Dante leans in to me. “She’s lying, Tom. She made that whole thing up. Every word.”
Chapter 97
Kate
AS ROTHSTEIN BANGS his gavel like a jockey flogging a fading horse on the home stretch, Tom writes Lindgren on a piece of paper. He slides it to me before I get out of my chair. I’m already there.
“Ms. Robinson, we’re all hearing this for the first time. To say the least, we’re a bit overwhelmed. And confused. Could you tell us again why you decided to come forward now?”
“Jesus,” says Nikki, then pauses as if to let this sink in. “He came to me in a dream and told me it was my duty to tell what happened.”
“Does Jesus often come to you in dreams, Nikki?” I ask, provoking enough derisive laughter to have Rothstein pound his desk some more.
“That was the first time.”
“Ahh. But why wait this long to come forward? And why do it now?”
“I was afraid. I didn’t want to hurt my cousin. But Jesus said I should say what I knew.”
“After the rape, did you go to the hospital?”
“No.”
“Really? Did you see a doctor anywhere?”
“No.”
“You weren’t examined by anyone?”
Robinson shakes her head, and I say, “I didn’t hear your response, Ms. Robinson.”
“No, I was not examined by a doctor.”
“Weren’t you worried about contracting a sexually transmitted disease or getting pregnant?” I ask.
“I was on the Patch.”
“But you weren’t worried about an STD?”
“Not really.”
“So you didn’t tell anyone at all about the incident at the time. No one. There is no police record, no medical record, and you finished cleaning the house after the rape. So there’s not a single bit of evidence, even circumstantial evidence, to support or confirm your story.”
“Objection,” cries Howard.
“What’s your question, Counselor?” asks Judge Rothstein.
“When you decided to come forward two days ago—after your visit from Jesus—who’d you talk to first?”
“I called the East Hampton Police Department.”
“And who exactly did you talk to?”
“Officer Lindgren.”
I am thinking on my feet now, trying to, anyway. “Ms. Robinson, have you been arrested lately? Say, in the last few months?”
“Yes, ma’am. For possession.”
“Possession of drugs?”
“Yes.”
“And who arrested you?”
Nikki Robinson looks left and right, anywhere but at me, but there’s no getting around this. “Officer Lindgren,” she says.
Loud, angry voices erupt from all sides, and Judge Rothstein has no choice but to finally go through with his threat. He clears the courtroom.
Chapter 98
Loco
LITTLE NIKKI PUTS on quite a show up on the witness stand. Who would have thought the slut had it in her? But after clever-girl Costello gets her to drop Lindgren’s name and her arrest, all hell breaks loose, and Rothstein clears the courtroom and calls it a day.
Everyone spills out into the hot courtyard, and if not for two hundred cops, there would have been a riot then and there. The atmosphere is so messed up and ugly, Rothstein suspends proceedings for an additional twenty-four hours.
So it’s not until Thursday morning that we all file back into the courtroom. Rothstein must think we’re all basically children, because he gives us a stern lecture on the importance of orderly courts in a free society. What a crock, and most of us know it.
Then he turns to Ms. Costello, who calls Marie Scott to the stand. This should be good. Scott’s a big witness for Dante, his beloved grandma.
One look at Scott, I see she’s one of those God-fearing, righteous women you always watch on the TV news after some tragedy happens. You know the type I mean, who somehow keep their shit together no matter what unspeakable thing has just happened.
She’s no spring chicken but her back is straight as a plank. And the slow way she walks up to be sworn in, you’d think she’s here to receive a special award from George Bush.
“What’s your relationship to the defendant, Ms. Scott?” asks Costello.
“I’m proud to say the young man is my grandson,” says Scott, hurling her big voice into the room.
“How long has Dante lived with you?”
“Five years. Ever since Dante’s mother began serving her sentence upstate. Dante’s father had already passed by then.”
“So you’ve raised Dante since then?”
“That’s right, and until these false charges, he’s never gotten into a bit of trouble. Not once.”
The question that always comes into my head when I see a woman like Marie is why, if her shit’s so damn tight, did her kids all turn out so bad? Even if she did a great job with Dante, how come her daughter’s in jail? That holier-than-thou attitude must drive them the other way.
“Where did he live in your place?” asks Costello.
“It’s just the two of us. So he had his own bedroom.”
“Could you describe it for us, Marie?”
“Nothing fancy. He had a bed that was way too small for him, but a good-sized desk and bookshelves on the walls. We couldn’t afford a computer, but he used one at school.”
“What was on those bookshelves?” asks Costello.
“On one wall were the things any high-schooler would have—books, CDs. The other shelf held his basketball stuff. He called it his Dream Wall because that space was dedicated to his dream of playing in the NBA. Of course, he never calls it that, he calls it ‘the League.’”
This is all highly fascinating, but where we going, Grandma?
“What did that wall consist of, Marie?”
“There were five shelves. On the outside went his trophies from the all-star games and the summer camps and being named Suffolk County High School Player of the Year two years in a row.”
“And how about on the inside?”
“That was where he kept his basketball caps. He had all thirty, one for every team in the League. Because that’s the moment he’s living for, when they call out Dante Halleyville in that auditorium in New York City and he walks to the stage and puts one of those caps on.”
“Did he ever wear those hats outside of the house, Marie?” asks Costello.
“Never!” says Scott so loudly that the whole courtroom feels the fury in it, and I don’t need to look at Officer Lindgren to know he’s sweating bullets now.
“He never wore those hats, period! Those hats weren’t for wearing. They were for dreaming. He ordered them by mail, took them out of their box, and placed them on the shelf, but he never put them on. He was superstitious. He didn’t want to put one on until they called him up on that stage and he knew which team he was playing for.”
I hate to admit it, but Lindgren was right. That bitch Costello has gotten too close.
“How long after the murders did the Suffolk County Homicide unit come to your home?”
“The next afternoon.”
“What did they do?”
“Searched Dante’s room, photographed it, dusted for prints. Then they taped it off. I still can’t go into my grandson’s room. To this day.”
“Were they the first police to come to your house, Marie?”
“No. That morning an officer from the East Hampton Police Department came over by himself. He said he was looking for Dante and asked if he could take a look in his room.”
About now I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Did you let him in, Marie?”
“Yes, ma’am. I knew Dante wasn’t involved in these crimes, so I didn’t see the harm. In fact, I thought it would help the police see that he was innocent.”
“Did you go in Dante’s room with the officer?”
“No, I let him in there alone. That’s the way he wanted it.”
Now the crowd is rumbling so much that Rothstein holds up one black-robed arm. Not that it does much good.
“How long was the officer in there?”
“Not long,” says Marie. “Not more than a couple minutes.”
“But long enough to take Dante’s Miami Heat cap off the shelf?” says Costello.
Now three things happen at once—the crowd explodes; the DA shouts, “Objection!”; and Scott drills out, “Yes, ma’am!” with everything she’s got, which is plenty.
“Strike the last question and answer from the record,” Rothstein tells the stenographer, then turns to the smart-ass bitch. “Ms. Costello, consider yourself warned.”
“Marie, do you remember which police officer came to your house that morning?”
“Yes, I do. Of course I remember who it was.”
“What was his name?”
“Hugo Lindgren.”
“Hugo Lindgren,” says Costello as if she’s stunned herself. “The same officer who just happened to get the anonymous tip about the gun at the Princess Diner and the call from Nikki Robinson also spent several minutes unattended in Dante’s room? Is that your sworn testimony, Ms. Scott?”
“Yes,” says Scott. “It most certainly is. Hugo Lindgren.”
By now the crowd, at least on my side, is ready to burn the courtroom down, no matter what Rothstein says about civic responsibility.
But it’s Costello, not Rothstein, who gets them to shut up. Because this is where she blows everybody’s mind, including mine.
“Marie Scott will be our only witness, Your Honor,” says Costello, twisting her gaze between the judge and the jury. “Ms. Scott said it all. The defense rests its case.”
Costello’s announcement stuns both sides of the courtroom into silence, and as the lookyloos start to file out deflated and confused, it reminds me of a pay-per-view title fight that gets stopped way too early. But you know what else? That bitch is smart.
Maybe she just stole the fight.
Chapter 99
Tom
THE NEXT MORNING, when the crowd trudges back into the courtroom, you can read the tension on every face. It fills the room. After a very hot week and air-conditioning that’s little more than a sound effect, this unventilated box reeks of dried sweat and body odor. As I walk to my seat alongside Kate, perspiration trickles down my back.
Deciding not to put Dante on the stand is a calculated risk, but putting a terrified teenager at the mercy of the prosecution seemed even riskier. Nevertheless, it places that much more pressure on my summation. I’m scribbling last-second notes when the bailiff crows, “All rise!”
Much too quickly, Judge Rothstein strides into the room, climbs onto his bench, and turns to me.
“Mr. Dunleavy,” he says, and I face the jury one last time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, when I stood before you at the start of this trial, my one request was that you accept nothing you hear until you’ve filtered it through your own judgment. I know you’ve done that because I sat and watched you do it, and because I can see the effect of that effort in your eyes. So, thank you.
“This morning we’re going to examine the prosecution’s case one final time and consider their so-called evidence piece by piece.”
Already, my face is dripping with sweat, and when I mop my brow and take a gulp of water, the only sound in the room is the drone of that useless AC.
“When I went to work for Dante, I thought this was a tragic case of an innocent teenager finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now I realize bad luck had nothing to do with Dante Halleyville and Michael Walker being at Smitty Wilson’s estate the night Eric Feifer, Robert Walco, and Patrick Roche were murdered.
“Dante and Michael were deliberately lured to the scene so they could be framed for the murders. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.
“How exactly did Dante and his best friend end up at Wilson’s fifty-million-dollar estate that night? When Dante turned himself in, he told the police he got a call at about five p.m., and we know he’s telling the truth because the records show he got a call eighty-three seconds long, exactly at five oh one. It came from a pay phone outside a seafood shack called the Clam Bar in Napeague.
“The caller identified himself as Eric Feifer. He invited Dante to come to the Wilson estate so they could clear the air and put this overblown incident behind them. Dante, being a good person who felt exactly the same way about that stupid fight—which the prosecution has shamelessly blown up into a mini race riot—immediately agreed to meet Feifer later that night. Also, apparently Michael Walker was looking to buy marijuana that night. Dante admitted as much.
“But the person who made that call, ladies and gentlemen, wasn’t Eric Feifer. It was someone impersonating Eric Feifer.
“If Eric Feifer was the caller, he would have used his cell phone. He didn’t need to go out of his way to make a call that couldn’t be traced back to him, because he had nothing to hide. But the caller, who was setting up Dante and Michael for these murders, did have something to hide. So he used a pay phone.
“That call,” I say, pausing only long enough to swipe at my dripping face again, “was only the first of several steps the actual murderers took to frame Dante, but it was the most important. It got Dante and Michael to the scene, and as soon as the murderers heard them arrive, they killed those three young men.
“Now the murderers had Dante and Walker at the scene, but that wasn’t enough for them. They find out—possibly from a connection in the police department—where Michael Walker is hiding. They murder him with the same weapon used to kill Feifer, Walco, and Roche. After getting Walker’s perfect prints on the weapon, they hang on to the gun until Dante turns himself in.
“As soon as they hear Dante stopped at the Princess Diner on his way back from the city that night, they drop the gun there. With another phony call, or so-called anonymous tip to Officer Hugo Lindgren, they reveal that the gun is in the Dumpster. How convenient.
“Ladies and gentlemen, do any of you use pay phones anymore? Do any of you not have cell phones? But in this case two crucial calls are made by pay phone. And both are made for the same reason—so the caller can’t be traced.
“Think hard about what the prosecution has been telling you. It doesn’t make sense. If Dante had killed those three young men, then used the same gun to kill his best friend, he had plenty of time to get rid of the murder weapon. If, as the prosecution maintains, he traveled alone from the Lower East Side to Brooklyn, killed Walker, and then returned to Lower Manhattan, he could have tossed the gun anywhere along the way. Instead, according to the prosecution anyway, he hangs on to it until the last minute. Then he recklessly discards it in a public place.
“And Michael Walker’s prints on the gun. That fails the smell test too. If Dante killed Walker he would have wiped all the prints off before discarding the weapon. He wouldn’t have carefully removed his prints and left Walker’s.
“Now let’s talk about the Miami Heat cap—because this is where the actual murderers slipped up in a couple of important ways. Since the killers couldn’t get Dante’s print on the gun, they decided to leave one of his caps at the scene. But how could the killers know that the hats on Dante’s shelves were purely symbolic, that they were never worn, that Dante thought it was bad luck to put any of those hats on before the NBA draft? They couldn’t.
“That’s why they left a cap that had no trace of Dante’s sweat or hair oil on the band. They left a hat at the crime scene that had never been worn. If Dante had gone off that night to kill his best friend, would he pick the brightest, reddest cap in his collection? And in a year, the prosecution hasn’t been able to find one person, not one, who saw a nearly seven-foot man in a bright-red cap on the streets of New York City that night. Of course they didn’t. He wasn’t on the street that night.
“So what really happened? Who are the killers?
“Someone or some group of people connected to the drug trade tha
t was conducted so brazenly at Mr. Wilson’s estate last summer killed those three young men. They opportunistically framed Dante Halleyville. They killed Michael Walker too, but in the process they made serious mistakes. Killers almost always do.
“A hat that Dante had never worn at a crime scene. A gun planted in a Dumpster in a way that makes no sense. And then, the biggest blunder—leaning way too heavily on one crooked cop.”
At that, the whole room squirms, particularly the men in blue standing shoulder to shoulder along all four walls.
“Are we really expected to believe it’s a coincidence that the same cop who received the so-called anonymous tip about the gun in the Dumpster also got the call from Nikki Robinson when she came up with her ridiculous fabrication of rape? And this is the same cop who arrested her for possession? And the same cop who was left alone in Dante’s bedroom with those hats? Please.
“But for all the mistakes the killers made, one calculation proved to be spot on—which is that the police would be quick to believe that a black teenager, even one with no history of violence and the prospect of being a top selection in the NBA draft, would throw it all away because he lost a meaningless pickup basketball game and got hit by a harmless punch. Why? Because that’s what black teenagers do, right? They go off for no reason.
“From the beginning of this trial, the prosecution has gone out of its way to talk about race. They told you about a basketball game in which, God forbid, one team was made up of black players and the other white players. They made sure you heard about a scared teenage kid who said, ‘This ain’t over, white boy.’ That’s because at the core of the prosecution’s case is the assumption that black teenagers are so fragile and insecure that anything can set them off on a murderous rampage.
“I know Dante Halleyville, and there’s nothing fragile about his personality or character. When his older brother veered into crime, he stayed in school and worked on his game. When his mother lost her battle with drug addiction, he stayed in school and worked on his game, and now he’s stood up to almost a year in a maximum-security jail for a crime he didn’t commit.