by Dave Daren
“I don’t need to hear this,” I said hastily. “I’m still a court officer.”
“A court officer,” Anthony mimicked.
“Which means I have to report any crimes that I believe are about to be committed,” I explained.
“Who said anything about a crime?” Anthony demanded.
I shrugged my shoulders and glanced out the window again while I counted to ten. I might have been willing to keep going under normal circumstances, but as far as I knew, Anthony still had the gun in his hand, and even a blind man could have seen the anger that contorted his face.
“Anthony--” I began when I thought enough time had passed.
“Don’t say another word,” Anthony warned.
I waited and watched as my client’s scowl slowly dissipated. Eventually, I heard the desk drawer open and something heavy thud against the wood. Anthony closed the drawer, then turned to look at me.
“The import company,” he finally said. “You can get me in?”
“I can,” I said. “Though having your mother’s shares would make it easier.”
“I told you I would talk to her,” Anthony replied testily. “And the investigation?”
“Now that I have the information from the reporter--,” I started.
“Is that the only new information you have?” my client asked. “What some reporter passed along? What am I paying you for if that’s all I need?”
“We’re still waiting for responses to some of our subpoena requests,” I replied.
“Then maybe you should take care of that,” Anthony snapped. “I think you’ve done enough damage to the business side of my life today, you might as well go muck around in my personal life some more.”
I stared at the younger Febbo in disbelief, but his face had hardened and his hand had yet to reappear from behind the desk. I took a deep breath and nodded.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ve got some files to go through.”
Anthony watched me as I stood up, and though I wasn’t feeling especially brave at the moment, I did at least turn my back to my client as I walked to the door and opened it. I turned to look at Anthony again, but all I got in return was another glacial stare. I stepped into the hall, closed the door as quickly and quietly as I could, then retreated along the hallway and down the stairs.
I spotted Katarina as she crossed the entryway, the red tabby at her feet. She looked up when she heard me on the stairs, and the pretty Polish woman stopped and smiled. I must have still looked angry or scared myself, because her smile disappeared and a sympathetic look took its place.
“He becomes more like his father every day,” she noted sadly. “I miss the young man who talked about starting his own brewery.”
“He and Kroger…” I started and then hesitated. “It was tense today.”
“He’s not sure who he can trust,” Katarina replied as she brushed a blonde lock away from her face. “Everyone is under suspicion, even those who have been with the family a long time. He sees spies everywhere.”
“And what do you think?” I asked. “Is he right not to trust them?”
Katarina glanced up the stairs before she leaned in closer. I could smell her perfume, something that reminded me of jasmine on a hot summer day.
“I’ve never trusted them,” she said quietly. “And Salvatore only trusted a very few. So yes, I think it’s smart not to trust them.”
“That’s not much of a way to live,” I replied quietly.
“It’s what you must do if you want to survive,” she said just as quietly.
“Katarina, did you find that guest list?” Gulia called from the piano room.
“A fundraiser for the local animal rescue,” Katarina said as she started to walk away from me. “It’s one of Gulia’s favorite charities. Even with Salvatore still in a coma, she will try to help them.”
I started to follow Katarina across the tiles but she slipped inside the piano room and quietly shut the door. I stood outside for a moment, and then decided I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind to visit with Gulia, something Katarina had obviously sensed. I gave up on the idea of saying hello to the matriarch and walked back to the door and down the steps.
I climbed back into the Volvo without encountering any of the Febbo guards and drove down the long drive to the road with only the birdsong for company. I spotted the van of the day, this time painted black, parked in the empty lot. I actually waved as I pulled out of the driveway, and wondered what had inspired that moment of madness.
I could tell the adrenaline was starting to wear off, and as it did, it really started to sink in just how close I had come to being shot by either Kroger or Anthony. This was different, somehow, than the shootout in the train station parking lot. For one thing, I knew both of the men involved, if not exactly on a deep, personal level, then certainly well enough to say we were more than just acquaintances. And then there was the fact that these were both men I was supposed to trust. One was my client, for God’s sakes, and yet he’d probably have been perfectly happy pointing that gun at me as well as Kroger. Lucky for me, I hadn’t blurted out anything stupid, like ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’ and so I was driving my Volvo on the LIE instead of riding in an ambulance to the ER. For the first time since I had agreed to Anthony’s offer, I was starting to wonder if I had really made the best decision.
These were the thoughts that plagued me as I drove back to the city, and I finally decided that the best thing I could do was to show that I wasn’t intimidated by what I had seen. Anthony was right, in a manner of speaking, and it was time to start tying the case together. I had a lot of loose pieces, but I needed a way to create a story that the jury could believe. I needed to find Marinello’s controller, to borrow from Kroger’s question about being in a James Bond novel, especially given Giorgio’s current status. And I won’t deny that I really wanted that person to be Kroger.
I’d mentioned the subpoenas to Anthony, and as I’d also mentioned to my client, the deadlines were approaching for the responses. There was really only one, though, that I wanted, and that was the request for Marinello’s phone records and text messages that we had sent to his attorney. When I hit the usual congestion, I called Liz’s secretary to see if anything else had arrived.
“Asha, this is Hunter Morgan,” I said after the woman had finished announcing the name of the firm.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Morgan,” she said cheerfully. “I meant to call you earlier but I’ve been so busy helping Mr. Cohen sort through some new material that arrived.”
“Does that mean we received some responses today?” I asked hopefully.
“We did,” she said. “It looks like phone records and messages for that Marinello person.”
“Listen, I’m on my way back into the city,” I said. “Do you mind if I stop by the office and pick up the material?”
“I’ll be here until five thirty,” she replied. “But I can’t stay any later than that. My husband’s taking me out to dinner for our anniversary.”
“Well, happy anniversary!” I exclaimed. “And I promise I’ll be in and out before five thirty.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she laughed as she hung up.
I checked the time and realized that it might be a tight squeeze if the traffic didn’t start moving again soon, but I really wanted to look at those records. I became the obnoxious driver who weaves between lanes even though there’s really nowhere to go. Slowly, painfully, I made my way past the construction that had shut down one lane and both shoulders, and started to speed along the highway as fast I dared.
I pulled up in front of Liz’s old office with time to spare, barely, and pulled into a semi-legal spot. I prayed that there weren’t any officers or meter maids working this stretch of street as I locked up the car, and then ran inside the building to the security desk.
“I’m Hunter Morgan,” I said to the security guard. “I’m here to see…”
“Oh, yeah, Asha sent down a pass for you,” the guard rep
lied.
He typed in something on the computer while his partner watched the lobby with a bored expression. I tapped my foot impatiently, but the world had apparently ground to a halt for a few minutes before the rush hour kicked in. Eventually, I heard the sound of a printer coming to life, and then the security guard handed me a sticker to wear.
I thanked him, confirmed that Asha was on the fifteenth floor, and sprinted towards the elevators. There was hardly anyone else waiting to head upstairs, so it was just me and two young men with too much Axe body spray on the trip to fifteen. I stumbled off the elevator and gasped for clean air, though I had a bad feeling that I probably carried a fair amount of sandalwood and blueberry scent with me.
Asha was at her desk when I came around the corner and I heaved a sigh of relief. I knew she probably only had a couple of years on me, but she and her high school sweetheart had married as soon as they had graduated. Neither had gone to college, though Asha’s husband had joined his father and uncle in the plumbing business. Asha, in the meantime, had earned a paralegal certificate while somehow raising their two children. Asha was something of a wonder to me, since she always sounded like someone’s kindly, elderly mother on the phone, yet when you saw her in person, you were treated to a woman of mixed heritage with long black hair, hazel eyes and a very trim body that had run the New York City marathon three times already.
“You made it,” she said when she saw me.
“It was a close one,” I confided. “I forgot about the work on the LIE.”
“Back out on the island,” she said as she sorted through a stack of envelopes and passed one to me. “Maybe you should just buy a house there.”
“I’m thinking about it,” I admitted it as I accepted the plain brown envelope.
“That’s a backup of the flash drive they sent over,” she said. “I’ve got the original locked away for now.”
“This is great,” I said. “And thank you.”
She smiled and waved me away from her desk as she started to gather her belongings. I retreated to the elevator at a slower pace where I discovered the first wave of workers had already started to gather for the ride to the lobby. I saw a few people near me scrunch their noses, and one woman casually covered her nose with her hand, so I was definitely still carrying around some of the body spray. I sighed, but plunged into the elevator when it arrived. I ignored the stares and coughs on the trip downstairs, then hurried across the lobby and out the door.
Thankfully, there were no tickets under my windshield wiper, so I climbed back inside the Volvo and slipped away before anyone had time to discover my bad parking job. I made my way back to Brooklyn, in the thick of the rush hour traffic, and tried not to grow impatient whenever I glanced at the envelope.
One of the benefits of living in DUMBO was that I could slip away from the crowds driving into the borough at the first exit, into a section of the city where traffic wasn’t all that bad. While I was parking the car and walking towards the door to my apartment building, most of the other people who had driven across the bridge with me were still fighting their way through the traffic around Borough Hall and the other government buildings.
I waved to Sulla, who had just come on duty, checked my mailbox, which was empty, and started up the stairs to my apartment. The building felt more alive, which I chalked up to the sounds of music and game shows that I could hear as I passed by my neighbor’s doors. I stepped inside my own apartment with a sense of relief and barely closed the door behind me before I retreated to my table and opened the laptop.
While the computer checked the flash drive for viruses, I ventured into the kitchen to look for dinner ingredients. I settled on a frozen spicy chicken power bowl which I popped in the microwave for the required amount of time. When the microwave dinged, I retrieved my dinner and a glass of water, and retreated to the table.
I saw that the computer had finished its check and approved the flash drive, so I opened the file and started to wade through the contents while I polished off my not so spicy chicken and rice combination. The sensible thing would have been to produce the information in date order, but lawyers, especially those that are trying to bury the evidence, are not big on doing things that are sensible. I spent nearly half an hour trying to figure out what arrangement they had used, then gave up. The index was even less helpful, since it had been converted to a PDF, so I settled in for a long night of trying to piece things together in proper order.
Marinello, like most people in our generation, sent a lot of texts, mostly to other young people, and generally reserved phone conversations for people like his parents and someone identified on the spreadsheet as “M. Lorenzo”. I found the texts and phone calls with my client, and I was happy to see that there were only a few, clumped together around the time Anthony said Marinello had contacted him. There was even mention of the watches Giorgio wanted to sell, another point in my client’s favor.
The more interesting phone calls were made to a series of numbers that were listed as ‘Unknown’, which I took to mean burner phones. These were scattered throughout Marinello’s communications, but there were four numbers that he contacted regularly during the time he started following Francie up until a few days before his own death. There were never any text messages exchanged with those numbers, so someone was being extra cautious. I double checked the text messages to be sure, and hoped that Marinello might have slipped up in the beginning and sent a text message or two, but apparently Giorgio had been able to follow the rules.
“Damn it, Giorgio,” I muttered as I picked through the text messages, “When did you suddenly become so concerned about following instructions?”
Frustrated, I sat back to consider my options. I could complain to the judge that Marinello’s attorney hadn’t supplied complete information, but that would probably piss off the judge, and as the attorney would happily point out, his client was no longer a part of the case. Besides, there wasn’t any realistic way for the other attorney to track down the owners of the phone short of serving a subpoena on the various carriers, who, if they agreed to help, probably wouldn’t come back with much more information than the place where the phone had been purchased.
The only other solution, then, was to call the numbers and see who picked up. I stared at my own phone for several minutes and tried to decide if I really wanted to use it for this project. The numbers could turn out to be completely harmless, maybe some of Giorgio’s pals even, but I knew that wasn’t likely. And the idea that the person who had tasked Giorgio with killing Francie would have my cell phone number was unsettling.
I glanced at the clock and realized that I could just make it to the shady electronics store on Fulton if I left now. I pulled my Keds back on, locked up the apartment, and took the stairs to the lobby two at a time. I flew past Sulla and jogged past my neighbors out for an evening stroll. By the time I arrived at the tiny store squeezed between a sporting goods place and a department store, I was out of breath and sweating.
I’d discovered this old hold-out of the pre-gentrification of downtown Brooklyn when my own phone had required repairs that only a company employee in some far away place could make. The good news was that the phone was still under warranty, so the company paid for everything, including the shipping. The bad news was that I would be without a cell phone for nearly two weeks. After two days, I’d given up on trying to make do with the land lines at the office, and had wandered into the first place I could find near my apartment.
The place was run by a Jewish family who treated everyone as if they were potential thieves. Despite this, I had left the store with a ready to go phone in less time than it would have taken if I’d shopped at a regular electronics store. Sadly, I’d given that phone to my parents once my own was repaired, and so I was back, looking for my own burner phone.
The place was busy when I walked in, despite the fact that it would be closing soon. I squeezed past racks of knock-off headphones and the display of dusty video cameras, to the
prepaid phone section that took up most of the space along the right side of the store. A handful of people were already there, each lost in their own world as they considered the options on display. I made my selection quickly, then joined the queue for the checkout.
“Mr. Morgan,” the man working the register said when he glanced up.
I’d finally learned his name was Eli, and he was the only one in the store who was at all friendly with the customers. He had soft brown eyes and curly hair that was always hidden beneath a hat, no matter the outside weather. He was also the only one who seemed to remember the people who had been here before, and since this had become my go-to place for whatever odd bits I might need, I had become a regular and therefore someone he could speak to.
“Busy tonight,” I commented as Eli rang up my purchase.
“Coming up on the first of the month,” he noted. “We make a lot of phone sales then.”
“Every month?” I asked curiously.
He nodded as he waited for my card to clear.
“People have money to spend then,” he replied. “And if they’re new to the city, the first thing they want to do is call home.”
He handed me a plastic bag with the phone, and I stepped away from the register. I returned to the street under the watchful eyes of Eli’s brothers and uncles, and made my way back to the apartment at a slower pace. I thought about stopping for an ice cream on the way, but told myself I didn’t need the calories or the delay in checking the numbers.
Once I was back at my own table, I activated the phone then checked the list one more time. I crossed my fingers and dialed the first number, but no one answered and the voicemail never kicked in. I tried the second with the same result, and then a third number.
I was about to hang up and try the last number when someone finally answered the phone. It wasn’t much, just a grunt, but at least I’d finally found a human.
“Jimmy!” I exclaimed as if I’d finally found my long lost best friend.
“Who the hell is this?” the person on the other end demanded.
