Blood Money (Joe Dillard Series No. 6) (6 page)

“Know anything about a defendant named Clyde Dalton?” I asked her.

“The stalker?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“I’ve never supervised him, but one of my colleagues has in the past. I know enough to tell you with some confidence that he’s crazier than an outhouse rat.”

“Crazy how? Are we talking legitimate mental illness or redneck crazy?”

“Paranoid schizophrenic crazy. Manageable with medication, but without it he tends to cause problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“He’s mainly a pest. Fixates on women and sends them love letters scribbled on toilet paper, envelopes, brown paper bags, anything he can find to write on when the mood strikes him.”

“Is he violent?”

“Not that I know of.”

Charlie was looking toward the bench. Judge Lockhart’s head was in his hands. She leaned toward Martha and me, nodded her head at the judge and said, “What’s he doing?”

“Dying slowly,” Martha said.
 

The door to the holding area opened and a lean, skin-headed man wearing an orange, jail-issued jumpsuit walked in. A bailiff was at his shoulder. He was cuffed and shackled and looked like he had no idea where he was. The bailiff stood at the podium next to the skinhead and cleared his throat loudly, but Judge Lockhart didn’t move. The bailiff did it again, and the judge’s eyelids separated so slowly they appeared to have been glued together.

“That’s him,” Martha said to me. “That’s your boy.”

I tapped Charlie on the arm and we got up and walked to the lectern “Excuse me, judge,” I said. “I understand you’ve appointed my young associate to a case. She’s here if you’d like to do the arraignment.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Dillard,” Judge Lockhart said. “And this young lady is… who is she?”

“Charleston Story.”

“Yes, yes, Charleston Story. Good morning, Miss Story. Welcome to my world.”

“Thank you, your honor,” Charlie said. “Glad to be here.”

“Wish I could say the same. Let’s see, I have just the case for you.”

He turned and leaned toward his clerk and said something I couldn’t hear. The clerk reached into her stack and pulled out a warrant.
 

“The public defender has a conflict of interest so I have to appoint a private attorney to represent this man,” the judge said. “Since you’re the new kid on the block, it goes to you.”

Several of the lawyers in the room snickered.

“Are you up to it, Miss Story?”
 

“I hope so,” Charlie said.
 

“Clyde Dalton,” the judge said in a loud voice. “You are charged with aggravated stalking. This pretty young lady here is going to be your lawyer, and since she’s new to the profession, this handsome gentleman standing next to her is going to help her with your case. Do you understand that?”

“Does she work for the CIA?” Dalton said.

“I think a mental evaluation might be in order, judge,” I said.

“Ah, the voice of experience,” Judge Lockhart said. “Mr. Dalton, have you been taking your medication?”

“It gives me headaches,” Dalton said.

“We’ve been through this before,” the judge said. “When you don’t take your medication you do things that cause you to wind up standing here in front of me. This time it’s more serious, though. Now you’re charged with a felony instead of a misdemeanor.”

“It’s the waves,” Dalton said. “The microwaves they send at me. The CIA and the NSA keep trying to—”

“That’s enough!” the judge said, raising his voice and holding up his right hand like a traffic cop. “I’ll order another mental evaluation, Mr. Dillard. You set it up, the state will pay for it. What it will tell you is that if Mr. Dalton doesn’t take his medication he will be unable to comprehend the charges against him and will be unable to aid in his defense. Therefore, without his medication, he will be unable to stand trial. However, if he
takes
his pills, he becomes perfectly able to understand and to aid in his defense and therefore become competent to stand trial.”

“I take it this isn’t his first rodeo,” I said.

“Third,” the judge said. “I’m also ordering Mr. Dalton to stay away from Veronica Simpson, the victim in this case. He may not go within a thousand yards of her. He may not contact her or communicate with her in any way, shape, form or fashion.
 
If he does, he goes to jail, and I don’t necessarily think jail is the best place for him. Mr. Dillard, Miss Story, I will leave it to you to insure that your client complies with my order. He has family, although my understanding is that his family has become so frustrated with him that they’ve pretty much washed their hands of the entire situation.”

“What about bond, judge?” I said. “If he can’t afford a lawyer he probably can’t afford to post bond. Are you going to keep him in jail? We ask that you release him on his own recognizance.”

“I suppose we need to hear from the prosecutor regarding bond,” the judge said. “What say you, Mr. Garland? Mr. Garland? Are you paying attention?”

Ramey Garland was the assistant district attorney in this particular division of General Sessions Court. He’d been with the DA’s office for thirty years, suffered from a degenerative eye disease, and was nearly blind. I knew him. He’d actually worked for me when I was the district attorney general. I’d heard complaints about his ineffectiveness, but he was such a nice man that I simply hadn’t had the heart to get rid of him. He was sitting at the prosecution table, surrounded by lawyers, studying warrants with a magnifying glass. Someone leaned down and whispered into his ear.

“Beg pardon?” Ramey said from the table.

“Clyde Dalton,” the judge said. “Stalking case. He probably can’t post bond. Are you opposed to me releasing him pending a mental evaluation?”

“Nah, go ahead,” Ramey said.

“Brilliantly expressed,” Judge Lockhart said. “Very well, Miss Story is appointed. Mr. Dalton will be released on his own recognizance pending a mental evaluation and subject to my prior order. Anything else?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Bailiff, take him back and bring in the next one,” the judge said, and Charlie and I turned and walked out the door.

Chapter 9

TWO
days after they whacked Skinny Tony Leonetti, Johnny Russo and Carlo Lanzetti walked in through the back door of a small deli called Poppa’s on South Broad Street.
 
Both of them were wearing their favorite designer brands: skin-tight Under Armour wife beaters and Nike sweat pants and shoes. Their hair was black – Johnny’s had blonde highlights – short, and spiked. Their bodies were bronzed by tanning beds. Their legs, chests, and underarms were freshly shaved. Johnny wore an Italian horn on a gold chain around his neck. Carlo wore a large cross on a silver chain. There was no particular significance in the symbols to either of them; they just liked the bling. Johnny led the way down a short hall and pushed a button on the wall. A couple of minutes later two deadbolts slid and they were face to face with Bobby “Big Legs” Mucci.
 

“You’re late,” Mucci growled as he stepped back so they could enter.

“You said three,” Johnny said.

“It’s four minutes after. When I tell you three, it don’t mean four minutes after. It means three. You guys look like a couple of mopes, you know that? And you smell like French whores.”

Johnny walked past Mucci without responding. He liked Mucci okay for an old-school guy, but the constant insults got on his nerves. Who was Mucci to judge his appearance, anyway? Mucci wore solid-colored golf shirts with logos and khaki slacks and loafers. He looked like bulldog dressed up as a golfer. He was in his late forties, shy of six feet tall with short, brown hair and a pock-marked face. His upper body was a little pudgy, but his butt and thighs were distinctly disproportionate – they were huge. “Big Legs” was a small-time sports bookie and controlled a dwindling numbers game that encompassed ten city blocks. He’d been a made member of the Pistone family for eighteen years and had done a six-year bit for aggravated assault. He talked the talk and tried to walk the walk, but like all of the other older wiseguys that Johnny knew, Mucci seemed defeated.

Mucci walked behind a desk in the run-down office. The place smelled of rat piss and cigar smoke. There was a monitor on a table with a split screen that showed the hallway outside the dead-bolted door. Two computers that Mucci used to handicap ball games sat on another table next to the desk. There were no pictures on the beige walls, only jagged cracks in the ancient plaster. Johnny and Carlo sat down on a dusty, overstuffed couch. Mucci reached down and turned off the two cell phones that were on top of the desk.
 

“I got good news and bad news,” Mucci said. “The good news is you guys did okay. Clean hit. Nice work. Everybody thinks so. The bad news is the books are still closed and they’re gonna stay that way for now.”

Johnny looked at Carlo, then back at Mucci. “I don’t think I heard you so good.”

“Yeah, you did. The books are closed.”

“That ain’t what you told me when we took this contract,” Johnny said. “You said—”

“I said I’d talk to them about it, and that’s what I did.”

“So we clipped a guy for nothing? No money, and now we don’t get made? This ain’t right.”

Mucci shrugged his shoulders and lifted his hands, palms up. “What can I say? Business isn’t so good these days. It’s tight,
capisci
? Not the way it used to be. The government is offering millions in the lottery and every schmuck with a buck is playing. It kills the numbers racket. The sports bettors go online now. It’s a crime, all that money going to offshore companies. The drug trade is risky – too much competition and cops everywhere. It’s tougher to make money, so they don’t let many people in anymore. They open up the books, next thing they know the money is spread so thin there isn’t enough to go around.”

“We make money,” Johnny said. “They take it every week.”

“You gotta pay your dues.”

“When was the last time somebody got whacked?” Johnny asked. He felt betrayed, anger coursed through him. He and Carlo had taken a huge risk, and now…
 
“I mean here in Philly. Before we did our thing the other night. When was the last time the family ordered somebody gone?”

“Been awhile,” Mucci said. “Since Sal went to jail.”

“More than five years. That’s why you guys ain’t making no money. You’re soft. People don’t fear you. A little heat comes down from the feds, and all of sudden everybody’s a rat. They don’t respect you anymore.”

Mucci pointed a thick finger at Johnny. “Watch your mouth, punk.”

“What are you gonna do?” Carlo said, his face pink with anger. “Whack us? Johnny’s right. You guys don’t do that anymore.
 
I tell you what
we’re
gonna do, though. We’re gonna quit paying. If you ain’t gonna let us in, we ain’t gonna pay. Why should we? What are we paying for? Protection? We don’t need your protection. Me and Johnny can take care of ourselves. Connections? You don’t have any connections, and if you do, you ain’t sharing them with us. Do you and your wiseguy brothers support our business? Help us in any way? No. You just sit around with your hands out and wait for your tribute. You’re welfare gangsters, you guys.”

Mucci narrowed his eyes and looked at Johnny. “What about you? That how you feel?”

Johnny nodded. “Yeah. That’s how I feel. Screw you guys. We ain’t paying no more.”

Carlo stood and took a step toward Mucci’s desk. He looked like the grizzly bears Johnny had seen on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, hovering over his prey, panting, about to attack.
 

“How about I just snap your neck like a twig?” A vein in Carlo’s forehead was protruding, a sure sign he’d gone into a steroid-induced rage and was about to do something violent. Johnny stood and put a hand on Carlo’s bicep while Mucci stared up at Carlo.
 

“I’ll give you both a little time to think about this,” Mucci said. His tone had changed. It was less aggressive, lighter, not so self-assured. “Maybe change your minds. You’re young. You need to be patient.”
 

“Patient? For what?” Carlo waved his hand and looked around the room. “So some day we can have all this?”

A couple of minutes later they were on the sidewalk.

“Short and sweet,” Johnny said.
 

“Yeah. I’ll bet he pissed himself.”

“He’s on the phone right now, ratting us out to the bosses. We just spit in their faces. They’ll do something. They’ll come at us.”

“I hope so,” Carlo said. “I’ll make ‘em wish they was never born.”

Chapter 10

LIKE
I told Roscoe Barnes the day I met him, money talks in the legal system. In this particular case, the amount had been five thousand dollars in cash, and it was paid to a well-qualified psychiatrist in Johnson City named Dr. Leland Holmes. Charlie had chosen him and made the initial contact, and once he received the money, the doctor became extremely accommodating. He’d set up an appointment for Roscoe immediately and had written a report that said exactly what we needed it to say. Roscoe was mentally competent. He was not a danger to himself or anyone else. As soon as I received a copy of the report, I called Nathaniel Mitchell – Roscoe’s son’s lawyer – and asked for a meeting.
 

At 9:00 a.m. on a Wednesday, Roscoe, Charlie and I approached the front door of Mitchell, Skaggs, & Ward, the oldest and largest law firm in Northeast Tennessee. Charlie was dressed in a royal blue business suit and carrying a briefcase. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail and she was wearing a pair of dark-framed glasses that gave her the look of an attractive, studious young lawyer. I’d asked her to persuade Roscoe to wear something at least semi-formal, but he’d stubbornly refused and was decked out in his bib overalls and red flannel shirt.
 

Nathaniel Mitchell’s firm’s offices occupied the entire top floor of a gleaming, ten-story bank building in Johnson City. The building sat at the top of a hill, the centerpiece of the city’s high-rent district. I’d been there a couple of times before, and I always felt as though I was entering a fantasy world, a world where, at least on the surface, everything seemed clean and perfect. Crystal chandeliers sparkled overhead, varnished cherry wood molded gleaming marble floors, expensive paintings and tapestries covered freshly-painted walls. Even the people seemed unreal, all scrubbed and expensively dressed and utterly efficient. Charlie had told me that Mitchell, Skaggs & Ward was one of the law firms that had told her they just couldn’t have the daughter of a convicted drug dealer on their roster.