The Adored (33 page)

His impulsiveness pushed him into a risk category he had not been in before. Risk spread across multiple fronts. He dared take insider information and use it to buy stock; he was taking information from a source who, while a friend, had a reputation for lying; he compounded the risk by taking four million dollars from his father’s company without authorization after discovering he had the ability to write checks above his authorized level; he was buying a stock he knew nothing about without any personal due diligence; and he was buying the stock on margin, which allowed him to buy twice as much as he had the money for by borrowing from his account at Brunswick Fund.

There was no thought to the potential for loss; it would take a miracle for this process, with all its potential pitfalls, to turn out right. Crane, the same person who maliciously smacked the ball into the face of his water polo opponents in college, now recklessly ignored the legal danger and played to Barnes’ weakness of desire for quick wealth. Barnes, the builder’s son who repeatedly gave into impulses that drove his addictions, moved forward toward self-destruction.

Chapter 44

Billy Stevens hid in the back of the parking lot of the Stamford Mall. He had walked to this spot earlier. The parking lot was particularly full this Friday night. It was still early, and Billy figured he could ID a rich woman, snatch her handbag, and beat it out the side stairway into the foot traffic by the Bank Street Brewery across the street.

He was right; there were hundreds of walkers this dark night—many working late in the office tower adjoining the mall, others going to the restaurants and clubs just up the street at Park Place, and still others going to the condo complexes that had sprung up in downtown Stamford to accommodate the giant new trading floors of some of the world’s largest investment banks. Even Donald Trump had just completed a luxury forty-story condo. Stamford was fast morphing into a segment of New York City—build big financial services and their trading floors, build lots of tony condos, add in a hot nightlife scene, and they will come: lots of expensively educated twenty and thirty somethings did.

Stevens had come up the stairway fifteen minutes earlier. It was a rarely used stairwell. Most shoppers drove into the mall; walkers generally avoided the few isolated traps like this stairwell.

Stevens was unemployed once again; nothing seemed to work. The drug dealer he worked for wanted all of his guys to have regular jobs in addition to dealing. Stevens would keep jobs for a month or two, somebody would give him a hard time, Stevens would give him some lip back, next thing you know Billy’s gone. Always worked the same way. This time it wasn’t his fault. He was driving policies around for an insurance company. Stopped for a red light, light turns green, he goes. Then wham, guy runs a red light and the company car is wrecked. Cops cited the other guy for running the red light; when they asked for Stevens’ license, he didn’t have one. Insurance company fired him on the spot. He asked for another chance since it wasn’t his fault and said he’d get the license. Office manager was so upset he walked Stevens to the front door of the office, opened it, and just pointed the way out. Stevens, never one to shy from a confrontation, grabbed the door knob, pulled the door closed behind him, not quietly but loudly, strongly, pulling-it-through-the-other-side-closed, closed so strongly that the glass in the seven-foot-high door came chasing after Stevens with a shattering screech and crash.

That was two hours ago. Now he needed money for a buy. Imagine that, Billy Stevens needing money for a buy. He’d told his friend Curtis Strong that he was no longer into that game; he was so far into it. He was using up the profits anyway he could to get the products into him: smoking, needles, inhaling.

His supplier cut him loose. Said he was bad for business. Said he couldn’t have a runner, a dealer using like Stevens was. Casual use was OK with the supplier but you had to control it. Not Billy, it had him, it wouldn’t let him go. He was in love with the stuff. He’d wake up in the morning, if he ever got to sleep, thinking about his first hit of the day.

The supplier was a son-of-a-bitch; he was very strict. But that wasn’t the problem that he was a tough business man. He was tough. And the tougher he had to get, the meaner he became. There were a lot of things said about him, about where he came from and how he got started. Stevens believed most of it because he had seen the supplier, had seen him beat guys up for welching on a debt. He made Stevens go to a customer’s house one time with him when the customer wouldn’t pay. He knocked on the guy’s door, and when his wife answered and said he wasn’t there, he punched her in the mouth, hard, knocking out the front teeth. She was bleeding like crazy. Billy’s supplier tells her, “Get your old man to pay my boy Billy by tomorrow night or I’ll come back and knock the rest of your teeth out.”

When he woke up the next morning, Billy Stevens found an envelope that had been slipped under his door. All the money due was paid.

Now he was on furlough from the supplier. He told Billy to get right or don’t come back. He needed to get back, and the supplier needed him back—he had grown into one of his better dealers. He had a steady group of customers and had brought along two tiers of subdealers. The money that flowed to him overwhelmed Stevens. As much as he made, he was always broke. Using, gambling, or spending way too much, especially on the girls. The girls were the worst. They’d party with him for days, days, and then they’d be gone and so would his money.

So here he was, biding his time, waiting for a mark that he could take easily and disappear with a few hundred—enough to have a good time.

This night he was all alone. The Brazilian supplier had given his territory to one of his amigos. He promised if Stevens got himself straight he’d give it back to him—but only after he was straight for a month. A month, he’d die in a month without a steady source of funds to get right, but not straight. It was a balancing act; you could still use and manage it and be right. To get straight, like Pedro wanted, well, that was asking too much.

There she is he told himself. Excited at the prospect of the money.

A middle aged woman, neatly dressed, probably a business woman by the look of her clothes, had exited the mall door and was walking directly to where Stevens had located himself behind a large reinforcing column. The stairway was off to his right. To his left, along the rear most wall in the parking lot, was a row of four cars with one space in between the third and fourth car.

Don’t go to the fourth car, Stevens said to himself. It won’t work with the open space next to it.

She continued walking, glancing over her shoulder, as if thinking she were being followed. I’m in front of you bitch, Stevens laughed in his mind.

She was, yes, she was going to the second car—cover and close to the stairwell.

Stevens pulled back further into the recess. He couldn’t see her now, but could hear her reaching in for the keys; she was close. He looked, she had her hand bag up, and she was beside the car, only she was facing him. He crouched down and began to move.

The woman got the keys out of her handbag and turned to put the key in the door of the Chrysler 300. As her right hand went out to insert the key, Stevens struck. He hit her in the head with his left arm in a swiping motion to knock her down. She fell backwards but stayed on her feet. Stevens reached across her arm to get the bag. He had it and started to pull. She wouldn’t let go.

“Let go of it, bitch,” he yelled at her.

She screamed. She screamed loud; she was going to tell the whole world. He had to act fast—he took a quick glance as he tousled with her. No one else was nearby. He let go of the handbag, put his left arm against her neck and pushed her against the first car. It set off the car alarm. She screeched even louder now. His head was pounding. With his right hand he reached in his rear pocked and pulled out a knife. It came alive as he flicked it open. In one motion he plunged it into her stomach. She kept screaming. He brought the knife back up to his shoulder, removed his left arm from her neck, and stuck the point in her throat, pushing as it entered. He left it there.

Stevens grabbed the handbag from the falling woman, and ran. As he got to the stairwell he heard someone yelling over by the mall entrance. Two men, they were coming towards him, yelling at him. He was now in the stairwell, rifling the purse blindly as he leapt two, three stairs at a time in his downward flight. He found it, her wallet. He dropped the bag and secured the wallet inside his jacket.

He could hear the two men behind him, yelling something. What was it they were saying? He heard a static sound from a two-way radio.

“Stop, police,” they were shouting. Holy shit, cops. Where did they come from? He was now steps from the door that would take him to the street when he heard the first shot, or was it that he felt it first. He couldn’t be sure, now he was hit, bleeding somewhere around his left leg. He couldn’t stop. He got to the door and exited.

He saw the throngs of people just down the walk in front of him. Not more than thirty yards, then he would be able to mix and disappear.

As he looked ahead right in front of him, a Stamford Police car had screeched to a halt. Two policemen exited, one drawing his gun. A second car, unmarked, pulled up, another man jumped out with a gun drawn.

Stevens reeled. There was an area to the right; it was narrow, was fronted by some bushes and seemed to be an alley in back of the street front stores. He dashed for it, the pain in his leg unbearable. Once behind the bushes and hidden in the alley, he bent down and took a nine millimeter hand gun from an ankle holster. The first of the two cops trailing him stumbled out of the door, and he fired wildly at them hoping to hold them off as he made a getaway. The two pulled themselves back into the cover of the stairwell.

Stevens turned to run, then looked back again to see if he was being pursued. A second shot rang out; it hit Stevens in the left side, knocking him to the ground.

The man in plain clothes quickly was upon Stevens.

Now Stevens knew; this was how it was going to end. He could feel the pain, the blood gushing out of him, his life slipping away, quickly. The man was saying something to him. The man kicked the gun out of his hand. He could feel he was going to pass out. CJ, what about CJ. He was in there; he was going to be in there forever and he didn’t do it. His last thoughts? He felt himself coming back; it was clearing up. Now he could hear the man. “Don’t move, don’t make a move or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.” Too late, I’m done. But CJ.

“Listen, you gotta help me. CJ didn’t do it.”

“What’s that asshole; you didn’t just knife that woman upstairs,” the detective said as he reached inside Stevens’s jacket and retrieved her wallet.

“No, I did that. But seven years ago, another knifing.” Stevens struggled to talk. He struggled to break the confidence he had promised Strong, tell him, tell him, Parker Barnes did it. But I made a promise to CJ that I wouldn’t.

“Go ahead get it out,” the detective said sarcastically. “I love deathbed confessions.”

“Curtis Strong was convicted of killing Augusto Santos seven years ago,” Stevens gasped, not much time left, he could feel himself slipping. “I was dealing drugs from Santos and knifed him. Strong was just walking by and tried to help the guy when he heard him moaning. I swear on my mother’s soul. Strong is in Auburn; he was convicted. You gotta tell someone they got the wrong guy. I did that,” Stevens said. And he died.

The detective looked at Stevens then hollered over his shoulder to the others, “All clear, he’s down,” and as the uniformed police started forward, Detective Sergeant John Walsh leaned down and said to the dead man, “Probably the only decent thing you’ve ever done in your life you sorry son of a bitch. Too bad your little secret is going to die with you.”

Officer Larry Bell came up beside Walsh. “We’ve got an ambulance on the way for the woman upstairs. She’s in real bad shape, lost a lot of blood. Is he dead?” and seeing Walsh nod, added, “Good shooting. Bastard almost got us coming out the door. You know this guy, Sarge? I heard him talking to you. What did he say?” Bell asked.

“Seen him around a lot. Know he’s got a record, Strong or something like that.” Walsh said absentmindedly thinking about the mountain of paperwork coming when there was a fatal shooting by police. Walsh added, “Here’s the woman’s wallet. Let’s find out who she is and contact some family.”

Other officers arrived; sirens could be heard in the distance as more police along with an ambulance sped to this site.

Chapter 45

Vito Boriello thought about what he and Jim Ford had agreed on, essentially, to try to prove that an innocent man had been sitting in prison in upstate New York for ten years. Across the country there were more and more project innocence task forces emerging, particularly as forensic science, technology and law school researchers came into being.

In the case of Curtis Strong Jr. no new science or technology would come into play, and the only researchers seeking to help Mr. Strong were Ford and Boriello.

In devising a list of to-dos, Boriello and Ford took those that would be easiest for them to handle from their respective locations. Boriello had begun his list and was coming up empty. Thumb print: yes, evidence and fingerprints confirmed that the thumb print on the knife that killed Augusto Santos was Strong’s. Strong said he had not touched the knife in trying to help save Santos’ life upon finding him hurt. Boriello ruled it a push—trying to save the guy’s life he may have inadvertently touched it.