James Patterson - Judge & Jury

Nordeshenko had followed the woman home from court that day. To her lovely town house in Murray Hill. After she went inside, he stopped on the street directly in front of the red wooden door. No guards. That's how they did things here. And the lock was a Weiser; it would be no problem. He saw the wires from a security system connected to the phone line. That was no problem, either.

"Mr. Kaminsky." The pretty hostess at the restaurant stepped up to him and smiled."Your table is ready now."

She seated him precisely where he had requested: at the adjoining table to the woman he had followed. It didn't bother him to be so close. She wouldn't know him; she would never see his face again. He had done this kind of thing countless times.

In the beginning, it was the Spetsnaz Brigade, special forces, in Chechnya. There he had learned how to kill with precision and without any remorse. His first real job had been a local bureaucrat in Grozny who had stolen several pensions. A real pig. Some of the victims had approached him to get even, and they paid him a sum he would not have earned in six months of waiting around to get blown up by the Chechen rebels. He was ridding the world of filthy scum. He could easily justify that. So he killed the bureaucrat with a firebomb placed in his speedboat.

Next, it was a policeman in Tashkent who was blackmailing prostitutes. He'd gotten a royal fee for that. Then a mobster in Moscow. A real big shot; impossible to get close to. He'd had to detonate an entire building, but it was just part of the job.

Then he started offering his services to whoever would pay his price. It was the time of perestroika, capitalism. And he was just a businessman. He'd hit the big time.

He stared at the fashionable woman again. Too bad. She seemed successful, and even likable. He knew exactly how it would go from here. It would begin with something small. A message, something that would fester in her mind. Soon, she'd be shitting bricks.

There would be no trial.

The woman shifted in her chair, and a blue cashmere sweater draped over the back fell onto the floor.

A waiter moved in, but Nordeshenko beat him to it. He reached down and picked it up.

"Thank you so much." The woman smiled warmly at him. Their eyes met. Nordeshenko made no move to avoid them. In a different world, she was probably someone to admire and respect. But this was his world now.

He handed back the beautiful sweater."My pleasure." He nodded slightly in return.

And it was. He had looked into the eyes of many of his victims before he acted.

Your life is about to become hell, Miriam Seiderman.

"MR. MACHIA, MY NAME is Hy Kaskel," the Eyebrow said as he stepped away from his chair the following morning."I'm going to be asking you some questions on behalf of my client, Mr. Dominic Cavello."

Andie DeGrasse opened her notepad to a new page, sketching in a caricature of the defense attorney, his eyebrows flashing. She had decided to keep what had happened yesterday afternoon to herself. What could she prove? At this point she didn't want another scene with Sharon Ann about"poisoning the jury."

"I'm familiar with your client, Mr. Kaskel," Louis Machia replied.

"Good." The diminutive defense attorney nodded."If you please, will you tell the jury just how you know him?"

"I'm just acquainted, Mr. Kaskel. I've been around a table with him a few times. He was there the night I got made."

"Around a table." Cavello's attorney theatrically mimicked him."Do you consider yourself a close friend of Mr. Cavello's? Has he, say, invited you out to dinner?"

"Actually I have gone out to dinner with your client, Mr. Kaskel." The witness grinned."It was after Frank Angelotti's funeral. A lot of us went out. But as for the other stuff, no. I was just a soldier. That's not the way it worked."

"So you've never heard Mr. Cavello give any orders on behalf of the Guarino crime family? He never said to you, for instance, ‘I need a favor from you, Mr. Machia,' or ‘I want Samuel Greenblatt killed'?"

"No, Mr. Kaskel, not quite that way."

"That was left to other people to explain to you. Like Ralphie D., whom you mentioned, or this other Tommy character… the one with the funny name?"

"Tommy Moose."

"Tommy Moose. " The defense attorney nodded."Sorry."

"That's all right, Mr. Kaskel. We all have funny names."

Peals of laughter erupted through the courtroom.

"Yes, Mr. Machia," the defense attorney said,"but what I was driving at is, you never actually heard my client suggest it would be a good thing if this Sam Greenblatt was killed, did you?"

"No, not directly."

"You heard that from Ralphie D., who, you say, spotted him driving around somewhere in New Jersey in a car."

"It wasn't somewhere in New Jersey. It was down the block from where Mr. Greenblatt was killed."

"By you, Mr. Machia, just to be clear."

"Yes, sir." The witness nodded."By me."

Kaskel scratched his chin."Now, you describe yourself as a longtime member of the Guarino crime family, isn't that right? And you've admitted to doing a lot of bad things on behalf of that family."

"Yes," the witness answered."To both."

"Like… killing people or trafficking in drugs, isn't that right?"

"That's correct."

"What kinds of drugs did you traffic in, Mr. Machia?"

Machia shrugged."Marijuana. Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine. You name it."

"Hmmph," the lawyer snickered to the jury,"you're quite the entrepreneur, aren't you? You've owned a gun, haven't you, Mr. Machia?"

"Yes, sir. I've always had a gun."

"Ever use your gun or threaten the life of someone in connection to those drugs, Mr. Machia?"

"Yes, sir, I have."

"Ever take any of those drugs yourself, Mr. Machia?" Cavello's lawyer pressed.

"Yes, I've taken drugs."

"So you're an admitted drug user, a car thief, a burglar, a knee breaker, and oh, yes, a killer, Mr. Machia. Tell me, in the course of your longtime crime dealings, did you ever have the occasion to lie?"

" Lie? " The witness chuckled."Of course I lied. I lied all the time."

"By all the time, you mean… once a month? Once a week? Every day, perhaps?"

"We always lied, Mr. Kaskel. That was what we did."

"Why?"

"Why would we lie? To keep out of trouble. To avoid getting caught."

"Ever lie to the cops, Mr. Machia?"

"Sure, I lied to the police."

"To the FBI?"

"Yes." The witness swallowed."When I was first arrested, I lied to the FBI."

"What about your wife, Mr. Machia? Or, say, your mother? Ever lie to them?"

Louis Machia nodded."I guess in the course of my life I've lied to just about everyone."

"So let's face it, Mr. Machia, what you are is a habitual liar. Basically, you've lied to everyone you know. The people you work with, the police, the FBI, your wife. Even the woman who bore you. Let me ask you, Mr. Machia, is there anything you wouldn't lie about?"

"Yes." Louis Machia straightened up." This. "

" This? " Kaskel mocked him sarcastically."By this, I assume you mean your testimony?"

"Yes, sir," the witness said.

"The government's promised you a sweet deal, haven't they? If you tell them what they want to hear."

"If I admit to my crimes and tell the truth." The witness shrugged."They said they would take that into account."

"By that, you mean reduce your sentence, correct?"

"Yes."

"Maybe even to ‘time served,'" the Eyebrow said, wide-eyed,"is that not correct?"

"It's possible." The witness nodded.

"So tell us," Kaskel said,"why should this jury believe you now, when in practically every other instance of your life, you've admitted you habitually lied in order to save your own skin?"