Blood of My Brother (11 page)

“The numbers don’t lie.”

“What did Al say to that?”

“He said he’d think about reopening the case, but that was two months ago.”

“Why did she wait so long to tell you?”

“She knew how I felt about the case. She was afraid I would do something rash.”

Frank could see that Jay was having trouble covering up his astonishment at hearing him mention Lorrie Cohen, the Essex County Medical Examiner, who Frank had been having an extramarital affair with for the past five years. He assumed that people knew of the affair, but he had never mentioned Lorrie to his friends. This was as close as he had ever come to acknowledging the relationship.

“Maybe Garland is working the case secretly,” Jay said.

“I don’t think so,” Frank answered. “Ralph Greco just got back from a two week trip to Italy.”

“We could call Linda Marshall.”

“We can’t. It would lead back to Lorrie. She’d lose her job, her pension.”

“That leaves the FBI.”

“Right.”

“I could call Agent Markey,” said Jay. “I’ve got the letters. It’s my civic duty.”

“You just told Al Garland you’d go through him.”

“Fuck Al Garland.”

“If you say so.”

“There’s one more thing.”

“What?”

Frank listened carefully as Jay told him about Herman Santaria, the bogus subpoena he had served, and the high-powered, almost menacing response it had drawn.

“Jesus,” Frank said when Jay was finished.

“Maybe Angelo Perna can get a line on Santaria,” said Jay.

“And get himself killed for asking.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am,” Frank replied. “Why didn’t you tell me about this Santaria character sooner?”

“I did it on a whim,” said Jay. “I didn’t expect any response at all.”

“The response could have been a bullet to your head.”

“Fuck.”

“Stop with the whims. We’re not playing chess here.”

“What’s got into you?”

“Jay, let me give you my take on this. I’ve been thinking about it hard since I read Linda’s story. Powers’s career is not
what it appears to be. Let’s say he acquires some nasty partners along the way. Let’s say he starts stealing from them, or they think he does, which amounts to the same thing. They behead his wife, while he watches, but he doesn’t tell them what they want to hear, like
where’s our money?
So they kill him, which they would have done, anyway. Donna Kelly, who he’s probably fucking, is holding some of the stolen loot. She hires Danny to help her get away with it, but somehow Danny’s caught and killed. She gets away, which looks suspicious to me, like maybe she set Danny up.

“Now you tell me about the Santaria family. Isn’t that what Parker said, ‘the Santaria family’? Not, ‘Herman Santaria’ ; ‘the
Santaria family
.’ That sounds mafialike to me. They’re probably big-time drug dealers in Mexico and Central America. They’re Powers’s nasty
partners
. But he fucks them, and they kill him, and Danny gets caught in the crossfire, the poor bastard. So this is who you, bright young guy that you are,
serve a subpoena on
. You’re lucky, Jay. They think you’re ignorant, that you’re just looking for records in some dumb-ass lawsuit in New Jersey. If they thought otherwise, they wouldn’t have been so polite about the way they threatened you. If you surface again, they’ll put two and two together, and they’ll come after you.”

“I
have
surfaced again,” Jay said. “I was on page three of the
Ledger
today, talking about two Mexicans caught in Danny’s apartment.”

“Do you have someplace you can stay for a few nights?”

“I’m staying in my own house.”

“Well then stay off the booze, and the Valium, or whatever it is you’re taking. You need to be alert.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s pretty obvious, Jay.”

It had also been obvious to Frank that Jay had been
avoiding him, which ordinarily would have been acceptable, as it was his view that most of what the world called suffering was not suffering at all but just life, and was best dealt with alone and in silence. He had stepped out of character in his attempts to
be there
—a phrase he hated—for Jay, which for the most part meant a night of drinking and passing out, but even he, with a terrible marriage and no kids, had Lorrie. Jay had no one.

“What about Santaria?” Jay asked.

“I’ll take care of it.”

“How?”

“Dick Mahoney owes me a favor. His wiseguy friends will tell us who Santaria is.”

“What are we doing, Frank?”

“
We’re
not doing anything.
You’re
going back to your law practice, and your life. I’m going to get to the bottom of this, and then I’m going to shove it up Al Garland’s ass.”

“What does Angelo Perna say?” Jay asked.

“Perna doesn’t smell any rats.”

“In Miami. But you do here.”

“All over the place.”

“That’s not unusual for you.”

“They’re coming out of the woodwork.”

“So you’ll talk to Mahoney?”

“Yes. He’s at the bar right now, with Bob Flynn. He must have slipped in while I was unnecessarily listening to you. When’s the last time
you
spoke to him?”

“Five years ago.”

“How do you manage that?”

“We avoid each other.”

“I hear he’s doing well, for a rat-bastard.”

“I’m not surprised.”

On his way into work the next morning, Jay stopped at his bank and put the originals of Kate Powers’s letters in his safe-deposit box. The day before he had made copies for Linda Marshall, who had stopped by to pick them up, and who had repeated her promise to keep them off the record until she heard otherwise from Jay.

At the office, Jay called the FBI in Newark and asked to speak with Agent Chris Markey. He was run around a bit, but eventually spoke with Agent Phil Gatti. Jay told Gatti that he had information concerning the Del Colliano investigation in Florida and the Powers investigation in Jersey. Gatti, irritated at Jay’s refusal to speak with anyone except Markey, took Jay’s name and number, but did not say whether Markey, or anyone else, would get back to him.

That afternoon Jay was working at his desk when Cheryl came into his office to tell him that an Agent Chris Markey of the FBI was in the waiting room and wondered if he could have a word with him. Markey, blue-suited, trim, a flinty fiftyish, took one of the two client chairs facing Jay’s desk after Cheryl showed him in and he and Jay had shaken hands. Jay sat back in his swivel chair, but before he did he looked out of the window behind him and saw that the
afternoon sky was darkening and that snow was beginning to fall.

There were no preliminaries.

“How’s your ex-partner, Dick Mahoney, doing?” asked Markey. “Still representing the boys?”

“You’d know more about that than I would,” was Jay’s answer.

“You represented Kate Powers, I take it,” said Markey. “And now the daughters.”

“Right.” Jay did not feel he needed to mention that he had called Melissa and Marcy the day before and asked them to get a new lawyer. They were model clients and they had promptly paid their first bill—six thousand dollars and change—but his conspiracy with Linda Marshall could be damaging to Bryce Powers’s reputation—now hanging by a thread—and, more significantly, it could jeopardize the assets of the Powers estate, assets that would ultimately belong to the girls. In other words he was now working against the interests of his own clients, a very bad thing for a lawyer to do, hence his quick decision and call yesterday.

“How are they doing, the daughters?” Markey asked.

“Do you know them?”

“No,” Markey replied, “but I know of them.”

“They’re doing okay.”

“We’ve been sent a copy of the lawsuit against them.”

“I’m not surprised.”

The lawyer representing Plaza I and II had threatened several times to file criminal complaints against Marcy and Melissa—their phony maintenance contracts were in fact vehicles for stealing money from the partners—unless Jay acted to settle the civil case quickly. The girls indeed had no viable defense, and Jay had recommended they settle, but, head-strong,
greedy, and thinking themselves clever, they had insisted on letting the case play itself out.

“He just wants you to collect his clients’ money for him,” Jay said. “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Jay did not respond. Markey’s tone of voice was disdainful. It reminded Jay of Frank Dunn, but without the humanizing touches of alcoholism and illicit sex. He wondered if Markey knew about his affair with Melissa Powers, and was certain, if he did know, of the judgments he would make. Human weakness, according to his friend Francis X. Dunn, was a euphemism for old-fashioned sin. What were Markey’s weaknesses? What sins was he concealing beneath the tough-guy, sneering facade he was showing Jay?

“So what is it you wanted to tell me?” Markey asked.

“What’s the status of your investigation?” Jay replied.

“What investigation are you talking about?”

“Dan Del Colliano.”

“What was his relation to you?”

“We were good friends.”

“Did you know he was six months behind in his child support?”

Jay took his time answering. In ten minutes, Markey had made three implied threats: one, by referring to Dick Mahoney, he let it be known that he could reach into Jay’s past and stir up trouble if necessary; two, although Jay knew that the Powers girls could have criminal problems, a
federal
prosecution was a surprise. His very unprofessional link to Melissa Powers would be something that the United States Attorney’s Office in Newark would not hesitate to use to its advantage if it could; and three, by mentioning Danny’s child support problems Markey was saying, in effect, that he could smear Danny publicly if he had to.

“Dan took care of his kids,” Jay finally said.

Markey did not reply. He got up and walked to the wall to his right, and looked at a framed picture hanging there: a line drawing of Jay catching a pass, done by an artist for the
Newark Star-Ledger
in 1979, when Jay had been named New Jersey schoolboy football player of the year by the paper.

“We have something in common, Jay,” said Markey, turning toward him.

“What’s that?” said Jay.

“My daughter died in a plane crash two years ago. She was seventeen. I’d hate for us to be adversaries.”

A pause followed this statement, in which Jay could feel the quickening of his heartbeat. Nothing he had ever been able to do or say or think had succeeded in preventing the visual of his parents’ last moments from appearing unbidden, and often unprovoked, in his mind. This time of course it had been provoked and, it seemed, provoked deliberately.

“Why should we be adversaries?” Jay asked, looking Markey squarely in the eye, keeping his voice steady.

“What is it you want to tell me?”

“First I need to know the status of the investigation.”

“How did you get my name?”

“I got it from Bill Davis.”

“I don’t know a Bill Davis.”

“I talked to the guy. He described you. He says you were in his apartment.”

“I read that in the paper, but it’s not true. If you want, we can call Davis now, and he can confirm that he was mistaken.”

“Look, Agent Markey,” said Jay, “I’m sure you have your reasons for denying your involvement, but I’m not asking for any information that might be confidential. I just want to
know if your office is investigating Danny’s murder. I think I’m entitled to know that.”

“First I have to have your information.”

Jay said nothing.

“It’s not a good idea for a private citizen to pursue a murder investigation,” Markey continued.

“Is that my civics lesson for today?”

“It could lead to a federal prosecution.”

“That’s refreshing,” said Jay. “An explicit threat.”

Before leaving, Markey presented Jay with a search warrant for the
Powers v. Powers
file, which Jay handed to him without a fuss. He had a copy of the entire file at home, and Kate Powers’s letters he would give to Markey when he felt like it, if ever.

When Markey left, Cheryl buzzed Jay to tell him that a Fran Kaplan had called—identifying herself as Melissa and Marcy Powers’s new lawyer—and asked that Jay call her. Jay looked Kaplan up in his Lawyer’s Diary, a directory listing all of the attorneys practicing in New Jersey, and saw that she was with Chandler and Roth, one of the state’s handful of three-hundred-plus-lawyer megafirms. He went through the switchboard, her secretary, and her paralegal before being allowed to speak to her.

“Mr. Cassio,” Kaplan said, “thank you for returning my call. I was retained this morning by Marcy and Melissa Powers.”

“Good. I’m sure they’ll be in good hands. You want my file, I take it?”

“Yes. Can I send somebody to pick it up this afternoon?”

“Tomorrow morning would be better. I need to copy it, and do a final bill.”

“Fine. Can I ask a couple of questions?”

“Sure.”

“Can you tell me your reasons for not wanting to handle the case any longer?”

Kaplan’s tone had been cool but civil, but now Jay
detected a change in her attitude, as if she expected a confrontation.

“A good friend of mine was killed,” Jay said, “while working for a woman who claimed to be connected to Bryce Powers.”

“Right, I read about that in the paper. How is that a conflict for you?”

“I explained all this to Melissa and Marcy.”

“They’re confused, so I’d appreciate it if you’d explain it to me.”