arm, her white Chanel watch. Beautiful and serene and all smiles, she went among the tired girls with a checklist and a digital camera, taking pictures and pausing here and there to inspect skin and hair and teeth.
She quickly divided the girls into categories and prices. The last shipment had been overpacked, and there had been some damage to the material. A girl had died on the second day, and several of the rest of them had become so ill, they, too, had to be destroyed.
What had Manuel called it?
Spillage. Exactly.
There had been no spillage this time. The sex-slave trade was a new avenue for the cartel, but, as she did with everything, Marietta was picking up the learning curve quickly.
Marietta clopped to the van on her pristine white heels and handed the dapper pimp her checklist and camera. They spoke quietly for a moment, the wiry, almost pretty dark-skinned Dominican nodding thoughtfully at her recommendations before returning his hungry gaze to the line of unkempt girls.
“Who wants a treat?” Marietta called in Spanish as she took a plastic bag of snack-size Milky Ways from her white purse and tossed it into the van.
The famished girls flooded into the vehicle, giggling. In a moment, they were buckled into their seats, chewing ravenously, chocolate on their cheeks and chins. The pimp, already behind the wheel, looked at them over the driver’s seat, his soft, seemingly friendly face beaming like a proud father’s.
“This is Mateo. He will take you to where you’ll be staying,” Marietta told them gently in Spanish as the warehouse’s steel door rolled back up. “He’ll make sure to get you to a phone right away so you can call home and tell your parents that you’re okay, okay?”
The girls-like Madeline and her friends responding politely to Miss Clavel-thanked Marietta in unison.
Marietta slipped on a pair of whimsical Chanel sunglasses and stuck her tongue out at them playfully.
“Bye, now. I’m so proud of you all,” Marietta called, tossing a wave and a blown kiss over her sleeveless shoulder as she headed back for the Mercedes.
“You made it, girls!” she said. “You really made it. Welcome to America!”
AT LEAST THE lobby security guard wasn’t lying down on the job, I thought as I arrived at the U.S. attorney’s secret office on lower Broadway. Even after I flashed my shield and showed the guard my driver’s license, he made no less than three phone calls before he allowed me to go upstairs.
Tara was on the other side of the elevator door when it opened on the seventeenth floor. I was instantly reminded how lovely she was. She was wearing a crisp Tiffany-blue blouse and a tobacco-colored skirt, her dark hair shining.
She surprised me by giving me an affectionate hug and planting a fat kiss on my cheek. As she guided me through a maze of cubicles into a conference room, I think I might have blushed a little. Or, to be more accurate, quite a lot.
She sat me down at a table stacked with law books and legal pads, and for the next half hour, we drank black coffee as she brought me up to speed on the prosecution strategy. She hadn’t seemed to have heard about my kids and what happened to them, so I didn’t bring it up. I’m a man who, if possible, always likes to compartmentalize the disasters in his life.
“As you already know, Mike,” she said, slipping on a pair of glasses as she showed me the indictment, “Perrine’s original warrant for the murders of the Border Patrol agents was put on the back burner while we shifted our focus to the murder of Scott Melekian, the Macy’s waiter Perrine killed while fleeing from you.”
She suddenly let out a huge yawn that turned into a sigh.
“My bad,” she said, blinking. “It’s been nothing but late nights since Judge Baym was killed.”
“Perfectly understandable,” I said, stifling a yawn myself.
“Anyway, we thought it was going to be a slam dunk at first,” she said. “We interviewed fifteen eyewitnesses who were ready to testify that they saw Melekian turn and stumble into Perrine as he was running into the restaurant. Then they saw Perrine grasp Melekian by the head and violently snap his neck with his bare hands, causing almost instantaneous death.”
She sighed again.
“That number of witnesses is now down to seven. Only three of the wait staff and four patrons are willing to say what they saw. We’re not sure if the witnesses are apprehensive since the courthouse shooting or if Perrine is getting to them in other ways, but people are becoming less and less willing to testify. That’s why I need you to be ready to go as soon as the jury is picked. We need to jump right into this with both feet-put you on the stand to set the whole thing up and get the ball rolling quickly. Because the longer we delay, the more witnesses we’re going to lose.”
I shook my head.
“You’re right,” I said. “With Perrine’s money and global reach, he’s already started to go all-in to ruin the government’s case through violence. It’s unbelievable.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Tara said. “The Mob used to do the same thing at the height of their power in the nineteen freaking thirties. All they seemed to do was find witnesses and kill them. The most depressing thing about it is that the bloody tactic has a tendency of being highly effective.”
She checked her watch and stood, stacking papers.
“Come on. Tempus fugit. We need to get to the courthouse. Grab one of these file boxes for me.”
Back at the elevator, Tara smiled at me sort of slyly after she pressed the button.
The last time we’d been in an elevator together was that night at the St. Regis.
I stood there in the pregnant silence, thinking about that night-Tara bringing me up to her room, how nice she looked in her fuzzy white bathrobe. For all its nuttiness, it was actually quite a fond memory. A man could get used to putting this vivacious young prosecutor to bed. In theory, of course.
The elevator binged open.
Tara stared at me, puzzled.
“After you,” I said.
She suddenly smiled again as we got into the car.
“Sir Michael Bennett, New York City’s last, and perhaps only, chivalrous knight.”
AND I THOUGHT Foley Square in front of the federal courthouse had looked like a zoo when the trial first started.
As Tara and I exited our cab and mounted the marble steps, it again looked like a zoo, only this time with open cages. There were reporters, protesters, cops, and sidewalk barriers everywhere. Most of the faces in the crowd looked even more nervous than the ones on the 7:21 out of Beacon. And why wouldn’t they be afraid?
The federal court in New York had been around since the days of Alexander Hamilton, and this was the first time a judge had been murdered in her own courtroom in the middle of a trial!
I elbowed Tara gently and pointed my chin up at the NYPD chopper that sailed into view above the courthouse.
“Wow, this is the first trial I’ve ever been on that required air cover!” I yelled as we moshed our way through the nervous crowd of photographers and newsies at the top of the stairs.
“Come on, Mike. Didn’t you read the paper?” she said. “The mayor insists that Perrine’s trial will move forward. New York City will not be intimidated by a drug cartel and its boss!”
“Of course. Not intimidated. How silly of me,” I said over the deafening rotor wash. “Isn’t it funny, though, how
