The Mayor of Lexington Avenue (49 page)

“Yes, I recall that.”

“Do you still maintain that he didn’t tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“And you heard Mr. Dragone testify that you threatened him with the health department?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still maintain that you didn’t do that?”

“Yes.”

“And you heard Ms. Lopez testify that Rudy’s mother, Elena, came to the police station to stop your interrogation of her son at 3:16 p.m. on January 24, 1986. It’s in her notes, she wrote the time down. Do you remember her testimony?”

“Yes, I heard her testify to that.”

“And your notes from your own records reveal that you began your interrogation at 3:18 p.m., is that accurate?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still maintain that when Elena arrived at the station, you were almost done with your interrogation of Rudy?”

“When I knew she was there—yes.”

“I’m not sure I understand your answer.”

“She may have been there and I didn’t know about it.”

“So you dispute Ms. Lopez’s testimony that she called back immediately to let you know Elena was there?”

“I dispute everything Ms. Lopez says.”

“Now, you said something on direct which I found very interesting—you said you would have remembered a letter in 1988 if it had mentioned a person named Geronimo, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Is that because a person named Geronimo was a witness in the Rudy Kelly case and had disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“And what would you have done if you
had
seen a letter from Del Rio identifying a Geronimo from Bass Creek as a rapist and a murderer? Would you have contacted the Del Rio police department?”

“Absolutely.”

“Would you have contacted Mr. Evans?”

“Either him or somebody in his office. I can’t say I positively would have contacted him.”

“But you never received this 1988 letter?”

“No.”

“No further questions.”

Jimmy DiCarlo finished his sterling defense with Philip Sheridan, a police sergeant with the Del Rio police department.

“What was your position in the police department in 1988, Sergeant?”

“I was in charge of records.”

“If an inquiry letter to another department was sent by your department in 1988 inquiring about a suspect, who would have sent that letter?”

“I would have.”

“Do you have any record of an inquiry letter being sent to the Bass Creek police department in 1988?”

“No. And I searched our records thoroughly.”

“And do you have any personal recollection of sending a letter to the Bass Creek police department?”

“No, I don’t.”

“No further questions.”

“Cross, Mr. Tobin?”

“No, Judge, but I would request that this witness stick around. I may want to call him on rebuttal.”

“Very well. Mr. Sheridan, if you could wait in the witness room, we may be calling you momentarily. It won’t be long. Any more witnesses, Mr. DiCarlo?”

Jimmy checked with Clay Evans one last time, hoping Clay would relent and take the stand. But Clay shook him off. There was no way he was subjecting himself to cross-examination by Jack Tobin.

“No more witnesses, Your Honor. The defense rests.”

“Any rebuttal, Mr. Tobin?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Call your first rebuttal witness.”

“The state calls Del Shorter.”

Clay Evans could feel the Grunt squirming next to him. He at least felt somewhat vindicated because he knew the Grunt had lied to him. Somewhere along the way, Brume had learned that Del Shorter was working against them but he had kept that from Clay. Jack Tobin had been waiting for both of them to testify so he could bring Del Shorter out to crucify them. Clay had saved himself from the humiliation of being torn apart by Jack on the stand, but from little else. This trial had been a nightmare. Jimmy DiCarlo’s defense had been the worst he had ever seen and now Jack was bringing Del Shorter out as the coup de grace. Clay thought of his decision to hire Jimmy DiCarlo and pay him $200,000 and his second decision to pay $250,000 to assassinate Jack.
Never has anybody paid so much for so little. . . .

“I’m retired and I’ve been living in Utah for the last ten years,” Del told the jury.

Jack skipped over the story of how he’d found Del. It wasn’t of interest to the jury. He had hired two people to go through all of Tracey’s telephone messages for the month before she died. Through a painstaking process, they’d discovered one of the calls was made from the home of Del Shorter’s sister in Stuart. Jack made the visit himself. It was not unlike the visit he had made to Maria Lopez the first time. The sister admitted that Del had visited and, in a fit of conscience, he had contacted Tracey James, but when she was killed he got scared and went back to Utah—which is where the Grunt had expected him to remain forever.

“In 1986, I was Wesley Brume’s partner.”

He proceeded to pound Wesley and, where he could, Clay into the ground as he responded to Jack’s questions.

“Officer Brume sent me out on January 24, 1986, to meet with Elena Kelly and to keep her occupied while he interrogated her son. When she caught on to what I was doing, she demanded to see her son. I told her she wasn’t a lawyer.”

In response to questions about the rape file, Del admitted his own complicity.

“We knew we were hiding the semen evidence. That’s why we created the rape file. There was no evidence of rape. Wes wasn’t smart enough to come up with the idea himself. He told me about it immediately after a meeting with Clay Evans. . . . The coroner was in on it. He had to be.”

The final blow was the 1988 letter, but even at this stage—even though he had made Jimmy look like a fool so many times—Jack held a little back so Jimmy could step right into it on cross.

“I knew about the letter. I saw it when Maria showed it to Mr. Brume. They knew it would blow their case. Evans was up for a federal judgeship at the time, and Brume was hoping when that happened something good would happen for him, which it did.”

Jimmy DiCarlo had nothing to lose on cross. He went after Del Shorter with a vengeance.

“So you were part of this—this criminal activity—is that what you’re telling this jury?”

“Yes.”

“And I presume you told Mr. Tobin all about your participation before today?”

“Yes.”

“And you have not been prosecuted for any crimes, have you?”

“No.”

“Even though, if you had come forward at any time about what you knew, you could have stopped Rudy Kelly’s execution?”

“Yes.”

“You are as much responsible for his death as anybody, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Maybe even more so.”

“I don’t understand your question?”

“You took the call from Maria Lopez on January 24, 1986. You made the decision not to tell Wesley Brume that Rudy’s mother was out there demanding to see her son. You made the decision to stall her!”

“I did not! I did not!”

“And you were the one who came up with the idea of a separate rape file!”

“I did not!”

“Oh no? Why is the rape investigative file signed by you? Why does it state, and I quote: ‘It is the opinion of this investigator that this rape investigation should be separate from the murder investigation’?”

“I don’t know. Probably because Brume wanted it that way.”

“Or you wanted it that way.”

Jimmy was actually making some headway. Jack was enjoying it because he knew what was coming. Clay Evans had given up. He knew the ballgame was over and that Jimmy was simply no match for Jack. He had made a bad choice and he had paid dearly for it. At least now, at the end, he could sit back and watch Jimmy’s evisceration.

“You knew Jack Tobin was getting close, so you got with your friend Maria Lopez and you made up this 1988 letter from the Del Rio police department and you fed it to Mr. Tobin so you wouldn’t be prosecuted.”

“That’s not true!”

“There was never any letter, Mr. Shorter, and you know it.”

“That’s not true, Mr. DiCarlo, I have a copy right here. I made a copy of it and kept it. I’m not sure why. Maybe just because I thought I might need it someday.”

Jimmy DiCarlo wasn’t sure he’d heard the answer right. At that moment, Clay Evans wanted to shoot this incompetent oaf with whom he had entrusted his life.

Del Shorter produced a document from his jacket pocket and held it out to Jimmy, who didn’t even want to go near it.

“Take the letter, Mr. DiCarlo,” Judge Stanton said softly. Jimmy finally took the letter.

“You could have typed this letter yesterday. The signature is unreadable,” Jimmy said after a quick glance. Questions had long ago gone by the wayside.

“I didn’t,” Del countered.

“And you don’t know if Wesley Brume ever talked to Clay Evans about this letter, do you?”

“No.”

“No further questions.” Jimmy tossed the letter onto the podium dismissively and walked back to his table acting as if he had decimated Del Shorter on cross. He didn’t even hear Jack call Philip Sheridan back to the stand.

“Mr. Sheridan, I have a letter here purported to be from your police department dated June 16, 1988. The signature is kind of hard to read. Could you take a look at it and see if you could identify the signature?” Jack handed the letter to Philip Sheridan.

“That’s my signature,” Sheridan replied after examining the letter.

“And did your department normally send out letters like this when you believed a suspect came from another state?”

“All the time.”

“How long do you keep those letters?”

“It all depends. We have what we call a ‘pending file.’ If the letter isn’t answered, it stays in the pending file and is purged after three years. If it is answered, it becomes part of the criminal investigative file and is not purged.”

“So, now that you have identified your signature on that copy, can you re-create for us what happened with this letter?”

“Sure. We probably sent it out and never received an answer and after three years purged it from our files. That’s why I testified that I had no record of such a letter.”

“Thank you, Officer Sheridan. No further questions, Your Honor.”

Jack had the letter marked and admitted into evidence over Jimmy’s strenuous objection.

“Redirect?” the judge asked, almost smiling. Jimmy had finally gotten the picture.

“No, Your Honor.”

“Any more witnesses, Mr. Tobin?”

“No, Your Honor. The prosecution rests.”

Jimmy was up before Jack had finished. “We renew our Motion for Acquittal, Your Honor.” There were actually some chuckles from the spectators and the press row.

“It’s 11:30 right now,” the judge said, looking at his watch. “I’m going to dismiss the jury for lunch and we’ll discuss the Motion for Acquittal.” The judge turned to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to give you a long lunch. You don’t have to be back until 1:30, at which time you’ll hear closing arguments. I suspect that you will be deliberating by the end of the day. Remember all my admonitions to you. Do not talk about the case to anyone or among yourselves. Enjoy your lunch.”

“Okay,” the judge started after the jury had filed out, “I’m going to give it to you short and sweet so you have time to digest it over lunch and to modify your closing arguments if necessary. I’m dismissing the case against Clay Evans.” A low murmur spread through the courtroom. Judge Stanton ignored it. “Mr. Evans was the prosecutor in the Kelly case. As such, he enjoyed absolute immunity. The only possible way he could be criminally responsible for Rudy Kelly’s murder is if,
after
the prosecution was completed, he participated in some illegal scheme to have Rudy Kelly executed. I listened carefully to all the testimony and there is no evidence that Mr. Evans even knew about the 1988 letter from the Del Rio police department. Maria Lopez, the state’s best witness on this issue, said she had no real proof that Wesley Brume even talked to Clay Evans about this letter. Mr. Shorter also admitted that he had no proof that Brume told Evans about the letter. Without this critical nexus, I must dismiss this case against Mr. Evans.

“As for Mr. Brume, he has limited immunity and there is ample evidence against him to send this case to the jury.

“That’s it. That’s my ruling. Mr. Evans, you are free to go. I’ll see the rest of you at 1:30 sharp.”

Jimmy was ecstatic. He went to shake Clay Evans’s hand but thought better of it when Clay glared at him.

“We won this case in spite of you. If I had taken the stand, as you suggested, I’d be feeling like Brume over there—waiting for my death sentence. Goodbye, Jimmy. And don’t ever show up in my courtroom again.”

Jimmy knew Clay didn’t mean it. Once he got back on the bench, he’d get a hankering for old Jimmy’s satchels of cash and everything would be forgotten. For now, though, without even going near his remaining client, Jimmy headed for the courthouse steps and his afternoon press conference, where he explained to all who would listen how he had achieved Clay Evans’s release. Nobody asked about Wesley Brume.

Late that afternoon, after closing arguments and less than an hour’s deliberation, the jury came back with a guilty verdict against Wesley Brume. And the next day, in the sentencing phase of the trial, they recommended a life sentence without parole, which the judge approved. They would have given him the death penalty, but Jack had made something clear in his discussions with them.

“Rudy and I discussed this many times,” he told them. “And we agreed that the death penalty has been arbitrarily applied in this country and we also agreed that the criminal justice system is too flawed to have a death penalty—just look what happened to Rudy. Therefore, I know Rudy would want me to ask you to give Wesley Brume the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of death.”

And they had agreed to his—to Rudy’s—request.

When it was all over, Judge Stanton just looked at Jack and nodded. Jack read the message in that nod. By declaring a mistrial and cleaning up the record, he had ensured a solid case against Wesley Brume. Brume could appeal from now until Doomsday and he wouldn’t get anywhere. As for Clay Evans, that case had always been a long shot. At least Stanton had let him put on his entire case, and he’d had a chance to show a fairly wide audience just what kind of man Clay Evans was. He’d wanted to finish the job, of course, to wring Evans’s slimy neck with a well-fashioned legal rope, but the law hadn’t let him. Jack had a real problem with the law that had let Evans wriggle away, but not with the judge. His friend Harley’s assessment had been only partially correct: Harry Stanton was never reversed on appeal because he worked as hard as the lawyers to make things get done right.