Outrage

12

Marlene paused at the entrance of the housing Works Bookstore and turned to face the massive dog who sat down on his haunches at her feet. The expression on his broad face seemed to express puzzlement at why their evening walk had been interrupted after only a few blocks.

“Sorry, Gil,” she said apologetically as she tied his leash to an empty bike rack. The restraint was unnecessary, as the hundred-and-twenty-pound presa canario would have died before leaving any spot where Marlene left him. However, other pedestrians felt safer knowing the beast was not free to devour them should he be of that mind-set. “This shouldn’t take long, and I’ll make it up to you.”

Trained as a personal protection dog, Gilgamesh was Marlene’s baby. One of her pursuits since leaving the New York DAO many years earlier, after establishing and then selling a very lucrative VIP security service, was ownership of a security and bomb dog breeding and training facility on Long Island. The farm specialized in mastiffs and her current favorite, the presa. She loved the catlike movement and athleticism of the breed’s thick, muscular body, as well as its fierce loyalty.

Gilgamesh was absolutely devoted to Marlene and her family. And while gentle under normal circumstances, he would, and had, killed to protect them.

Marlene was no longer active at the dog farm, which she’d left in the capable hands of her head trainer. And the fact of the matter was she’d been feeling a bit lost of late; her eldest child, Lucy, lived in New Mexico, and the twin boys were in high school and no longer put up with much mothering. With their belated bar mitzvah coming up, she’d recently started brooding over the fact that before she knew it, they’d be off to college and she and Butch would be empty-nesters. Butch is at the height of his career, she thought, but what am I going to do that I find rewarding?

Since giving up the dog farm, she’d been involved in dangerous battles with terrorists and criminal masterminds that seemed to follow her family like sharks follow blood in the water. And, as much as she hated to admit it and worried about her family, she liked the occasional adrenaline rush of fighting for her life, as well as doing something good for her community and country. But it was all sort of haphazard and not something she could do as a career. She did enjoy painting at her art studio in the building across the street from the family loft; however, it wasn’t enough-not for her mind and, truth be told, not the level of excitement she needed.

Things had started to change a month earlier when she took on the case of a man who’d been unjustly accused of a murder and was being railroaded by the unethical Westchester County prosecutor Harley Chin. Marlene had not only cleared her client, she had helped catch the real killer-a professional hit man who murdered the victim in order to cover up another homicide of a call girl committed by a New York State supreme court trial judge.

Solving two murders and nailing two killers, all while serving the cause of justice, had certainly filled her spiritual, mental, and adrenaline-junkie voids. She felt more energized and involved than she had in years. And now it gave her the idea for a new avocation combining her law degree-which she’d kept current with the New York Bar Association-with her knack for private investigation. True, she couldn’t practice criminal law in Manhattan to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest with her husband’s position, but she could practice law in the remaining four boroughs of Gotham, each one a county of its own, and her private investigator credentials-which she’d kept since her days with the security firm-were good in Manhattan as well; she could always work with an attorney there.

The recent case had convinced her that there was a need for her services as well. A district attorney like her husband-who insisted that his prosecutors play by the rules and who believed that it was the duty of his office to seek justice, not win at all costs-wasn’t the problem. Not that the New York DAO was infallible, but that sort of institutionalized ethics went a long ways toward preventing malicious or unwarranted prosecution.

Her husband was what the twins called “old-school,” an anomaly. As a first-year law student at Yale she took to heart a maxim of America’s justice system: it was better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be wrongfully convicted. Yet there were self-aggrandizing prosecutors, like Chin in Westchester, as well as overzealous cops, politicized judges, and lazy defense attorneys, who didn’t do their jobs, which meant that, regrettably, innocent people went to prison, and some were even sentenced to death.

And that’s where her inspiration came in. It was no accident that many of those for whom justice was truly blind were poor or disenfranchised and could not afford “dream teams” of lawyers, private investigators, and bevies of expert witnesses. Indigent defendants accused of homicide in New York had two private attorneys appointed to represent them; such attorneys belonged to a pool of “qualified” trial lawyers who applied to be in the group. However, they were paid at a much lower rate than their standard fees, and the only way to make money was to take on as many cases as a judge would assign them and then bill as many hours as the courts would allow. All the while, they were also working on more lucrative cases in their private practices. As a result, the time and energy devoted to the case of an indigent person accused of murder could be less than adequate.

As Marlene had explained to her husband when broaching the subject the previous week after their meeting with Stupenagel, she thought that maybe she’d take on a few cases a year where she believed there was a legitimate question about an injustice being done. She’d work pro bono-a Latin term meaning “for the good,” or more accurately “free of charge”-something she could easily afford as she’d made millions from the sale of the security firm, and the dog farm was quite profitable as well.

Although he’d teased her about whether he’d be comfortable “sleeping with the enemy,” Butch had not objected to her idea. She knew he wouldn’t. For one thing, he learned long ago that she was not easily dissuaded when she put her mind to something. But more importantly, he accepted that the job of the defense was to zealously and competently represent its client, and if the state couldn’t prove its case, then even a guilty defendant should be set free. So if Marlene put his colleagues in the other boroughs through the wringer, then so be it; they’d better be ready for a fight.

She didn’t have to wait for one either. That afternoon, Alejandro Garcia had called on her cell phone and asked if she could recommend a good attorney for a friend who was being unjustly accused of three murders. The irony was that when Marlene first met the then-budding rap artist, Garcia had been framed for a multiple homicide he didn’t commit.

When she pressed him for more information about the case, Garcia told her that his friend Felix was the young man she’d been reading about in the newspapers, the one the media was calling the Columbia U Slasher, with barely an attempt to preface the word “murderer” with “alleged.” He’d been arrested for the rape and murder of three women, two in Manhattan and one in the Bronx.

“Your husband’s office just indicted him,” said the former gang leader, who, although friendly with Butch, still had that street distrust of “the Man.” “But I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles, he didn’t do it.”

Marlene had frowned. Although she’d read about the arrest in the newspapers, she didn’t recall Butch talking about the case after the Monday meeting he had with his bureau chiefs and assistant district attorneys who presented their cases. He didn’t tell her about every case and had been preoccupied with some of the post-Jabbar trial fallout regarding jurisdictional issues with the feds. But the Columbia U Slasher case was fairly high-profile and he usually would have remarked on a case like that by now. Maybe it’s just such a slam-dunk case that it’s not worth talking about, she thought.

“If I remember right, the news reports were quoting anonymous cops saying he confessed,” Marlene told Garcia.

“Shit, Felix will confess to anything,” he replied. “It’s sort of weird, and probably because his old man beats the shit out of him for nothing, but he’d tell you he flew one of the jets into the World Trade Center on Nine-Eleven if he thought it would make you happy-or at least get you off his back. He’s been like that since I’ve known him.”

“Doesn’t he have an attorney?” Marlene asked.

Garcia had snorted with disgust. “No, Felix waived his rights,” he said. “I’m sure they had him convinced it was the right thing to do from the jump. So now he’s indicted for murder and won’t get an attorney appointed until his arraignment. Even then, who knows if he’ll get a good one and not some guy who talks him into taking a deal for somethin’ he didn’t do. He needs a good lawyer who’ll fight. But his family doesn’t have money, so I’m going to pay for it. That’s why I’m calling you. See if you know somebody who’ll fight for this kid.”

Marlene knew that the New York DAO’s assistant district attorneys, especially in the homicide bureau, were some of the best-trained and most skilled trial lawyers in the country. They were usually pretty damn sure that they were going to make their case at trial or they didn’t go to the grand jury for an indictment. Still, Garcia was a friend and asking for a favor, so she suggested that they meet first and then, if warranted, think of which defense lawyer to bring on board for the Manhattan case.

Garcia seemed relieved when she agreed, particularly after he also suggested that he bring Felix’s mother, Amelia, to the meeting. “She knows him better than anyone. I think if you talk to her, you’ll understand how he couldn’t have done this.”

Leaving Gilgamesh moping on the sidewalk, Marlene entered the bookstore, inhaling the musty aroma of old books and the smell of fresh coffee from the cafe at the rear of the building. Long and narrow, with its two floors of walls covered with row upon row of used books, as well as an eclectic collection of record albums, the bookstore subsisted on these donated items it then sold. All profits went to the Housing Works organization, which provided shelter, health care, and other services to homeless New Yorkers living with the AIDS virus.

During the day and even into the early evening, the bookstore was usually packed with browsers, readers, friends just having coffee, and sightseers, as the iconic shop, to the disgust of the locals, had become something of a tourist attraction. On weekday nights the environs were much quieter, as they were now, with just a few people scattered about, reading in one of the old leather chairs, working on their computer at a table with a latte, or gazing along the walls of books searching for an overlooked gem.

Marlene had offered to meet Garcia and Amelia Acevedo farther north, but he’d suggested somewhere closer to where Marlene lived in SoHo. “We don’t want to put you out,” he said. “And to be honest, Mrs. Acevedo doesn’t want to meet where someone she knows might see her and tell her husband. She has to take off from work for this, and he’d beat the hell out of her if he knew. The bastard sleeps all day, then drinks all night, gambles her money, and whores around while she’s at work.”

Marlene made her way back to where a bored barista made her a decaf Americano. She then took a seat in a nook and picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged that someone had left on the coffee table. She flipped open the book and noted one of the lines: The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

Just then the bell above the door rang and a small, dark-haired woman entered, followed by a young Hispanic man. The woman wore the sort of drab ubiquitous uniform found on the army of men and women who cleaned the offices of the high and mighty of Manhattan during the night and then disappeared back to their homes before daybreak. She looked frightened and out of place.

The man was also short but built like a fireplug, with a thick chest and muscular shoulders that supported a round, clean-shaven head. In his baggy New York Knicks jersey and low-rider jeans, Alejandro Garcia still looked like a kid from the streets of Spanish Harlem despite two platinum records and a major recording deal. He had big brown, soulful eyes that always reminded her of a deer’s, though she’d seen them turn as hard, dark, and bright as obsidian when he was angry. He’d been the leader of the notorious Inca Boyz street gang, whose turf was most of Spanish Harlem. And yet a stint in a reformatory, as well as the guidance and love of the grandmother who’d raised him, helped him focus on his music and gradually allowed him to walk away from the hardscrabble streets.

Garcia spotted Marlene and revealed the Cheshire Cat grin that was his most charming feature. He steered the woman toward her. “I take it that’s your trained bear tied up outside?” he said with a laugh. “I tried to be nice but he just gave me a look like he wanted to eat me. Don’t you feed him?”

“Oh yeah, and Gilgamesh eats like a bear, too,” Marlene replied, chuckling. “But he’s a gentle giant… unless…”

She left it at that, which made Garcia laugh again. “Unless you sic him on some homeboy’s ass… Anyway, Marlene Ciampi, this is Amelia Acevedo. Her son, Felix, is my friend I told you about.”

The three sat down and Garcia quickly filled in what he knew about Felix’s confession. “I haven’t seen him yet,” he said. “I’m not next of kin or a lawyer. So this is mostly from what he told his mom this morning after his indictment and what the cops told her. The story is the cops picked him up for some other mugging, which I’m sure he didn’t do either-just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time-and then they questioned him most of a day. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised he didn’t admit to every unsolved killing in the boroughs. But none of this adds up.”

“Like what?” Marlene asked.

“Like-and sorry, Mrs. Acevedo, but I have to be honest with Marlene here-Felix is what you’d call ‘a little slow.’ He was held back a couple of grades and still struggles with things like reading and understanding even when he says he does. He’s not stupid; it just takes him longer to put it together than most people. There’s one thing he’s good at: if he hears something-like which trains to take and what stops to get off, or a rap song-he can spit it back out like he recorded it. But there’s no room for mistakes. If he accidentally got off at the wrong subway stop, he’d be lost until someone else told him what to do. But the cops are saying this is the guy who supposedly slips in and out of buildings murdering women and disappears, until finally they catch him wandering around on the sidewalk on a Sunday morning. You believe that? Hell, the cops said Felix tried to run away and fell over his own feet. That makes sense, anyway, ’cause the guy’s a klutz and blind without his glasses, which they lost, by the way.”

“You say he has a habit of confessing to things he didn’t do?” Marlene asked.

As a former assistant district attorney, she knew that with any major crime there were people who would step forward to confess when they didn’t commit the offense. Sometimes it was for the publicity. Or sometimes they were mentally ill and harboring a guilt complex that made them feel as if they needed to be punished. But those people tended to turn themselves in or made statements to others hoping to be implicated. They didn’t expect to be spotted on a sidewalk by the police and then try to escape.

Occasionally there was another type of false confession made during police interrogations. There wasn’t a lot of rubber-hosing of suspects, no slapping a potential perp beneath a hot, bare lightbulb-defendants were well aware of their civil rights when it came to physical violence. But some police interrogators stopped just short of it-getting up in the face of the suspect, shouting, threatening, cursing, intimidating.

The U.S. Supreme Court had even ruled that the police could lie in order to secure a confession, such as telling a suspect that he’d been identified by a witness when the truth was that he had not. And some interrogators walked a fine line with techniques like sleep deprivation, hunger, and thirst-cases had been lost when defense attorneys successfully argued to a judge that crossing that line had constituted coercion or worse.

Whatever the reason behind a false confession, the police were supposed to keep secret some details about the crime that only the killer would know. It was a sure way to separate fact from fiction.

“Felix will say anything that will take the pressure off,” Garcia replied, and told her about the incident between Maria Elena and her boyfriend at the Hip-Hop Club. He turned to the other woman. “Mrs. Acevedo, maybe you could tell Marlene more about Felix?”

Amelia Acevedo smiled timidly. Marlene observed that before a hard life had prematurely grayed Amelia’s hair and lined her face, she’d been quite pretty. “Yes, ever since he was a young boy, if someone asks him, ‘Did you do this?’ he will say yes,” Amelia replied. “He does not like people to be angry with him. His father is always angry with him. The other night Felix tried to deny that he took his father’s beer, and then when my husband found the beer in the fridge, Felix then told him that he did it, which he did not do. That’s when my husband hit him like this.” She imitated a backhand blow to the right side of Felix’s face.

“Has he been in trouble with the authorities-the police or at school-where he confessed to something he didn’t do?” Marlene asked.

Amelia nodded her head emphatically. “Yes, the other kids at school sometimes do bad things and then blame him. They know he will say he did it. This happened at the school when that boy, I think his name is Raymond, threw a rock at the window of the grocery store. Felix was afraid when the police accused him and so he said he did it. He didn’t want them to be mad at him. But then the police found out he didn’t do these things.”

Marlene thought for a moment before speaking again. “Forgive me, but I want to play devil’s advocate here for a moment. I understand he sometimes confesses to things he didn’t do, but what if he really killed these women? Do you have anything else to suggest that he didn’t do it?”

Garcia shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t think he could do it. The kid is a real sweetheart and just sort of naive about the world. I mean, he wanted to give the coat-check girl a diamond ring he bought from some guy in a park-probably hot as hell-and he’s too shy to even ask her for a date. But besides just not being the killer type, he’s kind of skinny and not very strong.”

He patted Amelia Acevedo’s hand. “Sorry, Mrs. Acevedo, I like Felix but he can hardly walk without falling. The cops are saying he’s this smooth cat burglar who gets into these apartments in the middle of the day, ties up these women, kills them without alarming the neighbors, then just calmly walks away, catches a bus or a taxi back to the Bronx? And nobody sees him? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Garcia looked at Amelia. “Tell her what you told me about Felix on the day of the murder in the Bronx.”

“I do not remember last July when the two women were killed in Manhattan,” she responded, “but I remember when that Bronx woman, Dolores Atkins, was killed because I saw it on television news before I went to work. My boy came home when I was watching.”

“What was he wearing?”

“The same thing he always wears in the summer-a T-shirt, shorts, and basketball shoes.”

“Did you see any blood on him? On his clothes? His hands?”

Amelia Acevedo shook her head. “No, nothing. And not when I washed his clothes later.”

Garcia looked over at Marlene. “I don’t know what was in the newspapers, but I’ve talked to a few people on the street who wouldn’t shit me. They said there was blood everywhere. But Felix doesn’t get any on him?”

Marlene frowned. “I haven’t seen the crime scene photographs, but maybe he washed up or changed clothes.”

“Talk to Felix sometime and then you tell me if you think he’s so cool that after he cuts this woman up and did whatever else they say he did, he washes the blood off himself and his clothes,” Garcia said. “Maybe he stopped at a Laundromat and then went to the Y to take a shower.”

“Maybe,” Marlene said with a laugh. “But it’s just the sort of thing we’ll have to look into should the prosecution try to make that claim.”

Garcia grinned. “This means you’ll take the case.”

Marlene smiled back. “I can’t represent him on the Manhattan beef, but I have someone good in mind, a real sharp lawyer, Alea Watkins. But let me look into this and the Bronx case some more and see what I can come up with.”

Suddenly Amelia sobbed and reached over to grab Marlene’s hands. “Felix is a good boy,” she said. “Gracias, he is all I have to bring me joy.”

Marlene squeezed the other woman’s hands and smiled. “We mothers have to stick together. I’ll do the best I can.”