Leader of the Pack

by David Rosenfelt

  Everybody in the joint looks large and intimidating. I don’t think there’s a person here who couldn’t kick my ass, and I’m definitely including the women. Plus, they’re probably all carrying guns, courtesy of Richard Solarno.

  If I wasn’t with Marcus, I’d be back in Missoula, ordering room service and watching ESPN in the hotel room, with the door locked.

  But I’m here, and my primary goal is to get this over with as soon as possible, so that I will no longer be here. So my mouth takes matters into its own hands, and before I even realize it, I’m hollering, “S. J.!”

  Pretty much everybody in the bar looks in my direction, sizes up both Marcus and myself, and then looks toward the bar. They’re all looking at a very large guy with a beard, and I’m as sure that this is S. J. as I would be if he were wearing his name tattooed on his forehead. Actually, his forehead seems to be the only place on his body that isn’t tattooed. He is surrounded by other large people, in varying degrees of fatness.

  I walk over to where S. J. is sitting, casting a quick glance to the side to make sure that Marcus is with me. I’m not at all comfortable with these surroundings, and I don’t recall seeing this situation on the bar exam.

  “Hi, S. J.?” I say, just to break the ice.

  “Who the fuck are you?” is his pleasant rejoinder.

  “Touché,” I say, since I can’t help saying stuff like that.

  “What?”

  “My name is Andy Carpenter.” I throw in, “I’m a lawyer,” just to scare him. “This is my co-counsel, Marcus Clark.”

  S. J. barely glances at Marcus, as he says, “You hear that? He’s a lawyer.” Then, “What do you want, lawyer?”

  “I want to talk to you about Richard Solarno.”

  S. J. sits up straight, or at least as straight as he can. It’s as if I shoved a hot poker up his ass; the Solarno name definitely struck a chord. “What about Solarno?”

  “Can we talk somewhere in private?”

  S. J. makes eye contact with the bartender, who nods a silent assent. “In the back,” says S. J., and he hoists himself off the stool and makes his way around the bar toward a room in the back. Marcus and I follow him into what must pass as the bar manager’s office. It’s got a desk, a couch, and a small table with a TV on it. A small metal garbage can sits on the front corner of the desk, and S. J. plants his fat ass on the opposite corner.

  I wait until Marcus follows me into the office, and then close the door behind us.

  “What the hell are you doing with Solarno?” S. J. asks.

  “I’m not doing anything with him. He’s dead. I’m trying to find out who killed him.”

  “You think I did it?”

  “Did you?”

  “I would have, if somebody didn’t beat me to it. We put the word out on him, I’ll tell you that. The son of a bitch ripped us off.”

  “Would you be willing to testify that there were people other than yourself that wanted to do harm to Richard Solarno?”

  S. J. points to Marcus. “He talk? Or do you do all the talking, lawyer?”

  I decide to ignore that salvo. “Would you testify to that, S. J.? You’d get a free trip to New York out of it.”

  Just then, the door behind us opens, and three of S. J.’s large friends walk in. Each of them, like S. J., is at least six foot tall and probably two hundred seventy pounds of rolled skin. They must all have the same personal trainer.

  But the arrival of these newcomers is not a positive development, and I look at Marcus to make sure he’s alert to what’s going on. He has no expression at all; if his eyes weren’t open I’d think he were asleep.

  “The shithead lawyer and his mute friend want to take me to New York, see the big city,” S. J. says, pronouncing “mute” as “moot.” Two of the newcomers respond by chuckling at the thought of it, but the third doesn’t respond. The third one instead watches Marcus, which probably makes him the smartest of the group. Of course, being the smartest of this group does not qualify one as a Rhodes Scholar candidate.

  Nobody seems concerned enough to watch the shithead lawyer.

  “Have you seen our city yet, lawyer? Maybe we should show you the ‘little city.’”

  The four of them are generally in a three-quarters circle around us, but somehow it feels as if Marcus has them surrounded. They seem to think otherwise.

  I’m not going to get anything out of S. J.; it was clearly foolish to come here at all. My goal is now reduced to simply getting out of this town in good health, but to do so I’m going to have to rely on Dr. Marcus.

  The guy who was eyeing Marcus says, “We don’t need this, S. J.”

  “He’s right, S. J.,” I say. It’s all I can do to get the words out.

  S. J. does not seem pleased to have anyone questioning his authority. He ignores me and talks directly to the bright guy, the one who is preaching restraint. “I’ll decide what we need, and I say we need to show these two assholes the town.”

  S. J. and his two friends start to move toward us, and what happens next takes place so quickly that I wish I had filmed it so I could replay it in stop-action. Even though he wasn’t bending over, Marcus seems to uncoil. He grabs the top of the metal wastebasket that is sitting on the desk, and swings it in a circular, counterclockwise motion. It first hits S. J., and then his two friends, in their faces.

  It’s as if they’re a synchronized team, as all three reach for their already bleeding faces, one after the other, in perfect rhythm, like fat, wounded Rockettes. Marcus then addresses them individually, one at a time. He hits one in the stomach, a short, stunning punch that leaves the man moaning and retching.

  Before he even hits the floor, Marcus has clubbed the next one in the side of the head, and he topples like a stone on top of his retching comrade. S. J. barely has time to panic, before Marcus lifts him off his feet and throws him against the wall. He bounces off, and his face has the misfortune to ricochet into Marcus’s fist. He’s going to be unconscious for a really long time.

  Marcus now turns toward the brightest of the three, who has so far done the same as me, which is absolutely nothing but watch the carnage. The bright one holds up his hands, palms out, as if to say this is not his fight, and he means us no harm.

  I look at the pile of humans on the floor, two unconscious and the other moaning and retching, and I say, “You guys had enough?” My voice is shaking a little, but I don’t think the three of them notice.

  In any event, they don’t respond, so I tell Marcus in a slightly firmer voice, “Our work here is done.”

  We’re back at the hotel in less than an hour, and waiting for us in the lobby is Lieutenant McKenney. “We received a report that two guys beat up S. J. and two of his buddies. The two assailants apparently looked very much like you two.”

  “To be honest, you throw a dart in that town and you’ll hit guys who look like us,” I say. “We’re a dime a dozen. How are S. J. and his friends?”

  They’re in the hospital. S. J.’s got a broken jaw.”

  I shake my head sadly. “Boy, that really puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? One minute you’re fat and happy, sucking down Thunderbird, and the next you’re taking oatmeal through a straw.”

  “You probably shouldn’t go back to Millbank,” he says, smiling.

  “So I should withdraw the offer on the trailer?”

  “I think that’s wise.”

  Marcus sleeps the entire way back, so we don’t chitchat the morning away. I called Laurie from the hotel last night, and told her roughly what had happened. I made myself sound slightly more heroic in the telling than it actually happened in real life, and when I finished she said, “Was Marcus there?”

  “He was,” I said. “But he pretty much let me handle things. I think he might have been intimidated by the surroundings.”

  I use the time on the plane to plan my strategy. I’ve developed some real evidence that Solarno was peddling arms, but that alone won’t get me to the new trial. He could hav
e been an arms peddler who got murdered by his wife’s jilted lover.

  The real bombshell is that the Montana State Police notified Dylan Campbell about threats on Solarno’s life, and Dylan didn’t disclose it. That was exculpatory evidence, and we were entitled to it.

  The best thing about it is the fact that it is hard to assess what the value of the information would have been at trial. The fact is that not only would we have been able to use it in our defense case, but more important, we would have been able to investigate and develop it further.

  What that means is that the trial judge is somewhat in the dark; he can’t honestly dismiss the evidence as not substantial enough, because he can’t know what other evidence it would have led us to.

  I don’t know whether Dylan deliberately withheld the document. He had powerful evidence against Joey, and I would think he would have felt that his case could have survived the Montana information. I also think he would not have wanted to risk the wrath of the court if the information got out, which he is about to feel now.

  Fortunately, intent is not the determining factor here. Justice demanded that we get the information, and the reason we didn’t is of secondary importance.

  I think we now have a real chance to prevail and get our new trial, and I’m going to get Hike started on preparing a brief. He is outstanding at it, far better than I am.

  But should we get the new trial, we’re then going to have to come up with a way to win it, and we’re a huge leap from that. For one thing, I don’t have a real suspect to point to; I don’t believe for a second that S. J. and his chubby gang of idiots traveled cross-country in secret and pulled it off.

  I have to consider the possibility that if Richard Solarno double-crossed his Montana customers, then he might have done the same thing to people more competent, and more deadly. But I have no idea who those people might be, or if they exist.

  The incontrovertible truth is that somebody killed the Solarnos, and I’m no closer to figuring out who than I was six years ago.

  The most puzzling aspect of this is the role of the Desimone crime family. One of their own is in prison, their flesh and blood, yet it seems that members of the family knew the truth about what happened. Certainly Nicky Fats did; the essential accuracy of his ramblings has been confirmed. And Alex Solarno called the Desimone house after I scared him.

  Why would Joey’s own family be conspiring against him?

  Most of my knowledge of how organized crime families operate I got from Michael and Sonny Corleone, though I have had some rather frightening dealings with Dominic Petrone, the rather courtly and deadly head of the dominant family in North Jersey.

  I am vaguely familiar with the concept of omertà, which is the code of silence that members of Mafia families are sworn to uphold. There are no limits on this; for instance, “person A” cannot tell the police that “person B” committed a crime, even if “person A” is himself being wrongly accused of that same crime.

  Violation of omertà is said to be punishable by death, which seems a tad harsh for the crime of “tattling,” but the code has lasted for centuries. It is said to be loosening in recent years, as prosecutions of Mafia figures have risen dramatically.

  Faced with the prospects of years in prison, loyalty is proving to be a fading concept, and the more omertà is broken, the more breakable it becomes.

  I suppose it is possible that someone else in the Desimone inner circle killed the Solarnos, and omertà has stopped them from turning that person in. The net result is that Joey has suffered for it, but perhaps the code dictates it. That would at least explain how Nicky Fats knew about it, but leaves countless questions unanswered.

  I go straight to the office from the airport, and Hike meets me there. He’s already started preparing the petition, and for Hike, he seems excited about the prospects.

  “Are you going to give Dylan a heads-up?” Hike asks.

  It’s an interesting question, and one I’ve been thinking about. There is no legal reason for me to alert the prosecutor, Dylan Campbell, that we’re going to be seeking a new trial. Once we file the motion, the court would obviously inform his office so they can contest it.

  This is a charged situation, since much of our case is based on misconduct by Dylan in not notifying us about the warning from the Montana State Police. Disclosure of this will be embarrassing to him at the very least, and career-damaging at the worst.

  I can’t stand Dylan, which sets him apart from most prosecutors I deal with. Unlike many defense attorneys, I have no inbred bias against them; my father headed up the county prosecutor’s office back in the day. But I find Dylan to be arrogant and obnoxious, in addition to smart and relentless. I’ve beaten him the last few times we’ve faced each other, and I’m sure it drives him crazy.

  Resurrection of the Desimone case in this manner will infuriate him, which is what I’m counting on. Dylan makes mistakes when angry, when he lets things get personal, and mistakes are what I’m hoping for.

  “What do you think?” I ask Hike.

  “I think he’s going to be really pissed either way, but much more pissed if you blindside him.”

  “That’s what I think also,” I say, “so blindsiding is the way to go.”

  He nods. “Works for me.”

  “Vince really came through,” Laurie says, handing me the paper.

  I’m still in bed, but she has gotten up to retrieve it from the lawn, where it’s left each morning. Tara finds “paper fetching” to be way, way beneath her.

  I could easily read the paper online every morning, as I do everything else, but I’m afraid if I cut off delivery of the physical paper, Vince will find out and cut off part of my body.

  The story is on the front page, which is actually giving it more credit than it deserves. The attempt to kill Marcus and me jazzed it up a lot, but there is no proof that it was related to the Desimone case at all. Our attempt to reopen that case is in itself news, but the overall story is still somewhat short on substance. I hadn’t provided Vince with that much to work with.

  That’s about to change.

  I call Vince to thank him for running the story, and he says, “I can’t believe I put that drivel on the front page. You know what my problem is? I’m too nice.”

  “That’s always been your problem, Vince. But this time it’s going to pay off.”

  “I like the concept of paying off.”

  I give him the follow-up to the story, which includes the Montana information, and the fact that we’re filing a petition with the court today. He can run the story in the online edition the moment we file, and follow it up as soon as possible in print.

  “If you time it right,” I say, “Dylan will find out about it from you.”

  I actually think I can hear Vince salivating through the phone. “He’s going to go bat-shit,” Vince says. “This is beautiful.”

  I get up, shower, and go downstairs to take Tara on our walk. I stop in the kitchen to have some coffee, only to see Marcus standing next to the refrigerator. The door is open, and Marcus is in the process of emptying it.

  Marcus can eat like no one I’ve ever seen. I almost expect him to lift the open refrigerator, lean his head back, and pour the contents down his throat.

  I wave feebly and do an about-face, heading back up the steps. Tara stays down there with Marcus, maybe hoping for him to drop some scraps.

  Laurie has just gotten on the treadmill, which is a device I completely do not understand. I don’t like walking anywhere, and in a million years would not walk nowhere.

  This particular treadmill has a video screen that shows fake mountains, I guess under the very misguided assumption that mountain walking is an appealing concept. It isn’t; in fact, it’s one of the reasons they invented tunnels. I never really envied the Von Trapp family much.

  Laurie is constantly telling me how much better exercise makes her feel, but I’ve never been a fan of gasping and sweating.

  “You saw Marcus,” she says
, while walking furiously.

  “I did.”

  “I hired him as your bodyguard. I knew you wouldn’t do it on your own, Andy. But people are trying to kill you. People who do that kind of thing professionally.”

  I know she expects me to argue about this; Marcus has protected me in the past, and each time I’ve resisted his hiring. But he does it silently and unobtrusively; I never know he’s there until I need him, or until I walk into the kitchen.

  “OK,” I say, no doubt shocking her, and I head back down the steps. I put on Tara’s leash and take her for a walk; there’s no trace of Marcus the entire time. I can’t even hear the sound of chewing. But the truth is that I feel confident and a hell of a lot safer knowing he’s there.

  After the walk, I shower and head to the office, where Hike is waiting for me with the finished petition. I make a few edits on it, but they don’t improve it much. He did a terrific job, but it probably won’t carry the day on its own. We’ll have to do that in the hearing that will be called to decide the matter.

  One factor that works against us is the judge who will preside, Judge Henry Henderson. He handled the original trial, and he has unfortunately not retired since, demonstrating that prayer, at least when lawyers do it, has its limitations.

  Judge Henderson is commonly referred to by those who practice before him as “Hatchet,” a nickname he did not get by being warm and fuzzy. Legend has it that he got the name after various lawyers left his courtroom with fewer testicles than they had entered with.

  Over the years, my charm has been even less effective on judges than it has been on women, but Hatchet Henderson has been the most resistant of all.

  He’s generally impartial, torturing both the prosecution and defense equally. But in the original trial, I felt that he sided with the prosecution more than he should have, and his comments at the sentencing seemed to confirm that. I doubt he will be terribly sympathetic to Joey’s getting another shot, but the system doesn’t allow for me to go judge shopping. It’s going to be Hatchet all the way.