Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

by Larry A Winters

  “You mean like cashing stolen checks, that sort of thing?”

  Yang laughed, and Leary smiled in response. It was a relief to see some of her formality melt away. “Sure, although I don’t think Tuck ever stole a birthday card out of a mailbox. Have you met him? He isn’t exactly the stealthy type. He used manipulation, artifice, and a knowledge of how financial institutions work.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “Tuck was a master of what we call ‘affinity fraud.’ It’s human nature to trust people who are similar to us. A con man can prey on that natural inclination by making the victim believe that the con man and the victim share the same community or vocation or hobby. He was also adept at the ‘advance fee scheme.’ Get the victim to pay money, thinking it’s a first step to receiving something of more value.”

  Leary couldn’t help grinning. He’d always found the idea of the con artist entertaining. “Like if I paid you a finder’s fee, believing you’ll hook me up with a loan. Only after I pay you the fee, there’s no loan.”

  “Exactly.” Her expression darkened. “Why are you smiling?”

  “Sorry, I just—” Yang crossed her arms over her chest and leaned away from him, her air of formality returning. “Did I do something to offend you?”

  “I’ve seen that type of smile before—on jurors, on reporters, on anyone talking about this subject. Don’t think for a second, Detective, that just because no one’s being shot or stabbed, that these are victimless crimes. The victims of fraud lose money, but more than that, they suffer wounds to their psyches that sometimes never heal. There is nothing romantic about a person who manipulates someone’s emotions to trick them into hurting themselves. Con artists are their own special kind of monster. Reggie Tuck included.”

  Leary nodded, feeling suitably chastised. “I understand.”

  “Tuck’s victims were criminals themselves, so I suppose that makes him slightly less repugnant.”

  “Criminals?” Leary leaned forward.

  “Tuck preyed on their greed and their assumption that the whole world was corrupt. He’d appear as an investment banker with inside information, or a lawyer with access to client funds, or a bank officer willing to bend the rules. He always played the role of a greedy man who was out of his depth, with no criminal expertise, who was looking for a partner in crime. Of course, the people he approached saw him as someone they could take advantage of. They would set their sights on conning him, taking the pot of gold out from under him. They would be so focused on their own scheme that they would hardly notice the up-front fees Reggie needed to get the ball rolling. A finder’s fee, or an administrative fee, something like that.”

  “And once they gave Tuck the initial payments, he would disappear,” Leary said.

  “Exactly.”

  Leary was intrigued. He had expected Tuck’s victims to be society’s most vulnerable people—the elderly, the sick, the desperate. “He only tricked criminals? I guess he was a con artist with a conscience.”

  “That’s naive.” Yang’s frown returned. “More likely, it occurred to him that criminals would be less likely to complain to the authorities.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Listen, Reggie Tuck is likable. No question. He has a lot of charisma and self-confidence. And the fact that he ripped off bad guys might, on the surface, make him look like a good guy. But he’s not. He’s a thief and a criminal himself. He’s the last person on Earth you’d want to trust.”

  Leary felt a chill run up his spine. Jessie was with this man now, in a dangerous situation. He hoped to God that Yang was wrong.

  “Tell me about his victims,” Leary said. “Any chance Dane Brigg was one of them?”

  “If he was, the police never learned about it.”

  Leary nodded. He should have known that such a direct connection between Tuck and his would-be killer would be too easy. “It sounds like he stole from some dangerous people, and made fools of them in the process. Did any of his victims have the resources to hire hitmen, to set up a coordinated infiltration of a courthouse?”

  Yang sat in silent thought for a moment. “Most of his marks were small-time crooks. That was part of the profile he looked for—guys who were hungry to become bigger fish in the Philadelphia criminal cesspool. He never went for a major player. Although....” Her voice trailed off.

  “Although what?”

  “There was one possible exception.” She was silent again, thinking. Leary waited. “Are you familiar with Carlo Vitale?”

  “Isn’t he a high-ranking thug in the Philly mob?”

  “The official title is caporegime, or capo, but you’re right. He runs his own crew as part of the larger Philadelphia organized crime family. He would definitely have resources, and access to hitmen.”

  “Tuck ripped him off?”

  Yang shrugged. “The detectives in the Organized Crime Unit were pretty sure he did, but never found any evidence. The unit runs several undercover operations. For a few weeks, there was some chatter about Vitale meeting with a young black man who dressed in fancy suits and liked to talk a lot.”

  “What was the con?”

  Yang shrugged. “We never found out. And we never found any evidence. Eventually we busted Tuck for different crimes, and that part of the investigation was closed. I think I still have a copy of the police file, if you want it.”

  “Yeah,” Leary said. “I do.”

  19

  After the close-packed confinement of the courtroom, where Jessie could practically feel the impatience and tension of the quarantined men and women, the hallway felt silent and empty. Her footsteps clacked against the marble floor as she and Rais walked cautiously toward the bathrooms. She had never realized how wide the courthouse corridors were. She would have felt relief at escaping into such an airy space, except that the hallway was even more oppressive, suffused as it was with the threat of violence.

  “It gets to you, doesn’t it?” Rais whispered. “How these guys don’t show themselves? It’s like, knowing they’re here, but not seeing them, is worse than if they just attacked us.”

  “I don’t know if I’d say worse, but I know what you mean.”

  His gun, which he thrust in front of them like a shield, trembled in his hands. “You know, sometimes, on a dull day, I would wish for something like this to happen. Amazing, right? I actually thought it would be a good thing, exciting. A chance to put my training to use.” He laughed, and the high-pitched sound, horselike, made a shiver run up Jessie’s spine. “Now I’m probably going to die at the age of twenty-three. Be careful what you wish for, right?”

  She stopped walking and waited for him to turn and look at her. His chest was rising and falling too quickly. She touched his arm, hoping to steady him. “You’re not going to die, Mo. It might have been stupid to wish for this, but you were right about your training. What’s happening here today, you have the tools to handle. I just hope you’re right about Reggie being in the men’s room, so we can grab him and get back to the courtroom.”

  “Where else would he go? There aren’t exactly a lot of things to do on this floor.”

  The unspoken words, other than get killed, seemed to hang in the air between them.

  Jessie couldn’t imagine why Reggie would leave the relative safety of the guarded courtroom. She didn’t know him well, but she was pretty sure that while he might be stubborn, brash, and overly confident, the one thing he wasn’t was stupid. She found it hard to believe they would find him safe and sound, washing his hands in the bathroom. She just hoped they wouldn’t find him dead.

  They reached the door to the men’s room. Rais took a breath, checked his gun one more time, and shoved his way inside. Jessie followed closely behind him.

  The first thing she saw was a man using one of the urinals. His back was to them.

  “See?” Rais said. He holstered his gun. “I told you—”

  “That’s not him!” Jessie couldn’t get the words out in time. The man at
the urinal might have born a slight resemblance to Reggie from behind, but he was dressed in a jumpsuit, not the suit and tie she had brought with her this morning and which Reggie had been wearing ever since.

  The man whipped around, spraying urine. It was Tyrone Nash. He took his hand off his penis and grabbed a gun resting on top of the urinal. An identical twin of Rais’s, Nash must have taken it off of Erlinger’s dead body during his escape from the holding cells. Jessie felt the tight knot of fear she had been carrying in her belly explode into full-blown terror.

  Rais fumbled to retrieve his own gun from its holster. He wasn’t fast enough. Nash raised his arm and a deafening explosion reverberated off the tiled walls. Rais staggered backward, clutching at his chest. His face was full of surprise and disbelief. Jessie saw blood well between his fingers. Nash fired again and he fell backwards to the floor.

  Jessie backpedaled toward the door. Nash’s arm pivoted and she was looking down the barrel of a gun for the second time today. “No, bitch. You stay right here.”

  She put her hands up. “Just calm down. This is a messed up day. We’re all under a lot of stress.” A lot of stress? She looked at Rais, gasping and sputtering, blood bubbling from his mouth. The words sounded ridiculous even as she spoke them. But talking had apparently delayed Nash’s next bullet, so she kept going. “People do bad things under stress. The law recognizes that. The statutes call it mitigating circumstances. You could receive leniency, especially if you help me get Rais to a doctor.”

  Nash brayed a laugh. “A doctor? We trapped here, and that motherfucker’s gonna be dead in about five seconds anyway.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, but let me help him.” She sidestepped toward Rais, but Nash thrust his gun toward her.

  “You mean help yourself to his gun? I don’t think so.”

  “Please. I’m asking you, one human being to another. Look at him. He’s suffering.”

  She wasn’t sure that was even true at this point. Judging by the glassy look in Rais’s eyes, he probably wasn’t feeling—or thinking—anything as the trauma from the two bullets sent him into a state of shock.

  “Oh, so I’m a human being now, huh?” Nash said. “Now that I got a gun aimed at you? You weren’t so nice to me before, were you?”

  She considered arguing that she had always been civil to him, and that what he took for her not being nice was just her doing her job as a homicide prosecutor. But she doubted those were the words that would get her out of this situation alive. Assuming there were any words that could achieve that.

  “Where are your friends?” she said, remembering the other prisoners Nash had escaped with. She eyed the stalls warily. She did not hear anyone, but she wasn’t sure her ears, still ringing from the two gunshots, could be trusted. Nash alone was bad enough. If his new allies were here too, her chances—and Rais’s, if he still had any—would be even worse.

  “We parted ways. They’re a bunch of idiots, trying to move a damn barricade in the stairs. Trust me, that shit ain’t moving. We’re stuck here.”

  Rais’s body stopped twitching. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. His words from only minutes ago, about not living past the age of twenty-three, repeated in her mind. She was finding it hard to breathe.

  “Bitch, I told you. He’s dead. Don’t worry about him.” Lowering his voice, and smiling savagely, he said, “Worry about you.”

  She noticed his penis, still hanging from the open fly of his jumpsuit, begin to rise and harden.

  “The other deputies are going to be here soon,” she said.

  “Then we best do this fast.” He took a step toward her, stroking himself with the hand not holding the gun. “Turn around and lean over those sinks.”

  “Tyrone, think about what you’re doing.”

  “Oh, I been thinking on this for a long time, since the first time I saw you in one of those tight, pretty skirts in court.” His tongue protruded from his mouth, poked along his lower lip. “Turn around.”

  The sinks were set in a counter that ran most of the length of one wall of the restroom. As she walked to the counter, each step felt like the leaden motion of a nightmare. She could feel Nash’s gaze on her, and, in the corner of her vision, could see movement as he slid his fist up and down his erection in languid strokes. She stopped at the counter.

  “Bend over,” he said.

  “Whatever you’re going to do—”

  Her voice cut out as one of his hands grabbed her hip. With his other hand, he touched the barrel of the gun to her cheek. The metal was hot. He moved the gun upward, tracing the edge of her eye socket, stopping at her forehead.

  “Let’s cut the ‘whatever you’re going to do’ shit.” His voice was a foul wind in her ear. “We both know what I’m gonna do.” He pressed his penis against her ass, and even with a skirt, nylons, and underwear layered between their skin, the contact was enough to make bile rocket up her throat. Looking into her own eyes in the mirror over the sinks, she choked down her nausea.

  “If you rape me, your life is over.”

  He clutched a fistful of her skirt and yanked it up. “You forget I’m on trial for murder? Might as well get some ass before they lock me up for life.”

  “The death penalty doesn’t scare you?” His hand paused. Thank God. She kept talking, the words rushing out. “You know how it works, the lethal injection? The chemicals? First, they paralyze you. You can’t move—”

  “Doesn’t sound so bad.” He released her skirt, leaving it bunched around her waist, and clapped his hand hard against her chest. He tugged her jacket open wider and closed his fist around her left breast. She could feel his jagged fingernails. She cried out, knowing that was the worst thing she could do, that any sounds of fear or submission would only excite him more.

  “You can’t move when you’re paralyzed,” she went on, “but you can feel. The second chemical, it stops your heart. Your body is frozen. You can’t scream. You can’t thrash. You can’t even move your eyes. But the pain envelopes you as the poisons kill you.”

  She had no idea if this was true, but it was common anti-death penalty rhetoric she’d heard a million times since law school. If it was having any effect on Nash, she couldn’t tell. The hard rod moving against her buttocks did not seem to be dissuaded.

  “This is a boring conversation.” He let go of her breast, but the relief was short-lived. He took hold of her shoulder and forced her torso down until her head was in the sink, and all she could see was the drain and a few strands of her hair hanging past her eyes. His penis bumped against her and he let out a pleased little sound—something between a moan and a titter—that was somehow more disturbing than all that had come before. “Time to get this party started, bitch.”

  20

  Outside the DA’s Office, Leary sat in his car for a moment, going over in his mind everything he had learned from Melody Yang about Reggie Tuck’s career as a con artist. Yang’s file was open on the passenger seat, but he wasn’t looking at the neatly typed pages. He was watching the passing traffic and thinking about Carlo Vitale.

  The official title is caporegime.

  Leary was not an expert on the subject of organized crime—most of the murders he investigated were the opposite of organized—and he didn’t know many people in the Organized Crime Unit. But he knew one. He remembered Isaac Jacoby’s supposed words of wisdom from their breakfast this morning. What about that detective in Organized Crime, Lorena Torres? She had the hots for you, remember?

  He and Torres had come up through the Academy together, but their careers had taken them in different directions. So had their personal lives. Years ago, Torres had made a push to take their friendship beyond the flirting stage, but Leary hadn’t been interested at the time. She had been pretty pissed off, but he was pretty sure she lived with some wealthy banker type now, and Leary was apparently pining for a woman beyond his reach, so he figured that evened the score. Hopefully she’d talk to him.

  “Hey!” Torre
s answered his call with surprising enthusiasm, and Leary felt some reassurance.

  “Hi, Lorena,”

  “How have you been? How’s homicide treating you?”

  “Not bad. What’s new with you?”

  “Everything’s good. I’ve been studying for the sergeant test. Hoping to rank up.”

  Leary thought of his own stagnant career, but forced a cheerful tone. “You’ll do great. I hope you get the promotion.”

  “Me too. Sexy shoes don’t pay for themselves.”

  He didn’t miss her use of the word ‘sexy,’ or the breathy voice with which she spoke it. “You’re a good detective and you deserve it,” he said, hoping to steer the conversation back to safe, professional ground.

  “Are you following what’s going on at the CJC, the hostage situation? Can you believe it?”

  He hesitated. “Actually, that’s what I’m calling you about.”

  “Are you working it?”

  “I’m assisting. Listen, I need to ask you for a favor.”

  There was a short pause on Torres’s end. “I don’t know what help I could be with that.” Her tone stiffened, and any flirtiness that had entered their conversation disappeared. The small talk was over.

  “I need to know where to find Carlo Vitale,” he said. “I need to talk to him.”

  “You think the mob’s involved?” Torres sounded skeptical. “Vitale’s outfit is ballsy, but I’m not sure he’s up to taking over a government building.”

  “I’m just following a lead. You know how it is.”

  There was another pause. Leary’s fingers tightened around his handset. As the seconds passed, doubt gnawed at him. Why was he so bad at this? Jacoby and every career coach on Earth agreed that maintaining a network of friends was critical to success, yet Leary seemed to piss off everyone he met. He just wasn’t good at this whole friendship thing. And because of that, Torres was going to tell him to go fuck himself.