The Wrong Man (28 page)

This was their Ford Explorer.

“Fuck me,” he mumbled, as he approached the truck.

Every window had been busted out completely. The paint was scratched badly. It looked as if words had been scratched into the paint, but the lighting wasn’t that good, so it was hard to make out.

“What in the motherfuck is going on?” Dwyer said.

Neither of them knew where to start with all of this. Cahill looked back at the neighbor’s townhome. Hard to believe that it was just a coincidence that they dumped all that shit on them but if not, it meant they were on to them, and—

Dwyer started marching toward the neighbor’s townhouse. Cahill grabbed his arm. “We need to get the fuck out of here, Dwyer.”

“They’re in there. I fucking know it, and I’m going—”

“Then they’ve called the cops, you moron. We have to get out of here.”

Dwyer couldn’t bring himself to disagree. Things hadn’t gone so well up to now, and there was no reason to expect their luck would improve by sticking around.

Cahill got behind the wheel, Dwyer the passenger seat. Dwyer was
unhappy to discover that he had sat in a pile of broken glass. So had Cahill, but he wasn’t going to delay their exit over that.

“All right, Kolarich, score one for you,” he mumbled. “But I’m going to find you, and when I do, I’m going to cut your fucking head off.”

He put the car in reverse, backed out of the driveway, and headed west. Who knows, maybe their luck would change and they’d see Kolarich running—

Headlights popped on a car behind them, and then flashing lights on the dome overhead.

A cop car. A fucking cop car.

“Fucking Kolarich,” Cahill said. “I’m going to rip out your eyes and piss in the sockets.”

“You’re stopping?” Dwyer asked.

“Do we take our chances?” Cahill wondered. He had to make a quick decision here. He looked over at Dwyer, draped in black oil and brown sand. He looked like a fudge sundae.

“Let’s do it,” he decided. He gunned the engine and started flying west down the street.

Then another cop car, with flashing lights, turned onto the street from the other direction and came toward them.

“Fuck.” Cahill hit the brakes and threw the car angrily into Park. He was cut off. This was a narrow street with parked cars lining each side, and now he had squad cars at his front and rear. Could he and Dwyer win a shootout with the police? It was possible. They were surely better shots than these mutts. But backup would be called in, hell, neighbors would call 911, and even if they managed to take out the four officers, there was no physical way they could get their car free and drive off. They’d have to leave it behind, and they’d be the most wanted men in the state. They’d be drawing all kinds of attention to themselves and, more important, to the Circle.

He had to keep his eye on the prize here. He was needed a week from now. He’d trained for more than a year and he wasn’t going to miss it.

“Fuck,” he said again.

From both the front and rear, the squad cars activated their searchlights into his vehicle.

“Turn off your engine and put your hands on your head,”
one of the officers called out through his speaker.

“Do it,” Cahill said, gritting his teeth so hard he felt physical pain. He killed the engine and put his hands on top of his greasy, grimy head.

He looked over at Dwyer, who was fitting his fingers around his gun.

“Don’t be an idiot, Dwyer. We have a job to do on December seventh. Just let this happen and Manning will bail us out.”

Dwyer thought a moment, then complied. He reached down and placed his weapon on the floorboard, like Cahill had done previously when he started driving. Then he put his hands on his head.

A pair of cops from each direction approached the vehicle, their weapons drawn, Maglites directed toward the interior of the vehicle. They took their time, walking around each side of the vehicle.

“Do you have firearms in the vehicle?” called out one of them, his own weapon trained on Cahill.
“Do you have firearms in the vehicle?”

“Why would you say that, Officer?” Cahill said in a less than respectful tone. Cahill was not a big fan of law enforcement, or government in general.

“Well, for one thing, it’s scratched on the rear panel of your vehicle. It says, ‘We have guns in here.’ Right next to ‘Fuck you, cops.’”

Cahill closed his eyes. Fucking Kolarich. He was going to rip out his tongue and feed it to him.

“You’re going to keep those hands on your head, and you’re going to slide out of the vehicle.” An officer on each side opened the car doors. “Slide out right now, each of you.”

They complied, though it wasn’t easy with their hands on their heads.

“What is that you got on you?” the cop asked. “What the hell have you boys been doing?”

Cahill put his hands against the car and spread his legs.

“Sightseeing,” he said. “I love this city.”

With the car bathed in light from every fucking direction, Cahill could now read what had been scratched on the driver’s side panel:
We are assassins.

“Weapon on the floorboard, driver’s side,” said one of the cops.

“Weapon on the passenger floor, too,” said another.

An officer pulled Cahill’s hands behind him and slipped cuffs over his wrists.

“You look like you’ve been tarred and feathered,” one of them said.

“You look like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon,” another opined. The threat now contained, the two suspects now in handcuffs, the cops began to enjoy themselves.

“‘Die… fucking… pigs.’ ‘Cops… suck… dick.’” One of the cops was doing a walk-around with his flashlight, reading all the messages scratched into the Explorer’s paint.

“Someone stole the car,” said Cahill.

“And then gave it back to you? They must be nice car thieves.”

They popped the rear of the car. Cahill already knew what they would find. There were rifles and knives and rope and a body bag.

One of the cops got close to Cahill’s ear. “Whatever the hell you boys have been up to,” he said, “you’re in a lot of trouble.”

We watched it all from the front bedroom window on the third floor of Ross Vander Way’s townhouse.

“Can’t thank you enough,” I said to Ross.

“No prob, man. It was pretty freakin’ twisted.”

And I was pretty freakin’ sure that Ross was pretty freakin’ stoned.

Ross was a trust-fund baby. His parents owned a cruise line, and Ross had never worked a day in his life. He was partying his way through a master’s degree in business and living in this townhouse, which he’d converted into the best bachelor pad I’d ever seen.

Lightner was talking on the phone with one of his employees, the one who had been assigned to covertly watch my house after the first attempt on my life. It had been Joel’s idea, a pretty obvious security measure in hindsight, to have someone watch my house, and it had paid off for us. Joel’s associate had seen these two guys staking out the place earlier today, then head over to their Ford Explorer and leave for several hours, then return around seven tonight, setting up shop on the side of my garage, awaiting my return.

I’d considered just calling the cops, but these two would have gotten away. So Lightner and I came up with some thoughts at lunch, and he’d gone shopping for motor oil and a pound of sand. We wanted to make sure that a getaway would be tough for them, so in addition to the oil and sand, we did some work on the Explorer ahead of time, too, with a couple of screwdrivers.

Bradley had volunteered to drive the vehicle onto the driveway. That was nice of him. Normally I would have insisted on doing it myself—there was an element of risk at that point—but I couldn’t run to save my life right now with the bum knee.

“Shauna, you play a great nagging wife,” I said.

“And you the shitbag husband.”

I thanked Ross again and Joel, Shauna and I left the same way we came in—surreptitiously out the back door of Ross’s place. We found my car and picked up Bradley John on the corner.

“They won’t get before a judge until Monday,” I said. “I’ll bet they add resisting for driving away before they got cut off. And rifles and a body bag? That’s going to be an interesting bond hearing.”

Everyone was buzzing from what had just happened. It was great fun, no doubt, and a welcome release from the long hours we’d worked. But we all realized that for the second time in two days, somebody had been concerned enough about this case to attempt murder.

“Okay, screw this,” I said. “From here on out until this trial is over, we have to stay away from our homes. And we hire bodyguards. Shauna, Bradley—go home and pack. We’re not making ourselves an easy target. Joel, you got someone we could use for personal security?”

He did. His company had done some of it, too.

“We stay at different hotels and always with a security escort. Okay, you two? You can say no, but then you’re off the case. No fooling.”

Shauna asked, “Who might be funding this endeavor, Counselor? Last I checked, we had a client who didn’t pay.”

“I am,” I said. I still had a little money tied over from when I was a big-firm lawyer. My wife and I had been saving every penny for a single-family home that I now didn’t need.

“Then Ritz-Carlton, here I come,” Shauna announced.

“I’ll make some calls right away,” said Joel.

“Here’s a question,” Shauna informed us. “If
we
figured out that they might try to kill you a second time, why didn’t
they
figure out that we might be waiting for them?”

I nodded. The same question had been on my mind, too. And I thought I had an answer.

“They didn’t
know
about the first attempt,” I said. “The first group was
the Capparellis. The people who killed Kathy Rubinkowski. These guys tonight? Ten to one says they’re with Manning. They don’t look like mobsters. They look like corn-fed white Aryan supremacists.”

“So now you got two different groups wanting to kill you,” Lightner said. “That’s a lot even for you, Kolarich.”

Peter Ramini listened respectfully as Father DiGuardi’s homily wore on. The guy could talk. He was good people, and Lord knows, he’d heard a lot from Ramini over the years—not everything, and not in detail, but plenty. But damn if his homilies didn’t go on.

“Our readings today alert us to something great about to begin,” he told the packed Mass. “Night is ending. Dawn is at hand. Stay awake. Put on the armor of light. Let us begin waiting today in joyful hope for the coming of our savior.”

Ramini’s eyes drifted next to him, to Donnie. This was the first time he’d seen Donnie in a church. Ramini, he came most Sundays. He never quite challenged himself about why.

Donnie didn’t look happy. Why would he be? Two of Paulie Capparelli’s best men, Sal and Augie, died in that alley, trying to take out Kolarich.

“We must ask questions during this Advent season,” said Father DiGuardi. “Are we listening? Are we paying attention? Are we looking to what will be—or are we already there?”

The time between the homily and communion felt like the same amount of time Moses spent with his people in the desert. But soon the congregants stood, row by row, and shuffled out to receive the bread and wine.

Neither Ramini nor Donnie moved. They were in the back pew, nobody behind them, and for the moment nobody in front or next to them, either.

Donnie pulled a candy bar out of his jacket pocket, opened it, and took a bite.

“Don, for Christ’s sake. We’re in the house of God here.”

It didn’t seem to move Donnie. He leaned into Ramini. “You wanna wait on Kolarich?” Donnie said. “Paulie says okay. For now, we wait.”

Ramini nodded.

“For now,” Donnie repeated. “You’re sure Kolarich killed Sal and Augie himself?”

“I’m sure,” said Ramini. “Who else woulda done it?” He looked at Donnie. “I saw it with my own eyes, Don.”

It was the only story Ramini could tell the boss. The truth was out of the question. He knew Paulie would greet it with skepticism—Kolarich was just some lawyer, not a trained killer who could take out two attackers—but in the end, he figured Paulie would give Ramini the benefit of the doubt. Ramini had earned that respect. But he was running out of rope, he knew.

“For now, we wait,” Donnie said. “But two things, Petey. Okay?”

“Okay, two things.”

“One: If you think this lawyer’s getting close to us, no more waiting. If you gotta shoot him in fucking
court
, you do it. Right?”

“Right. And second?”

“Second,” said Donnie. “When this thing’s over, the trial and whatnot, and we’re all happy? Well, Paulie still ain’t so happy, see what I’m sayin’? Sal and Augie were good earners. Nobody kills two of our boys and walks away. Can’t have that. Right?”

Donnie finished up the candy bar and crunched the wrapper in his hand. The parishioners were starting to return to the pews in front of them, so the conversation would end.

Donnie leaned in to Ramini again. “What happens when the trial’s over, Pete?”

Ramini sighed. “Kolarich dies,” he said.

“And who dies if he don’t?”

Ramini nodded. “I do,” he said.

“You and everyone you love, Pete. You know the rules.” Donnie patted Ramini on the knee and walked out of the church.

Judge Nash was yelling at Wendy Kotowski and me before we even made it to the lectern to argue the pretrial motions. He thought the volume of our submissions was too great. He was right, but it wasn’t that unusual an amount, thirty-one motions in all. I was hoping that he would direct his wrath more at the prosecution, which technically had filed more than me, but that was wishful thinking.

A few years ago, Judge Nash put a hard limit on the number of pretrial submissions by each side. But the appellate court slapped him down. Criminal cases invoke the Bill of Rights, constitutional protections against the state unfairly throwing people in prison, and when a defendant’s liberty is at stake, arbitrarily limiting the amount of arguments he can make was viewed as a nonstarter.

But that didn’t mean Judge Nash had to like it. His official limitation became an unspoken one, and when lawyers exceeded it, they heard about it.