Yes, I know a lot. I know everything.”

“All right, then. I need details, and then you'll get what you want.”