Notorious (7 page)

M
elanie reported to Mark
Sonschein as soon as she got back to the office and filled him in on her meeting. He thanked her and told her to call him the second Diamond contacted her with an answer. They'd all be waiting anxiously to hear whether Briggs would cooperate, but in the meantime they needed to act as if the trial were going forward. The amount of work Melanie needed to do to prepare made her quake in her high heels. As she strode down the hallway, Melanie found herself reaching into her pants pocket and closing her fingers around the Saint Jude's medal for luck.

Papo West was waiting for her in her office with an incarcerated defendant named Vashon Clark, the star witness in the Briggs trial. Papo and Vashon were chowing down on pepperoni pizza. Melanie dropped into her chair, her nose wrinkling as she caught a whiff of the grease-sodden box.

“Hungry? Grab a slice,” Papo said, his mouth full.

“Thanks, but my stomach isn't great today.”

“The new chick came by looking for you,” he said. “She wouldn't eat, either. What's up with you women?”

“They watching their figures,” Vashon said.

“You mean Jennifer?” Melanie asked. “What did she want?”

“Susan told her to sit in on witness prep.”

“Oh, okay.” Melanie picked up the phone and dialed the main switchboard. The operator told her Jennifer's phone wasn't hooked up yet, but that she'd track her down and tell her to report to Melanie's office.

Melanie hung up. “Hey, Vashon, watch the tomato sauce. If you drip all over your prison blues, people will figure out where you've been,” she said. For his own safety, Vashon had been instructed to tell his cell mates that he was going to court on an appeal.

Vashon smiled. “Yeah, this ain't no baloney sandwich from marshals' lockup, right? They'll know y'all wining and dining me.”

Papo had unlocked Vashon's handcuffs so he could eat. They were in violation of virtually every prisoner transport safety rule in existence. U.S. Marshal's Service protocol called for an incarcerated witness to be interrogated in a secure interview room rather than in the prosecutor's office, to be escorted by at least two federal agents rather than the case agent alone, and to be handcuffed except when in a locked holding cell or when appearing in court. But as Melanie well knew, there weren't enough conference rooms or federal agents to go around, and a well-fed witness was much easier to work with than a hungry one. For the sake of the trial, she ignored the technicalities and took comfort in the fact that Papo was twice Vashon's size, not to mention that Vashon was too eager to cooperate to try anything stupid.

Vashon Clark was a pudgy, baby-faced twenty-seven-year-old doing a life bid at FCI–Fort Dix for a string of drug-related homicides. With all that time on his hands, he'd gotten to stewing over the fact that he was the only one from his crew who hadn't turned state's evidence and bought himself a sentencing reduction, and he'd finally decided it was time to take the plunge. Trouble was, there
was nobody left from the old gang to give up. They were all dead, in jail, or in Witness Protection. So Vashon had reached back in the memory banks and pulled out a hit that Atari Briggs had ordered him to commit back in the day, when Vashon worked for Atari at a heroin spot in East New York. Normally nobody would have been interested in a witness who started to sing so late in the game. Nobody would have believed him, either. But Atari Briggs's name commanded enough attention that DEA had heard him out and, fortunately for Vashon, discovered that he had hard evidence, not just gossip.

“We should get to work. You can eat and talk at the same time, right?” she asked Vashon.

“He can, but it ain't pretty,” Papo said.

“I need to look at my computer anyway to work on his direct testimony,” Melanie said, turning sideways and pulling up a document on her screen. It felt good to focus on the trial, to let drop the burden of Lester Poe's death for a while.

This was her third prep session with Vashon. In the first two, they'd covered the period from when he'd entered the drug trade at age nine after his mother's overdose death, to when he'd done his first murder at fifteen. They'd also reviewed the six homicides he'd committed that had nothing to do with Atari Briggs. They were now poised to get into the meat of Vashon's trial testimony—the year and a half he'd spent working for Briggs, complete with blood, guts, and pyrotechnics.

“Okay,” Melanie began, “the last time we met, you told me how you were working those crack spots in Bushwick and you were getting caught up in the war between your crew and the Dominicans.”

“Yeah, it was like, race war. I just want to do bidness but there was a lot of blood getting shed. I was looking for a change of scenery, you feel me? That's when Atari came looking for me.”

Somebody knocked on the door.

“Yeah,” Melanie called. Her fingers were flying over the keyboard, making notes on Vashon's testimony.

Jennifer Lamont poked her head in.

“Hey, Melanie, hope I'm not intruding. Susan said I should sit in on this so I can see how it's done.”

Melanie didn't look up. “Sure, have a seat.”

The small office only had two guest chairs. Papo stood to offer his, but Jennifer waved him down and went to perch against the credenza instead.

“Jennifer, this is Vashon Clark,” Melanie said. “Vashon is our single most important witness. In 1998, Atari Briggs ordered him to kill an underling who was selling his own drugs at one of Briggs's heroin spots. We're just about to go over that testimony now. The call where Briggs orders the hit was caught on tape, so we have fantastic corroboration.”

Jennifer nodded.

“Tell me how Atari first approached you,” Melanie instructed Vashon.

“It wasn't him personally. He sent somebody. My spot on Troutman had just got stuck up by the Dominicans, and I run them gangstas off. Clipped two of 'em. After that, my name blew up huge on the street. Peoples talking as far away as Canarsie, saying I stood tall in the fight. So Atari sent over a scout and ask me to come work for him.”

“Who did he send?”

“His boy Two-Ton Tyrone. Two-Ton roll up on me in a big black Jeep. I'm thinking I'm mad dead, 'cause this motherfucker for real. But then he step out with his hands in the air and say he ain't strapping. Said he heard good things and he come to recruit me. After that, I went to work for Atari, managing some spots in East New York.”

“Did you deal with Atari directly?”

“Sometimes, but mostly I go through his lieutenants.”

“You've said before that Atari had three lieutenants during the time you worked for him.”

“That's right. Two-Ton, a guy named Vegas Bo, and the one they call Shake and Bake 'cause he like to kick the shit out of peoples and set 'em on fire.”

“Do we have positive IDs on the three lieutenants?” Melanie asked Papo.

“Yes, ma'am. One moment.” Papo reached down into a briefcase that sat beside his chair and pulled out a file. He riffled through it, picked out some mug shots, and slapped them down on Melanie's desk, then began reading from rap sheets printed out on bright yellow paper.

“Malik Sanderson, aka Shake and Bake,” Papo read, “doing three lifes at Marion on twenty-three hour lockdown for multiple homicides with torture and lying in wait, plus distribution of heroin and cocaine base. Tyrone Clinton, aka Two-Ton, deceased from multiple bullet wounds at a stash house in Bed-Stuy in 2000. And—uh—Kevin Bonner, aka Vegas Bo, sentenced to sixty months for conspiracy to distribute heroin. Released in 2003 with five years supervision, which recently ended. Whereabouts currently unknown.”

The funny thing was, of the three lieutenants, Shake and Bake looked the least frightening—slim and almost intellectual—whereas Two Ton had been humongous, and Vegas Bo had a cruel face, with tattoos down his neck and a scar on his cheek.

“We need to put together an organizational chart for the jury,” Melanie said to Papo. “Give these mug shots to Shekeya Jenkins and have her send them over to the graphics people.”

“Will do.”

“Yo, Ms. Vargas, I know where Vegas Bo at now,” Vashon said.

“Oh yeah, where's that?” Melanie asked.

“Vegas. Where else, right? I hear he dabbling in some dope. More
than dabbling, actually. I hear he set up real nice with a serious source of supply. Kingpin level, I heard.”

“Dope. You mean heroin?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What source of supply?”

“I don't know. Something big, though. Peoples saying he hit the jackpot.”

“Do you have an address?”

“I can find out. I need a phone call.”

“We can arrange that. Monitored, though.”

“Whatever.”

“You think Bo might be interested in testifying?”

“What, I'm not good enough for you?” Vashon asked with mock hurt.

“You're good enough,” Melanie said. “But the more the merrier.”

No reason to tell a witness you were worried about losing the case. It could only make him nervous on the stand.

“Yeah, Bo might could testify. He got a beef with Atari.”

“What's that?” Melanie asked.

“Atari get rich and famous and forget about him,” Vashon said, laughing.

“Is that why you're testifying?”

“Me? Hell, no. I just want less time.”

Great. The jury was gonna hate this guy's guts. But what could she do? He was her star witness, and he'd just given an honest answer. Without him, she wouldn't be able to get her smoking gun tape in evidence, and the case would fall apart. Besides, he was telling the truth. It was her job to make the jury see that.

“You said sometimes you dealt with Atari directly, right?” she asked.

“If I had sensitive bidness, I'd deal with Atari face-to-face.”

“And that included the incident where he ordered the hit on your associate Little D?”

“First we met face-to-face and talk about the fact that Little D stealing. Then later, Atari call me over the phone and tell me to take Little D out.”

“Let's start with the background. Who was Little D, and why did Atari want him dead?”

“Okay, Little D was my shorty from back in the day, from the block. His government name Damond Purcell. The boy was trouble. Always looking for a score, always playing fast and loose. I knew it, but I hired him anyway, because we was friends.”

“You hired him?”

“Yes, ma'am. I was managing. If I want to put somebody on the payroll, I could do it.”

“Is that why Atari held you responsible when Little D screwed up?”

“Exactly. A poor management decision on my part that come back to bite me.”

“Explain what Little D did wrong.”

“He was stealing Atari's customers. Selling his own drugs at the spot. It was obvious, 'cause we got long lines of customers but we wasn't moving no weight. Little D thought I wouldn't tell, but I had no choice, else Atari's gonna think it's me stealing.”

“I'm going to bring that out in your direct testimony. It makes your role in the murder a little more palatable. No offense, but it's a tough sell to put a shooter on the stand against a guy who didn't touch the trigger, even if he ordered the hit. Especially here, because you killed your old friend.”

“Even though I done it all Geneva Convention and shit? One to the head, real painless?”

“The jury may not appreciate that nuance, Vashon.”

Vashon looked surprised.

“Okay, now for the tape,” Melanie said. “I can't believe how lucky we were to find this.”

She nodded at Papo, who cued up an old-fashioned celluloid tape. A decade earlier, when Vashon had spoken to Atari Briggs about killing Little D, wiretaps hadn't yet gone digital, and street drug dealers were still relatively careless about talking business over the telephone. Vashon had had the poor judgment to borrow a cell phone from a friend who was the target of a major DEA wiretap investigation. He'd carried the phone around for days, transacted business over it, then sweated bullets when his friend got arrested. Luckily for Vashon, the friend kept his mouth shut, so the feds never learned whose voice it was on that series of unidentified calls. Years later, when Vashon decided to cooperate, he remembered that the tapes existed and pointed Papo West in the right direction. They were gathering dust in the DEA evidence vault, a few months away from mandatory destruction.

Papo pushed play. Shrill beeps filled the room as the Vashon of ten years earlier, a mere seventeen years old, dialed up Atari Briggs on the borrowed cell phone, unaware he was being listened to.

“Yo,” Atari answered.

Briggs was only a few years older than Vashon, but his voice carried a kingpin's authority.

“Yo, boss. Bo told me to get with you,” Vashon said.

“You made any progress on that problem we discussed the other day?”

“I talk to the man. He just say ain't no thing.”

“He denying it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we got to take care of it, son. Something like this go unpunished, my name worth shit in the street.”

“You know, maybe I'm wrong about what I saw. Maybe I—”

“Don't you pussy out on me.” Atari's voice was low and threatening. “You know what he done, and you know what you gotta do. We understand each other? Because if he don't pay with his life, somebody else will. I don't need to tell you that means you.”

“A-ight. No worries. I take care of it for you, boss.”

“Bo gonna give you a clean nine. When you're done, throw it in the river.”

The line went dead.

Melanie shook her head in amazement. “‘Pay with his life.' He tells you straight out to kill him. We have crime scene?” she asked Papo.

“It's all good,” Papo said. “Vashon dropped Little D in the street in broad daylight less than an hour after this phone call. The cop who responded to the scene is still on the job, and I put in a notification for his testimony. We have photos showing Damond Purcell's body lying in a pool of blood, the autopsy report, the medical examiner who removed the bullets from the corpse, and the ballistics guy who'll say the bullets were fired from a Glock nine millimeter semiautomatic.”