Muzzled

by David Rosenfelt

  The bailiff comes to take him away. I tell him I’ll see him tomorrow to hear the remainder of his story.

  He nods. “Thank you.” Then, “I need you, Andy.”

  Not until I start to leave the courtroom do I see that Laurie has been sitting in the gallery. “I was in the neighborhood and I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll drop in on Andy and see what he’s up to,’” she says. “Cup of coffee?”

  We walk a block to a coffee shop where I frequently have lunch during trial days. Once we’re seated, Laurie says, “I’m sorry I came down so hard on you. You can live your life any way you want; you’ve earned it. I don’t want you to feel guilty or unproductive.”

  “Yet I feel guilty and unproductive.”

  She smiles. “Good; that was my plan. Are you going to take the case?”

  “I still haven’t decided; I need to hear more.” I then lay out for her what Vogel has told me so far. I’m not breaking lawyer-client confidentiality by doing so because Laurie is my investigator and is therefore part of the legal team.

  “So he hasn’t explained why he didn’t get to shore and call the police?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Did you believe what he told you so far?”

  “I didn’t disbelieve it. It had the ring of truth. It also had the ring of false.”

  “You have to decide one way or the other very soon. He’s entitled to know who his lawyer is.”

  “I know. I’m going to hear the rest of the story tomorrow and then decide.”

  “Is the dog … Aggie … a factor? His relationship with her?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because I know you. You have this weird attitude that people who love dogs are inherently good. But that isn’t true; it’s possible for bad people to love dogs.” She smiles. “There’s a name for them. Dog-loving bad people.”

  “I know, but you didn’t see the way Aggie reacted to him. She went nuts. Dogs are really good judges of character.”

  “You’re insane … in a charming way.”

  “I am aware of that. It’s a blessing and a curse.”

  “Her name is Carla D’Antoni. We went out a bunch of times,” he says. “I thought the relationship was getting serious. But she was secretive about things. For example, she told me I could never pick her up at her house.”

  Vogel is telling me who he thinks might have killed his friends on the boat. It’s already not going in a direction anything like what I expected … and I had no idea what to expect.

  “I’m not that experienced in things like this. I was married when I was twenty-two; we tried for a while to make a go of it, but it ended. Since then I hadn’t seriously dated anyone until Carla. But eventually I became suspicious; I thought maybe she was married, or that she had another boyfriend.”

  The light goes off in my dim brain. “Carla D’Antoni.”

  He nods. “Exactly. Believe it or not, I didn’t know who her boyfriend was until after the newspapers reported on her death.”

  Organized crime in northern New Jersey has become rather disorganized in the last few years. That is a natural result of a tendency for its leaders to either wind up in jail or dead. I’ve been involved in a number of cases that have led to some of those results.

  The most recent tentative top guy is Joseph Russo, Jr., who inherited the mantle from his father, not surprisingly named Joseph Russo, Sr. The elder Mr. Russo got his head blown off, leaving him ill-equipped to handle the job.

  Carla D’Antoni was rumored to be Junior’s girlfriend. Unfortunately, almost four weeks ago she suffered the same fate as the man who would have been her future father-in-law. She was murdered.

  Carla was found on the cement next to a four-story warehouse in downtown Paterson in the early-morning hours. Based on her fatal injuries, she had obviously fallen from the roof of the building. No one believes she jumped.

  The police have apparently made no progress in apprehending the killer. Three theories have been speculated about. One is that she was killed by an enemy of Russo’s, to send a message. Another is that she did something to piss Russo off, causing him to send her his own message. The third is that Russo had nothing to do with the murder.

  My view of theories is that when there are three of them, it means that the person holding them doesn’t have a clue as to what he or she is talking about.

  But Alex Vogel seems to be telling me that he is the one who pissed Russo off. “So you think Russo sent those guys onto the boat?”

  “I can’t think of any other possibilities. Carla must have told him about us, or he found out somehow and decided to take revenge on both of us.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police after your friends were killed?”

  “I thought about it, and I might have eventually. But what was I going to tell them? That I went out with Russo’s girlfriend? That’s not evidence they could use to arrest him. So they’d listen and send me home. It’s not like they would put me in the witness protection program. Russo would have had no trouble getting to me.”

  “But you have no way of knowing for sure why she was killed, or who killed her.”

  “That was true until those guys showed up on the boat. That ended any doubt in my mind. When she died and I read that she was involved with Russo, I didn’t know who killed her or why. But the boat … that made me realize that he must have known about us. He was going to do to me what he did to her.

  “So I was hiding until I could figure out what to do. I never did come up with a strategy.”

  As a professional with considerable experience dealing with criminal activities like murder, I consider this story total horseshit. And that might be understating the case.

  “I think you are completely misjudging this,” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Guys like Russo don’t send boats out on the ocean to commit murders. They don’t board boats on the open seas; they’re mobsters, not pirates. That’s not how this works. If they wanted to kill you, they would wait at the pier and put a bullet in your head. Or when you got in your car to go home, you’d step on the gas and wind up as a cream sauce on the parking lot.”

  “It can’t be anyone else.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m an executive in a corporation; the most dangerous thing I do all day is have one too many drinks at lunch. I don’t know killers, I don’t hang out with them, and I don’t give them reason to kill me.”

  “And you’re sure they were looking for you?”

  “Positive. They said my name; they wondered if I was one of the ones they shot. And they were going to look further for me; then they decided if by any chance I was on the boat and alive, the explosion would kill me. There’s no doubt about it; I was the target.” Then, more softly, “And I was the only one who lived.”

  “Was there anything of value on the boat that they might have stolen?”

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t do an inventory; I was too anxious to get out of there. But there was nothing that was worth much, other than the boat itself. Certainly nothing that would justify or explain murder.”

  I’m fairly sure that Vogel is wrong about Russo’s involvement, but that doesn’t mean I think he’s lying. It makes sense that he believes it, but he likely has no experience dealing with Russo or people like him.

  Unfortunately, I do; it’s among the reasons I am on this endless journey toward retirement.

  The story about the events on the boat, in Vogel’s telling, rings true. I can see why, believing what he did about Russo, that he panicked and hid. It was simultaneously stupid and logical.

  “Why did you leave the island to rent a car on the mainland? There were car rental places on the island. The police believe it was so you would be harder to trace.”

  He shakes his head. “It had nothing to do with the police. I thought Russo’s people might still be on the island looking for me. So I hitched a ride and got out of there as fast as I could.”

  I don’t
claim to know when someone is lying; my success rate in judging the veracity of people ranges from 49 to 51 percent. So I go with my gut, even though my gut is no better at it than I am.

  One other new factor impacts whether I take on Vogel as a client. The media is already reporting that I am his attorney, based on my handling the arraignment. I understand why they have made the assumption, even though it is currently technically incorrect.

  If I drop him now, it will seem as if I am making a judgment on his case and could be interpreted negatively by the general public, of which the future jurors are a part.

  But that is a secondary consideration. More important is that both my head and gut say that Vogel is telling the truth. Not only that, but he loves dogs.

  “I’ll take your case,” I say.

  Unfortunately, the media’s reporting my being Vogel’s attorney has had another negative repercussion.

  It’s alerted my team that we are taking on a client. In most situations that wouldn’t matter; legal teams expect to have clients and are prepared for it. My squad? Not so much, so I have to break it to them carefully.

  First there is Edna, my office manager. She is able to do her job efficiently because none of us ever go to the office. That enables her to manage it at her leisure, and leisure is Edna’s strong point.

  Edna will hate the idea of my taking on a client, although since she never does any work, she will be the least affected. She’ll still find time to cash her weekly checks and do her crossword puzzles.

  She makes me look driven.

  Hike, the only other lawyer in what I euphemistically call a “firm,” will have mixed feelings. He’ll want the money, and the work won’t bother him, but he’ll hate being involved in a losing effort. Hike’s a pessimist and there is no potential effort that he doesn’t see as a losing one. I’m just glad that Hike is on the defense team and not the jury.

  Sam Willis will be thrilled, but as always his enthusiasm will need to be tempered. Sam is my accountant, but on our legal adventures he serves as our computer guy. By that I mean that he is a hacker supreme, capable of sneaking into any computer anywhere. Almost none of it is legal, and the good thing about Sam is that he cares about that even less than I do.

  But Sam sees himself as more than the sum of his keyboards; he wants to be in on the action. His constant refrain is that he wants to “hit the streets,” doing stakeouts or shoot-outs. My preference would be cookouts, make-outs, and dropouts.

  The rest of my team is a contained unit. My wife, Laurie, a former cop herself, has joined up with another former cop, Corey Douglas, and Marcus Clark to form what they call the K Team. The name recognizes their fourth member, a former police German shepherd named Simon Garfunkel. Simon has been Corey’s partner for a long time.

  They are an effective group, and Marcus is particularly effective. He is the toughest, scariest human in this or any other galaxy. He has saved my life on numerous occasions; the only negative effect of that is that I remain alive and therefore capable of taking on new clients.

  Willie Miller is also here. Willie isn’t technically a part of the team, but as an ex-client of mine and my current partner in the Tara Foundation, Willie is a friend who cares about me. Since he is the toughest person I know, other than the aforementioned Marcus, Willie is on occasion able to demonstrate that caring by also serving as my protector.

  Willie has also saved my life on occasion, as has Laurie, and even Simon Garfunkel. It annoys me that I have never successfully saved my own life, unless you include stuff like looking both ways before I cross the street, and washing fruit before I eat it.

  As an obnoxious defense attorney who frequently pisses off dangerous people, I tend to need a lot of protecting.

  We start every case with a team meeting at which I tell everyone what we know so far about the case we are starting. Since we’re by definition at square one at that stage, I rarely have much information to impart. I just want to get everybody focused and on the same page.

  Right now we’re meeting in my office, which is on the second floor above a fruit market on Van Houten Street. If you are a lawyer trying to impress potential clients, this isn’t the kind of office you would bring them to.

  The place is, to put it kindly, something of a dump. On the other hand, the big, fancy firms don’t have the sweet aroma of fresh cantaloupe wafting through their open windows.

  I’m a fan of old TV sitcoms, and in one Honeymooners episode, Norton is able to tell what time it is by when the aroma of egg foo yong reaches his apartment window from the Chinese restaurant downstairs. He’s done this by having figured out the precise speed at which egg-foo-yong aroma rises.

  Cantaloupe is a little slower, but the sweet smell has just reached us, so I can tell without looking at my watch that it’s ten after ten, since the stand opens at ten. That makes it five minutes to watermelon.

  “I know you have learned from media reports that we have a client. I didn’t contact you all personally because those reports were premature, though ultimately accurate. We do now have a client.”

  There is a soft but audible moan from Edna.

  “Edna, is something wrong?”

  “No. I just didn’t expect a new client so soon. Or ever. It’s an adjustment.”

  “I feel your pain.”

  With that I address the group. “Our client, as you’ve read, is Alex Vogel. He is wrongly accused of having murdered two colleagues by blowing up his boat.”

  Hike frowns at my “wrongly accused” assertion, but refrains from snorting or moaning. The interesting thing is that I’m pretty sure he is not the only person in the room who assumes Vogel’s guilt. The natural inclination of both Laurie and Corey Douglas, as former cops, is to believe that arrests are generally made for good reason.

  They recognize the possibility that the accused is innocent, but consider it unlikely. The truth is that they are right more often than not.

  Laurie and I have not talked about whether she thinks Vogel is guilty of the crime since she believes he is entitled to a forceful defense either way. I have not discussed the matter with Corey at all. Along with Marcus, they will do their investigative work regardless of their personal opinion of Vogel or his guilt or innocence.

  “The prosecutor is Norman Trell,” I say. “Hike, please tell him that we’ve signed on and that we want to start receiving discovery immediately.”

  Hike nods. “That is not going to make for fun reading.”

  “I don’t know much, other than Vogel’s side of the story. I’ve handwritten it out; Edna, please type it up and distribute it to everyone here.”

  The horror on Edna’s face is evident. “How many pages will it be?” She cringes.

  “Probably two.”

  “Single-space?”

  “Double.”

  She sighs her relief. “Okay. When do you need it?”

  “Hopefully before the trial.” Then, “Once we read the discovery and have a plan of attack, we can give out individual assignments. Vogel has a theory about who the killers are, which you will read in Edna’s perfectly typed version. Though I doubt that he’s correct, it’s something we’ll definitely need to follow up on.”

  I tell them the tentative trial date, which is sooner than I’d like. Most defense attorneys like to delay as much as possible. I differ on that. Our client is in jail; he is currently being punished for a crime we are hoping to prove he did not commit.

  I would of course be opposed to a trial before we are ready, but we can generally be fully prepared well before a trial date is reached. So if we’re ready, we might as well move forward. If we find we need more time, judges are likely to grant it.

  I continue, “The undisputed facts are that he went out on the boat with the two victims, the boat blew up, but Vogel survived. He also went into hiding and did nothing to correct the belief of the police and public that he had died in the explosion.

  “My guess is that the prosecution has more than that going for them, bu
t we’ll know that soon enough.

  “That’s all for now.”

  It will take twenty-four hours to get the initial discovery documents.

  That doesn’t represent a deliberate delay by the prosecution; it just takes time to cull through the material, decide what is necessary to turn over, and make copies for us. I might be suspicious of certain prosecutors, but Norman Trell isn’t one of them. He’s always been a straight shooter with me.

  We can’t do much until then, since it is always helpful to have that information before we start investigating; it helps put things into context. Usually Laurie and I take this time to check out the murder scene, but that’s not possible here.

  The homicides for which Vogel is charged took place out on the ocean. Even if we could figure out exactly where, it wouldn’t matter. Water is water, and my guess is that the fish will be tight-lipped about what they witnessed.

  So instead we go to the pier where the boat originated. It’s a long drive for us, almost two hours, so we drop Ricky off at Will Rubenstein’s house. That will give them a chance to plan their bungee-jumping outing with Will’s father, Brian.

  It should come as a surprise to no one that Long Beach Island is an island, but the good news is that one can get there by car on a causeway. The causeway is perpendicular to the island itself, and once you cross it, a series of small towns are to both the left and the right.

  In general terms, the island gets less commercial, and the houses more expensive, the further to the left one goes. The pier where Vogel’s boat was docked was in Beach Haven, which is to the right off the causeway.

  Probably fifty boats are docked in the area. We head for the office of the pier manager. He’s not in, but an assistant is manning the desk. We introduce ourselves and she tells us her name is Dina. She doesn’t give us a last name, which at this point is not terribly important. And maybe she’s known by just the one name, like Cher or Madonna.

  We ask Dina if she was on duty the day that Vogel’s boat went on its ill-fated trip.