The wrong man, p.6
The Wrong Man, page 6
part #3 of Jason Kolarich Series
“Got it. Got it.” Bradley seemed pumped for this case.
“Shauna,” I said. “Take a look at the forensics and the blood spatter and the medical examiner reports. We don’t have to accept that the shooting happened exactly the way the prosecution claims. If we need to hire that guy—what’s his name, Peters?—then let’s talk and we can do it.”
“And when you’re done, Shauna,” said Joel, “come over to my place. We’ll open a bottle of wine and talk about it.”
Shauna rolled her eyes and nodded at me. “What’s your assignment?”
“Me?” I stretched my arms. “I’m going to get Tom Stoller to talk to me,” I said.
10.
Lorenzo Fowler was a married man, so when he visited Sasha, he had to go to her place. It was more accurately described as his place, as he bought the condo and paid the utilities and assessment. It was one of the ritzier places on the blossoming near-west side of the city. Sasha could have had her pick of spots, but she fancied herself an artist and liked the feel of this part of the city.
Fowler parked his car down the street, got out, and pulled up his coat collar. It was dark and cold, and before he trudged forward, he took only a quick look about him for immediate threats.
He didn’t see any.
He didn’t see Peter Ramini, sitting in a different car down the street, his hands stuffed into his coat pockets.
It was nine-forty when he arrived at Sasha’s condo. Anyone trying to predict Lorenzo’s movements would estimate that he would spend about four hours at her place before returning home. He always returned home. He never spent the night at Sasha’s.
Just over four hours later, Lorenzo emerged from the elevator in the building’s lobby. He nodded to the man at the front desk with no trace of embarrassment or guilt. He always felt better after an evening with Sasha. For a Ukrainian gal, she could make a plate of sausage and peppers. And in the bedroom, she performed feats of gymnastic agility that could earn her a gold medal in the Olympics. He was a bit lightheaded after a half-bottle of wine and the food and the sex. It was a welcome break.
The early-morning air was a harsh return to reality. Things had been tough for Lorenzo of late. That strip club owner Lorenzo had disciplined with an aluminum baseball bat had died two days ago. The police had come looking for Lorenzo today at the lumberyard. They’d be back again tomorrow. Paulie would be nervous.
Paulie was always nervous these days. It wasn’t like how it used to be. The feds had always been around, but the surveillance was so good these days that it was impossible to know where you were safe. Nowadays, Paulie wouldn’t communicate with anybody other than a whisper directly into his ear.
So what would Paulie think of the cops wanting to talk to Lorenzo about a dead strip club owner?
Lorenzo shuddered. He thought about his conversation the other day with that lawyer, Kolarich. He seemed like the sort that wouldn’t shy away from helping him. Some lawyers, they heard the Mob was involved, they’d back off. Kolarich seemed like the kind of guy who would get off on it. And the kid had brass; Lorenzo hadn’t met that many people who, knowing that Lorenzo worked for the Capparellis, told him to fuck off. Despite what he’d said, Kolarich would be there for him, he figured, if he needed him.
Trading the identity of Gin Rummy could do it, he felt certain. The feds would jump in and walk him on the strip club owner’s death and probably anything else for which they charged Lorenzo. You take away Gin Rummy, you take away Paulie’s best muscle. You take away one of the few people Paulie still trusted. It was valuable information. Lorenzo would be able to write his own ticket. Someplace warm, that much was for sure. An apartment for Sasha, too, if she’d come. Would she?
And then something felt wrong, and all at once Lorenzo felt exposed. Nothing he could put his finger on, but it wasn’t an accident he’d managed to stay alive for fifty-two years, thirty-four of them with the Capparellis.
He slowed his pace and removed his Beretta from the back of his pants so that he was holding it at his side. The streets were empty. The nearest bars were two blocks away. Other than a couple on the corner who appeared to be engrossed in each other, Lorenzo felt reasonably sure he was alone.
Still, he widened his approach to his parked car, so that he could see into the backseat before he got too close. Okay, the backseat was empty, good enough. As he kept walking around his car, he saw something on the ground, a single flower and a note. It stopped his movement for just a moment, while he focused on the ground behind his automobile.
In that brief window of time, a bullet threaded his windpipe and sent him staggering backward against the chained-up door of a used bookstore. He tried to hold himself up, tried to raise his gun, but the signals weren’t reaching their intended targets.
A second bullet shattered Lorenzo’s left kneecap. A third did the same to his right.
Lorenzo crumpled into a heap at the door of the used bookstore.
He tried to scream, but no sound came except something warm and sticky through the hole in his throat.
You had your chance, he told himself, as the lights went out.
11.
I was back at Vic’s, a bar I adopted as my preferred choice when I couldn’t find drinking buddies. You hit your mid-thirties and most of your friends have wives and kids, like I once did, and while five martinis at a fine local establishment on a Monday night might sound appealing, they usually have higher priorities. I did, too, once upon a time.
I took my usual seat, on one end of the wraparound bar, drunker than usual, because I’d forgotten to eat anything for dinner. The place had filtered out by now and it reminded me of that time a few days ago when I’d made the acquaintance of those two idiots bothering that lady.
I thought about Tom Stoller and my three failed attempts, thus far, to get him to open up to me. Shauna was working with our expert, Dr. Baraniq, but whichever way you cut it, we had holes in our defense. I’d reconciled myself to that. In the end, it was like I’d said to my team—if we did our job, they wouldn’t let the technicalities of an insanity argument get in their way. Either the jury would want to acquit him or they wouldn’t.
I was tired. Today was the deadline in the Stoller case for the defense and prosecution to share any remaining discovery—information to be used at trial—and witness lists. No matter how much you planned, it was always a rush at the end to get it done. And with Judge Nash, you didn’t want to omit anything. If it wasn’t turned over in a timely manner, it wouldn’t be admitted at a trial where he presided.
I raised my empty glass for a fifth Stoli. I wasn’t an alcoholic—which, of course, is what every alcoholic says. But I was different (a lot of them say that, too). I wasn’t trying to hide from anything or blur reality. I was coping with reality pretty decently these days, thank you very little. I still missed my wife and daughter so desperately that it sucked oxygen from my lungs, but I’d learned how to coexist with it.
No, I drank so I could fall asleep at night. I’d lost that ability to let my mind settle into that calm transfer from wakefulness to dreams. Once I’m down, I stay down, but I can’t find that equilibrium to get me there.
The bartender, not the normal guy, shoved a glass of wine in front of me filled with ice cubes and slices of lemon and lime. I stared at it for a long time.
“The fuck is that?” I asked.
“A wine spritzer. From the lady.”
I turned back to the far corner of the bar. The lady from the other night, again with the white coat, was sitting in a booth. Somehow I’d missed her coming in.
She walked over to me. I’d fancied her a bit from afar the other night. “Intrigued” was probably a better word. Up close now, she looked pretty much the same, the petite build and girlish features, but now with the details filled in. A crooked mouth, cautious eyes, nice pale skin with a dusting of freckles high on her cheeks. She smelled pretty damn good, too.
“That cocktail you wanted,” she said.
“Great.”
She still hadn’t taken a seat. She seemed to be debating with herself.
“You want to thank me but you don’t know how,” I said. “You’re a lady who can take care of herself and you don’t appreciate men acting like they’re rescuing the damsel in distress.”
She listened to me with a trace of amusement.
“On the other hand,” I went on, “those two big goombahs were a bit of trouble for you. Maybe you’d underestimated them. So you were relieved when I came out and offered some assistance. You appreciated and resented the gesture at the same time.”
She worked her mouth a bit as she watched me. Waiting for me to go on, but at the moment I was spending some time on that mouth of hers and letting my imagination move to places dark and steamy. I was in what you’d call a dry spell, you see. I made Mohandas Gandhi look like Hugh Hefner.
“How’m I doing so far?” I asked.
“In your mind?”
“We can start there, sure.”
“You’re doing great,” she said. “You’re charming and insightful and oh-so-confident.”
“Don’t forget I rescued you, too.”
“How could I?”
I gestured to the chair. “Have a drink with me.”
She paused, the mirth disappearing from her eyes. “I did want to thank you.”
“There’ll be plenty of time to do that between sips. I’ll even let you buy, if that’ll make you feel better about it.”
“But you’re making it hard. To thank you.”
“I’m rough around the edges to mask my sensitive, vulnerable side.”
“You’re also married,” she said. She nodded in the direction of my left hand resting on the bar. “No ring tonight, though.”
She was right, you could still see the pale outline on my ring finger. I finally took the ring off a few months ago, but I guess the impression hadn’t yet worn off.
“Then I guess you better be on your way,” I said.
The bartender put down a Stoli next to the wineglass. I turned away from the lady and went to work on the drink. A few minutes passed and she didn’t move.
“It was nice of you to help me the other night,” she finally said.
“Think nothing of it.”
“I’m not used to people trying to help me.”
I didn’t answer. I drained the Stoli and felt the effect immediately.
“You’re not married, are you? I was wrong about that.”
I put down my glass. “I’m not married anymore.”
“You have a pen?”
Did I have a pen? No, I didn’t. But the bartender did, along with another glass of Stoli for me.
She handed me a slip of paper. It had the word “Tori” and a phone number.
“If you want to call me sometime,” she said.
“Good to know,” I said, but Tori was already headed for the door.
12.
The room they let us use at the Boyd Center reminded me of a large playroom for children. There were stations for board games and a sitting area around a television and a desk with chairs. The walls were painted with that same orange color, and the carpeting on the floor was thick, if a little dingy. Not the traditional setting for an attorney-client visit, but budgets were tight, and this was also the room for family visits.
Tom Stoller was in limbo. He needed serious psychological assistance from the state, but he wasn’t getting it, because this was the same “state” that appeared in the caption State v. Thomas Stoller, the same “state” that wanted to put Tom in prison for life, the same “state” that didn’t want to concede that Tom suffered a mental defect at the time of the shooting—or at all, for that matter.
I sat across the room and observed Tom with Shauna. They weren’t discussing the case. They weren’t probing his troubled mind. They were playing checkers. I’d brought Shauna along today because she was good with people, far more adept than I at establishing bonds and adjusting to the nuances of interpersonal relationships.
Sitting across from Shauna, a checkerboard between them, Tom showed the same tremors I’d seen every time I visited. His tongue was peeking in and out of his mouth. His eyes were blinking rapidly. His fingers wiggled constantly. Side effects, Dr. Baraniq had said, of the antipsychotic medication. Tom appeared to be contemplating his next move in the board game, but for all I knew he was in a faraway place, envisioning himself as Sir Lancelot to Shauna’s Guinevere.
You’d think that his mere presence at Boyd was an acknowledgment of Tom’s mental illness, but it wasn’t. The state wasn’t stupid. Boyd housed all kinds of people who presented problems to jailhouses, ranging from patients with communicable diseases, such as HIV, to notorious individuals deserving of segregation, such as gang leaders or police officers, to those with your basic “behavioral” problems.
Tom Stoller fell into the last category. He wasn’t mentally ill. He was a “behavioral” problem. Yeah. Sure. Once they convicted him, he’d go to a penitentiary and receive somewhat decent psychological services. But for now, especially with an insanity defense looming, the state wouldn’t treat him as anything but a problem inmate who could be kept compliant if they drugged him up.
Tom double-jumped two of Shauna’s checkers. “Ooh, I was hoping you wouldn’t do that,” she groaned.
Tom looked up at her and stared, expressionless, in the inappropriate way of a child. Even when Shauna smiled and broke eye contact, as would any adult, he held his stare on her.
Shauna dutifully jumped one of Tom’s checkers. “Take that,” she said.
“I had girlfriends,” Tom said. I almost jumped out of my chair. It was the first time Tom had ever volunteered anything personal.
“I’ll bet you did.” Shauna winked at him. Bless her heart, she likewise recognized the significance of the moment but played the whole thing casually.
Tom stared back down at the checkerboard, and Shauna snuck a peek in my direction. Before too much time had passed, and the moment was entirely lost, she said, “Was there one in particular? Usually there’s one special one.”
“Jenny. Jenny, but she didn’t want to…” Tom dropped his head and started mumbling.
Shauna waited for a moment. “She didn’t want—”
“I can’t think of the name of the movie.” Tom shook his head harshly, like he was removing cobwebs. “In Somalia. She didn’t like it.”
“The mov—”
“It made her sad. She didn’t like… suffering.”
I knew what he meant. It was a graphically violent film about the American Special Forces operation in Mogadishu that went south and got a bunch of our elite soldiers killed.
“Black Hawk Down,” I said, from across the room.
Tom whipped his head around at me. With one violent thrust, he jumped up and backhanded the checkerboard clear across the room. Instinctively, Shauna pushed her chair backward, and I got to my feet. I raised my hand toward the security camera to indicate we didn’t want or need intervention by the Corrections guards.
Tom stood, frozen, his gaze lost somewhere in a memory. He slowly turned and walked over to the corner, where he took a seat and sat silently, stoic except for the familiar tremors. Shauna and I looked at each other, speechless.
“She didn’t want me to fight,” he finally whispered.
13.
The Starboard Room in the city’s Maritime Club was at full capacity over lunch, thirty tables with eight guests at each, as the U.S. Secretary of Labor droned on about reform of collective-bargaining laws and diverse workplaces in the “New America.”
New America is right, thought Randall Manning, president, CEO, and sole shareholder of Global Harvest International, a privately held company located eighty miles south of the city. Normally he wouldn’t give the time of day to a speech on the topic of diversity, of all things, but he needed to be in town on other business and welcomed the excuse. And he couldn’t deny enjoying the prestige of the invitation, a seat among the elite. He could allow himself that much; he hadn’t experienced a great deal of enjoyment in his life of late.
As the labor secretary continued through his speech, Manning leaned over to the man sitting next to him, his lawyer, Bruce McCabe. “Where,” he said in a controlled whisper, “is Stanley?”
Stanley Keane, he meant, the owner of SK Tool and Supply, located in the small downstate town of Weston.
“Don’t see him,” said McCabe. McCabe, a principal at the law firm of Dembrow, Lane, and McCabe, was outside counsel to Global Harvest.
Manning put his hand on the back of McCabe’s chair and spoke into his ear. “Stanley needs to be here,” he said. “He needs to be seen here.”
“He understands that.”
“Does he, Bruce? It was your job to make sure he understood.”
“He’ll show up,” McCabe insisted.
He never did. When the speech and luncheon ended, Randall Manning mingled with other business executives. He shook their hands and listened to their stories and told some of his own. He laughed at their jokes and told some of his own. He waited in line for a photograph with the labor secretary and swallowed his loathing and forced a smile on his face for the photographer.
When it was over, Manning had his driver take him to the Gold Coast Athletic Club, where he met the president of a pharmaceutical company—one of Global Harvest’s biggest clients—for a game of squash. At five o’clock, he met a local alderman and a state senator for drinks to discuss a tax-incentive proposal for a freight yard that Global Harvest was considering building inside the city limits. At seven o’clock, he had a steak at one of the city’s best joints, enjoying a view of the river in the process.
At nine o’clock, he returned to his hotel. He took the elevator up to his room, changed his overcoat from a charcoal one to a beige one, donned a fedora hat, and took the elevator back down to the fourth floor, a transitional floor that allowed him to access a different bank of elevators that, in turn, allowed him to exit the hotel onto a cross street, different from the one he’d taken to enter the hotel. He never broke stride into a waiting town car and settled in for the drive.
