Judge & Jury - James Patterson [20]
There would be no trial.
The woman shifted in her chair, and a blue cashmere sweater draped over the back fell onto the floor.
A waiter moved in, but Nordeshenko beat him to it. He reached down and picked it up.
“Thank you so much.” The woman smiled warmly at him. Their eyes met. Nordeshenko made no move to avoid them. In a different world, she was probably someone to admire and respect. But this was his world now.
He handed back the beautiful sweater. “My pleasure.” He nodded slightly in return.
And it was. He had looked into the eyes of many of his victims before he acted.
Your life is about to become hell, Miriam Seiderman.
Chapter 19
“MR. MACHIA, MY NAME is Hy Kaskel,” the Eyebrow said as he stepped away from his chair the following morning. “I’m going to be asking you some questions on behalf of my client, Mr. Dominic Cavello.”
Andie DeGrasse opened her notepad to a new page, sketching in a caricature of the defense attorney, his eyebrows flashing. She had decided to keep what had happened yesterday afternoon to herself. What could she prove? At this point she didn’t want another scene with Sharon Ann about “poisoning the jury.”
“I’m familiar with your client, Mr. Kaskel,” Louis Machia replied.
“Good.” The diminutive defense attorney nodded. “If you please, will you tell the jury just how you know him?”
“I’m just acquainted, Mr. Kaskel. I’ve been around a table with him a few times. He was there the night I got made.”
“Around a table.” Cavello’s attorney theatrically mimicked him. “Do you consider yourself a close friend of Mr. Cavello’s? Has he, say, invited you out to dinner?”
“Actually I have gone out to dinner with your client, Mr. Kaskel.” The witness grinned. “It was after Frank Angelotti’s funeral. A lot of us went out. But as for the other stuff, no. I was just a soldier. That’s not the way it worked.”
“So you’ve never heard Mr. Cavello give any orders on behalf of the Guarino crime family? He never said to you, for instance, ‘I need a favor from you, Mr. Machia,’ or ‘I want Samuel Greenblatt killed’?”
“No, Mr. Kaskel, not quite that way.”
“That was left to other people to explain to you. Like Ralphie D., whom you mentioned, or this other Tommy character . . . the one with the funny name?”
“Tommy Moose.”
“Tommy Moose.” The defense attorney nodded. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Kaskel. We all have funny names.”
Peals of laughter erupted through the courtroom.
“Yes, Mr. Machia,” the defense attorney said, “but what I was driving at is, you never actually heard my client suggest it would be a good thing if this Sam Greenblatt was killed, did you?”
“No, not directly.”
“You heard that from Ralphie D., who, you say, spotted him driving around somewhere in New Jersey in a car.”
“It wasn’t somewhere in New Jersey. It was down the block from where Mr. Greenblatt was killed.”
“By you, Mr. Machia, just to be clear.”
“Yes, sir.” The witness nodded. “By me.”
Kaskel scratched his chin. “Now, you describe yourself as a longtime member of the Guarino crime family, isn’t that right? And you’ve admitted to doing a lot of bad things on behalf of that family.”
“Yes,” the witness answered. “To both.”
“Like . . . killing people or trafficking in drugs, isn’t that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“What kinds of drugs did you traffic in, Mr. Machia?”
Machia shrugged. “Marijuana. Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine. You name it.”
“Hmmph,” the lawyer snickered to the jury, “you’re quite the entrepreneur, aren’t you? You’ve owned a gun, haven’t you, Mr. Machia?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve always had a gun.”
“Ever use your gun or threaten the life of someone in connection to those drugs, Mr. Machia?”
“Yes, sir, I have.”
“Ever take any of those drugs yourself, Mr. Machia?” Cavello’s lawyer pressed.
“Yes, I’ve taken drugs.”
“So you’re an admitted drug user, a car thief, a burglar, a knee breaker, and oh, yes, a killer, Mr. Machia. Tell me, in the course of your longtime crime dealings, did you