The Defense: A Novel (20 page)
It was time to find out.
In a confidence game, the moment just before you play your hand is the most nerve-racking. It’s the point of no return, and it’s always in your mind right until the second when you actually do it. Once you’re making that move, somehow the nerves disappear.
Standing and stretching my back and neck, I gave my clothes and my coat a final check. Some mud on the bottom of my coat came off with just a little water from the bottle that Arturas had thrown me earlier. After rinsing my hands from the same bottle, I rubbed them together until they were dry. Having decided that I was okay and that I didn’t immediately look like a guy who had been climbing over a dirty building, I watched the tremors disappear from my hands as I knocked on the door firmly and said, “Hey, open up. I need to talk to you. Your boss needs to eliminate another witness if he wants to avoid a retrial.”
Returning my eye to the keyhole, I saw movement. Victor stood, and as he did so, he obscured my view of the
Mona Lisa
print that I’d seen when I first walked into the office that morning. Somehow, his body standing in front of the picture created the germ of an idea, a spark, something that related to the dummy detonator and the case that I’d seen Gregor heave into the van, but at the moment, that train of thought was clouded in mist.
I heard the key scraping the lock open, and the door swung inward. All three men stood before me.
“Even if I kill Little Benny, the prosecution could still get a retrial with Tony Geraldo’s evidence. Your scheme won’t work without taking him out. Trouble is, you can’t shoot Tony Geraldo without risking an all-out war with the Italians. Lucky for you guys that you don’t need to kill him. If he’s the kind of man I think he is—money will buy his silence.”
Arturas looked at me and nodded his head.
“Yes. The other firms mentioned the greaseball’s evidence. They said it did real damage but would not be enough to convict Volchek on its own,” said Arturas.
“And they were right, but it
will
be enough for the DA to get a new trial. You can buy your way out of that now, but I need real money to do it. I think Tony Geraldo also goes by the name of Tony G. If it is the same Tony, then I know the head of his family. I represented him a long time ago. I can broker the deal. But I need four million dollars to do it: two for the brokerage fee for his boss and two for Tony.”
Arturas didn’t react to the figure. No overt expressions of shock. Four million didn’t appear to be big bucks for these guys. They could get it in a few hours. I recalled an article in the newspaper reporting that Volchek paid five million in cash for bail. Four million would be no problem. I bet my daughter’s life on it.
“Tony G is Tony Geraldo. And you’re right, we can’t talk to those men. Maybe you can; maybe you can’t. It doesn’t matter. After we kill Benny, no one will be willing to give evidence against Volchek even if there is a retrial. Forget about it,” said Arturas.
“I can’t do that. Your boss is giving me a shot at Benny—a shot at winning this thing without killing anyone. But I don’t have anything to throw at Tony Geraldo. You need to buy him off.”
“I told you to forget about it,” said Arturas, this time with steel in his voice.
“You want me to
forget
about a damaging prosecution witness in your boss’s murder trial?”
His shock registered immediately. I saw the skin tightening around his eyes before that terrifying smile emerged again.
“This is my plan, lawyer. You are not in charge here.”
“It may be your plan, but it’s my case. Volchek is
my
client. I’m playing for my daughter’s life. If you don’t tell him about this, I will. And I’ll tell him you tried to shoot me down. How will that make you look?”
Blue neon flashed across the room from the billboard on the adjacent building. The sudden pulse of color illuminated a wet glimmer on Arturas’s cheek: his scar—weeping again. Behind his fake grin, his brain was running the calculations, weighing up his options.
“Remember who has your daughter,” he said, as he dialed a number on his cell.
In not so many words, we understood each other. If I pushed him, he’d push back at me through Amy.
I listened to him talking to Volchek in Russian. Occasionally, Arturas would glance at me while he listened to his boss.
After a few minutes, Arturas hung up the phone and dropped himself back onto the couch. Assuming he was waiting for a decision, I took my place at the desk in the next room and waited. Tony Geraldo’s evidence might get the prosecution their retrial; it didn’t quite hit a home run on motive, but it was strong circumstantial evidence of animosity almost immediately prior to Mario Geraldo’s death. Miriam would paint a picture of a murdered family member, the terrible loss of such a promising young man on the say so of a cruel Russian mobster, but that was bullshit. If Arturas was right and Tony Geraldo was in fact Tony G, he probably didn’t give a shit about his cousin. From the crime-scene photographs I’d seen of Mario and his apartment, he’d looked to me like a low-life drug dealer. Tony was a big player in the family and the community. He had status. Volchek had probably done Tony Geraldo a favor. Tony was climbing high within the family, and his bottom-feeder cousin always had the propensity to drag him back down. He didn’t need that. He needed respect. And that started at home. After all, if he couldn’t keep his own cousin in check, who in their right mind would trust Tony to run a crew?
All the same, Mario was family. His murder was an insult that would have to be dealt with. You don’t just knock off a member of the family and get away with it—no matter what. Tony Geraldo needed a way to save face. He didn’t want to start a war—not for his shit-bird cousin anyway—and this probably caused him a dilemma. Perhaps Tony giving evidence against Volchek was the payback for Mario. Whatever his reasons, Tony’s evidence was my ticket to see my old friend Jimmy “the Hat”—the head of the family.
My right arm and my back ached following my escapades on the ledge. I thought about asking Arturas for painkillers, then dismissed the notion.
Arturas’s cell phone signaled a call coming in.
He answered the call and looked at me. He didn’t speak for a time. After about thirty seconds, he ended the call, stood up, and said something in Russian to Victor. Victor looked at me fiercely.
“You lie,” said Victor as he took a knife from his pocket.
Eight feet of nothing separated me and Victor. I sat at my desk in the judges’ chambers. Victor stood very still in front of the couch, staring at me. He held the knife in his left hand. I couldn’t begin to match the intensity of that stare. My eyes rolled nervously around Victor and the knife.
He began walking toward me.
He said nothing.
My brain ran a spectrum of scenarios before my mind’s eye, each more elaborate and detailed. I couldn’t fathom how I could have been found out. My eyes began darting more erratically, pawns to the theories that were vibrating around my head. My fingers reached for my mouth. If I’d been found out, it should be obvious by now.
Then my head put on the brakes.
My dad’s training—
keep it together
.
What if I hadn’t been discovered?
“You know what, Victor? I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a way that Volchek could’ve misinterpreted my actions.” Victor slowed his advance and listened.
“I’m a pretty smart guy. I have to tell you that in case you’re too stupid to realize it on your own. I’m acting in good faith toward your boss. There’s no way that Volchek can reasonably think otherwise. So I figure he doesn’t believe that I’m lying. He’s being cautious, overly cautious in my opinion. How the hell did he ever make any money without taking some chances? Anyway, I’m not a liar. You are. You’re trying to scare me into giving something away, trying to find out if I’m double-crossing your boss. Let’s save some time. I don’t have an ulterior motive. What? I’m going to take his money and leave my daughter with him? Is he crazy?”
Victor stopped around three feet from me, the knife still in his hand.
“Well?” I asked.
“Do it,” said Arturas, urging Victor on.
“This is bullshit,” I said. “You guys have nothing on me. You’re just seeing how I’m reacting to the situation. You’re wondering if I’ll crack and do something stupid or reveal a plan. Don’t worry. Where the hell could I go? I’ve been with you assholes all day. I want my daughter. I want her safe. I have to win. I
will
win this case to save my daughter.”
Victor didn’t move. For a moment, nothing happened.
He moved toward me quickly, the knife by his side. I planted my feet and gripped my seat. When he took his next step forward, I planned to dive to my left and start swinging the chair.
His foot stopped in midair, he flashed the knife, and then laughed as he stepped backward and turned to Arturas.
“He’s not liar. He nearly took crap in his pants. What a pussy,” said Victor, with a heavy Slav accent before taking a long belly laugh.
I relaxed a little. I’d passed a test and an important one at that.
Arturas made a call and again reverted to his native language. He was probably talking to Volchek. The call ended and he pointed at me.
“You had better be good, lawyer. Four million is a lot of money. Not for us, but it’s still a lot of money. We would be upset if it went missing.”
“When?”
“We will have to go and get the money. It will take a few hours to have it ready, no more. Where are we going with it?”
“I’m going to Jimmy’s restaurant for breakfast. That’s where you’re taking me, and that’s where I’ll meet Jimmy. You won’t meet him. He sees you and you’re a dead man, understand? Your boss needs this. I’m the only one who can make it happen.”
Arturas said nothing.
“You do know who Jimmy is? Right?” I said.
“He is a fat Italian son of a bitch,” said Arturas.
“Correct, but he’s also head of one of the biggest crime families in New York. And he doesn’t like anyone messing with the family, no matter how distant the relation. What I don’t understand is why you guys aren’t dead already.”
“Because he doesn’t want to start a war over a little junkie like Mario, and trust me, it would be war. In the end, Jimmy would probably win. But he would lose many men and much money in the process. Is it worth it for one junkie? No. He marks our cards. So we lay off dealers in his area for a month. Let him think business is too good to lose. He soon forgot.”
The press had reported Mario’s death as a gang hit—a territorial dispute. Tony corroborated the fight in the nightclub between Volchek and Mario Geraldo and said the killing was over a debt. What I didn’t know now seemed very important. My best guess was that Mario had been killed for the photographs that were hidden behind the broken picture frame in the crime-scene photos and subsequently burned by Little Benny when the cops started hammering down the door. What was in those photos? And why was Mario killed to obtain them? Without knowing anything about the photographs, I couldn’t be sure.
“Okay, so Jimmy saw dollars instead of blood this time. Or maybe that’s just what he wants you guys to think. Depends how personal it was to Jimmy. So how personal was it? Why was Mario killed?”
“He died because he was a stupid junkie who started a fight with Volchek.”
“But Tony Geraldo talks about a debt.”
“Everyone owes Volchek,” said Arturas, and his eyes momentarily strayed into the distance.
“So was it a debt or a drunken bar fight? Or did Little Benny kill him for the photographs that the cops found burned in Mario’s sink?”
Arturas looked me over, surprised.
“It was fate. That’s all you need to know. Do not ask too many questions, lawyer. One of those questions might just get your daughter killed,” said Arturas, as his hand tracked the scar on his cheek.
That was the second time that I’d seen him finger that scar. He probably wasn’t even aware that he was doing it—like most people that unknowingly reveal their tells. The scar appeared to be relatively recent: pink and angry—perhaps no more than eighteen months old. My guess was that Arturas suffered that scar around the same time that Volchek found out Little Benny would testify against him.
I couldn’t sleep.
The small couch in the old chambers felt lumpy and sunken in places. Broken springs and broken supports dug into my legs, but even if I’d been lying on a king-sized bed in the Waldorf, I would’ve had the same problem trying to sleep. I couldn’t stop turning everything over in my mind. In a way, it helped. Thinking through the problems helped keep my mind off Amy. My head raced with theories, most of them probably crazy, some close to home, one or two could be right on the money.
I’d never heard of a mobster turning state’s evidence for anything less than full immunity bought by the witness providing a sworn statement on every last detail of the organization: These are the suppliers; this is our distribution network; this is who launders our money, who killed who, when, and where. Usually all of this would be accompanied by a heavily pinned map showing exactly where the bodies were buried. Just like the Penditi.
We were very far from that situation here. Little Benny coughed to one murder, that’s it, and he wasn’t going into the witness protection program after this trial. He still had time to serve. So far he’d been serving that time in FBI protective custody.
I couldn’t understand why Little Benny would be stupid enough to do any time at all. Why didn’t he give up everybody, get himself an immunity agreement, then get the government to set him up for life in witness protection?
There had to be good reasons. First among my theories was family. The statements were silent on this, but if Little Benny did have a family, I was pretty sure they were in Mother Russia. Not even the feds would be stupid enough to try to offer protection there. No, Benny wasn’t worried about family in Russia; if he had family there, he wouldn’t have opened his mouth about Volchek at all, as there would be no way to protect his loved ones back home. If he had family in the United States, he would spill his guts for the whole operation and get his family into witness protection—or he would say absolutely nothing. Family considerations didn’t fit my theory.
