house, guarded by his double-digit-strong security detail?”
Because bullet holes were perhaps not the greatest visual stimulus for potential jurors, the trial had been moved from the majestic courtroom where Judge Baym had been gunned down to a much more modest one on the fourteenth floor.
Perrine was already sitting at the defense table when we arrived. I’d seen a lot of security inside a courtroom before, but this was over the top. There were at least eight uniformed court officers and another half dozen or so U.S. marshals standing in a wide semicircle around him. The men were all huge and intimidating, like an angry, violent defensive squad on a football team waiting tensely for the snap.
But if Perrine was intimidated or even noticed all the fuss, he hid it quite well. His demeanor and posture were as impressive as always, his head canted back commandingly, his crease-free prison jumpsuit worn officiously, as though it were formal military dress.
There was a playful sparkle in his blue eyes as he smiled at something that his thousand-bucks-an-hour lawyer said. You could tell the mass murderer thought the whole thing was a joke, that he was playing us and loving every minute of it.
CHAPTER 56
THE NEW JUDGE, Mary Elizabeth Fleming, was a tall, elegant black woman with a striking resemblance to Condoleezza Rice. She was just entering the courtroom from her chambers with the court clerk when it happened. There was a sound from outside, a sudden and tremendous window-rattling bang that seemed to increase in volume as it rose up from the street fourteen stories below.
At the massive booming noise, the courtroom broke into complete bedlam. Spectators immediately hit the deck in the seats behind me as the dowdy stenographer screamed. She knocked over her typing stand in a clatter and left a shoe behind as she dove into the witness box for cover.
It was unbelievable how fast all the court officers drew on Perrine, as though it were a Wild West show.
“Hands!” they screamed at him.
A six-foot-five redheaded cop circled in front of Perrine, the chunky device in his freckled hand pointed a foot from Perrine’s chest.
“Hey, you deaf? Hands up now or you will be Tasered, you son of a bitch!” he yelled.
The ghost of a smile played on Perrine’s lips as he sat as still as a paperweight in his chair. After a moment, he raised his hands in a slow, graceful motion.
“What’s that expression? ‘Don’t Tase me, bro’?” he said in the tense silence.
He turned toward the judge then, laughing softly.
The towering redheaded cop’s radio gave off a loud beep followed by the long squawk of a message.
“It’s okay. All clear, Judge,” the cop said, listening to his radio. “Looks like a truck at the construction site on Centre Street dropped a load of scaffolding.”
“How ironic. I almost dropped a load myself,” Perrine said with a girlish giggle.
“Can the comedy routine, Perrine,” the judge said. “I mean it. One more word out of you, and I might not Taser you, but I will gag you…
Closest to the witness stand, I went to help the shaken stenographer up from the floor of the witness box. I exchanged smiles with Perrine at the nearby defense table as I helped right her stenotype. When he gestured me over toward the defense table with his shackled hands, I was more than happy to oblige.
As I leaned in over the table, the drug lord flashed me a grin.
“You don’t scare easily, do you, Michael Bennett?” he whispered. “Neither do I. Believe it or not, I like you. With all your antics, I find you a very funny man. This circus needs a clown, and you’re doing a great job. Despite your silliness, my offer still stands. You could take a nice long vacation from all this stress, a permanent one, in fact. I hear the Maldives are quite pleasant this time of year.”
“The Maldives?” I said, raising an eyebrow as if I were considering it. “They do sound pleasant, but the question is would they be more pleasant than what I’m going to do to you on that witness stand? More pleasant than watching your face when the verdict is read?”
I could see a vein pulse on Perrine’s neck as I slowly shook my head.
“Sorry, Perrine. Truly, my apologies,” I whispered back. “But even a silly clown like me wouldn’t miss that for the entire world.”
THE METRO-NORTH TRAIN back to the lake house in Newburgh was half empty that night after nine o’clock. I didn’t read a paper or send out any e-mails. All I did for an hour straight was sip the Budweiser tallboy I’d bought in Grand Central as I sat in a window seat on the Hudson River side, listening to the clickety-clack of the train. If I’d had a harmonica, I would have busted into the saddest blues solo ever heard as I stared out at the dark water and chugga-chugga choo-chooed it north up the Hudson Valley.
And I didn’t even know how to play the harmonica.
That pretty much summed up how good things
The whole day had been nothing but one long, exhausting, frustrating emotional grind. At least for all the good people involved. The worst part was having to watch Perrine sit through the proceedings, sipping Perrier, with his dream-team legal counsel alongside him. Every few minutes, he’d swivel around to give me a little wink along with his arrogant Cheshire cat smile.
After court and a quick powwow with Tara and the rest of the prosecutors, I’d thought briefly about staying over in the apartment, then decided against it. Everyone would probably be asleep by the time I made it back to the lake house, but it didn’t matter. The need to be with my guys, especially Eddie and Brian, over the last week was undeniable.
Was it guilt over not being able to protect them?
No doubt it was.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what a miracle it was that they weren’t dead, and that we weren’t planning their funerals right now instead of finishing our vacation.
As the lonely lights of the Tappan Zee Bridge swung past on my left, I got a text message from Mary Catherine asking me if she should come to pick me up in Beacon. I begged off, texting back that I’d just get a taxi.
Though she’d certainly be a sight for my very sore eyes, I actually had one more stop to make before calling my heck of a long day a night.
I needed to meet up with Newburgh detectives Moss and Boyanoski, who had notified me that there was some potential progress on my kids’ case.
Forty minutes later, after exiting the train, I waved over a beat-up Chevy gypsy cab waiting in the Beacon train station’s otherwise deserted parking lot. The cabbie was a surprisingly young Hispanic girl with blue hair and earrings in her lower lip and colorful tattoos covering one arm, as though she’d been attacked by a gang of graffiti vandals. I could see that underneath all the junk was a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old young lady with gentle blue eyes who should have been home packing her book bag with paper and sharpened pencils for the new school year instead of out hustling for fares.
“Where to?” she asked before I could ask her if her parents knew where she was.
I shook my head. I had enough on my plate, I decided. Too much, probably.
“The Newburgh police department,” I told her, plopping down into the backseat.
