Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter) (4 page)

Richard was thought to be an innocent victim, first wronged by his wife, and then killed by her lover. He was essentially a fisherman, albeit a very successful one. He ran a shrimping company, which employed a fleet of more than ninety boats, stretching from New Jersey to Florida.

Probably being uncharacteristically kind, Hike doesn’t ask the key question, which is how carefully did I check Richard Solarno out before trial. He doesn’t have to; I’ve been torturing myself with that exact question since I left Nicky’s house.

The answer is that I didn’t do nearly enough. There were a combination of reasons for that. First of all, the police had conducted an investigation, and what I did do confirmed their view that there was nothing in Richard’s past that would have made him a likely target.

Karen, on the other hand, was a different story. She was not exactly the faithful, doting wife, and she played around with a number of unsavory characters. Joey actually thought that she dumped him when she found out he was not in the family business; he ceased to represent the excitement and danger she naturally sought.

Our defense was to offer two possible theories for the crime. They were contradictory, except that each was designed to cultivate reasonable doubt.

One was that the killing was a random home invasion gone violent, and there had been a few similar, albeit less deadly, incidents in that area around that time. The second was that there were a number of Karen’s ex-suitors both angry and violent enough to have done the deed, and that Joey was just one of the group. Our claim was that the prosecution quickly and unfairly picked Joey because of his family background.

Lastly, I was not Joey’s original attorney, but they had a falling out, and I was called in just three weeks before trial. I wanted a continuance to give me more time to dig into the case, but Joey wouldn’t hear of it. He was certain of his innocence, and confident in my ability to prove it, so he wanted out of jail as soon as possible.

Six years later he’s in state prison, so his confidence doesn’t seem to have been entirely warranted.

The point is that I have a lot of excuses for not more thoroughly vetting the man that was Richard Solarno, but none of them feel acceptable at the moment. The fact that the file does not provide any fresh perspective is not surprising; I’ve been through it enough times that I could almost recite it by heart.

Most likely none of this will matter, and the ramblings of a soon-to-be-dead fat gangster will be shown to have no relevance in the real world.

But my sympathy for Joey having to sit in prison, plus my guilt at not keeping him out of there, adds up to one thing:

I’m going to find out what the hell Nicky Fats was talking about.

Janet Carlson could wake the dead, and is uniquely in a position to do so. Janet is the Passaic County coroner, and while I am not particularly knowledgeable about the history of that office, I can safely say she is the best-looking coroner in Passaic County history.

She’s almost six feet tall, with jet-black hair and a body that is in Laurie’s league, which is to say the major league.

She is also completely competent, a fact that often causes me aggravation. Just by the nature of the job and system, she is always a prosecution witness, so it becomes my job to make her look bad on the stand. Maybe someday I’ll succeed at it.

It’s possible she feels sorry for me, because she goes out of her way to be helpful whenever she can, at least out of court. Since I go out of my way to take advantage of helpful people whenever I can, the relationship works pretty well for me.

I’m in the lobby area telling the receptionist that I would like to talk to Janet when I see her through a window into the main office area. Even better, she sees me, and comes out into the lobby.

“Andy, you’re not working again, are you? I mean, have you taken on a client?”

“No.”

She pretends to wipe her brow. “Whew, that’s a relief.”

“Why?”

“I have three years from August in the ‘when will Andy Carpenter get off his ass’ pool.”

I laugh. “You’ve got a pretty good shot.”

“Good to hear. So if you’re not working, this is a strange place for you to show up.”

“Doesn’t everybody show up someplace like here eventually?” I ask.

“Now you’re waxing philosophical? What’s up?”

“Has Nicky Fats come through yet?”

She looks puzzled for a moment, and then says, “Is that Nicholas Desimone?”

“You never heard of Nicky Fats?”

“No, but after looking at him, the derivation of the name is fairly easy to understand. I’m just getting to him now.”

“Can I watch?”

“You mean listen?”

“Yes. Listen.”

Janet knows the drill, since I’ve sat in on other autopsies with her before. I do so with my back turned to the body and table; I even walk into the room backward so as not to see the unfortunate ex-soul that’s about to be cut up.

She shrugs. “Sure. I always like live company.”

We go into the autopsy room. As we approach, I do a neat little pirouette and take the last ten or so steps backward, ignoring Janet’s chuckling at my antics. As always, I’m struck by how cold it is in the room.

As Janet is getting ready, she asks why I’m interested in this particular autopsy.

“I saw him just a short while before he died. Just an hour or so, if the news reports are right.”

“Was he a client?”

“No, I represented his nephew, Joey.”

“The guy who shot those people?”

“Innocent as charged.”

“Wasn’t there a jury involved in there somewhere?” she asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer. She starts talking into a recording microphone, describing what she is doing to the body, and what she is discovering.

I don’t understand much of it, since there are a lot of medical terms. Also, since I can’t see what she’s looking at, and because she examines every part of the body, it’s hard to know when what she is saying has any significance.

When she mentions “vertebral fracture” I perk up. “Broken back?” I ask.

“Broken neck; it was reported that he fell down in the bathroom. It’s going to be the cause of death.”

“So no chance of suicide?”

“Are you asking if he intentionally broke his own neck?”

“Withdraw the question. Could he have had help?”

“Let’s see,” she says, and then doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. Finally, “It’s not going to be definitive, Andy.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are contusions on the left side of the neck, probably premortem. Slight ones on the right side as well, but much less pronounced. Possible that they were sustained in the fall, maybe if he fell against a sink or something.”

“So it could have been a murder?”

“Possibly, but I’m not going to have enough to call it that. Unless you have something enlightening to add.”

“He was an enforcer and hit man. Those kind of people make a lot of enemies.”

“He lived a long life,” she points out.

“True.” I thank her and leave, walking straight out the door, since that leaves me with my back to Nicky Fats.

I’m not really sure what I wanted her to say, but what I got was the worst of all worlds. Had she said definitively that Nicky died of natural causes, I would have known that it had no connection to what he said to me, and I could have dropped it.

Had she said for sure that he was murdered, I would have been close to positive that there was something for me to find, and I could have plunged into it, for Joey’s sake.

This was somewhere in the middle, enough to draw me in, and probably enough to waste my time.

“I heard it from a guard,” Joey said. “He thought it was pretty funny.”

“He thought what was funny?” I ask.

“The idea of Nicky falling out of the shower onto the floor. He said he must have looked like a beached whale.” He shrugs. “That’s what passes for humor around here.”

Among the things I’d come back to the prison for was to tell Joey about Nicky’s death, in case he hadn’t heard. Obviously he had.

“I assume you didn’t get to see him?” he asks.

“Actually, I did. The day he died.”

“No kidding? That was fast. I’m glad you did. Was he coherent?”

“He went in and out. But he said a couple of things that I wanted to talk to you about.”

I go on to tell him what Nicky said about Richard Solarno, and ask him if it makes any sense.

“Not much,” he says. “I don’t even think Nicky knew him. How would he?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“I can’t. They lived in different worlds. Unless Nicky was also sleeping with Karen.”

Joey isn’t serious when he says that; it just reflects his continued bitterness about the way Karen Solarno dumped him. It’s an attitude that was damaging to him; witnesses testified about Joey’s anger at Karen, and it contributed to the prosecution’s theory on motive.

“Did you have any suspicions Richard might be into anything illegal?” I ask.

“Does domestic violence count?”

“He beat his wife?”

“According to Karen.”

“Interesting, but it doesn’t fit,” I say.

“I wish I could say otherwise, but Nicky was probably just babbling,” Joey says.

“Well, he did offer me some of his pasta when I saw him.”

“So?”

“He was eating M&M’s at the time.”

Joey laughs. “You know, I should be trying to get you to think Nicky was sharp as a tack.”

“Why?”

“Because if you dig into it, then maybe there’s a one percent chance of you finding something. Which is one percent more of a chance than I’ve got now.”

“You know damn well I’m going to dig into it,” I say.

He smiles. “Yeah. You want me to get you some money for your time?”

“I should be paying you,” I say.

“For what?”

“For getting me out of the therapy business.”

I’m generally really nice to waiters and waitresses. I smile, ask them how they are, thank them whenever they serve me something, and tip really well.

I am Andy Carpenter, man of the people.

But there is one thing that some of them do that annoys me, and Laurie has just told me it’s about to happen.

We’re at the Bonfire, a restaurant on Market Street in Paterson. It’s a nice place that I have some emotional ties to, in that it was a hangout on Friday and Saturday nights back in high school. It’s where we would go after dates, or, in my case, after not having a date.

We’ve just sat down and are looking at the menus, though I pretty much know the selections by heart. Our waiter is taking the orders of the four people at the table next to us, and Laurie has been glancing over at them, so she knows that what’s about to happen is going to bug me.

After she alerts me to it, she says, “In the meantime, tell me about Nicky Fats and Joey.”

“Let’s wait until we order. This could take awhile.”

What Laurie had noticed is that the waiter is not writing anything down as people are ordering their food. He just nods and answers whatever questions they have. There is no way that waiters can remember everything, and I am always positive they are going to make mistakes. Sometimes they don’t, but whenever it happens I am sure that they will.

This time, to drive me even more insane, the waiter doesn’t put in the orders of the four people at the adjacent table. He just comes straight over to us, which means he’s going to have to remember six people’s worth of food.

What could possibly be the upside in not writing it down? He’s going to have to tell it to the chef in a few minutes anyway. The chef will write it down, won’t he? Or is he a memory expert also? Why not write it down, hand it to the chef, and be done with it?

He comes over to us and says, “My name is Danny. Welcome to the Bonfire. Are we ready to order?”

I say, “We sure are.” What I don’t say, but which I’m thinking, is “Danny boy, prepare to suffer.”

Laurie orders first, a house salad and then the grilled salmon. She has a couple of additions and special requests, but nothing too complicated. Danny just repeats everything she says, smiling as he pretends to successfully commit it to memory.

“And for you, sir?”

“I’ll start with the special salad. But I don’t want the cheese, and maybe half as many croutons as normally would be served.”

He’s still nodding.

“I’d like kalamata olives instead of black ones, pitted, and let’s add cherry tomatoes, shaved carrots, and red onions.”

Still nodding.

“Is there oregano on the special salad?” I can see Laurie rolling her eyes, but I can’t stop now.

He shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask the chef.”

I nod. “Please do. I’m violently allergic to oregano,” I lie. “I can get oregano poisoning and go into spasm. You can substitute basil.”

“Basil doesn’t make him spasm,” Laurie adds.

“Right, basil,” I say. “No, on second thought make it thyme. In fact, the chef can throw in parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”

“What kind of dressing do you have?” I ask, and he reels off about ten of them. “See if the chef will mix the balsamic and lemon vinaigrettes. And I’ll have that on the side.”

I torture him even more on the main course, Mediterranean chicken, changing everything about it except the shape of the plate it comes on. Even with all that, I can’t get him to cave and write things down.

When he leaves, Laurie says, “That was quite a performance. What are you going to do if he gets it wrong?”

“I’m going to be really annoyed.”

“What if he gets it right?”

“I’ll be even more annoyed. All I really wanted was onion soup and a hamburger.”

She laughs. “You could use some serious mental therapy.”

“Maybe I’ll have Tara come visit me,” I say. “Which brings me to Nicky Fats.”

I tell her everything that has transpired. Laurie had worked on the original case with me; it was one of our first times working together, and preceded our romantic involvement.

She had left the police force just a few months before working with me on the case, and definitely retained a pro-prosecution attitude. If someone was arrested, she felt it was probably for a good reason. I think deep down she still has that feeling, though it has lessened considerably. Especially since she herself was once wrongly arrested and subjected to a murder trial.