“Judge won’t let that in,” he informed me. “A back door to get in Perlini’s pedophilia? C’mon, Counsel.”
I forced a smile, the kind I reserve for people whose teeth I’d like to kick in.
“No, you can forget about that,” he went on. “But listen, Counsel. With the headlines about Perlini and all-I’ve got a little room here. This was obviously a premeditated act with the equivalent of a confession, a store vid that puts him at the scene, I mean-”
“Lester,” I interrupted. “Did you bring me here to tell me how shitty my case is? Or to offer me a deal?”
He watched me for a moment, then broke into a patented smile. This guy was like silk. “Murder two, twenty years. A gift. You go tell your friends you played me like a fiddle.”
The way he presented it, you’d think balloons and streamers were about to fall from the ceiling. “Involuntary,” I countered. “Time served.” Involuntary manslaughter is the only murder charge that gives the judge the discretion to drop the sentence down to no prison time at all or, in the case of Sammy, who’d already spent almost a year inside, to time served.
“Time served. Time served.” Mapp chuckled. He let a hand play out in the air, as if conducting a silent orchestra. “I could think about voluntary. I
I could see that the discovery of the bodies behind the elementary school-and the subsequent headlines-had had the intended effect. The county attorney’s office was not thrilled to be coming down hard on a man who avenged his sister’s murder. They couldn’t give him a pass, nor condone vigilantism, but they wanted a quiet resolution where they didn’t play the heavy.
“Let me give that some serious thought, Lester.” I looked up at the ceiling. “Involuntary, time served.”
The prosecutor’s smile went away, but not without a fight. “Jury isn’t going to know that Perlini was a pedophile,” he said. “Or what he
“You’re starting to sound like a defense attorney, Lester.” The prosecutor was referring to the judge’s pretrial ruling, excluding evidence of Perlini’s criminal sexual history. If Sammy would have agreed to plead diminished capacity, this would be a no-brainer. But with Sammy saying he didn’t do it, the victim’s criminal past was irrelevant.
Then again, I wasn’t so sure Sammy
“Involuntary and three,” I said. If Sammy could play nice and get a day for a day, and with credit for time served, he’d have about six more months inside. He could do that, I thought. Another variable was Smith. This would certainly satisfy his need for an expedited resolution, and I wouldn’t be turning over any rocks he wanted to stay covered.
Mapp made a whole show of rolling his neck, moaning, warming himself up to a grandiose display of generosity on this, Sammy’s early Christmas. The only thing missing from his car-salesman act was telling me that “they’ve never done this before,” but that he “liked me.”
“I’d have to go upstairs on this one,” he began. “Voluntary and twelve. If I could even sell that for a premeditated murder-”
“With the equivalent of a confession, right?” I poised my hands on the arms of my chair, elbows out, ready to get up and go.
“Now, you’re
“You don’t have twelve years, Lester. You said you’d have to take it upstairs.”
He watched me again. He thought he was intimidating me with that direct stare. A lot of prosecutors think that. I probably did, too.
I pushed myself out of the chair. “Next time bring roses,” I said.
My adversary switched tacks, bursting into a premeditated laugh and wagging his finger at me. “Kolarich, Kolarich, Kolarich. ‘Next time bring roses.’ That’s good, that’s good. Listen, Counsel. See about that twelve years, and I will, too. Maybe-maybe even think about ten.”
Interesting. If I had ten years on the table now, I could probably knock it down to eight, maybe even six or seven if the judge would help me out, and that wasn’t such a bad deal. I still wanted to know more about my case, but I had the prosecutor moving in the right direction. It wasn’t much, but compared to the rest of the last week or so, things were looking up.
35
I NEVER LIKED POLICE STATIONS, even when I was a prosecutor. It reminded me of a fraternity house, only the members of this particular fraternity had sidearms and batons and the authority to search, seize, detain, and arrest. I never really had much time for the individual cops, either, only that was probably due more to the disdain I had for them growing up than anything else. Aside from the few cops that were outright wrong-on the take, corrupt-there were plenty of corner-cutters in the bunch, guys and gals who were sure the ends justified the means, who remembered a knock-and-announce that never was, who kicked the drugs into plain view after finding them under the mattress, who had an extremely generous interpretation of a voluntary confession. But then again, I didn’t have to go through a door not knowing what was awaiting me. I didn’t have to pat down a suspect, wondering whether there was a needle in his pocket infected with the AIDS virus. I didn’t have to wonder, every shift, whether this was going to be the day. And I didn’t have a healthy sector of the populace that resented me without understanding all the shit I had to put up with.
In the end, I played the whole thing to a draw. Cops were like any other group of people-some were okay, others weren’t. On which side did Detective Denny DePrizio fall?
I leaned against my car, playing over my conversation with Lester Mapp earlier today, watching plainclothes and uniforms march in and out of the stationhouse as dusk settled over the city. A few of the cops had arrestees, the lot of whom submitted quietly save for a homeless guy, who was calling them “traitors” and mentioning, I’m pretty sure, Herbert Hoover, though my money said he meant J. Edgar.
I saw DePrizio pop out of his sedan as the sun was falling behind him. A partner, another white guy, got out of the passenger seat and said something to DePrizio that made him laugh. All in all, he seemed like a pretty affable guy for a cop, but in my mind that just made it less likely he was trustworthy. I prefer assholes. At least they tell you what they think.
I somehow caught DePrizio’s eye, probably an eye well-trained to spot, in his peripheral vision, someone standing and staring at him. He did a double-take, then stopped, pointed at himself, and raised his eyebrows. I nodded. So did he. So now we had both nodded. I guess that meant that I had to come to him, which was probably the proper hierarchical order of things, but that didn’t mean I liked it.
DePrizio cast off his partner and took a few steps toward me. “Counsel,” he said, more of a question. I wasn’t sure if he was having trouble placing me or just wanted me to think so.
“Jason Kolarich,” I said, slowly extending my hand, because you always avoid quick movements with cops. “Representing Pete Kolarich.”
“Kolarich.” Again, take your pick-tapping the memory bank or pretending.
“Clean-cut white boy,” I said. “Steady employment, no priors except petty possession who suddenly transformed himself into a major drug kingpin and gunrunner.”
“Oh, the one who’s innocent.” He snapped his fingers.
I didn’t smile. Neither did he. Denny DePrizio, in his white dress shirt open at the collar, brown sport coat and jeans, a youthful face and a full head of sandy hair, could have played the lead on a television show about cops. His eyes, dark and deep-set, were the only feature that suggested his age.
“You got something for me? I’m freezing out here.”
I followed him into the station, which was in the midst of rush hour on the ground floor. Upstairs, the
