Judge & Jury (8 page)

There were three others with the woman at her table, talking and laughing. The place was jammed with an affluent, successful-looking crowd. The two men with her wore nicely tailored suits, expensive dress shirts, gold cuff links. She seemed to know the other woman in her party quite well. The conversation was lively, familiar. The wine flowed. How nice for all of them.

Nordeshenko had followed the woman home from court that day. To her lovely town house in Murray Hill. After she went inside, he stopped on the street directly in front of the red wooden door. No guards. That’s how they did things here. And the lock was a Weiser; it would be no problem. He saw the wires from a security system connected to the phone line. That was no problem, either.

“Mr. Kaminsky.” The pretty hostess at the restaurant stepped up to him and smiled. “Your table is ready now.”

She seated him precisely where he had requested: at the adjoining table to the woman he had followed. It didn’t bother him to be so close. She wouldn’t know him; she would never see his face again. He had done this kind of thing countless times.

In the beginning, it was the Spetsnaz Brigade, special forces, in Chechnya. There he had learned how to kill with precision and without any remorse. His first real job had been a local bureaucrat in Grozny who had stolen several pensions. A real pig. Some of the victims had approached him to get even, and they paid him a sum he would not have earned in six months of waiting around to get blown up by the Chechen rebels. He was ridding the world of filthy scum. He could easily justify that. So he killed the bureaucrat with a firebomb placed in his speedboat.

Next, it was a policeman in Tashkent who was blackmailing prostitutes. He’d gotten a royal fee for that. Then a mobster in Moscow. A real big shot; impossible to get close to. He’d had to detonate an entire building, but it was just part of the job.

Then he started offering his services to whoever would pay his price. It was the time of perestroika, capitalism. And he was just a businessman. He’d hit the big time.

He stared at the fashionable woman again. Too bad. She seemed successful, and even likable. He knew exactly how it would go from here. It would begin with something small. A
message,
something that would fester in her mind. Soon, she’d be shitting bricks.

There would be no trial.

The woman shifted in her chair, and a blue cashmere sweater draped over the back fell onto the floor.

A waiter moved in, but Nordeshenko beat him to it. He reached down and picked it up.

“Thank you so much.” The woman smiled warmly at him. Their eyes met. Nordeshenko made no move to avoid them. In a different world, she was probably someone to admire and respect. But this was his world now.

He handed back the beautiful sweater. “My pleasure.” He nodded slightly in return.

And it was. He had looked into the eyes of many of his victims before he acted.

Your life is about to become hell, Miriam Seiderman.

Chapter 19

“MR. MACHIA, MY NAME is Hy Kaskel,” the Eyebrow said as he stepped away from his chair the following morning. “I’m going to be asking you some questions on behalf of my client, Mr. Dominic Cavello.”

Andie DeGrasse opened her notepad to a new page, sketching in a caricature of the defense attorney, his eyebrows flashing. She had decided to keep what had happened yesterday afternoon to herself. What could she prove? At this point she didn’t want another scene with Sharon Ann about “poisoning the jury.”

“I’m familiar with your client, Mr. Kaskel,” Louis Machia replied.

“Good.” The diminutive defense attorney nodded. “If you please, will you tell the jury just how you know him?”

“I’m just acquainted, Mr. Kaskel. I’ve been around a table with him a few times. He was there the night I got made.”

“Around a table.” Cavello’s attorney theatrically mimicked him. “Do you consider yourself a close friend of Mr. Cavello’s? Has he, say, invited you out to dinner?”

“Actually I
have
gone out to dinner with your client, Mr. Kaskel.” The witness grinned. “It was after Frank Angelotti’s funeral. A lot of us went out. But as for the other stuff, no. I was just a soldier. That’s not the way it worked.”

“So you’ve never heard Mr. Cavello give any orders on behalf of the Guarino crime family? He never said to you, for instance, ‘I need a favor from you, Mr. Machia,’ or ‘I want Samuel Greenblatt killed’?”

“No, Mr. Kaskel, not quite that way.”

“That was left to other people to explain to you. Like Ralphie D., whom you mentioned, or this other Tommy character . . . the one with the funny name?”

“Tommy Moose.”

“Tommy
Moose.
” The defense attorney nodded. “Sorry.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Kaskel. We all have funny names.”

Peals of laughter erupted through the courtroom.

“Yes, Mr. Machia,” the defense attorney said, “but what I was driving at is, you never actually heard my client suggest it would be a good thing if this Sam Greenblatt was killed, did you?”

“No, not directly.”

“You heard that from Ralphie D., who, you say, spotted him driving around somewhere in New Jersey in a car.”

“It wasn’t
somewhere
in New Jersey. It was down the block from where Mr. Greenblatt was killed.”

“By
you,
Mr. Machia, just to be clear.”

“Yes, sir.” The witness nodded. “By me.”

Kaskel scratched his chin. “Now, you describe yourself as a longtime member of the Guarino crime family, isn’t that right? And you’ve admitted to doing a lot of bad things on behalf of that family.”

“Yes,” the witness answered. “To both.”

“Like . . . killing people or trafficking in drugs, isn’t that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“What kinds of drugs did you traffic in, Mr. Machia?”

Machia shrugged. “Marijuana. Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine. You name it.”

“Hmmph,” the lawyer snickered to the jury, “you’re quite the entrepreneur, aren’t you? You’ve owned a gun, haven’t you, Mr. Machia?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve always had a gun.”

“Ever use your gun or threaten the life of someone in connection to those drugs, Mr. Machia?”

“Yes, sir, I have.”

“Ever
take
any of those drugs yourself, Mr. Machia?” Cavello’s lawyer pressed.

“Yes, I’ve taken drugs.”

“So you’re an admitted drug user, a car thief, a burglar, a knee breaker, and oh, yes,
a killer,
Mr. Machia. Tell me, in the course of your longtime crime dealings, did you ever have the occasion to lie?”

“
Lie?
” The witness chuckled. “Of course I lied. I lied all the time.”

“By all the time, you mean . . . once a month? Once a week? Every day, perhaps?”

“We always lied, Mr. Kaskel. That was what we did.”

“Why?”

“Why would we lie? To keep out of trouble. To avoid getting caught.”

“Ever lie to the cops, Mr. Machia?”

“Sure, I lied to the police.”

“To the FBI?”

“Yes.” The witness swallowed. “When I was first arrested, I lied to the FBI.”

“What about your wife, Mr. Machia? Or, say, your mother? Ever lie to them?”

Louis Machia nodded. “I guess in the course of my life I’ve lied to just about everyone.”

“So let’s face it, Mr. Machia, what you are is a habitual liar. Basically, you’ve lied to everyone you know. The people you work with, the police, the FBI, your wife. Even the woman who bore you. Let me ask you, Mr. Machia, is there anything you wouldn’t lie about?”

“Yes.” Louis Machia straightened up. “
This.
”

“
This?
” Kaskel mocked him sarcastically. “By
this,
I assume you mean your testimony?”

“Yes, sir,” the witness said.

“The government’s promised you a sweet deal, haven’t they? If you tell them what they want to hear.”

“If I admit to my crimes and tell the truth.” The witness shrugged. “They said they would take that into account.”

“By that, you mean reduce your sentence, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe even to ‘time served,’” the Eyebrow said, wide-eyed, “is that not correct?”

“It’s possible.” The witness nodded.

“So tell us,” Kaskel said, “why should this jury believe you now, when in practically every other instance of your life, you’ve admitted you habitually lied in order to save your own skin?”

“Because,” said the witness, smiling, “it makes no sense for me to lie now.”

“It makes no sense?” Kaskel scratched his chin again. “Why?”

“Because if they catch me in a lie I stay in prison. All I have to do to get my sentence reduced is
tell the truth.
How ’bout that, Mr. Kaskel?”

Chapter 20

THEY BROKE FOR LUNCH. Andie went out with O’Flynn and Marc, the crime writer, to Chinatown, a short walk from the courthouse in Foley Square.

For a while, as they picked at appetizers, they exchanged stories. Andie told them about Jarrod, about what it was like raising a kid in the city by herself. O’Flynn asked what it was like to work on
The Sopranos,
and Andie admitted she’d sort of stretched that a little bit: “I was an extra. I exaggerated to get off the trial.”

“Jeez.” O’Flynn stared at her glassily. “Y’just broke my heart.”

“John’s been rewinding through five years of reruns trying to pick you out in the Bada Bing.” Marc grinned, picking up a piece of bean curd with his chopsticks.

“So what about you?” Andie turned to Marc. “What kind of stuff do you write?”

Marc seemed like a cool guy to her. He had longish, curly blond hair, a bit like Matthew McConaughey, and always wore jeans with his navy blazer and open-necked shirt.

“Couple of okay mystery novels—one was nominated for an Edgar Award. I did some
CSI
and
NYPD Blue
scripts.”

“So, like, you’re famous,” said Andie.

“I
know
a few famous writers,” he said, grinning. “Am I making you nervous?”

“Yeah, I can hardly hold my chopsticks.” Andie smiled. “Look at them shake.”

“So I gotta ask you guys.” O’Flynn lowered his voice. “I know we’re not supposed to talk, but this Machia guy, what’d we make of him?”

“We make him to be one coldhearted sonovabitch,” Marc said. “But he does know how to get a laugh.”

“He
is
a sonovabitch,” Andie agreed, “but when he was talking about his friend, I don’t know, I felt a different side of him starting to come through.”

“I guess what I was really asking”—O’Flynn leaned in close—“is, do we believe him? In spite of all the shit he’s done.”

Andie looked at Marc. Machia was a murderer and a thug. He’d probably done a hundred horrible things he’d never owned up to. But that bit about telling the truth hit home, how he had nothing to gain from lying now.

The writer shrugged. “Yeah, I believe him.”

They both looked at Andie. “Yeah, I believe him, too.”

Chapter 21

WHEN THE JURY CAME BACK from lunch, a behemoth of a man took the witness stand. He was probably three hundred pounds, and he was one of the least healthy-looking people I’d ever seen.

“Can you state your name,” Joel Goldenberger stood up and asked, “and where you currently reside?”

“My name is Ralph Denunziatta,” the heavyset man said, “and I currently reside in a federal penitentiary.”

Suddenly there was an ear-splitting boom that seemed to shake the entire building.

Everybody jumped or covered their heads. It was under-the-table time. There were several loud cries. One of the marshals made a move toward Cavello. No one knew what was happening yet. I stood up and was about to jump over the railing to protect the judge.

Then the noise came again. From the street. Maybe a demolition explosion, or a truck backfire. Everyone looked around as the nervous gasps in the courtroom diffused.

The only one who hadn’t moved was Cavello. He just sat there, looking around, concealing an amused grin. “Don’t look at
me,
” he said, and nearly everybody in the courtroom laughed.

The trial resumed. Denunziatta was about fifty, with a couple of double chins and grayish thinning hair; he spoke in a soft tone. Like Machia, I’d gotten to know him well. I was the one who had arrested him. I actually liked Ralphie, if you could like a guy who wouldn’t shrug to see you dead.

Joel Goldenberger stepped up to the stand. “Mr. Denunziatta, would you state your position in organized crime?”

“I was a captain in the Guarino crime family.” He spoke in a hushed tone, eyes averted.

“Ralphie D.?” the U.S. prosecutor asked.

The witness nodded. “Yes. That would be me.”

“You have a college degree, don’t you, Mr. Denunziatta?” the prosecutor continued.

“Yes, sir, I do. In business. From LIU.”

“But you never got a regular job? You chose to dedicate yourself to a life of crime?”

“That’s correct.” Denunziatta nodded again. Ralphie’s father was one of Cavello’s henchmen when Ralphie was growing up. “My father wanted me to become a stockbroker or get a law degree. But things were changing. The family was in some legitimate businesses—restaurants, nightclubs, food distribution—so I got involved with them. I thought I could avoid things, you know, the things everyone talks about—the violence, the dirty work.”

“But you couldn’t, Mr. Denunziatta, could you?” Joel Goldenberger asked.

“No, sir.” The witness shook his head. “I couldn’t.”

“And one of those things you couldn’t avoid was involvement in the murder of Sam Greenblatt?”

“Yes,” he said, locking his thumbs.

“And you pleaded guilty to playing a part in that crime, is that not correct?”

“That’s correct,” the witness said. “I pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree.”

“Why, Mr. Denunziatta? Can you describe your actual involvement in Mr. Greenblatt’s death?”

He cleared his throat. “Thomas Mussina came to me. He was a captain then. He reported directly to Dominic Cavello. He knew some people who worked for me owed the family a favor. Jimmy Cabrule—he had gambling debts. Also Louis Machia—he was looking to be made. He figured this was an opportunity.”