by David Ellis
His chest heaved. “Okay, so what do you think?”
She had taken the seat nearest him. How was this for an icebreaker? “I know that Ronnie is my son and not you.”
His mouth opened.
“Don’t—please, Alex. Just don’t deny it, okay? I saw it for myself.” She focused on the table and kept talking, to take the spotlight off Alex while she exposed his undeniable dishonesty. “You had your reasons, I assume. You wanted me fully invested in this case. But I still am. I’ll do anything I can for you. I would have all along, by the way. But anyway. That’s done. So let’s put that behind us. Okay?”
She saw the pain in Alex’s face, saw him begin to burst forth with a string of apologies that were probably near the surface for a long while. He spent the next ten minutes apologizing and explaining. Shelly had already forgiven him and repeatedly assured him of that fact.
Finally, if for no other reason than time being short, she slapped her hand on the table. “Apology accepted. Let’s move on.” She looked at him. “Ready to move on?”
He laughed.
“This next part isn’t quite as funny. If we claim that you’re innocent—that you didn’t do it—then we have to play this game. I was in here before, saying it was the Cannibals. You say no, and that handcuffs me. I have to give them someone, right? The jury has to have some reason to think that someone else was in that alley.”
His face hardened. He was following the map now.
“No,” he said.
“Ronnie was there, Alex. I know it and I can’t shake out my mind and suddenly not know it. I know he was there, as sure as I’m sitting here.”
“No. Shelly, no.”
“Alex, you have to hear me out. You have to hear me out or I have to withdraw as your lawyer.”
That seemed to get his attention.
“I have a conflict now. I think someone else could be responsible, but that someone is related to me. So the only way I can be your lawyer is if you say it’s okay. You have to let me tell you everything I think, and then we have to talk about it. So just shut up, okay?”
Alex folded his arms, fuming.
“I think Ronnie was there. I think after the shooting, you ran to his car, and after you drove away, you switched clothes. You switched clothes so the incriminating evidence wouldn’t be on you. The blood. The gunpowder. Ronnie took your clothes, and the gun, and he drove somewhere and dumped them. That’s why the cops never found the murder weapon. Or your hat or coat, for that matter. You were wearing Ronnie’s leather jacket when you were caught.”
She could see, from the sheepish look on his face, that she was right.
“He left you behind because you were already made. Sanchez knew you. So this was the best he could do.”
“That’s crazy,” Alex said halfheartedly.
“You hurt your knee that night,” she said. “You fell and hurt your knee. You could hardly move right after. That’s how Miroballi was able to catch you. And there’s no way you could have gotten half a mile away with the city police descending on the scene. Unless Ronnie had driven you.”
She could see Alex’s mind race. He seemed unable to concede. “Well, if we were switching clothes and all that to hide the stuff on me, that means I shot him.”
“Yes, it does. Or I’m missing something. But remember what I said, Alex. I don’t have to prove anything. If I can put Ronnie at the scene, it might be enough for reasonable doubt.” She ticked off the points. “Two boys in the alley. No murder weapon to be found anywhere. You were tested for the presence of gunpowder residue and it was inconclusive. So why is it any more likely that it was you than Ronnie? That might be reasonable doubt right there. Especially if I can add more to the story, which I can.” She dropped her hands on the table. “We’ve seen Ronnie on the west side, Alex. We’ve seen him with Eddie Todavia. I don’t think they were getting together to play bingo.”
“Bullshit.”
“Which means, at a minimum, that he was selling drugs. It might also mean that he’s working with the Cannibals. Let me finish,” she said as he began to protest. “So take that, and take Officer Sanchez’s belief that you were a snitch for Miroballi who had tipped off the Cannibals and, to me, that just means that you confided in Ronnie what you were doing. And he told the Cannibals.” She held up her hands. “Or something like that. I don’t know and I don’t have to connect every dot. I just have to come close and it’s over, I think.”
Alex had been shaking his head. “You’re wrong and I won’t agree to that. I’ll say it differently at trial. I’ll contradict that. How many times do I have to tell you that I shot the guy? I did it. If you put Ronnie there, you just take him down with me. They’ll say he was an accessory, right?”
She tapped the table. “Alex, you have to agree that you want me as your lawyer, even though I suspect another boy who happens to be my son.”
“I want you to be my lawyer if you don’t say he did it.”
“That’s a different subject. Are you willing to waive the conflict?”
“Whatever. Yeah. I don’t care about that. Because he had nothing to do with this, Shelly.”
She sat back in her chair.
“Someone’s gotta take care of Angela,” he said.
Oh. That hadn’t occurred to her. Alex might have figured that his goose was cooked—they’d nail him for something; he’d have to do at least some time in jail—and he could trust Ronnie to watch out for little Angela. But if Ronnie went down, too, there’d be no one to help Mary Ellen raise the child.
So that was it. Sure.
“You gotta agree that you won’t say anything like that at trial, Shelly. That you won’t make Ronnie out to be the bad guy.”
She thought it through as objectively as she could—making the case in her mind that self-defense was preferable to pointing the finger at Ronnie. Alex would sabotage any attempt by her to implicate Ronnie. She could make all the suggestions she wanted at trial, but Alex would insist, as he had just said, on testifying, and he would take the fall. In the end, Shelly would have hurt her credibility with a confused jury.
It wouldn’t work. That door was closed to her.
And self-defense appeared to be wide open. Talk about a ripe moment to be accusing a cop of narcotics trafficking and fear of the F.B.I. catching him! She thought of yesterday’s media coverage of the drug sting. Today’s follow-up. It was all over the news. She couldn’t have scripted it better. In truth, she had scripted it somewhat; she always had planned on this, but she hadn’t expected the magnitude of the news coverage.
Dan Morphew would do his best to exclude jurors who had read about the F.B.I. sting. But good luck finding twelve people who hadn’t heard. He would be stuck with their lame promises of keeping an open mind and not being influenced. That was fine. The point was, when she came at them talking about dirty cops selling drugs, they’d be nodding their heads. She would put the indicted cops on the witness stand, the F.B.I. agent, the federal prosecutor, and Alex would ride a wave of anti-police sentiment to an acquittal.
Yes. She could feel it now. It made sense. She felt a flood of relief. There would be nothing to gain by putting Ronnie at the scene, so she wouldn’t. He would be irrelevant to this case. This would be the same thing it always was. A case of self-defense.
“Alex, I do need something from you,” she said. “All of this that we’ve discussed about Ronnie. You can’t talk to him about it.” She pointed upward. “They can listen in. You’ll be tipping them off.”
He looked up, then around the room. “Right.”
“The part about Ronnie being my son—I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that, either. For the same reason. But it’s more selfish on my part. I’d rather do that on my own terms.”
“He doesn’t know you know.”
“Not at this point. I’d like to handle that in the—”
He waved her off. “Do whatever. I won’t say anything. I won’t embarrass you like that, Shelly. I never would. I
’m—I’m really sorry I lied about that. I was scared, you know?”
She put a hand on his. “I know. Forget about it.” She removed some files from her bag. “Now we have a lot to go over. So let’s get started.”
56
Suspect
SHELLY USED ONE of the law firm’s conference rooms so she could spread out. She had a master checklist on the windowsill that listed every single item she had to accomplish before trial began. She had checked off many, but by no means all, of the tasks. Serving trial subpoenas on all the witnesses, including all of the newly indicted members of the criminal drug conspiracy courtesy of the F.B.I. That was one of the few tasks she could delegate; Joel Lightner had a guy who did process serving. She had legal research to perform, and pretrial motions to draft that were due three days from now. She had already prepared most of her trial examinations—directs of her witnesses and crosses of the prosecution’s people. She had a stipulation from Dan Morphew’s office on cause of death, manner of death, and distance between the victim and the assailant, which the county coroner estimated to be about five feet.
She had considered the notion of a plea bargain. She knew the prosecutor was willing to talk, that much was obvious, but Dan Morphew had been right—they couldn’t lie down. The best she could hope for, she assumed, was something in the range of twenty to twenty-five years. That had been Paul Riley’s assessment as well. Twenty years would be a gift. She knew that. For killing a police officer? And with good time, that number was really ten years. But that assumed two things. First, that the prosecution would come that far down. Second, that Alex could last even ten years in hard time. She had serious doubts about that. She had worked through it in her mind. He would be twenty-seven when he was released. He would still have a life, and she would see to it that he had opportunities. He would change, irrevocably. But he would still have a chance to go on. He was a smart, resourceful kid. He would probably find some way to survive inside. He was white, and he was close enough to handsome, so it wouldn’t be easy. But he would also be a cop-killer. That would buy him something, she assumed.
She shook her head free of these thoughts. She looked at the spreadsheet she had made of all the police officers and others arrested in the undercover sting. Her first task, with Joel and Paul’s assistance, had been to group the officers by geography. The police department divided the city into “areas,” which were then divided into “precincts.” The relevant portion for the purposes of the F.B.I. sting was Area Four. Four of the six indicted city cops, including the sergeant, were assigned to the first precinct of Area Four. The other two officers were assigned to the second, which included the Eduardo Andujar projects and extended to the city’s downtown. These officers were named Leonard McArdle and Peter Otis.
Officers Raymond Miroballi and Julio Sanchez were also in the second precinct, along with McArdle and Otis. That explained why the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors had been looking at Miroballi (and presumably Sanchez). They worked in one of the tainted precincts.
She needed to put Miroballi next to the indicted cops, McArdle and Otis. That was one of the many responsibilities she had placed on Joel Lightner, who had been required to go outside his small agency of investigators to hire other private eyes he knew. Shelly didn’t want to guess how much all of this would cost Paul Riley’s firm, who was footing the bill. Probably a six-figure number, she estimated, when all was said and done. It was against everything she knew to accept such charity, but in the end, it wasn’t for her, it was for Alex, and she had no other options. Lucky for her the senior partner was sweet on her.
She got up from her seat and grabbed the file on Eddie Todavia. Morphew had informed her the other day that he was adding Todavia to his witness list. She even remembered his smart-ass follow-up—“Ring a bell?”—which told her that Morphew knew that Shelly had paid Todavia a visit as well. Two days ago, Morphew sent over, by messenger, a copy of a plea agreement between Eddie Todavia and the county attorney. Once they learned about Todavia, the police had sat on him until they could catch him doing something illegal, which must not have been very long. The caught him selling ten grams of crack cocaine on the street and moved in on him.
Then they had him. He wasn’t a first offender. This could mean real time for him. So he did what anyone would do in his position—he got creative. In exchange for his testimony in the case of People v. Baniewicz, Edward Todavia would receive a get-out-of-jail-free card. Shelly held the plea agreement in her hand. Todavia was being held, pending the trial, in protective custody, and the county attorney would agree to time served when the trial was over.
Mr. Todavia will testify that he sold crack cocaine to the defendant on several occasions over the last two years in amounts far beyond personal consumption. He will testify that the defendant spoke with him about his relationship as a confidential informant with Officer Raymond Miroballi. He will testify that he is affiliated with a street gang known as the Columbus Street Cannibals.
Shelly had already dispatched Joel Lightner to speak with Todavia again. This second conversation, as Joel had put it, was “decidedly less friendly.” Todavia, emboldened by his agreement with the police, had refused to speak with Joel at all. His only communicative gesture, Joel had reported, was a middle finger extended upward.
Shelly didn’t know how the cops found out about Todavia. Probably it was just good police work. She conceded the possibility that they had found Todavia because Shelly had. The people following Shelly and Joel that day, in other words, were county attorney investigators or cops, not feds. It was not technically illegal for law enforcement to follow around defense attorneys.
Had Shelly led them right to Todavia’s door? It was too painful to consider. And unhelpful, at this point, anyway. There was another question burning her mind at that moment.
If they were watching Todavia, did they see Ronnie with him?
She looked up when she heard a knock on the door. Speak of the devil. Ronnie Masters looked like he had just come from school, wearing a buttoned-down shirt and jeans, a navy backpack slung over his right shoulder. The weather had finally broken as June arrived, not the typical seventies but warm enough that Ronnie didn’t need the ratty hooded sweatshirt he’d been wearing. That thought brought her back to his presence in the alley that night, the switch of the clothes.
“Hey there,” he said.
“Hi.” She had forgotten that Ronnie was scheduled to stop by today. He dropped his schoolbag and looked over what she was doing.
She looked him over as well. This was her son. Now there was none of the uncertainty. Had that been it with Alex? Had there been some lingering, unconscious doubt in her mind? Was that why she had been unable to deal with it? She didn’t know the answer. She probably never would. But as she looked at this boy—a sizeable kid, the same blue eyes as her father, now that she thought about it, the high hairline from Abigail Trotter’s side of the family—she had no doubt. It felt right, too. He seemed like her son. Could a mother really have such a sensation? Her mind, trained for logical discipline, told her no. Everything else said yes.
This boy was a drug dealer? A gangbanger? It didn’t wash. She just couldn’t imagine it.
Ronnie helped himself to a seat at the opposite end of the conference room. “So how’s it going? Haven’t talked to you lately.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Closer it gets, the busier it gets.”
“You heard about the cops being arrested?”
She couldn’t suppress a smile. That piece of news had more or less consumed her for the past forty-eight hours.
He opened his hands. “So do I get to hear what’s going on? It’s hard not knowing.”
“Things are going fine,” she said. “This thing with the cops being arrested has diverted me somewhat. But we’re getting there.”
He looked around the room, at the banker’s boxes, the accordion files, the piles of paper. “Looks like you need my help again.”
“Yeah, I might. We’ll see
.”
“Are you gonna call me as a witness?” he asked.
“Don’t know.” She busied herself with the papers in front of her.
“Well, you know.” He gestured with his hands. “You always said we were gonna prepare or whatever.”
“We will, if I need you. I’m not sure I will.” She stacked some files together and placed them to the side. She sneaked a peek at Ronnie. He was clearly dissatisfied. He was being kept at bay and he didn’t like it. He had always volunteered to help, from day one, and no one had taken him up on it. Shelly looked on these offers now with a newfound skepticism. Ronnie certainly had wanted to keep a watch on things, and now she wanted to keep a watch on him.
He was handsome in the same way that her father was. It wasn’t that either of them had magazine-cover features. It was the way they all came together. He would be tall and wide, with a strong face. What else he would be—or was—she did not know. She couldn’t even begin to imagine all of the things that she would never know about him.
She knew it now. They had rules for lawyers for a reason. She could never accuse this boy of murder, or even hint at it. Thank God that self-defense was the way that made sense.
Her cell phone rang.
“Shelly, it’s Joel. Does the name Robert Eldridge mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“He lives in Julian Park.”
“No, Joel. Why?”
“Ronnie went to see him last night.”
She looked at Ronnie. He had opened up his backpack and removed his cell phone, punched some buttons. He probably had a nicer model than she did, not because he had more money, but because he had probably hunted down a deal on the Internet. Shelly had just walked into a store and picked up the first one she saw.
“This guy Eldridge works at a consulting firm,” Joel continued on the phone. “He’s divorced. That’s all I know at this point. We just saw him last night. Ronnie went into this guy’s house for about fifteen minutes and then left.”
