Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter) (2 page)

But Joey Desimone was different. He stood accused of the cold-blooded murder of a husband and wife in Montclair. The evidence was clearly against him, and I understood the jury’s finding him guilty, but every instinct I had said he didn’t do it.

Weighing heavily in the jurors’ minds, though they would never admit it and the judge specifically told them not to consider it, was the fact that Joey is the son of Carmine Desimone, the head of an organized crime family in Central Jersey.

Joey was widely thought to have distanced himself from his family’s “occupation,” and I believed then, and still do, that he had nothing to do with the criminal enterprise. But it was a mark against him, as was the fact that Joey was having an affair with the woman who died in the attack, Karen Solarno.

Public outrage at the crime was widespread; I was even castigated for representing him. The jury climbed on the anti-Joey bandwagon and gave him life without the possibility of parole. They would have given him the death penalty, but New Jersey doesn’t have one. Joey’s continuing to live actually became an issue in the next gubernatorial campaign, with one of the candidates pointing to it as a prime reason for a reinstatement of the ultimate punishment.

That candidate lost, and retreated to his previous post on Wall Street. Joey, in the meantime, spends twenty-three of every twenty-four hours sitting in a seven-by-ten-foot cell.

So I visit him. Not that often, maybe three or four times a year, and not for any reason other than to let him know he’s not forgotten. Early on I could see the look of hope on his face that I was bringing him some news that might help get him out of prison, and then the disappointment when that obviously wasn’t the case.

Now we just have easy conversations, friends talking about whatever. He’s managed to keep up to date on the news of the day, especially sports, so the conversation flows smoothly.

I don’t bother asking him how things are in the prison anymore. The answer is always a shrug and “getting by.” I know that he doesn’t get hassled by other inmates, for a few reasons. First of all, he minds his own business. Second, he’s a former Marine who can handle himself as well as anyone in the place.

Third, and by far the most important, everyone knows who his father is. Joey has often told me how distressed his father is that his son is behind bars, and that he was unable to prevent it. He is, however, more than powerful enough to have effectively put the word out that Joey is not to be messed with.

Joey is a football Giants fan, another mark in his favor, but he takes it to a level well past me. I know who the starters are, and am generally aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Joey knows everyone on the roster, including the practice squad, and he can talk at length about any one of them. Which is fine, because when it comes to football talk, I can listen at length.

I mention my experience with Tara, the Therapy Dog, and Joey finds it hilarious. “So you bring a dog right into the hospital? Isn’t that unsanitary or something?”

“Unsanitary? Tara?” I ask. “You start talking trash about Tara and it won’t do you any good to smile when you say it.”

He laughs, apparently not cowed by my threat. “Sorry, but I can’t picture it. The world has changed a lot since I’ve been in here.”

He probably doesn’t know how true that is, but I decide that his comment is not banter material, so I don’t try it. “I doubted it myself, but the first person I did it with, Tara really made her feel better. It’s like she came alive.”

His eyes light up with an idea. “Hey, does the person have to be in a hospital?”

“No, I don’t think so. Could be an old-age home, even in someone’s house. Wherever.”

“Would you try it with my uncle Nick?”

There’s pretty much no favor I wouldn’t grant Joey, but bringing Tara to visit Nick Desimone is pushing it. “Nicky Fats,” as he has been known to the tabloids, his family, his friends, police, and probably most of the people he has killed, has been Carmine Desimone’s right-hand man since Carmine assumed control of the family.

Carmine has been known to be ruthless in stamping out his enemies, a throwback to the days when the accepted mode of operation was to shoot, stab, and club first, and ask questions later. According to the lore, Nicky Fats makes Carmine look like Mary Poppins, and apparently moves with a deadly dexterity that belies his three-hundred-fifty-pound girth.

“You want me to do dog therapy with your uncle Nick?” I try to make my voice sound as incredulous as possible, but I can’t get it to the level that I really feel.

“You don’t want to?” he asks.

“What if Tara sheds on him?”

He laughs again. “What … you think he’ll kill you if she sheds on him?”

“Not necessarily kill, but ‘maim’ and ‘torture’ briefly entered my mind.”

“Don’t worry about it. Shedding would be fine; just don’t have Tara pull a knife on him. But seriously, Andy, he used to call me all the time. Now I talk to him maybe once a month, and he’s not like himself. Really down, you know? And not so sharp anymore. He forgets stuff; sometimes doesn’t make sense. And it’s getting worse.”

In a courtroom, even under tremendous pressure, I can think on my feet and verbally and strategically react to anything that might happen. But in this case, talking about taking a dog to visit an old fat man, I freeze up like a Fudgsicle.

“Sure. Happy to do it,” I say. In terms of level of truthfulness, that statement would rank with something like, “Damn, I’m going to be traveling to Saturn that day to go giraffe hunting.”

“Great. I’ll set it up.”

“You’re going to meet with Nicky Fats? And you’re taking a dog?”

The speaker is Eddie “Hike” Lynch, the lawyer who works with me when we have a case to work on, which means we don’t work together very often. He comes into the office pretty much daily to use the computer. Hike is cheap; he wouldn’t buy his own computer if the store threw in the antidote to a deadly poison he had just taken.

Hike also takes pessimism to a new level, so I’m not surprised that he sees my upcoming therapy session as a disaster about to happen.

“It’ll be a half hour, and I’ll be out of there,” I say.

“Really? What if you piss him off?”

“I won’t piss him off.”

“Come on,” he says. “You piss everybody off. You’re a really annoying person.”

“Thanks, Hike.”

“And speaking of pissing, what if your dog pisses on the floor?”

“Don’t call her my dog, OK? Her name is Tara.”

“What does that mean? She’s not your dog?’

“She’s my partner, and she’s a trained therapist.”

“Sorry. What if your trained therapist pisses on the floor?”

“There is no chance of that,” I say.

“Oh yeah? If I was alone in a room with Nicky Fats, I’d piss on the floor.”

My assistant, Edna, is not in because it is Tuesday. When we are not working on a case, Edna takes seven-day weekends. Tuesdays consistently fall within that window.

Her absence has left me with only Hike to talk to, which clearly is unacceptable, so I head for home. Laurie is not there; she’s teaching her criminology class at William Paterson College. But Tara is, and she and I need to talk.

I grab the leash, which sends her barreling toward the door. We take the same walk through Eastside Park that we take every day, but as always she treats it like it’s the first time she’s been in this wonderful aromatic world.

“Tara, we’re going to see this guy named Nicky; he’s pretty old and probably still pretty fat. He’s got a bit of a temper, so we want to be careful how we treat him.”

She’s not really paying attention, looking off toward a nearby tree. “You want to look for squirrels, or listen to me? Anyway, just be yourself, but follow my lead. Just do what I do, OK? For instance, don’t lick him unless I do, and I definitely won’t. Wagging your tail is fine.”

Tara doesn’t intimidate easily. I know that for a fact; we’ve argued over biscuit issues a number of times over the years, and the next time I win will be the first. She’s either not worried about meeting Nicky Fats, or she’s putting up a front. I suspect it’s the former.

I may be worrying too much, and at the same time underestimating Tara’s therapeutic powers. By the time she’s done with this fearsome Mafia figure, he’ll probably be a sensitive, poetry-reading, yoga-loving, introspective, mushy guy.

From pictures I’ve seen, he’s got the mushy part down already.

Somehow, Nicky Fats manages to be simultaneously fat and frail. He doesn’t seem quite as obese as the older pictures had made him appear, but I would still put him in the two-eighty-to-three-hundred-pound range.

But he’s also gotten very old, which I suppose is an accomplishment for someone in his profession. He seems weak, and his face is drawn and almost thin, a weird contrast to the rest of his body.

So far the visit has been not as awful as I expected. Nicky lives in Carmine’s house, which is on a nice piece of property just outside of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Two men greeted Tara and me at the door, but as security guards go, they were pretty lax.

I’ve been frisked by mob guys in the past in such a way that my private parts were made to feel open to the public. With these guys, I could have been carrying a bazooka, and I doubt they would have noticed.

They motioned me into a room at the rear of the house, which turned out to be a den. There was a large-screen TV, and Nicky was sitting in an armchair watching ESPN. Watching might be the wrong word; Nicky appeared to be paying no attention to it at all.

Nicky seemed to be expecting our visit, or at least he didn’t show any surprise. All he said was, “The dog is here. What time is it?”

I introduced myself as Andy Carpenter, though I was tempted to say I was Hike Lynch, in case anything happened that would cause Nicky to order some kind of retribution. He didn’t respond to that, or to my mentioning that Joey suggested I stop by, or to anything else I said.

But he sure as hell liked Tara. She went right up to him and he started petting her, occasionally laughing a weird laugh as he did so. This has now gone on for almost forty-five minutes, though it feels like next week will be two years since we got here. When one is with Nicky Fats, time goes in slow motion.

Nicky seems intermittently lucid, snapping back and forth from clear statements to borderline gibberish. But one constant is his petting and focus on Tara; she has got this therapy thing down really well.

Suddenly, Nicky looks up at me and says, “Who are you?”

I’ve mentioned my name a couple of times already, but decide that I don’t need to point that out. “I’m Andy Carpenter. Joey suggested I come visit.”

“Good boy, that Joey.”

I nod vigorously. Nicky Fats is the kind of guy that makes you want to nod vigorously. I’ll keep doing it until he says something like, “Stop nodding vigorously, asshole.”

“Yes, definitely a good boy, that Joey,” I say, since it seemed to fit in with the nodding vigorously approach.

“He coming here today?” Nicky asks.

Now, I know that Nicky has been in contact with Joey in prison, so it’s not like it’s been kept a secret from him the last six years. But if he’s forgotten about it, I’m not going to be the one to rebreak the news to him. “No, he’s not coming today,” I say.

I swear, I can see his eyes, and behind that his mind, start to clear. “He’s locked up,” Nicky says.

I nod, less vigorously this time. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Who are you? How do you know Joey?”

“My name is Andy Carpenter. I am Joey’s lawyer.”

“You lost the case?”

This time a slight nod and an involuntary cringe. “I lost the case.”

“My fault,” he says. “My fault.”

I assume he’s using the wrong pronoun, and instead of “your” fault, is saying “my” fault. I decide to be gracious and defensive at the same time. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

“We shoulda hit the bastard ourselves, as soon as it happened,” Nicky says. “I shoulda told Carmine. We should have been the ones to do it. My fault.”

On second thought, maybe he’s got the pronoun right. But whatever he’s saying, it’s so strange that I can’t let it go. “What are you talking about? As soon as what happened?”

“The prick couldn’t be trusted, you know? He was dirty; he had no honor. We shoulda hit him months before.”

“Are you talking about Solarno? Richard Solarno? The guy they said Joey murdered?”

Nicky nods and seems to be getting agitated. “I knew the prick couldn’t be trusted. I shoulda told Carmine.”

“Solarno? Is that what you’re saying? Why would you have to trust him? How did you even know him?”

Then something else seems to click in the relic that is his mind, and he stares straight at me with very cold eyes. “Get out of here. Take the dog.”

One more vigorous nod and Tara and I are out the door. I’m not sure, but I think she is nodding as well. Vigorously.

No one will ever have to put out an “All Points Bulletin” for Pete Stanton. The Paterson police lieutenant is always in one of two places; either he is on the job, or he is at Charlie’s, the greatest sports bar in America.

Part of what I am saying is hearsay. Except for when his path crosses with mine on a case or at trial, I don’t actually see him on the job. But he is a star in the department, and seems to be involved in a large number of investigations and arrests. He also knows virtually everything about any case the department is dealing with, whether he is assigned to it or not. So I’m assuming he works long hours.

But when it comes to Charlie’s, I am an eyewitness. Pete, Vince Sanders, and I have a regular table at Charlie’s. I’m not there every night, nor is Vince, but Pete’s presence is a rock-solid guarantee. I think he handcuffs himself to the table.

Laurie is the only other person allowed at the table, but for some reason she doesn’t come by more than a couple of times a month. I’m not sure why; it’s possible she doesn’t care for the belching.

Pete’s probably the only true sports fan among the three of us. Vince and I bet on the games, and therefore have a manufactured interest. Pete doesn’t gamble, which in my view makes him a communist, but he will eagerly watch any sport on television.