First, ADA Parsons questioned her star witness about Amendola’s employment by Leverton, including how Leverton had used Amendola as an enforcer for his various construction projects, and about the fake bribery by Millie, posing as a city building inspector at the Boston Harbor hotel project. Stein offered no objections during this questioning.
What happened next showed why the best criminal defense attorneys get paid the big bucks. When Parsons finished, Stein slowly rose from his seat beside Leverton and approached Amendola on the witness stand. A lion stalking a gazelle.
Here is an excerpt of Stein’s cross examination from the trial transcript:
MR. STEIN: Now, Mr. Amendola, is it true that you’ve spent about half of your adult life in prison for various crimes?
MS. PARSONS: Objection, Your Honor. Prejudicial.
JUDGE MERINO: Mr. Stein?
MR. STEIN: Goes to the credibility of the witness.
JUDGE MERINO: Overruled. Mr. Amendola, you will answer the question.
MR. AMENDOLA: Yeah, that sounds about right.
MR. STEIN: In order to induce your testimony here today, is it correct that the district attorney has promised you a reduced sentence for the crime of attempted murder of a police officer, a crime you have pleaded guilty to?
(Mr. Amendola nods his head in the affirmative.)
MR. STEIN: Let the record show that the witness is acknowledging by the nodding of his head that he has been granted a reduced sentence in return for his testimony.
JUDGE MERINO: So noted.
MR. STEIN: Now, Mr. Amendola, will you explain to the jury why, given these circumstances, they should believe your testimony that you were employed by Mr. Leverton.
MR. AMENDOLA: Because I have an honest face?
(There is laughter from the stands.)
JUDGE MERINO (pounding his gavel): One more outburst like that from the stands and I will clear the courtroom.
MS. PARSONS: I object to that question, Your Honor. Mr. Amendola cannot possibly know what effect his testimony will have on the jury.
MR. STEIN: Until they render a verdict, that is.
MS. PARSONS: Objection …
MR. STEIN: I’ll withdraw the question. Under questioning by Ms. Parsons, you alleged that Mr. Leverton had you on his payroll, correct?
MR. AMENDOLA: Correct.
MR. STEIN: So I assume you have proof of that employment? Payroll check stubs, bank deposits, income tax forms?
MR. AMENDOLA: I was always paid in cash.
MR. STEIN: How convenient.
MS. PARSONS: Objection. Counsel is testifying.
JUDGE MERINO: Sustained. Let’s keep it to questions, Mr. Stein.
MR. STEIN: Was this alleged cash arrangement at your request or Mr. Leverton’s?
MS. PARSONS: Objection. Mr. Amendola stated in his deposition to the district attorney that the cash payments were Mr. Leverton’s idea.
MR. STEIN: My turn to object, Your Honor. What Mr. Amendola may or may not have said in that deposition was part of a plea arrangement with the district attorney related to the charge of attempted murder against Mr. Amendola and is not relevant to this proceeding.
JUDGE MERINO: Sustained.
It went on like that, and when Stein was done, Bobby Amendola came off as what he was: a career criminal who’d been paid off by the DA, and thus his testimony could reasonably be considered suspect.
The jury deliberated for only two hours at the end of the third day of the trial and returned a verdict of not guilty on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder. Which meant that, if Bobby Amendola was ever brought to trial in Collier County for the murder of Henry Wilberforce, there was little or no chance that a jury there would believe him about his relationship with Stewart Leverton any more than the Suffolk County jury did.
Leverton had gotten away with murder. He and Libby were free to continue their life of privilege.
Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.
32.
Any Crime Will Do
Marisa and I were having dinner at Lulu’s Fish House on Estero Bay. We were seated at a table on the patio. The moon was full, the sky cloudless, the stars twinkling as if all was right with the world, which it wasn’t, and rarely is. But you play the hand you’re dealt and the best that you can hope for, so goes the Kenny Rogers song “The Gambler,” is to die in your sleep.
“At least you got paid for your time, Jack,” Marisa said after I’d gone over the hand I’d been dealt on my Naples homicide investigation.
“Which I feel guilty about,” I said.
“Lawyers get paid whether their client wins or not.”
“Which is why no one likes them.”
“So Stewart Leverton gets off scot-free,” she sighed, and sipped her wine.
“Actually, there’s been an interesting development involving Stewart Leverton,” I said. “Steve Bancroft, that Boston detective, called me yesterday. The Suffolk County district attorney has charged Leverton with crimes related to the bribery of city officials. His construction foreman, Randy Murphy, was arrested for his role in the bribery and offered a plea bargain in return for his testimony against Leverton. An investigation produced many witnesses about other such activities, going back many years. Amendola’s testimony was not needed for that. So maybe Leverton will do a stretch in the pen after all.”
“Like OJ,” she said. “He gets off on one crime and they get him for another.”
“Any crime will do,” I said, and we raised our glasses in a toast to that, Marisa’s filled with a nice pinot grigio and mine with an excellent diet root beer.
That night, lying in bed aboard Phoenix, I made a mental inventory of all that had happened following my lunch with Cubby Cullen when he told me about the murder of Henry Wilberforce and asked if I would meet with Naples Police Chief Tom Sullivan. The title of the Grateful Dead’s second album was, “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.” Just like my investigation.
Scooter Lowry was happily living the life of a trust-fund slacker in Santa Monica. Good for him.
Bobby Amendola, who’d murdered Henry Wilberforce, was serving time for the attempted murder of a Boston police officer and, if he survived his sentence, would stand trial in Naples for the murder of Henry Wilberforce.
Stewart Leverton, who’d ordered that murder, but escaped prosecution because of the Boston result, was under indictment for the bribery of numerous Boston city officials, and his construction foreman, Randy Murphy, charged with the same crimes, was going to testify against him. There were consultants that people could hire to provide advice on how to deal with incarceration. One piece of advice presumably was to avoid dropping the soap in the shower.
Libby Leverton was still living the high life in her Beacon Hill row house, but she could be out on the street if Stewart’s legal fees ate up the family fortune. She’d have to pawn her pearls, poor dear.
Lucy Gates called to tell me that she’d put an alert in her system to notify her of any news about my suspects. She found out that Alan Dumont had been killed, along with his wife, June, by the Larry Infante crime family of Providence, which had also murdered Daniel Danko, the Dirigo vice president of government relations, and Sheldon Sharkey, Dirigo’s Washington lobbyist. The FBI had opened an investigation of Infante for the alleged bribery of federal government officials relating to the Dirigo’s navy shipbuilding contract. Turned out that Dirigo’s in-house counsel also knew about that and was going to testify to it. I called my friend Sarah Caldwell, a special agent in the bureau’s Tampa Field Office, who helped me on a previous case. She told me that the bureau hoped that one or more of the crime family’s soldiers would agree to give up their boss for more serious crimes. In return for a reduced sentence, maybe Larry Infante would reveal the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s remains.
I had gained a level of confidence, if not total, for navigating the streets of Boston. I now knew what to order at Fat Thomas’s Tavern.
Boston Detective
Steve Bancroft was now attending AA meetings. He thanked me for the suggestion.
Millie Ryan had been promoted from corporal to sergeant with the Boston PD.
Her uncle, Detective Danny O’Rourke, had caught the killer of the Boston pedophile priest. It was the father of one of the victims. Which reminded me of Jack Stoney’s case.
Rob Little, Bobby Amendola’s public defender, had joined a prominent Boston law firm as an associate. He needed to pay off student loans. I hoped Rob would never become Shakespearean in his pursuit of billable hours.
Judy Kykendall, the Boston city building inspector whose identity Millie borrowed, was arrested and charged with accepting bribes from various real estate developers. Maybe I gave her the idea.
Rae Carpenter, interim president of Carpenters Local Union 327 in Dorchester, graduated from law school and accepted the union job permanently.
Lucy Gates, my computer hacker, called again and told me she was shutting down her business in Key West and moving to an unspecified location to do a confidential job. My guess: The federal government had enlisted her in the war against international cybercrimes. The nation would be safer for it.
Even though no one had yet been convicted of the murder I was hired to investigate, I cashed the City of Naples check for my consulting fee and made a donation in that amount to Collier County Habitat for Humanity in the names of Henry and Miriam Wilberforce. As Henry knew better than I did, philanthropy was good for the soul.
And then, Joe’s rhythmic breathing at the foot of my bed and the lapping of waves against the double pontoon hulls of Phoenix lulled me into a deep sleep. REM might have been involved.
The next morning, I was sitting at the galley table aboard Phoenix with a mug of coffee and a cherry Pop-Tart, working on editing the final chapter of Stoney’s Downfall. It was clear by then that Jack Stoney had not really fallen down but had only stumbled on his way to solving his case. Bill told me that he only wrote happy endings to his stories because fiction was meant to be an escape from the harsh realities of the real world in which positive outcomes were not guaranteed.
True enough, but I am comfortable with the reality of my life: operating my bar, enjoying Marisa’s company, staying in touch with Claire and Jenny, driving around the Sunshine State in my classic Vette with the top down and the music loud, living on my boat with my roomie Joe, staying sober, and enjoying each new day, one at a time. I consider myself to be a rich man. However, I’ll admit that it is invigorating to get involved in the occasional murder investigation.
Invigorating.
But only now and then.
33.
A Free Lunch
Seven months had passed since I’d worked The Case of the Dead Philanthropist.
One morning, I was hosing the seagull poop off the deck and roof of Phoenix as Joe watched from a safe distance to avoid the spray. Those damn gulls were a constant nuisance whenever they dive-bombed my boat like Japanese Zeros attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
I was just finishing the chore when my cell phone began playing the “Marines’ Hymn” in the back pocket of my jeans. I fished it out and saw on the caller ID that it was Cubby Cullen.
“Hey, Cubby,” I said when I answered. “What’s the latest?”
“Something has come up, Jack,” he said. “Let me buy you lunch.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My thanks to the folks at The Permanent Press for bringing Detective Jack Starkey to life on the printed page for the third time. Previous books in the series are Detective Fiction and The Dollar-A-Year Detective. Thanks also to Lon Kirschner for another terrific cover design.
If you are in Boston, the Charlestown Navy Yard is an excellent place to visit. When my wife, Mary, and I lived in Rhode Island, we often went to Boston to shop, eat, and see the sights. A favorite Chinese restaurant of ours was Joyce Chen in Cambridge, now closed. Joyce had a nationally syndicated cooking show on public TV, a series of best-selling cookbooks, and a line of woks. Sometimes we didn’t eat there when we’d planned to because we simply could not make our way from downtown Boston to the Harvard Bridge over the Charles River connecting the Back Bay to Cambridge. We joked about hiring a taxi and following it, but never did because there were plenty of good restaurants on the Boston side of the river, including the No Name Restaurant, and Legal Sea Foods, where you can, in fact, get very good scrod.
Anyone familiar with Boston eateries will recognize that Fat Thomas’s Tavern is based upon the venerable restaurant Durgin-Park, now, sadly, closed. A story in USA Today reported that the restaurant investment group which ended up owning the place decided it was not profitable enough. One of the veteran waitresses was quoted in the story as saying, “This is about greed. It’s all about greed … the cheap bastards.” Surly to the bitter end.
If you are in Chicago, you will not find The Baby Doll Polka Lounge because it does not exist. But there is no shortage of neighborhood bars just like it. And if you do not sample a Chicago-style hot dog at a place like Superdawg Drive-In, a deep-dish pizza at Gino’s East, and an Italian beef sandwich at Mr. Beef, and have breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s, then you have pretty much wasted your trip.
Although the fictitious Hurricane Irena of this story missed hitting the Southwest Florida Gulf Coast, the real Category 3 Hurricane Irma did make landfall in that location on September 10, 2017. Mary and I and our cat, Oliver, were there, in our house, and took shelter from the storm in a secure location. All of us, and the house, were undamaged, but next time, we’ll evacuate. I should have known better. I experienced a hurricane once before. I was aboard the navy destroyer USS Charles S. Sperry, DD-697, heading from Newport, Rhode Island, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when we ran into Category 5 Hurricane Camille. If I could have un-joined the navy, I would have, right then. We never made it to Gitmo. We limped back to Newport. The ship was so badly damaged that it was decommissioned and sold to the Chilean Navy. By then, I was safely on shore duty and asked my commanding officer why Chile would want such an unseaworthy ship for its navy. He told me that they couldn’t afford much diesel fuel, so they mainly would use it for drills at the pier. I would have preferred that the Sperry had remained at the pier while I was aboard.
My cat Lucy, now in cat heaven, and her replacement, Oliver, were the models for Jack Starkey’s cat, Joe. They helped me write the three Detective Jack Starkey books—that is, if you can call walking on the keyboard, meowing, and swatting me in the face with their tails, helping.
The Now-And-Then Detective Page 19
