Richard Montanari - The Devil_s Garden

Falynn did not look up at him. But Michael saw her eyes shift side to side, saw the wheels begin to slowly turn.

Michael glanced back out the window. A few minutes passed, minutes during which Michael realized he had taken his best shot, and failed. He envisioned this broken young girl sitting on the witness stand, devastated by the murder of her father, adrift on an ocean of sorrow, unable to say a word. He saw Patrick Ghegan walking out of the courtroom a free man.

“Everything is so ugly.”

Michael spun around. The sound of Falynn’s voice was so foreign, so unexpected, Michael thought for a moment it had been in his head.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Falynn shrugged. Michael feared for a moment that she was going quiet again. He crossed the room, sat near her on the couch.

“What’s ugly?” he asked.

Falynn picked up a magazine, began plucking away at the mailing label at the bottom. “Everything,” she said. “Everything in the world. Me.”

Michael knew she was saying this to get a reaction, but when he looked into her eyes, he saw that she believed it in her heart. “What are you talking about? You’re a pretty young woman.”

Falynn shook her head. “No I’m not. Not really. Sometimes I can’t even look at myself.”

Michael decided to go for it. He had to. “Trust me on this. Except maybe for the hair, you’re very attractive.”

Falynn looked sharply up at him. When she saw the smile on his face she laughed. It was a glorious sound. After a few moments – moments during which, consciously or unconsciously, Falynn Harris ran a hand through her hair – she turned silent again, but Michael knew the wall had fallen. He let her continue when she was ready.

“What’s… what’s going to happen in there?” she finally asked.

Michael’s heart galloped. It always did when he made a breakthrough. “Well, I’ll go into the courtroom with Mr Feretti and we will present any applications we might have – scheduling, legal, stuff like that. The judge might have an evidentiary ruling. There won’t be a jury or gallery for this. After that’s over, the jury will be seated and the trial will begin. After the opening statements you’re going to be sworn in, and I’m going to ask you questions about what happened that day. About what you saw.”

“What will I have to do?”

“All you have to do is tell the truth.”

“Is he going to be there?”

The “he” of course was Patrick Ghegan. “Yes he is. But he can’t hurt you. All you have to do is point him out once. After that, you don’t ever have to look at him again.”

The truth was, Michael would rather have Falynn look directly into the eyes of the jurors. He knew that teenagers – especially teenaged girls – could either be the greatest witnesses or an absolute nightmare. Falynn’s strength was how innocent and vulnerable she looked, her soulful eyes. Michael knew that John Feretti was going to have his hands full trying to break this witness – a young girl who had seen her father murdered in cold blood.

“We’re going to put him somewhere he can never hurt anyone else again,” Michael added. He was, of course, hoping for more than that. The DA was going to ask for the death penalty in this case. It was not the time to bring that up, however.

Falynn stared out of the window a few moments. “Do you promise?”

There it was, Michael thought. He had faced this moment before, specifically with the families of the employees murdered in the basement of that QuikBurger. He recalled Dennis McCaffrey standing before those men and women and making them a promise – the promise of finality, the promise of justice for their loved ones. Michael and Tommy had stood shoulder to shoulder that day and backed the DA’s pledge. It was a promise that nearly cost Michael his life. It was the Patrescu brothers who ordered the car bombing, the attempt on his life he had miraculously survived. In a twisted sense, the madness of that act had brought Michael his greatest joy: Abby and Emily and Charlotte.

“Yes,” he said, before he could think about it any more. “I promise.”

Falynn just nodded. She worried the edge of the magazine in her hands. After a few moments, she looked up. “How long does it all take?”

“Well, that depends on a few things,” Michael began, his heart beginning to soar. It was that old feeling, the feeling that the wheels of justice had just engaged, and he loved it. “The first part of the trial begins tomorrow. He has his lawyer -”

“And you’re my lawyer.”

At that moment Michael thought about trying to explain it all to her. He considered explaining how, when a person is a victim of a homicide, it is the state of New York that advocates for the victim, not a single person.

But all he could see was that face. That sad angel’s face.

“Yes,” Michael Roman said. “I’m your lawyer.”

Aleks walked the city. From 38th Street and Park Avenue he headed south a few blocks and began to wind his way toward Times Square, passing many landmarks he had only read about. The vaunted Madison Avenue, the Empire State Building, Macy’s, Herald Square, the stately, magnificent New York Public Library.

The city both dazzled and beguiled him. This was the center of the world. He wondered what effect a place like New York had had on his daughters, and what it would take to reverse such influence.

He knew that all he had to do in a place like New York City was walk down a street, alerting his senses to the aromas, the sounds, the sights, the rhythms. Before long he would catch the tail end of a conversation in Russian, Lithuanian, German, Romanian. He would ask after places, seeking the world beneath the world. It did not take long.

In a place called Bryant Park he found a pair of young Russian men who said they could help him find what he was looking for. For a small fee.

They played their games, took their stances, asserted their manhood. Eventually Aleks, who played the thick foreigner for them, got what he wanted.

Thefirst bar was call Akatu. It was a dirty, narrow place on West End Avenue in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, a place smelling of old grease and sour tobacco. The tavern was half-full at midday, had a parochial feel to it, as if strangers were not welcome, or at the least needed to be watched. Aleks understood. When he entered, he sensed all eyes on him. Some conversations halted.

As he made his way to the rear of the bar, there were two husky men talking softly, blocking his path. They did not move as he approached, holding their small piece of ground, as violent men will do, forcing Aleks to skirt them by, hugging the wall. One man was thick-waisted and muscular, nearly Aleks’s size. He looked bloated, muscle-bound only, perhaps pumped from a just-finished workout. The other was shorter, also solid, but more likely the one to be carrying a weapon. He wore a cheap and oversized wool blazer in the too-warm bar. Aleks walked around them, giving them their territorial due. For the moment.

Aleks ordered a Russian coffee and a shot. As he put his hands on the counter, pushing forth a twenty, the barman saw his tattoo, the mark of the vennaskond. The man looked confused for a second – the mark was not nearly as well known as the Russian vory – but his face soon registered the truth. This was a man to be reckoned with. Aleks saw the bartender nod to the two men behind Aleks, and in the mirror he saw them give him some room.

Aleks asked a few questions of the bartender, letting on just enough to get the answers he sought, but give away nothing. After a few moments of conversation he discovered this man could not help him. But the bartender did have the name of a bar and another man who might be able to help.