"Someone spotted you? And how did you end up realizing that?" the young prosecutor pressed.
"'Cause later that night, around seven, the cops came to my house. I wasn't there, but my wife and kids were. They asked to see her car."
"Her car?" The prosecutor looked confused. "Why would they ask to see your wife's car, Mr. Machia?" It was clear Goldenberger knew the answer but was adroitly leading the whole courtroom there.
"Apparently, the plates the neighbor had picked up as we drove away were registered to her."
There was an audible gasp throughout the courtroom.
"Your wife, Mr. Machia? You previously told us Steven Mannarino was supposed to steal plates for the hit."
"I guess he did." Machia scratched his head. "From my house."
Andie glanced toward O'Flynn, down the row. They both double-blinked, as if making sure they had heard right.
Chapter 16
JOEL GOLDENBERGER'S EYES were wide. "This is your best pal, Mr. Machia. You're telling me he stole the plates for this hit from you?"
"I said we had known each other since we were kids, Mr. Goldenberger. He was my oldest, not my best, friend, and he wasn't the smartest guy."
Snickers of disbelief erupted. Andie glanced up and could see Judge Seiderman hiding a smile again. Finally, when the courtroom calmed down, the prosecutor shook his head. "So, Mr. Machia, go on."
"After my wife called me, I called Stevie up and said, 'Stevie, what are you, fucking nuts?' Sorry, Your Honor. Anyway, what he told me was that his mom had found the stolen plates and threw them out and he'd panicked. He only lived down the block, so he knew our place like his own. I guess he found my wife's plates in a box on the side of our house and figured, who would ever know?"
There was a stunned silence for a few seconds-- the sound of total disbelief. Then the prosecutor continued. "So what happened when the cops came to your house?"
"My wife told them someone must've jumped the fence and stolen them."
"Your wife's a pretty quick thinker, Mr. Machia."
"Yeah, and she was pretty damn pissed, too." He shook his head and smiled.
This time, no one could hold back. Andie figured everyone had the same image: the gangster's wife coming after him with a frying pan. She put a hand over her face and averted her eyes. She caught a glimpse of Cavello. He was smiling, too.
"And so the cops were satisfied with that explanation? That someone else must've taken the plates?"
"I don't know if you would call it satisfied. I had a record. It wasn't exactly hard to pin me as someone who hung around the family."
"This couldn't have gone over very well with Ralphie D."
"I would call that an understatement, Mr. Goldenberger. Everybody was pissed as hell. I met up with Stevie later that night, and he was saying stuff like ‘I know I screwed up, but if something comes from this, I'm not going alone.' Crazy stuff. Stuff he knew better than to say. He was just worked up."
"And how did you respond?" the prosecutor asked.
"I kept saying, ‘Christ, Stevie, you can't say things like that. People are gonna hear.' But he was nervous. He knew he screwed up. I never saw Stevie act like that."
"So what did you do?"
"Me? Truth was, Mr. Goldenberger, I had my own situation to worry about. I told Ralphie, don't listen to the guy. He won't do anything stupid. He's just freaked out, that's all."
"You told Ralphie about Stevie?"
"I had to, Mr. Goldenberger. If he got nabbed and started to talk, he could bring us all down. But I needed to get myself an alibi, too. I had this knee thing in those days. I needed surgery. So I went right into Kings County Hospital up to this doctor I knew, that we knew --he owed us some money-- and I told him, you cut me open right now and the tab is clean. But I need the records to say I've been in here since this morning."
"Let me get this straight, Mr. Machia. You got a doctor to falsely admit you into a hospital to provide an alibi for killing Samuel Greenblatt?"
"Yes."
"And he agreed?"
"Well, I had a gun to his head, Mr. Goldenberger."
Andie couldn't believe it. The laughter got wild.
"So, getting back to Stevie Mannarino, Mr. Machia, your lifelong pal." The prosecutor took a few steps toward the witness. "You told Ralphie D. you would cover for him. What'd Ralphie say?"
"He said not to worry. He'd talk it over with the Boss. He said they'd get him somewhere where he could lie low for a while, 'til it all blew over. He told me just to focus on myself, get better. I was in this leg brace. Truth was, I was a little nervous I was never coming out of that hospital myself, if you know what I mean."
"So what happened?" Goldenberger went over and picked up Steven Mannarino's picture. He held it there for the jury to fix on. "Tell the court, Mr. Machia, what became of your pal?"
"I don't know." Louis Machia shrugged. He reached for the water bottle and cleared his throat. "I never saw Stevie again."
Chapter 17
IT WAS ALMOST FOUR. Judge Seiderman looked around the courtroom. She stopped the questioning. "Mr. Goldenberger, I think that's a good spot to leave off for today."
She cautioned the jury not to discuss the case or read the papers. Then they all filed back into the jury room. A few of them hurried off for trains, saying hasty good-byes.
Andie packed up her bag and put on her sweater. "See you tomorrow, everyone. I have to pick up my kid. Anyone taking the IRT?"
A woman named Jennifer said she was, and together they hurried over to Chambers Street
and hopped the Broadway number 1 uptown. Jennifer, who sold advertising in the city, got off at 79th, and Andie continued on uptown, to the walk-up brownstone on West 183rd Street
overlooking the George Washington Bridge, where she and Jarrod had lived for the past four years.
Andie got out at the 181st Street
station and walked down a couple of blocks to 178th to pick up Jarrod at Sandra's. Sandra's son, Eddie, was in Jarrod's fourth-grade class at Elementary School 115.
"Hey, Ms. Law and Order, " Sandra said, laughing as she opened the door. "You get a part?"
"I got a sentence." Andie rolled her eyes. "Eight weeks."
"Yikes!" Sandra exclaimed. "I got 'em to do their homework, at least part of it. They're in Edward's room. Playing Desert Ambush." The two women stuck their heads in.
"Mom," Jarrod crowed, "check it out. We're on level six."
"Well, I'm afraid we're going to have to level six it out of here. Mom's beat."
Out on Broadway, she and Jarrod headed back to their apartment. Dinner was in their future, and she didn't feel like cooking.
"So, what are we up for, mister? Nachos? Deli? I got forty bucks from the U.S. government that says dinner's on me."
"They gave you forty bucks?" Jarrod seemed impressed. "So, what's the trial about, Mom? Anything cool?"
"I shouldn't say, but it's about this Mafia guy. We heard these lawyers talk. Just like on Law and Order. And I got to meet the judge. In her office."
Jarrod came to a stop just in front of their building. He cried out, "Mom!"
Their car was parked on the street, a ten-year-old orange Volvo wagon. Sluggo, they called it, because it didn't go very fast and looked like it had taken quite a few punches. They kept it on the street. The local cops always cut them slack.
Someone had smashed the entire front windshield in.
"Oh my God," Andie gasped. She hurried up to the station wagon in disbelief.
Shards of splintered glass were all over the pavement. Who would do such a thing? She'd kept it on the street for years. Everyone on the block knew it. Nothing like this had ever happened. She placed a hand on Jarrod's shoulder.
Then Andie felt a knot tighten in the pit of her stomach. She thought of Cavello sitting there in the courtroom with his calm, indifferent stare. Like he had it all under control. And the stories Louis Machia had told. He had murdered for Cavello. Something like this was child's p
lay to the mob, wasn't it?
"Mom, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, Jarrod." She pulled him close.
But he didn't believe her any more than she believed herself. All they would have to do is follow you home.
Maybe they had.
Chapter 18
RICHARD NORDESHENKO HAD a very good plan, which was why he was sitting in a fashionable bistro on the upper East Side, watching an attractive, middle-aged woman from the relative safety of the bar.
There were three others with the woman at her table, talking and laughing. The place was jammed with an affluent, successful-looking crowd. The two men with her wore nicely tailored suits, expensive dress shirts, gold cuff links. She seemed to know the other woman in her party quite well. The conversation was lively, familiar. The wine flowed. How nice for all of them.
Nordeshenko had followed the woman home from court that day. To her lovely town house in Murray Hill. After she went inside, he stopped on the street directly in front of the red wooden door. No guards. That's how they did things here. And the lock was a Weiser; it would be no problem. He saw the wires from a security system connected to the phone line. That was no problem, either.
"Mr. Kaminsky." The pretty hostess at the restaurant stepped up to him and smiled. "Your table is ready now."
She seated him precisely where he had requested: at the adjoining table to the woman he had followed. It didn't bother him to be so close. She wouldn't know him; she would never see his face again. He had done this kind of thing countless times.
In the beginning, it was the Spetsnaz Brigade, special forces, in Chechnya. There he had learned how to kill with precision and without any remorse. His first real job had been a local bureaucrat in Grozny who had stolen several pensions. A real pig. Some of the victims had approached him to get even, and they paid him a sum he would not have earned in six months of waiting around to get blown up by the Chechen rebels. He was ridding the world of filthy scum. He could easily justify that. So he killed the bureaucrat with a firebomb placed in his speedboat.
Next, it was a policeman in Tashkent who was blackmailing prostitutes. He'd gotten a royal fee for that. Then a mobster in Moscow. A real big shot; impossible to get close to. He'd had to detonate an entire building, but it was just part of the job.
Then he started offering his services to whoever would pay his price. It was the time of perestroika, capitalism. And he was just a businessman. He'd hit the big time.
He stared at the fashionable woman again. Too bad. She seemed successful, and even likable. He knew exactly how it would go from here. It would begin with something small. A message, something that would fester in her mind. Soon, she'd be shitting bricks.
There would be no trial.
The woman shifted in her chair, and a blue cashmere sweater draped over the back fell onto the floor.
A waiter moved in, but Nordeshenko beat him to it. He reached down and picked it up.
"Thank you so much." The woman smiled warmly at him. Their eyes met. Nordeshenko made no move to avoid them. In a different world, she was probably someone to admire and respect. But this was his world now.
He handed back the beautiful sweater. "My pleasure." He nodded slightly in return.
And it was. He had looked into the eyes of many of his victims before he acted.
Your life is about to become hell, Miriam Seiderman.
Chapter 19
"MR. MACHIA, MY NAME is Hy Kaskel," the Eyebrow said as he stepped away from his chair the following morning. "I'm going to be asking you some questions on behalf of my client, Mr. Dominic Cavello."
Andie DeGrasse opened her notepad to a new page, sketching in a caricature of the defense attorney, his eyebrows flashing. She had decided to keep what had happened yesterday afternoon to herself. What could she prove? At this point she didn't want another scene with Sharon Ann about "poisoning the jury."
"I'm familiar with your client, Mr. Kaskel," Louis Machia replied.
"Good." The diminutive defense attorney nodded. "If you please, will you tell the jury just how you know him?"
"I'm just acquainted, Mr. Kaskel. I've been around a table with him a few times. He was there the night I got made."
"Around a table." Cavello's attorney theatrically mimicked him. "Do you consider yourself a close friend of Mr. Cavello's? Has he, say, invited you out to dinner?"
"Actually I have gone out to dinner with your client, Mr. Kaskel." The witness grinned. "It was after Frank Angelotti's funeral. A lot of us went out. But as for the other stuff, no. I was just a soldier. That's not the way it worked."
"So you've never heard Mr. Cavello give any orders on behalf of the Guarino crime family? He never said to you, for instance, ‘I need a favor from you, Mr. Machia,' or ‘I want Samuel Greenblatt killed'?"
"No, Mr. Kaskel, not quite that way."
"That was left to other people to explain to you. Like Ralphie D., whom you mentioned, or this other Tommy character . . . the one with the funny name?"
"Tommy Moose."
"Tommy Moose." The defense attorney nodded. "Sorry."
"That's all right, Mr. Kaskel. We all have funny names."
Peals of laughter erupted through the courtroom.
"Yes, Mr. Machia," the defense attorney said, "but what I was driving at is, you never actually heard my client suggest it would be a good thing if this Sam Greenblatt was killed, did you?"
"No, not directly."
"You heard that from Ralphie D., who, you say, spotted him driving around somewhere in New Jersey in a car."
"It wasn't somewhere in New Jersey. It was down the block from where Mr. Greenblatt was killed."
"By you, Mr. Machia, just to be clear."
"Yes, sir." The witness nodded. "By me."
Kaskel scratched his chin. "Now, you describe yourself as a longtime member of the Guarino crime family, isn't that right? And you've admitted to doing a lot of bad things on behalf of that family."
"Yes," the witness answered. "To both."
"Like . . . killing people or trafficking in drugs, isn't that right?"
"That's correct."
"What kinds of drugs did you traffic in, Mr. Machia?"
Machia shrugged. "Marijuana. Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine. You name it."
"Hmmph," the lawyer snickered to the jury, "you're quite the entrepreneur, aren't you? You've owned a gun, haven't you, Mr. Machia?"
"Yes, sir. I've always had a gun."
"Ever use your gun or threaten the life of someone in connection to those drugs, Mr. Machia?"
"Yes, sir, I have."
"Ever take any of those drugs yourself, Mr. Machia?" Cavello's lawyer pressed.
"Yes, I've taken drugs."
"So you're an admitted drug user, a car thief, a burglar, a knee breaker, and oh, yes, a killer, Mr. Machia. Tell me, in the course of your longtime crime dealings, did you ever have the occasion to lie?"
"Lie?" The witness chuckled. "Of course I lied. I lied all the time."
"By all the time, you mean . . . once a month? Once a week? Every day, perhaps?"
"We always lied, Mr. Kaskel. That was what we did."
"Why?"
"Why would we lie? To keep out of trouble. To avoid getting caught."
"Ever lie to the cops, Mr. Machia?"
"Sure, I lied to the police."
"To the FBI?"
"Yes." The witness swallowed. "When I was first arrested, I lied to the FBI."
"What about your wife, Mr. Machia? Or, say, your mother? Ever lie to them?"
Louis Machia nodded. "I guess in the course of my life I've lied to just about everyone."
"So let's face it, Mr. Machia, what you are is a habitual liar. Basically, you've lied to everyone you know. The people you work with, the police, the FBI, your wife. Even the woman who bore you. Let me ask you, Mr. Machia, is there anything you wouldn't lie about?"
"Yes." Louis Machia straightened up. "This."
"This?" Kaskel mocked him sarcastically. "B
y this, I assume you mean your testimony?"
"Yes, sir," the witness said.
"The government's promised you a sweet deal, haven't they? If you tell them what they want to hear."
"If I admit to my crimes and tell the truth." The witness shrugged. "They said they would take that into account."
"By that, you mean reduce your sentence, correct?"
"Yes."
"Maybe even to ‘time served,'" the Eyebrow said, wide-eyed, "is that not correct?"
"It's possible." The witness nodded.
"So tell us," Kaskel said, "why should this jury believe you now, when in practically every other instance of your life, you've admitted you habitually lied in order to save your own skin?"
"Because," said the witness, smiling, "it makes no sense for me to lie now."
"It makes no sense?" Kaskel scratched his chin again. "Why?"
"Because if they catch me in a lie I stay in prison. All I have to do to get my sentence reduced is tell the truth. How 'bout that, Mr. Kaskel?"
Chapter 20
THEY BROKE FOR LUNCH. Andie went out with O'Flynn and Marc, the crime writer, to Chinatown, a short walk from the courthouse in Foley Square
.
For a while, as they picked at appetizers, they exchanged stories. Andie told them about Jarrod, about what it was like raising a kid in the city by herself. O'Flynn asked what it was like to work on The Sopranos, and Andie admitted she'd sort of stretched that a little bit: "I was an extra. I exaggerated to get off the trial."
"Jeez." O'Flynn stared at her glassily. "Y'just broke my heart."
"John's been rewinding through five years of reruns trying to pick you out in the Bada Bing." Marc grinned, picking up a piece of bean curd with his chopsticks.
"So what about you?" Andie turned to Marc. "What kind of stuff do you write?"
Marc seemed like a cool guy to her. He had longish, curly blond hair, a bit like Matthew McConaughey, and always wore jeans with his navy blazer and open-necked shirt.