The K Team, page 4
“That’s okay; the Judge’s calendar will show when he was at the conference in NY. So we’ll know when, and we also can make a good guess as to the type of defendant they will claim the Judge helped. He or she would have been wealthy, so as to be able to provide the money for the Caymans account.”
“You want to contact the Judge to find out when he was at the conference?”
Laurie nods. “I will. I’ll also tell him about your conversation with Eva Staley. He has a right to know what he’s up against.”
“It might be time to bring the police into this.”
“I don’t think so. They haven’t made a demand yet, and without that there can’t be a blackmail charge. Plus he knows that once he brings them in, there’s no guarantee the whole thing won’t go public. But it will obviously be up to him; he knows what he’s doing.”
“He thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he doesn’t,” I say. “He thinks he can control this like he controls the lawyers in his courtroom, but the people he’s dealing with aren’t the type to rise respectfully when he walks into a room.”
“That’s why he has us.”
There isn’t anything more to be said; we’re still in the dark. Starting tomorrow we can dig into the court records and try to identify the relevant players who have appeared before Henderson, or who might be coming up in the future.
Marcus must have left, though I didn’t see him go. One minute he’s in a place and the next he’s gone. For a guy whose presence is frightening and dominating, he has an amazing ability to get around without being noticed.
“Where’s Marcus?” I ask.
“He must have gone. He’ll be back tomorrow with the court records.”
“I’ve never seen anything like how he dealt with that pimp. He was no small guy; must have been close to two hundred pounds. Marcus picked him up and launched him over a car, like the guy was made of straw.”
Laurie nods. “It took me a while, but you’ll get used to it too.” Then, “There is Marcus and then there is everybody else.”
Marcus got the call that the court records were ready to be picked up.
It presented a dilemma, even though he was currently at the courthouse. That morning, Marcus had been at Judge Henderson’s house and watched as he left for work. Marcus also watched as a man in a dark green Ford Fusion followed the Judge.
Marcus had gone to the Judge’s house in the first place to see if the Judge was being surveilled. Both Corey and Laurie had considered it a distinct possibility; if someone was threatening to blackmail the Judge, they would want to know whom the Judge was aligning himself with, especially if it was the police.
Marcus made a mental note to recommend that the Judge’s house be swept for listening devices and phone taps; it would be the logical thing for the blackmailers to do.
Marcus did not follow too closely; he knew where the Judge was going, so therefore he knew where the person tailing him was going. Marcus took down the license plate, then when he arrived downtown, located the car parked near the courtroom. From that spot the blackmailer would be able to see the Judge’s car in the employee parking lot, so it would be easy to follow him wherever he was going when the court day was over.
The call saying the records were available came at four thirty in the afternoon, and therein was the dilemma. Marcus knew that if he went in to get them, he might miss the Judge and the guy following him. If he didn’t go in, then it would be another wasted day without access to the records.
There was no time to call his partners to tell them to get the records; the court day would be over by the time they arrived. So Marcus called Laurie, told her what was happening, and gave her the license plate number to run. She didn’t think it was urgent enough to try to call the Judge while he was in court, so she just told Marcus he should get the records, which he did.
Sure enough, the Judge and the guy tailing him were gone by the time Marcus got back. That was okay. He had no reason to think the Judge was in any danger; if Marcus did, he wouldn’t have risked missing him. There would be no reason for a blackmailer to harm the intended victim; the opposite was true. If the blackmailers hoped to get anything out of the Judge, they needed him alive, healthy, and working.
So if Marcus wanted to, he could resume his own surveillance tomorrow. By then he would know who had the Judge in his sights.
I call in another favor from a friend on the force.
This time it’s to ask Joey Iurato to run the license plate on the car that Marcus followed this morning. I’m going to have to take each of these guys that helps me out for a night of drinking, and I’ll have to pick up the tab. At this rate I will be a penniless alcoholic by the end of the month.
I’m not surprised when it takes just a few minutes for Joey to run the plate and get back to me, but I am surprised by the results. The car is registered to Kevin Vickers, and I know him.
Vickers started out as a cop in the Clifton Police Department, but left after a couple of years to go into private practice. I had heard that it did not go well, that clients were few and far between. Vickers moved into other areas, like working for bail bondsmen, but remained on the fringe of the legal and investigative community.
I knew Vickers because I dated one of his sister’s close friends in high school. She was great looking and fun and smart, so of course I avoided any chance of a future with her.
As I recall, Vickers was not exactly a model citizen or student in high school, and I remember being surprised that he became a cop. I didn’t know him well back in those days and I was fine with that.
Joey has gone above and beyond and provided me with Vickers’s rap sheet; I hadn’t realized he even had one. There was an arrest for assault and one for passing a bad check, both in the years after he left the force. None of them went to trial; the assault charge somehow went away, and he pleaded no contest to the check issue.
He got off with community service. It doesn’t show whether he performed it, but it seems to have been resolved.
We’re meeting at Laurie’s house tonight, and as we arrive, she has just put her ten-year-old son, Ricky, to bed. Laurie wanted to meet here since we might want to call on Andy to help explain the court records. It’s delayed some since Ricky wants to spend a little time with his “Uncle Marcus.”
Before we look at the records, we discuss Vickers, and what we should do about him. Everyone agrees that we should not approach him in any fashion; there is no sense at this point in letting him know we are aware of his involvement.
“I don’t think he’s a danger to the Judge,” I say. “He’s a scumbag, but I doubt that murder is part of his résumé. Also, they would have no reason to physically harm the Judge at this point; not while they think he can be useful. With all the trouble they went to in order to frame him, he’s much more potentially valuable alive and well.”
“I agree,” says Laurie, and Marcus nods his assent.
“Do you think the Judge could have hired him as well as us?” Laurie asks. “Maybe for protection?”
“I doubt it. They inhabit different worlds. But we need to tell him about this. Even though we don’t think he’s in any imminent danger, we could be wrong. If someone was following me, I’d want to know about it.”
Laurie nods. “Agreed. I’ll tell him.” Then, “You guys hungry?”
As Marcus and I answer yes, Andy walks into the room. “How are my favorite employees doing? Any ass-kissing compliments you want to pay the boss, in this case, me?”
“Your favorite employees are hungry,” Laurie says. “Pizza would be nice.”
Andy nods. “Pizza is always nice. It’s pretty hard to hate a pizza.”
“Would the boss be willing to go pick some up?” Laurie asks. “I mean, since he’s the only one without any actual work to do.”
He agrees after sneering and moaning for a bit, and we all tell him the toppings we want on our pizzas. He’s heading down to pick them up at Patsy’s, that rare New Jersey restaurant that can match New York pizza slice for slice.
With that accomplished, we dive into the court records for cases Judge Henderson presided over starting six months before the first deposit was made into the Caymans account. Laurie had learned that the conference Judge Henderson attended was also in that same general time frame.
The six months is an arbitrary figure, but seems comfortable. It is unlikely that the bad guys would have waited longer than that if they had information that was valuable and could lead to something they wanted down the road. If we need to, we can go back and start earlier.
We’ve got two significant problems with this process. One is that we don’t even know what we are looking for. Our supposition, which certainly could be wrong, is that the blackmailers are prepared to claim that Judge Henderson already acted improperly on one of these cases, and that they will threaten to reveal it.
They will point to the Caymans account and Eva Staley as a payoff for his having done that improper deed. But to make it stick, they’d have to have credible evidence that he actually did something wrong. We hope to find it in these records, even though I think we all doubt that he actually did what they will claim.
Our other problem is that we don’t have enough expertise to capably analyze what we’re looking at. We’ve divvied up the trial transcripts and we’re each about three pages in before we come to this unfortunate realization.
“This is lawyer’s work,” I say.
Laurie nods. “Maybe I shouldn’t have sent our lawyer out for pizza. On the other hand, we’re really hungry, and pizza is pizza.”
When Andy comes back, we chow down. Laurie’s mouth is still full as she tells Andy the problem we are having. She’s not even a third of the way through when he says, “I don’t like where this is going.”
“I suspected you’d have reservations. I hope that your love for me will allow you to overcome them.”
“You want me to read through all these transcripts in the hope of finding something that likely isn’t there?” He sounds incredulous at the prospect. “And I should do it for love?”
“That sums it up.”
“Another love I have is not working. And the one thing Hatchet and I agreed on was that neither of us wanted me involved.”
I continue not to say anything; this is best handled by Laurie, and I think she’s closing in for the kill. “These are extraordinary circumstances,” she says.
“This is not my idea of a restful retirement. And how much is the K Team prepared to pay me for this work?”
“You’re doing it pro bono because that’s the kind of guy you are. You’re my hero.”
We reconvene at Laurie and Andy’s at 2:00 p.m. to hear what Andy has learned.
I’m surprised that Andy has gone through all of the documents so quickly; maybe he just wanted to get it over with, or maybe he just did a cursory job. He seems unlikely to be voted Man of the Year by Work Ethic Magazine.
Marcus is not here; he feels his time is better spent keeping an eye on Vickers, who in turn is following the Judge. Laurie has told the Judge about Vickers, and the Judge was upset about it. I can’t say that I blame him.
He reluctantly agreed that we should not intervene, at least for the moment. Vickers is not technically doing anything illegal, and he doesn’t seem to represent a physical danger to the Judge. If that seems about to change, Marcus will be there. I know Vickers to be a tough guy, but he is not Marcus. The Russian army is not Marcus.
I’ve brought Simon with me since this house is obviously dog friendly. Simon and Tara seem to like each other. Andy and Laurie’s other dog, a basset named Sebastian, doesn’t seem terribly interested in either of them. He seems most interested in sleeping.
Once we’re settled in, Andy begins telling us what he’s learned. “First, I need to preface all this by placing it in overall context.
“A judge handles many things besides trials. He or she hears motions, holds discovery hearings, status conferences, plea bargains, signs off on search warrants, and much more. These could take place between trials or even during trials.
“So that makes what we are trying to find that much more difficult. Hatchet, or any judge, can issue rulings that have major real-world significance, and those decisions can essentially be mostly under the radar.
“The other thing I want to say is I consider Hatchet to be obnoxious, dictatorial, arrogant, pompous, and inconsiderate. I do not consider him corrupt. I don’t think we will find unethical behavior because I don’t believe he would act unethically. And it is inconceivable to me that he would accept any kind of bribe or payoff. That is not who he is.
“But he has two other good qualities. He’s very smart. I cannot imagine him acting in a way that would put him in this position. He is a target in this situation, not a conspirator.”
“What’s the other good quality?”
“Take him out of his job, get a few drinks in him, and he can be a hell of a lot of fun. I was sitting next to him at a charity dinner once; when I saw him there, I almost bailed out of the dinner. But he had two glasses of wine, and he opened up. He and I were the only two people in the entire place not wearing ties. He told me he never does, that he hates ties and shoes. He says he insists on his neck and feet having room to breathe.”
I can’t help smiling at Andy’s recounting of that night. If I drew the short straw and had to sit next to Henderson at a stuffy charity dinner, I’d be miserable. Just being at a stuffy charity dinner would be enough to make my head explode.
“I noticed he doesn’t wear ties in court,” Laurie says, “the only judge I ever saw that doesn’t.”
Andy nods. “And I’ll bet he’s wearing flip-flops under those long robes. But getting back to the point, the guy is honest. I’d bet on it.”
“Understood,” I say, and Laurie nods her agreement. I’ve never heard any reason to think the Judge is anything less than honest, but to hear it from somebody like Andy, who has tried cases before him and who clearly cannot stand him, is significant.
Andy continues, “So, in the six-month period that we are talking about, Hatchet conducted eight trials. He also presided over many other matters, like the ones I described. I could go over everything with you or just tell you the ones that might conceivably hold some promise.”
Laurie and I both opt for the latter. If Andy doesn’t think anything significant is in the other stuff, we are not likely to either. Besides, we can always come back and revisit it if we think we need to.
“Okay. Let’s start with the trials,” Andy says. “Three or four of them are what I would consider nonprospects, so let’s get them out of the way first. “Two were for relatively low-level drug offenses. One was breaking and entering, and the other was intentional manslaughter, the result of a bar fight.”
“You listed four, but you said that three or four were nonprospects,” Laurie says. “Which one are you unsure of?”
“The bar fight. The other three were trials in which the defendants had significant criminal records, but all low-level stuff. They had very little money and were represented by the public defender. Whatever is going on in our case, there is certainly significant money involved.”
“How was the bar fight different?” I ask.
“The defendant”—Andy looks at a document—“John Lowry … basically had no criminal record at all. He also was an apparently productive member of the labor force. He worked as an IT computer guy, the company he worked for would send him out as a troubleshooter to large corporations. Then he took a job in the financial industry.
“But he wasn’t wealthy, and the thing that stands out is that he was represented by Walter Cummings. That surprised me.”
I know Cummings; I once tangled with him when I testified in a murder case. He is top-of-the-line, in ability but especially in price. He does not work cheap.
Andy continues, “But there isn’t much in the transcript to indicate that Hatchet did anything unusual or controversial. I was a little surprised by his charge to the jury, but it wasn’t out of bounds, and the guy was convicted. Lowry killed the guy with one punch, and Cummings tried self-defense. But a witness says the punch Lowry threw was the only one.
“Most of Cummings’s efforts seemed designed to get his client a soft sentence; including stressing the fact that Lowry was helping a woman whom the victim had just mistreated. It didn’t work; Lowry received ten years, which seems in line with the guidelines.”
Andy moves along to the cases that hold more promise. “One is an embezzlement case; a woman named Nina Williams was alleged to have stolen one hundred thousand dollars from a grocery-supply company here in Paterson. She had worked in their accounts receivable department. Hatchet made a ruling in that case that certain evidence found in her apartment was incorrectly obtained, making it inadmissible. I’m not sure I agree with his ruling, but because of it she ultimately went free.
“Another was a murder trial of a known organized-crime figure in Paterson. His name is Gerry Infante, a tough guy who weighs close to three hundred pounds. His nickname is Big Gerry, which among his other faults shows a lack of nickname creativity. He was a lieutenant in the Petrone/Russo crime family, which disbanded due to the untimely deaths of both Petrone and Russo.
“Infante was accused of strangling his fiancée, Cynthia Goffin, after discovering her cheating on him. In addition to screwing up his wedding plans, he was convicted in Hatchet’s court and sentenced to twenty-five years to life. I don’t see any questionable decisions by Hatchet here; I am including it because of the organized-crime connection. They are the types who would have no qualms of conscience about blackmailing a judge and would have access to the necessary funds to do it.
“Last is Drew Lockman, who stood accused of fraud. He was a partner in a brokerage, running a Ponzi scheme, sort of a reduced version of Madoff. He took about four million dollars of investors’ money, after convincing them he was some kind of investment savant.
“Didn’t take long for the money to be gone, but Lockman apparently lived quite well in the process. The people who invested with him should have been brought up on stupidity charges. He invested the cash in businesses that had a tendency to benefit him and his family, most of which went under.
