Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

Pasquarelli twisted his head around again. Jake thought he would have rotated it 360 degrees if that were biologically possible. "I'm to report to Twenty-six Federal Plaza tomorrow to discuss that print with none other than the assistant director in charge of the FBI, David Conroy. He's flying in from Washington, D.C., especially for this meeting."

Sam sat at his brother's dining room table, reading the New York Times, a cup of steaming coffee before him. Things sure had improved around here since Jake started seeing Manny. Now there was always French-roast coffee and toast made with Portuguese sweet bread in the kitchen, not to mention toilet paper in the bathroom. Ah, the civilizing influence of women! He glared at his brother, also engrossed in the Times, across the table. One thing hadn't changed. There was only one copy of the paper delivered, and he, as the uninvited guest, had to content himself with the sections Jake cast off. He'd already read the Arts and Dining Out sections, and he had no interest whatsoever in Business. That left Metro, since Jake was selfishly hogging both Sports and the main section. He picked it up unenthusiastically.

MAYOR VOWS TO RAISE CITY READING SCORES. Yeah, yeah, they kept that story on file and had been rerunning it every year since he'd been in kindergarten; CITY TO ALLOW PEOPLE TO CHOOSE SEX ON THEIR BIRTH CERTIFICATES-only in New York. Sam turned the page. LONG ISLAND POLITICO ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION, like that was news. He glanced over at his brother, who appeared deeply engrossed in the op-ed page. Then why couldn't he have Sports? Sam casually extended his long fingers and slowly drew the Yankees coverage closer.

Slap!

Sports was snatched back.

"C'mon, Jake, you can't read two sections at once. Just let me check the standings."

"No, I won't get it back. I want to read the paper in peace before I leave for work. You have all day to read it. Wait."

Sam sighed and returned to the Metro section. No new stories on the Vampire or the Preppy Terrorist. It really was a slow news day. He turned to the third page of the section and scanned the "Metro Briefs," stories so minor that they didn't merit a bylined article. A fire in Westchester, a hit-and-run in Connecticut… His gaze slid down the column in boredom, then stopped, riveted.

On May 24, police found the body of a twenty-three-year-old man in a litter-strewn lot in Kearny, New Jersey. He had been shot once in the temple, execution style. The victim was identified as Benjamin Hravek, who worked intermittently as a roofer. Police are seeking a ponytailed, tall, thin Caucasian male with silver hair, age approximately thirty-five, known to have had a violent encounter with Hravek at the Gateway Inn several days before his death.

The Metro section slipped onto the table and Sam stared out the window behind his brother's left shoulder.

"Oh, here-take the damn Sports." Jake tossed him the section.

But Sam was already out of the room by the time the newspaper landed. Manny paced the space in front of her desk with the phone pressed to her ear. She covered the distance in a few strides of her long legs, pivoted at the first of the white Carrera leather chairs she had purchased to inspire the confidence of her clients, and marched back toward the other chair, where Mycroft sat licking his paw.

"I want to talk to your client and find out what the hell's going on." Sam's voice came through the phone loud enough to make Mycroft's ears perk. "This little odd job you recruited me for is going to end up getting me arrested for murder."

"Look on the bright side, Sam. You'll have the best defense counsel on the east coast."

"Damn it, Manny! This isn't funny. There's some serious shit going down here."

"I know there is, Sam. And I'm not sure it has anything to do with the Iqbar case and Islamic terrorism. You know, Brueninger has presided over scores of controversial cases. What if the feds were sidetracked by Travis's reading material? What if they're looking at this all wrong?"

"You've got a point. I can't see a guy like Boo agreeing to work for a bunch of Muslim extremists. He's more of an organized crime kind of guy." Sam paused. "Was, I should say. Did Brueninger preside over any Mafia trials?"

"I've got a list of every case that came before him in the past five years," Manny said. "There was a Mafia money-laundering case a while back where a few mid-level capos got sent to minimum-security prison. I don't see the mob retaliating over that. They take those convictions as the cost of doing business."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "A little R and R and the boys are back to work. Besides, Boo's not Italian. Hravek is what-Czech, Hungarian, Serbian?"

Manny scanned the list of Brueninger's cases. "Hey, here's something. The judge convicted a bunch of guys from former Soviet-bloc countries for human trafficking-smuggling poor Albanian girls into the country and forcing them into prostitution."

"Sex-slave traders. They sound like the kind of guys who might carry a nice grudge against the man who sent them away."

Manny had done a Google search on the case while she and Sam were talking. "Apparently, he sent them far away. They were deported to serve their sentences in Albania."

"Eeew-that sounds unpleasant. If they're still there. But who knows-bribe the right people in the old country and they could very well be back on the streets here in New Jersey."

"And how would we ever know?" Manny asked. "We can't do follow-up in Albania."

"I'm relieved to hear you say so, because I'm not taking a field trip to Tirana."

Manny kicked at the side of her desk in frustration, then hopped up and down in pain. Mycroft studied her mournfully. Since getting expelled from the Little Paws doggy day-care center for fighting with a Boston terrier, he'd been spending long days in the office with Manny. "Somehow we have to find out who hired Boo, and why. Why did the bomber want to involve Travis?"

"Travis and/or Paco," Sam said. "The two guys Boo took with him to Club Epoch aren't going to know anything. We have to find the other guy, Freak."

"Or Deke or Zeke," Manny said. "No one seems clear on his name, where he came from, or where he disappeared to."

"The police maintain a database of nicknames bad guys use on the street," Sam said. "Do you know if the feds tried to find this guy in there?"

Manny dropped into her desk chair and swiveled to look out the window. Twenty floors below, the hustle and flow of lower Manhattan moved silently by. "If you ask me, the feds seem to be doing all they can to pretend our mystery man never existed. And I find that in itself to be very suspicious."

"Ah, Manny-you see conspiracies everywhere. Why not give plain old incompetence credit sometimes?"

"You're right, Sam. It's hard to overestimate that on the federal level. Luckily, I know a guy high up in the New Jersey Bureau of Criminal Justice. I'll suggest he run those names for us-for their investigation."

Manny waved Kenneth into the office. He was wearing a faux tiger-skin shirt topped by a short feather boa jacket. The jacket was a concession to the need for formal law office decorum. Despite his new natural-toned acrylic nails, he'd done an excellent job typing up the Eduardo wrongful death summary judgment brief that had to be filed with the court the next day.

"Thanks, Kenneth. I'll sign that and you can send it off."

"Hello? Are you still there?" Sam demanded.

"Sorry. Where was I?"

"Tracking down Freak."

"Right. If I could find him, the feds would have to accept that Travis didn't plan this. If I can't, I have to find another way to convince them Travis was an unwitting dupe, not an intentional coconspirator."

"Are you sure that's true?"