King Con (1997)

by Stephen Cannell

  "Did Joe Rina or Tommy Rina ever buy flowers at your shop?" she asked.

  "No, ma'am ... or if they did, I wasn't aware of it." Another glance at Cohen.

  "But it's possible, isn't it? According to the Trenton phone book, there are about twenty florist shops in the city ... so there's at least a one-in-twenty chance that he did."

  "I think I would'a remembered ..." Gino Delafore said. Again he looked over at Gerald Cohen, who was avoiding Gino's gaze by studiously surveying his notes.

  Finally Gerry looked up. "Is this going to take much longer, Judge? This juror is acceptable to the Defense. Ms. Hart has run out of challenges. If she's trying to dismiss Mr. Delafore for cause, she needs facts, which are obviously in short supply over there." He waved his arm at the Prosecution table. "Can we get this moving?" His nasal voice whined in the courtroom.

  "How 'bout it, Ms. Hart?" the Judge asked.

  "Just one or two more questions, Your Honor." She turned back to Gino Delafore. "Do you know somebody named Sam Definio?"

  "Yes. He used to have a little magazine stand in front of my shop."

  "But you knew he had a long record of involvement in criminal enterprises, including bookmaking and loan-sharking?"

  "No, I didn't know that."

  "Come on, everybody tells me he was known as 'Flashpaper' Sam because he kept his books written on dissolvable paper that he could drop into a pan of water when the cops showed up."

  "I knew he'd had trouble with the law. I knew he was trying to go straight. I bought a paper from him every morning for five years. Other than that, his business was his, mine was mine."

  "But he was reputed to be a member of the Rina Crime Family, wasn't he? And--"

  "Objection, Your Honor! What the heck is Ms. Hart talking about? What Rina Crime Family? My client has never even been on trial before!"

  "Joe Rina's been arrested ten times," Victoria shot back.

  "Sloppy police work and lies by crooked, police-bought informants are not proof of crimes, Miss Hart. ... Show me your convictions."

  Judge Goldstone turned to Gino Delafore and threw a judicial slow pitch. "Do you think you can decide this case on the merits, Mr. Delafore?" he asked.

  "Of course, Your Honor."

  The Judge looked at Victoria. "Unless you have something with teeth, I'm going to seat this juror."

  "Could I sidebar, Your Honor?" Victoria asked.

  Judge Goldstone motioned Gerry and Victoria forward. They clustered around his desk and talked softly, the Prosecution going first:

  "I think it's very relevant that this man ran a flower shop in front of which was a notorious bookmaker, who police believe was involved with Joseph Rina. Gino Delafore had to know that was a betting stand and he allowed it to happen right in front of his business because he also had connections with Joseph Rina. If that's not relevant, then I'm reading the wrong law books."

  "You can't inject unsubstantiated allegations into voir dire," Gerry said. "It's all innuendo, Vicky. This man ran a florist shop. He has no criminal record. Period. ... Can we move on, Your Honor?"

  "Victoria, I'm going to seat this juror as your second alternate and attach jeopardy. You have seventy-two hours to prepare your case-in-chief. Day after tomorrow, you will either begin opening arguments or I will have to dismiss. Sleep well, touch gloves, and may the best lawyer win," Judge Goldstone grinned.

  Yuck yuck, yuck, thought Victoria Hart as Murray Goldstone got up from his leather-backed chair and moved out of the ornate courtroom, black robes billowing. It was only ten A.M. The day was starting off disastrously, but before noon, it got much worse.

  The Trenton Haz-Mat team had been called in to probe the elevator shaft. They finally dredged up three sludge-covered bodies, which were rushed to the Coroner's office.

  Victoria Hart got the call just before lunch and, fearing the worst, trudged across the mini-mall to the Coroner's office, which was in the basement of the Police Lab. She walked down the concrete stairs, her footsteps unsteady, her hand on the metal banister. Her high heels echoed in a tiled corridor crammed with last night's drug and traffic mistakes. It was a depressing parking lot full of metal gurneys and stalled karmas. She went past the reefer room where the bodies were frozen after the M.E. had opened them up and emptied them of their insides, turning them into cadaverous kayaks. She gagged as she passed the decomp room, where decomposing bodies lay under plastic sheets, waiting for autopsies. She found the Coroner's Assistant, Herman Myer. Herman "the German" was six-five and weighed over three hundred pounds.

  "I'm here to make a preliminary I.D. on the three bodies you just pulled out of the shaft at Trenton Towers," she said dully.

  "Took us a while to get 'em cleaned up. They're a little graphic. ..."

  "I promise, Herman, I'll try not to vomit on your nice, clean autopsy room," she said morosely.

  He nodded and took her into a large forensic operating theater where all three bodies were on separate steel-tray autopsy tables. She reluctantly looked down. ... Bobby Manning's chest cavity had a hole in it the size of a cantaloupe. Pieces of his rib cage poked through, still glistening black from the oily goop that had filled the bottom of the shaft and hidden the bodies for three days.

  "That's Bobby Manning," she said sadly. "He liked Nestle's Crunch. I couldn't find the fucking Nestle's Crunch at the mini-market. They were out." Her voice was shaking.

  Herman reached out and put a hand on her arm. She pulled free and went to Tony Corollo. Tony's body was almost unrecognizable. She knew it was him but she couldn't make a positive, legal I.D. There wasn't enough left. His face was gone. She put a hand up to her mouth and fought back a sob. "It's ... he's the right size, but I can't tell for sure. You'll have to print him," she said, taking her eyes off the gruesome, faceless mess.

  "Already did. Weil get all the prints back in an hour or two. You don't have to do this, Victoria."

  She nodded and moved to the table and saw her friend Carol Sesnick. She looked smaller here on the metal table than she had in life. It was as if the wonderful spirit that filled her had somehow made her bigger. She had been shot in the head and the left side of her face was missing. She had bloated badly ... but it was her. Victoria reached out and touched the poodle curls, still wet and slimy from the oil. "I'm sorry, girlfriend," she finally managed.

  * * * *

  Her phone rang at ten o'clock the following night. The voice on the other end of the line was educated, Eastern, and very precise.

  "This is Miss Victoria Hart, yes?" he said slowly. "Your secretary gave me this number."

  She had been gathering up the remnants of her case to file in her office. She had armloads of depositions from nurses and doctors, all of whom had witnessed Frank Lemay's injuries, but would never be called upon to testify. The case was over. Jeopardy had attached. After tomorrow, Joe Rina could never be tried on this charge again.

  "Who's calling?" she said without interest.

  "This is Cedric O'Neal."

  "Who?" she asked impatiently.

  "I'm Anthony Heywood's criminal attorney."

  "Whose criminal attorney?"

  "Anthony Heywood's. I believe his street nickname is 'Amp' Heywood, or some such silliness. ..."

  Victoria thought Cedric O'Neal sounded wimpy.

  "He told me he called you last night and gave you information about where the bodies of the two police officers and your witness could be found. It's on the evening news that you subsequently found them, yes?" he continued.

  Victoria set the folders down, grabbed a yellow legal pad, and wrote down, "Cedric O'Neal." Under that she wrote, "Anthony 'Amp' Heywood."

  "Okay, how can I help you, Mr. O'Neal?" she said with interest, and grabbed for her leather-bound copy of the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, which listed all the attorneys in the United States ... where they went to school, what year they graduated, along with other pertinent facts including any landmark cases they had worked on. It also had employment histories.
r />   In his cheap motel apartment in Coral Gables, Beano Bates paced, carrying the phone. A con man working a phone hustle was known in the trade as a yak. Most yaks paced to keep their energy level up when doing phone freaks. He performed Cedric O'Neal with a perfect clenched-jaw, Eastern-old-school accent. "How can you help me?" he repeated her question. "Well, Miss Hart, I was thinking maybe we could help each other, yes? You see, Mr. Heywood has come to me with some legal problems which, frankly, are a mite troublesome. Mr. Heywood is of the opinion that a former accomplice of his is negotiating with the government to get a reduced sentence on a felony charge of grand larceny."

  "What accomplice are we talking about? What case? And what does all this have to do with me?"

  "I'm not quite ready to tell you that yet. ... If you don't mind, I'd like to make my presentation, then you can do all of your spiffies once I'm done."

  "My what?" she said, confused.

  "Give it your own shine, yes?" he clarified.

  What a jerk, she thought.

  "Mr. Heywood may have some information that would be useful to you in your prosecution of the Rina case ... but Mr. Heywood, instead of giving it away free, is finally being pragmatic and is looking to see what kind of assistance you might be prepared to give to him."

  "So this case his accomplice is about to pin on him is in my jurisdiction?"

  "Conceivably."

  "You're very cagey."

  "Well, you know how this stage of a plea bargain can be. We're tiptoeing around issues of prior knowledge, yes? If I might continue ...? Mr. Heywood might be willing to give you information about the death of the man this morning's paper is identifying as Demo Williams. In return, he'd like your advocacy in any forth-coming criminal action that your office may be contemplating against him."

  "Jesus, you're wordy. ... You can just say it, Mr. O'Neal."

  "I'm operating under instructions from my client right now. My client has not been implicated in anything yet, but he fears he's about to be, and I would just as soon handle this negotiation one-on-one. When constructing agreements of this nature, I like to see who I'm talking to."

  "Your client seemed to be indicating to me over the phone last night that his 'Ace Cool,' which means best friend, told him that he was part of the killing at Trenton Towers and that some Italian mobsters did the work. At least that's what it sounded like. I don't need to remind you that anything that Demo Williams told your client is hearsay and not worth much, if anything."

  "What if Mr. Heywood was in the nightclub, sitting right at the table, when the original offer was made?" Beano said, pinching his voice, giving it some Ivy League timbre.

  "That would be very interesting," she said.

  "I need three things if we're going to trade, yes? One: your promise that you will gather up a good position against the Rinas for murdering those three before you call Mr. Heywood to testify. He doesn't want to present himself to the court and implicate these Mafia killers only to have you lose the case. He wants them in jail where they can't retaliate. Two: He wants to be absolved of any charges pending against him for crimes currently being considered by your office. And three: He would like to be placed in the Witness Protection Program."

  Victoria was still thumbing through her copy of Martindale-Hubbell and finally found Cedric O'Neal. The listing said he had graduated top of his Yale class in 1989. Another Ivy League choirboy. They're coming through the windows. He was a partner in a law firm in New York, but was also licensed to practice in half-a-dozen other states, including New Jersey. He graduated less than ten years ago. She thought he was very young to be a partner already and it pissed her off. "You still with Lincoln, Forbes, O'Neal, and Ross?" she asked.

  "Ahhh. Got your Martindale-Hubbell out, do you?" he said in his pinched, clenched-jaw voice. "Yes, I'm afraid I'm still there, despite their best efforts to replace me." And then he laughed; it sounded very close to a cackle.

  Lincoln, Forbes, O'Neal, and Ross was actually a non-existent law firm that had miraculously appeared in the 1997 Martindale-Hubbell, courtesy of Frank X. Bates. Frank, who did second-story jobs when he wasn't oiling down roofs, had broken into the printing firm in Chicago that put out the directory and added the fictitious law firm to the computer file one day before it went to be typeset. It was very handy for a family of con men to have a registered, but nonexistent, law firm when working a sophisticated mark. It was often necessary to show up in a con claiming to be somebody's lawyer. Beano even had stationery and business cards printed. They were somewhere in his suitcase. The publisher had sent out a letter disavowing the mistake, but the nonexistent law firm was still in the book, long after everyone had thrown the letter away.

  Victoria closed the M-H directory and pondered what to do with stuffy Cedric O'Neal. She had one or two yellow "Caution" lights flashing on the big emergency panel in her head, but she was still seething with anger about the death of her friend and that energy helped to make up her mind. "Okay, Mr. O'Neal, how 'bout ten o'clock tomorrow morning? My office."

  "Ahh, could we perhaps make it someplace where the possibility of recording or eavesdropping is a mite less intense?"

  "How 'bout Sam's Deli, down by the river? Nine o'clock?" she said.

  "It's a date. I'll be the tall, balding gentleman in the tan suit and the striped school tie."

  She hung up the phone and wondered what the hell was going on.

  Beano hung up the phone, grabbed Roger, and headed to the door. He needed to go dig up the pickle jar he had buried under a rock off Highway 10. The jar contained fifty thousand dollars in cash. The fifty large was his start-up money and all he had left in the world. Then he had to catch the red-eye flight to Jersey, so he could make his nine o'clock meeting with a beautiful prosecutor named "Tricky Vicky" Hart.

  Chapter Six.

  TELLING THE TALE

  SAM'S DELI WAS ON THE CORNER OF MANCHESTER AND O Street. It had large, plate-glass windows and a takeout counter along the east wall. Beano arrived at eight, an hour before the meeting. He was dressed in a blue blazer, tan slacks, and striped tie. His dyed blond hair was falling over his tanned forehead. One of the problems with being on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List was that Beano's picture had been circulated to police departments all over the country. He picked a table in the rear of the deli. With his back against the wall, he sat scanning the half-full restaurant. Laughter and frying bacon mixed in with the occasional scream of a Waring blender. An aerial circus of black flies competed for a hanging light fixture in the center of the room.

  From what he'd been able to find out about Victoria Hart, she was no fool. She might even bring a police investigator to witness the negotiation concerning Anthony Hey wood's nonexistent crimes. Beano had selected his old cellmate, Amp, for the co-starring role in this hustle because Beano knew Amp had a sizable record and would be in the N.C.I.C. computer. Beano had also heard from an old ex-con friend that a month after he got out, Amp had stopped a bullet in a street action and had been given the Miami "burial at sea," which consisted of being lugged out to the Everglades and stuffed down a gator hole ... an event that made him technically still alive, but forever unavailable for protest. Beano's careful eyes zigzagged the deli and he determined there weren't any cops in the place.

  He ordered a tall glass of orange juice from an already tired waitress whose name tag said she was ANGEL. Beano sat watching the door, examining the customers as they arrived, checking them out one at a time as they entered. At exactly nine o'clock, through the door came the woman whose picture he had seen in the Trenton Herald. Victoria Hart announced her fastidious personality with her wardrobe and prompt arrival. In person, Beano didn't think she looked very tricky. She looked determined; everything about her suggested intelligence and organization. She was in a tailored, dark green suit with matching shoes and scarf. She was even more strikingly beautiful than the picture in the paper, but she seemed unconcerned with her looks. No makeup or hair-styling. She had a large briefcase and no purse.
She seemed impatient as she scanned the restaurant. As her eyes panned across him, he pulled the menu up to cover his face. She was searching for a tall, balding man in a tan suit and school tie, the description he had given her. But nobody in the restaurant matched that description. She glanced at her watch, then moved briskly across the deli and took a table by the window.

  He let some more time run off the clock. At nine-ten, Victoria Hart started glancing at her watch. Then she pulled her case files out of her briefcase and started going through them again. Angel poured the New Jersey Prosecutor a second cup of coffee. By nine-twenty she was tapping her fingers on the linoleum table top. Beano watched her carefully with a con man's practiced eye. She was going to be a tough mark. She was definitely Type A, direct, no bullshit ... the hardest kind. Type A's were generally fastidious, so Beano decided on a plan. He wanted to wait until she was just about to leave. If this was a trap, and she had somebody else in the restaurant, they would communicate before she got up. She would wave the back-up over and they'd do some whispering ... Whatta you think? Is he gonna show? Did he stand us up? Beano continued to observe her; she was important to the layout of his con. As the Prosecutor on the case, she had spent almost a year trying to convict Joseph Rina. That meant she was the greatest living expert on that Mafia Prince outside of his own family. She would have already deposed all of his friends and business associates. She would know about all of his legal and illegal activities, his known associates, his girlfriends, his enemies. She would have the background information Beano would need. Most attorneys at trial keep a copy of the complete case files with them, so if something comes up, they can have it at their fingertips. He hoped she had the bulk of this information in her oversized briefcase.

  Beano had very little knowledge of Joseph Rina beyond the fact that he was an avid card player and was viciously effective with a nine-iron at close range. His brother, Tommy, was reputed to be something of a loose cannon. He was fiercely loyal to his younger brother and had protected him all his life. In fact, at the age of fifteen, Tommy had attacked an Irish thug named Sean Morrisey, who had threatened Joe. Tommy had beaten him to death outside a bar with a ballpeen hammer. Then a miracle occurred: The thug sat up on the Coroner's table just before the autopsy. They rushed Morrisey to the hospital and he had been saved. The way the story went, two months later the resurrected boy had been walking down the street where the beating first happened and was shot in the back from a passing car. Because he'd killed him twice, Tommy Rina had been Tommy "Two Times" ever since. Other than that distressing piece of information, Beano knew next to nothing about Tommy.