Mean Streak

by Carolyn Wheat

  There might be things my client hadn’t told me.

  But there was nothing I could do about that now. I took my seat with an air of competent boredom, as if the playing of the tapes was just one more tedious task to get through before the really important stuff began. The second-last thing I wanted was to let the jury know I felt any anxiety about the tapes.

  The last thing I wanted was to let Singer know.

  Warren Zebart looked like an FBI agent. He was a beefy man in his mid-fifties with a ruddy face and iron-gray hair. He wore thick-soled wingtip shoes and an off-the-rack gray suit. Even his tie was gray, with navy rep stripes.

  I took rapid notes as he told the jury how long he’d been a special agent, and how he’d come to be assigned to Nick Lazarus’ task force. I leaned forward slightly when he told of his first meeting with New York City Detective Edmund Fitzgerald.

  Was the slight, almost imperceptible curl to his lip when he mentioned Eddie Fitz a figment of my imagination? I hoped not; if I could show the jury that even the chief FBI man had reason to despise the turncoat cop, we’d be setting the stage for TJ’s revelations. If we could find TJ in time. If we could find TJ at all.

  I stifled those thoughts in case they began to show on my face, and gave my full attention to the FBI man.

  “I was the contact agent,” Zebart explained. He shifted in his seat and turned his face toward the jury box. Clearly a man who’d spent a good deal of his professional life on the witness stand. “That means that Detective Fitzgerald reported to me.”

  I made a quick note to ask Agent Zebart on cross if the contact agent wasn’t also known as a “handler.” The slang term would make Eddie Fitz sound like a wild animal, someone who needed to be kept in check by the cool heads at the FBI. Then I’d hit Eddie with the term, hoping the implication would rankle enough for him to say something he’d regret. Or at least something Davia Singer would regret.

  “Agent Boatman was the electronics expert on the case,” he continued. I jotted “Boatman-wireman” on my legal pad. Zebart went on to give a cursory overview of the surveillance techniques the FBI had used in the case; the details would be filled in when Harris Boatman took the stand.

  According to Zebart, Eddie had met Fat Jack Vance at the round information booth in the courthouse at 100 Centre Street. Immediately prior to the meeting, Zebart had watched Agent Boatman tape a Nagra recorder to Eddie’s naked torso.

  It took another fifteen questions to lay the foundation for the playing of the tapes. I rose to indicate the defense’s lack of objection, hoping my demeanor indicated a supreme indifference to whether the tapes were played. They were coming in anyway, Matt and I had reasoned, so why make a fuss that might indicate we had something to fear from them?

  The first tape began with a huge amount of background noise from the crowded lobby at 100 Centre. The courthouse was home to both the criminal and supreme courts in Manhattan; during the lunch recess hundreds of people bustled past the information booth where Fat Jack and Eddie Fitz had arranged to meet.

  The two men made for a restaurant in Chinatown. We listened to several minutes of dishes clattering, waiters bustling, and people chatting over their moo shu before Fat Jack got down to business.

  The fat man’s raspy voice said, “Maybe you could help us out on the Nunzie thing.”

  Zebart had already given the jurors the background; the name Nunzie wouldn’t come as a surprise to them.

  “Yeah, I heard something about that,” the young voice that belonged to Eddie Fitz replied. “Something about Lazarus yanking this guy’s chain pretty hard, trying to make him roll over on his lawyer.”

  “His own lawyer, can you believe it?” Fat Jack’s wheezy voice trembled with indignation. “There’s no loyalty these days.”

  “What I hear,” Eddie Fitz said, “Lazarus is always pulling that shit, breaking some guy’s shoes so he turns on his friends. Guy like that’s gotta be stopped.”

  “I heard Lazarus went to see Nunz at the Federal Correction Center,” Jack went on. The words were punctuated by a slurping sound that was probably Fat Jack inhaling a bowl of hot-and-sour. Two jurors giggled. I relaxed a bit; if I could get them laughing at the tapes, they might not take them as seriously as Singer wanted them to. “I heard they talked a long time. So, you heard anything, or what?”

  Eddie echoed the fat man’s George V. Higgins style of speech. “I heard something all right,” he replied. “But the guys I hear things from, they don’t do anything for charity, you know what I mean? They gotta know they’re gonna be taken care of.”

  Jack chuckled. “And I suppose you’re gonna want a little something for yourself?”

  “Just tell me how much I can spread around and still have something left over,” Eddie said.

  “Hey, Matty takes care of his friends,” Jack replied. I had carefully planned for the first mention of Riordan’s name on the tapes. I was to look completely bored, completely unfazed, completely unruffled. As far as I was concerned, this was Fat Jack pretending to be a big shot, pretending he spoke for his sometime employer. It was not evidence of a conspiracy between my client and the soon-to-be-ex-bail bondsman.

  “Don’t worry about that. He’ll see to it you’re covered,” Fat Jack promised. “Matty’s got the bucks and so do the guys he works for. You’ll be squared on this thing.”

  End tape. And end Warren Zebart’s tenure on the witness stand; from here on the tapes would be placed in evidence by the man who’d taped the wire to Eddie Fitz: Agent Harris Boatman.

  I limited my cross of Zebart to pointing out, in several different ways, that he’d never met Matt Riordan and hadn’t been present when the alleged payoff was made. The impression I wanted the jury to have was of a man doing his job, but doing it without the full benefit of the information they were going to have once this trial was over. On summation, I wanted to be able to discount Zebart, not as a liar out to frame Riordan, but as a man who’d been lied to by Eddie Fitz and used by Nick Lazarus. Sincere but uninformed, that was what I wanted the jurors to see when they looked at the FBI man.

  Harris Boatman was a lithe black man with close-cut hair and pencil mustache. His suit was brown and his tie had flowers on it. What I’d learned from Matt Riordan about men’s ties was that flowered ones were worn only by men whose wives picked out their clothes. How this was going to help on cross, I had no idea, but I filed the information in a corner of my mind.

  He described at length the process of wiring Eddie Fitz for sound. And he told the court that there were nights when Eddie refused to wear the wire, nights when he’d been sure he’d be searched by the men he was meeting.

  Matt and I had known there were meetings that hadn’t been taped; this was the first time we learned why.

  On the second tape, the food was Italian; Jack and Eddie were eating at Forlini’s, a venerable institution located directly behind 100 Centre Street.

  “Matty and I talked,” Jack said, “and we need to know where Lazarus is on this thing. If Nunzie testified in the grand jury, then we need those minutes. And we need the 3500 material. All of it, not just Nunzie’s.” Singer had already explained to the jurors that 3500 material meant witness statements, which were required to be handed to the defense after the witness testified at trial, but were not privy to the defense beforehand.

  “I already talked to Paulie the Cork,” Eddie boasted, naming the grand jury clerk of the federal courthouse. The clerk had pleaded guilty, and would be taking the stand to confess. “He says Lazarus walked Nunzie over to the grand jury personally. That’s how bad he wants to hurt your boy. But don’t worry,” Eddie went on, his tone expansive, “I’ll get this shit right out from under Lazarus’ nose.”

  “Good,” the fat man replied. “I’ll tell Matty as soon as we leave here. So how soon can we see this stuff?”

  I had my summation line ready. Fat Jack was blowing smoke, Fat Jack was doing what we in the trade called “puffing”—he was pretending to have contacts he did
n’t really have. He was playing big shot, throwing Matt’s name into the conversation to make Eddie Fitz think he was a big man.

  Paulie the Cork came to the table the next time out. The food was Italian again, but this time they were up in Little Italy, at the Luna.

  And this time, Fat Jack insisted on frisking his new cop friend.

  “Hey, what is this?” Eddie said. “Take your hands off me, you little—”

  “Don’t take this wrong, Eddie,” the new voice identified as Paulie the Cork’s pleaded, “but Jack says I gotta search you.”

  “Jack says, huh?” Eddie retorted. “Jack don’t trust me, he can tell me so himself, not make you put your hands all over me like some faggot. I’ll tell that fat sonavabitch what I think of him.”

  “Hey, Eddie, don’t take this wrong,” Fat Jack repeated. “It’s just business, that’s all.”

  “If that’s the way you do business, you can keep your business to yourself. I’m outa here.”

  “Ah, sit down, Eddie,” Jack told him, his voice coated with olive oil. “You’re not going anywhere. You need us, we need you. The people I work for just get a little nervous about discussing business with cops, that’s all. Too many stupid fuckers have hung themselves on tape—you know that.”

  Considering that the entire courtroom was listening to the product of the wire Eddie had been wearing, Judge de Freitas had to pound his gavel a few times to stop the derisive laughter. Fat Jack and Paulie the Cork had hung themselves on tape, all right—but I made a note to remind the jurors that Matt Riordan hadn’t even been in the room at the time.

  “Yeah, you gotta admit—” Paulie started.

  “Shut up, Paulie,” Jack cut in. “Sit down,” he went on, switching back to the cajoling tone he used with Eddie Fitz. “Have a little vino, some fettucine. You’ll feel better after you eat a little something.”

  Jack’s idea of “a little something” for lunch had Juror Number Four stifling a giggle. By the time the three men had thoroughly discussed the respective merits of zuppa de pesce versus tortellini in brodo, most of the jurors were smiling.

  Eddie apparently sat down at the table, but he wasn’t about to let the matter of the frisk go. “You sure you want me to sit here, Jack? We’re pretty close to the jukebox. All I’m gonna get is Sinatra, I sit over here.”

  “Ah, just sit the fuck down, Eddie.”

  Eddie wasn’t about to let the joke die. “See that waitress over there?” he asked. “The one with the big tits. Wanna know why they’re so big? On account of she’s got a microphone hidden in the left one. Yeah, talk into the left one, you want Lazarus to hear nice and loud.”

  “Ah, cut the crap, Eddie,” Jack begged.

  By the time the three men started in on the zabaglione, a fee had been agreed to and another meeting set up to make the exchange.

  Matt came to the next meeting. They were back in Chinatown; there was talk of ordering a whole carp in black bean sauce. There was also talk of another frisk, before Matt joined them.

  “You gonna read me my fucking rights while you’re at it?” Eddie demanded. “You’re makin’ me feel like a skel here, patting me down all the fucking time.”

  “Don’t be like that, Eddie,” Jack replied, his tone weary. “Matt says I got to search you, he’s gonna come to the table.”

  “It’s just business, Eddie,” Paulie the Cork contributed, his voice a sycophantic whine.

  “That’s the way you mopes do business,” Eddie retorted, “I’m outa here. You can keep your business to yourselves.”

  The argument ceased when Matt stepped up to the table.

  “Word in the courthouse says Nick Lazarus wants your ass real bad,” Eddie said for openers.

  I allowed myself the ghost of a smile. This was precisely the theme my summation would center on. Lazarus wanted Riordan’s ass real bad—and he wasn’t above using a crooked cop to get it. How nice of Eddie Fitz to give me a line I could build my final speech to the jury around.

  “Nick isn’t fit to shine your shoes, Matty,” Paulie the Cork chimed in. “He can’t try a case, is his problem. So every time he loses, he puts the blame on you.”

  Nick Lazarus sat in the front row of the courtroom, directly behind Davia Singer’s chair. A dull red crept into his sallow cheeks as he listened to the assessment of the former court clerk. True or not, those words were going to end up in the lead paragraph of every story to hit the papers tomorrow.

  Nobody said Shut up, Paulie, but everyone at the table was thinking it. I knew this because I was thinking it, just listening to the tape.

  “I hear Nunzie may have made a deal with Lazarus,” Matt said in his deep voice.

  “What I hear,” Eddie Fitz replied, “is that Lazarus promised him a walk. A clean walk, if he’d roll over on you. I hear he walked Nunzie over to the grand jury, and Nunz gave it all up. Told Lazarus everything he knows about you and Frankie C. and the Lou Berger thing.”

  Singer rose to explain to the jury exactly who Frankie C. was. In case the jurors were too stupid to realize that Eddie had just named Don Scaniello’s successor, Frank Cretella, who just happened to be Matt Riordan’s longtime client.

  “I wish I knew exactly what Nunzie told them,” Matt said.

  I made a note: Wish I knew not same as would pay to know. But I wished I had something stronger than that to say.

  Judge de Freitas cut us loose at precisely 5:00 P.M., with two more tapes to go.

  I felt as if I’d run a marathon; I hadn’t even stood up to cross-examine Boatman yet, and I was as wiped out as I’d ever been after a day of trial. I’d overdosed on adrenaline and I hadn’t really begun to try this case.

  It was pouring. All the pent-up humidity of the day had given way to a slashing rain that dumped a river onto the slick stone steps of the courthouse. I didn’t want to walk down those steps in my expensive new shoes, but the minicams waited at the bottom, undeterred by the downpour. I shrugged at Matt and headed down the steps, unfurling my umbrella as I went.

  “All we’ve heard so far,” I told Ginger Hsu, “is that Jack Vance likes sesame chicken and Eddie Fitz prefers jumbo shrimp.” Matt and I had decided never to use the nickname Fat Jack when talking to reporters; we didn’t want to offend weight-challenged viewers.

  “There has been nothing offered today to indicate that Matt Riordan had the slightest idea what Jack Vance was doing—and there won’t be any evidence like that tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day,” I promised. “This whole thing is exactly what the government’s chief witness just said it was: Nick Lazarus wanting to nail Matt Riordan’s you-know-what.”

  Behind me, Carlos Ruiz tossed a challenge at the United States attorney. “So, Lazarus,” he began, “is it true what they say—you can’t try a case?”

  I didn’t wait to hear the answer; the question itself filled me with elation. Matt shepherded me toward a cab—how he managed to snag an empty one in a rainstorm was one of those unexplained miracles—and in a matter of minutes we were on our way up the Bowery to McSorley’s to meet Angie.

  There was a certain irony in going to McSorley’s. It had been a males-only tavern for over a hundred years, and had been integrated by women within my lifetime as a New Yorker. And now a female lawyer was going there to meet her female investigator, a former Housing cop.

  The place was cool and dark and yeasty, a perfect sanctuary on a wet summer evening. Matt hustled me inside and ordered us both a Watney’s. I picked up my mug and took a grateful sip, letting its malty flavor linger on my tongue.

  “God, that was an ordeal,” I said when half the brew had disappeared down my dry throat. And if it was dry today, when I’d done virtually nothing in court except listen to tapes, how would I feel after a bruising cross?

  “I’m exhausted,” I went on, “and we’ve just started this thing. How in hell do you do this, week in and week out? Year in and year out?”

  I never got to hear the answer. The door flew open and a very soggy investigator
pushed her way in. Her hair was sopping and her clothes hung on her as if she’d put them on straight from the washing machine, without benefit of dryer.

  She was out of breath. She tossed her bag onto an empty chair and plopped down next to me.

  “I found him,” she said. Then she grabbed another lungful of air. “I ran all the way here from the subway,” she explained. “No umbrella.”

  My exhaustion fell away at once; I felt alive again, ready to go. Should we abandon our beers and head for Bedford-Stuyvesant, nail down an interview with TJ as soon as possible? Had he admitted that he and Eddie Fitz were partners? Would he testify?

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “When can we see him?” Matt demanded.

  “You can’t,” my investigator replied decisively. “He’s in the morgue.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Riordan slammed his fist down on the table so hard the beer mugs jumped. “I knew it!” he cried in a voice torn between anguish and triumph.” I knew that bastard would stop at nothing. He must have found out we were close to bringing TJ into court, and he—”

  “Wait a second here,” Angie cut in. “Not so fast, Jose.” One of Angie’s peculiarities was her penchant for giving everyone Spanish names. “This guy happens to have been dead a month already. Found in the trunk of a car over on Bushwick Avenue.”

  “Just like Nunzie,” I murmured. “I wonder if the people who iced Nunzie also took out TJ.”

  “No way,” Matt said in a decisive voice that brooked no argument. “No way this guy’s death is a coincidence. He’s the only credible witness who could prove Eddie Fitz is a lying scumbag, and he turns up dead on the eve of our calling him to the stand, and it’s a coincidence?” He shook his head and repeated his earlier pronouncement: “No way.”

  “Look, I can see where our chief witness ending up wearing a toe tag is upsetting,” I began, trying to sound more conciliatory than I felt, “but, face it, the guy was a drug dealer. A lot of people might have wanted him dead.”