Margo squared her shoulders in defiance. “But I am—about us—unless you destroy that file in front of me, right now.
“Griffin,” the DA laughed nervously. “I don’t understand why you’re so protective of these assholes. Your career is not at stake here. They’re your bosses; they are
not
your partners. You’re a
bright, attractive attorney. You can get a job anywhere. I’d even hire you,” she said mockingly.
“No thanks. There’s not enough money in the job. DAs make crappy money. You know that.”
“So you love the money. What else do you do for it—besides practice law? It’s no secret, Margo. You and Silvio, I don’t talk about it, but I know all about it. Besides fucking him, what else have you done for money? Is that why you’re so afraid of the Lopez file?” Gates’ face was red with rage. No little cunt was going to ruin her. She had worked too hard and too long, and for too little money, to lose
her
job.
“None of your fucking business.” Margo stepped closer to the door until she was flat up against the imposing figure. But Gates didn’t budge. “Get out of my way.” Margo’s eyes were brimming with tears. She tossed her hair back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Gates knew she had to think, and think quickly. She could not allow Margo to leave, not now. She backed away, changing her expression from confrontational to compassionate. “Look, I’m sorry.” She took the young woman’s hand. “You just get to me, that’s all. Don’t leave. Let’s sit down and calmly work through this. Let’s talk about the alternatives and what we can do to make this all go away.”
Margo lowered her eyes and smiled. “It’s simple, Muriel. It really is. Just take those papers over to that little ol’ shredder, right over there—” she pointed to the white machine that represented relief and tons of money coming her way—”and put them right through.” She put her hand affectionately on the DA’s shoulder. “No more evidence, no more problem.”
“What about the two problems having breakfast at this very moment? We can’t put them through the shredder, can we, Margo?”
“Kirby and the brats are easy,” Margo purred. “They’re already being taken care of. Trust me.”
“Eenie, meenie, miney, mo,” he said out loud as he stared at the five photographs, which he held spread, fanlike, in his right hand. He was having the most difficult time deciding which he should do first. They had to be done close together in time, he knew that. But deciding which would be first, that was his problem. Usually it was one person, or possibly two in the same location. But this was different; two were in one location, three in another, although not very far apart. He had to find a way to move them together. This was a big job worth a hell of a lot of money, two hundred thousand a head, all in cash, half of which had already been wired to his Bahamian account. But all had to be done in less than an hour if he was going to receive the rest. Rudi couldn’t afford to screw this up. None could get away alive. Death must be instantaneous. There must be no evidence which could lead to him, or his employers. He closed his eyes to meditate.
Recently he had begun feeling less confidant, less secure, less decisive. He worried about whether he was just losing it—losing his talent. He couldn’t afford that, not now. He was too young to retire; only forty with an Alzheimer’s stricken mother to support. He had put her in the best nursing home in the area, which he paid monthly in cash. He loved his mother. He loved his job. He loved seeing the look of surprise in his victims’ eyes at the moment they knew that
he
was the last person they would ever see; hearing the last gasp of breath they would ever take as they all, each and every one of them, fought for the impossible: to regain the life they had already lost. Then the resignation and then calm. He felt honored to be present at these sacred moments.
He opened his eyes and suddenly it came to him. He had a plan. He went straight to work. He moved to the back seat of the silver Volvo he had “borrowed” from an unsuspecting visitor to the
city who had left his car in the underground parking lot area of Penn Center Plaza. He reached into his large, black leather suit bag, which he always kept handy for occasions such as this. It was always with him when he knew he had a job to do. It contained getups for almost all occasions: wigs, makeup, glasses, a police uniform, executive wear, ties, white shirts, cufflinks, and work clothes: jeans, sweat shirts, work boots, an Eagles jacket, and a knit ski cap. He never knew what he needed to be. It was always determined by the job, and he needed to be ready to transform himself into what was necessary at a moment’s notice, like a chameleon.
In thirty seconds he was dressed, using the back seat of the Volvo as a dressing room. The windows were tinted, so no pedestrians passing by had a clue what was going on. The metamorphosis was complete. Navy-blue blazer, rep stripe tie, white Polo button-down shirt, scuffed, well-worn wing-tips, and a camel hair coat, slightly worn but clean and pressed. He looked honest and hardworking, not slick, not like a model from
GQ
, although he could have been if he had wanted to. He had the angular good looks, but he never wanted to attract attention. He didn’t want any questions asked. He wanted to meld into the quiet drabness of normal Philadelphia life, humdrum workers who passed each other on the streets with no attention given or gotten. He checked himself out in his handheld mirror.
Perfect
, he thought. Then he went through the zipper compartment inside the suit bag and quickly found what he needed: an ID that bore his photo, as did all the other phony identification cards in the bag. It was official; it read “Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office” over the picture of his smiling face.
“Perfect,” he said aloud. “It’s good to have friends in high places.” He chuckled to himself as he made his way to 1421 Arch Street, Executive Division.
You lose or win your case in your opening
, John Asher silently repeated to himself, as he approached the jury.
“My name is John Asher,” he said, smiling confidently. He was a dapper figure, dressed in the darkest gray pinstripe suit. His starched white shirt was the perfect background for the blazing tomato-red silk tie and matching handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. His hair, graying at the temples, was perfectly cut and smoothed back. Not a strand was out of place. He was as cool as a cucumber, and in control of the situation. He carried no notes. He didn’t need any. He had given this opening statement a hundred times before. He had it honed to perfection, eliminating all the unnecessary words and adding all the right ones. He knew which words to emphasize and which to gloss over casually. Corresponding hand gestures had been choreographed and fit neatly into the script.
Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Romancing the jury was a crap shoot. Sometimes they fell in love with you, and sometimes they chewed you alive and spit you out all over the courtroom. It was hard to tell. But John Asher was hard to dislike and harder to distrust. This would be the challenge of his life, he thought. The case was a surefire loser and his client, a masochistic idiot. And Asher had been charged with doing the impossible.
“Friends—” he continued, walking with a slight swagger, back and forth in front of the box— “just because my client, Doctor Victor Manin, is here in front of you today, as the defendant, does
not
mean that he is guilty of negligence, in causing Sean Riley’s death, or in contributing to it in any way. You have all heard the phrase ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ I’m sure. Well, that not only pertains to criminal cases and criminal defendants, but it also applies to civil cases such as this one. The judge,” he looked and
gestured in Barnes’s direction, “Judge Joseph Barnes, will tell you this clearly in his instructions.”
Barnes hated being used to bolster a point. He kept his head bent and scribbled on his pad so as to appear impartial and simply taking notes. He was actually drawing gallows with Doctor Manin as a stick-figure hanging man.
“Just remember there are two sides to each and every story. You know this from your own experience. So when you’re listening to the witnesses in this case, I ask you to please keep an open mind. You swore a sacred oath when you were selected to serve, and I know, and so does Doctor Manin, that you will keep your oath. I ask that when you listen to the evidence that you remember that the Rileys have the burden of proving their case, that the evidence must favor them, must tip the scales in their direction.” He held up an invisible scale with one hand while moving his other hand dramatically down, as if deeply depressing one side.
“And I’m going to ask that you consider my client Doctor Manin’s track record, which you will hear about, as a doctor and a citizen—all that he has done in the name of goodwill, and all the care which he gave and still gives all his patients. Particularly the police.
“We will show that during Sean Riley’s emergency surgery, everything went as well as it possibly could—not just well, but very well—like clockwork. We will present evidence that Officer Riley was doing fine and that Doctor Manin was so careful with this surgery that instead of leaving the closing of the incision to an assistant, as is often the case, Doctor Manin closed the wound himself, using fine, careful suturing. I ask you to remember that just because bad things happen doesn’t mean that someone is at fault. Bad things happen in this life…and that’s just the way life is sometimes.”
Alonzo Hodge stared ahead, emotionless, arms crossed, not giving the white man the satisfaction of his attention.
Yeah, bad things happen all right—always to the little guy. Get real, man. Don’t try to con me,
he thought.
“Acts of God are sometimes devastating, like floods and earthquake. Death happens, my friends…”
Nick shook his head. This was a closing argument if he had ever heard one. It was more a summation than a road map of where the defense was going. He could object to the entire opening. But no, this was all Asher had—bullshit and bravado.
Let Barnes make an ass of him by interrupting and telling him to get off Broadway and get back into the courtroom. Let Asher go on
, he thought. He was just tightening the noose around his client’s neck. He could see this from Alonzo Hodge’s body language. There was no sympathy in those eyes, only anger.
“We will prove to you that surgery is a risky business. Our expert will tell you that—” Asher turned away from the jury and walked toward Dr. Manin, and then quickly turned back to face the jury—”sometimes doctors can’t do anything to prevent a tragedy. Sometimes it’s not in their control, and we will show you that.” Asher’s steel blue eyes fixed themselves on juror number three, whom he had seen nodding her curly head. He walked toward the jury box and stood directly in front of her.
Ah, a sympathetic ear, an approving look. Gotcha,
he thought. Hopefully she would help turn the others. His eyes went to each and every juror except to juror number one. No one could get to him, so he decided to ignore Alonzo Hodge. He was poison to Asher’s case and of no use to him. His tack was to butter the others up and have them gang up on Hodge. “Thank you,” he said and then walked slowly to the defense table and to his seat next to Victor Manin, giving him a confident nod.
Patrick and Seamus Riley squirmed in their seats. They sat in the front row, just behind the railing which separated them from their mother and Nick Ceratto. They were twins, in their thirties, burly brutes, well over six feet tall with bellies on them that would rival an Eagles linebacker. It was clear from their girth that they had downed many a pitcher in their native Fishtown neighborhood— and that they knew how to handle themselves when things got rough.
Seamus leaned over to Patrick and whispered, “I’d like to beat the crap outta that fuckin’ bastard. He’s worse than the fuckin’ murderer sittin’ next to him. I’d like to rip that poker outta his ass right now and teach him a thing or two.”
Patrick stared ahead and nodded in agreement.
Seamus continued, “Sometimes it’s not in their control,” he said, mocking Asher. “My ass. I’ll have no control over the terrible things that happen to that cross-burnin’, hymn-singin’ faggot when I get my hands around his pale, scrawny neck…and squeeze until his fuckin’ eyes pop outta his head.” Seamus’s face was beet red as he drew in his breath in preparation to continue his diatribe.
“Calm down,” Patrick whispered. “The damned judge is looking right at us. We’ll have our chance, Seamus, don’t worry.” He patted his brother’s arm and with his other hand squeezed the rosary he kept in his jacket pocket. “We’ll have our chance.”
Gloria Henley shook her white head adamantly. Her gold clip earrings jiggled with the movement, as she said no for the fifth time.
“I’m sorry Mr. Feinberg,” she said, glancing over her half glasses at the ID which the man in front of her displayed in its worn, leather case. “Ms. Gates cannot see anyone without an appointment.”
He smiled calmly, totally in control as always, looking down at the brass name plate on her desk. “Gloria. I’m sorry,
Ms. Henley
,” he corrected himself. “I’ve come at the request of district attorney, Mike Rosa. You know him, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do know
of
him. I’ve never met him, actually,” she responded aloofly.