Trap (9781476793177) (21 page)

“Your office?”

“The restroom. You go first, I'll follow.”

Gallo smirked. “Didn't know you got freaky, Tommy.”

“Shut the fuck up. I'm going to check you for a wire.”

“A wire? You've been watching too many gangster movies, but okay.”

Gallo got up and walked off toward the men's room. Monroe stood. The dirty cop was watching and got up, too. They both followed the younger man.

“Who's your friend?” Gallo said when the other man entered.

“None of your business, pal. Turn around,” the cop said as he quickly made sure no one was in the stalls. He looked at Monroe. “Stand against the door so no one comes in.”

No sooner did Monroe do as he was told but someone tried to enter the restroom. “Hey, what the fuck,” a Spanish-accented voice said from the other side. “You
pendejos
can play with your dicks some other time, I got to take a pee.”

“Go away, asshole,” the cop yelled. “Official NYPD business.”

“Fuck off,” Gallo added, then turned around as ordered.

The cop shoved him roughly against the wall and began patting him down. He then removed Gallo's belt and took a pen from his shirt pocket and the cell phone from his pants. The cop walked into one of the stalls and dumped it all in a toilet.

“Hey, what the fuck!” Gallo yelled. “That's my phone, you son of a bitch.”

“Can't take any chances that someone is listening in on your cell,” Monroe replied with a smile. “You've also heard of pen microphones, and I'm assuming there's the same concern with your belt. Don't worry, you'll be able to buy a new phone with ‘your money' later.”

“Give me your shoes,” the cop demanded.

“You're not going to flush them!” Gallo said with alarm, though he removed the shoes. “They're five-hundred-dollar Guccis.”

“Nah,” the cop replied. Instead he whipped out a butterfly knife that he opened with a flourish and then pried the heels off the shoes. He looked them over and then at Monroe. “He's clean,” he said, and handed the shoes back to Gallo.

“Damn right I am, you fucks,” Gallo said angrily as he put the ruined shoes back on his feet. “I should make you give me an extra thousand for wrecking my shit.”

“Cost of doing business,” Monroe replied. “Besides, there's a hundred grand in the briefcase. And I already saw that you transferred your money from your ‘school' accounts. Way I figure it, you're worth two million easy and that's a lot of phones and shoes. Let's go back to our seats.”

As the men left the restroom, the young Hispanic who Monroe had noticed at the bar shoved his way past them. “You girls done powdering your noses?” he said.

The cop continued back over to his place at the bar while the other two returned to their seats. As they sat down, the young Hispanic man exited the restroom, and when he passed by their table, he reached down and placed a flash drive in front of Gallo. “I got your stuff out of the toilet,” he said quietly, then continued on his way and left the bar.

Monroe noticed the bandage on the young man's hand. “Your partner in crime,” he said to Gallo. “That was a pretty bold move on your part, but I knew it was you on the security tapes.”

“I wanted you to know it was me,” Gallo retorted. “Otherwise you might have gone to the cops about a ‘break-in' and fucked the whole thing up.”

Monroe nodded. “I thought maybe that was what you were doing with that,” he said, pointing at the flash drive.

“What? And spend the next eight years, at least, in the pen for stealing union funds?” Gallo said. “I may be a coward, but I'm not stupid. I'm also not going to hang around and get indicted for murder. That was fucking stupid to kill Lubinsky.”

Monroe's lips twisted. “Look,” he said, leaning forward, “it wasn't my idea either. But we were all going down if that charter school bill goes through with the audit clause. You don't want to go to the joint and neither do I. She's crazy, but I went along with her shit because there was no other way out. Lubinsky couldn't be bought and the bill was going to pass. She had to go.”

“I hear you,” Gallo said. “But it's over the top to me, and I'm getting out. Give me my money.”

“Not so fast,” Monroe said, turning on the laptop. “I want to make sure I'm getting what I'm paying for.”

“No problem,” Gallo replied, shoving the flash drive across the table.

Monroe inserted the drive into the laptop and pressed a few buttons. He looked at the screen and nodded. “How do I know this is the only copy?” he asked.

“You don't,” Gallo said. He nodded at the cop who was sitting at the bar watching them. “But you got the Kings County district attorney in your back pocket and at least one crooked NYPD cop, so I'm sure if you want, you can make life very difficult, if not impossible, for me. Like I said, I'm out of here and you'll never hear from me again.”

“Yeah, where you heading? Your place in the Keys?”

Gallo laughed. “Sold it. And you think I'm going to tell you? Nah, farther south, Costa Rica, maybe Ecuador, but I won't be sending you a postcard. Two million plus will buy me a new name and a lot of fun. So adios, Monroe.”

Monroe took a large sip from his bourbon as he watched Gallo walk out the door. He was taking a second sip when there was a sudden flash, followed by a muffled explosion. Car alarms began going off as people inside the bar yelled and ran for the door.

Except not everybody did. The large black man who'd been listening to his music stood and drew a gun from beneath his leather coat. He pointed to the lovey-dovey couple, who were also cops and had jumped to their feet, guns pulled. “I got this. Move!” he yelled.

As the couple ran for the door, the crooked cop at the bar at first seemed confused. Then he began to reach for his gun until Gail, the waitress, who'd been standing behind him, pressed her service revolver against his head. “Drop the gun, scumbag, and don't move,” she hissed. “NYPD, and you're under arrest.”

“What the—” Monroe exclaimed as he started to panic.

“On the floor,” the large black man demanded.

“Who are you?”

“NYPD Detective Clay Fulton. You're under arrest for murder, and you better pray to God you didn't just add to the body count.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“No? Well, let's go have a little chat with my boss and see about that.”

“Who?”

“My boss, Butch Karp, the district attorney of New York County. Let's not keep him waiting. Now put your hands behind your back while I read you your rights.”

Nine months later . . .

“O
YEZ, OYEZ, OYEZ, ALL THOSE
having business in Supreme Court Part 42, draw near and ye shall be heard,” the rotund chief administrative court clerk James Farley intoned. “Put down that newspaper in the back, and all cell phones must be turned off, if not they will be surrendered. The Honorable Supreme Court Justice Peter Rainsford presiding.”

As the judge swept into Part 42, otherwise known outside of New York as a courtroom, Karp glanced over at the defense table, where attorney Irving Mendelbaum stood next to his client, the defendant Olivia Stone. It was the morning of the second day of her murder trial, and his former Kings County counterpart looked angry and defiant.

Just the way I want her
, Karp thought as his eyes shifted back to Mendelbaum, who gave him a wink. Karp winked back and returned his attention to the judge, who settled into his chair on the dais and urged the attorneys and spectators alike to take their seats.

Tall, thin, and balding with pale blue eyes that could sparkle with merriment over a good joke or blaze with anger for a breach of court decorum, Judge Rainsford had been the perfect choice for this case as far as Karp was concerned. He was not known for being partisan in any way, which had probably hurt his chances over the years for an appointment to a higher state court or federal bench, but it had also earned him a reputation for fairness on both sides of the aisle and with the media. And in a high-profile, politically charged case like this, Karp was grateful not to have a judge intent on grandstanding to score points with voters or party hacks.

Karp respected and liked this judge. Over a good, full-bodied red wine, Rainsford would confess to a penchant for reading crime thrillers and courtroom procedurals but only if they “adhered to reality rather than some legal fantasy that comes out of left field.” He also had a son in the Army Rangers who'd served three tours of duty in Afghanistan before returning home alive and unharmed to his grateful parents.

The last time Karp had talked to Rainsford on a social level was at a courthouse Christmas party. The judge was looking forward to retirement, at which point he was going to sell his home in Mount Vernon and move to a farm in Pennsylvania that he and his wife, Fran, had bought years before. “I'd like to be done with all the madness, Butch, and we'll be content to be just simple country folk.”

This morning, however, Rainsford was clearly irritated as evidenced by the way he glared at the gallery, which was packed mostly with media types. “It was brought to my attention this morning that someone in the press attempted to contact one or more of the jurors in this case
despite
my admonition to refrain from any such behavior,” he said tersely.

Karp glanced back at the spectators in the rows, who were squirming whether they were guilty or not and looking at each other as if it had to be somebody else who had invoked the judge's ire. He imagined the terror the real guilty party must be feeling at that moment.

“Would Phil Manzano stand up,” Rainsford demanded.

Several members of the media sniggered and covered their mouths to hide smiles as one of their competitors, a muckraker for one of the weekly newspapers in Brooklyn, was singled out. It was immediately evident where he sat, as those closest to him slid to either side as though to avoid becoming collateral damage. A small, insipid-looking man with a scraggly mustache rose slowly from his seat.

“Are you Mr. Manzano?”

The little man nodded.

“What's that? I didn't hear you,” the judge said.

“Yes, your honor, I'm Phil Manzano,” he squeaked.

Rainsford pointed a long finger at the guilty party. “Court security, remove that man and toss him in a cell until I have time to deal with him at the end of the day.”

“No, please, I won't do it again,” Manzano squealed in terror.

“I know you won't because you won't be allowed back in this courthouse for the duration of this trial,” the judge said. He then cast his eyes over the others in the gallery. “And that goes for the rest of you. I will not tolerate anyone interfering with the sanctity of these proceedings, which includes any attempts to contact a member of the jury. Am I clear?”

Karp was amused to watch the rest of the crowd bobbing their heads in unison like a classroom full of kindergartners scolded for refusing to be quiet during naptime.

After Manzano was escorted, still protesting, from the courtroom, Rainsford's glare disappeared and he smiled. “Good morning, counselors, Mrs. Stone. Are we ready to bring in the jury? Good. Mr. Farley, let's get on with it then.”

When the jurors were seated, Rainsford turned to Karp. “Are you ready, Mr. Karp?”

“Yes, your honor,” Karp said, rising from his seat.

During his opening, Karp had explained that the People's case would actually be comprised of two separate parts “though ultimately we will demonstrate how together they create the whole.” The first part, he'd said, would be to dispel what was likely to be the defense contention that Lars Forsling was the murderer.

What he didn't say to the jury was that it was his strategy to “steal the defense's thunder” by essentially presenting their case and then systematically dismantling it.

The second part of the People's case would be to prove that Stone, in concert with teachers union president Tommy Monroe, and her “lover and hired assassin” Yusef Salaam, “also known as Henry Burns,” schemed for and then with intent caused the death of Rose Lubinsky, Mary Calebras, and Tawanna Mohammad.

Stone's motivation, as well as Monroe's, he had told the jurors, was to prevent passage of a bill “written by the deceased, Rose Lubinsky, that was before the state assembly last winter.

“This bill would have curtailed the power of the teachers union, whom the defendant counted on for financial and political support,” Karp said. “But there was another motive, an even more venal motive. Monroe and the defendant, Olivia Stone, were afraid of a clause in that bill that would have triggered an audit of the union's accounts that would have uncovered years of skimming and the theft of millions of dollars. And the only way they thought they could stop or delay this bill to give them time to cover up their misdeeds was to remove its champion. And so Salaam was dispatched to set a bomb beneath the deceased's car while she was giving a talk about a book she'd written. That bomb would take her life, as well as the lives of two young women who died only because they were friends of Rose Lubinsky and in the wrong place at the wrong time. For no other reason, they would suffer horrible deaths because of the pernicious and evil scheming of the defendant.”

As he spoke, Karp had walked toward the defense table and then lifted his arm and pointed at Stone. Already red-faced after his remark about her “lover and hired assassin” Salaam, the former district attorney of Kings County had glared up at him, not bothering to disguise the hatred she felt. Her husband had filed for divorce following her indictment when some of the more tawdry accusations were reported in the press.

As expected, following Karp's remarks, Mendelbaum's opening statement had contended that Forsling, “a murderous, psychotic individual motivated by vile anti-Semitism, as well as a desire to make a name for himself among his fellow Nazis,” had planted the bomb beneath the car of a “prominent Jewish author outside of Il Buon Pane, a bakery owned by a Jewish couple, Moishe and Goldie Sobelman, who had survived the death camps of World War II.