by Alan Hruska
“Your boss, Foster Donachetti?”
“That’s right.”
“Is it usual for him to talk to suspects before you do?”
“Happens, sure.”
“Were you there when it did?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Think so?” Tom says.
Sammy rises. “What the fuck is this, Weldon?”
“Nothing, relax.”
FIFTY
Tom gets to Rikers Island by bus. As an assistant DA, he’s entitled to drive into the compound, but Tom neither owns a car nor commands one. The other passengers, all women, are older than he and get off first. He pegs most for visitors and one for staff. He’ll never know. The trip to a place like this is generally uncongenial.
Dealing with a series of corrections officers, who regard him with resentment, he has Jacob brought into a room. It smells of disinfectant and fear.
Jacob, sleepless, is surly. He’s still in the black workout clothes they brought him in with. Tom waves off the squat guard’s presence and any necessity for manacles. The door closes on the officer’s smirk. As an ADA, Tom can get what he wants here, but not without receiving some attitude.
Jacob says, “This place is a hellhole. You can’t even fucking sleep here.”
Tom gives him a look of indifference. “I thought we had a deal.”
“You’re an ADA? I’m supposed to have a lawyer.”
“Right,” Tom says. “And if you don’t have one, I can’t use anything you say. So. I thought we had a deal.”
“You got outbid.”
“That right? By whom?”
Jacob laughs. “By my civic duty. By the need to tell the truth.”
“Think it through, Jake. If you do tell the truth, your story will hold together; your deal will hold together; and you’ll get the minimum for murder one, or felony murder. Stick to the lie, your story will be challenged and come apart. They’ll throw the book at you.”
“You lied to me. You said I’d get the chair, but there is no death penalty in this state. I’ve checked with the jailhouse lawyers. And you’re recording this fucking conversation.”
“I told you. I can’t use it. I’m a lawyer. You’re an arraigned defendant without one.” Tom gets up. “You know the name of the ADA who questioned you last night.”
“Sure. Sammy Riegert.”
“Who else? Same building.”
“No one.”
“You’re sure? No one, no questions?”
“I fucking said.”
“Talk to anyone else?”
“No.”
“Sure of that?”
“Jesus! Yes! Fucking sure!”
“Thanks, Jake.”
“For what?” he says.
“Time of day, man. Pleasure of your company.” Tom signals the corrections guy to come back in.
Yasim Maktoum, sitting alone in a park in Oklahoma City, calls Mike Skillan on a cell phone just purchased for the purpose.
“Put it through,” Mike says, when learning who’s on the line.
“I have information for you,” Yasim says.
“I’m listening.”
There’s a long silence until Yasim says, “I really don’t know what to do, so I called you.”
“I understand.”
“I just learned something terrible.”
“About your girlfriend.”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“She’s a paid assassin,” Mike says.
“How did you know this?” Yasim says, now even more agitated.
“We know more than you apparently realized. Has she confessed to you?”
“I don’t know what I should tell you.”
“Let me tell you what you should do,” says Mike. “From wherever you now are—”
“Oklahoma City.”
“Yes, I have that. My point is do not go back to your room. Go straight to the airport. Come back to New York. You called me, because you’re an innocent bystander to this. Have nothing further to do with her. Go from Kennedy to my office at One Hogan Place. We will take your statement and protect you. You understand? If you stay out, you’re in danger.”
“Yes, I understand. I’m in danger, but not only from her.”
“All the more reason,” Mike says, “to get back here as quickly as you can.”
Long silence, until Yasim says, “Okay.”
“I’ll look forward to meeting you,” Mike says. “Ask for me when you arrive. They’ll have word of you downstairs. And Yasim. What hotel, what room?”
After a long pause, Yasim says, “the Radisson, 906,” and hangs up.
Mike looks up, and there’s Tom, standing behind the chair in front of Mike’s desk. “You know who that was?”
“Yasim Maktoum,” Tom says.
“He’s coming back here.”
“Good,” Tom says. “I’ll want them all here tomorrow morning. Yasim, Rashid, Stamos, Jacob, Piet, Elena, Sofi, your original eyewitness—what’s his name, Moon—and others I’ll tell you about.”
“You want them?” Mike says, with a laugh.
“I do.”
“You’re getting awfully high-handed, kid. Especially for someone who’s been here two days. And now once again a suspect himself.”
“Oh come on!” Tom says. “You’re still on that—that bullshit story?”
“It’s been confirmed,” Mike says, with a straight face.
“Look, Mike.” Tom grabs the back of the chair. “Stop dicking around, and I’ll solve the case for you.”
“We already know Stamos was at the center of it.”
“Can you prove it?”
Mike hesitates. “Not cleanly. Not yet.”
“And who was paying him?”
“Jockery, probably.”
“Right,” Tom says. “Probably. We know how far ‘probably’ gets. And who else? Rashid? Probably? For all of it? Part of it? Anyone else?”
Mike frowns. “Whatta you need?”
“What I said. Tomorrow morning.”
Mike props his index fingers one inch apart. “You got that much.”
“Thanks,” Tom says. “I’ll want them all in the reception room at the same time, so they can see each other. I’ll need three interrogation rooms. And I’ll do the questioning.”
“Boy!”
“I know. High-handed.”
“Beyond that, fella. You are an arrogant son of a bitch. No wonder she split.”
“You think I’m arrogant?”
“Then you deserve each other.”
Tom laughs, leaving the older man with a rueful smile.
Tom is sitting in the upstairs hallway in front of Elena’s door when she returns to her apartment.
“How’d you get into this building?” she asks.
“You think that’s a challenge? You choose to live in a building without doormen.”
“The front door is locked.”
“And often opened by people living here wishing to leave and not particularly caring who comes in after them.”
“I don’t want to see you,” she says.
“I know, but I do you, because I need you.”
“Don’t start, Tom.”
“I’m not. I need you to talk to Mike Skillan. Tell him you heard Jacob—the thug who abused you—admit he was working for Teddy Stamos.”
“Why?” she asks. “Doesn’t he believe you?”
“I need confirmation. Jacob is now claiming I was responsible for the plot to kidnap you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No shit,” he says.
“And what?” she says. “Skillan believes that?”
“I doubt it. But he’s got to deal with it. And I promised him I’d solve his case for him tomorrow. You can help.”
“Me?”
“I’m bringing in everyone, ten a.m. Even Sofi and your charming sisters.”
“My sisters?” Elena exclaims. “What do they know?”
“Maybe nothing. They’ll
be there so we can find out.”
“And what?” she says. “You’ll question everyone, and break the case? You’ve done a lot of this, Hercule Poirot?”
“Never,” he admits. “But it’s not rocket science. The prosecutor holds all the cards. And the play is simple. You pretend you know more than you do and let them tell you the rest of it. You saw what happened last night. Jacob confessed in two minutes that he’s working for Stamos.”
“So you don’t need me.”
“Of course I need you.”
“I see that man again, I’m going for his throat.”
“You’ll be in a separate room.”
“I won’t be there! Aren’t you listening?”
“I need you there.”
“Why?”
“Because you know more than I do. You’re smart. Two heads are better than one. I like working with you. You’re beautiful.”
“You just want to get laid.”
“That too,” he says.
“Okay,” she says reluctantly after a long pause. “I’ll be there tomorrow. But the other thing?” She shakes her head. “Not happening.”
FIFTY-ONE
Tom wakes up feeling confident. He’s always had that—a breezy expectancy of good fortune. Commuting from Red Hook to Foley Square, however, he’s reminded of the paucity of material he has to work with, the cleverness of those he has to work on, and the consequences of getting it all wrong—or, just as bad, getting nothing.
Not a good time for a loss of confidence, he reflects. So I damn well better not have one!
Mike is already ensconced when Tom arrives at the senior man’s office. “This is a highly unusual situation,” Mike says. “In several respects. I’m allowing an assistant DA, who’s himself a suspect, to interrogate a bunch of witnesses to prove his own innocence. Let me stop there for a minute. You have any idea why I’m doing that?”
“You believe I’m innocent.”
“Must be that,” Mike says. “But I could be wrong.”
“You’re not,” says Tom. “Have you talked to Elena?”
“I have. I myself asked her to come in.”
“So you know what happened with Jacob?”
“I know what she says. And all these people have come in, some without lawyers, all without the need for me subpoenaing them, seemingly happy to tell their stories. You have any idea why?”
“They want to lead you to believe that their stories are true.”
“You think they’re all guilty?”
“No,” Tom says.
“But you know which ones are?”
“Reasonably sure.”
“And you think you’re about to prove it by the brilliance of your questioning?”
“With one more witness, yes.”
“One more witness?” Mike says, beginning to get hot. “You need someone in addition to the seven suspects we’ve already assembled for you? Someone you haven’t told me about?”
“Well, he’s already here. He works for you,” Tom says. “He’s the guy who’s been leaking stuff.”
“You now know who that is?”
“I do.” Tom sits. “Remember what I said? When I caught Jacob in Khalil’s basement, he confessed he’d been working for Teddy Stamos. Later that night he talked to two people here and changed his story. One of them turned him.”
“Not Sammy Riegert,” Mike notes. “We’ve been over that.”
“So we have.”
“Okay. So what is this? I have to pull it out of you?”
“It’s Foster Donachetti.”
“What?” Mike says with a harsh laugh.
“Sorry. I know he’s a friend, but that’s the guy.”
With blinking eyes, Mike rocks back a bit in his chair. “This I don’t believe.”
“Yeah, you do,” Tom says.
“How do I know you’re not just making this up? The change of story?”
Tom takes out his iPhone and plays the recording. Mike listens. Then thinks. “Where’d you get this?” he says.
“I went to see Jacob at Rikers.”
“Outbid by civic duty was all he said.”
“Listen to it again,” Tom says, and replays it. When it stops, Mike sits there, says nothing.
“As you just heard, he admitted talking to Sammy—obviously he had to, but said it naturally, no strain at all. He denied talking to Donachetti. Not only do I know he was lying, because Sammy told me Foster had spoken to him, but Jacob’s an easy read. The lie was all over his face. And in his voice. Only one reason for him to lie about it. It was Foster who fed Jacob the new story.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Ain’t as much as you’re implying.”
“I think you know better.”
“I don’t know, Tom. I’ve given you a lot of rope.”
“And I need more. I want to put Jacob in an interrogation room now. Teddy Stamos in another. Then I want to cuff Foster and show him in cuffs—and pissed off about it—to both of them. When I’m finished with Jacob, put Moon in that room, but make sure Teddy sees that happening. After I’ve talked with all of them, and probably one or two more, we’ll have what we need.”
Mike is now staring, not at Tom, but into space. “Foster Donachetti has been my friend for more than thirty years. We were at law school together. And the only thing you have is that some creep lied about talking to him? On the basis of that, you want me to charge him? Humiliate him?”
“I think you’ve got more than that. And I think you know … Donachetti is the lance we need for opening this whole pocket of pus.”
Mike blows out his cheeks. “Quite a metaphor.”
“Quite a mess.”
“What more do you think I have?”
“You’re an easy read too, Mike. I think he’s the guy you’ve been suspecting all along.”
Tom appears at the door of Foster Donachetti’s office with two uniformed cops—and with Foster’s secretary screaming for them to leave. Tom formally addresses the thin-faced man. “We are charging you with obstruction of justice in the investigation of Robbie Riles’s death, and this is your Miranda warning. You have the right to call a lawyer, and to remain silent, and anything you choose to say will be held against you.”
Foster, smartly suited as usual, rises from his telephone conversation. “Are you outta your fucking mind?”
“Gentlemen.” Tom beckons to the cops who immediately cuff Donachetti with his hands in front. “Please follow me,” Tom says.
Stunned, furious, and literally being dragged, Foster lets go a scream that pierces the caterwauling of his secretary. “What the fuck you doing, Weldon?”
“What I’m doing, Foster, is enacting your worst nightmare.”
They’re at the elevator, and the door opens. “I’ll have your ass,” he snarls.
“That’s it?” Tom says. “Pretty weak.”
“Mike hears about this, he’ll roast your balls.”
“Who you think authorized this, Foster?”
“I don’t fucking believe it! You’re false-arresting me? It’s you I’ll have prosecuted!”
Tom gives him a pitying look.
Heading down, there’s just glaring.
At interrogation room one, Tom opens the door, and the cops pull in Donachetti. Jacob, already seated and manacled to the table, looks startled.
“So sorry,” Tom says. “Wrong room.”
Closing the door, they then repeat the process at room number two, where Stamos registers equal shock to see Foster dragged in with cuffs. Tom then oversees settling Foster in the third room and returns to face Jacob. He takes the seat across from the prisoner.
“Just as well you saw that,” Tom says.
“I want a lawyer,” Jacob shouts. “Now!”
“Well, you see, ‘now’ is the problem. You will have a lawyer, but if you don’t talk until he or she gets here, you’ll lose the race.”
“What fucking race?”
“
I’ve told you how it works, Jake. First one in with the material evidence gets the best deal.”
“You’ve already lied to me is what you’ve done.”
“About capital punishment?” Tom says. “Not really. There’s quite a range in this state when it comes to prisons. Some … staying there long term? You’d rather die. And you … felony murder, sexual assault … you’re definitely long term.”
Jacob tries to read Tom’s face. “You got something more to say?”
“You’re listening now, are you? I have your attention?”
“What’s the fucking deal?”
“Depends on what you have to give me.”
“Suppose I could give you that guy you just brought in here?”
“Well,” Tom says, “we already have him, as you saw. But … corroboration? That’s useful, I admit. So you’d get something for that.”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe dropping the sexual charge. Would make a difference on sentencing. Certainly on the facility they send you to. If you want to be caged with a couple of hundred other sexual offenders … well, wouldn’t be my choice. Nor something a guy like you would likely recover from.”
Jacob looks a little sick. “You said you’d drop that charge.”
“You reneged on the deal. Now, you’ve got another chance.”
Realizing what he’d just admitted, Jacob puts his hands to his face.
“Hey, it’s up to you,” Tom says. “No pressure from me. You do what’s good for Jacob. All I know is, I’ve got other witnesses in other rooms here waiting to talk to me. You’ve got a chance to jump in first, because right now I’m in this room, talking to you. I get up off this chair, that chance is gone. So you tell me, Jacob. Are you cooperating now, or do we burn you in hell?”
“I dunno, man.”
Tom gets up. “Suit yourself, man.”
“Sit down,” Jacob says.
“I’m outta here.”
“He’s the guy.”
“Donachetti?”
“Yeah.”
“Guy who did what?”
“Told me what to say, night before last.”
