Gods and Fathers (2 page)

“What’s going on there?” Healy asked, nodding toward the blonde as she stepped off the sidewalk, her stockinged legs long and graceful, into Manny’s.

“I can see her openly now,” Matt replied.

“How did Debra take it?”

“Not well.”

“Did you tell her about your friend?”

“She knew.”

“And your boy?”

“He’ll be okay.”

Matt sized up his boss, who he knew was doing the same to him. Healy’s offer, made subtly over the last two weeks, in the elegant code used by all good politicians, was simple. Win
The People v. Hakimi
—the first honor-killing case ever in Manhattan—
and you’ll get all the top murder cases. You’re a very tough kid and can take the heat. You’ll be a star. I’ll get re-elected.
Simple.
Until I don’t need you any more
was of course never said, never even hinted at. But Matt heard it nevertheless.

“Let’s go in,” Healy said.

“No, I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

“My father. I should get back.”

“Okay, but you deserve one drink. That was a huge win today.”

“A first year law student could have won that case.”

“I meant politically.”

“So I’m your star A.D.A. now?” he said. “Your gladiator?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t want me getting depressed.”

“Right.”

“Are you my Caligula?”

“Always with the ancient Romans,” Healy said. “They’re dead. And they were crazy.”

“Not all of them.”

“You have a trust problem.”

“Politicians scare me.”

“Caligula was a tyrant, not a politician.”

“His palace guard killed him. He thought they were his friends.”

“Have
you
ever killed anybody, Matt?”

“Not without a good reason,” Matt said, smiling, deciding to let Healy think he was taking this question as a joke, though he knew it wasn’t.
So he knows,
Matt thought.
So be it. I was cleared, honorably discharged. I’ve got other things to worry about.

His father, the toughest guy he would ever meet, the ex-jarhead who had survived, unscathed, at the age of twenty, five Pacific island invasions, would be dead in two weeks of lung cancer, the only enemy he couldn’t beat. His marriage of seven years had ended bitterly. His six-year-old son seemed distant, already taking his mother’s side. Could that be possible? Or was he just paranoid, guilty? And then there was the young blonde law clerk he was seeing. There was something different about her now. Her ambition seemed to be showing for the first time, like an old-fashioned slip beneath the hem of a skirt. Or had he missed it before? Yes, lots of other things to worry about, but these did not include the size of his heart or the fight in him. These, he knew, would not fail him, no matter what the future held.

When he saw the silver BMW parked in front of the garage, and the lights on in his house as he turned into the driveway, Matt DeMarco knew that his son, Michael, a graduate student in Boston, was home, and that his weekend would be ruined. When Michael was a boy, Matt, chafing under the rigid visitation schedule imposed by his bitter ex-wife, had yearned for spontaneity in his relationship with his son. Now he dreaded it.

He took a deep breath of the cold night air as he turned the key in the front door, letting it out slowly as he entered and hung his winter coat in the hall closet. The television was on in the living room, where the remains of a half-eaten pizza sat congealing on the coffee table. In the kitchen he put his briefcase on a counter and splashed some scotch over ice. He could hear the thud-thud-thud of a lopsided load in the washing machine in the adjacent laundry room, and, over that, the angry cadences of rap music coming from upstairs. Back in the living room, he flicked off the television and then headed to his bedroom at the back of the house, shaking his head as he went, trying to ignore the pizza, the misuse of the washing machine, and his son’s nasty music.

In the bedroom, a small sanctuary with a sitting area facing a fireplace and a study tucked into a corner, he placed his drink on his dresser and changed into khakis and an old sweater. As he turned to pick up his scotch, his eye was drawn to the nearby gleaming gold frame of a color photograph of him and his son taken on the day of Michael’s graduation from high school in Manhattan. He picked it up and stared at it.

They were standing side by side at the ornate front door of the Parnell International School on Central Park West. Michael’s thick head of hair was a deep, lustrous brownish-black, like Matt’s, but unlike Matt’s it contained streaks of light brown, as if sand had been mixed with ebony, the result of his mother’s northern Italian genes. Other than those sandy streaks, they could, from not too great a distance, be taken for twins. They were both the same lithe and graceful six-foot in height; they both had the same wiry, hard muscled bodies, and both had the same deep-set raven-black eyes above high, wide cheekbones and full lips. Their dusky complexions, aquiline noses, and hooded, piercing gazes spoke of a bloodline that had spawned desert nomads and medieval warriors, its feral nature never quite yielding to the civilizing influences of Europe and America. That nature, Matt knew, thinking of the scene he had made in court that afternoon, was never far beneath the surface. Of all the facts of his life, it was the hardest and most durable, almost completely resistant to the softening forces of time and experience, like a rocky outcrop still sharp and jagged, and lethal, though the sea’s waves had broken over it for centuries.

Matt focused on the photograph again, on the two DeMarco men as they stood next to each other on that day six years ago. He had chosen this picture because he and his son were together and smiling, a rarity. But of course it had been a mistake, wishful thinking. They were not really together, and the smiles were not real smiles. Matt’s was forced, and you could tell, if you looked hard enough, that, lurking beneath his son’s was a smirk. A smirk that had evolved into a more or less permanent sneer as the years passed and the barren ground between them became impassable.

Next to this picture was one of Matt and his father, taken at Rose Hill on the day Matt graduated from law school in 1986. Seven years later Matt, Sr., who had raised Matt alone in the Gunhill Road neighborhood of the Bronx before buying a small house on City Island, was dead from lung cancer. Like his son and grandson, Matteo DeMarco, Sr., was dark and charismatically handsome, one of the cigarettes that killed him dangling from his half-smiling lips. It was the money that his father left him that had enabled Matt to buy his Pound Ridge house and still keep his small apartment in Manhattan. The guy was a worker, and a fighter, Matt thought, the same half-smile crossing his face for a second, remembering the daily early morning calisthenics and the weekly shooting lessons that were as much a part of his childhood as spelling and math.

The ringing of his cell phone broke Matt’s brief reverie. He returned the picture of himself and his son to its place on the dresser, and looked at his phone’s screen. The call was from Jon Healy. He thought for a moment, then decided to let it go to voice mail. As he made his way through the living room, Matt was surprised to see Michael in the entry foyer talking to two young men. He had not heard the front doorbell ring, which was not surprising since the rap music, or whatever it was, was still blaring. He was about to turn toward the kitchen, to avoid an introduction, but something about the two men, presumably friends of Michael’s, made him change his mind. They did not look like the pseudo-hip, superficial young men, with their spiked hair, polished fingernails and meticulous, form-fitting clothes that his son usually gravitated toward.

These two were a bit older, perhaps in their late-twenties. Both wore jeans, expensive leather jackets and the bulky type of shoes that looked like if they kicked you, could do some damage. Both were swarthy, with several days’ growth of black beard. The taller one was balding, his dark eyes heavy-lidded. The shorter one had a crooked nose and a head of thick, black, wiry hair. They seemed civilized enough as they chatted with Michael, smiling at something he was saying, standing casually with their hands in their jacket pockets. But there was a hardness about them, in their eyes and in their bearing—intensity that he knew his unworldly son, eager to be cool, would either be oblivious of or think fascinating—that Matt did not like.

Neither of them looked at Matt as he entered the foyer. Michael ignored him too for a couple of long and uncomfortable seconds, then turned to greet him.

“Hi,” he said. “I didn’t know you were home.”

“My briefcase is on the kitchen counter.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“I didn’t know you were coming. Is your mother away?”

“They’re in St. Moritz.”

Sometimes Matt’s ex-wife, Debra, and her husband, Basil, let Michael use their Park Avenue apartment when they were away, and he was in town to see his girlfriend, Yasmine, who was a senior at Columbia. Sometimes—for reasons Matt could not quite understand—they didn’t, which is when Michael condescended to visit him, if you could call it that, at his place in Pound Ridge, the heavily wooded, extremely quiet enclave fifty miles due north of New York City.

“And you are?” Matt said to the taller of Michael’s friends.

“This is Adnan,” Michael said, “and Ali. They work for Basil. We’re going out.”

Matt stood motionless, looking first Adnan and then Ali in the eye, waiting for one of them to put a hand out, but neither did. Instead each nodded slightly and made half-hearted attempts at smiles. Fake smiles.

“Where are you going?” Matt asked. He was curious because he knew of no place in the area that was hip enough for the likes of Michael and his new friends.

Michael rolled his eyes at this question, then, shrugging his shoulders, said, “Greenwich, we’re not sure.” Turning to his two friends, he said, “come on up.”

“Wait,” Matt said, before any of them could move.

“What?” Michael said, the irritation in his voice sharp and unmistakable.

“You need to move your car,” said Matt, his voice measured, under control. “It’s blocking the garage and it’s starting to snow.”

Matt met Michael’s glare with one of his own, tired of these small battles but unable to stop engaging in them, even though the war had been lost long ago.

“Sure, Dad, no problem,” Michael said, feigning agreeability, but making little effort to hide his real feeling, which Matt could see was closer to disgust than mere irritation.
Because I asked him to move his car.

Matt watched as the three went up to the second floor, which contained Michael’s room and a second bedroom that used to function as Matt’s office. He waited, pondering these two new, and different, friends of his son’s, until he heard the door to Michael’s room click shut. Then he retrieved the pizza and brought it into the kitchen, where he picked up his briefcase. Back in his study he returned Jon Healy’s call—without listening to the message—but the D.A. did not answer.

He turned on his computer and, sipping the remains of his scotch, turned his mind away from Michael and onto work, something that had not been so easy to do when his troubles with his son first began, but that—for better or worse he could not be sure—had gotten easier over the years.

He was trying a case in which an illegal Mexican immigrant had been charged with the rape and murder, by stabbing, of a young black prostitute in a courtyard of the Lillian Wald housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The NYPD had installed an extensive video surveillance system in and around the Wald Homes in 1997. Despite relentless vandalism, the camera in the courtyard of 12 Avenue D still worked ten years later, and the thirty-year-old defendant, Mauro Morales, had been caught on tape. Mauro offered an alibi defense through his grandmother.
They were watching American Idol in her apartment in East Harlem. The tape was grainy. That wasn’t her grandson. He would never do such a thing.

The problem for Mauro was that DNA taken from sperm found in the girl’s vagina matched his. Also, the jacket that the attacker was wearing on the tape, with a picture of John Lennon painted on the back clearly visible, was found in Mauro’s girlfriend’s place in Brooklyn. Fabric samples found at the scene matched this very jacket.

The problem for Matt was that the judge trying the case, Pete Sullivan, had taken it upon himself to harshly cross-examine the grandmother, his tone of voice increasingly sarcastic and incredulous with each new question. Matt had gone easy on her. She was lying to help her grandson. The jury would see that, might even respect it. Also, it never paid to beat up old ladies in front of juries. They all had grandmothers. They might get mad enough to give your defendant a pass.

In the middle of Sullivan’s questioning, Matt knocked a glass carafe of water onto the floor, shattering it. Everyone was startled. The bailiff cut herself cleaning up the shards. The jury was excused. While they were out, Matt politely asked Sullivan to apologize to the witness and to tell the jury to disregard his unnecessary intrusion into the case.
That’s what a competent judge who had temporarily lost his mind would do
, Matt had said. Sullivan went berserk and had probably called Healy. And now Healy was calling him.

Matt searched through Westlaw, the legal search engine, for a case that would help him, but none of them did. When judges lent their authority in this way to a prosecution, the convictions that inevitably followed were just as inevitably overturned by appellate courts.
A fair trial,
one court said,
difficult as that concept might be of precise definition, definitely does not include the court acting as a second prosecutor.
He e-mailed this opinion—as it happened, from the New York Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court—to Healy to lay the groundwork for his explanation of his stunt in court today. If Healy supported him, he might actually get Sullivan to say and do the right thing, which was Matt’s only hope of successfully defending his conviction at the next level. But Healy wouldn’t, Matt was all but certain. He was a publicity whore who lived for conviction headlines. Appellate reversals meant nothing to him. The case could always be tried again.

He reached for his cell phone to call Healy again, but before he could start dialing, the music from Michael’s room suddenly invaded his bedroom, its volume so high that it would make talking impossible. Trying to control his anger, Matt made it to his son’s room where the noise was so loud the door was shaking. Matt knocked as hard as he could but got no response. He was about to kick the door in, his frustration building with every
motherfucker
coming over Michael’s fancy speakers, when, simultaneously, Adnan emerged from the hall bathroom, zipping his fly, and the music stopped.

“The door is not locked,” Michael’s friend said, smiling his faux smile, deigning to look directly at Matt through his lowered eyelids, still in his leather coat.

Matt said nothing.
What is it with this kid
, he thought,
why is he so cocky?

“What do you do, Adnan?” Matt said. He had waited a few seconds, his eyes locked on the young Arab’s, before speaking.

“What do I do?”

“Yes, for a living.”

It was Adnan’s turn to pause, his face serious now, the smile gone.

“This is a question I am not used to answering,” he said, finally.

“Do you think it disrespectful?” Matt asked.

“Not the question,” Adnan replied. “The tone.”

“Ah, the
tone
,” Matt said.
It was meant to be disrespectful, as you are to me in my house.
But before he could speak these words, Michael’s door opened and he and Ali came out of his room.

“Dad,” Michael said. “What’s up?”

“The music, Michael.”

“The volume control got stuck.”

“The volume control got stuck?”

“Yes.”

Matt shook his head, then, nodding in Adnan’s direction, said, “Your friend won’t tell me what he does for a living.”

“What?”

“He thinks I disrespected him.”

“They were just leaving,” Michael said, shaking his head again. More disgust.

“Good. What about you?”

“I’m staying in.”

Staying in, Matt thought. That’s a new one
.
Before he could assimilate this, Adnan said, “Yes, we go.” Gesturing to Ali to follow, he turned and went quickly down the stairs. Michael, following them, grabbed his coat from the hall closet, and walked with his two Arab friends out to their car.

Matt watched through the mullioned windows of the front door as Michael, Adnan and Ali shook hands and did some kind of ghetto chest hug before the two Arabs got in their car, a black Mercedes sedan, which was parked at the curb, and drove off through the now steadily falling snow.