Skeleton Justice

by Michael Baden

  “I’m sure Dr. Costello understands. He asked how you were doing, said to tell you not to work too hard.” Kenneth picked up a stack of paper. “Is this complaint on the Conceicao employment discrimination case ready to go?”

  “Yes,” Manny said. “But you’re going to have to scan the appendix into a portable file format so that we can electronically file the matter with the clerk of the federal court.”

  “You wanna check out the sale at that new shoe boutique on Madison?” Kenneth asked.

  “Casa Bene del Sole? That’s cruel! Don’t tempt me when you know I can’t possibly go.”

  Kenneth reached over and popped up the to-do list Manny had minimized on her computer toolbar. “Oh, come on. What if I take care of a few more things on this list?”

  “I appreciate it, Kenneth, but I don’t think—”

  Kenneth interrupted her with a thrust of his right hand, looking for all the world like Diana Ross doing “Stop! In the Name of Love.” “Delegation is the soul of good management. What about this number four—talk to InTerVex? I’m great at talking.”

  “Well, maybe you could do that,” Manny admitted. “It’s the pharmaceutical company where one of the Vampire’s victims, Raymond Fortes, worked.”

  Kenneth wrinkled his nose. “The rat-bite guy?”

  “Yes. Jake and I want to know if Dr. Fortes had any connection with Argentina. Apparently, he was a lonely workaholic, so his business seems the best place to start looking.”

  “No problem. I can do that.” Kenneth headed out to his desk.

  “But, Kenneth, remember, don’t just come right out and ask—”

  Kenneth pivoted, the ends of his metallic silver scarf fluttering, his Vamp fingernails adorned by crystal faux diamonds flashing. “Come on, Manny—give me a little credit. No one’s better than me at being subtle.”

  Manny went back to answering interrogatory 221: “Describe how the alleged actions of the defendant in failing to treat the prostate interfered with the future income stream of the plaintiff.” Some days Manny felt that she wanted to represent a stream of urologists, just so they could all pee together on the justice system.

  She jumped, startled from her concentration by Kenneth tapping his size-twelve Manolos. “Grab your bag. We’re going to Casa Bene del Sole. Have to hurry to get there before it closes.”

  “Already? Did you—”

  “Dr. Raymond Fortes graduated from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina’s second-oldest medical school. He worked as a doctor in Córdoba for fifteen years before moving to New York in 1990 to work for InTerVex. He’s a naturalized citizen.”

  “Great work, Kenneth. I don’t suppose you found out what kind of drugs Dr. Fortes was developing at InTerVex?”

  Kenneth tossed his scarf over his shoulder. “Of course I did. Fertility drugs. Fortes was an OB-GYN in Argentina at the Hospital Universitario de Maternidad y Neonatología.”

  “Google him,” Jake commanded.

  Manny and Jake sat hunched over Jake’s office computer. Two half-eaten calzones leached tomato sauce onto the papers strewn across his desk. Manny, lightning fast on the keyboard, was at the controls.

  “Twenty-four thousand hits on General Rafael Cintron,” Manny reported. “It would be nice to have some idea of what it is about him that’s of interest to us.”

  “Start reading,” Jake said through a mouthful of meatballs and dough. “We’ll know it when we see it.”

  Manny doubled-clicked. “Here’s his official biography. You read. My eyes are burning.”

  Jake scanned the screen. “He’s sixty-three years old. Been in the army since he was eighteen. Worked his way up through the ranks. Seems to have successfully weathered several regime changes. That says a lot about him.”

  “If you’re looking for something controversial, we need to go to some of the news reports about him,” Manny advised. She scrolled through the top entries brought up by the search engine. “These four are all in Spanish. I’ll use Google to translate them.

  “‘General Announces Plans for New Training Procedures,’” Manny read. “Snore. Here, this looks more promising.”

  “‘Grandmothers Protest General’s Link to Dirty War.’” Jake read the headline aloud, then moved over to give Manny a chance to read the rest of the article silently with him.

  “Sounds like these grandmothers claim General Cintron was implicated in the disappearances of their adult children during the military dictatorship of the late seventies, early eighties,” Jake said. “Los Desaparecidos—the disappeared ones—that’s what they call the victims. The grandmothers are still protesting, all these years later.”

  “But Argentina is a democracy now,” Manny said. “What’s Cintron still doing in their army?”

  “I’m no expert on Argentine history, but I think there’s been a lot of controversy over amnesty for those who participated in the junta. They weren’t all arrested and imprisoned. A lot of them are still actively part of Argentine society. I guess Cintron must be one of those clever survivors who plays on whatever team is at bat.”

  “I was still only a babe in arms when all this was going on,” Manny said, “but doesn’t this tie in with our Nixon lecture? Wouldn’t Nixon have been a supporter of that regime?”

  Jake sighed. Reminders of Manny’s youth always depressed him. “Yes, my little peep, you must have been paying attention in college history class. The junta was rabidly anti-Communist, which automatically made them allies of Nixon and Kissinger. Nixon was out of office by then, of course, but this was the period when he was casting himself as elder statesman and foreign policy guru. Hence the lecture at the Scanlon Center on the necessity of supporting a regime that he knew committed atrocities against its own people.”

  Manny bit off a chunk of calzone and chewed thoughtfully. “I don’t get it, Jake. Why would the Vampire be killing people in New York because of something that happened in Argentina decades ago?”

  Jake shook his head. “I’m not sure. But a possible link between Cintron and Nixon seems to lead in that direction. And then there’s the instances of torture: Hogaarth, Fortes, and Deanie Slade. Torture was one of the hallmarks of the Dirty War. People who opposed the regime would suddenly disappear. Most were held in secret government prisons, tortured for information on their comrades, and then killed.”

  Manny rubbed her temples, leaving a small smear of tomato sauce. “You’re making me more confused. We know Dr. Fortes was Argentinean; we suspect that Ms. Hogaarth was, too. Why were they tortured before their deaths—because they were once part of the military junta, or because they once opposed it?”

  Gently, Jake wiped the tomato sauce off Manny’s face. “Don’t demand so many answers. We’re just laying out the facts.”

  “Well, what do you make of this fact? Deanie Slade was tortured, and she’s New Jersey through and through. No connection to Argentina there.”

  “It’s another data point.”

  “This isn’t an academic exercise, Jake!” Manny balled up the remains of her dinner and stalked across the room to throw it in the trash. “In all this calm analysis of data points, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Travis Heaton is under the control of people who not only kill but torture. We need to find him, fast.”

  “Drama has its uses in the courtroom, Manny, but investigations succeed on the steady accumulation of evidence. The process can be maddeningly slow, but no one’s invented an alternative.”

  Jake patted the chair beside him. “There’s more data to be dug. Are you in, or out?”

  Manny returned and dropped into the chair. “Of course I’m in. I’m sorry I snapped at you, but I’m just so damn worried about Travis. And it infuriates me that the Sandovals are allowed to hide behind diplomatic immunity. They must know what’s going on here, but somehow it’s against their personal best interest to cooperate with the investigation.”

  “Let’s see if we can turn up any link between Ambassador San-doval and the Dirty War,”
Jake said, turning back to the computer. He could feel Manny’s barely suppressed impatience as he typed. He wondered, not for the first time, how she’d ever managed to sit through Civil Procedure and Contracts in law school.

  “Here’s Sandoval’s official UN biography. It doesn’t mention that he ever served in the military. He’s only fifty-one years old. He probably would have been in college and law school during the Dirty War years.”

  “So maybe he and his wife were part of the opposition,” Manny suggested. “Wasn’t it mostly young people—students—who were disappeared by the government?” She leaned forward, gesturing, as her mind raced ahead of her ability to form sentences. “Paco seemed frightened by the letter I found in his room. Maybe someone from his parents’ past has come back to haunt them. Maybe they’re manipulating Paco to get what they want.” Manny flung her pen onto the desk. “Damn, I wish I still had that document!”

  Jake said nothing, only pursed his lips and kept scrolling through information brought up by the search engine.

  “I know what’s going through your head.” Manny knocked her knuckles against the wild tangle of Jake’s hair. “You think I should focus on this research instead of obsessing about what’s out of reach. But I tell you, if we could just find out what the Sandovals are hiding, we wouldn’t need to be piecing together all these scraps of information.”

  Jake paused, his hands suspended above the keyboard. “This is the best way to find out, Manny. We’re not breaking into their home again.”

  Manny shook her head slightly, as if she’d already considered this but rejected it. “No, no more clandestine operations now that our cover’s been blown. But I feel that if I could just get Paco alone and talk to him, really talk to him, he’d tell me something valuable.”

  “Why should he?” Jake demanded. “If it would endanger his family?”

  “Because now it has to be clear to Paco that he’s put Travis in danger. Paco’s not a bad kid—he must feel guilty about what he’s done to his friend.”

  “What do you know about Paco’s character? You’ve spent all of five minutes with the kid, and half of that time you were on his back, literally.”

  “You’d be surprised the insights gained by jumping on a person.” Manny grinned, poised to pounce. “Want me to demonstrate?”

  Jake squirmed in his seat. Why did working with Manny always give him this precarious feeling, like he was riding in a ski lift without the safety bar down?

  It was only nine-fifteen—too early to succumb to temptation. Jake knew he could easily put in three or four more hours here, digging for clues, reviewing the case files to look for significant details. He met Manny’s teasing glance cautiously. “Hold that thought,” he said, and waited for a storm or a sulk.

  But Manny merely laughed. “Don’t worry—I won’t forget.” She pivoted and looked around the office. “Say, as much as I love bonding with you by sharing this computer, don’t you think we’d get to our reward a little faster if we were to divide and conquer? Isn’t there another computer here I can use so we can both look things up?”

  “Sure. You can use Dave’s.” He pointed to a desk just outside his office door.

  “All right. Yell if you find anything interesting. I’m going to dig up more information on this grandmother’s organization that does the protests, Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.”

  Regret mingled with relief as Jake watched her retreating figure. He could certainly focus better when he wasn’t breathing in Manny’s perfume or brushing against her soft skin. But he liked knowing she was nearby, close enough to shout out an idea or ask an opinion.

  He turned back to his own work. Forsaking the computer for the time being, Jake again pulled out the case files on the Vampire’s victims. He’d already gone over them countless times, but it wouldn’t hurt to look at them once more, bearing in mind his new knowledge of General Cintron and the Dirty War.

  He had already tried to recontact each of the first four victims—the ones before Annabelle Fiore, whose blood had been taken but who had not been injured—to ask about a connection to Argentina in their lives. Victim number four, Jorge Arguelles, a tourist from Chile, seemed to have the closest connection, but he had already returned home, and Jake had not yet been able to reach him to ask if he had recently visited neighboring Argentina or had friends there.

  Jake had not had the time to visit each victim personally, as he had with Annabelle. In his telephone conversations with the first three victims, each one had claimed to have no connection to Argentina. Now he wished he had made the effort to interview them in person, so he could have observed their eyes and hands as they spoke, listened to their breathing and vocal pitch, tracking any signs of deception.

  Jake reread his notes. Victim number one, Lucinda Bettis, stood out. The other victims had thoughtfully considered his question about Argentina but had ultimately claimed no connection. Mrs. Bettis had replied in the negative almost before the question about Argentina had left Jake’s mouth. Then she had rushed to get off the phone, saying she needed to get back to her children. Given that the other victims he had reached had answered in the negative, her response hadn’t raised a red flag at the time, but now Jake studied her file more closely.

  Born in 1977, married, mother of two. She had been attacked in her Upper West Side apartment in the middle of the day while the kids were at nursery school. No sign of forced entry; she said she’d answered the knock at the door because she was expecting her neighbor, who had agreed to pick up a dozen eggs for her at the market.

  Again, he compared her file with the others, searching for some significant detail, something that either set her apart from the others or joined them all together. It eluded him.

  From the other room came the sound of Manny’s outrage. “Oh my God! This is horrible!”

  Manny pulled two sheets of paper from the printer and entered Jake’s office, reading aloud. “Listen to this: ‘The junta led by Videla until 1981, then by Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, was responsible for the illegal arrest, torturing, killing, or forced disappearance of citizens who voiced opposition to the government. Critics claim there are documents showing Argentina’s brutal policies were known by the U.S. State Department, led by Henry Kissinger under both the Nixon and Gerald Ford presidencies.’”

  Manny looked up. “Isn’t that outrageous? Nixon and Kissinger’s foreign policy extended long after the impeachment. And there’s more.” Manny continued reading aloud, her voice rising with indignation at every ghastly detail—secret imprisonment, torture, mutilation, murder—of the Argentine government’s brutality.

  “Say that again.” Jake suddenly cut her off in mid-sentence.

  “‘Some of the bodies were never found because they were taken far offshore and disposed of in the ocean,’” Manny repeated.

  “No, not that. What you said before.”

  Manny flipped back to the first page she’d printed out. “‘The government claims that about nine thousand people were victims of forced disappearances, but the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo estimate that nearly thirty thousand dissidents, students, and ordinary citizens disappeared between 1976 and 1983. The higher number includes children who disappeared with their parents, and pregnant women who may have given birth while in captivity.’”

  Jake lowered his head and scrambled through the file folders on his desk, checking each one quickly and moving on to the next.

  “What? What is it?”

  Jake looked up and met Manny’s eyes. “Victims one, three, and four were all born during the Dirty War. Victim two was born two years earlier. That’s it. That’s the connection. These victims—they’re all children of the Desaparecidos.”

  “What are you thinking?” Manny asked. She and Jake were lying in her Murphy bed, with Mycroft curled at their feet. They didn’t often spend the night at her place, even though Jake praised the coziness of her five-hundred-square-foot apartment: “Makes me feel like I’m sleeping in a caske
t.”

  Manny rolled over on the six-hundred-thread-count sheets and ran her finger down Jake’s sinewy arm. Turning corpses over on a daily basis is good for the muscles, Manny thought. She read the deep recessed lines documenting Jake’s thoughts. “I’m sure you’re only thinking about how fabulous it is to be here with me, naked and alone.”

  “I was thinking about the blood.” It never occurred to Jake to utter a judicious lie.

  Manny flopped onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. “I love it when you ply me with romantic pillow talk. What blood?”

  “The blood the Vampire takes. He went to all the trouble of collecting those samples, then abandoned them in that apartment in Brooklyn.”

  “He must be done with them,” Manny said. “Because if he still needed them, it wouldn’t have been hard to take them along when he left that place.”

  “Exactly. So if he was testing the blood samples, as I’ve always suspected, he now has his results. What’s his next move? What’s he going to do with this information?”

  “I don’t know. The note he left with Deanie told us to await instructions. He must be planning something.”

  Jake unexpectedly sat up and slammed his fist so hard onto the down comforter that three feathers shot into the air. “Well, I’m not waiting for him to act. I want to be one jump ahead, anticipating him.”

  Manny had been about ready to drift into blissful and much-needed sleep, but being in the presence of Jake when he was so excited was the equivalent of drinking three cups of double espresso—and infectious.

  She sat up, too, and faced him across the rumpled covers. “But even with what we know now, or what we suspect, we still aren’t any closer to understanding the Vampire’s motivation. And without that, how can we anticipate his next move?”

  Jake said nothing, eyes focused on the seemingly nondescript pattern of her new white-on-white silk comforter.

  “Jake?”

  No answer.