Condemned Read online

  Money’s eyes shifted toward Red. His outwardly quiet composure masked a cold, extremely efficient assassin who disposed of competitors or victims with a cleaver merely for the tactile enjoyment of the blade separating the victim’s neck from his shoulder. Years ago, both he and Red had worked for the older numbers kings of Harlem. Red’s cool, suave presence made him a man to whom men and women were attracted. The old leaders had adopted Red, grooming him to be next in line to run the operation. Dark and cold, Money was not as affable or sociable as Red, but he brought qualities that ensured harmony and peace in Red’s reign.

  After New York State established official daily Lotto games, which considerably reduced the Brotherhood’s gambling take, discipline and order in the ranks had allowed Red to direct a seamless shift from running numbers into the distribution of marijuana, and, eventually, into harder narcotics.

  Judge Ellis returned the phone receiver to its cradle. She rested her head against her high backed chair. The silent atmosphere in the courtroom was alive, almost bursting with barely harnessed energy. The media people, anxious to report the latest turn of events to their editors, were stuck fast on the edge of their seats, ready, yet unwilling, to leap to their feet, lest they miss something.

  “I’m going to chambers,” the Judge said, rising. “I’m going to arrange for a doctor to examine Mr. Leppard. Meanwhile, everyone is to stay right where they are to await Mr. Leppard and Dr. Acquista.”

  “All rise,” Trainor ordered as the Judge exited.

  By the time those in the courtroom half rose, the Judge swept down from the long bench and disappeared into a corridor that led to her robing room.

  Selwyn Rabb, a New York Times reporter, was already moving along the rail that separated the audience from the well of the courtroom until he was as near to Hardie as he could get. “What do you think is going to happen now, Red?” Rabb called over the rail. Other reporters sidled closer.

  “I just hope Mr. Leppard is okay,” said Red.

  “Are you hoping for a mistrial in case he can’t continue?”

  “I’m just hoping he’s okay,” he repeated.

  “What about the possibility of a mistrial?”

  “That’s for the Judge and the lawyers.” Hardie turned toward Money Dozier who was now standing beside him.

  “Things don’t stop taking funny twists, do they?” Red said softly to Money. “No way she’s going to let anything happen to stop this disaster from falling on our heads.” Money shook his head. “Worst thing, they know everything that’s going on, almost before we do. There’s a snitch, a rat, somewhere amongst us.”

  Money had a facial tic. When he spoke, his eyes turned upward, his eyelids fluttering, showing the whites of his eyes. “You know who it is, Mr. Red?”

  Red shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about it right from the time the Government told the lawyers there was a bug in the Sports Lounge. I can’t figure out who it is.”

  Awgust Nichols, Red’s nephew, his ex-wife’s sister’s son, thirty two years old, with glasses and a thin pencil line moustache, was seated in the audience, watching the proceedings. Nichols was Red’s accountant, the one from whom D.E.A. Supervisor Michael Becker had seized all of Red’s financial records after personally serving the subpoena at Red’s office in hope of seeing the look on Red’s face when he did. Unfortunately, Red wasn’t in when Becker arrived.

  Anton Taylor, tall, powerfully built, dark skinned, one of the street level, toiler class defendants—whose hand to hand drug sales to a black Undercover established the necessary underpinning for the conspiracy—stood in his place at the defense table. He made eye contact with Awgust Nichols, then walked toward the rail.

  “What do you figure?” Taylor murmured over the rail to Nichols.

  Nichols glanced toward Red at the defense table. “She’s not going to declare a mistrial because somebody’s nose is bleeding.”

  Taylor shook his head. “Every day it’s something else.”

  “Things’ll fall into place soon. I’m going to make an appointment with those Russians, maybe for tonight.”

  “I thought we were going to the Yankee game tonight,” said Taylor. “They’re playing Seattle. Good game.”

  “I’ll tell them to meet us at the Flash.” The Flash Inn was an Italian restaurant at the head of Macombs Dam Bridge that spanned the Harlem River separating the Bronx from Manhattan. The food at the Flash was better than good, the atmosphere quiet.

  A.U.S.A. Dineen, standing at the prosecutor’s table, arched his back to stretch. “What do you think?” Dineen said turning to Geraghty. At the end of the court session yesterday, Geraghty was on the witness stand, and was scheduled to be cross-examined this morning by Hardie’s lawyer, Thomas Leppard.

  “About Leppard?” Geraghty was of medium build with flat, dark hair, and blue eyes. “A crock of shit. Phony as the day is long.” He had been born in Queens, but having been raised by a mother and father with thick County Kerry brogues, there was the slightest touch of Ireland in Geraghty’s inflection.

  “Look at these people,” Dineen said, scanning the defense tables. “Hardie and Dozier communicate just by looking at each other.”

  “Like wops without hands,” said Geraghty. He thought a moment. “They’re scared of the dark, you know?’

  “The wops?”

  “No, the jigs. What do you think of this idea: we put them all in a dark room, the wops couldn’t communicate because they couldn’t see each other’s hands, and the spooks’d all be too scared of the dark to move. We’d knock crime in New York on its ass with only a dark room.”

  “You scare me,” said Dineen. Geraghty chuckled. “Taylor and that accountant are awfully chummy,” said Dineen, looking toward the audience. ‘You sure the accountant’s clean?”

  “According to the Boss, he’s clean. And you know what a hard-on Becker is. He says the accountant is an ambitious little fucker, jealous of Red, but basically harmless.”

  “That gorilla Taylor he’s talking to isn’t harmless.”

  “Yeah, but his thick skull was the best thing that happened to us in this case,” said Geraghty. “His selling nickel bags and becoming friendly with Castoro was all Becker needed to start the Brotherhood on the road to the Can.”

  “You want to play a little handball at the A.C. tonight?” Dineen asked.

  “Can’t. The Boss scheduled me for some Bumper Lock tonight.”

  “He puts you on surveillance duty even when you’re the Case Agent, and you’ve got to be in court every day?”

  “I’m indispensable.”

  Several months before, and now throughout the trial, Supervisor Becker had assigned members of the squad to a nightly Bumper Lock or obvious surveillance of Red Hardie. Bumper Lock surveillance teams, on foot or in vehicles, tailed the subject so close that they were intentionally obvious. It wasn’t done to ensure that the subject wouldn’t run away. Becker knew Hardie wouldn’t run. It was to be annoying, disabling, to make Red a goldfish in a bowl. Becker’s hatred of drug dealers, particularly blacks, who, like Red, earned enormous income and were accorded respect and admiration in their community, was so intense that he insisted that Bumper Lock be maintained every night, even though its only purpose was to annoy Red.

  “Actually, tonight I got a special assignment—I’ve got to follow the tall black Senator around.”

  “Galiber? Why is the D.E.A. interested in Galiber? He’s a lawyer, for Christ sake.”

  “He’s introducing a bill up in Albany to legalize drugs.”

  “Becker has you following a State Senator around because he introduced some bullshit bill to legalize drugs, that hasn’t got a prayer in hell.”

  “It’s an election year. The Senator’s up for re-election. The Boss figured that maybe we put a tail on the guy every few days, we might come up with something his opponent could use against him. That’d get the bill shit-canned pretty quick.” Geraghty stretched, turning slowly to observe the defendants in the courtroom.
He turned back to Dineen. “If Leppard’s nose bleed is real and we break early, maybe I can beat your ass in a couple of handball games before I take to the road.”

  “You beat my ass? Just for that, if we play, I’m not going to let you have a single point.”

  “Wake up, Counselor,” said Geraghty, “you’re dreaming.”

  The familiarity with which Geraghty spoke to Dineen was not lack of respect. Dineen, too, had been born in Queens. They had known each other all their lives, had gone to high school together. Dineen was a solid athlete, but not up to the quality of Geraghty, although Dineen would not admit that. Whitey Ford, the former pitcher for the New York Yankees, who was raised in the same area of Queens as both Geraghty and Dineen, thought Geraghty had a promising career in professional baseball. But a leg fracture during a high school football game took Geraghty down for a season and a half, and in the meantime, romance, a child, marriage, in that order, meant the end of baseball. Sic transit gloria mundi.

  Dineen looked over his glasses at Geraghty. “If we weren’t in court, I’d knock you right on your ass, bucko.”

  “More dreaming?”

  Jackie Engler, Anton Taylor’s lawyer, moved toward Marty Adams who represented Money Dozier. Engler was short, thin, sharp featured, balding, with glasses. Marty Adams, a seasoned veteran of criminal trials, brought Engler into the Brotherhood case. One of the reasons he did was that Engler was brilliant at researching the law. Adams wanted him on hand to write motions, put together briefs on any point of law that might come up, to provide the legal spitballs that Adams might have to lob toward the Judge.

  “Can I talk to you a minute,” Engler whispered to Adams.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Is this strategy of Hardie’s wise? This Judge doesn’t seem to be someone to be screwed around with.”

  “I know nothing about a strategy, nothing more than you,” said Adams.

  This was Engler’s first major league case, and he was eager to show his stuff, to make good as a private defense lawyer. During his three year stint with Legal Aid, on the advice of his uncle, who happened to be the Rabbi at Adams’s shul, Engler went out of his way to become friendly with Adams, purposely tracking him down in the courthouse, making an occasional lunch date with him, claiming that he admired Adams’s style. In actuality, Engler wanted to be close to Adams’s lucrative practice as the reins slowly slid from Adams’s aging, trembling hands.

  The other reason Adams recommended Engler to the defense team was more self-serving. Adams told Money Dozier—Red let Money who was less generous, less a pushover than Red when it came to negotiating lawyers’ fees for the other defendants—that Engler was the best law man around. He told Money that Engler wanted $25,000 as a fee. Money argued that Engler was only a kid, a fifth wheel, that Adams and Sandro Luca—Red’s long time lawyer—were really going to carry the case. Money allowed Adams $15,000 for Engler. Adams, who didn’t argue much with Money—no one did—accepted Money’s offer. In turn, Adams told Engler there was only $10,000 available for his fee, Adams pocketing the five thousand dollar difference. Considering the same routine for each lawyer he put in the case, together with his own fee, Adams was doing well for himself at this trial.

  Adams had been in the criminal defense traces for decades, often, in the past, representing Italian organized crime figures. Now that the intelligent members of Italian organized crime had gone legitimate, and the unintelligent to jail, Adams was fortunate that his reputation served to carry him into major drug cases representing blacks and Dominicans.

  Adams was short, portly, with a shape like a bowling pin. He had, over the years, become fat in more ways than one. His trial tactics had become complacent, he let things slide, readily excusing his lack of vigor with the fact that the cards were so stacked against drug clients, that efforts to save them were useless. Adams could, however, still growl and argue with judges, tear his reading glasses from his face in righteous indignation, noisily slapping them onto the counsel table. All of which sound and fury, while truly signifying nothing, made his clients feel they were being vigorously defended.

  “If Leppard’s nose thing isn’t real,” said Engler nervously, “this Judge is going to be out to spill blood—no pun intended.”

  Adams shrugged. “What are you worried about?” He leaned closer to Engler. “They’re the ones who go to jail.”

  “She could make life very difficult for the lawyers.”

  “She hasn’t already?”

  “All rise,” Claire Trainor announced as Judge Ellis swept back into the courtroom and up the steps to the bench. As she sat, the Judge focused on Hardie.

  “I’ve asked Doctor Norman Texard to examine Mr. Leppard—after he arrives in the courtroom,” the Judge murmured. “We shall shortly have an objective opinion whether or not Mr. Leppard is feigning anything for any of our benefits.” She smiled thinly at the jury.

  “Norman Texard?” Marty Adams murmured from the side of his mouth toward Engler. His seat during the trial was directly next to Adams. “I thought that old son of a bitch was dead.”

  “You know him?” Engler whispered back.

  “He’d testify a cadaver was fit for trial. Whenever the government needs a friendly medical opinion, they pull Texard’s chain. He was the doctor, years ago, who said that Funzawal Tieri was fit to stand trial. Old Funzy was falling on his face, had his colon removed, wore a bag and all, could hardly stand up … you remember?” Engler shook his head. “That was like a week, ten days at the most, before Funzy died. Son of a bitch, he is, Texard.”

  “While we wait, Mr. Hardie,” the Judge continued softly, “let’s explore our alternatives.”

  No one, not even the jury, to the Judge’s immediate left, could hear every word the Judge said. The sense of her colloquy emanated from the sneer on her face. “Claire, let me look at the file.”

  Trainor handed a case folder up to the bench. The Judge began rummaging through the documents in the file. “Mmmm, now I remember …,” the Judge said, mostly to herself.

  The Court Reporter leaned closer toward the bench.

  “Sandro Luca was originally your attorney, was he not, Mr. Hardie?” The Judge looked over the edge of the bench.

  Hardie merely returned the Judge’s glance.

  “Is that right, Mr. Hardie?” the Judge said slightly louder.

  “Your Honor,” said Marty Adams, rising,

  “Are you now representing Mr. Hardie?” the Judge demanded, turning a baleful glare at Adams.

  “No, Your Honor.…”

  “Mr. Adams,” the Judge said, leaning forward, “stop winking at me when you speak.”

  “I’m not winking, Your Honor,” said Adams, his hands trembling. He had no control over his high blood pressure, his trembling hands, or the tic that made his right eye blink when he was stressed.

  “Of course, you are, Mr. Adams. I know a wink when I see one. I order you to stop winking at me.”

  “Your Honor …” said Engler, beginning to rise.

  “Do you think Mr. Adams needs a lawyer, Mr. Engler?”

  Engler shook his head, immobilized in the half risen position.

  “Are you lawyers trying to lock horns with me?” The Judge’s eyes narrowed, her lips curled at the corners. “I wouldn’t advise it. I really wouldn’t. Now sit down! Both of you. When I want to hear from either of you, I’ll tell you. Now both of you, stay seated!”

  Calmer, the Judge sifted through some papers in the file. She glanced again at Adams. “I suggest, Mr. Adams, that you find yourself a good doctor and attend to yourself. Mr. Hardie, would you mind standing.”

  “Not at all, Your Honor,” said Hardie, rising to his full height.

  “May I just make a remark for the record, Your Honor,” said Marty Adams, half rising again.

  The Judge slammed the flat of her palm on the bench. An exhalation of apprehension puffed out of the jury and audience.

  The Judge leaned forward. “Mr. Adams. Welcome
to the real world. The routine that you used in the Municipal Court a couple of decades ago, does not work here. If you say one more word, any word at all, Mr. Adams, even ‘Your Honor’, I am going to hold you in contempt, and you will spend at least this evening in the M.C.C.” The Judge’s eyes remained fixed on Adams. “With that admonition, Mr. Adams, you are free to say anything you wish.”

  Adams stood silently, his eye winking at the Judge.

  “Mr. Hardie, I believe we were speaking.”

  In the back of his mind, Red thought that perhaps this turn of weather might swell into a deprivation of constitutional proportion. “I really don’t want to say anything, Your Honor,” he said. “I’d like Mr. Leppard to speak for me.”

  “Mr. Leppard, for some absurd reason, which we will learn very shortly,… very shortly, is not here.”

  “I really think my lawyer should speak for me, Ma’am,” Hardie repeated.

  “I think we may have a solution for that, Mr. Hardie. As I was saying, Alessandro Luca was originally your attorney in this case, at least for the preliminary proceedings, was he not?”

  “I really need Mr. Leppard, Your Honor.”

  “I don’t know how we ended up with such a withered nigger bitch as our Judge,” Taylor whispered under his breath toward Jackie Engler. Engler glanced quickly, apprehensively, toward the Judge, moving to the far edge of his seat, as far from Taylor as he could.

  “When this trial was scheduled to begin,” the Judge continued her recollection, “Mr. Luca was then engaged on another trial. At my direction, Mr. Leppard was brought in to represent you, is that not correct?”

  The faint wail of a siren stole through the curtains of the courtroom. The Judge looked toward the windows, cocking an ear. Everyone in the courtroom listened. The sound disappeared.

  “But I told Mr. Luca that I was not relieving him entirely. I see my written notes right here. Claire, call Mr. Luca’s office,” the Judge directed. “Tell Mr. Luca, or anyone who answers, that I want Mr. Luca here this afternoon. This afternoon!” the Judge repeated harshly.

  Trainor lifted the receiver of her phone and pushed buttons on the keypad.