Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter) (3 page)

Tonight is a perfect example. Because the four or five hundred ESPN channels each have to devour twenty-four hours of sports, they show games like Troy at Middle Tennessee State, which is on tonight.

I’m taking Middle Tennessee plus five points, while Vince has Troy. If I wasn’t betting the game, I wouldn’t watch it if you strapped me to the chair. But not only is Pete interested in it, he’s spouting facts about the key players on each team.

At the half, Troy is ahead by two touchdowns. I don’t mind that I’m losing; what bothers me is that Vince is winning. Vince is a terrible loser; he complains, makes excuses, and can’t let it go. He’s also a terrible winner; he brags, gloats, and is generally obnoxious. And tie games bring out the worst in him.

“How could you possibly bet Middle Tennessee?” he asks. “Northern Tennessee I could understand. Southern Tennessee I get. But Middle Tennessee? They play chess and jacks in the middle of Tennessee, not football.”

“You’re an idiot,” I point out.

“So you’re down two touchdowns to an idiot?” he asks, a question for which there is no good retort, because it contains the truth.

“Currently I am, yes.”

Satisfied with his rhetorical victory, Vince looks around the room, his customary frown on his face. “This place is turning into foo-foo land.”

There was a time, early in our relationship, when I would have said, “What do you mean, Vince?” That time has now passed; he’s going to tell me anyway, no doubt in a negative rant, so there’s no reason to pretend I’m interested.

“Just sitting here, I can see eleven beer bottles on tables.”

“So?”

“Of those, nine are light beers, and of those, eight are foreign.”

“I repeat … so?”

“So if they don’t like this country, and they don’t want to be fat, why don’t they go to some health spa in Paris, sip wheat germ, and let me drink real American beer and watch football?”

There’s no answer to that, and no reason at all to continue to talk to Vince, so I turn my attention to Pete. He hasn’t said much during the first half, which is typical for him. For one thing, he’s intent on watching the game. For another, it’s hard to chitchat when one has a beer bottle in one’s mouth.

For Pete, a beer bottle is like a pacifier. When he’s complaining, or talking too much, you just stick one in his mouth and he starts happily sucking on it.

“What’s new in the world of crime?” I ask.

“Why, you looking for some scumbags to represent?”

They’ve been verbally mistreating me like this for a long time, and I’ve suddenly had enough. “OK, listen, both of you. You are either going to talk to me in a civil, friendly, respectful manner, or you are going to buy your own beer and burgers.” Since I am wealthy, and they’re not, I am always getting stuck with the check.

“How’s it going, my man?” Vince says to me, not missing a beat. “You’re looking good today. You lose some weight?”

“Why would he need to lose weight?” Pete says. “The man is ripped. It’s no wonder Laurie is nuts about him.”

This is even worse than the abuse. “That’s enough,” I say. “Now you’re making me nauseous.”

“Whatever you say, asshole,” Vince says.

“I’ve fished bodies better than yours out of the river,” Pete chimes in.

Back to normal.

“So I heard you were making the prison rounds yesterday,” Pete says. “How’s killer Joey doing?”

Pete was the arresting officer in the Desimone case, and his testimony at trial was credible and convincing. He never had any doubt about Joey’s guilt, as he has told me on numerous occasions.

“How much do you know about Richard Solarno?” I ask.

“He’s dead.”

“Besides that.”

“Read the trial transcript.”

“I have, many times. I’m talking about beyond what came out at trial. How carefully did you check into him?”

He’s quickly suspicious. “Why?”

“Because I’m buying the beer.”

He shrugs his defeat. “Not that much. There wasn’t much point; he wasn’t the target. His wife was.”

“According to your theory.”

“Right. I’ve got to stop basing my theories on the facts and the evidence. I should use your approach and have my theories delivered to me from fantasyland.”

“Any chance Solarno was involved in something illegal?”

“Like what?”

“I have no idea.”

“Sounds like you’re really getting somewhere.”

“Just answer my question,” I say.

“Yeah; he was into something illegal. He was a Russian spy. He also killed Kennedy and kidnapped Lindbergh’s kid. Who’s putting this bullshit into your head?”

“Nicky Fats.”

Vince considers it time to jump in. “You talked to Nicky Fats? I hear he sits in a room all day planning to assassinate President Eisenhower.”

“What the hell were you doing talking to Nicky Fats?” Pete asks. “Is he your next innocent client?”

“He’s a misunderstood soul,” I say. “But he had some interesting things to say about Richard Solarno.”

Now Pete sneers openly. “Yeah? Why didn’t he say them when Joey was going down?”

“Now that is a damn good question.”

Nicky Fats forgot Carpenter’s visit within ten minutes after he left. His short-term memory was unpredictable. Some things stuck with him for days, or even months, while others were wiped clean almost instantly. Were Carpenter and his dog to come back, Nicky would think they were visiting for the first time.

The deterioration of his mind had taken place slowly, and his family and friends had been just as slow to notice it. Of course, Nicky had never been surrounded by the most sensitive of people, nor those who were the most tolerant of weakness.

It was up to Nicky’s brother, Carmine, to provide for his care. Carmine was the youngest of three brothers, seven years younger than Nicky, who in turn was born three years after Vincent Desimone. Vincent seemed destined to lead the family, but his ascent was thwarted by a bullet that spread his brain matter over much of downtown Bayonne, New Jersey.

Of the remaining, unsplattered brains among the siblings, Carmine’s was significantly superior to Nicky’s. Since Nicky was far more prone to, and adept at, violence, the roles they adopted were the obvious ones. Carmine would be in charge, and Nicky would be his trusted enforcer.

Nothing much changed for many years, and the family ruled with only occasional challenges that they thwarted easily and ruthlessly. They’ve also been comparatively successful in fending off law enforcement. While other “families” have been infiltrated and had their top people taken down by the feds, the Desimone family has survived relatively intact.

To this day Carmine is said to be on top of his game, but instead of having Nicky as his enforcer, he has taken on the role of Nicky’s caretaker.

Not that it’s taken a lot of work. Nicky has been mostly content to sit in his room, watching television and movies on DVDs. He’s not adept at working the remote control, but that hasn’t been a big problem, because he doesn’t really seem to care what he’s watching.

Lately Nicky has asked to go out more, even mentioning old friends that he wants to see. The fact that some of them have been dead for twenty years either is lost to his failed memory, or not enough to deter him from wanting to reconnect and hash over old times.

Carmine’s primary custodian for Nicky is Tommy Iurato. Iurato is somewhat overqualified for the assignment; he’s been a top-level soldier in the family for years.

Iurato had given the OK to allow Carpenter and the dog to visit with Nicky. He figured that it would be uneventful, and might shut the complaining Nicky up for a while.

The other, more important reason was that it would serve as a test, to see how Nicky would handle himself when in contact with the outside world.

“Did you enjoy the visit?” Iurato asked when he brought in Nicky’s dinner. It was the same dinner every night, spaghetti and meatballs, chocolate pudding, and a carafe of red wine.

“What?”

“When you saw the lawyer and the dog. How was that?”

“What the hell you talking about?” Nicky asked. He absolutely had no clue about having had a visit of any kind.

“Never mind. I thought someone was here today. Maybe I was wrong.”

“Not only are you wrong, but you’re stupid,” Nicky said.

Iurato not only knew that Carpenter and the dog had been there, he knew every word that was said. He had seen it through the hidden cameras in the room, and heard it through the hidden microphones. Nicky was under constant surveillance.

Iurato didn’t argue; he simply left the food, and then came back ten minutes later, when Nicky was finished. The old man still had a healthy appetite, yet had been losing weight regardless of how much he ate. It was the one thing about him that Iurato envied.

Iurato picked up the dishes and placed them on the table. He then propped Nicky up in his chair; he had slouched a bit and had a difficult time lifting himself back up.

Once that was accomplished, Iurato stepped behind Nicky, and in one motion, broke his neck. He did it quickly and expertly, in the same manner he had used with previous victims.

Iurato went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, then ripped the shower curtain and threw it on the wet floor. He then dragged Nicky into the bathroom, which was not an easy task, as Nicky now defined the term “deadweight.”

Iurato placed Nicky on the floor, and then left the bathroom, closing the door behind him. The official report would say that Nicky had slipped and fallen in the shower, and no one would contradict it. No coroner in his right mind would believe that someone had come into Nicky Fats’s house and killed him.

And no one could ever have imagined who ordered it, or why.

I am at my computer when I have a potentially life-changing experience. There, sitting in my e-mail in-box with far less important messages, is one with the subject, “Urgent response requested.”

Never one to fail to respond to an urgent request, I open the e-mail and am shocked to find that it is from one Amin d’Amino, a bank officer in Ghana. He is writing to me because he has learned that I am a man that can be trusted to handle a sensitive matter with great discretion. And this is clearly a sensitive matter.

It turns out that there are twenty million dollars sitting in this particular bank, needing only a destination to allow Mr. d’Amino to send it to. And he has chosen me! From a country full of people! Obviously the Andy Carpenter star shines brightly around the world.

For my trouble and discretion I will receive eight million dollars for myself. Amazingly, all I have to do is send him my bank account information, so that he can wire it. It’s an eminently reasonable request; if it takes me five minutes to do it, I will have earned one point six million dollars per minute. There are NBA players who don’t earn that much.

Having said that, I’m thinking that maybe I’m not worthy of something like this. I’m debating this in my own mind, when I hear the doorbell. Laurie opens it and lets Hike in, and he comes into the den, carrying a filled cardboard box, which he puts down on the desk.

“Give me your bank account number,” I say.

“What for?”

“Eight million dollars, that’s what for. It’s your lucky day.”

“Is that the Ghana money?” he asks.

“How did you know?”

“I already sent them your information. You should get the wire any minute. Which is good, considering you’re working for a client who hasn’t paid you for six years.”

He’s referring to Joey, though of course I haven’t done any work for him during those six years. There was little need to fight to keep someone out of prison when that person was already in prison.

“Let’s take a look at the file,” I say, and proceed to take folders out of the box that Hike brought from the office. While I’m not being paid for this, Hike is, which is why he was so willing to pick up the file and bring it over. If I asked Hike to drive to Wyoming to pick up an acre of cowshit, he would be fine doing so, as long as he could bill by the hour, and he could get time and a half for washing off his shoes.

“Your schedule is a little off,” Hike says.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not the end of the month.”

Hike knows that my going through old files on cases I’ve lost is a common practice for me, as I’m always hoping I’ll suddenly find something I’d previously missed. But I usually reserve the last week of every other month to do so, and the next time isn’t for six weeks.

“I got some new information yesterday, from Nicky Fats,” I say.

“Did you kill him after he gave it to you?”

“What does that mean? We did therapy with him.”

“He’s dead; I just heard it on the way over here. He died yesterday afternoon.”

This is stunning news. “How?”

“They’re not saying … but apparently he was depressed, and they’re hinting at suicide. Maybe you’re not that good at the therapy stuff.”

The timing of Nicky Fats’s death is a direct violation of my coincidence theory, which is that coincidences don’t exist. Of course, the theory might very well not apply in this case, since Nicky was very old, losing his mind, and not exactly a picture of health. There is also no real possibility that his rambling to me could have gotten him killed, since only Tara and I heard it. I only mentioned it to Pete, Vince, and Laurie, and that was apparently after Nicky was already dead. As far as I know, Tara hasn’t barked it to a soul.

One thing is for sure: the death is untimely. It does not allow for further questioning of Nicky, should that be necessary. Of course, that in itself is a mixed blessing, since I had absolutely no desire to ever be in the fat man’s presence again.

“So what did he say?” Hike asks.

“That Richard Solarno was into possibly illegal activities; he called him ‘dirty.’ Made me wonder if Richard might have been the target, rather than his wife, Karen.”

Hike wasn’t working with me back then, so he’s unfamiliar with the case. I lay out the rough picture for him, that the prosecution’s case was predicated on Joey killing Karen and her husband as an act of revenge. Joey and Karen had been having an affair, which Joey readily admitted to. She had broken it off, a fact which he also confirmed.