Robert Tanenbaum - Outrage

“But you know what, Felix? I think you’re lying about that. I think you took the ring from Olivia Yancy,” Graziani said accusatorily.

Felix shook his head. “No, I bought it from Al. It’s for my girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend Olivia?” Graziani asked.

“No. Maria Elena.”

“Cut the crap, Felix,” Graziani replied. “If you want us to help you, you need to start helping us. You cut the ring off Olivia Yancy’s finger. What did you do with it after that?”

“I filed Al’s name off,” Felix replied.

“Bullshit!” Graziani exploded. Felix jerked back in his chair, frightened, as the detective continued, “Olivia’s husband’s name is Dale. That’s what you filed off, isn’t it?”

Felix blinked back tears. “I bought it from Al and filed his name off.”

Graziani stood and acted as if he was going to leave the room. “That’s it, Felix. No more joking around with you. You got the ring from Olivia and put it in your wallet. And if you don’t fess up, any chance you have of us telling the judge that you cooperated with us will go out the window. Understand? We’re looking at the fucking death penalty, Felix.”

Swallowing hard, Felix struggled to speak and then started crying. “I bought it from Al for my girlfriend.”

“Suit yourself, Felix,” Graziani said. “Come on, Phil, let’s leave him to his fantasy world.”

The two detectives had almost reached the door when Felix yelled, “I took the ring from Olivia.”

Graziani stopped and stood for a moment without turning. When he did, he was smiling broadly. “And whose name did you file off the ring?”

“Dale,” Felix responded.

Graziani looked at Brock and smirked. “Well, thank you, Felix. I’m going to leave you for a bit. I need to make a telephone call to the New York district attorney’s office, but we’ll probably want to ask you some more questions later. Will that be okay?”

Felix sniffed and nodded his head. “Then can I go home?” he asked, looking from Graziani to Brock, who lowered his head.

“Sorry, Felix,” Brock said. “But that’s going to be a very long time from now.”

“A very long time,” Graziani repeated. “You’re a murdering son of a bitch, and they’re going to put you away for just about forever… Hell, they’re probably going to put you down like a mad dog, and I’ll be there to watch ’em do it.”

Marlene paused at the entrance of the housing Works Bookstore and turned to face the massive dog who sat down on his haunches at her feet. The expression on his broad face seemed to express puzzlement at why their evening walk had been interrupted after only a few blocks.

“Sorry, Gil,” she said apologetically as she tied his leash to an empty bike rack. The restraint was unnecessary, as the hundred-and-twenty-pound presa canario would have died before leaving any spot where Marlene left him. However, other pedestrians felt safer knowing the beast was not free to devour them should he be of that mind-set. “This shouldn’t take long, and I’ll make it up to you.”

Trained as a personal protection dog, Gilgamesh was Marlene’s baby. One of her pursuits since leaving the New York DAO many years earlier, after establishing and then selling a very lucrative VIP security service, was ownership of a security and bomb dog breeding and training facility on Long Island. The farm specialized in mastiffs and her current favorite, the presa. She loved the catlike movement and athleticism of the breed’s thick, muscular body, as well as its fierce loyalty.

Gilgamesh was absolutely devoted to Marlene and her family. And while gentle under normal circumstances, he would, and had, killed to protect them.

Marlene was no longer active at the dog farm, which she’d left in the capable hands of her head trainer. And the fact of the matter was she’d been feeling a bit lost of late; her eldest child, Lucy, lived in New Mexico, and the twin boys were in high school and no longer put up with much mothering. With their belated bar mitzvah coming up, she’d recently started brooding over the fact that before she knew it, they’d be off to college and she and Butch would be empty-nesters. Butch is at the height of his career, she thought, but what am I going to do that I find rewarding?

Since giving up the dog farm, she’d been involved in dangerous battles with terrorists and criminal masterminds that seemed to follow her family like sharks follow blood in the water. And, as much as she hated to admit it and worried about her family, she liked the occasional adrenaline rush of fighting for her life, as well as doing something good for her community and country. But it was all sort of haphazard and not something she could do as a career. She did enjoy painting at her art studio in the building across the street from the family loft; however, it wasn’t enough-not for her mind and, truth be told, not the level of excitement she needed.

Things had started to change a month earlier when she took on the case of a man who’d been unjustly accused of a murder and was being railroaded by the unethical Westchester County prosecutor Harley Chin. Marlene had not only cleared her client, she had helped catch the real killer-a professional hit man who murdered the victim in order to cover up another homicide of a call girl committed by a New York State supreme court trial judge.

Solving two murders and nailing two killers, all while serving the cause of justice, had certainly filled her spiritual, mental, and adrenaline-junkie voids. She felt more energized and involved than she had in years. And now it gave her the idea for a new avocation combining her law degree-which she’d kept current with the New York Bar Association-with her knack for private investigation. True, she couldn’t practice criminal law in Manhattan to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest with her husband’s position, but she could practice law in the remaining four boroughs of Gotham, each one a county of its own, and her private investigator credentials-which she’d kept since her days with the security firm-were good in Manhattan as well; she could always work with an attorney there.

The recent case had convinced her that there was a need for her services as well. A district attorney like her husband-who insisted that his prosecutors play by the rules and who believed that it was the duty of his office to seek justice, not win at all costs-wasn’t the problem. Not that the New York DAO was infallible, but that sort of institutionalized ethics went a long ways toward preventing malicious or unwarranted prosecution.

Her husband was what the twins called “old-school,” an anomaly. As a first-year law student at Yale she took to heart a maxim of America’s justice system: it was better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be wrongfully convicted. Yet there were self-aggrandizing prosecutors, like Chin in Westchester, as well as overzealous cops, politicized judges, and lazy defense attorneys, who didn’t do their jobs, which meant that, regrettably, innocent people went to prison, and some were even sentenced to death.

And that’s where her inspiration came in. It was no accident that many of those for whom justice was truly blind were poor or disenfranchised and could not afford “dream teams” of lawyers, private investigators, and bevies of expert witnesses. Indigent defendants accused of homicide in New York had two private attorneys appointed to represent them; such attorneys belonged to a pool of “qualified” trial lawyers who applied to be in the group. However, they were paid at a much lower rate than their standard fees, and the only way to make money was to take on as many cases as a judge would assign them and then bill as many hours as the courts would allow. All the while, they were also working on more lucrative cases in their private practices. As a result, the time and energy devoted to the case of an indigent person accused of murder could be less than adequate.