Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [3]
Giordano looked up and realized that the kid, Archer, was staring at him.
“I know who you are,” the kid said in a hushed voice. “I saw you on all the news channels. I saw when you were arrested.”
“Yeah, well, I got a lot of press,” Giordano acknowledged, secretly pleased to have been recognized. He was, after all, a local celebrity of sorts. “The trial got a lot of airtime.”
Giordano could tell that Channing wanted to ask about that, but didn’t. Instead, they talked quietly about the lockdown and the amount of press that was outside to cover the day’s events. Channing, being closest to the window, could monitor the media activity on the courthouse lawn.
“I don’t think it’s fair that I should miss my trial just because they lost someone and can’t find him.” Lowell was whining again, and for two cents, Giordano would have taken him out, right then and there, had he been able to.
Giordano expressed his annoyance with a look that sent the kid shivering, and then told them, “I ain’t too happy about the delay, myself. We had a big day planned here. My attorney thinks he can get my conviction overturned.”
“What were you convicted of?” Channing asked.
“Shooting my wife, among other things.” Giordano watched Channing’s face for a reaction. There was none.
“Did you?” Channing raised one eyebrow only slightly.
Giordano smirked.
Channing appeared to take that for a silent admission.
“Why would they overturn your conviction?” Channing asked curiously.
“Because the cop who testified against me—the cop who provided all the evidence against me—lied, and everyone connected with the investigation knows that the cop lied.” Smug little bastard. Thought he’d put a noose around my neck? He did me the biggest favor of my life, and the stupid shit will have to live with that the rest of his life—that his lies set me free.
“They can let you off for that? If somebody lies?” The kid was all ears now, his personal whine-fest over for the time being.
“Yup.”
“But don’t they just try you all over again?” Lowell asked.
“Nope. My lawyer says they don’t have enough untainted evidence to make a jaywalking conviction stick. First time around, the D.A. loaded the charges against me. Tried me for everything he could think of. All those charges were based on the testimony of this one cop. And he lied. Everything he said, all the shit he said at the trial, he made up. My attorney later proved it was all lies, and then the cop had to admit that he’d made it all up. They’re gonna have to let me out. My lawyer says any day now.”
Giordano closed his eyes and recalled with sheer joy the look on the D.A.’s face when Matusek had stood up in court at the sentencing hearing and announced that he had proof that Police Officer Bill Caruso had planted evidence and lied through his teeth and that he, Matusek, had a witness who would testify under oath that Caruso had admitted doing so to make sure that Giordano got the maximum sentence allowable by law for having murdered his wife and his two sons in cold blood.
Who’s sorry now, Billy boy?
“What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when you get out, Vince?” the kid was asking.
“Depends on whether or not I’d get caught.” Giordano laughed.
“What if you wouldn’t?”
“What, wouldn’t get caught?”
“Yeah. What if you could do anything—anything at all—and not get caught.” Lowell watched him intently.
“Gotta think on that a minute.”
“Think of three.” Lowell egged him on. “Let’s each think of three we’d do if we knew we wouldn’t get caught.”
Three? And if he knew he would never get caught? Jeez, there were so many. . . .
Ha. There was Uncle Vinnie, but he was on his last leg anyway with lung cancer, which couldn’t do its job fast enough as far as Vince was concerned. And then there were all the members of his family who had turned away from him after he’d been arrested. His mother—his own mother—had disowned him, but he couldn’t very well whack his mother. What kind of a man would do a thing like that?
“If I could get away with it,