Beano waited until the Prosecutor pulled up her huge briefcase and started digging around for her wallet to pay the bill; then he got out of his seat and crossed the restaurant toward her.
"Miss Hart?" he said, slightly out of breath.
She jerked her head up from her wallet and looked at him. "Cedric O'Neal?" Her expression said he wasn't what she expected.
"Actually, no. I work with Ced O'Neal. He got stuck in New York on a pre-trial motion that got expedited at seven this morning. He called me and I got here as quick as I could. I hope you weren't waiting long. I'm Martin Cushbury." He handed her a card that said he was Martin Cushbury, Attorney at Law. The card was embossed in gold with the firm name of Lincoln, Forbes, O'Neal, and Ross. "I'm with our New Jersey office in Newark. I got his call at eight-thirty. I was in the damn shower. He tried to reach you but I guess you'd already left. ... I got here quick as I could."
"I have a ten o'clock court date, so we don't have much time," Victoria said, looking at her watch again.
"Okay, right. Well, uh ... despite our lack of time, would it be all right if maybe I sat down?" he asked, grinning.
She motioned for him to sit and smiled apologetically, but didn't speak. Beano thought her smile was stunning, but he pushed thoughts of her beauty away and went right to work. ...
"Sorry I kept you waiting," he said.
"Nine o'clock means nine o'clock, Mr. Cushbury," Victoria lectured.
Angel came over and Beano ordered another big glass of orange juice. He smiled at her and let his face redden. "Uh ... well, let's get started then. ... I don't quite know what Ced told you, but we represent an African-American male named Anthony Heywood, who has some information which, I guess, Cedric thinks could be of some use to you on this Carol Sesnick matter. However, Mr. Heywood will need some protection against future prosecution. He's afraid he is about to be implicated in a grand larceny case." He looked down at some prop notes he had in his hand. "Scribbled this stuff down pretty hastily this morning," he alibied lamely. "Didn't quite get it all."
"After Mr. O'Neal called, I checked with the police." Victoria interrupted. "Tony Heywood's name hasn't entered into any of our ongoing investigations. However, I ran him through N.C.I.C. Your client served time in Raiford Prison for second-degree murder."
"He did?" Beano stammered, "Oh ... well, I guess ... I didn't ... But that doesn't really change anything ... or does it?" Beano looked nervously at his notes.
"A convicted murderer isn't usually a credible witness," Victoria negotiated.
"I suppose it's better than nothing though, isn't it?" Beano said, sounding confused. "I'm, ah ... If I seem a little lost, it's because I don't do criminal. I'm in our real-estate department. Do leases and build-to-suit deals for corporate customers," he explained. Beano sensed this news warmed her, as Angel set the juice down in front of him.
"Why don't you tell me what you think you can contribute to my case?" Victoria said. "Then we'll see what kind of deal, if any, we can make."
Beano consulted his notes. "Let's see. ... Okay, Heywood was at a table at the Striped Zebra Club in Trenton. It's a gentlemen's club. I use the term loosely." Beano smiled his boyish rainmaker smile. It brought rain, but only a few drops. She smiled back thinly. "Our client heard somebody named Texaco Phillips offer Demo Williams five hundred dollars to help out with some wet work. ... 'Wet work,' I presume, is like killing," he explained, and she smiled patiently. "Later that night, Demo didn't reappear at his house. He was found the next morning inside that stolen Econoline van in Hoboken." Most of this, including Texaco's name, Beano had gotten out of old newspaper articles about the Rina Crime Family and the killing in Hoboken. The rest was pure imagination. He knew it would intrigue Victoria and it did.
She leaned forward. "So, it wasn't Joe Rina who solicited your client's friend to commit murder ... it was Texaco Phillips?" she said, taking out a yellow pad and beginning to make notes. "Exactly when did this conversation take place?" she asked.
Beano gave the story a little more gas. He wanted Victoria to think she could pick his pocket. "To be honest, I'm really ill equipped. I don't have enough background to conduct a negotiation. Maybe you could see Ced sometime later this week."
"Look, Mr. Cushbury, I've got to go into court this morning at ten A.M. and shut down a high-profile case I've been working for a year. Once I do that, I can never try Joe Rina for this crime again. Texaco might turn State's evidence if I could roll him. So if you have anything I can use, I need it now or not at all."
"I don't know why Ced called me to do this. It's nuts." Beano could see the tightness around her eyes. ... He had her going.
"Mr. Cushbury, Tommy and Joe Rina killed my only witness, who was also my friend. They killed two wonderful young police officers as well. I want those murderers in jail. You've got to tell me what you have."
Beano looked again at the prop notes in his hand, as if they might somehow hold the answer to his manufactured dilemma. He saw she was about to pounce, so he helped build her confidence with more manufactured confusion. "This stuff mystifies me. ..." He looked at his notes for a long time. "Oh boy ... here's something I forgot, wait a minute."
"Mr. Cushbury, your client's friend, Demo Williams, apparently was contacted by Joe Rina's bodyguard and solicited to commit a murder. If you have something, then damn it, give it to me."
"Oh dear," Beano said weakly, and looked down at his notes again.
"You won't find the answer on that paper. You tell me now, or when Amp Heywood is eventually indicted for that grand larceny, I'll see to it he gets the full jolt. I'll sharpen his heels and drive him into the ground," she said, leaning in toward Beano.
"You'll what?"
"You heard me. If you have information regarding a triple murder, do you really think you can sit there and plead out your two-bit larceny? ... This isn't a real-estate lend-lease deal, it's felony hard-ball."
"You ... you can't ..." Beano started to sputter. "I ... represent this man. ..."
"Watch me." She took out a cellphone and dialed in a number. Then, before hitting SEND, she looked up at him and scowled. "What's it gonna be?" she bluffed angrily.
Beano thought she was even more beautiful mad. "I ... I ... okay, but at least let me see the case file. If I'm going to do this, I need to look it over first."
He had placed the almost-full glass of orange juice directly in front of him. He reached his right hand abruptly across the table to grab her folders. She started to grab them back and, in the process, he back-handed his orange juice glass over.
"Jesus, how stupid!" she cried, as the full glass of juice filled the lap of her green business suit and began dripping slowly down her legs. She exploded out of the seat and looked down at the mess he had made of her outfit.
"Oh, my goodness," Beano flustered, "how clumsy ... how awful ..." He grabbed his napkin and began to spread it around on her suit, making it worse.
"Stop it! Just stop it!" she said, then grabbed two napkins off the next table and looked desperately at Angel, the waitress. "Where's the ladies' room?" Angel pointed to a door in the back of the deli. "Stay here," Victoria ordered Beano, then hurried off to repair the damage, leaving her briefcase behind in the confusion.
When she returned, five minutes later, Beano Bates and the Rina files were gone. "Dammit to hell!" she cursed at herself. Her dress was drenched with cold water and pulp shreds and hung on her like a wet saddle blanket. She felt like a fool as she looked down at the empty table. All that was left was the overturned glass of orange juice. Victoria Hart carefully picked it up and wrapped it in a fresh paper napkin. Then she put it into her briefcase and left the delicatessen. She had five minutes to make it to court.
Chapter Seven.
THE YELLOW SHEET
AFTER NINE MONTHS AND THREE MURDERS, VICTORIA Hart voluntarily withdrew the State's case against Joe "Dancer" Rina. The whole process took less than ten minutes. When Judge Goldstone dismissed the case, the little mobster no
dded his head as if it had been God's will and slowly got to his feet.
Gerald Cohen was closing up case folders and filing them in his briefcase as the Princeton Glee Club cleared the battlefield, gathering up pens, pencils, case reports, and unused arguments from the long, wooden table. The handsome mobster timed it so that he and Victoria met in the doorway of the courtroom. He graciously stepped aside to let her pass. When they were in the hall, he turned to her. ...
"It's gratifying when justice finally prevails, isn't it, counselor?"'
"Are you talking to me?" she said, stunned by his arrogance.
"I believe I was." He smiled.
"Then tell your blond flunky who stole my case folders this morning to send them back. There's nothing in there I can use against you. This case is done ... but I have to turn over my files for review. I'm sure you want my sorry performance evaluated."
"Of course, I don't know what you're talking about. But let me give you a tip, Vicky ... I've been very patient with you. I've endured your subpoenas of my friends and business associates. For almost a year, I've put up with your brash, unsubstantiated allegations. There's a part of me that keeps asking why I've been so charitable. I don't have an adequate answer. Perhaps it's because you're an attractive young woman and I was raised to be courteous to women. However, you've used up all my patience. In the future, you might do well to give me lots and lots of room."
"The room I'm planning to give you is about ten feet square and has a view of the rock quarry. Get used to seeing me around, Joe, 'cause I'm just getting started on you."
She turned and walked away from him, squaring her shoulders, feeling his glare on her back all the way to the elevators. When she turned to push the DOWN button, she saw him still staring. He hadn't moved, but the look on his face transformed him. He no longer looked like a movie star. In that brief glance, she could see inside him as if some mystic chisel had stripped away his beauty and revealed his inner core. In that second, before he turned and walked away, she saw the deadly glare of pure evil. She wondered if she could deal with such a virulent enemy.
Victoria had given the orange juice glass to David Frankfurter before court and he had run it across the courtyard to the police lab. By the time she got back to her office, she had forgotten all about it, but David came through the door with a police printout in his hand.
"You ain't gonna believe this," he said, holding the crime lab report. "We got three good prints off that glass. Index, middle, and thumb, along with a partial palm. This guy you had breakfast with is quite a catch."
"Works for Joe Rina, right?"
"Not that I can tell." He handed her the yellow sheet.
"Beano Bates?" she said, perplexed. "A confidence man?"
"Not just a con man, the con man. This guy is reputed to be the best long grifter operating in America. He actually has sold the Brooklyn Bridge."
"Come on, that's a joke."
"No joke ... It's a scrap iron scam. The way he worked it, Beano pretended to be a Brooklyn metal stress tester who was fired by the city. He had metal stress fracture X-rays and a buncha official-looking time line analyses. They convinced the mark, who was the greedy owner of a scrap metal company, that the bridge had serious metal fatigue and had been judged unsafe by the civil engineers and was going to be torn down. They said it was all being hushed up because the public outcry would be enormous. They set up a fake auction and this dummy paid a half-a-million dollars to Beano's phony inside man to rig the bids. The same scam was done once by some French sharpers on the Eiffel Tower. Beano Bates is the only white-collar criminal on the current FBI Ten Most Wanted List."
She started to scan the charges against him." This guy did a nickel in Raiford. Check and see if he was there the same time as Anthony Heywood, a.k.a. Amp."
"Already did. They were cellmates."
"So what the hell does he want with my case file?" she asked, and then looked at David. Both of them were trying to figure it out, but it didn't add up.
"Nothing here ties him to Joe Rina?" she finally asked.
"Naw. Looks like they run in separate gutters."
There was an empty silence in Victoria's office that was interrupted by her phone buzzer. She picked it up and got her secretary, Marie.
"The Gray Ghost wants to see you, stat," Marie's voice said, with concern. "The Gray Ghost" was office code for G.G. ... Gil Green.
"Okay, I'm on my way." She hung up and looked at David Frankfurter. "Gil wants me. What's the official scuttlebutt on this? Am I headed to Hoboken?" she asked.
"Siberia," he replied sadly.
She nodded, then got to her feet and moved slowly from the office, holding Beano's yellow sheet. She paused in the doorway and handed it back. "Put him through the National Crime Information Center computer. Get me a deep check. I particularly wanna see if he's got any connection to Carol Sesnick." Then she turned and walked out of her office and down the hall to the elevators.
"These kinds of things are always hard, Victoria," Gil said. This time he was looking at her and she could tell he'd rehearsed what he was about to say. A bad sign. He had some notecards he was referring to on his desk in front of him. Another bad sign. She assumed he'd been briefed by Labor Relations on how to handle this meeting to avoid a wrongful-termination suit. "The whole Joe Dancer disaster is going to have to be reviewed. I know you may view this as unfair, but as the Prosecuting Attorney, I think you may have made some decisions in this investigation that bear further examination."
"Such as ...? Every move in this case was approved by you, Gil."
"Victoria, I don't want to get into this with you now. You are temporarily being reassigned to a lower-profile situation. I want you to work the booking desk for a while."
"You want me to be the booking clerk!" she said, appalled. That was a job usually held by the most junior member of the D.A.'s staff. It involved reviewing arrests the police brought in and deciding if there was enough evidence to warrant a criminal prosecution. Then the clerk turned the preliminary decisions over to a senior prosecutor for approval. Even though the job was always done by an attorney, "clerk" was not an accidental description.
"You can check with Betty on where she wants to put you. It's only temporary, just until the review is complete. You're still on full staff salary. I got that for you, but I think we all need to keep our heads down right now. I'm instructing you to make no statements to the press about this situation." Then his secretary buzzed. He picked up the phone. "Oh, right. Sorry ... Yes, right away." He looked at his watch, shook his head, hung up, and got to his feet. It was bad theater. The buzz from his secretary was pre-arranged to bring the meeting to a quick close. "Sorry, Vicky, I'm late for an appointment," he lied, and waited impatiently for her to leave.
She slowly got to her feet. He looked uncomfortable. Gil was non-confrontational, which she always thought was strange behavior for a District Attorney.
"This is chickenshit, Gil. I deserve better than this."
"I'm sure your review will substantiate all of your decisions, but until it comes down, I think this is best. I've already given your background notes and motion files for the Rina case to Mark Switzer. He's doing the prelim. Turn the rest of your Rina stuff over to him ASAP."
She didn't have the nerve to tell him that the rest of her case folders had been stolen from her.
Victoria was popular in the office. She often stayed late and listened while young prosecutors ran their cases by her, hoping Tricky Vicky could find some legal loop-holes or creative strategy they could use. She knew there would be a crowd at the elevator wanting to know what happened. She couldn't bear to face them now, so she took the back stairs down to the trial division on the fourth floor, moved quietly past the Xerox room into her private corner office, and closed the door. In Gil's office, she'd been strangely submissive, as if there were some specific protocol for that kind of event that demanded a level attitude. All the meeting lacked was a blindfold and a last cigarette. Now she could
feel her anger building. She cursed herself for not having chosen the moment to tell the D.A. what a low, shifty coward he was. She stood behind her desk, chewing a fingernail, looking out her corner window onto State Street Park across from the Criminal Courts Building. Her office was cramped but pin-neat; files and folders arranged by case with tight, usable precision.
The phone rang. She snapped it up.
"Victoria Hart," she said sharply, then her mood seemed to change. "Ted Calendar? From WTRN-TV?" she finally said.
The studio at WTRN-TV was small and stuffy, and Ted Calendar looked much older in person than he did on TV. Victoria had let the makeup lady dust her with powder, but there wasn't much she could do with the short hairstyle.
Victoria was miked and sat in a straight-back chair opposite Ted. There was a fake fireplace behind them; a blue oval carpet and bookshelves in the wings completed the economical set. Ted Calendar was reading notes on his lap almost as if she weren't there. They were a few minutes from taping.
"Thanks for this opportunity to tell my side of it," Victoria said.
"Too bad about the Rina trial. Lotta fish got cooked but no dinner served, huh?" he said, still not looking up at her.
King Con (1997) Page 7
