Lily White (45 page)

“Good to meet you.”

“Will,” McCloskey said. “Could I have a quick word with you, Will?”

With a sinking heart, Lee watched Will enter his office. McCloskey, clearly nervous, followed and closed the door. No one had prepared Will Stewart for her. He would be furious. Like hell I will! he would boom. McCloskey, terrified, would race
back up to Huber, who would be forced to change his mind. Lee saw herself taking “Basic Puff Pastry” in the Shorehaven School District’s adult ed program several decades sooner than she’d expected. No, it could even be worse. Will would view her as a party hack and treat her with contempt. It would take her years to gain his respect. If she ever could: Eager to prove herself, she’d screw up case after case so badly that not only would she get tossed out of Homicide; they wouldn’t even let her try misdemeanor cases.

It was taking too long. She strained to hear shouts, but all was silent behind Will’s door. Attorneys passed and glanced at her curiously. She should not have worn a beige suit. It was too late into the fall. She felt so wrong and wished that someone had mentioned the fact that Will Stewart was black and infinitely suave. The door opened. Will stuck his head out. “Who can I call about you?” he asked pleasantly, even warmly, as if he was so pleased with her that he couldn’t wait to hear more good things. She realized that he was a smarter politician than Huber and McCloskey put together.

“You mean from the Manhattan D.A.’s?” she asked. What a moron she sounded like! What did she think he wanted? References from the eight million guys at Cornell she’d fucked?

“Right,” he said.

“Well, the D.A. himself. Or the head of the Supreme Court bureau—”

“Melanie Tucker?” he asked congenially. At least, he seemed congenial. For all she knew, he loathed Melanie and any recommendation from her would mean automatic rejection. Yes, she nodded, her head bobbing like a fool’s, Melanie Tucker. “Sorry to keep you waiting like this,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Lee replied, but he had already closed the door. All right, she thought, as long as her tortured gut did not cause her to writhe and double up, groaning in agony. She held
her handbag in front of her and pressed her forearms against her raging stomach. How much longer? She couldn’t stand it. Maybe he would hate her because her last name was White. She could knock, say Excuse me, it’s really Weissberg. Except maybe, despite all those rabbis on the March on Selma, he was an anti-Semite.

The door jerked open, and Jerry McCloskey flew out. “See ya,” he muttered, and tore down the hall.

“Come in,” Will called.

Although his name was on the door, Will Stewart’s office had nothing to do with him. It was standard government issue, newer than its Manhattan equivalent and just as lifeless. But he had done nothing to make it his: no pictures, no mementos, no bound appellate briefs, no knickknacks. His pen was a twenty-nine-cent Bic. “Come
in
,” he repeated. Lee took a deep breath and then, propelled by the exhalation, went into his office. He was standing behind his desk, but instead of the expected forefinger pointed toward the door, he was extending his hand. “Welcome,” he said. She felt a little dizzy but noticed he had sat back down and seemed to be suggesting that she do the same. “Sorry to put you through all that.”

“No problem,” she said cheerfully.

“Lee,” he said. With his voice, it sounded like a summons from God. He sat back comfortably in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head.

“What?”

“I’m your boss. Don’t bullshit me: ‘No problem.’”

“Okay. I had terrible stomach cramps, and I was afraid I’d embarrass myself in some particularly disgusting way. Or else I’d go into shock and convulse, and my head would bang rhythmically against your door and you’d think I was interrupting your discussion with Jerry McCloskey.”

“I wasn’t discussing with him. I was torturing him by not accepting
you as a fait accompli. I sat here for a couple of minutes looking dubious. Then I called Melanie. She thinks the world of you, by the way.”

“That’s what I think of her.”

“So do I. We testified together before a House committee.” He did not smile, but his face softened. “She’d be my mother’s dream girl, with those hankies up her sleeve. And pearls. The only way she could be more perfect would be if she were black.” He continued to look faintly amused—either at his mother or at some recollection of Melanie, but he did not smile. Then he leaned forward. “The stomach business. Do you get nervous in court?”

No, she was going to say, but heard herself saying: “Most of the time. Right before I open and when I sum up. But once I start talking, it disappears.”

“Too bad they can’t bottle that,” he said.

“Do you ever get that way?” she asked. A second later, she shrank back, nearly crazed by her audacity.

“I used to. Not my stomach. I used to sweat, which is worse, I think, because everyone can see it. But it hasn’t happened in years. I guess I’ve been doing it too long. You get numb to it, and that’s not good. You lose your competitive edge.” She nodded, suddenly exhilarated, realizing they were having a conversation. “I don’t know, though. Maybe being numb is better than being scared shitless. Now, let’s see: I’ve got to get someone to find you a desk. You want a chair too?”

“While they’re at it.” She smiled at him. Her infectious smile, Jazz called it. Or contagious. Whatever. You smile at someone and they light up, Lee. I’m telling you, it’s true.

Will did not smile back. In fact, he looked away and opened a folder on his desk, passing a quick glance over the papers inside. “Okay, you get settled. Then you’ll have to fill out all the forms. We Republicans say we don’t want big government, but don’t
believe us. It will take you hours. Come back around … whenever. Five, six.” He picked up what looked like a Justice Department newsletter and immediately became engrossed.

“Thanks!” Lee said. She waited a fraction of a second too long, hoping he would glance up and smile. Not a big smile, just something quick, spontaneous. Or at least say, You’re welcome.

But she got nothing more from Will Stewart until seven-fifteen that night, when he handed her five eight-by-ten photographs of Nicky “The Rooster” Gaudioso in the trunk of his Lincoln Continental—which had been found in the woods in Eisenhower Park. He was at least two weeks dead, his throat slit, his testicles stuffed into his mouth. “I think you’ll have fun with this,” Will said. Her parents, her sister, Jazz—any civilian—would have recoiled. But Lee nodded. She knew exactly what Will meant, and she knew he was right.

She took the photos home, and after dinner, while Jazz watched the Yankees getting creamed by Cincinnati in the Series, she spread them out on the kitchen table. With a flashlight in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other, she bent over them, studying Nicky and the trunk that had been his grave. Not much, she thought, although it might make a good ad for the Continental: Check out our roomy trunk! A few minutes later, she noticed: There was something pale and squiggly in the right-hand corner. What was it? More important, was it what she thought it was? She called the detective sergeant on the case, a guy named Brody. Yeah, he said, it’s rubber gloves. You know it’s after ten o’clock? Lee ignored his question and asked if he’d brought in the gloves to the lab to check for prints. Prints? Brody asked, as if it were a strange new concept. The perpetrator might have used the gloves to put Nicky in the car and simply forgotten them, Lee explained. Gotcha, Brody said wearily. I’m sure the gloves went in. It’s automatic. Good, Lee said. Then let’s not
give the killer time to remember he forgot his gloves and skip town—unless you think it was Nicky who kept them there in case he had to perform emergency microsurgery. I’d like the answer by noon tomorrow.

When Eddie Marcantonio, whose fingerprints were found inside and outside the gloves, was arrested for the murder of Nicky Gaudioso, he claimed that he was a salesman for Sunshine Garden Supplies. While he did collect a check from Sunshine, however, he would not have known a pile of manure from a hot rock. As Detective Sergeant Brody told Lee, his real profession was hit man for the Gambino family. His job required patience and not imagination or intelligence, so Eddie did quite well. He was not the sort who minded spending his working life sitting in a car, waiting hours for one of his subjects to emerge from a dinner of
cervelli fritti
at Vincente’s restaurant or from a visit to his girlfriend’s. He was patient, looking straight ahead, not listening to the radio, not reading a newspaper, with only his knife or his gun for company. Then he would do what he’d been sent to do: commit murder. Eddie knew, naturally, to try and avoid crowds, but if his business was ever observed, he did not worry. Should the terror of the moment not frighten an eyewitness, the notion of the cruel death that would follow a court appearance to identify Eddie as the killer worked wonders.

“Eddie didn’t do it!” his lawyer, Chuckie Phalen, announced to Lee. “He uses rubber gloves all the time. In the garden supply business. Doesn’t like dirt getting under his fingernails.” Chuckie wheezed as he spoke. His pallor was almost as bad as Nicky Gaudioso’s.

“This is your defense?” Lee asked. She neither liked nor disliked Phalen. He was one of the Old Boys, criminal lawyers who considered themselves archliberals in those rare instances when they managed to refrain from calling a female attorney “honey.”

“Just because he has an Italian last name doesn’t make him
Mafia.” Despite his breathing problems, Chuckie spoke with an energy that was rare for an Old Boy on a routine murder case.

“No,” Lee agreed, already hearing his summation in her mind. She hated to admit it, she had told Jazz the night before, but it wasn’t so terrible working out here—and don’t say I told you so. He’d been thrilled, and his hug had been full of joy. Well, it wasn’t
that
terrible. Lawyers waited until she finished her sentence before beginning theirs. The cops didn’t pal around with the assistant D.A.’s the way they did in New York, but they were cordial enough. Brody had even shaken her hand when the fingerprints on the gloves proved to be Eddie Marcantonio’s and then, for good measure, patted her on the back and announced: You’re hot shit. “There happen to be three drops of Nicky’s blood on Eddie’s rubber glove,” Lee informed Chuckie Phalen. “That doesn’t exactly paint a picture of Mr. Sunshine Garden Supply planting petunias, does it?”

“I like your stuff,” Chuckie said. It was, on the surface, a predictable compliment, the old pro patting the rookie on the back, hoping the rookie would feel enough of a personal tie to give his client a break. But Lee sensed it was sincere, and she wanted to smile and give him a warm thank-you, maybe even—after the trial—say something about her liking his stuff. But she could be wrong, he could be setting her up, so she just offered him a slight incline of the head that said: I heard you. “Aah, you think I’m buttering you up. I can tell. That’s okay, I understand. Now listen, sis—”

“Lee.”

“Lee, what I have here is a family man. Wife, two kids. A dog, even. So maybe we can talk.”

“They don’t allow dogs in Attica. The wife and kids can visit.”

“You’re a real softie.”

“I keep trying.”

“You want to check with Will on this?”

“No.”

“Will is tough but fair.”

“Good. That’s how I want to be.”

“So how’s about five to seven?” Chuckie asked, the air creating a whistling sound every time he inhaled.

“That’s what I’m hoping he’ll get for illegally parking the Continental on county property.” For the first week, she kept saying “city,” and she was only now getting accustomed to glimpses of green outside and being greeted with actual hellos instead of grunts by the unit’s secretaries. “The murder charge is extra. I can offer you something less if he’s willing to discuss who asked him to kill Nicky and send a message.”

“What message?”

“The message that this is what happens to guys who talk.”

“You mean, the you-know-whats in Nicky’s mouth?” Chuckie asked, with such false innocence that Lee couldn’t help it. She threw back her head and laughed.

But she stopped laughing six months later, in court.

Chuckie was good, very good. The way he cut into the credibility of her expert witnesses: not with eye-rolling, give-me-a-break mockery or go-for-the-throat attack, but by respectful solicitation of their views, seeking ever more amplification until the experts were drowning in rolling seas of their own jargon. In addition, Chuckie had the New York-Irish equivalent of courtly Southern charm, calling prospective jurors “Ma’am” and “Sir” during voir dire, wheezing to the judge phrases like: “I respectfully submit to Your Honor” and “I would beg the Court’s indulgence.” There was not a hint of blarney. A gentleman, the jury was obviously thinking, and Chuckie’s dignity subsumed the man beside him at the defense table, Eddie Marcantonio—who, after a Chuckie wardrobe consultation—was looking like a deacon of an extremely sincere church.

But Chuckie’s being good was only half the problem. It was that Lee was not. She could tell it by the way the judge listened to her motions; no matter how reasonable her arguments were, he reacted as if she were being not merely frivolous but sneaky. And the jury. For them, Chuckie was a good show and she was the commercials. They kept tuning out.

“What’s happening?” Lee demanded of Will. She threw up her hands. Several shreds of coleslaw flew off her plastic fork and landed on his office rug. She reached over and picked them up. “You sat in yesterday. You saw. They’re not with me, and don’t tell me they are.”

He put down the huge, drippy corned beef and pastrami combo she had been coveting. “I won’t tell you they are, because they’re not.”

“You could at least be a little less eager to give me the bad news.”

“No. I’m giving it to you where it has to go: right between the eyes. You’re screwing up.” But he said it with affection.

In her half year in the D.A.’s Office, she had gone from awe of Will Stewart to having a slight crush on him, then a large crush, then to a realization that what he was, above all else, was a great friend—although in truth the crush never disappeared. Will had grown up less than ten miles from her, in Glen Cove. His parents had worked on one of the great Gold Coast estates, his father as head groom in the stables, his mother as a laundress. The owner of the estate had taken a shine to him and paid for his education at Columbia. Will had gone on to Columbia Law School on scholarship. She found him a fascinating mix, a kid from a blue-collar family who had grown up to be a down-to-earth working stiff—civil service division. Yet hand in hand with his lack of airs and his nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic, he comported himself with the polish of someone born to great wealth. It went far beyond his impeccable clothes and physical grace.