Dead Man's Thoughts (23 page)

When we finished eating, Winthrop lit a cigarette, ordered more coffee, and continued talking about Parma. “There's even more to the pattern than just the big shots getting off and the small fry getting nailed,” he said. “Like the number of cases where Parma indicted for perjury instead of for substantive crimes, like bribe-taking. Then the cases were tossed by the appellate courts because the perjury was induced by the prosecutor in the Grand Jury. You know the kind of thing.”

“I read about it. Wasn't there a case with a lawyer and a law secretary? In the Bronx?”

He nodded. “That was the biggest, but there were others. It got to be a joke. The Special Prosecutor never indicted for substantive crimes. Just perjury—after he'd trapped the witnesses into lying in the first place. The point being that the public never knew whether or not he had any real evidence of corruption. If he did, it never saw the light of day.”

“That's true,” I agreed. “He never did prove those Bronx lawyers were actually taking bribes.”

“Right. Then there are the bad grand jury charges—little things like forgetting to submit exculpatory evidence or to instruct the grand jurors about the defense evidence.”

I was once again impressed by Winthrop's grasp of legal procedures and technicalities. He must have been coached constantly by lawyers who knew the ins and outs of criminal procedure. Which may have been one reason his rivals on the big dailies hadn't questioned Parma's methods. They didn't know how deviant those methods were from the way things were usually done.

“And Blackwell wasn't the only key witness to fall apart on the stand. Either Parma has had more than his share of bad luck or—”

“Or he's been sabotaging his own operation all along,” I finished. “But what would be in it for Parma? Oh, I know money, but I thought he was so ambitious. He really wants this congressional committee job—would he jeopardize that for ready cash?”

“Maybe he wouldn't have to,” Winthrop replied. “Not if he could cover his tracks well enough. Plus if he protected the biggies, he'd be owed quite a few favors. Which is a good thing for an ambitious man to be owed.”

My mind was wandering. Two pieces of the puzzle were rattling around in my head. I couldn't shake the feeling that they meant something. But what?

Charlie in the pen, begging me to get him protection. “Better than before,” he had said. Where nobody, not nobody, could get to him. Because last time somebody had gotten to him? Somebody supposedly guarding him? Parma himself?

But then why had Charlie told Nathan he had something for the Special Prosecutor? How could even Charlie Blackwell, Master Informer, have informed on Parma
to
Parma? Unless he had never intended to inform. Unless blackmail had been his game. “Get me out of this rap, or I'll tell the world how you fixed the Stone case.” Which gave Parma a terrific motive for murder.

“Earth calling Cassandra,” I heard an amused voice say. I looked up, blushing, to see a smile on Winthrop's face. “My wife tells me I look like that when I'm thinking about a story,” he said.

Story. Should I tell Winthrop my thoughts? What could it hurt, I asked myself. He got it all. Blackwell. Nathan. Paco.

“God, this is something,” he said excitedly. “You think this Blackwell character had the guts to put it to Parma?”

“That's the hard part,” I admitted. “Charlie was so fucking scared. But maybe that's why. He knew he was in over his head this time.”

“Plus I see another problem,” Winthrop continued. “If Parma thought Blackwell was a threat to his federal appointment, why stir things up in the first place by busting him? Why not let sleeping dogs lie?”

“There's only one answer to that,” I said. I started talking fast, aware that I could lose Winthrop completely with this one.

“It explains why Charlie wasn't taken to the World Trade Center, why the yellow card was changed, why Charlie was left so vulnerable. Parma meant to kill him from the beginning.”

T
WENTY
-
SEVEN

H
e was drunk. As usual. He weaved his way down the long corridor toward Part 6, nearly knocking down a pregnant woman, who glared at his tipsy efforts at a courtly apology.

“Not again, Mr. Puckett,” I said, resigned. “Plus you're late. Judge Noonan just issued a bench warrant. We'll have to go in and get it lifted.”

He started to explain. I cut him off. It would be the same old rambling, boozy excuse. I didn't waste time listening to it.

We went inside. Corcoran, the clerk, looked up from his deskful of papers, a derisive smile on his face. When I asked him to recall the case, he said, “So the old rummy finally showed, eh?” His contempt for Puckett would have been more reasonable, I thought, if I hadn't been able to smell Scotch under the heavy mouthwash odor of his own breath.

The D.A. and I approached the bench. Same old story. Hezekiah Puckett was charged with burglary, and burglary was what he was offered. No plea down to trespass. So no deal. Date for trial, the Monday after next.

“Try to get him here sober, Counselor,” Judge Noonan advised. “And if he's late,” he warned, speaking loudly enough for my client to hear, “I'll throw him in jail. That I promise.”

Which wasn't a bad idea, I thought, cynically, turning back to my client. He'd missed the judge's admonition; he was bending all his efforts to standing up. He swayed rather a lot. Puckett in jail, I mused, would be a hell of a lot easier to deal with than Puckett out. He'd be on time, for one thing; he'd be reasonably sober, a thing I'd never seen, and, best of all, he couldn't wander away from the courthouse whenever he felt like it, as he'd done the last time the case was on.

But even with Puckett under control, the case was a loser. He'd been found by the cops on the premises, burglars' tools in his pocket. Burg Three was a lousy offer, but if we couldn't win at trial, not one we could afford to turn down, not with a mandatory jail sentence after conviction for Burglary Two.

“I ain't meant to do no stealin',” was all he would say.

I shrugged. It was his decision, though I'd hoped to spare him the jail time. I wrote his next court date on one of my cards, handed it to him, and made sure he put it in his pocket. I had half a mind to pin it to his coat, the way kindergarten teachers pin notes to their kids. Then I watched his dignified weave back down the corridor toward the elevator.

Next stop, criminal court. I was hoping to get Thomas Boynton's case dismissed. Then I'd beard the D.A. lions in their den on Digna's behalf. Her case wasn't on the calendar, but if I could get a supervisor to agree to a misdemeanor plea for her today, it would be smooth sailing when the case was on.

As I sat in the front row in Jury One, waiting for Boynton's case to be called, I found myself thinking back to my last night with Nathan. “I know I can't save them all,” he had said, “but if I can get one kid into one program.…” It made sense. I couldn't change Digna's life for her, or get her kids back, or stop her being poor. All I could do was keep her out of jail. And if I did that, it would be enough. There was no point in wishing I could do more. I couldn't.

Boynton came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. “When they gonna hear my case?” he asked, for the third time in about fifteen minutes.

“Mr. Boynton,
please
just sit down and wait. There's nothing I can do till they call it, okay?”

“I don't want to be comin'
back
here no more,” he grumbled. “Ain't nothin' but a waste of time.”

While I waited, I thought about Del Parma. Winthrop's
Voice
article had come out early this morning, Wednesday. I'd read it over breakfast. It really blew the lid off, I reflected admiringly. He'd laid out everything he'd told me about the cases botched by the Special Prosecutor's office, and he'd topped it off with what I'd told him about Riordan, Nathan, and Blackwell. He was within the bounds of the libel laws, but just barely. Parma would have some tall explaining to do to the congressional committee.

And to Detective Button, I hoped. The article should at least get Button thinking. Parma's motive to murder Blackwell stood out a mile, and Winthrop had made the link between Charlie's death and Nathan's very clear. So clear even a cop could understand it.

The bridgeman called Boynton's case. Dismissed. I told Boynton so with a smile, but if I was hoping for thanks I didn't get it. “'Bout time,” he muttered, stalking away. “Waste of my fucking
time
.”

Maybe. Maybe not. He'd at least learned how serious his wife was about wanting him to move out and leave her alone. I doubted that anything short of being locked up could have impressed it on him so forcibly. So in a roundabout way, rough justice, Brooklyn-style, had been done. Then why did it leave such a bitter taste in the mouth?

I thought at intervals about Parma throughout the day. A double-agent of crime, playing both sides of the street? So panicked at the thought of what Charlie could do to him that he set the little man up for death, engineering his murder by paid assassins? Maybe with help from court personnel? Somebody, after all, had tampered with Charlie's yellow card. Could Red or Vinnie or even Maria Watson be on Parma's payroll? Or somebody at the Brooklyn House?

As for Nathan's murder, that was easy. If Parma was the killer, he'd learned that Charlie had talked to Nathan because Nathan had called Parma. Personally, as an old friend. But would Nathan call Parma, knowing Parma was the fixer of the Stone case? Maybe out of friendship, to give the man a chance to explain. That would be like Nathan. The only question was how Parma could have known enough to frame Paco. Maybe the same court officer who'd fixed Blackwell's card.…

It was a great theory. There was only one flaw in it. A fatal one. At 4:40
P
.
M
. that afternoon, Del Parma was pushed under a moving subway train. He died instantly.

T
WENTY
-
EIGHT

T
he next day was Paco's sentence date on the misdemeanor. As I waited for Pete Kalisch, I reflected that a lot of water and not a little blood had flowed under the bridge since that night in arraignments when Nathan had told me about his plans to get the kid into a program. I wished to hell he had. Maybe none of it would have happened, or at least not so easily, had there been no Paco to hang the rap on.

Pete came in about five minutes later. He went up to the bridgeman, signed in to have the case called, submitted a notice of appearance, and then asked for the probation report. I could see the bridgeman shrug, then hand the papers to Pete. He brought them back to the first row and let me read over his shoulder.

I read quickly, trying to pick out the items the murderer could have gotten from the report to use against the kid. Like the fact that he was nicknamed “Paco.” That was in the first line. So you didn't have to be his bosom buddy to know that if you wrote him a note it should be addressed to “Paco,” not “Heriberto.” Also the kid's criminal history was outlined. He'd started hustling at school, putting out for the older boys' lunch money. He'd even been the complaining witness in a Family Court petition against one of those older boys. But the charges were dropped when Paco failed to show up in court.

From school, Paco had graduated to the street, showing up primarily in the Village. There was a string of Manhattan Family Court petitions charging him with petty larceny. A watch. A ring. A wallet. All from tricks. Just as he'd said, a little extra payment to take away the shame. He'd been lucky on the cases—ACDs, fines. Apparently the judges hadn't liked the complainants. Chicken hawks don't get much respect in society.

It was all pretty sordid and pretty routine. Until I saw an adult arrest that sickened me. It started out as the usual trick-plus-ripoff bag, but the victim had caught Paco leaving with his gold cigarette case and there had been a struggle. According to the report, Paco had gone berserk and beaten the guy to a pulp. The probation department deplored the violence, but they never did get Paco to explain to them why it had happened. He refused to talk about it.

I was writing it all furiously into my notebook when a voice penetrated my funk of concentration.

“What's going on here? What's the meaning of this?” I looked up to see Di Anci framed in the doorway of the robing room. He was livid, his face distorted with anger, almost spluttering as he went on, “Ms. Jameson, who told you you could look at that report?”

Pete stood up. “I did, Your Honor. Ms. Jameson is consulting with me about the case. Her office represented Mr. Diaz prior to my appointment as counsel.”

Di Anci's voice grew deceptively soft and patient. Anyone who knew him would have known he'd all but passed the bounds of reason. “I don't care, Mr. Kalisch. I don't care what you thought you were doing. The statute is very clear. First of all, I am still the judge in this courtroom and I decide who can see that report. Not,” he glared at the bridgeman, “not the court personnel.”

“But Judge, you told us before—” the bridgeman began. I could have told him to save his breath. Di Anci shouted, “Silence!” at the top of his lungs. Then he turned to me. “Ms. Jameson,” he said in a voice of deadly calm, “I am not going to let this matter drop. I am not only going to take it up with Mr. Jacobs and your bosses at Park Row, but I am going to seriously consider filing a grievance against you with the Bar Association. You have violated the defendant's right to privacy, you have engaged in a serious conflict of interest, and you have violated the Criminal Procedure Law, which gives the right to see this report to defense counsel only. Which you are not. And for the record, I don't believe for one minute what Mr. Kalisch said about your helping him with the sentence. What you were doing, Ms. Jameson, was snooping. Pure and simple. And I won't have it in my courtroom.”