Black Water Transit (44 page)

“Working at what, Mr. Coleman?”

“Call me Flan, Val.”

“At what?” she said with a snap.

“At uncovering a rather distressing conspiracy against an innocent man, a conspiracy that, it pains me
to say, Val, might have been uncovered by your office if you had cared to apply some of the principles of justice so eloquently stated in the motto on that crest behind your desk.
Qui pro domina justitia sequitur
. Do you know what those words mean, Val?”

“Of course I do. ‘Where the power of justice leads.’ ”

“Roughly translated, yes. You catch the gist, at least. You’re familiar with a man named Carmine DaJulia, then?”

Greco did not move at all. Her stillness became obvious to her after it had become obvious to everyone else in the room.

“I am.”

“Yes. I understand he has been the chief informant in this case against Jack Vermillion. Is that right?”

“This information is classified, Mr. Coleman. There are security considerations. The safety of our confidential informants is critical to the operations of the Justice Department.”

“Of course. Well, perhaps we can hasten the proceedings here.… Please don’t leave, Mr. Glazer.”

Glazer had gotten out of his chair and was moving toward the door. Kuhlman and Bern stood rooted in place.

“I wonder if the gentlemen from the ATF here might persuade Mr. Glazer and his associates to linger awhile?”

Glazer paled as two of the ATF agents moved a little closer to him and fixed him with an unblinking stare.

“This is ridiculous.”

“God, don’t blubber, Marty,” said Jack. “Why do they always blubber? Just shut up, okay?”

Flannery gave Jack a hard look.

“These proceedings are a serious matter, Jack. I know you’ve been under a great deal of strain. But there’s no need to be abusive.”

Jack smiled back at him and recrossed his arms.

“Now, we’ve been in the process of obtaining an affidavit from this CI of yours, Carmine DaJulia”—Flannery pronounced it badly, as if he were describing a type of skin disease—“and I have brought along some copies of it for … goodness, I think we have enough for everyone. Excuse me, young fellow, could you …?”

He was holding ten thick typewritten documents bound in sky-blue, with the logo of his law office on the covers. He was asking for help from one of the ATF agents, who hesitated and then took the papers and handed them to Greco, to Glazer, to the rest of the ATF men. Flannery ignored Kuhlman and Bern. Jack had to admire the old bastard. He had turned the ATF men into court clerks and he was the presiding judge. He had taken over the room. It was the kind of thing they couldn’t teach you at Harvard Law. You had to go to Yale.

“Good, thank you. Now, let me give you a précis of the contents of this affidavit, which, as you can see, has been fully witnessed and notarized and which was freely given by Mr. DaJulia without coercion or duress of any kind. If you wish, I have videotapes of the discovery interview in the car.”

Greco was scanning the pages with an expert eye. As she read it, her face was going through some color changes.

“Let’s cut to the chase here … Flan,” she said, packing it with as much ironic detachment as she could muster. Jack figured she was already trying to work out how this could be twisted to make her look good. She was a contender, no doubt of it. Flannery raised his eyebrows in a mock show of concern.

“Cut to the chase? Goodness, Val. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing all this week? Chasing this poor man all over the Eastern Seaboard? Still, if you insist. Mr. DaJulia conveys the information in this affidavit that it was he who planted the stolen vehicles in the container
you found on the
Agawa Canyon
and that it was he who was the source for the cocaine-tainted currency you found.”

“Why the hell would DaJulia do that? What possible benefit could there be in it?”

“You were putting a great deal of pressure on Mr. DaJulia, my dear. You wanted information. You wanted a score. Frank Torinetti was at the top of your list. DaJulia gave you something else. Somebody you were quite happy to destroy. Jack Vermillion.”

“DaJulia gave us information that implicated your client. Nothing we did was outside the canons—”

“I’m not blaming you for being misled by an informant. I’m blaming you for missing a much more interesting issue. You played DaJulia, and he played you. Of the two, DaJulia was the better tactician. You underestimated him, but he had you pegged.”

“This is absurd. Get to the point.”

“I’d be delighted. Mr. DaJulia confirms that he was approached by our Mr. Glazer here a few weeks ago, who explained in some detail to him exactly how it was possible to implicate Mr. Vermillion in drug trafficking and money laundering. Apparently he knew something of Mr. DaJulia’s reputation through mutual friends in the … leisure industry. He also outlined the workings of the RICO laws and the process by which a man’s property might be forfeit under certain carefully defined legal circumstances. Mr. Glazer’s firm had already begun a thorough investigation of Black Water Transit under the guise of offering to do a pension fund reorganization, and they had concluded that Mr. Vermillion’s association with certain individuals who are thought to have connections with the Cosa Nostra provided the perfect background for such an … escapade. You do admit that most law enforcement professionals in the Albany area were privately convinced that Jack Vermillion was—I
love this phrase—mobbed up. I admit to some suspicions myself. So the stain, if you will, was already on the man. All that was required was an ambitious—and gullible—prosecutor, one who had already made a name for herself through a series of extremely aggressive actions against a wide range of businessmen and -women over the last six years. You are known, I am told, around these very offices as the Pirate Queen.”

“This is fucking absurd.”

“Not really, Val. It’s all here. Read it, my dear, and weep.”

“Are you trying to suggest malice here, Mr. Coleman? Because malice is—”

“Hardly malice, Val. I’m suggesting stupidity. Stupidity, pure bull-headed blind-minded stupidity. It causes much more grief in the world than malice. You have to accept this, my dear, if you’re ever going to succeed in Washington. DaJulia’s little game is croquet compared to the games that go on down by the Potomac.”

Greco had nothing to say for a few seconds.

“What about Earl Pike? How does your client explain him?”

“My client doesn’t explain him. He’s your problem. You were already running an operation against my client. You were operating on information provided by Mr. DaJulia. I presume the timing of the … bust … was up to Mr. DaJulia?”

“He … told us that he knew when Mr. Vermillion intended to move these vehicles. He said he’d let us know how and when.”

“So he was in control of that?”

“Yes. In effect.”

“So when Mr. Pike contacted him in connection with a weapons shipment, DaJulia, who knew something of
the man, decided to put him in touch with Jack. It could go either way then. Jack could refuse to ship the container. Or he could agree. If he agreed, DaJulia had someone in Red Hook who could tell him when Pike’s shipment was going. He saw to it that the one you were expecting would go the same day, on the same ship. A weapons shipment would only sweeten the case against Jack.”

“But Vermillion came into our offices. He informed on Pike himself. What did DaJulia expect that to accomplish?”

“He didn’t expect it at all. When Jack informed on Pike, it came as a complete shock to everyone. All of his friends counseled him against it. As did I. Quite vigorously. It shocked you, I suspect. I wonder why you didn’t reconsider your view of the man.”

“I … we suspected some sort of diversion. Besides, we were already committed. The thing was in play.”

“In play? My God, woman.”

“Where is Mr. DaJulia now?”

“In a hospital in Albany. Under a police guard.”

“In a hospital? If this affidavit was the result of any kind of torture, it’s meaningless. Totally worthless.”

“I think Mr. DaJulia will confirm the essentials of this matter. All that is required of your office is to take up the matter and investigate the allegations in a calm and professional manner. As the crest says, where justice leads—that is your job, isn’t it? I suspect you’ll be able to find sufficient corroborative evidence in Mr. Glazer’s background to make a good case for criminal conspiracy. For example, we’ve found out that Mr. Glazer has been the principal liaison officer in three other federally mandated seizure operations. I’ve included the reports with the DaJulia affidavit. Buying businesses at a bargain rate through federal forfeiture operations seems to
be a specialty of the house at Galitzine Sheng and Munro. If you can’t make a case with this sort of help, my dear, you should consider an alternative career.”

Glazer popped a gasket at that point.

“I’m not standing around to listen to this bullshit. You have no right to detain us. I do not have to stand here and be libeled.”

“Slandered,” said Greco. “Libeled is written.”

Flannery shook his head.

“Don’t know. We have put all this in print. You could make a case for it being libel
and
slander.”

“Whatever,” said Glazer. “We’re going.”

He hesitated and then started for the door. Kuhlman and Bern stayed where they were. He turned to look at them.

“Let’s go.”

“You really intend to charge him?” said Kuhlman. “Because if you do, I want a deal. I’m not going down the chute for this prick.”

“Andy!”

“Nor am I,” said Bern. Glazer looked ill.

“You can go, Mr. Glazer. May I suggest a lawyer?” said Greco. “We’ll be in touch. Let him go, Ben. Mr. Kuhlman, Mr. Bern, you two can stay. I’ll speak with you both later. I’d like to clear this room. Mr. Coleman, I’d like a word. Privately.”

“Delighted,” said Flannery. “May Jack leave?”

“Jack Vermillion is still in a great deal of trouble. He slaughtered two guards in Beach Haven and he executed three children in Pennsylvania. Or does he deny that as well?”

“Really, Val, you’re quite the bull terrier, aren’t you? I would think the unfortunate confrontation at Hazleton would be a topic of some … delicacy … around your office, since at the time it happened you had a GPS transponder on the marshals van. It could be argued—
and will be, if you push it—that you are legally culpable for the deaths that ensued. God knows what the fallout would be.”

Two small roses of bright color appeared on Greco’s cheekbones at the same time that her forehead grew slightly more pale. Flannery Coleman took advantage of the pause to turn around and favor Jack with an evil smile.

“Jack, why don’t you go have a smoke?”

“I’d like to stay.”

“Oh God, Jack, what Ms. Greco and I have to do here is something only lawyers should have to witness. Dear lad, please go.”

Jack went.

The sun had gone down in glory behind the towers and pillars of Manhattan, turning the sky a brilliant fiery amber shot through with streaks of shell-pink and sea-green. The lights had come on all over Manhattan and Earl Pike had sat in jeans and a soft plaid shirt and savored every golden moment of it in the living room of his suite with a CD of African drums playing softly. The insistent rhythms of the drums seemed to catch something of the spirit of the place. He had been to many cities in the world, and he had seen many terrible and wonderful things, but nothing to lift the heart and ease the soul like a sunset in New York. He looked at his glass of wine and moved the crystal, swirling the liquid around the sides of the glass. He inhaled the scent of it,
oak and black cherry. He needed another and walked barefoot across the thick emerald-green carpet to pour one from a bottle standing on the rosewood sideboard. It had been a good day. One of his best.

He had been particularly moved by the television coverage of the police funeral held today at Saint John the Divine, the massed blue ranks in solemn files, the wind that stirred the snapping flags, the melancholy beauty of the Last Post played by a trumpeter who knew what he was about. The scene had touched him deeply as a military man, and he remembered the many, the too many, times he had stood at stiff attention on some windswept hillside, or in a jungle clearing, or on the flat plains of the Middle East with a chain of low saw-toothed mountains in the blue distance and watched through tears as another soldier was placed into the care of the earth, the great receiver, the last certain refuge from a violent world.

He had looked for a familiar face, the black policewoman and the club fighter, Nicky Cicero, but there were too many for that. It didn’t matter. He had played his role in a greater mystery, and he knew that in some way he had taken part in the sacrifice of a brave man. He had not hated many of the men he had killed in all these years, and least of all the policemen he had killed in the last few days. They were men and women in the service of a corrupt empire, but he himself had lived and—in a way—died in the same service. All dead soldiers are brothers, he had thought, and even the enemy is purified by dying on the field of battle. When the piper had played “Amazing Grace” in the whistling silence of the graveyard in Brooklyn as the policeman’s coffin was being lowered into the open grave, Pike had felt the terrible beauty of the moment as much as any man or woman there. It was a searing feeling, and it did not pass for several hours, not until he saw the newscast at six. It
confirmed all his beliefs about the political system in America. And it was amusing as hell.

Jack Vermillion had come in from the cold—that was the way the Channel Seven anchor had put it—and as the details of Jack’s return were described—the plea bargain, the acceptance of two years in prison—he’d serve six months at best—in return for a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter in the case of three dead boys in Hazleton, and the return of his assets under a sealed agreement with the United States attorney’s office—all of these gambits confirmed Pike’s belief that there was no real honor in the justice system, only the cynical calculus of a predatory state and the struggle of the individual to preserve some measure of dignity inside what was in reality a prison that stretched from sea to shining sea.