First degree (13 page)

MARCUS CLARK SCARES
EDNA HALF TO
death when he comes to the house to give his first weekly report. I assure her that he's on our side, but I don't think she can reconcile his menacing presence with the fact that he's one of the good guys.

Then Laurie comes into the room, and the transformation is immediate. She and Marcus hug warmly, and he inquires as to her health, her mental outlook, anything she might need, etc. Edna grudgingly accepts him as one of the team, though she occasionally glances over at him, as if to make sure he doesn't turn on us.

Marcus essentially has made no progress, which in his eyes is in itself a sign of progress. He has not found a trace of Dorsey, and since he firmly believes he can find anyone, he considers his failure a sure sign that Dorsey is dead.

"I spoke to him," Laurie points out.

"Or somebody trying to sound like him" is Marcus's response.

She pushes back. "It was him."

They kick around this unresolvable issue until finally Marcus allows as how it's possible Dorsey is alive, but with a lot of help powerful enough to keep him totally hidden. We all agree that only somebody like Dominic Petrone has that kind of power, but Marcus doesn't believe that Petrone would have let Dorsey make the phone call. That was the act of a man with intensely personal motivations, and Petrone would look at this as strictly business.

The court clerk calls to announce that Hatchet has reviewed Dorsey's files and set a meeting for tomorrow morning in his chambers to discuss our motion to receive them in discovery. Hatchet likes to resolve these matters without a formal hearing, and that's fine with me. I'm glad he didn't call it for this morning, because I've got the meeting with Willie Miller and the attorney representing the estates we are suing.

The easiest way for me to explain how Willie is reacting to his impending wealth is to say that he asks me to pick him up at a Mercedes dealership. He's standing out front when I pull up, and he gets in the car.

"How come you weren't inside kicking the tires?" I ask.

"They weren't taking me seriously. They don't think I can afford one of those pieces of junk. Shows what they know."

"How much do you have in your checking account?" I ask.

"I don't have no checking account," he says, and then he smiles his broad smile. "But I'm gonna."

The conversation during the rest of the drive to the lawyer's office involves Laurie. Like everybody else who knows her, Willie is concerned, and he has a better idea than most how unjust the justice system can be.

We arrive at the law firm of Bertram, Smith, and Cates, a respected civil litigation firm in Teaneck. I have spoken a couple of times to Stephen Cates, the attorney representing the defendants, and he has been properly noncommittal as to his position, pending this meeting.

He greets us cordially, sits us at a conference table with a large fruit bowl, offers us something to drink, and gets right down to business.

"I understand you've been approached by the daughter of one of my clients," he says, referring to Nicole.

I nod. "I have."

"I apologize for your being put in that position. I, of course, had no idea until after the fact."

"No problem," I say.

He then launches into a long-winded recitation of the position of his clients, and their desire to bring this unhappy matter, or at least this portion of it, to a close. They recognize the negative impact their actions have had on Willie's life, and they have concocted a formula that they believe accurately assigns a financial value to it. He is so busy explaining the formula, he neglects to mention what that value is.

After twenty minutes that seem like two hours, he reaches the end and says, "Do you have any questions?"

Willie, who has had three oranges, two apples, a banana, and a bunch of grapes during this presentation, doesn't waste any time. "How much?" he asks.

Cates seems somewhat taken aback by Willie's directness, but decides to meet it. "We're looking at in the neighborhood of four point three seven million dollars, paid out over seven years."

Willie almost spits up three grapes at the absurdity of the offer. "That may be the neighborhood you're lookin' in," he says. "But not us. We're lookin' uptown." By "us" Willie means he and I, although my intention is to keep him functioning as chief negotiator. He's doing fine, and I prefer to spend my time mentally beating myself up over Barry Leiter's murder.

But Cates turns to me, obviously looking for a weaker link than Willie. "What exactly is your position?"

I look to Willie and he nods, in effect giving me the floor. "Eleven point seven million, paid out over five minutes."

He doesn't blink. "May I ask how you arrived at that figure?"

"Gut instinct," I say. "We consider it a fair figure, and as such it is nonnegotiable. I believe we can get considerably more at trial."

"I see. I'll convey this to my clients."

I tell him that'll be fine, and with Willie grabbing a final orange on the way out, we say our goodbyes.

Willie asks if I can drop him off at his girlfriend's house, which is in a rather depressed area of downtown Paterson. Paterson is a city of over a hundred thousand people and can match any other city blight for blight. Yet whenever anyone in the area refers to "the city," they are talking about New York.

We are about ten blocks from our destination when we almost hit a dog running loose on the street. It looks to be a Lab mix, skinny, worn-out, and frightened from life on the street.

Willie and I are both shaken by the near miss. "Damn, that was close," he says.

"Poor dog. They'll catch him and take him to the pound," I say.

"And then what?"

"And then they'll kill him."

"What?" Willie yells, outrage in his voice. "Stop the car!"

I barely have time to pull over when Willie jumps out, chasing the dog down the street and calling, "Here, dog!"

The dog demonstrates his intelligence by running away from the screaming Willie, so I pull the car up ahead and try to cut him off. I jump out of the car and start chasing him back toward Willie, but again the dog is clever enough to run down an alley.

The chase is on, as Willie and I spend the next twenty minutes running up and down streets and in and out of alleys, all in pursuit of this poor dog. We execute a number of maneuvers to cut him off, but he outsmarts us each time.

The workout in the whirlpool at Vince Sanders's club hasn't quite prepared me for this kind of running. I'm gasping for air and my insides are burning, but Willie handles it like he's out for a walk in the park.

After a few minutes more I lose sight of both Willie and the dog, and they are going to have to handle this on their own. I stagger up and down a few alleys, hoping to find one of them, although my first choice would be to stumble upon an oxygen tent.

And then, at the end of an alley in front of a dirty garage, I see Willie. He is sitting on the cement, back against the wall, cradling the dog in his lap and petting him gently on his head. The dog contentedly rests that head on Willie's knee. They look so relaxed that the only thing missing from this picture is a pond and a fishing pole.

When I'm able to breathe and walk again, the three of us go back to the car. Willie keeps the dog on his lap in the front seat and announces that he is now his dog, and his name is Cash, for obvious reasons. I check and see that there is no collar or tag on the dog, which makes it far less likely that there is an owner somewhere looking for him.

Willie promises to put up signs in the neighborhood with pictures of the dog, but I'm not sure he'll follow through on it. Whatever. A dog has found a loving owner; there are worse things that can happen in this world.

I get back home and am surprised to see Pete Stanton waiting to update me on the early stages of the investigation of Stynes. He could have done it by phone, but I think he wanted to see Laurie and offer additional moral support.

The report on Stynes is stunning in its brevity. "So far Stynes doesn't seem to have existed," Pete says.

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

Pete proceeds to tell me that they have run his prints everywhere, military, federal, and state, and come up with nothing. They've circulated his picture to every law enforcement agency in the country on a priority basis and came up empty as well.

"How is that possible?" I ask.

"I don't think it is," Pete says. "A guy like that, he had to have a record, or been in the military, or applied for a gun permit ... something. If there's no record of him, then that record had to have been erased."

"By who?"

Pete shrugs. "By some record eraser--how the hell should I know? Anyway, we're still looking, but I don't think we're going to find anything."

Pete leaves and I spend the rest of the night preparing for the meeting in Hatchet's chambers tomorrow to discuss our request for all of Dorsey's records. It's not a motion we can afford to lose.

The morning is sunny and bright, but as always, Hatchet's chambers are cloudy and dark. Once again, Dylan is there before Kevin and me, which annoys me. The judge should not be talking to one counsel without the other present. I could lecture Hatchet on this point, or I could decide to keep living.

It becomes instantly apparent to me that their pre-meeting was by Hatchet's design. "Mr. Campbell has decided not to oppose your motion" he announces to me.

"Good," I say.

"You will have the file by close of business today."

"Good," I say.

"That will be all, gentlemen."

"Good," I say.

Dylan hasn't said a word, and I've only said one, although it's a word I like and I've gotten to say it three times. Within moments Kevin and I are back in my car.

"What the hell was that about?" Kevin asks.

"Hatchet obviously read him the riot act before we got there," I say.

Kevin is incredulous. "And Dylan just caved?"

"You've obviously never had Hatchet read you the riot act. Giving up on the motion was easy; if Hatchet had really put on the pressure, Dylan would have sacrificed his firstborn."

I call Edna and she tells me that there's an important message from Marcus, asking me to meet him at an address in a very depressed area of town. Kevin agrees to go along, and within twenty minutes we're at the location, which seems to be an abandoned apartment building. It is next to an abandoned movie theater and across the street from some abandoned stores.

We get out of the car and start looking around. After a few moments we hear a voice.

"Up here."

Looking down at us from one of the few unboarded windows in the building is Marcus. "Come on up," he says. "Sixth floor."

I moan, since the elevator in this building would obviously not be running, and I'm still sore and barely catching my breath from yesterday's dog-chasing jaunt with Willie. But ever the trooper, I march into the building with Kevin and we trudge up the steps.

When we reach the sixth floor, I instantly know that my instinct that the elevator would not be running was a correct one. I know this because hanging above the empty elevator shaft is a human being. He's hanging from a shoulder harness, his eyes bulging in fright and trained on Marcus, who stands nearby with a large knife in an apparent threat to cut that harness and send the man six stories to his demise.

I'm speechless, but Marcus is calm and relaxed, as if we were meeting him at the pool to have pina coladas. Ever aware of the social graces, he performs the obligatory introductions. "Andy Carpenter, Kevin Randall, this is Asshole. Asshole, this is Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Randall."

When I first walked in, I couldn't understand how a person could find himself hanging over an elevator shaft. Now I understand that most of the fault lies with his parents. When you name your kid Asshole, you are pretty much preordaining his being treated with a lack of respect as he grows older.

Marcus informs us that the hanging man has something to tell us. I think Kevin is going to have a stroke at being part of this scene, and I'm not terribly comfortable with it either, so I convince Marcus to bring the man onto safe ground. Marcus grudgingly agrees, after the man croaks a promise to speak just as candidly standing as he would have hanging.

Once he gets out of the elevator shaft, the man calms down some, and I learn that he has another name. Mitch. Mitch is apparently a small-time hustler, part-time informant, and full-time slimeball, who keeps his ear to the ground in the hope of gathering information he can sell. Marcus, persuasive fellow that he is, has prevailed upon Mitch to share some information with us for free. He has even prepared the special harness as a show of support for Mitch in that effort.

Mitch is able to shed some light on Dorsey's illegal activities, but it is a slightly different light than we had pictured. Dorsey was, as we suspected, heavily involved in the criminal activities of the Petrone family. But according to Mitch, Dorsey was merely a glorified bagman; the real power and protection for Petrone came from above Dorsey on the totem pole. Mitch doesn't know the identity of the man or men above Dorsey, but he's sure that Dorsey's main function was to collect money and pass a good chunk of it up the ladder.

This angle certainly fits in with what Celia had to say about the other lieutenant that Dorsey was involved with. Whether that lieutenant was in fact above Dorsey in the Petrone operation, or just working alongside him, it's becoming very clear that someone in the department has an interest in Laurie getting convicted.

We send Mitch on his way with our sincere thanks and our admonition to him to keep his ears open and report back to Marcus if he learns anything else. He promises that he'll do just that, but my guess is that Mitch will choose not to remain in the same hemisphere as Marcus.

Hatchet Henderson is the kind of judge whose orders are followed, and Dylan is not about to be the lawyer to buck that trend. When Kevin and I get back to the house, the remainder of Dorsey's file has already been sent over, and Kevin and I immediately start to pore over it.