The Good Lawyer: A Novel (11 page)

Vinny got to his feet. “His prints are all over the apartment—even the crib.”

“But he was the janitor there. And why were no prints found in the apartments where the other rapes took place?” The idea of slam-dunking this guy just didn’t sit well with me.

“There’s more. He’s black, in his mid-twenties, muscular, and bald. But he wears a wig. Said he caught some childhood disease from eating bad bananas and lost his hair.”

“OK, so he’s bald,” I answered disconcertedly. “Why climb down from the roof like the Spiderman? As the janitor couldn’t he just go in the front door?”

“They’d know it was him,” Vinny half whispered, as if he alone had figured this out. “Victims two and three lived in the same housing complex five blocks away. He is one of seven custodians there also!” Vinny’s eyes brightened.

“Does he have a record of sex crimes?”

“No,” he said slightly disappointed. “No record at all. But he was seen in the building around the time of the murders, and get this, a search of his apartment uncovered a twenty-four karat gold locket belonging to the baby.”

I didn’t hide my astonishment. “What about rope and gloves and duct tape?”

“None of those things were found.” Vinny’s impatience was evident. “I wouldn’t bet my life that this is the guy, but I’d damn well bet a year’s salary. And if you take the case, like you promised, you can widen all the potholes of proof to your heart’s content.”

“I never promised to take the case.” He put his hands on his hips as if betrayed. “If I can get the arraignment I will, and that’s it. Then it’ll be assigned counsel or a Major Offense Bureau attorney at Legal Aid. If he’s charged with murder right out of the box, there’s no way my supervisors will let me touch it, and that’s if the judge doesn’t appoint counsel at the arraignment. And I’m playing no games this time. I mean it!”

Vinny turned obstinately and walked out. I felt like shit.

I caught up to him at the elevator. “If they don’t charge him with the murders right away I’ll take the case somehow, some way. All right?”

“All right,” Vinny said quietly to the unopened elevator door, and I could see that my young reporter friend would not be happy unless I gave him an unconditional guarantee.

“You know there’s no way I can take it if he hires private counsel.”

Vinny arched his shoulders and said, “he’s a janitor, for Christ’s sake,” then disappeared down the stairwell.

And it struck me: not only did I have to arraign the alleged Spiderman, but I also had to stay with the case long enough to get Vinny his exclusive—the real return favor.

The way the case was breaking, I figured that wouldn’t take long.

Chapter 21

K
renwinkle ignored me as I entered. It was Peter Guevara’s adjourn date. Only corrections had no record of him.

I hurried into the clerk’s office where a liver-spotted courthouse relic named Gilbert O’Toole peered at me over thin bifocals. When I asked about Guevara he stepped to the rear of the clerk’s office, made a phone call, then returned and said, “Pedro Guevara made bail the evening after he was arraigned. Fifteen thousand cash.”

I took a seat in the first row of the courtroom, feeling as if I had just been told Guevara had been beaten to death. I hadn’t heard a word from him since his teary eyed entrance into detention.

At any moment I expected him to walk in with private counsel and not a drop of gratitude for what I’d done thus far. Regardless, it would be tough as hell justifying to Sheila why a Legal Aid lawyer should keep a case where a defendant had come up with fifteen grand cash to buy his release. Damn that I had already begun an investigation. My work would only wind up enhancing some private defense counsel’s file.

Legal Aid’s plead-em-out dead wood lawyers would laugh at my early jump on the case. Regardless, I wasn’t going to wait around only to get bumped by some three-piece suit with a five-grand retainer. He could call me at the office if he wanted to review my file. I rose to leave.

Krenwinkle called out to me. “Mannino! Don’t disappear! Your client was here looking for you!”

“Sure,” I called back, my voice full of sarcasm. My
client
probably wanted to introduce me to his new attorney.

As I passed through the exit doors I saw Guevara approaching. He was holding a small brown paper bag, crumpled at the top. Wearing a gray suit, white shirt, polished black shoes and a matching gray designer tie, he looked better groomed than any lawyer in sight.

“Nick!” he exclaimed like an old friend who had dearly missed me. I looked around for his new attorney. “I didn’t see you in the courtroom so I went across the street to get some coffee.” He pulled a styrofoam cup secured by a shiny white plastic lid out of the bag. “Here, I got you one too. It’s a regular.”

“Thank you. But we’ll have to drink them out here.”

I grabbed the lid and pulled it off my regular to cool. He tossed his in a nearby garbage can and sipped piping hot black coffee without hesitation. “I can’t thank you enough, Nick. An officer in detention told me I got lucky when I got you. You were really great in court last time, and that D.A. was a real crumb, and you made the judge see that.”

I realized then that for better or worse, Guevara had every intention of taking his chances with me.

When the case was called Krenwinkle didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see my client free on bail. With his wife at the helm, P.S. 92 had raised two thousand five hundred dollars of Guevara’s bail. Guevara himself somehow came up with a thousand. An employer I knew nothing about, a real estate broker in a part-time job Guevara had renting apartments on weekends and weeknights, staked another twenty-five hundred. And to cap off this pot of generosity, a doctor friend, who lived in the affluent Country Club Estates section of the Bronx, put up the balance—nine thousand big ones. Guevara handed me the M.D.’s number and asked me to give him a call—at the doctor’s request.

Assistant D.A. Jimmy Ryan had sauntered in minutes earlier. Since he was out of rotation in AP-6 it was apparent he was intent on seeing this case through. When he saw Guevara in suit and tie, he became visibly incensed. “Your honor. Yesterday the grand jury voted to indict this man on all counts, regarding all three child complainants.”

A few deliberate “yeahs” came from a small group behind us—part of the neighborhood watchdog committee, no doubt still bitter from missing the arraignment. Krenwinkle waved them quiet.

“I move the bail be increased to fifty thousand dollars,” Ryan said indignantly.

Krenwinkle stared down at the prosecutor. Guevara stiffened. No doubt Krenwinkle was concerned I would then respond, and appropriately so, by stating the source of all the bail money, including his wife’s part in raising it.

“Judge,” I said, “over two dozen friends and co-workers helped raise this man’s bail. They believe in him enough to stake their hard-earned money on his returning time and again to face these charges. And they did so the very day after his arraignment. My client has been free for six full days knowing, as Mr. Ryan assured us all at arraignment, he would show up to hear he had been indicted. As a result, there have been no changed circumstances that would justify disturbing the bail set by Judge Benton.”

“Application denied,” Krenwinkle said. “Mr. Ryan you may renew your request in Supreme Court before Judge Graham, Part 30, April 6th. Case adjourned for arraignment on the indictment.”

Ryan slammed his folder shut and shoved it under his arm as if part of a military drill. “See you in Supreme, Mannino.” He brushed past Guevara and myself and left the courtroom, the smell of his cheap cologne filling the air.

Outside in the lobby Guevara gave me a pat on the back and a hug, all with the comfortable camaraderie of an old football buddy. I was amazed at how quickly his emotions changed depending on the circumstances in or out of the courtroom. But I thought it healthy that he was able to express himself so easily in view of the terrible stress he was under.

To my relief and surprise he hurried away, telling me he’d call in a couple of days.

When I returned to AP-6, Krenwinkle, no doubt relieved he and his wife weren’t the afternoon
Post’s
front-page news, had called a ten-minute recess.

I found him sitting behind his desk in his makeshift chambers beside the courtroom. A
Daily News
was draped on his lap. The headline was simpler than
Newsday’s,
but announced in equally horrifying terms:
Spiderman Kills.

“I figured you’d be back,” Krenwinkle said, as he pushed the newspaper aside. Of course, he had no way of knowing a suspect-janitor was already in custody. “I’ve got news for you on that blonde,” he blurted.

“I thought you might.” Knew was more like it. If the Administrative Judge wanted to know the status of an active investigation in his county, he merely had to pick up a phone. Krenwinkle had lived and worked in the Bronx his whole life; he’d get whatever information he wanted, and from reliable sources too.

“That was no suicide,” he said. “She was tossed off that roof and put up one hell of a fight. The cops think she hung from the edge until her assailant stomped on her fingers. Evidently she also tried to cling to the side of the building as she fell. Her palms and fingertips were scraped to the bone from contact with the brick facade.”

“So they can’t take her fingerprints?”

“They can take them, but it ain’t gonna do much good. They’re trying to piece together her identity from partial prints. Don’t hold your breath.”

“Jesus. And no one’s come forward looking for her.”

“You got it,
paisan’
. You might be of help too if you can shake some screws loose, and figure out why she wanted to see you.”

Chapter 22

I
left the Bronx Criminal Court in a blur of suits, briefcases, and blue uniforms. By the time my head cleared I had walked over two blocks up the lightly traveled Sheridan Avenue, instead of along the busy Grand Concourse on my way back to the office.

The further I walked along the side streets and outside the imaginary zone around the Criminal Court within which lawyers, civil servants, court officers, and police regularly trafficked, the more I invited a confrontation with the worst of the local element—the poor, the desperate and even the drug-crazed.

I scaled the curb on the corner of 164th with my head bouncing pugnaciously toward 165th, defiance in every step—come and get me.

A small garbage-filled lot flanked my left side. Car parts, cans, bottles, and tattered newspapers lay in the dirt and weeds. The carcass of a dead cat covered with flies lay crumpled against a pile of egg white stones.

A row of abandoned buildings with boarded and cinder-blocked windows and doors followed. Concrete stoops, faded and cracked, stood as a relic to the families who long ago struggled and commiserated there, on its landing, on its steps, while their children played—shared lives lost to politicians, businessmen, landlords, gentrification, neighborhood fear, street fear, fear of the unknown.

In the middle of this block, on this same side of the street, there stood a two-story brownstone. It was the only visibly inhabited building on either side. Two wooden doors with beveled glass panes separated the South Bronx street from those who dwelled within. Standing behind one of the doors, in the pale light of the vestibule, was a shirtless Hispanic boy, nine or ten years old. Dark-skinned, with straight black hair, oval eyes and full lips, he watched as I walked, then stared as I stopped on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps that led to his front door. He pointed his finger at me contemptuously.

I looked down, then back up at the door. The boy was still standing there. Only this time he was black. I winced then looked at him again, and he was laughing, like he hated me, relishing my confusion. My heart was pounding, but I wouldn’t look away.

I watched as the boy disappeared into the murky vestibule, then I continued walking toward 165th Street—quickly.

I called Vinny Repolla from my windowless office. With a reporter’s resources at his disposal he was in a good position to learn the identity of the dead blonde. Once I knew who she was, I would know why she wanted to see me.

Vinny called midway through a meeting that Sheila Schoenfeld, Douglas Krackow, and all fifteen complex C attorneys attended for the sole purpose of setting next month’s arraignment schedule. I handed my choice of dates, good and bad, to Tom Miller, and took the call at my desk.

Vinny was intent on talking about the Spiderman. The accused janitor was headed for central booking. He would be arraigned in the morning. But not for double murder. And not for rape either. For burglary—for taking the dead baby’s locket.

The D.A.’s Office might as well have held a press conference to announce they had problems, big problems connecting the defendant to the murders of the mother and child, no less the sexual assaults on the other four victims.

“Wonderful,” I said incredulously. “I suppose you’ll want me to do both arraignments, one for the burglary, then the follow-up for the rapes and murders.” I was disgusted at getting sandbagged in a way even Vinny hadn’t intended.