Bury the Lead - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,44
at his watch. “You’re on the clock, asshole. You’ve got fifteen minutes.” He’s referring to the agreed-upon length of our interview, and I’m somewhat put off by his attitude.
I look at my own watch. “You’re short,” I say.
“I told Vince fifteen minutes,” he insists.
“I wasn’t talking about the time, I was talking about your height,” I say. “You’re short. I would say . . . five two-ish? Asshole?” It’s a tough call whether or not I should be coming back at him like this, but there’s no chance I’ll get something out of him if he thinks I’m just going to accept his bullshit.
He seems ready to go back at me but then thinks better of it. We’re even with the insults, and he wants to get this over with.
“Ask your questions,” he says.
“Who might have had reason to kill Linda Padilla?” is my first softball.
“No one that I know. But then again, I never met your client.”
“She made a career out of blowing the whistle on people, every one of whom would have a grudge against her. What I want to know are the special ones, the ones who really hated her, who she might have been afraid of.”
“Linda wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody.”
“Tell me about her connections to Dominic Petrone.”
He laughs a mocking laugh. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m not asking you if they were connected. I already know that from five different sources. What I want to know is the extent of the relationship.”
He hesitates, unsure of what I know or how to respond.
“I will ask you these same questions on the stand if I have to,” I say.
“Don’t threaten me.”
“Look,” I say, softening my voice and acting conciliatory, “my only interest in this is proving my client is innocent. To do that, I just may have to find out who is guilty, or at least provide the jury with a reasonable alternative. I only care about Petrone if I think there’s a chance he had Padilla killed. If there’s nothing there, I don’t bring in Petrone and I don’t bring in you.”
He thinks for a moment; the idea of avoiding future involvement appeals to him. “She knew Petrone,” he says. “She met him at business dinners, political gatherings, that kind of thing.”
Those kinds of meetings are quite conceivable. Petrone has the appearance and manner of a sophisticated businessman, and he has relationships with important people from the legitimate side of the tracks.
Nevertheless, I’m skeptical. “You make them sound like casual acquaintances. I know it was much more than that.”
He nods. “He liked her, thought she was smart and had guts. He sort of took her under his wing. And she liked him, but she knew it would look bad for her politically. So she kept him at arm’s length.”
“Did that piss him off?”
He stares hard at me. “Dominic Petrone would never have done anything to hurt Linda Padilla. No way. No how.”
“Is that right?” I ask skeptically.
He nods. “That’s very right. He wouldn’t harm a hair on her head. But you? He’d break you like a twig and bury the pieces under Giants Stadium.”
Oh.
• • • • •
TRIALS DO NOT creep up on a lawyer. Birthdays and holidays creep up. The start of the baseball season creeps up. Trials steamroll; one minute it seems like you have plenty of time to prepare, and the next the bailiff is asking you to rise.
The bailiff will be asking us to rise in the case of New Jersey v. Cummings the day after tomorrow. We’re not ready, not even close. But it’s not the timing. Our real problem is, we haven’t made progress refuting the evidence, evidence that seems to increase daily.
Vince has asked me to meet him at Charlie’s tonight for a final pretrial discussion. It’s one I’m dreading, almost as much as I’m dreading the trial itself.
I’d feel better if Laurie were able to join us, but she’s with Sondra tonight. They’re out to dinner, a sort of celebration that Sondra has finally recovered from her injuries. Tomorrow I’m bringing her down to the foundation to meet Willie, who has been asking me every day for weeks when his devoted underling is arriving.
Vince has grown increasingly subdued and depressed over the last few weeks and appears the same when he arrives tonight. We order beers, and I wait for the questions that I know are coming.
He throws me a curve. “I want to announce that Daniel is my son,” he says. “I don’t want it to be