The Monkey Handlers Page 3

  “Lady,” said the cabbie, “I already got…”

  The sandy-haired man cocked his head slightly toward the woman and slid his right arm free of his coat, then shot it down toward his briefcase, snapping his thick-fingered hand around the delicate fingers of the would-be thief, already encircling the grip of his intended loot. Garcia gasped at the strength of his mark’s hand.

  The big man reached his left arm through the cab’s driver-side window and pressed the horn. As he did so, he increased the pressure of his grip on Garcia’s hand like a hydraulic press. Caught between the terrible crushing of the big man’s grip and the rock-hard handle, the gypsy’s hand started to break; finger bones, knuckles, and then, one after the other, the long bones leading to his wrist. Garcia screamed in agony but was drowned out by the taxi’s horn. He would never use his right hand to steal again.

  Magdalena, seeing the excruciating pain registered on her partner’s face, whipped a straight razor from the sash around her waist and brought it up toward her partner’s tormentor. Without letting go of Garcia, Magdalena’s target released the horn and snapped his left fist into a powerful backhand karate blow directly into her left breast. Magdalena’s mouth opened but no sound came out. As she sank to her knees, vomiting, her assailant released Garcia’s now-crippled hand from his right, then used it to deliver another backhand punch, this time to the gypsy’s temple, felling him on top of the vomiting woman.

  The cabdriver was filled with apprehension as his fare quickly put his coat and bags into the rear of the cab and entered.

  “Mister…” he started. Then he saw his passenger’s face in the rearview mirror and thought better of it.

  “Drive,” said Helmar Metz.

  * * *

  County court for the county of Mohawk, state of New York, convened every weekday morning at ten o’clock. The three county-court judges rotated the taking of motions and hearing of trials. The Honorable William B. Martin, senior of the three judges, was winding down his service on the county court by having assigned himself out of turn to hear motions for the month of May. The aging Manny Weiss, justice of the supreme court of the state of New York assigned to sit at Rhinekill, had finally been persuaded to retire a year before elections to solve two problems. First, Old Manny was getting a bit forgetful and had become something of an embarrassment to the bench. Second, his early retirement enabled the party to appoint its own selection and give this person a year to become fixed in that position in the mind of the public before running for election.

  William B. Martin was the de facto head of the party in Mohawk County. Nevertheless, skillful politician that he was, he had waited until it was “his turn” before engineering his elevation to the supreme court bench. Things were, as usual, going his way, and he was in an affable mood on this warm May morning. Only forty-nine years old, he could see himself on the court of appeals before he was sixty.

  Judge Martin got where he was by being able to handle difficult problems in their infancy. So it was with confidence that he picked up Michael Stone, Esquire’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the matter of one Sara Rosen. Martin pressed a button on the desk in his chambers. His clerk put his head through the door to the chamber’s outer office cum reception room and said, “Yes, boss?”

  “I think,” said Martin, jerking his thumb toward the door at the opposite end of his chambers that led into his courtroom, “you’ll find a lawyer named Michael Stone sitting outside waiting for court to convene. Bring him in here, will you?”

  “On my way, boss.”

  The Mohawk County courthouse had been built in 1903. It was five stories tall, of red-brick construction with brownstone trim. Inside, the floors were of white marble, never a problem to keep clean in 1903 when the city was full of Irish and Italian immigrants only too thankful for the opportunity to swing a heavy wet mop all day. Now that the Irish and Italians were the judges and lawyers, and others deemed such labor beneath them, the floors remained dirty.

  Stefano Seri was short, dark, and overweight, but he moved with surprising alacrity when on a mission in his role as clerk to Judge Martin. He ushered Stone into the judge’s chambers through the courtroom entrance behind the bench, introduced the two men, and kept right on walking to the other side of the room and out to his little office. Martin was on his feet, left hand gripping an ever-present massive cigar, right hand reaching across his desk to take Stone’s and shake it as only a politician can.

  As he did any time he entered a location for the first time, Stone scanned it quickly and thoroughly. Martin’s chambers were second only to those of Justice Weiss over on the supreme court and surrogate side of the building. On the fifth floor, they overlooked the heart of the city at First and Main. The decor was turn-of-the-century legal; that is to say, wood—dark and everywhere.

  The big old mahogany desk, behind which Judge Martin stood offering Stone a cigar, dominated the room. Stone declined the big corona politely; he was already feeling green from the cloud of tobacco smoke that hung like ground fog around the judge. There was a small chair to the right of the desk where a stenographer sat when taking dictation. To the left was an overstuffed armchair whose maroon leather had been buffed to a fine patina by years of lawyers’ serge. “Sit down, sit down,” Martin said, gesturing to the armchair.

  Stone did as he was bidden, and the judge settled back down into his spring-loaded leather swivel chair. Its back, Stone noted, was so high that no matter how far back Martin leaned in it, he was protected from that injury most beloved of the legal profession—whiplash.

  “See from the papers congratulations are in order,” Stone ventured.

  “Oh, well”—Martin waved it off with his cigar—“the committee had no choice. Don’t get me wrong, Manny Weiss is a wonderful man and been a credit to the profession. He just got a little too old.” Martin’s eyelid dropped in a sly look. “Know how you can tell when a guy’s gettin’ too old?” He went on without waiting for Stone’s answer. “In the first stage, he forgets to zip up. Poor Manny was in stage two—he’d forgotten to zip down.”

  Martin laughed appreciatively at his own joke, then swiveled to face Stone directly.

  “So how’s the practice goin’? You makin’ a living?”

  “A living’s about it, Your Honor, but it’s enough. I’m alone, and my Aunt May, my Uncle Harry’s widow, won’t let me pay her any rent. Give her a hundred a month for food and utilities—and I know that doesn’t cover it—and had to threaten to leave to make her accept that. She’s a neat lady.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Martin, “and your uncle was a good man, too. Good lawyer. Well liked in this county. Nice little real estate practice, got along with everybody. Took it kinda hard when right outta law school you joined the navy.…”

  “I believed in the war,” Stone said, his voice cold.

  “Right, right,” Martin said defensively, “I was in Korea. I know what you’re saying. Anyway,” he said, trying to recover, “your uncle was really tickled when you retired outta the navy and joined him. Shame about his ticker. His practice and your navy pension…”

  “I didn’t retire from the navy,” Stone said, anger tinging his voice. “Not in long enough. I was forced out on a bullshit disability. Minor hearing loss. I get something from that.”

  Although Martin couldn’t know it, the anger in Stone’s voice was directed at himself because he knew in his heart that what he was saying wasn’t true.

  “Well,” said Martin, emitting yet another cloud of noxious smoke, “every little bit helps.” His face brightened. “Meanwhile, you been getting Harry’s share, right? Some guardianships, few estate appraisals for the surrogate, stuff like that?”

  “Yes, I have, Your Honor, and I do appreciate it.…”

  “Well, as I said, your uncle was well liked around here. Besides, you’re doing your duty as a member of the bar. Somebody has to do it, and some of the guys around here have such a successful practice that little stuff would be a burden. You kn
ow,” Martin said with obvious emphasis, “a smart man like you, well liked, links to the community through your uncle, navy vet, no reason some day not too long from now you couldn’t run for something or build a pretty lucrative practice. You just need to be around long enough to get the lay of the land.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Stone, trying his best to be agreeably noncommittal.

  Martin kept right on talking. He scooped up Stone’s writ and said, “No need to waste your valuable time out there arguing this writ in the courtroom. I’m gonna grant it right here. The order’s already prepared. You’re right on the merits. They should know better than to still be pulling this shit. We used to do it all the time, years ago when I was DA. But times change. People”—Martin looked at Stone knowingly—“have to learn how to change with the times.”

  The judge rose and walked to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Main Street, five floors below. “Look out there,” he invited Stone. “You know what you see out there? A city on its ass. You know why? Stupidity. Sheer stupidity.”

  He turned back to Stone. “Twenty-five years ago, the biggest manufacturer of electronics in the country wanted to build a plant in this city. The dumb WASPs who’d been running this town since New York was New Amsterdam turned up their patrician noses. The good times were gonna go on forever. Screw growth. Who needs it? You know what happened?”

  Stone shook his head. “Before my time.”

  “That company built a plant just outside the city limits. Then four more. The suburbs became where it was at for employment. Then housing. Then the downtown department stores went—all the shopping action was in the suburban malls.”

  Martin sat back down. “You know what this city’s tax base consists of now?” Martin answered himself: “Just one plant. And it was dying, too, before Riegar bought it and kept us alive.”

  Judge Martin handed the signed writ to Stone. “The little lady should be waiting with a deputy downstairs outside the Family Courtroom. Give him the bottom copy of my order.”

  Stone rose and took the sheaf of papers. “Thank you, Your Honor, I really—” The judge came around his desk and cut him off in mid-sentence as he clapped an avuncular hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “And, counselor,” he said, squeezing Stone for emphasis, “you have done your duty for your client. Stick to real estate.”

  Judge Martin opened the door to his reception room, eased Stone through it, then paused as he was closing the door. “You know,” he said, speaking around the clenched stub of his cigar, “the members of the criminal bar in this county aren’t such bad guys. Quit breakin’ their rice bowls.” Like the Cheshire cat, he receded into a cloud of cigar smoke and was gone.

  There was such a knot of people in front of the fifth-floor elevator door that it was clear to Stone he wouldn’t make the next trip, so he opted for the stairs, the springy muscles in his legs taking them like a dancer. He spotted the two women he was looking for from the landing midway between the first and second floors. The women could not have been more different.

  The female deputy sheriff was large to begin with, but three years of helping herself to free meals and snacks from a jailhouse kitchen that put out more starch than the laundry had so stressed her uniform that a sneeze would have produced casualties from flying buttons. To her beefy wrist was attached a handcuff, linked by a short chain to another locked around the wrist of a woman almost as tall as she. Just as the utter boredom of the life of the deputy was reflected in her bovine inertia and expression, intellect and the intensity of the deeply committed glowed from the sloe eyes her prisoner had inherited from a Mediterranean Sephardic mother, their near-purple blackness in startling contrast to the light skin bequeathed her by her northern German Ashkenazi father.

  Sara Rosen’s hair was jet black, dense, thick, and with a natural curl that made her a virtual stranger to beauty salons, going in only on special occasions for a professional cut. Her black eyebrows had a high arch, were a bit thicker than was fashionable, and guided the eye to a thin, Semitic nose that divided feline cheekbones and pointed directly to full lips over a strong but pointed chin. She was twenty-six, and when she was dressed and entered a room, women hated her for the way their men’s heads snapped around and their gazes held overly long on a body that combined thinness with just that last trace of baby fat that bans wrinkles and is the unmistakable stamp of youth.

  Michael Stone took the last steps slowly to observe Sara Rosen for as long as he could before he was himself observed and his scrutiny proved offensive. Even in her present state—sleepless, curls in disarray, dressed in jeans that set off her long legs and tight behind and a hooded workout sweatshirt that rendered her shapeless from the waist up, fidgeting on the bench in angry impatience—she changed Stone’s attitude toward her in an instant. What had been approached as a chore had metamorphosized into anticipation from one side of him, clashing with apprehension from another. He remembered another woman whose eyes had burned with commitment-driven intensity. So, for that matter, he supposed, had his own once. Unfortunately, the objects of those two commitments had been 180 degrees apart.

  Stone stepped up to the two women and held his right hand out toward Sara Rosen. “Michael Stone,” he said. “We meet at last.”

  “Stay away from the prisoner,” snapped the deputy.

  Stone shook Sara’s hand anyway, then peeled off a copy of the writ signed by Judge Martin, handed it to the deputy, and said, “She’s your prisoner but my client. You’ll note that according to the writ I’ve just handed you, Miss—Ms.,” he corrected himself, “Rosen is to be brought before Judge Martin upstairs forthwith.”

  “Uh,” grunted the deputy as she hauled herself to her feet and headed toward the elevator. Sara Rosen sprang up lithely, saying, “I have been all over this county since last night. Where have you—”

  Stone held up his hand. “Wait,” he said, “anything you say to me in the presence of a third party is not covered by the attorney-client privilege. I have every reason to believe you’ll be released shortly after we get upstairs. Then we can confer privately.”

  “Then,” said Sara as the old elevator’s doors squeaked shut and the crowded car began to groan upward, “I take a bath. Then I eat. Then we have a conference.”

  Because of the crowd, Stone was standing unwillingly against Sara, trying to keep any intimate part of his body away from her by holding in his muscles. Her unwashed body’s odor, loaded with pheromones, was advertising her sex to any nearby upper-Paleolithic males whose subconscious receptors had not been numbed by the recent advent of modern civilization. There was nothing wrong with Stone’s receptors and her closeness disturbed him.

  When the three of them entered Judge Martin’s courtroom, the clerk had just called another case. The judge spotted Stone and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the sheriff’s office has just responded to a writ of habeas corpus issued by this court. Will Mr. Stone and Mr. Sibley”—Martin beckoned to the assistant district attorney—“please approach the bench.”

  Stone and Sibley walked up to stand before Judge Martin’s elevated bench as the deputy seated Sara Rosen and herself behind the defendant’s table inside the bar.

  “Your Honor,” began Sibley, “I’m afraid I’m not prepared to make a recommendation for the setting of bail in this case. I don’t have the file—”

  “The file,” snapped Stone, “was supposed to be in city court at seven-thirty this morning. I was there. The district attorney was there, but my client wasn’t.”

  “Gentlemen,” admonished Martin, “I’ll have no bickering here.” Turning to Sibley, he said, “The file should be downstairs in the office, right? That’s where we always kept it when I was DA. If you want a few minutes to run down and get it, I’ll give them to you. But what’s the point? This is one of those agitator trespass cases down the Riegar plant, right? The defendant has a local address?” The judge looked at Stone, who nodded affirmatively. “So we’re talking recognizance here, not money bail, ri
ght?” Martin looked at Sibley.

  “Your Honor,” protested Sibley, “from what I understand, this is a Burglary Two charge. The defendant was caught inside the plant at night by a security guard.”

  “Alleged to have been caught inside by the guard,” argued Stone.

  “She was inside when picked up by the local police,” countered Sibley.

  “Of course,” said Stone. “If the guard caught her on the grounds, he’d have to take her inside to call the police. The point is that this is all at the accusation level now, my client has a local address, and, as the court has noted, this is a simple trespass case. We’re not dealing with the Star of India here.”

  “Alleged simple trespass,” Sibley retorted, “and as I’m sure the court will also note, the formula for a new drug breakthrough can be worth a lot more than the Star of India.”

  “All right, all right,” said an exasperated Martin. “You want a hearing, right?” he said to Stone.

  “Correct, Your Honor. The sooner the better. Like this afternoon. We—”

  “Okay,” Martin cut him off, “and the district attorney obviously needs to find his file and prepare.” He looked out over the courtroom toward Sara Rosen. “Will the defendant, Sara—” He looked at the writ before him for help.

  “Rosen,” Stone and Sibley said simultaneously. “Rosen,” repeated the judge. “Will you come forward, please.”

  Sara, by this time unshackled from the deputy, stepped forward, and Stone guided her to his side.

  “Does the defendant,” said Martin, looking at Stone and, to her annoyance, ignoring Sara, “understand that she is charged with burglary in the second degree and waive further reading?”

  “Yes, Your Honor, through counsel; for the record, Michael Stone. S-t-o-n-e,” he said, looking over at the court stenographer and enunciating clearly.

  “How does the defendant plead?” Martin asked, still looking at Stone.

  “Not guilty.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” blurted Sara Rosen, her patience at an end. “I—”