Death's Witness

by Paul Batista

  “I understand that, Julie. I’ll give it to one of the other guys.”

  Wasserman leaned forward. With delicate fingers he stroked his gleaming forehead.

  “Cassie wants to talk with you,” he said.

  58

  “Cassie?” Catherine Barnes was an author of three best-selling books. A Candice Bergen look-alike, at least in makeup, she did commentary on one of the network’s weekend news programs.

  Jealous rumors around the newsroom—and there were always jealous rumors there—had it that she had more than $3 million in royalties from those books socked away in Cayman Islands bank accounts. She specialized in reporting on criminal trials, particularly “mega” trials that lasted for months and involved famous defendants and high-profile lawyers. Julie had read somewhere that Cassie had a contract to write a book on the Fonseca trial. She was in her late forties, a woman with a southern accent who was once married to a millionaire magazine publisher. She lived in Manhattan and East Hampton. Her face appeared and reappeared in the society pages of the New York newspapers and the glossy surfaces of Vanity Fair. Julie had an innate, instinctive dislike of her, not because of her appearance or her success but because of her confection of a style. In truth, Cassie was a native of Toledo, not Atlanta. How had she developed a southern accent?

  Stan said, “She called me fifteen minutes ago, told me about the testimony today, and said she wanted to talk to you. She asked me if I could arrange it. I guess I’m becoming your gate-keeper.”

  “No,” Julie said flatly.

  “She just wants to know what you know about this Hutchinson character.”

  D E AT H ’ S W I T N E S S

  “Stan, I’m paid to write the news, not to make it. Please ask her not to call me.”

  “I can’t stop her, Julie.” Stan Wasserman was stroking both eyebrows. “Besides, she’s fair.”

  “Then I’ll tell her I don’t want to talk to her.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Can’t you see?”

  “Not really.”

  “My privacy, Stan, for one thing.”

  “Anything else?”

  59

  “First, I start with her, then others follow. What I said to Tom, what Tom said to me…those things were for us…”

  “Certainly, Julie. I told her I thought you wouldn’t be enthu-siastic about this. I’ll try talking her down. But she may call you.

  She’s persistent. People in our business are supposed to be persistent.”

  “She’s not really in our business, Stan. She’s in another line of work. She’s in the who-do-you-know and who-do-you-kiss-and-tell field. She’s Dominick Dunne in Gucci shoes.”

  Stan stared at her. It was, Julie felt, a look of sympathy, patience, kindness, but then he said, too formally, as if rehearsed:

  “When I tell her that you won’t speak to her, Julie, we can be certain you won’t speak to anybody else, can’t we? Other people are going to try to reach you about this, you know.”

  For the first time in the years she had known Stan Wasserman, Julie was disturbed by him, startled by his message. Who was the we? She also experienced a sense of helplessness. She recognized he was urging team spirit, a message of “help us, not them.” He had conducted himself for years as a man who didn’t play on any team: independent-minded, candid, capable, bemused by ass-kissers and the overtly ambitious, never a “kiss-up, kick-down”

  kind of guy. So, for Julie, this was new and unsettling. She felt an impulse to ask him when NBC went into the business of requiring loyalty oaths. But she needed his and the station’s support and patience and money. She had to keep this job, this source of funds P A U L B A T I S T A

  for herself and her daughter. She said quietly, “You know I wouldn’t do that,” and abruptly left his office.

  At her computer again, she wasn’t able to focus on the next story, the bombing of a Sunni mosque somewhere in the world.

  Since Cassie might soon try to reach her, Julie made a decision.

  She called Elena at the apartment and said she would be home early. Elena put Kim on the phone. In baby talk, Julie said to her daughter: “Mommy be home soon.” Kim said, “Mommy, Mommy.”

  Alone at the computer terminal, Julie was nervous. She 60

  wished, as she had so many times since Tom’s death, that she had friends. They had been an insular couple. Tom was outgoing and friendly with strangers, but not close to anyone except Julie, and now Julie felt she was paying a price, not yet measured, for their loving exclusivity. She’d allowed herself to drift away from the female friends she had before she met Tom. She could barely remember the names of her old boyfriends, although she could recall that several of them were once gentle, sincere. And she wished that, in all the time since Tom’s death, she had placed more than one call to Vincent Sorrentino to thank him. Her voice had choked so much, even as Vincent tried painstakingly to prolong the conversation, that she was just too overwhelmed to continue the call. Vincent had left, at intervals, several messages since then, with his home and office numbers and his cell phone number. For reasons she didn’t understand, she hadn’t yet called him.

  There was one call she did make before she left the NBC

  office. She had kept in her wallet the piece of paper on which he had written his name and telephone number.

  “Strike Force.” It was a man’s voice, Brooklyn-accented.

  “Hi, is this Agent McGlynn?”

  “No. He’s out of town today. Can I take a message?”

  “Ask him to call me. Julie Perini. 212—566—0210.”

  “Will he know what this is regarding?”

  “He knows me.”

  D E AT H ’ S W I T N E S S

  “I’ll see he gets it. I’ll have him get right back to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  Sparks Steak House, at 46th Street and Third Avenue, was three blocks from Sorrentino’s office. Paul Castellano was shot to death on the sidewalk in front of Sparks in the mid-1980s. As it turned out years later, John Gotti had ordered Castellano killed there. It had been Castellano’s favorite place for dinner. Vincent Sorrentino, who was then at a much earlier stage in his career, had been one of Castellano’s lawyers. Three days before he was gunned down (photographs of the 61

  dead man in his limousine had become one of the icons of the age) Castellano had visited Sorrentino’s office for fifteen minutes. In many ways, it was that event that began to propel Vincent Sorrentino toward all the notoriety he developed over the years.

  Over the course of the last few months Fonseca, Sorrentino, and others in Fonseca’s group ate dinner at Sparks dozens of times. They joked about it as their war room for the trial. Gino, the unflappable headwaiter who acted as though he knew secrets, always had the same table reserved for the Congressman: a curved six-seater with leather benches against the wall at the far end of the subtly lit, wood-paneled room, once Castellano’s favorite table. Silver-haired and handsome at seventy-two, the Congressman always showered blessings through the room as he made his way to his table. You would think, Vincent Sorrentino often thought, that Fonseca had been coronated, not indicted.

  Even Sorrentino, normally Spartan about his appetite, was glad to reach Sparks that night. He had spent an hour with Fonseca at his office after the trial ended that day. “News to me, Vinnie,” Fonseca had said as they rode uptown in the backseat of Sorrentino’s car when he asked if the Congressman ever heard that Hutchinson had met Tom Perini. “If it’ll help,” Fonseca added, “I can call around and see if anybody knows anything.”

  And that is what the Congressman did before they left for dinner. Fonseca must have had thousands of names and telephone P A U L B A T I S T A

  numbers in his cigarette-lighter-thin cell phone. His quick calls seemed to reach every corner of the country. He even managed to reach Hutchinson’s ex-wife in Florida. “Yeah, sweetheart,”

  Sorrentino heard Fonseca saying at his end of the conversa
tion as it came to a close, “you take care, babe. And you be sure to stop in when you get up here.”

  Fonseca was seated at Sorrentino’s gleaming desk, his handsome face made even more striking by the large, stylish glasses he had taken to wearing for the last two years. He raised upturned palms and said, “Nobody knows nothing, Vinnie. That little shit Hutchinson 62

  had one gorgeous wife. I see her when I get down to Boca.”

  Sorrentino wasn’t in the mood for one of the Congressman’s war stories about the women he loved. Instead, Sorrentino said,

  “I think I know who knows.” He opened his cell phone by deftly snapping back the tiny lid. As he waited for the cellular connection, he said: “The hairy lawyer.” The Congressman liked Sorrentino’s style, a cool, ballsy elegance that seemed to stop at nothing.

  “Neil,” Sorrentino said into the cell phone as he glanced and winked at the Congressman. “It’s the Prince of Darkness.”

  The Congressman smiled broadly, admiringly, at Sorrentino, who was saying to Steinman, “Tell me, Neil, when did you find out Hutchinson had been waltzing around with our own Joe Namath?”

  Fonseca followed Sorrentino’s side of the conversation intently. “Sure, my client’s sitting right here with me.” “What difference does that make?” “I don’t see that I’m not entitled to that information, Neil.” “I agree, I don’t know how Golden Boy could have been wining and dining Hutchinson and then gone to bed with poor old Sy Klein.” “Sure, but I still think you should tell me what you knew and when you knew it, as old Howard Baker used to say during Watergate.” “Don’t tell me you don’t remember who Howard Baker was? Did you ever hear about Watergate?”

  “Just pulling your leg, Neil.” “Watch out, Neil, it sounds like the stuff mistrials are made of.” “Sure, so long, see you tomorrow.”

  D E AT H ’ S W I T N E S S

  Sorrentino flipped the cell phone closed and said to the Congressman, “I think what we got here is a little disarray in the enemy camp. Hutchinson somehow neglected to mention his meetings with Perini, or so Steinman says. By the way, just to show you that not all of you guys in Congress remain immortal, Neil had no fucking idea who Howard Baker was. He probably doesn’t remember Peter Rodino or Mario Biaggi or Wilbur Mills.

  So much for dedicated public service.”

  “Fuckin’ Wilbur Mills,” Fonseca laughed. “I had a few drinks with him the night he leaped into the Tidal Basin while chasing 63

  that stripper.”

  “The stripper? You mean the Argentinean Firecracker?”

  “Yeah,” Fonseca said. “Annabella something-or-other.”

  “Don’t tell me you cavorted with her, too?”

  “Can’t remember. Long time ago, Vinnie. I was busy then making laws for the nation.”

  Their dinner at Sparks that night was interrupted at least six times by a variety of men and women stopping at the Congressman’s table. Fonseca had that quick wit, complete recall of names, and bright amiability Sorrentino admired but never sought to imitate. Fonseca slowly drank most of a bottle of red wine without any noticeable change in his words, gestures, or expressions. Sorrentino, who had work to do the next day, drank only water and ate only shrimp and lettuce.

  At one point, Fonseca said, “Vinnie, why don’t we talk to Klein himself about Perini and Hutchinson? Might help, don’t you think?”

  “It might, but I don’t want you to talk to him.”

  “Listen to me. I’ve learned my lesson, Vinnie. I make one call to an old friend like Sy and they go get a superseding indictment for obstruction of justice, the fuckers.”

  Vincent Sorrentino always found his work fascinating. It was the fastest game around. Every action caused an endless series of reactions, and there was rarely the luxury of time to consider the consequences. Instincts, intuition, experience, nerve—all of that P A U L B A T I S T A

  counted. Reading cases, writing briefs, research—there were thousands upon thousands of lawyers in New York who could do that, and he recruited them and used them as the “lawmen” on his cases. But there were only four or five other lawyers in New York who knew how to try cases the way he did, lawyers who owned the courtroom.

  As Sorrentino sat in Sparks, he stared at this old war horse who, he knew, was as corrupt as the prosecutors believed but for whom he had developed a strong attachment. He wasn’t sure how to exploit the link between Hutchinson and Perini, although his 64

  experience and instincts made him certain there was some link there, some connection, some way to derail this trial. But he also knew he had only a limited amount of time. Every instinct told him that the jury was going to convict Fonseca and the others.

  What Sorrentino needed was a mistrial. Almost every day in a trial there were unexpected, unpredictable developments that could make a case dissolve.

  He said quietly to Fonseca, “Let me think about it. You shouldn’t talk to Klein. I may not be the right guy to do it, either.

  Sy would still like to have my head busted open.”

  The Congressman gave him a deliberately enigmatic smile.

  “Hell, Vinnie, not to worry, he would’ve arranged for that already if he really wanted to.”

  “Thanks for the insight.”

  * * *

  Every night since Tom’s death, Julie had carried Kim close to her, in constant contact. Kim was adorable. She walked unsteadily in loose clothes, smiled often, and talked more and more. Kim plainly loved the fact that her mother kept the television on all the time. For Julie it was important to hear the sound of voices in the apartment continuously, even when quiet Elena was there. The three televisions, often tuned to different stations at the same time, provided the incessant background noise of voices and canned laughter. This was new to Kim, since Tom and Julie used to spend D E AT H ’ S W I T N E S S

  their evenings talking quietly or reading, sometimes aloud to each other. When Tom was alive, the television had only been on in the morning for Kim to watch Sesame Street, reruns of Mr. Rogers, and the insufferable, fat Barney.

  Julie knew she was making a mistake in not doing the things she needed to do to gently coax Kim to bed by seven-thirty or eight, the time when Kim once went to sleep. She now kept Kim with her through the news programs at eleven. Usually the child would simply and sweetly drift into sleep before or midway through the broadcast, toppling to her side on the sofa next to 65

  Julie or into Julie’s lap. Sometimes, as on this night, Kim would hold on tenaciously to her cute alertness.

  Kim didn’t respond, but Julie did, when a picture of Tom flashed fleetingly on the television screen. “And a strange twist today in the racketeering trial of Congressman Daniel Fonseca…”

  Julie listened, confused and upset, to a thirty-second report about Tom Perini and Hutchinson, described as the “rat” who was Congressman Fonseca’s former chief of staff. As Kim played with her mother’s hair, Julie focused on the unfamiliar picture of her husband on the television screen. It had been taken before she even knew him. The picture showed Tom—curly-haired, youthful, and smiling, like one of the gregarious boys in the new generation of the Kennedy clan—moving straight toward the camera.

  The still photo then dissolved into a tape of Vincent Sorrentino speaking into microphones on the white steps of the federal courthouse at Foley Square and asserting, “The prosecution’s failure to have disclosed on its own the involvement of its chief witness with a member of the defense team is outrageous. What did Mr. Hutchinson tell Tom Perini? Did Hutchinson, for example, tell Perini that the Congressman had done nothing wrong? That Congressman Fonseca was an innocent man? That, after all, was what the government’s star witness had just been telling the first Grand Jury.”

  Distracted, she sped Kim through the nightly routine of cleaning, endearing words, and bedtime reading. The child collapsed P A U L B A T I S T A

  into sleep when she was put down in her crib. Her chest was flat on the rabbit-decorated bed sheet, her head twisted to the sid
e, her rear raised. Julie thought, in a moment of lonely, loony horror, that Kim could just as easily have fallen into that position dead. The way dead people fall, Julie thought.

  “God,” she whispered aloud, expelling the image of death. “I can’t let myself do this.”

  How much, she wondered, did Kim understand? Two weeks after Tom’s death, Julie lay down one afternoon on the floor of Kim’s bedroom as the little girl drew lines and circles on a big 66

  piece of paper, constantly changing the bright colors. Julie drew some lines on her own sheet of paper. At a moment when Kim was quiet, Julie said, “Kim, have you noticed anything?”

  “Mommy, see my paper!”

  “I see, sweetie.” Julie touched the side of her daughter’s face and then pulled her daughter’s head gently toward her own so that the girl had to look at her.

  “Sweetie, do you know that we won’t see Daddy again?”

  Kim’s eyes focused only momentarily on Julie’s eyes. Julie wanted to believe it was in that moment of focus, quiet, and clarity that Kim acknowledged understanding that her father was gone.

  Julie groped for the next words. “Your daddy is dead, sweetie.

  That means he can’t come back. Ever.”

  Kim became fussy. “Show Daddy the picture!” She picked up the sheet of paper.

  “Daddy can’t see the picture, sweetie.”

  Placing her small hands flat on the floor, Kim lifted herself to her feet. She still held the piece of multicolored paper on which she had been drawing. She ran out of the room. Julie, too, got up from the floor and followed her daughter at a distance.

  Kim ran first to her parents’ bedroom. “Daddy!” she shouted.

  She opened the door to the closet where she knew her father’s suits and other clothes hung. “Daddy?”

  She left the bedroom, still clutching the paper she wanted to show him, and went to the kitchen. “Daddy?” she asked again, D E AT H ’ S W I T N E S S

  turning repeatedly and glancing around the kitchen.

  Watching her daughter, Julie braced herself against the door-frame. Finally, Kim, crumpling the paper in her hands, ran to her mother, crying, crying, crying.