Sudden Death (7 page)

The conversation moves back to Bobby’s own football career, mainly because that’s where he moves it. My guess is that pretty much every conversation he has moves to the same place. He talks about how he was going to attend Ohio State on a full football scholarship. That all came to an end when he was injured in a car crash.

“It happened in Spain,” he says. “I was taking a few weeks to travel through Europe. I was on one of those winding roads, and my car went over the edge. I haven’t been out of this chair since. If it happened here, with American doctors… who knows if it would have been different, you know?”

I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. Everything Bobby ever wanted disappeared when his car went a few inches off the side of the road. I can almost feel the disappointment in the air, weighing on him.

I’m relieved when the door opens and Teri comes in, still wearing her nurse’s uniform. She also has with her a young boy, whom she introduces as Jason, their seven-year-old son. Jason seems tall for his age and has none of his father’s offensive lineman bulk. He’s either going to be a wide receiver when he grows up or, if he takes after his mother, a nurse.

“I’m off to work, Bobby,” Teri says. “Don’t let Jason stay up too late.”

He smiles. “What do you mean? I thought we’d go out drinking tonight.” He taps Jason lightly in the ribs. “Right, big guy?” Jason taps him right back and mimics his “Right, big guy.” There seems to be an easy relationship between father and son.

Teri says goodbye to me and leaves. Once she’s out of the house, Bobby says, “She works like crazy and takes care of me and Jason. She’s unbelievable.”

“Can you drive?” I ask.

He nods. “Yup. They make hand controls for cars. But it’s still a hell of a lot easier when she’s with me. The team lets her come on road trips.”

Jason asks Bobby to read him a story, and I take advantage of the interruption to say my goodbyes.

I drive back home, no more enlightened about the facts of the case, but liking my client a little more. He has taken good care of this one friend, and on some level it makes it harder for me to believe he killed another one.

L
AURIE MAKES MY
favorite for dinner, pasta whatever. She seems to add anything lying around into the sauce, and somehow it turns out terrifically. The best part is, she never tells me the ingredients, since if I knew how healthful they were, I probably wouldn’t eat them.

We have an agreement that we never discuss business at home, but while we’re on a case, we break the agreement pretty much every night. Tonight is no exception, and during dinner she tells me about her initial efforts to investigate the life of Troy Preston.

Mostly working with her own contacts, the picture she’s getting of Preston is not a positive one. Word has it that he failed an NFL drug test last season. NFL policy is to put the failed player on probation and mandate counseling. The infraction remains secret until the second offense, at which point there is a four-week suspension. The prosecution’s postmortem blood test on Preston indicated that he would have failed another test had one been scheduled any time soon. That’s not something he needs to worry about now.

The Jets, according to Laurie’s sources, were very worried about Preston and felt that drug use was responsible for his mediocre performance last season. He was never more than an adequate reserve anyway, and with his knee injury he was in danger of being cut from the squad this year.

After dinner we go into the living room, put on an Eagles CD, open a bottle of chardonnay, and read. I had run a Lexis-Nexis search on Kenny, which through the miracle of computers allows me to access pretty much everything that has been written about him. Edna has pared it down to everything not related to game performances, leaving me with a thick book of material to go through.

Laurie reads a mystery, one of probably a hundred she reads every year. It surprises me, because solving mysteries is what she does for a living. I’m a lawyer, and trust me, when I have spare time, you won’t catch me reading
The Alan Dershowitz Story.

Tara takes her spot on the couch between us. Music seems to put her in a mellow mood, which Laurie and I augment by simultaneously petting her. My assigned zone is the top of her head, while Laurie focuses on scratching Tara’s stomach.

Laurie and I haven’t discussed her possible move back to Findlay since the night of that stupid eclipse. I keep forming sentences to address it, but none of them sound right while taking the route to my mouth, so I don’t let them out.

“This is so nice,” Laurie says with total accuracy.

I need to let her feel how nice this is without saying anything about the possibility of her leaving and ruining it. I have to let her deal with this on her own; my advocating a position is not going to help. “It is nice,” I agree. “Completely nice. Totally nice. As long as you and I and Tara live here in New Jersey, we will have this permanent niceness.” In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m an idiot.

“Andy…,” she says in a gentle admonishment. Then, “I do love you, you know.”

“I know,” I lie, since that is no longer something I know. I’ve pretty much broken it down to a simple proposition: If she stays, she loves me; if she leaves, she doesn’t.

Usually, we have CNN on as background noise, but lately, we’re unable to do that because their policy seems to be “all Kenny Schilling, all the time.” Nobody on these shows has any knowledge whatsoever about the case, but that doesn’t stop them from predicting a conviction.

I get up and walk around the house, bringing my wineglass with me. I grew up in this house, then lived in two apartments and two houses before coming back here. I could barely describe anything about those other places, yet I know every square inch of this house. Even when I wasn’t living here, it was completely vivid in my mind.

No matter what I look at, the memories come flooding back. Wiffle ball games, playing gin with my father, stoopball, trying a puff of a cigarette in the basement, eating my mother’s cinnamon cake, having the Silvers, our next-door neighbors, over to watch baseball games on TV… my history was played out here. I left it behind me once, and I won’t do so again.

I am painfully aware that Laurie’s history is in Findlay. Not in a house, maybe, and I’m sure that her memories aren’t as relentlessly pleasant as are mine. But it is where she became who she is, and she’s being drawn back to it. I understand it all too well.

I need to stop thinking about it. She will make her decision, one way or the other, and that will be that. If my mother were alive, she would say, “Whatever happens, it’s all for the best.” I never believed it when she used to say it, and I don’t believe it now. If Laurie leaves, it will not be for the best. It will be unacceptably awful, but I will accept it. Kicking and screaming, I will accept it.

I wake up in the morning resolved to focus on nothing but Kenny Schilling. My first stop is out to the jail to talk with him. He’s less anxious and frightened than the last time I saw him, but more withdrawn and depressed. These are common reactions, and they must have something to do with the self-protective nature of the human mind.

I begin by telling him that I have decided to stay on his case, though he had always assumed that I would. I lay out my considerable fees for him, and he nods without any real reaction at all. Money is not an issue for him right now, though until a month ago he was a relatively low-paid player. The Giants are sticking with him and paying him according to his huge new contract. As far as my fees go, if I get him acquitted, it will be the best money he ever spent. If he’s convicted, all the money in the world won’t help him.

With the money issue out of the way, I start my questioning. “So tell me about the drugs,” I say.

“There weren’t any. I don’t do drugs.”

“They were found in your blood. The same drug was found in Troy Preston.”

“They’re lying. They’re trying to put me away.”

“Who’s they?” I ask.

“The police.”

“Why would the police want to put you away?”

“I don’t know. But I didn’t take no drugs.”

His insistence on this point is surprising. Drug use in itself does not come close to a proof of murder. He could be protecting his public image, but his current incarceration on first-degree murder charges has blown that out of the water much more effectively anyway. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the police have conspired to frame him by faking the blood tests, though I will look into any possible motivations for their doing that.

The other possibility of course is that both the police and Kenny are being honest and that the drug was slipped to him. I need to consult an expert to find out if that is possible.

“Could someone have slipped you the drug without you knowing it?”

He grabs on to this like a life preserver. “Yeah, that must be it! Somebody put it in my drink or food or something. Maybe Troy did… he was there.”

Once again the persistent “why” question rears its ugly head. “Why would he do that?”

He shakes his head, having discovered that this particular life preserver can’t support his weight. “I don’t know. But there’s gotta be a reason.”

I have Kenny rehash his relationship with Troy Preston, starting with their meeting at the high school all-star weekend. It turns out that they also spent a couple of days together at the NFL combine before they were drafted. The combine is a place where rookies come to demonstrate their physical skills to assembled NFL executives.

Kenny claims to have racked his brain trying to think of something relevant to Preston’s murder, but he just can’t come up with anything. “There’s… there’s just nothing.”

I detect a hesitation, mainly because there was a hesitation. “What were you going to say?” I ask.

“Nothing. I’ve told you everything I know.”

I’ve gotten pretty good at reading my clients, and for the first time I think Kenny’s holding something back. Holding something back from one’s defense attorney is akin to putting a gun to one’s head and pulling the trigger, but my pressing Kenny for more information gets me nowhere.

Before I leave, I broach the subject of Adam Strickland becoming an employee of my office so that he can observe what’s going on and perhaps someday write about it.

“But he can’t write anything we don’t want him to?” Kenny asks.

“He can’t reveal any privileged information without our permission.”

“What if he did?”

“You could sue him, and nothing he says could ever be used in court against you.”

Kenny shrugs, having lost interest. He has no desire to focus on any subject that can’t get him out of his cell. “Whatever you want, man. I don’t care either way.”

I tell him I’ll decide one way or the other and then let him know. I head back to the office, where Laurie is waiting for me. I can tell by the look in her eyes that she has something to tell me, though my hunch is helped along considerably by her saying, “Wait till you hear this.”

I decide to take a guess first. “Your old boyfriend changed his mind and offered you a job as a school crossing guard. And you said no, because they’re giving you a bad corner and making you buy your own whistle.”

“Andy,” she says, “you’re going to have to try harder to deal with this.”

I already knew that, so I say, “What were you going to tell me?”

“Preston wasn’t just using. He was dealing.”

This is potentially huge. If Preston was dealing drugs, he was involved with big money and very dangerous people. The kind of people that kill other people. The kind of people that defense lawyers love to point to and say, “My client didn’t do it; they did.”

“Who told you?”

She smiles. “Police sources.”

“Police sources” is Laurie-speak for Pete Stanton. Pete has long been a reliable source of information for both of us. He would never say anything damaging to the department, but nor does he have that knee-jerk police reaction not to have anything to do with anyone on the defense side of the justice system. There would be no downside at all to his supplying background information in this case, since it is under the jurisdiction of the state police.

“Did he give you specifics?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Over dinner with you. Tonight. He invited me as well.”

I nod with resignation. Since I’ve inherited my fortune, Pete’s goal has been to make me poor again. He does this by selecting the most overpriced restaurants he can find and then stuffing himself to the point where he has to be lifted out of his chair with a crane, while I pick up the tab. “I hope he didn’t choose the restaurant,” I say.

“He did. It’s a place in the city.”

New York City. Pete hates New York City, always has, but he’s apparently become disenchanted with the reasonable cost structure of New Jersey restaurants. “It would be cheaper to bribe the jury,” I say.

P
ETE SAYS HE’LL
meet us at the restaurant, so Laurie and I drive in alone. I’m not a big fan of driving in Manhattan; it calls for an aggressiveness that I simply do not have outside of a courtroom. I’m always afraid that Ratso Rizzo is going to pound on my car and yell, “I’m walkin’ here! I’m walkin’ here!”

The restaurant is on Eightieth Street near Madison, and as we get close, I start looking for a parking lot. I find one on the same block, with a sign proclaiming a flat rate of forty-three dollars for the night. They seem proud of this, as if it’s so inexpensive it will be an enticement for people to park their cars here. I only wish Laurie and I had come in separate cars so we could take double advantage of this incredible deal.

“Maybe you should look for a space on the street,” Laurie says.

I shake my head. “It’s a nice thought, but the nearest space on a street is in Connecticut.”

I park in the lot, and we walk half a block to the restaurant. It’s French, with stone walls to give us the impression that we’re having dinner in a cave. I approach the maître d’ and tell him that I believe our reservation is in the name of Stanton.

He brightens immediately. “Ah, yes! They’re waiting for you!”

Before I get a chance to fully weigh the significance of his using the word “they’re” rather than “he’s,” Laurie and I are led to a private cave off the main dining room. We enter and see one table, set for fifteen people. The problem is, there are enough people in the room to fill it.

Pete jumps up, almost knocking over a lit candle in the process. “Our host is here!”

This draws a cheer, and I am soon surrounded by members of Pete’s family. I know only two of them: his wife, Donna, and his brother, Larry. I’ve been out with Pete and Donna a few times, and I got Larry off on a drug charge four years ago. He’s since turned his life around and does volunteer work as a drug counselor in downtown Paterson.

Laurie and I are soon introduced to a bunch of Uncle Eddies and Aunt Denises and Cousin Mildreds, all of whom think it’s just wonderful that I’ve thrown this party for my good friend Pete.

“This is so nice of you,” Donna says to me. “And his birthday isn’t for six weeks.”

Laurie jumps in, fearful of what I might say. “Andy wanted it to be a surprise.”

I nod, staring daggers across the room at Pete. “And it was. It definitely was.”

Pete is oblivious to my daggers; he’s too busy holding bottles of expensive wine and asking, “Who wants white, and who wants red?” He looks at the labels and says, “I got the Lafeet something and the Pooly whatever…” This is from a guy who’s never bought a bottle of wine without a twist-off cap.

I finally make it over to the guest of honor. “You’re a cop,” I say, “so you’d be a good person to answer this question. Who could I hire to kill you? After this dinner, I can’t afford to pay very much, but I don’t need a quality hit man. For instance, I don’t care how much pain he causes.”

“Don’t tell me you’re pissed off,” he says.

“This was supposed to be a dinner where you gave us information about drug traffickers. Not a four-thousand- dollar family circle meeting.”

He nods. “It turns out that Larry knows something about this, so I wanted him here. But he was having dinner with Aunt Carla, who was staying at Cousin Juliet’s, and it sort of snowballed from there. You know how these things are.”

With almost no family of my own, and no desire to impoverish my friends, I don’t know how these things are, but I drop it. “So when can we talk?”

“You can drive Larry and me back. We’ll talk then.”

The rest of the evening is surprisingly pleasant, at least until the check comes. Pete’s family is both close-knit and funny, and it feels good to be included in it. I’m not totally forgiving Pete for this fiasco, though, and I lash out by refusing to sing “Happy Birthday” when they bring out the three-tier cake I’m paying for.

It’s not until we’re on the George Washington Bridge driving home that Pete addresses the issue at hand. “Paul Moreno,” he says.

“Who’s Paul Moreno?” I ask. The question must be a stupid one, because it draws sighs and moans from Pete, Larry, and Laurie.

“He’s a guy who makes Dominic Petrone look like Mother Teresa,” Pete says. Dominic Petrone is the head of the mob in North Jersey, which means Paul Moreno must be a rather difficult fellow to deal with.

“I just spent twenty-eight hundred bucks on your birthday. Can you be a little more specific?”

Pete, Laurie, and Larry then alternate being very specific, and the picture they paint of Paul Moreno is not a pretty one. About five years ago a group of young Mexican immigrants started a drug pipeline from their former country to their current home in North Jersey. It was mostly street stuff and relatively small money for this industry.

What distinguished this gang was the violence they were quite willing to use in running their business. Led by a young hood named Cesar Quintana, they became the area’s primary source of cheap drugs and ruthless violence, and they were limited only by their inherent lack of intelligence. They were not businessmen, and business acumen is needed to sell all products, including illegal drugs.

Enter Pablo Moreno, born in Mexico to a family of very significant wealth, said to be dubiously earned. Moreno was educated in this country, graduated from the Wharton School of Business, after which Pablo Moreno became Paul Moreno. He returned to Mexico for a while and then settled in North Jersey two years ago to apply his business expertise in earnest.

It seems as if he conducted an analysis and determined that the best opportunity for success in this country was to become a part of the still-fledgling, unsophisticated operation Quintana was running. Moreno’s style, reputation, and money overwhelmed him, and they soon became partners. They allegedly split the profits, but Quintana has allowed Moreno to call the shots, perhaps the first sign of intelligence he has ever shown.

In the eyes of law enforcement their operation now represents the worst of both worlds. Moreno provides the smarts and the capital, and Quintana supplies the muscle and willingness to use it. In the process they’ve branched out to higher-end drugs and higher-level clientele.

“Which is why they’ve become a major pain in the ass of Dominic Petrone,” Pete says.

“And he hasn’t taken them on?” I ask. Rumor has it that both end zones in Giants Stadium are built on a foundation of people who became pains in the ass of Dominic Petrone.

Pete shakes his head. “Not yet. Drugs have never been the main part of Petrone’s operation, so he’s let it go so far. There’s no telling how long that will last. It’s a war he’d win, but it would be ugly.”

“So where does my client fit into this?”

Larry answers. “He probably doesn’t, but Troy Preston does. Moreno loves football, and he took a liking to Preston. Preston in turn took a liking to Moreno and his lifestyle. The word is, they were really close.”

“So Preston was dealing for him?” Laurie asks.

“Not in a serious way at first. More to his friends, certain other players… that kind of thing. People tell me it made him feel like a big shot. Then he started liking the fact that it was supplementing his income, so he branched out some. The bigger problem is, he started using what he was selling, which is not the best thing for a pro football career. And as his career went down, his need for money outside football went up.”

My mind of course is focused on finding a killer other than Kenny Schilling. I start thinking out loud. “So Petrone could have killed Preston to send a message to Moreno. Or maybe Preston pissed Quintana off, and
he
killed him.”

“Or maybe your client is guilty,” Pete says, ever the cop. “The victim’s blood was in his car, and his body was in his house. Not exactly your classic whodunit.”

“More like your classic frame-up,” I say.

Pete laughs. “And exactly why would they pick Schilling to frame? It’s not like they would have left evidence for the police to track them down. Petrone’s been murdering people since he was four years old. You think we could have tied him to this?”

“You? No. The state cops? Maybe.” I don’t really believe what I’m saying; it’s my pathetic attempt to get back at Pete for the birthday bash.

If Pete is wounded by my attack, he hides it well. He shakes his head. “Nope. Petrone didn’t do Preston, and the job was too classy for Quintana. He would have sliced him up and dumped him in front of City Hall.”

He’s probably right, but at the very least this opens up a huge area for a defense attorney to explore and exploit. I’m already working out strategies in my mind; the money for this evening’s fiasco may actually turn out to be well spent.

We pull up at Pete’s car, and as he and Larry get out, Pete pats my arm. “Thanks, man. This is the nicest thing anybody’s ever done for me, even if I was the one that did it. But you didn’t get too pissed, and I appreciate it. You’re a good friend.”

“Happy birthday,” I say. That’ll teach him.