Fatal Odds Read online

  He laughed a gentle laugh. “Yes. That would be first. Actually, that would be second. The first concern is that I want to assure you that after what I hope will be a pleasant and productive conversation, you will be escorted to your home. In spite of what you may have heard of our little community here, you’re in no danger. Do you understand that I can and do give that assurance?”

  I sat back in the chair as an intended sign of trust. “I do. Perhaps you understand that you’ve just restored ten years to my life.”

  The laugh this time was open and hearty. “I’ve been told that you have a certain steel in your bones when in, shall we say, difficult situations, Mr. Knight. The mere fact that you chose to come here tonight, well . . . we both have much to learn of each other. So, to business.”

  He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. “Mr. Knight, we have a mutual acquaintance. Victor Mendosa. I believe you have a close relationship.”

  I figured I was giving him nothing he didn’t already know by saying, “He’s the son of my mother’s sister. My cousin.”

  “Yes. And I believe the relationship is even closer than that.”

  “If you mean we’ve been close friends since he and his brother, Roberto, came to live with us when he was fourteen, yes. You’re right.”

  “That’s good. Let’s get directly to the point. Cards on the table, as they say. Victor’s in legal trouble. Our Suffolk County district attorney wants to try him for involvement in his brother’s death.”

  “As far as I know, there’s been no public announcement.” I was getting edgy about breaching the confidence I promised to Billy Coyne. He smiled and leaned back in the creaking desk chair.

  “We could play games with each other and waste the evening without ever reaching the point, Mr. Knight. That would be unfortunate for the three of us, Victor included. Why don’t we assume for discussion, merely hypothetically, that I have information about an impending indictment of Victor for felony murder based on the D.A.’s suspicion that the race was fixed? No actual admission or commitment on your part required. Is that fair?”

  I was still uncomfortable. “I’m willing to listen.”

  “Very good. Then we can assume, hypothetically of course, that Victor is left with two choices. We both know that Victor is . . . missing. He could stay that way indefinitely and avoid trial. That’s not a good choice. He has a promising career. The alternative is to turn himself in and stand trial.”

  “When you say ‘missing,’ Mr. Garcia, can we also assume—hypothetically—that you know where Victor could be located. That assumption could, as you say, advance the conversation.”

  There was a pause. His smile was frozen for a few seconds before thawing. My guess was that he seldom heard more than the word “yes” or “no”—mostly “yes”—from someone sitting in that chair.

  “I’m acquainted with your senior partner, Mr. Devlin. You’ve picked up his direct ways. I see you also have the backbone to carry it off. I hope we’ll get to know each other better. Until then, let’s hold that assumption about Victor’s whereabouts in abeyance.”

  “I’m still listening.”

  He nodded. “I have an interest in seeing Victor cleared of that charge. He’s a fine young man. But you know that.”

  “Would you mind if I ask what that interest is?”

  He raised his hands in an ambiguous gesture as he noticed that the questions were flowing in his direction.

  “I’ll give you the simple answer. Too many of our young men have their futures, their lives, stifled . . . stamped out in their teens. Violence seems endemic to our community. Your path was different, thank God. But you understand how things are here.”

  He looked over. I said it all with a nod.

  “I don’t want Victor’s life to end here. I want him to have the best defense counsel possible. I’m told that would be the firm of Devlin & Knight. I’m also told that the fee would be at an appropriately high level. I’m prepared to write whatever check is necessary to ensure your services.”

  “That’s very generous, Mr. Garcia. But it doesn’t answer the question.”

  His eyebrows rose significantly, as did my blood pressure. But I needed an answer to the question before I could make a commitment. This could be rough sailing. Mr. Devlin and I agreed when we first came together as partners that while we’d be representing criminals—many of them guilty—we’d never take on representation of anyone whose occupation involved cold-blooded murder. That eliminated organized crime personnel, whether Italian, Irish, or Puerto Rican. I owed it to my partner to honor that commitment, regardless of circumstances. He would have done the same.

  He held up his hands in a silent question.

  “Your real interest, Mr. Garcia. It matters. I’ll tell you why if you’d like. As you say, Victor’s a nice young man and a good jockey. Neither of those facts would cause most people to open their checkbooks.”

  There was a slowly kindling fire in his dark eyes now that was setting off alarms in every corner of my mind. It was only deep-rooted loyalty to Mr. Devlin that recalled the phrase, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

  “Perhaps, as you say, Mr. Garcia, it’s my turn to put all the cards on the table.”

  He was piercing me with those deep eyes at this point, but there was still no hostility in his voice. “By all means, Michael. May I call you Michael?”

  “I’d actually prefer to keep the formality, if you don’t mind. You’ll understand when I tell you why I need to know more before I commit. Mr. Devlin and I made a solemn promise that neither of us would represent anyone whose occupation involved murder.”

  “Victor’s a jockey, Mr. Knight.”

  “I was with Victor in the hospital. He had come right from the track. He took off his jockey silks in the waiting room. I saw the tattoo. ‘NDC.’ That’s the symbol of an organized crime gang called the Nyetas. I may not live in Jamaica Plain now, but I’m not totally out of touch either. The gang that rules in this housing project is rumored to have connections with the Nyetas.”

  I looked for something in his eyes—agreement, disagreement, anger. I could at least read nothing that said I’d walked off a cliff so far.

  “I think you brought me here for this meeting because I’ve been asking questions about Victor. Clearly you’re not the building superintendent here. You’re a man of power. I think you see where this is going.”

  He sat back in his chair. There was a studied calm in his features that I’d seen in Mr. D.’s when the game was on and the stakes were high.

  “Ask your question, Mr. Knight. And make it direct. Leave no room for later doubts.”

  The gauntlet was down, and I had one chance. “If we take on the representation of Victor, will we be representing solely the interests of a jockey with a promising career, or will we be furthering the interests of an organization that deals in drugs and death?”

  I held my breath. He stood. I don’t know why, but I did, too. He had my eyes locked with his.

  “This boy with the tattoo. You didn’t know him when he and his brother were young boys in Puerto Rico. You were not living in your mother’s house when they came here. It was your mother who answered the pleas of her sister in Puerto Rico to bring the boys to this city before their lives were compromised by the gang. But your mother never knew the full story, either. And just as well.”

  He walked over to my side of the desk. “I’m in a position to know more about you than you think. May I just say that your own past was not unlike that of Victor. You may not have been left with a tattoo to carry for the rest of your life, but I’m sure you have other scars, up here.” He pointed to his forehead. “You made a new life. So has Victor. What Paco did for you—yes, I know about that—I also did for Victor. The difference is that I had the power to grant his release without suffering the price Paco paid for you.”

  He turned his head, I think possibly to hide any trace of an emotion that could seem to some like weakness. “Victor has been l
ike my son.”

  He walked back and sat down. I sat as well. Our eyes were locked again. “No, Mr. Knight. You have no worry on that score. I make no apology for my life, but you won’t be representing me or any organization. You’ll be defending a boy against an ambitious and powerful prosecutor. I believe you and your partner can live with that.”

  There was that same tiredness around his eyes that I see in Mr. Devlin’s all too often. But I could find no resentment there for my asking the question.

  There was one more devil that had to be exorcised. “Mr. Garcia, are you aware that Paco is dead?”

  “So I’ve heard. That is regrettable.”

  “Are you also aware that I came within a count of three of being shot by the man who killed him?”

  This time I saw his eyes come to full alert. I recalled the name on the identification I found in the wallet of the man with the gun, the man who also died that night from a gunshot out of the shadows.

  “Mr. Garcia, who is, or rather was, Hector Martinez?”

  I could have read his expression as either shock or anger. Either way, it was momentary. A look of calm resolution took its place almost before I could read it.

  “Mr. Knight, this is a dangerous world you and I have chosen to inhabit. You represent people who are involved in matters that must occasionally touch your life with certain risks. It would be naïve to believe these risks could be totally avoided by saying you’re just the lawyer. Am I correct?”

  I thought back over the past three years and counted the number of times I’d sworn never to take another case more dangerous than drafting a deed.

  “Granted. But . . .”

  “Allow me, Mr. Knight. And then you choose, once and for all. You recognize that I’m a man of a certain power in this community. May I say modestly, that you have no conception of the extent of that power. That said, I’ll swear to you now that I’ll use every resource at my command to shield you and your partner from any threat that might result from your representation of Victor. More than that, I cannot offer.”

  I sensed that that was all he had to say on the matter. It was in or out on that basis. I sat silently for a few moments. I wanted him to know that what I was about to say was fully thought out.

  When I looked up, I could see that he was giving me the time for thought, but that he expected an answer.

  “Mr. Garcia, Victor is my cousin. But we’re more like brothers. Before you brought me here, Mr. Devlin and I committed to his defense. I could have said that at the beginning, but I had to know what part you play in this. As long as the business of the Nyetas is out of this equation entirely, our commitment to Victor stands.”

  His smile was genuine. He took a checkbook out of his coat pocket. I held up a hand. “That’s not what I want. I need something more important.”

  His eyes asked the question.

  “I need information. Where do I start? You didn’t say you knew where Victor is. But you didn’t deny it either. There’s no time for games now. We trust each other, or we don’t. It can’t be halfway. I could be walking into a lion’s den.”

  He nodded as if a decision had been made. “You’re an interesting young man. You and Lex Devlin are well matched. I’ll say this just once. When I give my trust, like your partner, it’s not halfway. I fully expect the same. I don’t think I need to be more explicit.”

  We both stood, and when our eyes met this time, a compact was made. Words were unnecessary. The handshake merely solidified it.

  He walked me to the door. “Now may I call you ‘Michael’?”

  “Now, and from now on, Mr. Garcia.”

  “I’ll be in touch by tomorrow with the information you need. If you have to contact me, do it through the chef at El Rey de Lechón. He’s not of our blood. But you can trust him. And there are not many. As we say, cuidado, Miguel.”

  SEVEN

  I KNEW THAT certain questions needed solid answers before I could make a pitch to Victor to turn himself in voluntarily. First, was that race, in fact, a boat race as the old touts used to say—fixed? Secondly, if so, was Victor in on the fix? Two affirmatives to those questions would dictate a radically different approach to the defense from the one I had planned on the assumption of Victor’s innocence.

  My only lead as to his whereabouts was the promise of a message from Ramon Garcia. That involved waiting—a skill I never fully mastered. I decided to make the best use of the time.

  There had been a bug in the back of my head ever since the previous morning when I’d watched Dante’s Pride, Roberto’s horse in that disastrous race, walk calmly into the training starting gate on the backstretch. He even stood still in the box as if he were posing for photos. Rick had called to mind the contrasting image of the Pride in the starting gate the afternoon of the race. He was jumpy as a cat on a griddle. He never had all four feet planted on the ground before the gate sprung open. The result was predictably a stumbling start over the first eight strides.

  When facts don’t readily rear their little heads, the next best thing is a hunch. As Sherlock Holmes was wont to say, eliminate the improbable and what’s left is high on the probability chart. I remembered hearing a story from Rick years before about an old Montana horse trader’s trick to make a horse look lame in order to reduce the asking price.

  That thought had me at the Suffolk Downs backstretch the next morning before the sun cleared the horizon. I walked down the track to the starting gate where the crew of assistant starters were standing around in a cluster, waiting for the day’s crop of horses for training.

  I caught the eye of Fred Rothman, the only one I knew. Rick McDonough had referred him to our law firm years before when he was charged for an incident of high-speed driving. I had lucked out in discovering an out-of-date calibration of the radar equipment used at that time by the local police. The judge dismissed the charge. That put Fred and me on friendly footing when he walked over to the rail.

  “How’s it going, Counselor?”

  “We’ll see how the day shapes up. I need a favor, Fred. Just a curiosity. You were working the starting gate the day Roberto Mendosa’s horse fell, weren’t you?”

  Fred just shook his head. “That was the worst, and I’ve seen all the bad ones. Roberto was a good kid. What’s this got to do with you?”

  “Curiosity. Do you remember which starter loaded Dante’s Pride for that race?”

  “Yeah. Dante was number three post. That was . . .”

  He started to turn around toward the group of starters, some of whom were looking in our direction. I caught him in mid-turn.

  “Fred. Look at me. This is confidential.”

  “This is more than curiosity, isn’t it, Mike?”

  “That’s the favor I mentioned. You and I are just chatting about the weather, right?”

  “Looks sunny to me. I was about to say it was Ronny Stone. I remember he loaded Dante’s Pride.”

  “How do you remember that?”

  “Because I had to help him. It was unusual. Pride’s usually the coolest horse in the race.”

  “Without turning around, which one is Stone?”

  “He’s the guy with the blue cap.”

  That did it. I spotted him in the group and thanked Fred.

  “Whoa, Mike. What’s up?”

  I smiled. “Nothing, Fred. When do you fellas take a break?”

  “At eight thirty. We’ve got a list of horses to gate-train coming down now. Then they drag the track. Everything shuts down for fifteen minutes. You know the routine.”

  “Then here’s the second part of the favor. Would you tell Mr. Stone I have a message for him? Confidentially. I’ll be at the coffee shack during the break. He doesn’t know me. No names. Just tell him quietly the guy at the rail said he’s from a man he knows in the city. You don’t know anything more than that.”

  “Now you’ve really got me curious.”

  “How about if I satisfy your curiosity over dinner at Durgin-Park in about a week. Until then
, you don’t know anything.”

  “My mind is a blank.”

  “Then put a smile on your face, deliver the message, and dream about that prime rib.”

  * * *

  I was at the coffee shack, when the breezing and galloping horses all came off the track to allow the tractor brigade to drag heavy planks with three-inch studs on the bottom around the track to break up clods and smooth out the surface. I had two steaming cups of the heavy dark brew in front of me when I saw a blue cap ease up to the counter a few feet away. He had the rugged build of a man who pushed and pulled ton-and-a-half horses into confined metal enclosures for ten races every day.

  He never looked in my direction, but I could sense the tension in every muscle. The counter man looked for an order, but he just waved him off. I slid one of the coffee cups down in front of him. He just looked at it. I smiled and hoped he could hear the smile in my voice. One of us had to set the tone for some conversation.

  Most of the chatter of the jockeys and exercise riders down the counter was fortunately in Spanish. I kept my voice below the chatter level in English.

  “Good morning, Ron. That coffee’s for you.”

  He picked it up and blew the steam off the top. Still nothing but tension. That actually brought a bit of joy to my heart. I turned and gave him the most beaming, comforting smile I could muster at that hour.

  “Smile, Ron. Relax. I’m like an insurance salesman. You know what insurance is, don’t you? Some people say they can’t live without it. Let’s take a walk.”

  I left it at that vaguely ominous suggestion and moved away from the counter in the direction of a vacant section of the track rail. If there were anyone within earshot—which there wasn’t—the rumble of the tractors would have provided privacy.

  I looked back and watched him ease away from the counter. He gave it his best casual saunter in my general direction. He looked about as casual as a Marblehead sloop tacking into a headwind. And every reluctant step he took confirmed in my high-fiving mind that on a hunch, I had cast my net over a major catch.

  He settled at the rail about four feet away looking toward the grandstand across the track. I moved a foot or two closer.