Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel (12 page)

Now that Pisani had softened me up, Whitaker moved in for the kill. “You’re creating a real shit storm here, young lady—all because of your ‘conscience.’ I’m glad that you have such a flowery view of our justice system. But it is not a moral battleground. What we have here is more of a production line. Victims come in. We’re flooded with cases. The quicker we prosecute one, the sooner we can help someone else. The more we win, the sounder the public sleeps at night because there are fewer dirtbags on the streets. Shit storms aren’t good for production lines.”

As strange as it sounds, I suddenly had newfound respect for our district attorney. He and Pisani made the choice seem incredibly simple. If I played along and did what everyone wanted me to do—if I closed my eyes to what I had seen—and filed the trumped-up charges that O’Brien had sent over, then the system would run smoothly. The production line would keep moving. Faced with assault and resisting arrest, Hitchins and his attorney would cave. They’d cut a deal. The fact that Hitchins was beaten and pistol-whipped while he was handcuffed—facts that could result in very bad press for the police—would never be mentioned and, even if the defense raised it, who would believe him?

“Look,” Pisani said, “file the extra charges and then offer to dismiss them in return for Hitchins pleading to assault. That way you’ll win without the risk of a trial and your conscience will be clean. We get what we want and Hitchins gets what he deserves. Case closed.”

It sounded so simple. But for some reason, it stuck in my throat.

“Sir,” I said firmly, addressing Whitaker. “I don’t want this turning into a shit storm and I’m not a bitch regardless of what the chief of police told you. All I want to do is my job. I want to put Rudy Hitchins on trial. But if you decide to remove me from this case and have someone else handle it, that’s your call. But I will not file additional charges just to keep the production line moving.”

Whitaker glared at me. “Miss Fox,” he said coldly, “I would have replaced you the moment that I got the call from the chief. But I’ve already given an interview to Will Harris at the White Plains newspaper about this case. I bragged about how our office was going to go after this schmuck in criminal court and how this matter had been brought to my attention by the first female assistant district attorney in our county’s history. I talked about the importance of women’s rights. So you tell me, Miss Fox, how would it look if I suddenly replaced you?”

Clearly frustrated, Whitaker made one more attempt. “If you take this case to trial, there’s a chance you’re going to lose it. Have you thought about that? How will that help anyone? But if you get Hitchins to plea-bargain, then it’s perfect. This office wins. You win. Hitchins goes to jail. The newspaper reports that our office is cracking down on abuse. The public is happy. Why can’t you just be a team player here? Why are you conjuring up this internal drama? Do you honestly believe Hitchins is the first punk slapped around a little by the police?”

I didn’t respond, and in my silence, he knew that I wasn’t going to change my mind, so like the skilled politician that he was, Whitaker offered me a way out. He gave me a chance to please everyone.

“You could withdraw from this case. Voluntarily. Then your conscience would be clear, there wouldn’t be any hard feelings between the police and this office. Mr. Pisani here could negotiate a plea bargain. We’d drop the additional charges in return for Hitchins pleading guilty to beating up Mary Margaret Finn. Justice would be served.”

“And what would I tell Will Harris at the newspaper when he calls and asks me why I dropped the case?” I countered.

Whitaker didn’t hesitate. “First of all you never—ever—talk to the press. I do. Got that?”

Pisani jumped in. “Here’s what you could tell him. You could tell him it’s a woman thing. You know, that time of the month. You’re too emotional. You didn’t feel up to handling the case. Trust me, he’d understand.”

I sat there in stone silence for nearly a minute. Whitaker and Pisani both probably thought I was pondering their suggestion. But I was actually fighting the urge to reach over and throttle Pisani. It took me a moment to get the image out of my mind of my hands around his neck and squeezing. I said, “I have no intention of resigning voluntarily from this prosecution.”

Whitaker twisted his neck as if he was trying to exorcise some pain from it. “Okay, Miss Fox, we’re going to do this your way. The hard way. But you need to grow up and ditch this misty-eyed view that you have of our criminal justice system. The hard-core reality is that we live in a dark world here, a murky world. So let this be your first lesson. If this thing blows up in our faces, especially mine, then this will be both your first official case as an assistant district attorney and your last.”

He waved his hand, dismissing me, but as I started to leave, he couldn’t resist throwing one more barb my way.

“When you go out the door, take a look at whose name is on it. It’s mine. Not yours!”

The next morning the
White Plains Daily
published on the front page a photograph of District Attorney Carlton Whitaker III looking stern behind his desk. The headline read: “D.A. Whitaker Champions Women’s Rights.”

My phone immediately started to ring with calls from reporters and women’s groups. I referred them all to Whitaker’s office.

11

The old observation that pet owners choose dogs and cats that resemble them applied to Rudy Hitchins’s choice in lawyers as well. Alexander Dominic was a familiar face in the White Plains courthouse and quite a sight. He could have easily hired himself out as a department-store Santa Claus without needing any extra pillows around his ample waist. He stood only five feet six but appeared taller because he wore his dyed brown hair in an Elvis pompadour. Adding to the illusion were the two-inch heels on his two-tone, square-toed, blue-and-white stacked-heel shoes. The upper lace portion of the shoe was white, the remainder was blue, and there was a white strip between the shoe’s leather and its built-up blue soles. A chain-smoker of unfiltered Camels, he preferred polyester leisure suits when he worked in his combination apartment/office that he rented above a pharmacy in one of White Plains’s rougher neighborhoods. His favorite leisure suit was lime green. He wore its light jacket over a spinach-green open-necked shirt with a four-inch-wide collar. At age fifty-five, Dominic thought of himself as the William Kunstler of White Plains, but he had none of that radical lawyer’s brilliance or his oratory skills. Dominic was exactly what he appeared to be—a low-rent bottom-feeder who would proudly defend anyone who could scrape together his forty-five-dollar-per-hour fee. It didn’t matter if the defendant was a repeat child molester, streetwalker, cop killer, or drug pusher. If you needed a lawyer, Dominic was eager to become your mouthpiece, apologist, and loyal lapdog.

Normally, a defense attorney wants to delay going to court as long as possible. There is no advantage in rushing a client to judgment, especially one as guilty as Rudy Hitchins. Delays allow the defense to plot a plausible explanation for why the accused is innocent, even though he’d been identified by a half-dozen witnesses fleeing from a convenience-store robbery or had plowed the family station wagon into a lamp pole at two a.m. so inebriated that he couldn’t say his own name coherently. Delays give both sides time to posture and rack up billable hours.

But any interest Dominic had in stalling waned after he read the
White Plains Daily
article about how Rudy Hitchins had become a test case and also learned at the police station that I had refused to move forward on the additional resisting charges.

All this was heady stuff for Alexander Dominic Esq., opening his eyes to a real opportunity. If he was lucky, he could get his name and photograph in the newspaper, too.

And publicity, even bad publicity, was good for his business.

For those reasons, when Dominic made his first official appearance in court in the matter of the
People of the State of New York v. Rudolph Hitchins, aka Rudy Hitchins
, the pudgy defense attorney announced that he wanted to get his client’s case fast-tracked. What he actually said was more grandiose, which was his modus operandi.

“Your Honor,” Dominic declared loudly, “an innocent man such as my client shouldn’t have to spend one day longer than necessary with these ugly and false charges hanging over his head and clouding his future.”

His speech nearly made me gag. The only future Hitchins had waiting for him was a 6-by-6 cell. I was seated at the prosecutor’s table entirely by myself. Because of my dustup with Detective O’Brien, my boss had decided to hide out at the Westchester Country Club’s ninth hole. The courtroom was half-filled mostly with other attorneys and their clients, since this was merely a hearing to set a possible trial date. I glanced back and saw a man furiously taking notes. I assumed that he was Will Harris, covering the arraignment for a follow-up story.

Judge Michael Morano, who was well familiar with Alexander Dominic and his sad-sack clientele, couldn’t help himself from smirking at the defense attorney’s remarks, knowing full well that the idea of Dominic actually representing an innocent client was mind-boggling.

From a prosecutor’s point of view, I saw no reason to delay. In fact, I welcomed it. In his haste, Dominic had overlooked an important fact about the victim. Mary Margaret was pregnant and had such severe injuries that it would take months for them to heal. When Judge Morano scheduled the case to be heard in five months, I was elated. My victim would be on the verge of giving birth and having a pregnant victim testify about being beaten would have an emotional impact on jurors.

Dominic thanked the judge for speeding up the trial and declared in a voice loud enough for our local reporter to hear, “Your Honor, I’m not even sure I will need to call a single witness because these charges are so groundless.” Just the same, Judge Morano set aside two days on his judicial calendar for the trial. The good judge then announced that he wanted to see both of us in his chambers, an office directly behind the courtroom. Dominic waddled in behind Judge Morano with me bringing up the rear, but I stopped short in the doorway of his chambers. Judge Morano had removed his heavy black robe and fired up a thick cigar. Dominic had taken this gesture to mean that he could light an unfiltered Camel.

Judge Morano noted that I had hesitated and said, “I’m going to need you all the way in here so we can close the door.”

“Judge, I have asthma. I’m allergic to smoke.”

“Oh,” he responded in what, at first, sounded like a concerned voice. He glanced at Dominic, who began puffing madly, trying to get as much nicotine into his lungs as possible before the judge told him to put it out.

But rather than lowering his foul-smelling cigar, Judge Morano took a long, slow, and apparently satisfying pull on it, causing the dark ashes at its tip to burn red. He smiled and said, “Well, that’s a real shame, dear. Now get in here so I can talk to you both.”

Reluctantly, I took another step inside his office and closed the door behind me. I was standing at the outer edge of a Spartan room that had clearly been furnished by the lowest government bidder. The walls were lined with metal shelves that contained leather-bound volumes of New York State’s penal law, most of which appeared as if they had never been opened. There were no family photographs, no legal degrees, no plants, no paintings. The place reeked of cigar smoke and coffee. The tiles on the floor were covered with layer upon layer of wax, which made them look yellow, not white.

Judge Morano looked directly at me and said, “When I first met you in the courthouse elevator, young lady, I told you my courtroom was for serious crimes, so why are you cluttering up my docket with this bullshit?”