The red-faced woman looked up at me, trying to gather her tears with her fingertips and failing.
“Did you ever think, Detective Bennett, that there would come a day in your life when you wanted to die? When you actually longed for it?”
I squeezed the woman’s hand.
“I know one thing, ma’am,” I said. “I know your son is watching us right now, and he couldn’t be more proud of you guys for coming here today to see that his killer never gets a chance to hurt anyone ever again.”
When we went back up after lunch, Ivan Vogel, the chief prosecutor of the narcotics unit in the U.S. attorney’s office, stood at the front of the small, windowless gray courtroom.
“The prosecution would like to call its first witness,” the short, stocky, former collegiate wrestling champ said. “We call Detective Michael Bennett to the stand.”
Mrs. Melekian’s words still rang in my ears as the court clerk asked me to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Then I lifted my hand off the Bible and turned and stared Manuel Perrine right in his pale blue killer’s eyes.
“Would you please state your name and occupation?” Vogel said.
“My name is Michael Bennett, and I am a detective with the New York City Police Department. I have been with the department for the last twenty years.”
“Could you please tell us in what law enforcement capacity you were working on the morning of June third of last year?”
“I was working with a joint task force of city police and federal authorities to facilitate the arrest of the defendant, Manuel Perrine, for international drug trafficking and murder.”
“I’m going to have to object there, Your Honor,” Perrine’s well-heeled lawyer, Arthur Boehme, said, standing with an affable grin. “The federal arrest warrant in question states that Mr. Perrine was wanted to stand trial for the murder of the two U.S. Border Patrol agents. It says nothing about drug trafficking. Also, my client has not as yet been convicted or even tried for those crimes.”
“Sustained,” the judge said as the Waspy, Jimmy Stewart-looking son of a bitch parked his impeccably tailored ass back into his seat.
I looked at Judge Mary Elizabeth Fleming. Her colleague had been murdered by the homicidal maniac slime at the table five feet away, and here she was, making sure all the hairsplitting bullshit Perrine’s mouthpiece was spouting got its due? What a load of ripe horseshit trials could be. Sustained, my ass. Perrine was a stain.
Vogel frowned as he paced in front of me.
“Detective Bennett, how was it that you had information that Manuel Perrine would be in New York City?” he said.
“Credible information was provided to us by a confidential informant. We set up surveillance at the location where we were told he would be, but after he did not appear, we reevaluated our information and suspected that he was in town to attend the graduation of his daughter from NYU law school. As we attempted to arrest him, gunfire broke out from Perrine’s bodyguards, which then resulted in the death of DEA agent Hughie McDonough and NYPD officer Dennis Jaeger.”
Perrine’s lawyer popped up again like a polished, boyishly handsome target in a game of whack-a-mole.
“Again, Your Honor, I need to object. At this time, my client is on trial for the murder of one Scott Melekian, a waiter at Macy’s. There is nothing in the charges leveled against him here today for the murder of any law enforcement personnel.”
“I knew we should have put the murders in sequential order, Mr. Boehme,” I said into the microphone. “Your client’s killed so many people, it gets quite confusing.”
Nervous chuckles erupted from the crowd, which would have been fine except for the fact that what I said was actually true.
“Your Honor!” Boehme said.
“Strike the witness’s last statement. Please just answer the questions, Detective Bennett. This isn’t a stand-up routine.”
You’re right, I felt like saying. It’s a frigging farce.
The prosecutor approached the bench.
“Please, Your Honor. My witness is testifying to his whereabouts and the circumstances surrounding the death of Scott Melekian. That is, he’s trying to, but defense counsel is making it impossible.”
“The prosecution is right,” Judge Fleming said. “Do I have to remind our prestigious defense counsel that he will soon have his very own chance to cross-examine the witness? In the meantime, please do shut up and stop interrupting, Okay?”
That’s when Perrine popped up.
“Bullshit!” he screamed.
The table before him heaved up and slammed down as he kneed it. Boehme squinted up at Perrine in abject puzzlement. He looked like he wanted to say something to calm his client, but then thought better of it. He quickly turned his head downward, as if suddenly fascinated by the pattern in the government-issue carpet.
“Bullshit!” Perrine repeated. “These accusations are false, you lying maggot! This is harassment. This proceeding is illegal! I wish to speak to the Mexican consulate. I am not a citizen of this country. I am a Mexican national. Your laws have no authority over me!”
In a moment, no less than a dozen burly court officers, corrections officers, and U.S. marshals rushed forward from their stations. Perrine seemed to calm a little, then he feinted and broke through them, screaming, as he ran directly at me. Immediately, I stood and lifted the metal chair I was sitting on, able, ready, and oh so willing to crush Perrine’s skull with it and finish this crap once and for all.
But unfortunately, before I had the chance, the court officers were able to loudly tackle him to the carpeted ground. After a moment, you couldn’t even see Perrine beneath the crush of people on top of him. From the bottom of the pile, there were grunts and the click of metal as they cuffed his legs.
“You will regret this, Bennett,” Perrine screamed where he writhed like a wild animal on the floor. “You will wish you had been stillborn by the time I am done with you and your family!”
He was still screaming as they took him out by his hands and feet. There was dead silence in the courtroom as everyone looked at each other, trying to recover and catch their breath.
“On that note, I believe these proceedings are done for the day,” the judge finally said. “And defense counsel, tomorrow the defendant will be gagged as well as heavily shackled under my order. So I don’t want to hear the slightest peep out of you about it. And with the next outburst, I promise you, he’ll be tried in a cage.”
She brought down her gavel like a blacksmith hitting an anvil.
“This trial will proceed, so help me. This trial will proceed if it’s the last thing I do.”
AT A LITTLE before 8:00 p.m., the Fifth Precinct evening patrol supervisor, Sergeant Wayne Lozada, and his driver, Officer Michael Morelli, parked in their favorite cooping spot, the southeast corner of Canal and the Bowery, facing the ramp for the Manhattan Bridge.
After Morelli put it into park, he lifted a massive binder from the backseat. He flipped through the NYPD Patrol Guide to the section covering the use of the Taser on emotionally disturbed people. Morelli, who was actually quite proficient in the use of the electrical device due to the neighborhood’s proliferation of nuts, didn’t really need to go over it but was brushing up for a sergeant’s test he was scheduled to take at the end of the month.
As Morelli studied, Sergeant Lozada idly listened to the fizz and pop of the radio as he stared at the monumental arch and colonnade at the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. He never got sick of looking at that thing. Above the Chinese billboards, crappy stores, and skells selling fake handbags on the piss-stained Bowery sidewalk, the intricate baroque stonework looked fantastical, like a Rembrandt peeking out over the rim of a Dumpster.
Lozada, who briefly had been a high school history teacher before becoming a cop, was an architecture buff. After he retired at the end of the year, he was thinking about starting a walking tour.
“You see that thing, Morelli?” Lozada said. “That thing was built by the same architects who designed the iconic New York Public Library. It’s called a triumphal arch, and this one was modeled in the tradition of both the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris and the first-century Arch of Titus in Rome. It was part of the City Beautiful movement,
