He lingered far enough behind to not be recognized should, for some reason, she turn and look behind her. He questioned the wisdom of her walking these streets alone at night. An ancient rusted Impala passed him, traveling over the speed limit, and he tensed, sensing trouble, when he saw the red brake lights and heard the squeal of rubber tires skidding on the asphalt surface as the car came to a sudden stop beside the lone woman. Two young men jumped from the car. One snatched her sack purse and book satchel. The other grabbed her by the waist and started dragging her to the car, intending to throw her into the backseat.
“Hey, motherfuckers!” Michael screamed, dropping his backpack and running toward the car. The taller of the two men drew a knife, clearly rattled when the weapon didn’t deter Michael from attacking. Michael felt the blade pierce the flesh in the thickest part of his haunch, and, enraged, broke the boy’s jaw with his first punch, knocking him on his back. He heard a car door slam, and the racing motor of the Impala driving away, the coward abandoning his friend to Michael’s wrath. He gripped the boy’s throat with one hand, not allowing him to beg for mercy, and struck him, each punch gathering force, fueled by years of rage at his father’s cruelty, beating the kid’s face to a bloody pulp. He would have killed him if Amy Morganthau hadn’t jumped on his back, sobbing, trying to restrain him.
“Please, stop. Stop. Stop. I’m okay now,” she pleaded.
The influence of the Morganthau family extended far beyond the Borough of Manhattan and criminal assault charges were never filed against Michael Rocco Gagliano. Amy tried to acknowledge her appreciation, but Michael rebuffed her offer to pay for the ER to stitch his knife wound, saying it wasn’t her responsibility. He even refused to be her guest at an expensive steak house, saying he didn’t think it right for him to accept a gift for simply doing what any decent man would do. She was used to getting her own way, she told him, and sooner or later she would find some way to repay him, even if it took years for the right opportunity to present itself.
MICHAEL, 1989
She was a write-on, not one of the elite who’d risen to their lofty position as Law Review associates on the basis of their grade point average. Michael Rocco Gagliano, the newly elected Note Editor, who would go on to graduate ranked fourth in his class, had taken an instant dislike to her as he undertook the extensive edits necessary to prepare her submission to the venerable publication. His own well-reasoned, impassioned argument in favor of allowing criminal defendants to waive their Sixth Amendment right to counsel during police interrogation had needed only minor revisions last year, and Michael had been deferential to the senior editor assigned to his project, willing to accept his suggestions. This chick was something else, confrontational from the outset, insisting on an extensive debate over even a minor change to a footnote. She’d clearly resented his lack of enthusiasm for her deadly dull (for him at least) topic, debtor abuse of the automatic stay provision of the bankruptcy code.
“It’s Kit,” she corrected him when he mistakenly called her Kathy.
“I go by Michael,” he informed her when she referred to him as Mike.
It would be years before they learned they were known as Doozy and Mikey to their respective families, names more suitable for Mouseketeers. Michael did call her Princess Leia, not to her face of course and only to a select group of trusted intimates on the Law Review editorial board, and not because she shared a physical resemblance to Carrie Fisher. But Katherine Morris Scott did seem to have been spawned on another planet, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. She was nothing like the women he’d grown up among, creatures who took elaborate measures to emphasize their physical differences from men. Kit, lithe and muscular, her dirty-blond hair pulled back from her face, unadorned by any makeup other than an occasional touch of lipstick or any jewelry except for the small gold hoops in her pierced ears, would have seemed like an alien among the Catholic school girls of South Philadelphia. Most men would consider her attractive, he conceded, not a great beauty, but a handsome woman with good features that would age well.
“You must think I’m a complete bitch,” she said, surprising him with a quick about-face as they sat at a small booth in a West Philadelphia deli favored by generations of Penn Law students for its generous portions of potato salad and matzo ball soup.
“Huh?” he grunted, grabbing a napkin to sop up the oil dripping from his hoagie onto the edited pages spread across the tabletop.
“Oh God, I just made you blush!” she laughed.
“Look, I just want to finish up here and . . .”
“You must really hate me,” she said, interrupting him.
“No, I don’t,” he said, but knowing that he easily could, especially now that she was obviously changing tactics, trying to disarm him with insincere apologies and self-deprecating remarks. She’d clearly overestimated his ability to be charmed into submission by a seductress without a pair of big tits. He knew her type from his days at Princeton. A woman with a storied Philadelphia surname who believed he was nothing more than some big stupid jock, the beneficiary of an affirmative action program for athletic scholarship recipients from ethnic minority neighborhoods. Easy prey for patrician mockery.
“Are you going to eat that or let it go cold?” he asked as she played with her food.
“The soup is kind of greasy,” she complained, claiming a complete loss of appetite. “Do you want to finish it?”
“It tastes okay to me,” he said, having grown up believing that wasting food was the most grievous of sins.
“You’re funny,” she announced.
“How so?” he said, picking up the bowl to tip the last bit of soup into his mouth.
“You just are. My father would really like you. He’s always wanted another Tastykake.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, bristling slightly, assuming that being referred to as a lunch box snack cake, a Butterscotch Krimpet or Chocolate Junior, was an emasculating insult. You really are a bitch, he decided. Thirty-two blocks from here, in the neighborhood where he’d been raised, they would call her a cunt.
“That’s what he called his favorite clerk. Alan Jablonsky from Trenton. His father was a maintenance man at the state capitol. Alan was Harvard Law. He’s at Sullivan and Cromwell now. Represented Dow Chemical in that big antitrust case last year. My father loved him. All hard work and no attitude, he said. You should apply.”
“I’m not interested in writing someone else’s opinions for two years. I’m going straight to the DA’s Office after graduation.”
“So? My father went to St. Paul’s with her right-hand man. The city of Philadelphia will somehow survive for two more years while you clerk for my father. I know he’s still interviewing,” she persisted.
The Honorable Augustus Ballard Scott, appointed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals during the first term of the Reagan Administration, was known as a law-and-order jurist, referred to affectionately as Gruff Gus by those who argued before him. A clerkship in his chambers wasn’t considered a plum by Michael’s peers on the editorial board, whose academic résumés had earned them consideration by liberal icons and Federalist Society heroes sitting in the most prestigious circuits. Still, it was an appellate clerkship and one of Judge Scott’s own had gone on to a position in the chambers of the Supreme Court, clerking for Chief Justice Rehnquist, no less.
“What’s in it for you? Does your old man pay you a finder’s fee?” he asked, not trusting her intentions.
“You really are a complete and total asshole,” she said, laughing, without malice so he knew she wasn’t really offended.
“So I’m told. On a daily basis. At least once an hour.”
“By who?”
“Well, you just did, for one.”
“Anyone else?”
“You name them, they say it.”
“Your girlfriend? You have one, I assume?”
“My fiancée,” he said, not intending to sound resigned to his fate.
“Wha
t’s her name?”
“Barbara,” he answered, truthfully, though he’d rarely known anyone to refer to her by her formal name.
“Is she an undergraduate? You strike me as someone who needs to be adored by those worshipful coeds who study in the law library, hoping to make the acquaintance of a future partner at a Wall Street firm.”
“She’s a nurse. She works in the Emergency Department at St. Agnes.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding almost incredulous, as if he’d just revealed his fiancée was a circus performer. “How long have you been together?”
“A long time.”
“What does she look like?”
“What difference does it make?” he asked, growing irritated by the game of twenty questions. “Why do you care what she looks like?”
He wanted to finish the edits, turn the goddamn thing in to the executive editor. It was getting late and he’d promised to pick up Barbie at the end of her shift, her nerves still unsettled by an off-hours rape on the Broad Street Subway line last month.
“I bet she looks like Diane Keaton.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he scoffed, trying to visualize his Italian-Polish fiancé in an Annie Hall getup.
“Because you look like Pacino.”
Michael had long been weary of the frequent comparisons to a pipsqueak who needed lifts to reach five-foot-six. Still, he couldn’t deny the resemblance and, over time, had embraced the nickname, Godfather, given to him by his Princeton teammates.
“When are you getting married?” she asked.
“Soon,” he said, the same answer he always gave the woman waiting to become his wife.
“I think my fiancé and I are breaking up,” she announced.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He’s sleeping with this little bitch in Boston. Some Brahmin whore he met at the Business School. He keeps denying it, but I know he’s lying.”
“Maybe he’s not.”
“I bet you don’t sleep around on Barbara.”
“No, I don’t,” he answered truthfully. He didn’t. He hadn’t. Not one time since they lost their virginity together on the cold linoleum floor of his father’s barbershop. Not during his four years at Princeton. Not since they’d begun sharing a cheap apartment near the river in Grays Ferry when he entered Penn Law, ignoring the laments of her disapproving parents. Never. Ever. Ever.
“I knew it. I could tell,” she said. “Don’t be embarrassed that you’re actually a good guy.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” he protested, sounding defensive.
“So, how about it?”
“How about what?”
“Meeting my father. I’m going out to the house tomorrow. You should come. You can bring Barbara.”
“She works tomorrow. She gets premium pay for Sunday shifts.”
“Then come by yourself. For drinks and dinner. I just know the Judge is going to love you.”
“We’ll see,” he said, not ready to commit, but already considering which of his ties would make the best impression on Gruff Gus. After all, a clerkship would be a nice little résumé credential for a man with ambitions of one day being elected DA himself. He’d wear a rep. Red, white, and blue, of course. And a white shirt. Maybe after a few stiff drinks the old patriot would even confuse his olive-skinned guest for a real American rather than a yard worker who had wandered through the front door. “I’ll meet you at the law library,” he said. “What time do you want to pick me up?”
MICHAEL, 1992
“I can’t fucking believe you are doing this! You’ve known my Tony your entire life. You made your First Communion together. Your father gave him his first haircut.”
The distracted young ADA, looking down at the notes he’d scrawled on a legal pad for his opening statement, made his best effort to ignore Tony Valentino’s haggard-looking mother as she stalked him in the courthouse hallway. The way she was carrying on you would have thought Michael was sending the scrawny little junkie to Graterford state prison for life instead of asking for a one-year sentence in the county jail.
“You little fucker. You think you’re better than us now, don’t you?” she said, insisting on a confrontation.
He’d known the day would come when he would have to choose between old loyalties and his sworn oath to uphold the law. He just hadn’t expected it to arrive this soon. But this is the life he wanted. This is the work he’d fought to do. Penn Law grads, especially one who’d been an editor of the Law Review and had completed a two-year Third Circuit clerkship, rarely came seeking employment opportunities in the District Attorney’s Office, and those few who did were expected to contribute their superior abilities to the more intellectually challenging arena of appellate work. But Michael had resisted his new employer’s efforts to confine him to the tedium of brief writing and insisted he be assigned to the trials unit. They’d thrown him in with the other puppies to cut his baby teeth on preliminary hearings where they struggled to hold the attention of bored and distracted judges. Michael was a quick study, the first of the litter to draw blood with his bite. Four weeks after being sworn in as an assistant district attorney, he was assigned a bench trial in a simple assault second-degree misdemeanor charge.
“Come on, Mikey, cut me a break. We’ll plead to a third-degree misdemeanor and enter court-mandated rehab. You’ll be lucky to get even that after the bartender testifies Tony was only defending himself,” Tony’s lawyer whined. Michael knew him from the neighborhood—one of those shingle-hanging hacks who trolled the courthouse in their cheap, ill-fitting suits, handing their cards to potential clients who couldn’t afford to pay a decent attorney to take their cases.
“That’s not what she said in the police statement,” Michael said, eager to get his first trial under his belt.
“What’s the matter with you, Mikey? I been loyal to your family for years. I stuck with your old man until he retired, even after he almost clipped off a piece of my ear.”
Even Michael’s supervisor, the venerable Walter Rudenstein, was surprised by the vehemence with which his young protégé argued against agreeing to the lesser count and a lenient sentence of probation, rehab, and a thousand-dollar fine. It was a fucking bar fight, Michael, the jaded prosecutor chided. You’d think this pathetic little junkie was Manson and John Wayne Gacy rolled into one. What are you gonna ask for when you’re trying real criminals? That the poor bastards be drawn and quartered in the village square? But in the end, Walter Rudenstein, impressed by Michael’s tenacity, gave his blessing. Yeah, it was just a bar fight. A bar fight provoked by a defendant with three prior misdemeanor convictions and two failed stints in recovery programs. Tony Valentino was a bully and a coward, a fucking sadist who deserved the maximum punishment.
“Just be sure this isn’t personal, Michael,” Walter Rudenstein cautioned.
He assured his boss he had nothing against Tony Valentino personally. He’d known him all his life. They’d made their First Communion together.
The victim, a nervous lowlife reeking of Paco Rabanne, alcohol, and dirty underwear testified he hadn’t given Tony Valentino the slightest provocation to smash his fist into his face three times, causing a hairline fracture below his right eye socket. The bartender corroborated the sorry old drunk’s story. The judge sentenced Tony to nine months in county, eligible for release in six if he successfully demonstrated a commitment to recovery. Mrs. Valentino, an unlit Virginia Slim in one hand and a bejeweled cigarette case in the other, was waiting for Michael as he emerged from the courtroom. She spit in his face, twice.
“Once for you. Once for your faggot brother.”
The cop who’d testified for Michael grabbed her by the elbow and twisted her arm.
“You stupid fucking cunt. That’s a fucking felony, assaulting an officer of the court.”
“Let her go. She’s not worth the fucking trouble,” Michael said as he calmly wiped the spit from his face and watched her slink away, no more threatening than an insect he coul
d have crushed beneath his heel.
MICHAEL, 1997
“Would you mind keeping an eye on her for a few minutes? Just make sure she doesn’t drown.”
Scottie Lippincott, all of six years old, reminded him of the pigs-in-a-blanket being passed around by the catering staff—a pink, plump Vienna sausage wrapped in puffy orange pastry. He pulled off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs, dangling his legs in the water, ready to dive to the rescue if the little girl defied the physics of her Navy Seal–approved flotation device and plunged to the bottom of the pool. He soon realized her mother’s fears were completely unfounded. Poseidon, Lord of the Watery Underworld himself, couldn’t have vanquished the feisty kid. Scottie was a turbo-charged dynamo, furiously slapping the surface of the water with her chubby arms, determined to propel herself the length of the pool.
“Here, you’ve earned this,” Kit said as she sat down beside him and handed him a beer.
“I can see she has your personality,” he commented.
“I wish. She’s her father’s daughter, through and through. I should have married someone like you, Michael. Then my child would be as solid and earnest as her very serious old man.” She laughed. “I bet you’d make a wonderful father.”
It made him feel good, having his old nemesis flirt with him. He knew he was blushing, as awkward at being the object of a female’s attention as he had been at fourteen.
“Look at me, Mama! Look! Look!” Scottie shouted. She wasn’t doing anything remarkable, nothing she hadn’t been doing the entire afternoon, but several minutes had passed since she’d had her mother’s undivided attention.
The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter Page 11
