Judge & Jury

Someone had smashed the entire front windshield in.

"Oh my God," Andie gasped. She hurried up to the station wagon in disbelief.

Shards of splintered glass were all over the pavement. Who would do such a thing? She'd kept it on the street for years. Everyone on the block knew it. Nothing like this had ever happened. She placed a hand on Jarrod's shoulder.

Then Andie felt a knot tighten in the pit of her stomach. She thought of Cavello sitting there in the courtroom with his calm, indifferent stare. Like he had it all under control. And the stories Louis Machia had told. He had murdered for Cavello. Something like this was child's play to the mob, wasn't it?

"Mom, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, Jarrod." She pulled him close.

But he didn't believe her any more than she believed herself. All they would have to do is follow you home.

Maybe they had.

Chapter 18

RICHARD NORDESHENKO HAD a very good plan, which was why he was sitting in a fashionable bistro on the upper East Side, watching an attractive, middle-aged woman from the relative safety of the bar.

There were three others with the woman at her table, talking and laughing. The place was jammed with an affluent, successful-looking crowd. The two men with her wore nicely tailored suits, expensive dress shirts, gold cuff links. She seemed to know the other woman in her party quite well. The conversation was lively, familiar. The wine flowed. How nice for all of them.

Nordeshenko had followed the woman home from court that day. To her lovely town house in Murray Hill. After she went inside, he stopped on the street directly in front of the red wooden door. No guards. That's how they did things here. And the lock was a Weiser; it would be no problem. He saw the wires from a security system co

"Mr. Kaminsky." The pretty hostess at the restaurant stepped up to him and smiled."Your table is ready now."

She seated him precisely where he had requested: at the adjoining table to the woman he had followed. It didn't bother him to be so close. She wouldn't know him; she would never see his face again. He had done this kind of thing countless times.

In the begi

Next, it was a policeman in Tashkent who was blackmailing prostitutes. He'd gotten a royal fee for that. Then a mobster in Moscow. A real big shot; impossible to get close to. He'd had to detonate an entire building, but it was just part of the job.

Then he started offering his services to whoever would pay his price. It was the time of perestroika, capitalism. And he was just a businessman. He'd hit the big time.

He stared at the fashionable woman again. Too bad. She seemed successful, and even likable. He knew exactly how it would go from here. It would begin with something small. Amessage, something that would fester in her mind. Soon, she'd be shitting bricks.

There would be no trial.

The woman shifted in her chair, and a blue cashmere sweater draped over the back fell onto the floor.

A waiter moved in, but Nordeshenko beat him to it. He reached down and picked it up.

"Thank you so much." The woman smiled warmly at him. Their eyes met. Nordeshenko made no move to avoid them. In a different world, she was probably someone to admire and respect. But this was his world now.

He handed back the beautiful sweater."My pleasure." He nodded slightly in return.

And it was. He had looked into the eyes of many of his victims before he acted.

Your life is about to become hell, Miriam Seiderman.

Chapter 19

"MR. MACHIA, MY NAME is Hy Kaskel," the Eyebrow said as he stepped away from his chair the following morning."I'm going to be asking you some questions on behalf of my client, Mr. Dominic Cavello."

Andie DeGrasse opened her notepad to a new page, sketching in a caricature of the defense attorney, his eyebrows flashing. She had decided to keep what had happened yesterday afternoon to herself. What could she prove? At this point she didn't want another scene with Sharon A

"I'm familiar with your client, Mr. Kaskel," Louis Machia replied.

"Good." The diminutive defense attorney nodded."If you please, will you tell the jury just how you know him?"

"I'm just acquainted, Mr. Kaskel. I've been around a table with him a few times. He was there the night I got made."

"Around a table." Cavello's attorney theatrically mimicked him."Do you consider yourself a close friend of Mr. Cavello's? Has he, say, invited you out to di

"Actually Ihave gone out to di

"So you've never heard Mr. Cavello give any orders on behalf of the Guarino crime family? He never said to you, for instance, ‘I need a favor from you, Mr. Machia,' or ‘I want Samuel Greenblatt killed'?"

"No, Mr. Kaskel, not quite that way."

"That was left to other people to explain to you. Like Ralphie D., whom you mentioned, or this other Tommy character… the one with the fu

"Tommy Moose."

"TommyMoose. " The defense attorney nodded."Sorry."

"That's all right, Mr. Kaskel. We all have fu

Peals of laughter erupted through the courtroom.

"Yes, Mr. Machia," the defense attorney said,"but what I was driving at is, you never actually heard my client suggest it would be a good thing if this Sam Greenblatt was killed, did you?"

"No, not directly."

"You heard that from Ralphie D., who, you say, spotted him driving around somewhere in New Jersey in a car."

"It wasn'tsomewhere in New Jersey. It was down the block from where Mr. Greenblatt was killed."

"Byyou, Mr. Machia, just to be clear."

"Yes, sir." The witness nodded."By me."

Kaskel scratched his chin."Now, you describe yourself as a longtime member of the Guarino crime family, isn't that right? And you've admitted to doing a lot of bad things on behalf of that family."

"Yes," the witness answered."To both."

"Like… killing people or trafficking in drugs, isn't that right?"

"That's correct."

"What kinds of drugs did you traffic in, Mr. Machia?"

Machia shrugged."Marijuana. Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine. You name it."

"Hmmph," the lawyer snickered to the jury,"you're quite the entrepreneur, aren't you? You've owned a gun, haven't you, Mr. Machia?"

"Yes, sir. I've always had a gun."

"Ever use your gun or threaten the life of someone in co

"Yes, sir, I have."

"Evertake any of those drugs yourself, Mr. Machia?" Cavello's lawyer pressed.

"Yes, I've taken drugs."

"So you're an admitted drug user, a car thief, a burglar, a knee breaker, and oh, yes,a killer, Mr. Machia. Tell me, in the course of your longtime crime dealings, did you ever have the occasion to lie?"

"Lie?" The witness chuckled."Of course I lied. I lied all the time."

"By all the time, you mean… once a month? Once a week? Every day, perhaps?"