Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Syd unbuttoned her blazer and Dar could see the 9mm Sig-Sauer holstered on her belt. Then she turned toward the NICB attorney, Poulsen. “What you didn’t think of, Jeanette, is that we wanted this person bad enough to follow all of the major suspects with cell-phone scanners.” Syd stabbed a button down on a tape recorder.

Poulsen’s voice could be heard, static-lashed and tinny but quite recognizable: “Santana from Fraud Division and three FBI agents have gone undercover to make contact with your Helpers of the Helpless.”

A man’s deep voice said something unintelligible.

“No, I don’t know the agents’ names,” came Poulsen’s voice, “but it’s two men and a woman and they should be coming into the country via the same coyote and contacting the Helpers at the same time Santana does. That’s all I can tell you now.”

The man’s voice rattled again, but this time the words “money” and “transfer” and “usual amount” could be heard.

Attorney Poulsen shot up out of her chair as if propelled by a huge spring. Her face was deep red and the cords stood out on her pretty neck. “I don’t have to listen to this shit. This is nonsense. You can’t get any real information to your fucking grand jury after six months, so now you’re framing me with this…” She started striding past Syd toward the door. “You’ll have to reach me through my attorney.”

Syd grabbed the taller woman by the arm, spun her around, and slammed Poulsen’s upper body down onto the conference table while she pinned both arms behind her. Syd swept a pair of cuffs off her belt and had the woman handcuffed before Poulsen could lift her head from the table.

“You have the right to remain silent—” began Syd.

“Fuck you—” began Poulsen, but Syd grabbed a hank of her hair and slammed her face back onto the tabletop.

“Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law,” continued Syd in a calm voice. “You have the right to an attorney…” She pulled Poulsen’s handcuffed wrists high above and behind her, causing the woman to gasp and shut up.

“We’ll take over here, Chief Investigator,” said Warren. He and the FBI man next to him each took the now-weeping Poulsen by an arm and led her out of the room, still reading the NICB attorney her rights.

When the door was closed behind them, Syd wiped her hands on her linen slacks as if they were dirty. “We’ve traced one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars transferred to a secret account that Attorney Poulsen set up eight months ago,” she said.

Syd’s voice had stayed steady during all of this, but now she paused long enough to draw a breath. “Our regular task force meeting will be held a week from tomorrow. District Attorney Restanzo has agreed to join the task force and will be present at our next meeting. I hope to be able to announce some real developments by then.”

Syd looked around the table. “Some of you knew Investigator Santana—I’ve known him and been close friends with him, his wife, Mary, and their two children for four years. Tom’s funeral will be held tomorrow, ten A.M., in Los Angeles, at the Trinity Catholic Church in Northridge, just off Reseda Boulevard near the State University campus. We’ll let you know about the arrangements for Special Agents Garcia, Sanchez, and Foxworth.”

During Santana’s funeral, Dar realized that he had not been in a Catholic church since the funeral for David and Barbara.

Afterward, people milled in the sunlight outside the church for a while. There would be a private graveside ceremony, and Syd asked if she could talk to Dar afterward. Dar nodded, seeing his dark suit and glinting sunglasses reflected in her dark glasses. She had not cried during the funeral, nor when she’d hugged and spoken to Mary Santana and the two children.

“Name a place and time,” said Dar.

“Lawrence and Trudy want us at the Esposito accident site by four for a demonstration,” said Syd. “After that? Your condo?”

“I’ll be there.”

Lawrence’s cell phone rang as Dar and the adjuster drove back to San Diego in the newly repaired NSX. “Bingo,” said Lawrence.

“One of the photos?” said Dar.

“Yep. I showed them to the few guys who were working the construction site that Sunday—not Vargas, the foreman, he didn’t want to cooperate, but to the other guys—and two of them made a positive ID. They each saw this guy walking around with a hard hat. They hadn’t recognized him, but figured he must be some contract laborer for that weekend.”

“One of the Russians?” asked Dar.

“No. The New Jersey ex-mafia guy, Tony Constanza.”

“Will they testify in court?”

“Who knows?” said Lawrence. “I didn’t tell them that this was a murder case with ex-mafia hit men involved, I just showed them the pictures. If I knew what it was all about, I wouldn’t testify.”

District Attorney Restanzo was standing on the construction site with three of his underlings, and none of them seemed very happy about getting their wing tips muddy. Two uniformed police officers had cordoned off the area around the scissors lift and were standing guard, holding the curious construction workers at bay, while Lieutenant Hernandez stood with arms folded. Trudy had the video cam set on a sturdy tripod. Lawrence was standing under the raised scissors lift precisely where Jorgé Murphy Esposito had been standing when he was killed. As during the original accident, there was a quarter ton of lumber on the massive lift bed thirty-six feet up.

Hernandez was explaining. “There’s been controversy over whether this was an accident or should be added to the wrongful-death files already involved in this Alliance case. Mr. Stewart has the answer.” He gestured toward Lawrence, who nodded at Trudy. The red light on the camera came on.

Lawrence cleared his throat. “All right. We all know that autopsy evidence and circumstantial evidence surrounding the death of Attorney Esposito suggest that he could not have pulled the hydraulic screw loose on the pillar there and died as he did, in under two seconds, without the front of his torso being sprayed by hydraulic fluid. The coroner’s photographs show clearly that only the cuffs of Mr. Esposito’s trousers and the soles of his shoes were sprayed with the fluid. Several workers on the site here have identified photographs of a man they say was present on the Sunday Mr. Esposito died. That man is a certain Tony Constanza, a former mafia informer now in the employ of Attorney Dallas Trace.”

“I don’t like the term ‘mafia,’” said District Attorney Restanzo. “Mafia equates with Italian and Sicilian and is a slur on a specific ethnic group. Everyone knows that the so-called Syndicate has long since moved away from dominance by any single ethnic group. We prefer the term ‘organized crime.’”

“All right,” said Lawrence. “For the record, Mr. Tony Constanza used to be a member of that wing of the multiethnic, multiracial, equal-opportunity organized crime syndicate which, even today, is comprised primarily of Sicilian-and Italian-Americans and is commonly known as the mafia.

“All right,” continued Lawrence, looking at the district attorney, “if you’re going to prosecute this, you need proof that it was murder, not an accident. I’d like to show you that proof. I’m currently standing where Mr. Esposito was two seconds before this scissors lift lost all hydraulic pressure and collapsed on him, crushing him in the scissors’ mechanism. Would anyone like to join me here while we reenact the accident?”

For a minute no one moved. Then Dar stepped under the platform next to Lawrence. He had no idea what his friend was up to, but he trusted his professionalism. Dar’s black Bally shoes and the cuffs of his Armani suit trousers were getting splattered with mud, but that did not bother him. He knew how to spit-shine shoes.