Jury of One (27 page)

“Who does Alex work with?” Joel asked.

“Man, nobody. Alex don’t come with other people.”

“Who do you work with?”

“Me?” Todavia shook his head firmly. “No way, man. No fuckin’ way.”

Nobody in the room could have expected Todavia to part with that information.

“Does Alex know your friends, Eddie? Did you arrange a meet with them?”

“No.” He folded his arms. “
Huh
-uh.”

“I’ll let you go on the other stuff,” said Joel, removing his firearm from his shoulder holster. “But on this one, I have to be a little more insistent.”

Todavia showed his hands. “Man, I fuckin’ tell you. The man comes to me once a year, maybe, maybe twice a year. We do our business and that’s all. You think I’m gonna let him meet my boys? I’m a businessman, see. We make our deal and that’s all. I don’t know his shit, he don’t know mine.”

“Your friends are C-Street, right?”

“See, man.” He held out the palms of his hands. “So why I’m gonna let this white boy hook up with ’em?”

“You’re not the only one I’m asking,” Joel said, still fondling the weapon. “If I find out Alex was talking to your
hermanos,
I’m coming back with my friends. Dig?”

“You talkin’ crazy now. Ask, man.” He waved Joel off.

“Tell me about Ray Miroballi, Eddie.”

“Don’t know—”

“He’s a cop, Eddie. You know him.”

“Don’t know no cop Mira-whatever-the-fuck.”

Joel cocked his gun. This did not escape the notice of the young man he was interrogating. Shelly felt herself steel. Surely Joel wouldn’t bluff this far? Surely Eddie Todavia would see this as an over-the-top gesture. But he didn’t. She saw the fear in his eyes. The thought occurred to her, maybe she
didn’t
know this neighborhood like Joel did.

“Did I load this thing today?” he asked himself. He pointed the gun at the wall off to the side, waved it a bit. “Hard to tell by the weight. Might have a couple of bullets in here.”

“Man, I don’t know no cop with that name.”

“He’s an old partner of mine,” Joel lied, bringing the gun back to his open hand. “He says you know each other.”

“Okay, then whatever he says, man.”

“That’s right,” Joel said. “I
did
load this thing this morning.” He held the gun upright, then slowly moved the barrel downward in the direction of Todavia.

Todavia’s hands were out in surrender. “Man, I tell you I don’t know this fuckin’ guy. I swear to Christ I don’t know this guy.”

“He says you do, Eddie.”

“Man, I don’t know the name. Maybe I see him, I know him.”

Shelly held her breath. She kept her eyes on Todavia, who kept his eyes on Joel.

Joel dropped the gun to his side. “Okay, Eddie.” He pointed to the window. “You see that car down there? Those are my guys. You move off this couch before I drive away and—”

“Man, go already. I don’t need your fuckin’ shit.”

He was upset. She figured he couldn’t have really thought that Joel would put a bullet in him. But she didn’t know these people nearly as well as she had thought. Maybe they had seen such things happen. In any event, this man’s pride was wounded. She saw the fire return to his eyes the moment that Joel retreated.

Shelly got up to leave. Todavia stood as well and gestured toward her. For a guy who had just had a gun pointed in his face, he rebounded remarkably. Apparently it wasn’t his first time. Or maybe he was just trying to buy back some of his pride. “Hey, li’l lady,” he said to her, “how ’bout you hang back so’s we—”

The distance was about right, about the length of an extended leg thrust. Her precision was not at top form. The heel of her shoe—yes, she had worn gym shoes for just this opportunity—flew into the abdomen of the drug dealer and sent him flying against the couch.

“Not just now, Eddie,” she said. She followed Joel out of the house. They moved briskly to the car and didn’t linger at the curb.

“Remind me not to piss you off.” Joel threw the car into drive and sped off. He nodded to his associates in the sedan as he passed them.

“Don’t supply drugs to my client.”

He looked at her. “You know, Shelly, no one put a gun to Alex’s head.”

Interesting choice of phrase, she thought. And it reminded her of something her father might say. Free will, the favored expression of conservative politicians. Your circumstances are tough? Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and make it happen. Yes, sure that was true to some extent. But when you grew up knowing nothing but absentee parents and gangbangers all around you, you hardly even knew what it was you were supposed to be aiming for. It was a lot easier to pull yourself up when you were attending respectable, and safe, schools, when your friends and parents shared the same aspirations as you.

But Alex didn’t exactly grow up in gangland, so Joel’s point carried a little more weight. In fact, all Alex had to do was look across the dinner table at Ronnie to see the right example.

“Alex went to someone he knew,” she said. “I doubt he has a boatful of friends who sell drugs. He wouldn’t have gone to a stranger. If it weren’t for this piece of garbage, Alex might not be in the mess he’s in.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Not always so simple.” Joel—both of them—seemed to relax as they put distance from the neighborhood. They were quiet for a while as they traveled toward more familiar haunts.

“Well, that guy doesn’t help me.”

“No, he doesn’t really back up your idea,” Joel agreed. “He says Alex didn’t know any of his associates, so we can’t put Alex with the Cans. And he didn’t seem to know Miroballi.”

“Miroballi could know
him,
” she said.

“Sure, that’s true. What’s”—he looked at Shelly—“what’s Alex say about all this?”

“Alex says it was self-defense. He denies all of it.”

“So you don’t trust him.”

“It’s more like I think he has some reason for not telling me everything. I feel like I have to figure it out myself.”

“Don’t fuck around with the C-Street Cans, Shelly.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well, hear it again. Don’t go busting balls in their camp. Let it go.”

“Let it go, even if I’m right?”

Joel wet his lips. “Your own client won’t even back it up, Counselor. So what do you think is going to happen? You’re
going to get YoYo to waltz into court and confess that he decided to have Ray Miroballi whacked?”

Jorge Joaquinto—referred to on the streets as “JoJo” but derisively by law enforcement as “YoYo”—was believed by the government to be the top leader of the Columbus Street Cannibals. Joel had a point here. She had no way of making a Cannibal admit to hitting a police officer, at least not one still wearing his arms.

“So let me get this straight,” she said. “Even if it’s true that this gang killed a cop, made Alex take the fall, and is threatening Alex’s family to keep him quiet—even if all of that’s true, I should let it go.”

“You should be realistic. What, you’re going to put Alex on the stand and treat him as an adverse witness? Cross-examine him? Come on.” He glanced at her. “What’s your great plan?”

“Don’t have one,” she conceded. “But I’ll tell you what I’m
not
going to do.”

“You’re not going to give up on this.”

“Damn straight.”

Joel pulled the car over at the curb by Shelly’s office. She had another late night ahead of her. She had been working with a forensic pathologist on the distance of the gunshot. She was drafting an appeal of Judge Dominici’s ruling two days ago that she could not make the city police department open its internal investigation to her. And she felt, in many ways, like she was just getting started on this case, constantly starting back up a new hill.

“That kid really thought you might shoot him,” she said. “Just like that, for no reason other than the fact that you weren’t getting the answers you wanted. And I thought I knew their world.”

“Say, Shelly,” Joel called to her as she left the car. She poked her head back in through the passenger’s window. “That was a cheap shot back there. Nice kick, but cheap shot.”

She couldn’t disagree with that. But she had felt less than charitable toward the young man. And the element of surprise was always the most effective weapon of all.

S
HELLY SIGHED WHEN
she returned to her office. She not only had the appeal of Judge Dominici’s ruling on the police investigative file to finish, she had promised to look over a complaint that one of the law firm’s associates was planning to file with the state Human Rights Commission, alleging racial discrimination against a company in town. This extra work was the price of these nice offices and resources—a price that she had insisted on paying, but still, it was keeping her away from full-time concentration on Alex’s case.

Her cell phone buzzed. She recognized Joel’s number.

“We were followed tonight,” he told her. He sounded breathless. He was in the car, she could tell, from hearing the radio in the background.

“Who?”

“Well, I don’t know. My guys picked it up. A pretty good tail, I have to say. I had no idea.”

“You weren’t looking for it,” she said. “But who?”

“Well, I’d assume law enforcement. Probably the feds.”

She didn’t know how to react. There was something creepy about it, no doubt, but she felt a measure of validation. It told her that she was onto something here. Maybe.

“We lost them,” said Joel. “In fairness, we weren’t ready for it.”

“Sure. No problem. What do you suggest?”

“I’ll put a tail on myself,” he said. “If I’m followed again,
we’ll get ’em. But I don’t think they’ll make that mistake again, Shelly. They probably know we outed them.”

“Don’t be sure.” If it was the F.B.I., enforcing Shelly’s promise that she would not expose the operation prematurely, they might
want
to be noticed.

She hung up and noticed the newspaper sitting on the corner of her desk. Paul Riley had written a note from his personal stationery—“FYI”—and she saw the article. The
Daily Watch
was following the closing days of the state legislative session, in which the Democratic-controlled House and Senate had passed legislation to repeal the ban on abortions funded by public aid. The law banning publicly funded abortions had been passed in the late ’90s, when the G.O.P. controlled the Senate and there were enough conservative Democrats in the House to pass the bill. That law had effectively ended any state funding of abortions—with the necessary exceptions to satisfy the Supreme Court—which meant that it had affected only the indigent, those who needed public aid to pay for the procedure.

The Democrats, now in control of both chambers, had passed a bill two days ago to end the ban, to open up the taxpayers’ wallets once more for this particular procedure. Governor Langdon Trotter had vowed a swift veto. His challenger in the November election, Anne Claire Drummond, bitterly criticized the governor’s response. This was not about abortion, she said, so much as it was about treating the poor differently.

The story accompanied an article that showed a surprisingly strong showing for the Democratic nominee. Anne Claire Drummond was a former state legislator and congresswoman from upstate. She had made a name for herself as a proponent of universal health care, which was probably not the way to endear herself to the state’s voters. Drummond was the liberal among the Democrats vying for the nomination and was not, as far as Shelly could tell, the preferred choice of a party trying desperately to break the G.O.P. stronghold on the governor’s mansion. But she had run a series of snappy television ads that got her out to an early lead, and women crossing over from the G.O.P. had provided the necessary votes for Anne Claire Drummond to hold on against two male opponents.

If the election were held today, the
Daily Watch
said, Governor
Trotter would receive 51 percent of the vote, and Congresswomen Drummond would receive 47. That wasn’t bad. Shelly assumed a lot of that was attributable to Drummond being the new kid on the block. When they went to the polls, most voters in the mainstream voted for comfort, and that usually went in favor of the incumbent. And her father was no lightweight. He seemed to know exactly where to draw the lines in an election year. Short of a major scandal, Governor Trotter could expect to be re-elected by a comfortable margin.

Short of a major scandal,
she repeated to herself.

The
Daily Watch,
in an editorial, agreed with the Democratic nominee Drummond on the governor’s promised veto of the abortion bill. Abortions should be safe and rare, it said, but not based on disparities in income. And didn’t an abortion spare the taxpayers from supporting this child born to a dependent family? Whether from a cost-benefit analysis or an issue of fairness, the governor was wrong.

Shelly took the newspaper and ripped it in half. She threw it across the room, then went over and retrieved it. She continued to tear at it until it was reduced to tiny rubble. When she was finished, she gathered some material, turned off the light, and went home.

U
SUALLY
S
ATURDAYS FLY
by. This one, yesterday, slowed to a crawl, beginning with their discussion in the morning, when Shelly dropped the bomb on them. It was an hour or so before her parents could even gather themselves to provide a meaningful response—a response, that is, other than questions about the father of her child, or the rhetorical how-could-you-do-this question. Private discussions took place, phone calls (Shelly was relatively sure, presumably to her grandparents), a long walk in the evening.