Mob Lawyer

by Dave Daren

  “Fucking bastards,” Anthony growled.

  “No argument from me,” I assured him. “Look, let’s go back in and see what happens. If they try to bring up the other case, we’ll walk out. But I use that against them in front of a judge.”

  “Really?” my client asked in surprise.

  “Really,” I said. “I promise, I do have a reason for subjecting you to this.”

  “Okay,” he said. “It just pisses me off.”

  “I know,” I replied. “All we need is a few minutes.”

  “You know, it’s what they always do,” he sighed.

  “What do you mean?” I asked as I watched my client try to get control of his anger.

  “They don’t care if a supposed criminal gets shot,” he explained. “They’ll only investigate it if they think it will help them solve other crimes. Like my dad getting shot, they’re really only interested in finding out what he was up to and what the other families will do. They don’t really care who actually shot my dad, and if they do solve that case, it’ll be incidental to whatever they’re really looking into.”

  “That’s a rather harsh assessment,” I noted.

  “But Francie,” he continued on as I hadn’t spoken. “Francie’s case they’ll keep working, but only because they want to nail me. If I wasn’t a suspect, they’d probably bury the case and move on to the next one.”

  I had to admit, his take on Francie’s case wasn’t wrong. Without a viable suspect, most murder cases would be quietly relisted as a cold case and moved to a shelf in the records department somewhere.

  “I don’t think they’d bury the case,” I demurred.

  “Of course they would,” he said in exasperation. “Don’t you get it yet? They’d never devote this much time and effort to the case if it wasn’t me they were trying to nail.”

  “They did find you at the crime scene,” I reminded him. “They would come after anyone in that situation pretty hard, whether or not his name was Febbo.”

  “Then why haven’t they done anything else on the case?” he asked. “You found Marinello easily enough. Why can’t they? I talked to Gabby and Nera this morning, just to ask if talking to you had triggered any other memories. They both told me that they hadn’t talked to anyone from the police yet.”

  And they’d disregarded the neighbor across the hall, I thought to myself. In fact, there were a lot of people that the police hadn’t talked to yet, starting with Wendy Romer, the young woman whose mother suddenly required her help. And as Anthony had just pointed out, Marinello wasn’t that hard to find. Yet, no one else had talked to him yet.

  “Do you think one of the other families has people inside the police department?” I asked. “Say, in Queens?”

  “They’ve always had people inside the police department,” Anthony replied.

  “That’s what Agent Duvernay suggested,” I mused.

  “Well, he got that much right,” Anthony snorted.

  “But how much could someone really do?” I pressed. “There are over thirty thousand police officers on the force. They’d have to make sure you were taken to the precinct where they had a man, and they’d have to make sure that someone could control the direction of the case.”

  I thought about the three detectives I’d encountered so far. Gomez had seemed honest enough, though like Duvernay, he knew an awful lot about my client. And then there were the two who were here today, ostensibly to talk about Febbo’s shooting, but clearly hoping to learn something about the Mott murder.

  “It’s not as hard as you think,” Anthony replied. “All you have to do is whisper that the suspect is part of the Mafia, and even a good cop will look the other way. They figure even if you didn’t do the crime you’re accused of, you probably did something just as bad, and the world will be a better place without you in it.”

  I started to argue with him, then stopped. There’d been a big blow up in the department nearly two years ago when several of the officers who worked the evidence room were discovered taking bribes to destroy or alter evidence. Most of the cases were minor affairs, but the whole operation had come to light when a gun used in a rape-murder had disappeared.

  “I wasn’t paid enough to give a shit,” I murmured.

  “What?” Anthony asked in confusion.

  “A quote,” I explained. “From one of the officers who was nailed in that evidence tampering case a couple of years ago. A reporter asked him if it bothered him that so many cases had been destroyed by him and his cohorts.”

  “I wasn’t paid enough to give a shit,” Anthony chuckled. “Yeah, that about sums it up. They find some guy who needs some extra cash, and before you know it, he’s not just telling you who’s been brought in for questioning or when the feds are planning to raid your operations, but he’s stealing evidence or whispering in the detective’s ear.”

  It wasn’t all cops, I knew that. Most were still in it because they did care. They just maybe cared more about some people than others. And then I finally understood a comment I’d once heard a black classmate make.

  The classmate was older than most of us, and had grown up in the projects. By the time he was sixteen, he’d been stopped by the cops twelve times just for being a black kid in a black neighborhood. By the time he was seventeen, he was upstate in prison with career criminals because he’d dared to defend a friend who was being arrested. He’d survived, earned his GED, and then fought to get into law school. The comment he’d made as we sat in Criminal Law one day was that the NYPD was the biggest gang in town.

  His point, I now saw more clearly than ever, was that in the process of fighting crime, the NYPD often resorted to many of the same tactics as the criminals they were fighting. It was a truth that applied to the Febbos’ relationship with the police as well, and I wondered again about the man we’d interrupted at Anthony’s apartment and why no one from the police had yet bothered to search the place.

  “Let’s go back in,” I suggested. “Remember, stay calm. As soon as they start asking questions about Francie, we’ll end it.”

  Anthony nodded and took several deep breaths, followed by a few shoulder rolls. When he looked reasonably calm, I led him back to the conference room, where Allan still sat in his same chair but Orson had taken up a post next to the door, no doubt so he could watch for us through the pane of glass in the door.

  “Okay, let’s finish this,” Anthony said as he stepped back into the room.

  “Just a few more questions,” Orson assured him as we three took our seats again.

  “How did you find out your father had been shot?” Allan asked abruptly.

  “My mother was on the phone with him,” Anthony replied in a calm voice. “They were talking about which movie they wanted to see, and dad said he would be home sooner, so maybe they could see the movie first and go to dinner after, and mom said something, and then started screaming that he’d been shot.”

  “Why did your mother think it was gunshots she heard?” Orson asked.

  Anthony stared at the man in disbelief for several seconds, then shook his head.

  “She knows what gunshots sound like,” Anthony said.

  “But over a phone,” Orson pressed.

  “She knows what gunshots sound like,” Anthony repeated.

  “Okay,” Orson conceded. “But why did she assume it was your father who had been shot?”

  “Because she heard him grunt, and then he stopped talking,” Anthony explained.

  “These are questions you should direct to Mrs. Febbo,” I cut in. “When she’s feeling up to it.”

  “So your mom thought your dad had been shot,” Allan remarked. “What did you do then?”

  “Mom kept yelling into her phone,” Anthony replied slowly. “Just to see if he would answer. I called 9-1-1 on my phone, and I had to ask my mom if she knew where the meeting was. They almost didn’t send anyone when I told the operator we’d heard it happen while we were on the phone instead of witnessing it first hand. But then I guess
they got other calls about gunshots, so someone finally sent the police and ambulance.”

  “There were quite a few calls,” Allan admitted. “Broad daylight, near City Hall. Your old man was lucky to get shot there because the police and EMT’s got there fast.”

  “So you were out on Long Island, with your mother,” Orson continued. “How did you know which hospital to go to?”

  “Someone picked up my father’s phone,” Anthony replied. “One of the police officers, I think. She saw it was still on and she asked who was on the other end. She stayed on the phone with my mother until they were heading to the hospital and then she told us where to go.”

  Orson nodded.

  “That matches with the report,” Orson said as he glanced at Allan.

  Allan looked unhappy that Orson had agreed with Anthony about anything, but he finally nodded as well.

  “Then what?” Orson encouraged.

  “I grabbed the car keys and put my mom in the car,” Anthony said. “I told her to call my sisters as we were driving to the city since they all live closer. And Paul works in midtown. Not sure where Kenyon was.”

  “Who arrived at the hospital first?” Allan asked.

  Anthony glanced at me but I shrugged. I wasn’t sure why Allan was asking which meant he was probably on a fishing expedition.

  “I just assumed it was Paul,” Anthony said. “But I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Everyone else was here when we arrived.”

  “So you two were the last to arrive,” Allan clarified.

  “We were,” Anthony agreed. “But we were the furthest away.”

  “Is there a point to this?” I asked.

  “Just getting it straight in my head,” Allan replied.

  “Anything else?” I demanded.

  “How were you and your father getting along?” Orson asked.

  “The same as we always did,” my client huffed.

  “Can you explain that?” Orson prodded.

  “What do you want me to say?” Anthony sighed. “We had our ups and downs. I didn’t always like everything he did and he didn’t always like everything I did, but he is my father, and I love him.”

  “But this morning,” Orson pushed. “Were you two on talking terms?”

  “We’ve always been on talking terms,” Anthony snapped.

  “You sure about that?” Allan interjected. “You’ve spent a lot of time trying to distance yourself from your family name.”

  “Because I don’t like my father’s business,” Anthony replied.

  “And what business is that?” Orson asked casually.

  It felt like the temperature in the room dropped a good thirty degrees. Allan scowled at Anthony while the other detective put on a more innocent air. Anthony folded his arms across his chest and glared at both men.

  “Next question,” I announced.

  “Okay, sure,” Orson agreed happily. “So everything was okay this morning. You two were talking, your father seemed normal, nothing strange happened. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” Anthony agreed.

  “Nothing came up in the last few days?” Orson continued. “No odd phone calls or strange visitors to the house?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Anthony said again.

  “Is there a point to this?” I demanded.

  “We’ve been looking through phone records,” Allan replied.

  “Phone records?” Anthony asked in surprise.

  “Whose phone records?” I shot back.

  “Anthony, among others,” Orson said with a note of regret.

  “For what purpose?” I asked. “And don’t tell me it’s related to this matter.”

  “What we’re interested in is a couple of phone calls your client had,” Allan said without answering my question. “He talked to a man named Giorgio Marinello.”

  I didn’t think that either Anthony or I reacted, but Allan’s smile turned vicious, and a gleam shone in his eyes. Even Orson dropped his good cop routine as he turned a cold stare on Anthony.

  “So, what were you and a member of a rival family discussing?” Allan asked. “And why did it require a meeting?”

  Chapter 13

  “We’re done,” I announced as I stood up again. “Anthony, let’s go.”

  “We’re not the only ones who will be asking,” Allan warned as Anthony slowly stood up.

  “No doubt,” I replied.

  I had a hand wrapped around my client’s arm by then and I pushed him towards the door. He still hadn’t said anything and he moved in slow motion. I wasn’t sure what to make of his reaction, but the more pressing issue was the alleged phone calls and meeting between Lamon and Marinello.

  “If you decide to talk,” Orson said as he thrust a business card in my direction,

  I took the card as I shoved Anthony out the door and into the hallway. I dragged Anthony all the way back to the elevator before he finally tugged his arm free of my grip, but he remained quiet until we reached the lobby.

  “I need to check on my mother,” he said as he looked around.

  “Here,” I replied as I handed him my phone. “We need to talk. Now.”

  Anthony nodded but his focus was on the phone. He dialed the number and then waited for his mother to answer. I heard her pick up but Anthony cut her off before she could say anything.

  “How’s dad?” Anthony asked.

  “He looks smaller,” I heard Gulia reply. “But he’s tough.”

  “Hunter and I need to talk,” Anthony said. “Get Paul or Annie to drive you home. I’ll be there later tonight.”

  I waved at Anthony as I remembered Liz’s suggestion, one that somehow seemed more important now that I knew my client had been talking to Marinello.

  “Get a room,” I suggested when Anthony looked at me. “That way she can be back here in the morning.”

  Anthony considered that for a moment, then nodded.

  “Mom, Hunter has a good idea,” he said. “You should get a room nearby. So you can be close and you won’t have to drive in during rush hour.”

  Gulia said something, though I couldn’t hear exactly what she said, and then after several moments I heard a different voice.

  “Look, Paul, just find a room for her,” Anthony said in an exasperated tone.

  “Rooms,” I amended. “You should stay here as well.”

  Anthony started to protest but changed his mind.

  “Make it two rooms, next to each other,” Anthony told Paul. “I’ll stay with mom tonight.”

  There was another pause and then Anthony rolled his eyes.

  “Just use mom’s credit card,” Anthony exploded. “Yes, fine, downtown will do. Just call me when you’ve got the rooms.”

  He disconnected while Paul was still talking and handed the phone back to me.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “I’d rather not be out in public very much,” I said. “Not after the events of today. We need to find a quiet place to talk.”

  “Wait here,” Anthony ordered as he looked around.

  He spotted a pair of nurses walking towards one of the desks and followed after them. I watched as he walked up to them and started to speak. They nodded sympathetically, then pointed towards the elevators. Anthony nodded and walked back towards me.

  “There’s a chapel,” Anthony announced. “There’s usually no one there.”

  I nodded and Anthony led the way to the elevator. We got off on the second floor and we followed the signs for the chapel to a room tucked behind the nurse’s coffee station. It was small with just enough room to hold maybe twenty people if you packed them in tight, though it did include a small altar and a cross on the back wall. It was empty except for the fresh flowers someone had placed on the altar, though sadly, their pleasant scent wasn’t quite strong enough to overcome the smell of antiseptic.

  “Giorgio Marinello,” I said when we had claimed a spot in the front pew.

  “As I said before, I know him from high school,” Anthony sig
hed.

  “Did you talk to him on the phone?” I asked. “Before Francie was killed?”

  “Yes and yes,” he replied.

  I waited for him to say something else, but he appeared lost in his own world as he stared at the cross.

  “Start talking,” I finally said.

  “It makes more sense now,” he said. “Though it seemed odd at the time. I just never thought…”

  “Talk,” I commanded when he went silent again.

  “George called me,” he started. “A few weeks ago, I guess. I’d have to check my phone… which is currently on the blink. Anyway, he said he got my number from a friend of a friend. He asked if I still collected watches and said he had some to sell. I put him off, but he called back a few days later. So I asked him where the watches came from and he said they were his own, but he needed to raise some cash and so he was willing to sell them.”

  “Did he say why he needed cash?” I asked.

  “No, though I did ask,” Anthony replied. “I’m not that stupid, though you wouldn’t know it based on how easily I fell into this trap. He just said he had a deal he was trying to work but he needed some upfront money. I’ve been around people like George enough to know that I didn’t want to know any more.”

  “So why not go to people in his own family?” I mused.

  “Usually that means someone is doing something that the family wouldn’t like,” Anthony explained.

  “Such as?” I asked.

  “Such as starting their own operation,” Anthony replied. “And not giving the family a cut.”

  “Do you think George would do that?”

  Anthony considered that idea for several moments and shrugged.

  “When we were kids, I would have said no,” Anthony mused. “But I’m not so sure now. You hear stories, you know.”

  “And what stories did you hear about Marinello?” I prodded.

  “That he spent more than he made,” Anthony replied. “That he insisted that he should be getting a bigger cut for his troubles.”