Страница 80 из 86
I did not have to work, at least for a while. I was still technically on paid leave from the district attorney’s office. My full salary continued to be direct-deposited to my checking account, as it had been throughout this entire episode. No doubt this was a tricky problem for Ly
Meanwhile, Canavan had bigger fish to fry. She had to figure out what to do about Logiudice, the Rasputin in her court, whose professional implosion had surely ended his own political hopes and, if she was not careful, might end hers too. But, again, she could not fire a prosecutor merely for losing a case, otherwise who would ever be willing to go to work for her? The general view was that Canavan would run for attorney general or even governor soon and leave the whole mess behind for the next DA to clean up. But for the time being, all she could do was watch and wait. Maybe Logiudice could resurrect his reputation somehow. Hey, you never know.
I did not worry much about my own career for the time being. Certainly I was done as a prosecutor. The snickering would have been too much. I suppose I might have gone on as some other kind of lawyer. There was always criminal defense, where the link to Jacob’s case might even have been a badge of honor-the drama of an i
Of the three of us, Laurie was the most beaten up by the trial. In the weeks that followed she did recover a little, but she never did return to what she was Before. She never put back on the weight she had lost, and her face would always look drawn to me. It was as if she’d aged ten years in just a few months. But the real change was inside. In those first weeks after Jacob’s trouble, there was a cool, guarded quality about Laurie. She was wary. To me, this new, more cautious ma
38
Northern Correctional Institution,
Somers, Co
In the visiting booth again. Sealed up in my white-walled compartment, thick glass window in front of me. Steady background noise: murmuring in the adjacent booths, in the distance muted shouts and prison racket, a
Bloody Billy shuffled into the window frame, his hands cuffed to a waist chain, a second chain ru
Two guards piloted him to the chair but without laying a hand on him. One of them released the handcuffs from his waist while the other watched, then they both backed away, out of the window frame.
My father picked up the phone and, with his hands joined at his chin as if in prayer, he said, “Junior!” His tone said, What a pleasant surprise!
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Patz.”
His eyes traveled from my face to the phone on the wall and back, reminding me to watch what I said on a monitored line.
“Junior, what are you talking about? I’ve been here the whole time. Maybe you haven’t heard: I don’t get out much.”
I unfolded a Triple-I record, a multistate criminal record. It was several pages long. I palmed it smooth and pressed the front page against the glass with five fingertips for him to read the name: James Michael O’Leary, a.k.a. Jimmy, Jimmy-O, Father O’Leary, DOB 2/18/43.
He leaned forward and squinted at the document. “Never heard of him.”
“Never heard of him? Really?”
“Never heard of him.”
“You did a bid with him right here.”
“A lot of guys come through here.”
“Six years you were here together. Six years!”
He shrugged. “I don’t socialize. It’s jail, not Yale. Maybe if you had a picture or something?” Mischievous wink. “But I never heard of this guy.”
“Well, he’s heard of you.”
Shrug. “Lot of people have heard of me. I’m a legend.”
“He said you asked him to look out for us, to look out for Jacob.”
“Bullshit.”
“To protect us.”
“Bullshit.”
“You sent someone to protect us? You think I need you to protect my kid?”
“Hey, I never said any of that. This is all you talkin’. Like I said, I never heard of this guy. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Now, spend enough time in a courthouse and you become a co
So I just took the paper down from the glass and dropped it on the little melamine counter in front of me. I sat back and rubbed my forehead. “You fool. You stupid old fool. Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Fool? What are you, calling me a fool? I didn’t do shit.”
“Jacob was i
“Watch your mouth, junior. I don’t have to stay here talking to you.”
“We didn’t need your help.”
“No? Could’ve fooled me.”
“We would have won.”
“And if you didn’t? What then? You want the kid to rot in a place like this? You know what this place is, junior? This is a grave. It’s a garbage dump. It’s a big hole in the ground where they throw the trash nobody wants to see anymore. Anyways, you’re the one who told me that night on the phone, you were going to lose.”
“Look, you can’t-you can’t just-”
“Jesus, junior, keep your dress on, would you? This is fuckin’ embarrassing. Look, I’m not saying anything about what happened, okay? ’Cause I don’t know. Whatever happened to this guy-what’s his name? Patz? — whatever happened to this guy, I don’t know. I’m stuck here in this pit. What the hell do I know? But if you’re asking me to boohoo because some kiddy-raper child-molester piece of shit got killed, or killed himself, or whatever? Forget about it. Good riddance. One less piece of shit in the world. Fuck him. He’s gone.” He held a fist to his mouth and blew into it then blossomed open his fingers, like a magician making a coin disappear. Gone. “One less asshole in the world, that’s all it is. Guy like that, the world’s a better place without him.”