Saving Jason (10 page)

T
he night was cool for April, but spring in New York is always unreliable. There have been blizzards, heat waves, floods, and cold snaps during the month. There have also been coyote sightings, a crocodile in Central Park, a tiger in Queens and another in the Bronx, a six-foot boa constrictor that had gotten itself stuck between some rocks, a wild turkey downtown, and reports of a bear up in Riverdale that turned out to be a big black hairy dog. And forget about the rats. Not all of this happened in April, but it was ongoing evidence of the constant incursion of nature upon the city. Most New Yorkers live there—rather than in some more bucolic environ—because they don’t want to confront nature on a daily basis. Having to put on a heavy jacket for a five-block walk up Broadway on a spring evening can feel like a major concession to a world that the city fights to keep at bay.

The light was about to change as I reached Seventy-sixth Street and I dashed across to the east side of the street just before the tide of taxis and Town Cars swept past. A horn sounded behind me and I looked back. A slight figure in a dark coat and a long-brimmed hat had tried to make it across behind me, holding back only when the driver of a yellow cab hit the horn rather than the brake and blew by the pedestrian at ten miles over the limit.

I tucked my chin into my coat and walked faster in an attempt to generate the body heat that I was losing through my ears and fingertips. The light at the next intersection was two steps ahead of me, and despite the cold, I decided not to risk making a last-second dash. I stopped and waited. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the small dark figure across Broadway making an abrupt turn, upsetting for a moment the flow of pedestrian traffic approaching the
corner. I didn’t stare; I barely looked. But I was on a clandestine mission with three thousand dollars in cash in my pocket. It was not a time for complacence.

Making a feint, I stepped off the curb as though in preparation for a head start the moment the light changed. The figure turned again and began to move to stay slightly ahead of me on the opposite side of Broadway. “Tailing in advance,” the hacker would have called it. I stepped back onto the sidewalk and turned to the right, down the side street toward Amsterdam. I moved quickly.

The traffic thinned as I headed up the block, and after passing the back of the comedy club on the corner, I darted across and continued on the north side of the street. I risked a quick look back. My follower had raced across Broadway and was coming up the block behind me. I thought of Hannay’s comment on being paranoid and felt a momentary flash of kinship. I sped up.

At the end of the block, there was a bank ATM kiosk and I ducked in and waited for my pursuer to approach. It didn’t take long. I had my back against the inner wall, just out of the direct light.

The figure reached the corner and looked around, trying to be casual about it, but failing. Even wrapped in the dark coat, the shape was definitely feminine. And nicely proportioned, I couldn’t help but notice. Her hands were jammed in her pockets and her shoulders were high and hunched. She was cold.

She was also unsure of herself and, with her quarry having disappeared, possibly frightened. She looked up and down Amsterdam and her shoulders began to slump. Then the next wave of traffic began to come up the avenue and headlights framed her for an instant and formed an aura around her head. A distinctly red aura. She turned away from the blinding light and I saw her profile. I knew that redhead. It was Aimee Devane.

My first thought was to walk out and immediately confront her with questions and accusations. I quashed the impulse and instead turned my back to her and pretended to use the ATM. I could still see
her—though dark and clouded—reflected in the black plastic border above the screen. She finally turned and saw my back in the kiosk. I turned quickly and charged out the door.

“Aimee? What a surprise. I didn’t know you lived in my neighborhood.” I may have overplayed the moment. She was startled and embarrassed, but she covered well.

“I’m meeting a girlfriend,” she said.

“Oh? Where? I’ll walk you there. I’m just out for a stroll myself.”

We both knew that she had been following me, and we both knew that we both knew. But we stood in the cold, making polite noises at each other and ignoring the obvious. If I had been truly frightened I might have been angry, but what I felt most strongly was curiosity. Why was Aimee Devane following me?

“No, that’s okay. It’s just a block over.”

“Scaletta’s? Love that place. Let me walk you. It’s a dark block.”

“Really, I’ll be fine. See you later.”

She practically ran across Amsterdam and continued down the side street toward the park—and Scaletta’s. I watched until she was out of sight and I was sure she wouldn’t be able to circle back and follow me again.

Mike, the bartender at the Dublin House, took the envelope for Richard Hannay and shoved it down behind the cash register. He acted as though receiving secret messages and wads of cash for men with fictitious names and no fixed address was business as usual. Maybe it was. The place had a long history, having first opened in the midst of Prohibition. I debated having a pint before heading home, but decided that my pact with Skeli was more important. And I wasn’t going to order a club soda in a dive bar.

A light mist had begun and I turned up my collar and hustled back down Broadway. No one followed me.

U
nited States Attorney Wallace Ashton Blackmore was a self-promoting politician with no more respect for the law than any of the miscreants who had ever stood before him. He first made himself famous shortly after the crash by arresting a junior MBS salesman and taking him off the Nomura Securities trading floor in handcuffs. He brought with him four U.S. Marshals and a parade of television news teams. The publicity made Blackmore an instant national celebrity, though six months later the grand jury failed to grant an indictment and all charges against the young man were dropped. The press didn’t care. Blackmore was already a hero and a regular talking head on cable.

It cost the guy’s family over a million dollars in legal fees and ended his Wall Street career. Collateral damage.

The meeting took place in a conference room that was about ten degrees warmer than necessary. Blackmore’s people, led by his top AUSA, John Martin, arrived in shirtsleeves. Larry and I were in suits. No one offered coffee, soft drinks, or water. We were all in place—hot and uncomfortable—for close to fifteen minutes before the great man made his entrance.

What he lacked in charisma and good looks, he made up for with a street fighter’s posture and attitude, ready to challenge anyone in the room on any subject. He was shorter than he appeared on television and his comb-over was much more obvious. What came off on the tube as the broad, unwrinkled brow of a great thinker was, in person, a bulging protrusion over a pair of small sunken eyes. If he’d been a parking valet, you would hesitate to hand him your keys.

There were no preliminaries.

“Here’s how it’s going to work, Mr. Stafford. I’m going to tell you what it is I want from you, and after a bit of pro forma hesitation, you’re going to give it to me.”

Larry answered. “My client is here voluntarily, Wally. There’s no reason for him not to give his complete cooperation.”

That wasn’t exactly so, but the double negatives were a handy way of obscuring my extreme reluctance to tell Blackmore anything at all.

Blackmore barely acknowledged Larry. “Please tell us why you were interested in a tiny firm called McFee Plumbing.”

Larry had prepped me for this one. It was the obvious opening question.

“I do financial investigations for Virgil Becker. The firm pays me, but I answer only to him. When he doesn’t have something pressing for me to work on, I look for potential troubles. It keeps me busy.”

“And you were ‘troubled’ by a handful of trades in a stock that’s priced somewhere between twenty-three and eighty-seven cents a share?”

“I routinely make requests for documents to various regulatory bodies on a range of issues. McFee was one of many I made that day.”

“We’ll get to that. Did you discuss McFee Plumbing with Virgil Becker?”

Blackmore didn’t waste any time.

“I may have. I don’t know whether I mentioned the firm by name. It was one of many.”

Blackmore had four men and two women sitting at his end of the table. All six made notes every time I opened my mouth. When they weren’t writing, they were staring at me.

“When did you first discuss McFee Plumbing with Virgil Becker?”

Larry held up a hand in the universal
Slow down
gesture. “Mr. Stafford has not said that he remembers speaking with his employer about that specific stock.”

“Look, Larry. We’re doing this here in my offices as a favor to you,
but don’t push it, okay? Either your client opens up and tells me what I want to hear, or I will see that he’s indicted, and we know where that leads, don’t we?”

An indictment would mean my parole would be revoked and I would be back in prison for the remaining sixteen months of my original sentence. There would be a feces-flying court battle over whether my son would live with his grandmother—my ex-wife’s mother—in Louisiana or with my father out in Queens. Pop and I would, no doubt, lose that battle, and it was quite likely that I would never see the Kid again.

“Give us a minute, Wally.” Larry turned and whispered in my ear, shielding his lips with a raised hand. “He can do that. It’s bullshit, I admit, and from what you’ve told me, I can beat anything they throw at you. In court. Once it’s in front of a judge, you’re fine, but this
pezzente
doesn’t want you to ever get your day in court. He can delay for a year or more and let you sweat it back in Ray Brook the whole time.”

Ray Brook was where I had served most of my sentence. It was a medium-security facility in upstate New York. It was cold ten months of the year and hot for the other two and the clientele included both the scared and the scary. I knew where I fit in. I did not want to go back. “What do I do? I’m not lying just to stay out of jail. I’ve got nothing he wants. I really don’t think I know anything.”

“Follow my lead.”

What choice did I have? “If you save me, you’re saving the Kid. Don’t forget it.”

Larry turned back to face the group at the end of the table. “Full immunity. In writing. Signed by a federal judge.”

Blackmore threw up his hands. “You can’t expect me to go along with that. Blanket immunity? In return for what? I haven’t heard what he’s got. How do you expect me to make a deal?”

“Full cooperation. Before we leave this room today, you will know everything that he knows. Guaranteed. But he gets full immunity for anything he tells you here.”

“I can’t do that, Larry,” Blackmore said, shaking his head violently so that the comb-over slipped sideways and threatened to begin flapping.

“And he will repeat it all for a grand jury.”

Blackmore should have left the negotiations to one of his crew. He was too greedy, too ambitious, and too in love with himself to see the trap. U.S. Attorneys are appointed by the president. They are administrators. Some, like Blackmore, are also politicians. Rarely are they experienced prosecuting attorneys and they should know enough to delegate negotiations to their staff. But the six men and women with him were all too cowed by his arrogance to speak up. I could see the united front develop cracks and start to crumble.

“I can’t get a judge to sign off on that just on my say-so,” Blackmore said.

Larry smiled. He had forced Blackmore into telling an obvious lie. Even members of his own team winced at this feeble excuse. One point for the good guys.

“Sure you can, Wally.” He looked at his Rolex. “We’ve got a table reserved for one o’clock at Forlini’s. You do what you need to do, and we’ll meet back here at, what? Two-thirty? Three?”

Blackmore looked around his group. Finally, one of the women spoke up. “O’Rourke’s clerk owes me one.”

“Do it.” He practically spat when he said it.

Larry stood up. I joined him. We walked out together. Larry had just finagled me a Get Out of Jail Free card and, so far, it had cost me nothing. Whatever happened after lunch, I wasn’t going back to prison.

I
had the sole stuffed with shrimp and crab meat in a white wine sauce. Larry had kale sautéed in olive oil. No carbs. No protein. I didn’t question it. If he was on some power diet, it was working. He looked like he was twenty years younger than his age.

“So what happens when we get back there and Blackmore finds out I’ve got nothing to offer?”

“But you do. He knows some things, but if he really had a case, he’d know you were innocent. And he’d know a lot more than he’s saying. He lost the only witness willing to talk to him. Just give him everything you’ve found and everything you guess. I think you’re already miles ahead of him.”

I thought it through. Aimee Devane had assured me the firm was in the clear. I couldn’t imagine a way in which anything I had to offer would undermine that. The question for me then was going to be whether I could protect Virgil as well.

“Suppose it’s not enough? The guy’s a pit bull.”

“You’ve got immunity. Worst case, he rants a bit. He’ll get over it.”

A gray suit with a lawyer inside appeared next to our table. AUSA John Martin.

“Mr. Blackmore wants you two back now. The papers are ready.”

“Signed?” Larry asked.

“Judge O’Rourke was feeling magnanimous today, I guess.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Uh, no.” Martin was grinning.

“Then sit.” Larry looked around and a waiter hurried over. “What can we get for our friend that’s quick?”

“You want I get him a plate of the linguini alle vongole? The staff lunch. It’s all made.”

“You eat clams?” Larry asked the young lawyer.

Martin sat. “Blackmore’s going to have a cow.”

“And you’ll blame it on me. Just don’t breathe garlic on him when you’re making excuses.”

The pasta arrived and the Assistant U.S. Attorney ate while Larry told a story about his first mob defense case, where he’d gotten his client off by proving that the feds had manufactured evidence. “The jury had to acquit, but I learned something. They all hated me. I could feel them turn the minute I made that FBI agent look like a bigger crook than my man. The public doesn’t want to know what goes on. They want their G-men to be like in the movies. I made him look bad and they didn’t like it. Like I say, I won the case, but it wasn’t pretty. You two finished? We should head over before your boss gives himself a stroke.”