The Car Bomb (The detroit im dying Trilogy, Book 1) (23 page)

“
Frank, I was getting worried. We’re doing fine, but we’ve got less than 40 minutes, and I haven’t been able to get any response from Dworkin or the prosecutor’s office. Francine tells me you and the judge were in there with Alice and Jack.”

“
Yeah, don’t worry about a response. I’ve got one from O’Bryan.

“
Great. I’ll insert that while you go over the lead. So what did he say?”

Frank stopped on his way to the back of the newsroom and the hallway to the men’s room. “His honor claims he was working with Gant to nail Peoples for bribery.”

“
What? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“
Of course, it doesn’t. But give me a minute here to take a leak and put on my face, and I’ll give you a verbatim from the judge. Now what about legal?”

Dennis sat at his computer. “Harmon’ll be here in a few minutes, but he shouldn’t have a problem. We’ve been very careful. Everybody has their say, we’re just reporting the facts and I’ve pasted “allegedly” on everything.”

“
Okay, good.” Frank resumed his walk to the back of the newsroom and then through the hallway to the men’s room door.

Inside, the place was empty, except for one stall with its door closed. He walked to up to a urinal and unzipped his fly.

Inside that one closed stall, sitting fully clothed in his police uniform, was Officer Kenneth Miles.

He had found this men’s room by chatting up a bored stage hand, feigning an avid interest in Frank, and getting the guy to talk about the anchor’s pre-newscast routine. After taking a brief look around in here, he had then hung out in a corner of the newsroom, mostly hidden behind a newspaper, until Frank walked in, and it was soon obvious that the full story was a go.

Moving quickly, he had taken an alternate route to get into this stall before the asshole came in whistling to take a piss.

Now through a half-inch space along one edge of the stall’s wall, he could see the jerk, with a paper towel in his collar, primping at the mirror. For a second he touched the department-issued .44 in its holster. Then he lifted his right pant leg to grab from its holster the little Walther .22 he had taken off a punk-assed hit-kid with a drug crew a few years back.

He pulled up the other pant leg to expose the gun’s custom made silencer strapped to the side of his shin. Then reaching back, he flushed the toilet, and while the noise filled the room, he screwed the silencer into place on the Walther’s barrel.

One last thought now on making this little move. The judge was usually a pretty sharp guy, but in this case he’d become rattled and wasn’t really thinking straight. With Frank pounding away at it, this story about setting up Peoples and “Pretty Rick” for bribery, even with someone inside the prosecutor’s office ready to vouch for it, had little chance of sticking.

No, to give it at least a chance, he needed to put a couple in Frank’s head, drag him into this stall, pull his pants down and prop him on the shitter. Figuring he was taking a huge dump, they wouldn’t find him for several minutes, and by then he’d be out that back door off the newsroom, to pick up the judge and drive calmly out the station’s gate.

Then he’d see how things went and, only if necessary, execute his carefully formulated exit plan.

One more glance through the crack at Frank still primping, and he got up off the toilet, unlatched the door and stepped out of the stall.

In the mirror Frank immediately saw Miles come out with the gun pointed at him, and he froze, half his face covered with liquid make-up. Only Frank’s eyes moved as he followed the cop circling a few steps behind him with the gun held in both hands and leveled at the middle of his back.

In front of the men’s room door, Miles stopped moving and asked, “You think that stuff might work for me?”

Frank continued to stare at him in the mirror. Fear filled his throat, but he swallowed hard and tried to keep his voice steady.

“
I doubt it. Even with make-up, you’d still look like a killer.”

“
Say goodnight, Frank. That was your last commentary.”

Miles raised his aim to the back of Frank’s head and began to squeeze the trigger.

And just then the door behind him swept inward, as the two cops from the lobby burst into the room followed by Francine. The swinging door caught Miles in the back and shoulder as the muffled gun fired with a thud. The bullet hit Frank’s mirrored image squarely in the face, shattering the mirror and showering Frank with fragments.

The two cops quickly wrestled Miles to the floor and disarmed him, while Francine rushed to Frank.

“
My god, Frank, are you okay?”

Deeply shaken, he tried to breathe and nodded silently as he stared at the slivers of mirror on his suit coat.

After a few seconds he finally found his voice. “Seven years bad luck, Frankie.”

The young redhead took his arm and moved him toward the door. “Not for you, Frank. For him. Probably a lot more than seven.”

On the news set, his make-up and hair in place, he felt close to calm as he waited for his cue. The floor director counted down, then whipped a finger at Frank.

“
In my twenty-five years in the news business this may be the most painful and perhaps important story I’ve ever reported. As some of you may know, Detroit Recorder’s Court Judge William J. O’Bryan is a long-time friend of mine. But tonight Judge O’Bryan is at the center of a number of serious allegations involving corruption and murder.

“
Good evening, everybody, I’m Frank DeFauw. And tonight Channel 5 News has learned exclusively that Judge William O’Bryan, along with prominent defense attorney Samuel Dworkin and at least one other man who works in Recorder’s Court, may be involved in an alleged bribery scheme—a scheme that may have led to murder in an effort to cover up their alleged criminal activities.”

Thirty-five minutes later, Frank was finishing his summary of “what we’ve learned so far,” as Channel 5 wrapped its extended coverage of the court bribery expose, which had even included Mary Scott interviewing her co-anchor on the I-94 shooting.

With b-roll running of a chaotic scene in the newsroom, Frank read:

“
And just about 40 minutes ago, right here in our Channel 5 studios, in the men’s room off our newsroom, a third attempt was made on my life by this man, Kenneth Miles, a Detroit Police officer assigned to Recorder’s Court as a bailiff for Judge O’Bryan.

“
As you heard earlier, only because of excellent police work by Detroit Police officers Frank Riley and Eric Fontana did I come out of this unscathed.

“
Here you see Miles in the custody of Officers Riley and Fontana as they took him away to the Wayne County Jail where he’ll be held for an arraignment tomorrow morning in the very court where he has served as a bailiff for the past three years.”

Of course, at 11 that evening, WTEM presented a full report on the alleged bribery and murder scandal featuring Judge William O’Bryan and defense attorney Sam Dworkin and involving Channel 5’s own Frank DeFauw as a major player. Again the report included most of what was seen on the five o’clock, but there were significant additions as well.

Anthony Peoples was interviewed by Frank live on the set, talking at some length about the experience of concealing his identity and finding safe refuge for several weeks, both in the city of Detroit, where he was known to a number of people, and in Cleveland, where he knew only his sister Vanessa, and where he had spent nearly four weeks after being deeply shaken by the death of Prentice Gant.

Also interviewed, live from his living room, was the Wayne County prosecutor Peter Canzoneri, who offered absolute assurances that “every step will be taken to get to the bottom of every single allegation” and that “no stone will be left unturned to insure that those who may have broken the public trust are brought to justice.”

Though it would not be seen today, the sun had been up for a while on this frigid February morning, everything in browns, blacks and grays, from the ice covering the lake, to the stripped bushes and naked trees, to the thick cloud banks blocking every inch of sky. Staring at this bleak scene through the kitchen window, he had to admit he was feeling pretty damn good.

Empty nesters now, with Bobby in his freshman year at U. of M. along with Jen, he and Marci seemed to be making the transition okay. Yes, it would be nice to hear more often from the kids, but Marci’s more relaxed attitude now was no news was good news.

Her voice came from behind him as she entered the kitchen. “You couldn’t sleep?”

He turned to her, the blond hair sleep-tousled, a little crazy, the way he liked it in the morning. “Yeah, no, I had one of those stupid, annoying dreams where nothing makes sense when you wake up, and every time you try closing your eyes, it starts again. You ever get those?”

“
No. But I think you just couldn’t wait to read the Freep.”

They both glanced at the table covered with sections of the paper.

“
Well, that might also be true.”

She let him kiss her, a soft peck on soft lips, then went for the pot of coffee he had made more than an hour ago.

Half the Free Press had seemed to be devoted to coverage of the trial’s conclusion yesterday. Even Wee Willy’s gossip column was almost straight reporting on the jury’s surprisingly quick return of the verdicts.

Frank rarely looked at the little prick’s column these days. Actually, Barnes had pretty much left him alone ever since that strong backlash to the piece on Frank’s peccadilloes with Sherie Sloan. Word was the guy had nearly lost his column over that, when even some of his most avid gossip fans had deemed the story both salacious and unfair.

Three months later when the lease on her apartment was up, Sherie had called to tell him she was moving to Pittsburgh for a new job and a new life. He had wished her luck and resisted the urge to see her gorgeous face one last time.

Upon first sitting at the table that morning with his coffee and the paper, it had been clear the Free Press had pulled out all the stops, assigning extraordinary resources to report the story and developing several background pieces, all poised to grab and illuminate the moment.

According to the paper, the bribery, corruption and murder cases against William O’Bryan and Sam Dworkin had turned on the testimony of two men: the aggrieved widower Anthony Peoples and the judge’s bailiff, Detroit Police officer Kenneth Miles.

On the corruption charge, Peoples, bolstered by the videotape that had caused such a sensation when it was first shown on the news, had sunk both the judge and the attorney popularly known as “Suspenders.” Despite a variety of detailed and inventive arguments, including the claim of a broken chain of evidence, their high-powered legal team had finally failed to get the tape tossed, and the defendants went down “like a hot knife through butter,” as Frank’s favorite columnist put it.

The murder charges were more of a contest. Miles, the cop assigned as a bailiff for Judge O’Bryan, had pled guilty to one count of attempted murder in the men’s room shooting at WTEM, and one count of reckless endangerment in the Jefferson Avenue incident, both of them involving popular Channel 5 news anchor Frank DeFauw. But after several lengthy and grueling interogation sessions, Miles had continued to maintain that he had absolutely nothing to do with the bombing deaths of Peoples’ wife and two children.

And according to an unnamed source in the federal prosecutor’s office, despite his two pleas, Miles had actually claimed that he had never intended to kill anyone. In plea bargain negotiations, Morgan Flannigan, the attorney for Miles, said the tape of the Jefferson Avenue drive-by near-miss clearly showed an attempt to scare, not harm. And in the men’s room shooting, Flannigan maintained the only reason the gun had fired was that the swinging door had slammed his client in the back.

In the end, the key to the prosecution finally making a plea deal was a firm avowal by Miles that he had a contract from the judge and “Suspenders” to murder both Peoples and DeFauw. Even with his pleas accepted, Miles would likely be spending the better part of 15 years behind bars,

At trial Miles had been grilled unmercifully for several days on his history, character, motives and contradictions. He held up sufficiently to give the jury enough for a second degree murder conviction for both Dworkin and the judge. They were each headed for 18-25 (12 if they behaved themselves) at some federal pen.

There were two other questions about this story that had continued to intrigue Detroiters, and the paper had diligently searched for answers. One involved the early retirement and subsequent suicide of the Wayne County prosecutor Prentis Gant. The other was how Sam Dworkin and Judge O’Bryan had learned of the existence of that infamous tape.

According to one extensive background report, federal investigators, with information from Anthony Peoples, had looked into the possibility that someone in the county prosecutor’s office had tipped one of the men to what Gant was up to. Investigators determined that Gant had run the operation entirely on his own, apparently not trusting anyone in his office. He had personally gone to a federal judge for a warrant, hired a private company to place the camera and secured the bribe money by accessing a cash account normally used to pay informants. When he met with Peoples, it was always alone at a private location.

Then-assistant prosecutor Peter Canzoneri, who had been assigned to the case in which Peoples was charged with a felony murder, had said he had “no clue what Gant was doing.” He was also quoted as saying, “I didn’t think much of the case, but Gant insisted on going forward with it.”

One member of the county prosecutor’s staff, who wished to remain anonymous, had said while others in the office could have gotten wind of Gant’s operation, Canzoneri was “in the best position to sniff it out and might have had a motive” to pass a word along. According to the source, it was common knowledge in the office that Canzoneri had long coveted the top job and was bitter about his inability to raise the political and financial backing he needed to make a run for it.