by Nick Dorsey
“Not that well. They didn’t have any children, and we were always busy with the boys. Maybe we had a glass of wine or two over the years.”
“I understand.” Tom was sitting in the sunroom on a wicker bench, hunched forward slightly, hands together over his knees. His active listening posture. Patton was at a glass breakfast table with a notebook. The woman was a bundle of energy, bringing Patton a cup of water and boiling water for tea and fussing with milk and sugar.
Tom said, “Did Ernie ever get upset with her, with Sofia? I don’t mean they argued about money, or whatever. All the stuff couples argue about. But did they have real knock-down, drag-out fights? The kind that could wake you up?”
She gave Tom a look as she brought a tea tray to the table. “But Ernie’s the one who got shot. He was a very sweet man. Very soft-spoken. He always asked after the boys, but other than that, it was hard to get more than a few words out of him. Her , on the other hand, she was always a handful. Always talking about what she wanted to buy, or how she wanted to fix up her place. Remodel her bathroom. A new marble kitchen countertop. Bragging about her new car. Very conscious of all that.”
“So you never saw, or heard of, any big arguments?”
“Ernie was a puppy dog. He adored her. He doted on her. She was always showing off her new clothes. New jewelry, things like that. Of course, when I heard that she shot him I thought it all made some sort of weird sense. Maybe she wanted something, wanted him to buy her something, and he finally said no. And she could be like a child sometimes, talking in that way foreigners have. Not using proper English, I mean. Sounding like a four-year-old. Maybe she just got fed up and threw a tantrum. And now Ernie’s dead.”
Tom nodded sympathetically. He said, “What about that Thursday, a few days before the shooting? Did you see either of them that day?”
The woman waved her hand. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not the neighborhood watch over here. I try to mind my business.”
A while later Patton and Tom walked back down to the Jeep, Tom worrying at the scraps of information they were given and not finding much substance.
Patton said, “You ask them questions like that, and you don’t feel like you’re hammering?”
“I’m just trying to get answers. They get angry, upset, start to cry? That’s okay. We’re all people. But I need my answers. So I keep asking questions.”
“Easy as that, is it?”
“Right. Just keep asking questions.”
“Look here.” That was Patton, pointing to an old man puttering around his Jeep, peering through the windows. He quickened his pace, aiming for the old guy in the brown corduroy jacket. “I help you, sir?” Patton made it sound like a threat.
The old man took it in stride. “This thing got a lot of space?” He said. He jerked a hand to the rear of the Jeep. “My grandkids, guess I got about forty or so of the little punks now, they all play soccer or volleyball or whatever-the-hell, and they all want their Paw-Paw to come see them win.” The man grinned, deep furrows wrinkling around stained but strong teeth. This was an encapsulation of the man’s whole demeanor; he was worn and weathered but still tough. His hair was long receded to an iron-grey horseshoe circling his head, but behind his blue-grey eyes, he was still sharp. He said, “You think I could fit all those nets, rackets, and whatever back in there?”
Tom hung back a moment, watching the interaction. Patton shrugged and said, “I don’t know. It’s pretty big.”
“Pretty big, yeah.” The old man gave the Jeep another appraising glance, really thinking about it. Like he might be buying the car off Patton any second. After a long moment, he turned to them with a look like he was just realizing they were waiting on him. “Hey, I don’t mean to hold you up. I’m over here with my sister. We had a family tragedy, you know?” He gestured to the Adelfi house. “Our cousin died. Suddenly. My sister didn’t take it so well. Rough for all of us, of course, but she was close with Ernie. She’s up in there now, just broken-hearted. Can’t stand to see her like that. So I said to myself, hey, Sal, go get some air. So I came out here and saw your car. I guess you start thinking about death, you start thinking about what comes next. I mean the next generation, the kids. The grandkids, too. So I got to thinking that maybe if I got a big car like this, I’d take them around. See more of them.” He turned back to admire the Jeep.
Patton said again, “Well, it’s pretty big.”
“Pretty big,” The old man who called himself Sal muttered, and then stared at the driver’s side window of the car, not looking at the Jeep but looking at his reflection in the tinted glass.
Tom walked over to Sal’s shoulder and half-raised a hand to Patton, motioning that he would take it from here. “You said, Ernesto Adelfi was your cousin?”
“He was the youngest of the cugini, the cousins. Fifteen total. Only six of us left, now.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” The words came unbidden, and for a heartbeat, Tom wondered why those words could come so naturally now, why they rolled off his tongue so easily now but had remained locked inside him when it came to Brandon Herbert. Tom stuck out his hand and the old man shook it, nodding along with the handshake.
“I sure appreciate that. Sal LaRocca.”
“Tom Connelly. This is my partner-” Tom stopped himself. He didn’t know what to call Patton. He cleared his throat and said, “This is my colleague, Patton Brooks.” Sal fixed a grey eye on the young man and nodded to him rather than shaking his hand. Patton took out a pen and his notebook instead.
“Sal. You owned the restaurant with Ernesto?” Patton wrote quickly.
“Hey, look at that, I’m famous. You’re right. The Pan Dell’Orso on Metairie Road. I still own it, Patton.” Then, to Tom, “Lou-Ann down the way called me to say you were asking questions. So I’d like to answer them. Offer my services.”
“She told you we’re with the Public Defender's office?”
“She told me.” The muscle in Sal’s jaw worked as he said the words, and his grey eyes were cold. “This is America, right? Innocent until proven guilty and all that. I admire that. Criminals need defending. Even murders, I guess.” He grinned and suddenly his eyes sparkled. “ How she like prison? I imagine some homegirls in there would love a nice Swedish piece like her.”
Patton rolled his eyes. Tom didn’t react. So Sal wanted to screw with them. That was fine. Tom said, “We haven’t seen Mrs. Adelfi. Right now we’re just trying to figure out that night, the night Ernie died. Put together a timeline.”
“Ernie comes home after a long day of work, and his wife, like always, she’s toasted, you know what I mean? And she shoots my cousin in the heart. There’s your timeline right there.” Sal swatted Tom’s shoulder, friendly. “Hey, this ain’t too difficult. Maybe I could go work with you guys, right?”
Patton snorted laughter.
“They don’t pay too well, though.” Tom half-smiled.
Sal chuckled for a moment, but his eyes dropped and the smile fell away as he remembered why they were there. “So, she shot him. Excuse me for saying, but we got the death penalty in Louisiana, maybe we should use it.”
“It’s sort of hard to talk out here,” Tom said, even though it wasn’t. The day was cool and breezy and the sun was even bullying its way out from behind a string of clouds. “Can we go inside for a few minutes?”
“Inside?” Sal looked past the palm trees standing guard around the circle drive and to the main house. “I wouldn’t want to upset my sister. She’s had a rough week. And she’s got a little heart problem. No, I wouldn’t want to upset her.”
“Maybe another time?” Tom turned to Patton. “Do you have a card?”
Patton shrugged. “I got one of Jean’s cards in the Jeep.”
Sal waved them off. “I’ll lose a card. You know where the Dell’Orso is?”
“I do,” Patton said.
“Swing by, the two of you. Make you a nice plate. Wine, maybe some grappa, a coffee. Whole big dinner.”
‘Thanks,” Patton said. “But we can’t-”
“Yeah, thanks,” Tom interrupted him. “We’ll let you know, okay?”
They said their goodbyes and Patton and Tom got in the jeep. When Patton put the car in gear, Tom spoke up. “I got distracted on the ride out here.” By Patton and Brandon Herbert’s wake, but Tom didn’t say so. “I meant to ask you what sort of information you had on Ernesto Adelfi.”
“What they had. I Googled a little bit. He ran a restaurant with Sal LaRocca.”
“That guy.” Tom pointed to Sal, who was slowly bending down to pick up an old newspaper from the driveway.
“Yeah, Sal LaRocca. He was the husband’s business partner. It didn’t say they were cousins.”
“LaRocca.” Tom closed his eyes. Because he knew that name. Just like he had known Adelfi the first time he heard it, when Sofia came into his office to ask for his help. “Did you get any info on the partner?”
“Arrest history. Sal had an assault charge in something like 1976. Dropped.”
“That’s a good start.”
“A start? Other than that, there was nothing.”
“You didn’t look into Sal’s father? His family? Anybody else named LaRocca?”
“No. I mean, Sofia is the one being charged. The old man, he’s got nothing to do with nothing.”
“Maybe you should have looked into him. I been trying to think for a while now, where did I hear the name Adelfi? I couldn’t put it together.”
“You didn’t look it up online?”
“Jumping on the internet isn’t my first impulse. But I remember now. I first heard that name in an obit. An obituary.”
Patton gave him a look as though Tom had just started speaking in tongues. “What now?”
“The obits. This was ten years ago if it was a day. I had only been on the force a few years, but I remember the old guard talking about it. The dead guy was named Frederico LaRocca. You know that name?”
“LaRocca.” Patton shook his head.
“Right. LaRocca.” Tom nodded. “But not Sal. This other guy, the dead guy, was in his nineties. Big news at the time. Adelfi must have been one of the names on that long list of surviving family members.”
“Okay, so this was Sal LaRocca’s what, father? Uncle?”
Tom ran a hand across the stubble of his cheek, thinking. He said, “Godfather is more like it. There was a name the papers didn’t call him, the name the old-timers on the force knew, that was The Rock. Freddy ‘The Rock’ LaRocca. This old guy had been head of the LaRocca crime family. He was something in his day, back in the 60s and 70s. Gambling, drugs, prostitution. He outlived the other New Orleans mafiosos; the other big players, the Carollas, the Marcello Family. The Rock was the last of them.”
Together they looked out of the Jeep’s window at Sal, an old man with his pants hitched up high across a small paunch. His knotty fingers clutching a newspaper as he limped slowly up the circle drive.
“When Freddy LaRocca died, the New Orleans mob died with him.” Tom said, “Our pal Sal? I guess that’s what’s left.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
J ean loaded a slide into the old projector, then took a step back and looked at the clock on the wall over the door. Half past the hour. The bulk of her audience was a good thirty minutes late.
Only three older women were seated around the plastic tables in the big conference room on the sixth floor of Tulane Tower. They were dressed in their Sunday best, lacking only their hats to make the occasion truly formal. The trio had been five minutes early. The grey beauty was Priscilla Robinson, the matriarch of the Robinson family, flanked by her oldest daughter and her youngest sister.
Jean put on a smile when she first greeted the family. She smiled when she apologized for having to start late because Kile Robinson wasn’t on time for the meeting. She shouldn’t have apologized for that, but it was in her nature. Now she wasn’t smiling. She walked over to the three grand women and sat with them. “Mrs. Priscilla, we’re going to start just as soon as he gets here.”
Mrs. Priscilla pursed her lips. “Maybe they shouldn’t have let the boy out on bail. Keep him inside, maybe he’ll learn to be on time.” Priscilla put a hand to her mouth, realizing what she had just said. “Oh, lord. I did not mean that.”
“I know. This whole process is frustrating for everyone.”
The conference room was the biggest room the Public Defenders Office had to offer. It was used for strategy meetings when the Defenders needed every mind available on a particular case. A war room, though it was a far cry from the old school hardwood-and-leather lawyer’s offices that she had pictured as a freshman in law school. It wasn’t even the modern glass and metal variety that she had seen as a summer clerk at Bowes and Associates in Atlanta. This room felt like a smaller version of a high school cafeteria, off-white tiled floor to match ceiling tiles that, she hoped, were no longer pressed asbestos. The conference tables and chairs were plastic instead of oak and leather. A set of law books crowded a corrugated metal shelf on one side of the room, and Jean doubted the set was complete. The back of the room looked like a discount clothing store, lined with racks of suits and ties for clients to wear to court. These were supposed to be for clients who were being held in prison awaiting trial, but more often than not they clothed those out on bond who couldn’t afford a suit. Whenever possible, Jean saw that her clients were dressed. It's the little things that can swing a judge.
A half an hour ago, the room was supposed to house a Robinson family meeting. As much as she hated to admit it, Jean thought Mrs. Priscilla was right. If her grandson was over in Orleans Parish prison instead of at home on bail, he would have been more punctual.
Now Mrs. Priscilla fixed Jean with a warm smile that almost hid her fear. “I don't know how much longer I can wait.”
“It shouldn't be much longer.”
“You know he helps me out at the end of every month. He's got that job at the warehouse. My check doesn't cover everything.”
Jean couldn't help herself. She said, “You have to start thinking about what if he's not around to help you out.”
Miss Priscilla took a deep, weary breath. “Is that how it is?”
“Yes ma'am. I'm afraid so.” Jean had slides to help her explain everything to the family. The extent of Kile’s crimes. The quantity of marijuana and cocaine involved. This being his third conviction for distribution. The firearm. The far-fetched notion of leniency, even when taking into account Kile supporting his family financially. The fact that he was found guilty at his trial. All that was left was sentencing. She wanted the family to know exactly what was going to happen to Kile Robinson, and how long he could be expected to be behind bars before he was eligible for parole. Instead of turning on the slide projector Gene reached across the table and took Mrs. Priscilla's hand.
“Mrs. Priscilla. If you have any questions you want to ask me before he gets here, go ahead.”
That smile again, like armor against the world. She said, “How could he be so stupid?”
Jean didn’t have an answer for her. Ten minutes later Kile and his sisters arrived at Tulane Tower and she began her presentation, a cruel prophet carefully revealing the future trials and tribulations of the Robinson family.
Later that afternoon Jean cleared from her wall all the post-it notes referencing the Robinson case. They would be replaced soon enough, new names and new cases to join the post-its that stayed, including the rash of green notes with Adelfi written on them.
She couldn’t figure Adelfi out. The woman needed to take a plea, of that Jean was sure. There was too much evidence against her. Soon Jean would have all the forensics and maybe that would shed some light on this dark subject, but she had her doubts.
Tom Connelly seemed to genuinely want to prove Sofia Adelfi was innocent, but if he did put together a timeline and proved that Sofia spoke to him, that would only strengthen the DA’s case.
She stared at the green notes but her mind wouldn’t wrap itself ar
ound the facts, it wouldn’t perform the necessary contortions and gyrations needed to form a working theory. Needed to form a defense. She decided to call it an early day. She was packed up and slipping on her shoes when Patton showed up at her door with a well-dressed Tom Connelly in tow. Well-dressed but wrinkled. Perpetually rumpled somehow, like even a freshly ironed shirt would crinkle up once he put it on.
“Did we have a meeting?” She knew they didn’t, looking back and forth between the two men.
“No. But we conducted some interviews over by Sofia Adelfi’s house.”
“And you had to come see me?”
Patton gave Tom a look that let Jean know this had already been discussed. “I wanted to write it up and send you a text.”
“Face-to-face is better,” Tom said. So Jean waved them inside. Tom sat on the edge of the empty desk rather than in the chair and crossed his arms. Patton gave him a ‘go-ahead’ gesture.
“The neighbors either didn’t know or didn’t like Mrs. Adelfi.”
Jean said, “Anybody place her at the scene?” That was a definite yes. Jean sat back down and kicked off her shoes. “Any indication that anybody had problems with Mr. Adelfi?”
“Nothing unusual.”
Jean watched them exchange a look. She frowned. “Alright, don’t keep me in the dark. What’s up?”
“We did a little research.” Tom glanced at Patton. “Should have had it before the interview, but we found out some new information.”
Patton shrugged in defense. He said, “I don’t know what I don’t know.”
“See? He’s learning.” Tom leaned forward like he was whispering a secret. “Ernesto Adelfi has connections to organized crime.”
Jean pursed her lips. “He ran a restaurant.”
“His uncle was Freddy LaRocca.”
“So?” Jean looked out at the Criminal District Court as Tom and Patton related their morning interviews. Patton starting out, Tom taking over and giving the story color. Giving Jean a brief history of organized crime, by which he meant the mafia, in New Orleans. All winding up with Tom and Patton talking to some old man in the street.
