The Defense: A Novel (16 page)
Tony’s statement focused on his cousin Mario and his animosity with Volchek. It started well, talking about Mario’s time in juvie, then his graduation to federal lock up, Mario turning over a new leaf, Mario having a long-running disagreement with Volchek over a debt, then Tony’s recollection of the nightclub altercation with Volchek. This could be the same argument that had been independently witnessed by Nikki Blundell. Tony’s statement was bad for Volchek. It helped set up more of a motive. It established a timeline to the murder, and it corroborated Nikki Blundell’s story. Not good.
I ran through the witness list again.
The IO could be a big problem, but his evidence wasn’t too controversial. The female cop who had arrested Little Benny at the scene wasn’t giving evidence because it didn’t establish anything toward Volchek’s guilt.
The nightclub girl I could deal with.
The vic’s family member—he was trouble. Miriam probably had an ace in Tony Geraldo. Something I hadn’t seen yet.
Then there was the last witness—the star man, Witness X. The anonymous moniker served only to protect whatever new identity he would be given from being discovered by the press. Volchek knew, as sure as he knew his own face, the identity of the man who’d betrayed him.
Tony Geraldo and Little Benny sank Volchek. Both of them were devastating. I felt sure I had enough to cause problems for the prosecution, enough to keep Volchek occupied so he wouldn’t worry about me.
If Tony G was Tony Geraldo, then I’d found my leverage.
I turned slightly in my chair. Arturas and Volchek were whispering. I made a soft noise and moved a little. Volchek saw me. He closed the door separating my judge’s room from his reception room. He wanted privacy and didn’t want me trying to listen in on the conversation. I couldn’t hear a thing, but I wanted him to see me listening so he would close the door. I could then watch them unobserved.
Below the handle on the old, paneled oak door, I saw a keyhole.
I looked through it, but the key must have been in the lock. The key narrowed my vision even further. I could just about make out Volchek talking to Victor. Volchek turned and embraced Arturas, then left. Arturas sat down and struck up a conversation in Russian with Victor. I had some privacy now. Kneeling down, I felt the bomb components jabbing into my side. I’d almost forgotten the damn thing was there.
I reached into my coat pocket and took out the wallet that I’d lifted from the big guy who’d put my lights out in the limo. Inside the leather foldable, I found around six hundred dollars in loose hundred-dollar bills, together with two brass money clips holding a thousand dollars each, again, in hundred-dollar bills. Among the credit cards for “Gregor Oblowskon,” I found something that took my mind into a blizzard of questions: a business card with a telephone number scrawled on the back. The number was written in blue ink. A cell phone number. I couldn’t find a name on the card, but it was the printing on the card itself that worried me the most. The card gave the address and the title of an organization. I didn’t need to read the name of the organization; the address—“26 Federal Plaza, 23rd Floor, New York, NY”—was well known to me. It’s on Broadway, south of Canal Street, north of City Hall, and home to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I knew then I could trust no one, not cops and certainly not the feds.
My watch chimed—eight o’clock. Amy’s watch would be chiming, too. Our time. I couldn’t let myself think of her. I had to stay sharp, focused, and angry. Sending myself crazy with worry wouldn’t help my daughter.
Five hours to get to Harry before he began court duty. There was only one way I could get to his office without the Russians knowing, and the thought of it terrified me.
I heard a footstep outside the door and plunged the wallet back into my pocket, sat on my chair, lifted one of the open files, and buried my head in it.
The door opened and Arturas stood over me. He tossed a bottle of water into the corner.
“Olek has gone home for the night, so I’m locking you in here. Victor and I need some rest. You get some sleep, too. If you try to escape…”
“Where am I going to go?” I said. “Can’t I at least take the jacket off?”
“No. Try to get some sleep anyway. I’ll be back to check on you at daybreak.”
“Please.” I stood and grabbed his right forearm and gave him a pleading look. He began to pull away, and I turned, quickly, catching his retreating body with my hip. As he fell, my right hand moved swiftly into his coat—my second pocket dip of the day. He landed on his ass and swore. Digging his heels beneath his thighs, he sprang up at me. I kept hold of his wrist and pulled him back up.
“Jesus. I’m so sorry, man. It was an accident,” I said. I put my hands up defensively. My hands open, palms toward Arturas with my fingers splayed, cradling my prize in the fold of my right wrist, in between the back of my hand and my forearm. A tricky hide, but I’d practiced it for years. I could hide a silver dollar in the crook of my wrist unobserved and still play a round of poker. I pretended to look scared—when really my limbs were tense with anger. Arturas feigned a right hook. I flinched and exaggerated it. He smiled and closed the door. Victor let out a big laugh from the next room.
“Pussy,” said Victor.
I listened to the key turning in the lock, gave it a few seconds, then snapped the back of my wrist toward the ceiling, sending the little black device tumbling into the air. Catching the detonator in my right hand, I wondered how long I had before Arturas discovered it was missing. I needed the detonator. I didn’t want Arturas triggering the device if he just happened to open the door and find me gone. I was going to see Harry, and I needed to bring the bomb with me because if any man knew how to disable it, it was Superior Judge and former Captain, United States Army, Harry Ford.
Before I did anything, I had to be sure my babysitters wouldn’t come looking for me anytime soon. Volchek had already left. I heard a whispered conversation, then the door to the hall opening and footsteps walking toward the elevator. The door to the corridor closed. I heard the rattle of keys locking it, and through the keyhole I saw Victor lie down on the couch and close his eyes. Arturas had just left.
Victor was on his own.
I watched Victor carefully for a little over an hour. I could hear him breathing heavily as he lay on the couch. His eyes were closed, and his hands rested on his stomach. Apart from a small lamp, the only light in my room came from digital billboards across the street. Rhythmic dances of red, blue, and white slipped in and out of the room every few seconds and threw strangely shaped creatures around the walls.
I thought I could hear Victor snoring again, louder than before.
Turning over the FBI card in my fingers, I thought about my conversation with Volchek that morning in the limo.
Benny is well protected and well hidden. Even my contacts can’t find him.
The phrase “my contacts” made sense to me now.
Volchek had a rogue FBI agent in his pocket, someone on the inside. And whoever that agent was, he couldn’t locate Benny. I couldn’t trust anyone. If the mob could buy a federal agent, they could buy a hundred New York cops. Peering through the keyhole again, I made sure Victor remained asleep on the couch. It didn’t look like Arturas would return tonight; he said he would come get me in the morning. I put my coat on.
It was 9:10 p.m.
Time to escape.
I moved quietly to the sash window. The windowpane misted with my breath as I opened the latch locking the lower pane. I put my hands on the frame, shifted my body underneath, and pushed.
The window didn’t move.
Not even an inch.
I checked and made sure all latches and locks were open. I tried again. It didn’t budge. The poor light didn’t help, so I felt around the frame with my fingertips. I couldn’t feel the join. The window must have been painted shut about twenty years ago, and nobody had dared open it since. Patting my pockets, I listened for the jingle of my keys and heard nothing. I was going to use the sharp edge of my key to cut the paint. Checking my pockets, I realized my keys were gone. At that moment I didn’t know if I’d dropped the keys somewhere or if Arturas had taken them, but I didn’t have time to think about it. Instead I took out my pen and ran the point around the frame. When it had run its course, a ball of hard paint covered the tip, and dried, rubbery ribbons of the stuff fell around the window ledge like streamers.
I got up onto the large windowsill and started to push. It was noisy. I couldn’t help it. A tearing, cracking sound came from the paint, and a dry, satisfying groan escaped from the frame as it separated from its mate and the window opened to a cacophony of traffic, music, and the hum of New York City. It had stopped raining. Night court was in full swing, and I could see, below me, a line of taxis stretching from my side of the building and then turning right toward the front entrance. Monday nights can be slow, but there’s always business around the arraignment court. Anybody who posts bail after nine invariably needs a ride.
I closed the window a little to drown out the worst of the noise. I didn’t want Victor to hear. Hunkering down on the balls of my feet, I took four steps sideways and began edging myself out onto the ledge, tucking my head into my chest to get below the windowpane. My head came up on the outside of the window, and my eyes shut of their own volition. I forced my eyes open and then immediately regretted it. I knelt on a three-foot-wide ledge, nineteen floors up. An old stink came off the thick green moss and the ancient bird droppings that covered the masonry. It felt slippery. To my right—a dead end: an impassable outcrop for the elevator. Left was my only option. I had to move down a floor, get to the right window, and just hope Harry remained a creature of habit.
Closing my eyes again, I pictured an internal map of the building and tried to plot a route from the outside. The courthouse stood alone, surrounded on the south and west sides by a small park. I stood on the east side of the building. Below me was Little Portland Street, which led to Chambers Street and the front entrance of the courthouse at the north side of the building. Harry’s room was on this side of the building, the east side, but not on this floor, and there was an even bigger problem. There was something on this side of the building that blocked my way; something that was probably around thirty feet tall. The top third of the obstacle came onto my level. The head, the arms, the sword—they would be difficult to get around, but not impossible.
Before I got to my destination, I had to climb down the gray lady.
Slowly, both hands gripping either side of the brick slab window arch, I levered myself to a standing position and started freaking out. I’d always experienced the same weird sensation with heights; didn’t matter if I was fifty or five hundred feet from the ground, it always felt worse when my head was close to a ceiling. If I was ten feet off the ground on a balcony where I could see a ceiling in my horizon view, I would freak. Give me a limitless sky and I’d be fine. I could never work out why.
Standing in the arch, my head inches from the roof of the granite recess, I felt like I was about to lose it. I clung to the wall, my fingernails biting and breaking for grip as I fought for air. The piercing cold wasn’t helping, and the wind whipped my coat around me. Every breath felt fierce. The car horns and engines, bus air brakes and cab doors closing beneath me were a constant reminder that life existed nineteen floors below me and that I was nowhere close to being safe.
I blew out all my disabling nerves in a series of quick exhalations and took a step forward. Even as I did it, my brain screamed at me—
What the hell are you doing?
I didn’t care. I held to an image of Amy in my mind’s eye,
my
image of
my
Amy, her hair in my hand as she blew out all those birthday candles before we compared our new watches. The ledge narrowed beyond the window’s recess. It was maybe two and a half feet wide. I stared with amazement at my right foot as it moved forward and steadied, ready for my left to join it.
I’d never tried to hold on to something with my face before. I hugged the side of the building as my left foot shimmied farther and my fingers began shaking from the death grip on the brickwork gaps. I moved again.
Ten minutes later, I stood five feet from the Lady.
The Lady was familiar. Most people would recognize her figure. A woman blindfolded, wrapped in a toga, sword in one hand and scales in the other. Both arms raised parallel to the floor, balancing mercy with retribution just as she balances her hands. She is blindfolded to symbolize her indifference, her blindness, to race, color, or creed.
Yeah, right.
The Lady is known as Justitia: a bastardized version of Greek and Roman gods of justice. She’s not always blindfolded. The Lady that sits on top of the Old Bailey in London wears no blindfold. Scholars say the blindfold is superfluous because the figure is female and therefore must be impartial. They obviously never tried a case in front of Judge Pike.
My feet shuffled forward again, but almost imperceptibly this time. It felt agonizingly slow. My brows furrowed, and I felt a quickening heat in my brain and chest.
Welcome anger; welcome fresh adrenaline.
The rush took me another two feet, and I stretched out a hand to grasp the sword hilt. I wasn’t able to reach it. I couldn’t move any farther—no more ledge. Everything in my mind and body screamed at me to hold on to the wall, but I had to reach for the sword, for Amy. My right foot took my weight, and I raised my other foot for balance.
A dull, rumbling crack came from beneath me. My weight shifted, dropped, and I jumped.
My right hand caught the sword. My left slipped over her arm and I swung my legs onto the granite folds of the toga, both feet scrambling wildly for purchase.
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” I repeated.