Leader of the Pack

by David Rosenfelt

  When he’s finished, I say, “When did you learn all of this?”

  “Within the past month.”

  “Six years after the murders? Six years after Mr. Desimone was arrested?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you were not aware that the Montana State Police informed the District Attorney’s Office six years ago about threats on Richard Solarno’s life?”

  “I was not.”

  “Had you known that, would you have investigated it?”

  “Yes. But I investigated it now, and there is no evidence that that group was involved in this case.”

  “Lieutenant, is it true that the best evidence in a murder case is usually developed in the first seventy-two hours?”

  “That is often the case.”

  “Because trails can run cold?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “In six years they can get frozen, can’t they?”

  Dylan objects, but I’ve made my point. I even think I’ve done so without making Pete look bad, but he’ll probably have a different view of that.

  Carmine Desimone had put pressure on Ryerson.

  Not unbearable pressure. Not game-changing pressure. Not even enough to make him change the plan, at least not so far.

  But he felt the pressure. It was his plan; he had recommended it, argued for it, and it was approved. Now it was up to him to execute it.

  Technically, he could do so at any time. But to really do it right called for patience, which meant waiting for an event that was beyond anyone’s control. It was up to Mother Nature.

  Ryerson smiled to himself; there’s never a natural disaster around when you really need one.

  Carmine was stupid, so stupid that Ryerson had no idea how he had achieved his position in life. If there was one thing he should have learned by now, it’s that there was no one in the organization that he could trust to have his back.

  But instead he trusted Bruni, and had in the process put himself into a position where he simply had to be killed. Not that he wouldn’t have been killed anyway, but Ryerson would have hoped it could have been done at a time of his choosing, in keeping with the plan.

  Carmine, for all his stupidity, remained crucial to the operation. Whether alive or dead, he had a role to fill, and he would fill it perfectly.

  He would be the person they would blame.

  So all Ryerson could do was to be ready for all eventualities. He would have to make another trip to Peru, and would do so right away. He had been told that everything was ready, but wanted to make extra sure by seeing for himself.

  There would be only one chance to get this right.

  I wasn’t looking forward to Raymond Fisher’s testimony.

  Now retired, Fisher was the director of the New Jersey State Forensics Laboratory at the time of the Solarno murders, and his words were a significant factor in Joey’s eventual conviction.

  Fisher is a defense attorney’s nightmare. He comes off as sincere, even kindly, and with an apparent total knowledge of his field. This is because in real life he is sincere, kindly, and has a total knowledge of his field.

  Jurors have no doubt that he is saying what he believes to be the truth, and recognize him as a person uniquely qualified to know that truth.

  I barely laid a glove on Fisher during the first trial, and unless there is some divine intervention in the form of a list of new questions for me to ask him, I’m not going to do any better this time.

  For once, Dylan takes the “less is more” approach to his witness, asking him questions concisely and directly, drawing out the meat of the matter but not weakening it through repetition. I suspect he does this because he’s anxious to see me strike out again in my attempt to challenge Fisher, and he’s even more anxious for the jury to see it.

  Moving quickly through the forensic evidence that is basic to the murder, but has nothing to do with who committed it, Dylan gets to the heart of Fisher’s testimony. It’s a ski jacket, and Dylan asks Fisher if it is the one that was taken from Joey’s apartment during a lawful search of the premises.

  “Yes, it is,” says Fisher.

  “Did you conduct any tests on it?”

  Fisher nods. “We did. We tested for blood and gunpowder residue.”

  “And what did you find?’

  “No blood, but definite traces of gunpowder. The pattern clearly indicates that someone wearing this jacket fired a weapon.”

  “Is it possible to determine what kind of gun it was?”

  “Not from examining the jacket, no.”

  “What about when it was fired?”

  Fisher thinks for a moment, as if the question is new and intriguing, which it certainly isn’t. “Hard to say. It would depend on how much the jacket was worn in the interim, in what weather, etcetera. But I would certainly say it was fired sometime within a week of the examination.”

  Dylan turns him over to me, no doubt with pleasure. My first question is, “Dr. Fisher, did you conduct the tests on the jacket yourself?”

  “No, members of my—”

  I cut him off, asking Hatchet to instruct the witness to answer “yes or no” questions with yes or no. Hatchet obligingly tells him not to volunteer information, to answer only the questions asked.

  I repeat the question, and Fisher says, “No, I didn’t conduct the tests myself.”

  “Were you in the room, or looking over the shoulder, of the person conducting the test while he or she was doing so?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see the jacket when it was in the lab?”

  “I did not.”

  “Were you in Mr. Desimone’s apartment when it was taken?”

  “I was not.”

  “Yet you identified it when Mr. Campbell asked if it was the same one.”

  “I have full confidence in my colleagues.”

  “If they were here, maybe the jury could have made that judgment for themselves.”

  Dylan barely has time to finish his objection before Hatchet sustains it and warns me to be careful.

  “So, basically, Dr. Fisher, you’re just here to report on someone else’s work?”

  “I suppose that’s correct.”

  “But as you said, you have full confidence in that other person.”

  “I do.”

  “What is his or her name?”

  Happily, Fisher has to look at the report, and I pounce. “You have to look at the report to find out who you have full confidence in?”

  “I had an excellent staff. This work was done by Stephen Jordan.”

  “Tell us a little about Mr. Jordan.”

  “Well, he was a senior director.”

  “It says that on the report?” I ask, knowing that it does.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell us more, please. Help us get to know him.”

  Dylan objects, but Hatchet lets me continue until I establish completely that Dr. Fisher wouldn’t know Stephen Jordan from Michael Jordan.

  “How is it that this jacket came to be tested?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t say,” he answers. “We just test what they give us.”

  “How many items of clothing were tested?”

  He looks at the report again before answering. “Seven.”

  “From the entire apartment, they took only seven pieces? Do you know why?”

  “I don’t. No.”

  “Would Stephen Jordan know why?”

  Once again Dylan successfully objects.

  “Does the gun residue, in these trace amounts, leave a stain or something that the eye can see?”

  “No, it would not.”

  “Most people have more than seven pieces of clothing in their apartment, wouldn’t you say?” I ask.

  “Generally yes, but I couldn’t speak for Mr. Desimone.”

  I nod. “Because you weren’t there.”

  “Yes.”

  “So they took very few items, as if they knew what they would find and where they would find it?”

  Dylan
objects again and I drop the question and excuse the witness. I’ve made some debating points, but at the end of the day the jury will believe the tests, and they probably should.

  The troubling thing for me is that not only can’t I give the jury a theory about the jacket that they’ll find credible, I can’t even come up with one for myself.

  Joey told me, as he told the police, that he did not own a gun, and certainly none was found in his apartment. He also told me, and I believe him, that he had last fired two years previously, on a hunting trip. Records showed that he didn’t even own that jacket then.

  If it’s a frame, it’s a subtle one, since there was certainly a decent chance that they wouldn’t have taken the jacket for testing. Had they not done so, maybe whoever might have framed Joey would have opted for a more direct approach.

  I didn’t know the answer then, and I don’t now. It’s one of the reasons Joey has been living in a cage for six years.

  Sam knew Ryerson would be leaving the house, soon, even though he had been there all day. Sam had been in his car outside Ryerson’s house for three and a half hours, since 5:00 P.M., when he had taken over from Willie.

  Ordinarily, they would have stopped their stakeout by now, since Ryerson had not shown an inclination to go out at night. But Sam knew from his computer searches that six hours ago Ryerson had booked a first-class ticket to Lima, Peru, on American Airlines, which was leaving at eleven twenty that night.

  Not that Sam expected the ride to the airport to be an eventful one, and he was aware that once he got to the airport, that would be it. There was no way he could follow Ryerson to Peru even if he wanted to; he didn’t have his passport with him, and it was long expired anyway. But he figured he’d wait around, perhaps to see if Ryerson was traveling alone.

  At eight forty-five, a car pulled up and the driver went in. The man was large but not fat; Sam thought he could have been an outside linebacker, or tight end. Sam drove up a little closer to the house, possibly closer than he should have, but he wanted to get the license plate number, which he did.

  With his ever-present computer on the passenger seat, Sam started to run the license plate through the state database. He actually did it by having penetrated the police computer systems in Fair Lawn, and then pretended to be the Fair Lawn Police, accessing the state information. Like so much of what Sam did online, it was completely illegal, and he was completely unconcerned about it.

  Before he could finish the search for the license-plate information, the visitor and Ryerson came out of his house and got in the car. Sam noticed that Ryerson carried a very small case, not even as big as a small suitcase. He was not surprised, since Ryerson was booked to fly back the next evening.

  As they were leaving the house and walking toward the car, the driver seemed to look in Sam’s direction, and for a moment Sam thought he had been spotted. But the man quickly looked away, and they got in the car and drove off. Ryerson got in the passenger seat rather than the back, which seemed to mean that the man was not a chauffeur.

  Sam let them get out of sight for a short while, just in case the man had noticed him. He knew where they were going, so he knew he’d be able to catch up. He was at this point basically following to see if the man was also on the flight or not. Then he could cross-check the names on the passenger list, and possibly identify him.

  As Sam drove, he broke driving as well as hacking laws by looking over occasionally and operating his computer, so that he could learn whose car he was following. They were nearing JFK when he finally learned that the plate belonged to Nicholas Costa, with a current address of 545 Riverside Avenue, in Hoboken.

  Costa dropped off Ryerson at American Airlines and headed back toward the city. He didn’t head toward North Jersey, but instead went south, which led Sam to believe that he could be headed home to Hoboken.

  Sam decided to follow, but first called Andy at home. Laurie answered, but said that Andy was out and couldn’t be reached; he was interviewing a potential witness, which he had to do at night, because he was in court all day during trial.

  “Does the name Nicholas Costa mean anything to you?” Sam asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

  Sam explained all that had happened, and that he hadn’t had a chance yet to search online for information about Costa. “I’m going to follow him, maybe watch him for a while. If you want to check him out as well, he lives at 545 Riverside Avenue, in Hoboken. I think that’s where he’s headed now.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Sam. He could be a dangerous guy.”

  Sam laughed. “You sound like Andy. I’ll be fine; I’m not going to even let him see me.”

  “Sam, we don’t know anything about this man. I’ll make some calls, but just keep your distance.”

  “I will, and I’ll check him out online.”

  Sam followed him to the Hoboken address, which was a rather nondescript house in a middle-class neighborhood. He was clearly not in the same economic class as Ryerson.

  Sam parked up the block and turned the lights off in his car. He expected that Costa was in for the night, but decided to hang around for a while anyway, just to see if anyone else came by. It also gave him time to work on his computer and search for information about Costa.

  And information is what he found, in ample supply. Costa had spent ten years in prison for manslaughter, and was reputed to be an associate of the Desimone crime family. He would be happy to be able to report to Andy that Ryerson and the Desimones were definitely connected.

  Sam had just turned off his computer, when the driver’s side door opened and he was grabbed by the neck and pulled out of the car. He fell to the ground, and rolled over on his back.

  Before he could react, a large shoe, attached to a very large man, was pressing down on his neck. The pressure was enough to make him very uncomfortable and gag, but not enough to cut off his breathing entirely.

  “Who the hell are you?” the man asked.

  Sam tried to answer, but the pressure on his neck became greater and greater, and breathing became impossible.

  And then everything went dark.

  Edward Young is scared, and I can’t say I blame him. He plays in a rough financial world, but at the end of the day it’s just real-life monopoly. Somebody shooting at him in his car, somebody killing his driver, that’s “Untouchables” territory. And it has scared the hell out of him.

  He’s decided he needs to be protected, a logical decision. But when you have his kind of money, you cover all your protection bases. So I am sitting in his house in Alpine, and so far I have encountered two bodyguards and two attorneys.

  The attorneys are sitting in the den with us as we talk. It’s a remarkable room, with two walls of bookshelves and a fireplace so large it could be a studio apartment. I don’t recognize the artwork on the walls, because I do not recognize artwork, but my guess is that the people that painted them are famous, European, and have been dead for five hundred years.

  The meeting is at Edward’s request, just as I have a feeling that everything done in Edward’s life is at his request. Everything except getting shot at.

  I start off by apologizing for what he’s been through, and I express my condolences for his driver. He nods and says, “He’s got two kids, an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old.”

  I say that it’s horrible, because in fact it is horrible, and wait for him to continue. He called the meeting, so it’s his agenda.

  “I believe this happened because I was put on your witness list, and the people that did this had the connections to find that out. They think I have something to say that could prove helpful to you, and damaging to them.”

  “Do you?”

  He nods. “I do, but I won’t say it in court, and I do not want you to call me to the stand.”

  “Just to be clear,” I say, “you’re telling me that you have the information, but if I call you then you will deny it?” As I say this, I glance at the two silent attorneys. While
I’m sure they’re well paid, attorneys at any price level would know that Edward is saying he will perjure himself, something they are legally obligated to not sit idly by and watch their client do.

  “That is exactly what I’m saying.” He says it with full confidence that he can get away with it, and he probably can. “But I am willing to make an arrangement that could work for both of us.”

  “What might that be?” I ask, knowing there is very little chance I’m going to like it.

  “I was only partially truthful when I told you that I closed up Solarno’s company because it was bleeding money. Had that been the case, I would have found someone to buy it, for whatever I could get. I found out that the reason it was bleeding money was that Solarno was conducting illegal activities, in conjunction with certain members of organized crime. When he died, that connection was severed, and the business could not stand on its own.

  “Since I had no desire to reinstate that connection, and since the business could not survive without it, I shut it down.”

  “This would be powerful information to get before a jury,” I say. “And once you say it, then the facts would be out there, and no one would have any reason to quiet you.”

  He frowns. “I’m not going to say anything; I already told you that. But Solarno did not know he was going to die so suddenly, and did not have the time nor the inclination to cover his tracks. So there are documents that support what I’m saying. I am prepared to turn these over to you, providing you do not reveal where you got them. You can call the investigator I hired; he will testify for you at trial.”

  My guess is that the bad guys will know where I got the documents, but I don’t feel the need to point this out. “Who are the people Solarno was dealing with?” I ask.

  “Members of the Desimone family. I’m not sure who or on what level.”

  “Do you know of any reason why they would have wanted to kill him, since doing so ended their business relationship?”