The Wrong Man (5 page)

“You’ll carry a heavy burden,” Judge Nash warned me. He granted the motion allowing me in as lead counsel and called the next case.

I looked back at Deidre Maley—Aunt Deidre—who was watching her nephew walk out of the courtroom, tears brimming in her eyes. When he was gone, she turned her eyes to me.

Thank you,
she mouthed to me, showing a bit more hope in that expression than I’d previously seen.

I sincerely hoped that it was warranted.

Don’t ask me why I do the things I do.

The part about being at Vic’s until closing—that part’s easy. The vodka helps me sleep. And I don’t like drinking alone, even if I don’t know anyone else in the bar.

The part about the girl, though. That’s the don’t-ask-me-why part.

I watched her for three hours at the end of the bar. Came in alone about ten, maybe ten-thirty. Thin and dirty-blond and pretty. But not like a Barbie doll. Petite face, slightly crooked nose, but a look about her more than anything. Like she’s seen a lot.

Character, they call it. That’s what I like, a face with character. I don’t trust Barbie dolls. I prefer women who don’t realize how attractive they are.

Ten-thirty, we’ll call it, she came in. Kept to herself. Looked my way once or twice, but that was due more to the fact that we were opposite bookends of the wraparound bar, so I was directly in her line of sight.

She wasn’t the problem. The yuppies and middle-aged burnouts in their work costumes, talking big and making their moves, they weren’t the problem, either.

The two guys in the corner booth, they were the problem. Swarthy Italians with thick manes of hair and even thicker necks.

They sent over the first drink to the lady at about midnight, when the population had dwindled from thirty to single digits. A glass of pinot. She turned and smiled and looked away before she could see the two men in the corner, raising their glasses of scotch to her in response.

The second drink came at half past midnight, when there was a finger’s worth remaining in her glass. She said something to the bartender that I couldn’t make out. Maybe that’s because I was on my fourth vodka, but the volume of her voice seemed to match her petite build.

The bartender personally delivered the next round of scotch to the goons in the corner, and his voice was a little stronger than the lady’s.

“She said thanks, guys, but she’s not in the mood for company tonight. She said no offense.”

“Ho!” cried one of the Italians, wounded.

The peppy adult-contemporary music had changed to soft, boozy jazz. Cologne still lingered in the bar. I was getting tired and figured I could sleep well now, but something told me to stick around.

Besides, I could use the exercise. In the week-plus since I’d entered Tom Stoller’s case, I’d gone through all the evidence the prosecution had turned over and everything that Bryan Childress and the public defender had gathered on Tom’s behalf. I’d spoken again, with little success, to Tom himself. I didn’t get much out of him besides the meal plan for that day and the temperature of his room. I hadn’t gone for a run for nine days straight, and our recent mid-October ice storm hadn’t helped matters any. Either way, the lack of exercise had left my muscles itchy.

The woman fiddled with her smart phone for a moment. She didn’t seem like the smart-phone type. Not the aggressive, corporate sort, this one, not if I was reading her correctly. But what did I know? All I could really figure was that she was nursing some sort of wound, and she could hold her liquor. Counting how she started plus the ones courtesy of the Sicilians, that made six wines, which would tip me more than four Stolis.

The seventh came courtesy of the goombahs again. I don’t know why the bartender didn’t run interference for the lady, but he served her up. That was it for the lady. She pushed it away and pushed herself off the bar stool.

She didn’t even acknowledge the corner boys, which might have been a smart move. Save them some face. Italians are like that. Lost every war they ever started but still think they’re the toughest guys going.

“Ho!” one of them called out.

I settled up and threw on my coat.

Both men stood up. They weren’t tall, but they were wide. Weight lifters, the muscular shapes of their shoulders and arms notable, even through their winter coats.

“That’s no kinda polite,” thug number one said. “All those drinks and not even a hello?”

The woman, who had thrown on her long white coat and gathered her purse, turned to the man. “Hello,” she said. “And good-bye.”

“No, no, no.” They picked up their pace as she left the bar.

So did I. When I pushed through the door, the three of them were standing outside. One of them, the beefier one, was holding the lady’s arm by the biceps as she tried to yank it away.

“—your name,” he said. “Least you can do is tell me your name. I bought you all those drinks.”

“I didn’t
tell
you to buy me any drinks,” she protested. Her voice wasn’t so weak, after all. She seemed like someone who could take care of herself under normal circumstances.

“Just let her go,” said the second goombah.

“I’ll let her go when she tells me her name and thanks me for the drinks.”

All at once, everyone seemed to notice me. Maybe that’s because I cleared my throat really loudly. The woman caught my eyes. Both goons turned and looked at me. Our breath lingered in the frozen air. This is where the protocol called for me to de-escalate the situation.

“I’m the one who should be upset,” I said. “I sat there the whole night and you didn’t buy me a single cocktail.”

“This don’t concern you,” said the one holding the woman’s arm.

“A wine spritzer, something,” I said. “Throw me a bone.”

Goon number two squared off on me now. “How ’bout I throw you my fist?”

“Clever. Good comeback. Listen, fellas,” I said.

Don’t ask me why I do the things I do. As awkward as it was, my presence was eventually going to be enough to make them release this woman. And a smooth diplomat like me could have gotten these men on their way without fisticuffs. A lot of braggadocio and threats—face-saving—but not fisticuffs. The guy was too close for me to throw a punch, anyway.

So I threw him an elbow. I’m right-handed, but for some reason I can
throw a stronger left elbow. Go figure. Like my brother’s a righty but swings a golf club lefty.

The elbow caught him in the soft part of the skull at the temple. I can’t take total credit for knocking him over, as there was a decent patch of ice on the sidewalk. Anyway, he lost his feet and fell hard on his left shoulder, and his head collided with the ice.

Maybe it’s unresolved aggression. Reliving my childhood or something. My mother always told me I couldn’t solve problems with my fists.

But like I said, it was an elbow.

“That had to hurt,” I said to the other goon. “I’m Jason, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Now, what’d you do
that
for?” said he. Sounded like a rhetorical question. He was playing it tough, but from my take, the wariness in his eyes, he didn’t want to escalate the situation. More bark than bite. Once again, protocol dictated I give him an out to save face.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” I answered. “I’ll get you started. It ends in a vowel.”

The other guy got to his knees. His shoulder was bothering him. He probably had a headache, too. This ice is a bitch.

“Not the last time we’ll be seeing each other. Understand?” This from the first one, who released the woman and went over to help his buddy.

“I’m here most nights,” I said.

It took them some time to leave. Number two got to his feet, cussed a few times, and mumbled some aggressive thoughts. But they were leaving. The threat was over.

The woman could have been on the next block by now if she’d wanted to be. But she stuck around. Watched them leave, waited until they were well out of sight.

Then she turned on me. “I can fight my own battles, thank you.”

“You had that situation under control, did you?”

“Dealing with jerks has become my specialty.”

Present company excluded, I’m sure. She smoothed her hands over her white coat. Frozen breath trailed out of her mouth. Her heels looked vulnerable on the ice.

“Safe travels,” I said.

She walked away without another word.

I made it to my law firm the next morning by nine. I kept my own hours, and on days when I didn’t have court in the morning, I often worked out in the morning and arrived late. But today I wanted to finish up my notes on the prosecution’s evidence in
Stoller
and get them typed up for the beginnings of a crude database.

I pushed through the door bearing the stenciled lettering of T
ASKER &
K
OLARICH
and smiled at our young receptionist, Marie, who majored in archaeology and minored in the avoidance of productive labor.

“Hold all my calls,” I said. “I’m on with the Pentagon in ten minutes.”

She hardly looked up. There was definitely a document in front of her, so she must have been working very hard on it. “You have a ten-thirty.”

Right. I’d forgotten. Some guy who called a couple days ago and was vague about why.

My partner, Shauna Tasker, had a young couple in her office. My guess, a real estate closing for a husband and wife. Shauna was good about diversifying. She preferred litigation but took on all sorts of transactional matters, too, from real estate sales to corporate formations to employment agreements to falling asleep from boredom.

“What up, old man?” said the third member of our team, Bradley John, as he passed the office with a cup of Starbucks in hand.

“Hey, Rock Star.”

I’m only seven years older than Bradley, for the record. He’s been out
of law school for three years and joined up with us three months ago. I like the kid but try not to let him know it.

I had court this afternoon on a state drug possession, and another appearance in federal court on a gun case. The drug possession was a guy running pills, including a couple that hit Schedule I and therefore could get the kid six years inside, even for a first offense. The gun charge was an arrest by city cops but was scooped up by the feds, who can kick the sentence on a gun crime into the stratosphere compared to state guidelines. I have a decent chance on that one, because the kid dumped the gun during the chase, but nobody saw the dumping.

All fine, they’ve paid up front and both will probably go to trial, which is the only thing that keeps my heart pumping these days. But my ten-thirty, from what I gathered between the lines over the phone yesterday, might be a homicide.

The guy’s name was Lorenzo Fowler. He was of medium height, thick across the middle, with heavy bags under his bloodshot eyes. He was wearing a dress shirt open at the collar and a cheap wool sport coat. He wore too much cologne—any cologne is too much—and shook my hand too hard when he sat across the desk from me.

He smoothed his hands over the arms of the chair and tapped his feet. Nerves. That’s not unusual in my line of work.

“So this is attorney-client, right?” he asked.

“Are you an officer of a publicly held corporation?”

He cocked his head. “What? No.”

“Are you going to tell me about a crime you plan to commit in the future?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Then everything you tell me is confidential.”

He nodded.

“I’ve got some, uh, legal problems,” he said. That distinguished him from absolutely nobody who entered my office.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“It’s not important.”

Interesting response. “You wanted to hire me, what, to cater your kid’s birthday party?”

His eyes narrowed as he considered me. I don’t think he thought I was funny.

“They’re looking at me for something. Something maybe I did, maybe I didn’t do.”

I nodded along. “You need a lawyer.”

He shook his head. “No, I got a lawyer for that other thing.”

I was done trying to coax him. He’d get there eventually.

“Anyway.” He took a nervous breath and looked around the office. “If it ever gets hot, I’m thinking—see, I’ve got something I could trade. I know something about another case.”

I put my hands on the desk. Thus far, this conversation hadn’t called for copious note-taking. “Mr. Fowler, if you’re represented by counsel, talk to him. Or her. Not me.”

His head bobbed for a minute. He wet his lips and looked around the walls of my office, the cheap artwork and diplomas. Nerves flaring up again.

“This would be something I wouldn’t talk to him about.”

Something wasn’t connecting. Unless. There was only one way this made sense.

“Who do you work for?” I asked. “The Morettis? The Capparellis?”

He cocked his head, then smiled. I wish he hadn’t. He hadn’t received stellar dental care over the years.

“Capparellis,” he said.

Right. Fowler worked for the Mob, the Outfit, whatever remained of the old crime syndicate since the feds have taken a massive bite out of their organization. Not what they once were in this city, but still formidable. Guns and girls and gambling, plus drugs and protection. Rico Capparelli was the top guy of the family and went down on a federal racketeering charge—RICO, ironically. His brother, Paul, is presumed to be running things these days, though I know that only from press accounts. When I was a prosecutor, I focused on street gangs, not the Mob.

Whatever that other thing was that Lorenzo Fowler maybe did, maybe didn’t do, he was represented by the Mob’s lawyer. A Mob lawyer’s first loyalty is to the Mob, not the person he’s defending. Fowler had something
to trade, but he couldn’t do it through his current attorney. Which meant he was going to sell out somebody higher up on the food chain.

“You want legal advice,” I said. “You want an idea of what kind of deal you could cut.”

“That’s it.”

Okay, that’s it. “What’s the thing you maybe did, maybe didn’t do?”

He hitched one shoulder. “Guy who owns Knockers. The strip club over on Green? He mighta taken a beating last week. He might not survive it.”