Authors: David Ellis
She saw the headlines through the glass before she had dumped the coins in:
FEDS NAB COPS IN DRUG CONSPIRACY
P
ARTNERSHIP WITH
S
TREET
G
ANG
A
LLEGED
She threw in the coins and pulled on the handle to no avail, finally having to remove the change and try again after almost yanking the stand off the ground.
She removed the paper and started reading. She was vaguely aware of a bus stopping but she was too absorbed to think of it.
The United States Attorney, Mason Tremont, was pictured standing with authority before a bank of microphones. In the background, according to the caption on the front page, was the F.B.I.’s special agent-in-charge in the city, as well as the profile, out of focus, of Assistant United States Attorney Jerod Romero. The headline was supported by three separate stories covering the police officers, the federal investigation, and others caught up in the federal probe.
According to the story, late yesterday, federal agents arrested six officers on the city police force, along with a number of others allegedly involved in a wide-ranging conspiracy to promote and protect the drug trade on the city’s west side. The charges against the officers would range from providing a safe harbor for the narcotics traffic, to receiving kickbacks, to outright selling the drugs themselves.
She swept the coverage looking for the critical names—Raymond Miroballi; Alex Baniewicz; Miroballi’s partner, Julio Sanchez; Eddie Todavia; even Ronnie Masters. She finally found a bullet-point list of individuals picked up in the sting. There were six police officers but she did not recognize any of their names. There was one sergeant and five patrol officers. The paper listed sixteen other people, whose roles in the scheme were not detailed. In some cases, because they were juveniles, their names were not even listed. Some of them—many of them, probably—had been smaller players who were busted and flipped. Many of them were undoubtedly members of the Columbus Street Cannibals.
It was a wide-scale scheme to distribute crack cocaine on the west side. That made sense, if you wanted to sell drugs on the street on a volume basis. Cops were skimming off the top in drug busts—if not stealing the entire stash—employing runners to do the selling, helping out the bad guys when they got picked up, tipping off their cronies, even recruiting buyers. The implicated police officers came from more than one precinct on the west side. Shelly didn’t know one precinct from another. She’d have to consult with Joel Lightner or Paul on that point.
By the time she walked into her office, she had read every article twice and used a pen to mark relevant portions. Another copy of the front page was sitting on her chair, courtesy of Paul, no doubt. She put in a call to Joel Lightner and left a message on his cell phone.
She looked again at the photograph of United States Attorney Mason Tremont. He was the first African American named to this jurisdiction as the top federal prosecutor. He was appointed by, and served at the pleasure of, the president, like all U.S. Attorneys. But in reality, the rule was that the president turned to the highest-ranking member of his political party in the state to give the nod. It was a courtesy extended in nearly every jurisdiction in the country by both political parties. And because the two state senators were Democrats, the Republican president turned to Governor Trotter to suggest all federal judges and United States Attorneys.
Tremont was the governor’s guy, or one of many. He was a former federal prosecutor who had made a nice career for himself in white-collar criminal defense and commercial litigation. But his greatest attribute was fund-raising. It was estimated—because such things could not be directly attributed—that Mason Tremont had been responsible for raising as much as three million dollars for Lang Trotter’s gubernatorial campaign in the 2000 race.
She looked at her watch. She was supposed to see Alex this morning, but that might have to wait. She went to the copier and made duplicates of the articles.
She was twelve days from trial and she had a lot of people to interview, or at least try to interview. She would have to revise her witness list based on this “newly discovered” development. It was not new to Shelly, of course, at least not entirely. The judge would not be happy with her. But she would explain the necessity of her silence, and the judge at least would have to let her add the arrested police officers to her list, because she never knew their names until now. That was really all she needed. If the judge did not allow her to call the federal investigators and prosecutors as witnesses, that would be acceptable to her. They didn’t seem too thrilled in helping out Alex, anyway.
The key was she could not let the judge move the trial date.
This was, more or less, what she had wanted. A big splash of publicity, talking about city cops on the take, illegal and rough stuff, only days before her trial started. It made her chances of showing self-defense all the easier. The jurors from around the county would not exactly be bowled over with shock when she told them Ray Miroballi was a drug-dealing cop.
Assuming she was going to say that. Assuming she was pleading self-defense.
That particular theory was looking better and better the more she read the stories. There would be follow-ups. Hopefully—though not likely—even a guilty plea or two before Alex’s trial started. Cops
admitting
they were on the take.
The only person more excited than she, Shelly assumed, was Jerod Romero. This was his baby, and what a baby it was. Public corruption cases were the top-selling ticket in this town. Yes, this would make for excellent drama. The public—the jury in Alex’s case—would be in the mood. Suburbanites in the county would only feel validated in their already tainted view of the city’s finest. The city dwellers on the west and south sides would be outraged. There was no one, in fact, who wouldn’t feel either disgusted or more disgusted.
She had a winner. Right?
Right. It sounded better today, with this news, than ever before. Ray Miroballi was a dirty cop who forced a kid to sell drugs. Miroballi was getting nervous about Alex, because Miroballi had discovered Alex was working with the feds against him and he needed to silence him. Alex shot him in self-defense. Miroballi’s partner, Sanchez, says differently? That’s because he was a part of it. He was a dirty cop, too—
like those other cops you read about in the papers,
she would not be able to directly say.
She felt a surge of adrenaline—positive juice—for the first time in a long time. Maybe Ronnie had nothing to do with this. Sure, it seemed like he was there. But he didn’t do anything but try to help Alex out of the jam afterward. No reason to implicate him. Irrelevant, is what it was. A textbook case of self-defense. She’d been foolish to think otherwise.
Her phone rang after ten o’clock. It was county prosecutor Daniel Morphew.
“Haven’t heard back from you,” he said. “I thought we were talking here.”
“What was that, Dan? Seventy years? I don’t think so.”
“Well, that much I figured. I’m saying, come to the table.”
“I need something more enticing than seventy years to get me to the table. Okay, you want a counteroffer? How about time served?”
Morphew made a noise that resembled a mischievous laugh. “Okay, Counselor. I’ll give you a discount for the headline today. Everyone hates cops, right? So take fifty. And I’m bidding against myself here.”
“I’ll take it to my client, Dan, but no way.”
“He killed a cop, Shelly.”
“A scumbag.”
“Listen—I’m not arguing merits with you here. I’m saying, he killed a cop. There’s only so much we can do here, even if we wanted to make this go away. We have to work with these guys every day of the week. Cops have to trust us. See what I’m saying?”
Of course she did. “After today’s headline?” she said. “They’ll be on their heels for quite a while. You guys are big boys.”
“Then tell me no, Counselor. Tell me that there’s no way we can deal.”
She didn’t catch the meaning.
“Tell me there’s no deal you will take. No middle ground.”
He needed to hear the words. Okay. He was saying this wasn’t his idea. He had orders from on high to make this case disappear. He needed to be able to report a resounding “no” from Shelly Trotter. This could be a bluff. Most lawyers wanted to appear reluctant to make a deal. The best settlements were the ones where both sides walked away unhappy, or at least pretended to be unhappy. But she hadn’t seen much of that bullshit in Dan Morphew. She was betting that he was being straight with her.
“Elliot wants to make this go away?” she tried, invoking the name of Morphew’s boss, County Attorney Elliot Raycroft.
The grunt again, Morphew’s version of a laugh, only this time it seemed less sincere, less pleasant. “Okay, Counselor. If that works for you.”
She felt her blood boil. She had expected something like that answer but it didn’t reduce the sting. Morphew wasn’t directly saying the words because he couldn’t afford to be quoted. He assumed they were speaking the same language. The county attorney wasn’t calling the shots either, he was saying. Elliot Raycroft was heeding a call from higher up.
“Every one of those guys in the federal sting is going on my witness list,” she said. “I’ll have it to you by the end of the day.”
“The cops rounded up? C’mon, Counselor. One has nothing to do with the other.”
Shelly smiled to herself. Dan Morphew, to date, had absolutely no idea what Shelly was going to do with her self-defense argument. He didn’t know about the plea arrangement Alex made with the F.B.I. He didn’t know that Alex had ever been picked up by the feds at all. Shelly had played a game with the prosecutor. She had counted on the fact that she could prove everything she needed through Alex, her client, whose testimony she was not required to disclose to the prosecutor. But since the feds had made their bust a little sooner than she had expected, she would now disclose Jerod Romero, the federal prosecutor, as well as everyone else involved in the sting. She had already begun to put together the supplemental disclosure. But she was feeling a little mean right now, bitter, after Morphew had all but told her outright that Governor Langdon Trotter was interceding to help plead out this case. So she wanted to deliver her news to Morphew personally.
“Alex was part of that sting,” she told Morphew. “He was working for the feds trying to nail a certain drug-dealing cop. A cop by the name of Raymond Miroballi. Miroballi was one of those guys, Dan. And Alex was trying to help put him away.”
Silence at the other end of the phone. She wondered if Morphew had swallowed his tongue.
“This was coming out through Alex,” she continued. “But since the feds decided to move on the other cops, I might as well—”
“You haven’t disclosed shit about this,” he said.
“Well, as I was saying, Counselor, I didn’t have to. Moreover, as you will soon learn, we had a confidentiality agreement with the federal government.”
“That doesn’t mean squat to me—”
“No, I suppose not. Like I said, I was going to put this on through my client. But now that the U.S. Attorney has gone ahead and made his bust, I might as well go full throttle. The judge isn’t going to stop me.”
“This is an ambush, Shelly. This is—this is bullshit.”
“Name a rule I violated,” she said. “You can’t. I’ll have a disclosure to you by day’s end.”
She heard papers ruffling on the other end. She had just made Dan Morphew’s next two weeks much more difficult. She had considered not naming these new people, sticking with her plan of putting on this evidence through Alex. But she decided against it. She wanted the jury to see as much of the grime as possible. She wanted to parade corrupt cops to the witness stand and ask them technically relevant questions—
Did you work with Ray Miroballi to sell drugs and protect drug dealers? Did Ray Miroballi tell you that my client, Alex Baniewicz, had flipped to the feds? Did Miroballi tell you that he had to kill my client to keep the operation going?
—knowing full well that the witnesses would refuse to answer any of the questions. They would take the fifth, while Shelly threw all of these vicious accusations at these cops for the jury’s benefit. She would have at least six opportunities to do this, and by the end of the trial, the jury would have heard these suggestions so many times, they would certainly have to wonder.
“We’re adding a witness of our own,” Morphew said.
“Yeah?” Shelly felt the familiar heart palpitation of a lawyer near trial.
“Eddie Todavia. Ring a bell?”
She didn’t respond. She felt a slow burn in her chest.
“Getting back to an earlier point,” he continued. “You’re telling me there’s no chance of a deal.”
“Tell him whatever you want to tell him,” she answered. “Tell him to kiss my white Irish butt.” She hung up the phone and went for her coat.
T
WO PHONE CALLS
was all it took. Two calls to Mari Rodriguez, the governor’s chief of staff. Sixty minutes later, she was walking into the Maritime Club, one of the exclusive, predominantly male clubs in the city. Shelly did not walk among these people generally speaking, but Governor Langdon Trotter certainly did.
She knew he was in town today. It was a rather inconsequential fact to her, not because she was too busy to see him but because, busy or otherwise, neither was likely to make much of an effort to see the other. Fine. That was fine. Stay out of her way, she would stay out of his. It had been an unofficial truce for years. Anger had turned to indifference, and usually stayed there, or at least she wanted to think so.
She took the elevator to the eleventh floor, where she had scheduled her meeting. You had to schedule with the governor. But if you were an irate daughter almost screaming into a cell phone, adjustments were made. Shelly was relatively sure that the offices nearby had been cleaned out. You’re governor and you want privacy, snap a finger and it happens.
Mari wasn’t around. All she saw when the elevator popped open were two members of his security detail, wearing suits and grave expressions, phone cords winding from their waist into earpieces.