Chapter 6 Eddie

6

Eddie

A week after John Jackson left my office, I was standing outside the Manhattan Criminal Court building, waiting for a hot dog at Akash's stand, when I got the call from Al Parish. The call I had been waiting for.

‘I just got word from the DA. The gun they took from Jackson's house gives us a big problem. Ballistic testing confirms the slugs found in Mrs. Blakemore's chest and skull were fired from that weapon.'

‘That's not good,' I said.

‘It gets worse. There's DNA on the pistol grip – it's John's.'

‘Didn't he tell the police he'd never seen that gun before?'

‘He told them twice. Once when they showed him the gun they found in his closet and again during questioning, even after I'd told him to keep his damn mouth shut.'

‘Hold on a second,' I said. ‘Extra onions, please, Akash.'

I took my hot dog and soda and sat on the low wall on the east side of the courthouse. I put the phone to my ear and said, ‘In a way, this is good news.'

Parish said nothing for a moment. He was looking for my angle, decided he couldn't find it and asked for directions.

‘In what possible way is this good news?'

‘Oh, it's bad news for John, no doubt. But in my mind either he's the dumbest killer to ever walk the earth, or he's telling the truth. Who shoots a neighbor dead in a wealthy neighborhood and hides the murder weapon in their closet? One thing we know for sure is Jackson isn't dumb. This confirms what I felt all along. John is innocent and he's on the level. If your client tells you the truth, that's half the battle.'

‘But the other side of that battle is unwinnable. This just became a rock-solid case for the DA. There's going to be a press conference at four.' Up until now Jackson hadn't made the news. ‘District Attorney Castro is about to make the front page and Jackson's life is going to implode.'

‘I imagine an indictment from a grand jury is imminent. That gives us some discovery. At least something to work with so we can start building a defense. We'll need to talk to him before the press conference. He'll make it through this,' I said.

‘Will he?' asked Parish.

‘He'll make it. Even if we have to carry him. Get him to your office in an hour. I'll call Kate and Harry. There might be a way to handle Castro's press conference.'

‘Not much we can do. What's the point?'

‘We need to deaden the impact of the press conference, for the sake of getting an unbiased jury at least. And for John's sake. I don't want him splashed over the news, not yet. And I don't want Castro riding our client's case for publicity to help his election campaign.'

‘What can you do?' asked Parish.

‘I'll figure it out.'

I hung up, texted Kate and Harry to tell them about the forensics and arranged to meet them in Parish's office in an hour. Then I took a bite out of the hot dog and popped the tab on my Pepsi.

People think justice is like the buildings that house the system itself. Huge, indelible edifices that look as if they've stood there for five hundred years. Same as the courtrooms themselves. Apart from microphones and the addition of TV monitors, courtrooms haven't changed for more than a century. Not really.

That gives the notion of justice permanence.

Yet it could not be more malleable. What drives the justice system isn't our constitution, or the laws that govern each state, it's the people in power.

Justice is a hammer. You can use it to tap lightly on stone, molding and shaping it over time.

Or you can crack the whole damn rock wide open.

It depends on who is wielding the hammer.

In this instance, District Attorney Rob Castro was going to pick up his hammer and do as much damage with it as possible.

As I contemplated various ways to go after Castro, a long black town car pulled up at the curb. A serious hunk of shiny black metal with blacked-out windows and titanium rims. That car weighed two and a quarter tons, yet the suspension shifted as the driver got out, opened the rear passenger door and looked at me.

The driver was Anthony Lombardi, better known to me and the rest of the criminal fraternity in New York as Tony Two Fucks. He weighed half as much as the car. That sport shirt drawn tight across his chest must've been made from Kevlar, because no other kind of material could take that strain. Tony was a good guy. Sure, he was a getaway driver and peripatetic hitman for the Mafia, but we all had our foibles. Tony had a little speech problem. His mother, Gloria, God rest her soul, first noticed the problem when Tony, good Catholic that he is, was going through his first confession.

The eleven-year-old Tony got into the confessional and said, ‘Fuckin' bless me, Father, for I have sinned like a motherfucker.'

His career as an altar boy was cut drastically short and the priest threw him out of the church.

Tony, for reasons best left to science, could not get through a sentence, no matter how short, without a liberal sprinkling of fucks.

Not even without a ‘fuckin' A-fuckin'-men' at the end of his ‘Our Father'.

‘That fuckin' hot dog any fuckin' good?' he asked.

‘It's good,' I said.

‘I'll fuckin' pick up a bag when I drop you off. Get in the fuckin' car, Eddie. Jimmy wants to see ya.'

There are a lot of Jimmys in this town, but I instantly knew who he was talking about.

My childhood friend, Jimmy the Hat, who ran half of the city from a restaurant. He was head of one of the most powerful Italian crime families in New York, which made him one of the most powerful men in the country.

I finished the hot dog and the Pepsi, threw the napkin and soda can in the trash and got into the front passenger seat beside Tony.

I don't ride in the back. I'm not royalty, I'm not a made guy and I'm not stupid enough to get into the back of a car that can be locked and sealed by the driver up front, no matter how far Jimmy and I go back.

‘How's Jimmy?' I asked as Tony pulled into traffic.

‘Fuckin' A, that's how fuckin' good he is, the fuck.'

‘You sure? No problems?'

Tony shook his head.

Shit.

I didn't wish any ill on Jimmy. He was my friend. But if he wanted to talk about last night's game, or shoot a game of pool, he would've called. This was a summons. This was official. He'd sent a made guy to pick me up.

If Jimmy was good – that meant this was about me.

And it was urgent.

And it was probably bad.

Real bad.

As we drove, I tried to work out why Jimmy had sent a car for me.

Tony didn't help my thought process. It was only a short journey, but Tony liked to talk.

‘That gal you got fuckin' working for you. The fuckin' blonde, what's her name?'

‘Denise? The office secretary. You met her last year.'

‘Fuck, that's it. Fuckin' Denise. Is she married?'

I looked at Tony.

‘What do you mean is she married? You like Denise?'

‘Of course I fuckin' like her, you know. Real fuckin' nice gal. So is she married or what?'

‘She's single, I think.'

‘Any fuckin' chance you could put in a good fuckin' word for me?'

I recalled Denise and Tony had hit it off last year, after Tony and his pals had done some driving for us.

‘You want me to ask her out for you?'

He nodded, said, ‘I ain't so fuckin' good at that kind of fuckin' thing.'

I called Denise on my cell.

‘You remember Tony, Jimmy's driver, who helped us out last year?'

‘Tony Two Fucks? What about him?'

‘He wants to know if you're free Saturday night?'

‘And he's getting you to ask me out? He doesn't have the balls to ask me himself?'

I glanced over at Tony. He looked like a ten-year-old waiting to see if Santa Claus had come on Christmas morning. Some guys are built like that. They can kick down a door to a bunker in Baghdad, jump out of an airplane, even shoot somebody in the head and chop up their body, all without breaking a sweat. But ask them to visit a sick relative, make up with their mom or ask a girl out on a date and they'll be paralyzed with fear.

Tony was one of those guys.

‘He's shy,' I said.

‘If Tony Two Fucks wants to date me, he's gonna have to grow a pair and ask me out in person. Until then, tell him to go fuck himself. Twice.'

I pulled the phone away from my ear, turned to Tony and said, ‘Denise says pick her up at eight on Saturday.'

She heard me. I killed the call just as she was screaming my name.

It was only then I looked out the window, saw we were passing the courthouse again. Tony was looping Foley Square. Classic counter-surveillance moves. I didn't give it too much thought. Somebody was always keeping tabs on Jimmy's business and associates.

The car pulled up outside Jimmy's restaurant. I got out, looked around the street. Not too much surveillance today. At least none that I could see. Somebody was always watching Jimmy, though. Either the NYPD anti-corruption taskforce, their vice squad, Narcos, robbery homicide or organized crime divisions. And that was just local. The feds, the ATF and even the NSA had been known to keep tabs on Jimmy the Hat Fellini.

And with good reason. He was one of the smartest mob bosses in the last hundred years. The evidence for that was right here in front of me. With so many agencies keeping tabs on him, and Jimmy running his business from the restaurant, there were only so many parking spaces on the street for surveillance vehicles and Jimmy made sure his delivery trucks took those spaces day and night – which meant that law enforcement had to rent premises with a view of the restaurant – either apartments or some of the empty retail spaces.

Jimmy knew this, so he bought all of the buildings with a view of his place.

If three or more government agencies, and thirty NYPD detectives were going to watch him, they had to pay him rent first. The more eyes on Jimmy, the more rent he took from federal and state law enforcement. He thought it was only fair for them to pay for the inconvenience.

Greenbacks and kickbacks.

Jimmy was downstairs in the private section of the restaurant at a table covered in a white cloth. An espresso and five cell phones sat in front of him. He wore his grandfather's flat cap, white shirt, black braces. He rose and we embraced.

‘Eddie Fly, you okay, brother?' he asked.

‘I'm fine,' I said.

He looked over my shoulder at Tony, asked, ‘Any tails?'

‘Clear as fuckin' day. I did two full circuits before I fuckin' came in.'

‘Sit down, Eddie,' he said.

‘What's wrong?' I asked, pulling up a chair. ‘You're both skittish. The feds giving you problems?'

‘Nah, nothing like that. It's you I'm worried about,' he said.

‘Me?'

‘Eddie, there's no easy way to say this so I'm just going to spit it out. Somebody dropped a ton of paper on your head.'

My gut tightened like I'd just taken a punch.

‘How much paper?'

‘Fifty Gs,' said Jimmy.

Shit. I put my elbows on the table, sank my head and inhaled.

‘Tony, get him a Scotch,' said Jimmy.

‘No, it's fine,' I said. ‘I'm okay.'

I wasn't okay. Far from it. This morning, all I was worried about was saving John Jackson from life behind bars. Now I had something else to occupy my mind.

Jimmy just told me that someone had taken out a contract on my life. And whoever completed the hit could collect fifty thousand dollars. That's fifty thousand reasons for every junkie, lowlife and hitman in New York to put a bullet in my head.