The Cross: An Eddie Flynn Novella (2 page)

“What about that robbery case? We got a ten-grand retainer last week. What happened to that?”

Taking a billfold from his pocket, he peeled off two C-notes and placed them on my desk.

“That leaves me an eight-hundred-dollar stake. The rest went to office costs and filing fees. And you thought
I
was gambling—if we lose this case we’re going under.”

I shook my head. Hernandez was my case, and yeah, it had cost a lot to set it up, but I was sure I could win it. And if we won, the payoff would keep us going for the rest of the year, at least. Secretly, the thought of losing the case terrified me. I didn’t want to admit, to Jack or myself, just how big a gamble the case had proven to be.

“We got money coming from other clients. I’ve got twenty grand in outstanding bills,” I said.

“Get a grip. Your client Pete Tulisi came in here yesterday with fifty pounds of tuna. Said he couldn’t make a payment on his bill this month and this might keep us going for a while. Marion took most of it. What’s left is in the refrigerator. You better take it home tonight. I can’t stand fish.”

Halloran and Flynn, attorneys at law, had only one employee: Marion Page—a sixty-three-year-old legal secretary who knew more about criminal and civil procedures than Jack and I put together. She didn’t type—she hammered out correspondence. And in the last year
she’d burned through three laptops. When Jack told her the fourth laptop would come out of her paycheck, she lightened her touch—and darkened her mood. I classified myself as a decent fighter, and I knew Jack could handle himself. We were guys who wouldn’t shy away from a right hand, no matter who was delivering it, but we were both kinda scared of Marion. She didn’t work late. Point-blank refused. Thank God; it was difficult enough to find the money to pay her regular salary. If she ever decided to do overtime, either I’d have to sell my car, or Jack would need to get lucky at the table, real lucky.

“Pete can’t always pay his court fine
and
his legal fees. Way I see it, it’s better to let him pay the fine. If he defaults on the fine, he goes to jail; then he can’t work and we’ll never get paid.”

“We ain’t getting paid right now.”

“He’ll pay. When Pete can spare it, we’ll get it. Besides, his mom works in city management. It’s good to have those kinds of connections.”

“Yeah, right. I’m outta here. If anyone is lookin’ for me, I’ll be at Manny’s or Hanzo’s. You got the phone.”

“Hey, you didn’t tell me what the offer was from Vinnie.”

“Twenty-five,” said Jack.

“Twenty-five thousand? That doesn’t even cover our outlay.”

Jack snorted, put on his coat, and said, “Eddie, wake up. The offer was twenty-five hundred. I think Vinnie knows something we don’t.”

And with that, my partner left our tiny studio office in Harlem with the front door shaking in its frame. It was a measure of Jack that he could make more money at a Triad poker game in a single night than he could bill in legal fees in a whole month. Turning over
trials and plea bargains wasn’t Jack’s style—he was the rainmaker. He brought in the clients, good and bad. I did most of the trial work. Somehow it all came together as a business.

A two-man business with a secretary who had more legal and business sense than the both of us.

On the other hand, Vinnie Federof operated as sole partner with half a dozen junior lawyers backing him up. The more I thought about his offer, the more I thought Vinnie had some trick up his sleeve. He was notorious with juries. Up until 2003, under the penal code, it was an offense to tamper with or attempt to influence a juror prior to the jury delivering their verdict. That created a loophole which Vinnie exploited. Obviously, he couldn’t influence the jury before the verdict—but he did plenty afterward. If Vinnie won his case with a verdict from the jury, he made a point of taking all twelve jury members out to an expensive dinner and treating them to a night in a hotel. Lot of people couldn’t see the point, especially considering the case was over. Well, thing is, word travels fast. Don King used to do the same when he was dragged through the courts in a series of cases in the early nineties. If he won his case, Don put the entire jury up in a hotel in Vegas for the weekend and gave them tickets to Holyfield or Streisand or whatever they wanted, and he publicized it. There were pics in all the dailies of Don and his jury. Don’s theory was that the next jury hearing one of his cases might be inclined to give him a favorable verdict in the hope that they would get a weekend away and tickets for a show. Vinnie had tried this, too, and it had worked until the loophole was found and closed.

That didn’t stop Vinnie from doing whatever he could to influence jurors, but I remembered that during jury selection, he’d missed a couple of questions I would’ve asked the jurors if I were representing Marzone. I’d thought Vinnie would sack juror eight in the Hernandez case, but he let the juror slide. That worried me—Vinnie hadn’t done his
homework for jury selection. Maybe he didn’t need to and there was something else in his armory I hadn’t thought about. Maybe the poor offer was just tactics.

Before Jack had left the office, he’d said the words that I hated the most:
You got the phone
.

A cell phone rested on a stack of files beside Jack’s desk. I picked it up and made sure it was on. We had a dozen desk sergeants in as many precincts on the payroll. They gave us a heads-up if any juicy arrests came in—like a murder or a robbery. We’d get the call before the person in custody got a chance to call their own lawyer. Most times, when we got there before they’d made their call, we got to keep their business. That’s
if
I answered the damn phone in the first place. I hated cell phones, a hang-up from my days as a hustler. Carrying a cell, even a secure throwaway, was just like putting an electronic tracker on your clothes. With the business I was in, I didn’t want the cops knowing where I was and who I was talking to. So more often than not, I’d ditch the cell phone, knowing that if someone wanted to get ahold of me, a call either to the landline at Ted’s Diner, my home, the office, or the payphone at the Chambers Street courthouse would eventually track me down. I stuffed the cell in a drawer and slammed it closed.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was ten after six, and I needed to call home. I picked up the receiver and was happy to hear a dial tone. At least the phone lines hadn’t been cut for nonpayment

“Hi. It’s me. I should be back around seven thirty. Keep Amy up if you can. I’d like—”

“She doesn’t want to see you,” said my wife, Christine. She sounded tired. Either physically, or maybe she was just tired of me.

“What’ve I missed now?”

“Her recital.”

“Shit. I knew there was something else I had to do today. I’m sorry. I clean forgot about it. Was she upset?”

“Sure was.”

“Was she any good?”

“Of course not. It was a bunch of fifth graders murdering ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ It was terrible. That’s not the point, Eddie.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll take her to the park over the weekend, and the movies. I’m leaving in—”

The desk began to vibrate—a violent burr that I felt in my fingertips.

“There’s a call on the office cell. I gotta go. Looks like I’ll be late. Sorry. I’ll make it up to you and Amy tomorrow. I promise. Don’t wait up.”

Before I finished my sentence I knew that Christine was already hanging up the phone. The last few months had put a strain on an already fraught home life. Money was tight, Christine didn’t see much of me, and my nine-year-old daughter was beginning to wonder where the man in the wedding photo with her mom had gone. I would catch glimpses of Amy, early in the morning when she was eating her cereal or asleep in bed at night when I got home. I knew this had to stop sooner or later.

Light from the screen display filled the drawer and spilled out into the room. The caller ID was withheld, which meant NYPD.

“Halloran and Flynn, attorneys at law.”

“It’s Bob at the Twenty-First. Patrol just hauled in one of your guys. He wants to talk to you.”

I heard the receiver pass, and a different voice came on the line.

“Eddie, it’s Marko. The cops just pulled some bullshit stop on me at—”

“Marko, we’ve had this conversation before. We don’t talk on an open line. You know that. Don’t talk about the case until I get there. Answer the booking officer’s questions; they’re standard. Cooperate and be polite with him. Give them your name, address, date of birth, and next of kin. You’ll be asked questions about your mental and physical health, too. Answer them. Don’t say anything else—and don’t talk in holding. I’m on my way.”

Chapter Two

The sight that greeted me at the front desk of the 21st Precinct had become all too familiar over the past couple of months. It was becoming painfully predictable. I’d get a call from a client or a desk sergeant telling me about an arrest, I’d jump in the car and race over there, park, and by the time I swung open the precinct doors, it was too damn late. The desk sergeants told me that the client had changed their mind and gotten themselves a new lawyer; my services were no longer required.

Vinnie Federof had beaten me to it. The NYPD and Vinnie had declared war on Halloran and Flynn. It was the Irish way—
you mess with us, we’ll bury you
.

This time I’d missed getting to the client before Vinnie by only a hair. Vinnie stood in one of his vile blue suits at the inquiry desk, signing the visitor’s book. He turned and smiled at me.

“No hard feelings, Eddie,” said Vinnie.

“None taken. I’ll see you in court in the morning.”

Without another word, Vinnie bent down, retrieved his briefcase, and disappeared through the security door.

There was nobody else in the office. I looked at the desk sergeant, and he looked away. Sergeant Bob Riley had been the one who’d called me an hour ago.

“I know what’s going on here,” I said. “Marko is my client. What’s the deal with Federof? Who called him?”

A shake of the head, and then the desk sergeant checked behind him to make sure no one was listening and said, “I didn’t call him, Eddie. Sorry. I’ve no clue.”

“When you called me, did you put my name on the custody record?”

Riley blinked, thinking about it. Then nodded.

Somebody in the NYPD was keeping an eye on my clients and checking the custody records for my name. Soon as I appeared in the system, somebody in the NYPD leaned on my client, probably promised them to drop the charges for a citation or some other great deal if they went with a new lawyer—Vinnie Federof.

I let the heavy precinct door slam shut on my way out. The closest parking spot I’d been able to get was more than two blocks away. I pulled up my collar and started walking.

What the hell did I expect? When you sue the NYPD, you can expect some payback. When I thought about the pressure, the lost clients, the sleepless nights, I asked myself, was the Hernandez case worth it?

Yeah, it was.

If we secured a verdict for Chilli’s widow, we could expect the damages to be in the millions; we’d sued for thirteen, but Chilli wasn’t exactly a shining pillar of society. He’d been in a neighborhood gang, the 47s, since his eighth birthday—hanging out on watch on top of a Dumpster. If he saw the cops, he’d holler and the corner men would split and dump their dope. Old and wise by the age of fifteen, he’d become a dealer, then a hitter. He’d graduated to soldier a year later, when he put three guys from a rival firm in the dirt with a baseball bat and a broken bottle of Sam Adams.

No guns, though. That was Chilli’s thing. His father got caught with a hot piece used in half a dozen murders and did life for it. The son would not make his father’s mistake.
Eventually Chilli got pinched on a manslaughter beef and did fifteen years. The word was Chilli took the hit on the manslaughter to protect a high-level member of the gang. On the inside, he did his job for the crew, running protection and hustling debts on the understanding that when he got out, he’d be clear and free of the 47s for life.

Sure enough, a month after Chilli’s release, the 47s paid a visit to the Fortune Diner, where Chilli’s probation officer had set him up as a grill chef. His old friends told him that as long as the tattoo was on his forearm, he was their man. It was unfortunate for Chilli that the owner of the diner fired him for willful neglect of company property the same day. After the delegation from the 47s laid out their ultimatum, they watched as Chilli put his arm on the steel hot plate.

He didn’t flinch, didn’t cry out. Just burned off the gang tat, scraped up his own skin with a spatula, and handed it to his old gang leader on a brioche roll. They left him alone after that. Any man who could withstand that kind of pain wasn’t worth the trouble. Cost Chilli a job and fifty bucks out of his paycheck because the hot plate had to be fired down, cooled, and cleaned. A lot of the diner’s customers ordered the cold egg salad that day.

So what drove a guy like Chilli to stab a man to death a month later?

The victim was Ed Genarro, a mid-level shipping union official. Stabbed to death by a Hispanic male outside the St. Regis Hotel. His wallet was missing. ATM records said Genarro had withdrawn two hundred dollars earlier that day. How much was left after a few cocktails in the Saint Regis? Probably a hundred, maybe more. People get killed for less in this city.

The NYPD said they got an anonymous tip-off that Chilli was walking around with a knife, talking up the murder. When Detective Marzone and his partner stumbled upon Chilli’s
car, they pulled him over; Chilli resisted and tried to stab Marzone in the face. Chilli Hernandez died of asphyxiation. Choked to death by Marzone in the struggle for the knife.

I didn’t buy it. Any of it. Neither did Maria, Chilli’s wife. She told me as much eight months ago when she came to see me. Told me how her husband had changed. At first I didn’t believe her. Then the hot plate story checked out, and I became interested.

Of course, I had to sell the case to Jack. Maria had no money, and we would have to foot the bill for the case on a wing and a prayer. If we won, we were made. On the other hand, a loss would put the firm under. There was another possibility. Even if we proved Chilli was murdered by the NYPD, if the jury bought the city’s case that the deceased was a cold-blooded killer, they might reduce the damages significantly. This case put me, my partner, my family, everything on the table.