Gods and Fathers

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

The Story Plant

The Aronica-Miller Publishing Project, LLC

P.O. Box 4331

Stamford, CT 06907

Copyright © 2012 by James LePore

Jacket design by Barbara Aronica Buck

Print ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-029-8

E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-030-4

Visit our website at
www.thestoryplant.com

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, except as provided by US Copyright Law.

For information, address The Story Plant.

First Story Plant Printing: February 2012

Printed in The United States of America

A World I Never Made

Blood of My Brother

Sons and Princes

The Fifth Man

Anyone Can Die

I am grateful to Greg Ziemak, as always, for reading and commenting, to Bill Evans for supporting me emotionally for many years, to Tom Connelly and Greg Barber, for keeping the fire of friendship going, to Peter Dalton, for his faith in me, and to John Egan, for his loyalty, his generosity of spirit, and his stories, one or two of which may have found their way into this novel. These are BC guys who, like it or not, are stuck with me.

Thank you, also, to my police consultants, Bob Mahon and Frank Sharpe, not only for their expertise, but for their service. We take our police for granted, but there is no way we could work and play and raise our families without them doing what they do.

My deepest gratitude extends again to my friend and editor, Lou Aronica. I struggled with this novel. If it’s any good, it’s because of him.

To my wife Karen.

Matt DeMarco, six foot tall and a trim one-hundred and eighty pounds, his gray, light-weight suit and navy blue tie simple and conservative, stood erect and brushed a hand across his forehead, his fingertips lightly touching his short, thick, black hair as he did. His chiseled face and dark, keenly observant eyes were still marked with the quiet but lethal pride of the Marine Corps ten years after his discharge. He had packed a lot into those ten years, finishing college and sprinting through law school. Not to mention a marriage—now on the rocks—and a six-year-old son. This moment was a culmination of sorts, his first summation in his first murder trial for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, after six years of toiling in the vineyards of misdemeanors and lesser felonies.

He looked at the jury, sweeping his hooded, hawk-like eyes slowly from left to right along the front row, and then right to left along the back, stopping long enough to make eye contact with each one, the first time since his opening statement that he’d looked directly at any of them. He had worked on his summation for two days, but he did not know until this moment how he was going to begin. All sixteen faces were grim, determined, all sixteen pairs of eyes locked on his. Seeing this, he made his decision.

Turning away, he walked over to the defense table and looked squarely at Wael Hakimi. Wael, nineteen, his eyes burning with hatred, stared back. In his peripheral vision, DeMarco could see young Hakimi’s lawyer, Kendall Jones, glance up at him, squinting, a suspicious look in his slitted eyes, his full lips slightly open, as if he were about to speak, or gathering himself to pounce.

“Taqiyya,” Matt said, in a stage whisper, keeping his eyes locked on Wael’s. The young man raised his shoulders and leaned back slightly in his chair, as if he were getting ready to howl. Their eyes, unblinking, stayed locked. Matt stepped closer. When he was a foot away from the edge of the polished wooden table, he leaned even closer, and said it again, a little louder: “Taqiyya.”

Jones bolted upright. “Objection! Objection! He is trying to intimidate my client. I move for a mistrial.” Jones, at six-four, his burnished skin very dark, nearly black, was an imposing figure at all times, but especially when he rose to his full height to thunder his objections. His physical presence and his bellowing Jamaican accent were, Matt knew, his best weapons in a limited arsenal.

“Sit down, Mr. Jones,” said the judge, Joel Coen, peering at the defense lawyer over his reading glasses. The silver-haired jurist, with twenty years as a prosecutor and twenty as a criminal court judge under his belt, had been a model of neutrality throughout the two week trial, but there was no question in anyone’s mind that he was tired of Jones’ theatrics. “This is fair comment,” Coen continued. “There has been quite a bit of testimony about this word, this concept.”

“Your honor,” said Jones, stretching his frame to its fullest and leaning toward the judge, who sat some twenty feet away, within leaping distance, “Mr. DeMarco was staring at my client with contempt in his eyes. He was only inches away. This is an outrage!”

“You summed up for over two hours, Mr. Jones. There were no objections from Mr. DeMarco. This is closing argument. Sit down. And by the way, for the record, Mr. DeMarco was standing several feet away from the defendant, and his tone of voice was not intimidating in any way.”

DeMarco had walked to the far side of his table while this colloquy was taking place, positioning himself so that he had Jones, Judge Coen and the jury in his field of vision. He waited while the scowling Jones settled his tall, angular body slowly, theatrical disgust in every movement, into his chair. Then the ex-Marine turned prosecutor walked slowly to the front of the jury box, swept the panel’s taut faces one more time, and said the word again: “
Taqiyya,”
this time in a normal voice, but spitting the word out, like the bad taste that it was.

“You heard the defendant talk about it on the stand,” he continued: “
Permission given by the Koran to lie to infidels, if it advances the cause of Islam.
Mr. Jones objected. He didn’t want you to know about this strange principle. I’m sure you understand why, after hearing the defendant testify.

“And then there’s
namus,
” Matt continued. “The quaint cultural tradition that permits Muslims to murder their wives or daughters or sisters if they have dishonored the family, for example by dating an American man, or, in this case,
boy
. The defendant’s own medical expert, Dr. Zakharia, told you all about
namus
, and how it drove Mr. Rahim temporarily insane.
Allegedly
temporarily insane.”

“Objection!” shouted Jones, rising again, “I demand a side bar!”

“Are you
requesting
a side bar, Mr. Jones?” Coen asked, his voice calm.

“Yes and yes again!”

“Excuse the jury,” Coen said, nodding to his court clerk. “Stay where you are, counsel.”

“You are a Jew,” Jones said, when the jury was gone. Jones paused, the scowl still on his face, the whites of his large eyes seeming to expand as he waited—
for
effect,
DeMarco, who had returned to stand behind his counsel table, said to himself.
He thinks he’s back in Los Angeles, talking to a post–Watts jury. Unbelievable.
The murmur from the gallery—filled mostly with reporters, but also with a sprinkling of Muslims from around the five boroughs of New York—came abruptly to a halt, as all eyes turned toward the bench.

“I’m listening, Mr. Jones,” said Coen.

“As such, given the events of February 26 at the World Trade Center,” Jones said, “you are in a conspiracy to deny my client a fair trial, to convict him unjustly.”

“In a conspiracy with whom?”

“With Mr. DeMarco, with Mr. Healy, with the Chief Justice.”

“Anyone else?”

“The Governor.”

“I am holding you in contempt, Mr. Jones,” Coen said. “I will set the fine after the trial. I will also ask my court clerk to prepare a formal contempt complaint. You will be notified.”

“You yourself are in contempt. Of justice.”

“I am going to bring the jury back,” Coen said, ignoring this last comment from Jones. “Mr. DeMarco will resume his summation. You are free to object at any time. How the jury will react to your objections, I do not know. They may like them. Then again, they may not. I will rule on each one as and when it is made. Please be seated.”

Matt DeMarco had also killed someone in a fit of passion: his Drill Instructor at Parris Island in 1979. The DI—Johnny Taylor by name—a large Southerner with a foul mouth and a propensity to spew spittle when he screamed, which was most of the time, had ridden everyone hard, but Matt especially so. Eighteen and very raw, thrown out of high school for breaking a classmate’s nose—twice—Matt had prepared for boot camp by memorizing Basic Drill and Ceremony, Marine Corps Rank, the Eleven General Orders for a Sentry and the entire Marines’ Hymn. The more he knew, the more Taylor hated him.
Dago, greaseball, guinea, wop,
Matt heard these words all day, every day. Often the DI’s large red face was an inch away, his breath awful, his spit spray disgusting.

One day they marched ten miles through a swamp to a desolate training area. His platoon formed a circle around Taylor, who picked one out and then another to demonstrate lock and hold skills, used to neutralize an enemy, or kill him, in close quarters. When it came to Matt’s turn, the DI, a tall muscular man of around thirty-five, added a few sharp elbows to his ribs before disengaging, causing Matt to bend over and gasp in pain.
Dago pussy
, Taylor said, himself bending over to put his face as close as possible to Matt’s, the saliva flying. Matt, six-two, a hundred and eighty-five wiry pounds, cat-like when cornered, an ancient mix of Italian and Arabian blood running through his veins, took a deep breath, stood quickly, stepped behind the DI, locked his left forearm under his throat, and, covering Taylor’s mouth with his right hand, paused for a split second to let the spray-spitter contemplate his short future. Then he yanked Taylor’s head back hard, severing his cervical spine, killing him instantly.

Matt had been hoping for three weeks that he would not snap, knowing that when he did, it would be full out and in no way controllable. But he was lucky. The other platoons in his company had spread out in the swamp to train. No one except his own platoon, reduced from forty-four to twenty-six trainees because of Taylor’s insanity, had seen the incident. And if they had, how would they know it wasn’t a lock-and-hold exercise gone wrong, a tragic accident? That was Matt’s story, and all twenty-six members of his platoon backed him up. Many of them, sweating, thirsty, exhausted, actually thought it
was
an accident. Matt was confined to quarters for three weeks while everyone involved was interviewed. All stood tall.

Matt got a break. The Marine Corps was suspicious, but there was no hard evidence, and his father had been a Marine, had served in the 3rd Marine Division’s Amphibious Corps in World War II, had landed on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, and received the Navy Cross for his valor there. Matt had to start basic training over again, but there was no court martial, nothing on his record. He was watched and screamed at, but never pushed beyond his limit again. He came to believe that he had done the Corps a favor by eliminating a sadist in its midst. For reasons that he surmised, but could never confirm, after specialty training in South Carolina, he spent the rest of his four year enlistment doing shore patrol, first in San Diego, and then in Naples. His commanding officer in San Diego suggested he take up boxing, which he did with a vengeance, winning the 1980 and 1981 Armed Forces Middleweight Championship at Naval Base Ventura County before moving on to Italy.

Matt did not, however, see a kindred spirit in young Wael Hakimi, who had stabbed his fifteen-year-old sister Aleah to death in their Lower Manhattan apartment while she was talking with her boyfriend on the phone. The boyfriend had testified.
Wael
, the girl had said,
Wael
… What did her voice sound like? Matt had asked.
Terrified.
What did you do?
I called 911.
Why?
She was afraid of Wael. He had threatened her before.
The responding officers had found Rahim, covered with her blood, trying to stuff his sister’s body into the building’s incinerator.

No, Matt had no sympathy for Wael, whose concept of honor was to kill his sister, then lie about it, to tell the jury that he had no memory of the evening in question.
They were watching television and the next thing he knew he was in a squad car.
Sure, Wael, of course.

Matt could have recited the alphabet for his summation and sat down. There was no way the kid was going to be acquitted. And he wasn’t. When the verdict came back, Matt nodded his thanks to the jury, and watched as Wael was cuffed and led away. In the wide marble-floored hall outside the courtroom, his voice echoing off of the domed ceiling, Matt spoke briefly to reporters and then left, heading for Manny’s, a local bar popular with lawyers and judges and high-ranking cops.

Outside the courthouse, across the street in Foley Square, television cameramen and reporters were gathered in front of Kendall Jones, who had bolted after the verdict to continue the trial in the media. Matt stepped across and stopped on a patch of grass some thirty feet to the right of this crowd.

“There is no justice for minorities in America,” Jones was saying, still in that booming voice, still scowling, “especially now, especially for Muslims. Wael Hakimi is the victim in this case…” Matt tuned him out, and was about to leave when he noticed a stocky, powerful-looking man, swarthy, with a five-o’clock shadow, in his late thirties or early forties, standing in the small crowd of passers-by that had gathered behind Jones, looking at him—at Matt. Then Matt remembered that on the day the trial began two weeks ago, Wael had turned several times to look at someone in the back of the courtroom, a dark complected man with a bluish-black shadow of a beard, a man, Matt remembered thinking to himself, who needed to shave twice a day. A man who had, as far as Matt knew, not appeared again. Was this him?

Before Matt could answer his own question, his boss, Jon Healy, the Manhattan District Attorney, appeared at his side.

“Fuck this bullshit,” Healy said. “Let’s have a drink.”

“I was on my way to Manny’s.”

Healy, only five years Matt’s senior, a tall handsome Irishman with a red face, a thick head of wavy, dark brown hair and sharp, all-seeing blue eyes, nodded. “I’m buying,” he said. Matt watched the stocky man for a second or two as he walked toward the far end of the square, then turned to join his boss.

“I just spoke to Coen,” Healy said. “He wants me to file a criminal contempt complaint against Jones.”

“Good.”

“I told him no.”

“Why?”

“It’ll just give him another soap box. And I’d lose.”

“I guess Coen didn’t like the ‘You are a Jew’ comment.”

“Correct.”

Manny’s was only a block away, on Broadway. The two lawyers, carrying their suit jackets over their shoulders, both tall—one a savvy politician from a rich, well-connected family, the other, forced out of high school for assault, his connections all wrong, a street fighter who had just tried, and won, his first murder case—cast long shadows on the sidewalk ahead of them as they walked in the last bright light of a beautiful spring day. Near the bar’s entrance, Healy took hold of Matt’s forearm to stop his forward motion. “Wait,” he said, “how are things at home?”

“I left.”

“When?”

“Sunday.”

“Where are you staying?”

“My dad’s on City Island.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Two weeks.”

“I’m sorry, Matt.”

Healy let go of Matt’s arm, and they remained silent for the time it took a small group of judge’s law clerks, men and women not too much younger than Matt, to pass and enter Manny’s. One or two nodded diffidently at Matt and congratulated him, the rising star in the Manhattan DA’s powerful universe. One of the law clerks was a tall, striking blonde who looked straight ahead as they passed.