Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter) Read Online Free PDF Page A

fisherman, albeit a very successful one. He ran a shrimping company, which employed a fleet of more than ninety boats, stretching from New Jersey to Florida.
    Probably being uncharacteristically kind, Hike doesn’t ask the key question, which is how carefully did I check Richard Solarno out before trial. He doesn’t have to; I’ve been torturing myself with that exact question since I left Nicky’s house.
    The answer is that I didn’t do nearly enough. There were a combination of reasons for that. First of all, the police had conducted an investigation, and what I did do confirmed their view that there was nothing in Richard’s past that would have made him a likely target.
    Karen, on the other hand, was a different story. She was not exactly the faithful, doting wife, and she played around with a number of unsavory characters. Joey actually thought that she dumped him when she found out he was not in the family business; he ceased to represent the excitement and danger she naturally sought.
    Our defense was to offer two possible theories for the crime. They were contradictory, except that each was designed to cultivate reasonable doubt.
    One was that the killing was a random home invasion gone violent, and there had been a few similar, albeit less deadly, incidents in that area around that time. The second was that there were a number of Karen’s ex-suitors both angry and violent enough to have done the deed, and that Joey was just one of the group. Our claim was that the prosecution quickly and unfairly picked Joey because of his family background.
    Lastly, I was not Joey’s original attorney, but they had a falling out, and I was called in just three weeks before trial. I wanted a continuance to give me more time to dig into the case, but Joey wouldn’t hear of it. He was certain of his innocence, and confident in my ability to prove it, so he wanted out of jail as soon as possible.
    Six years later he’s in state prison, so his confidence doesn’t seem to have been entirely warranted.
    The point is that I have a lot of excuses for not more thoroughly vetting the man that was Richard Solarno, but none of them feel acceptable at the moment. The fact that the file does not provide any fresh perspective is not surprising; I’ve been through it enough times that I could almost recite it by heart.
    Most likely none of this will matter, and the ramblings of a soon-to-be-dead fat gangster will be shown to have no relevance in the real world.
    But my sympathy for Joey having to sit in prison, plus my guilt at not keeping him out of there, adds up to one thing:
    I’m going to find out what the hell Nicky Fats was talking about.

 
    Janet Carlson could wake the dead, and is uniquely in a position to do so. Janet is the Passaic County coroner, and while I am not particularly knowledgeable about the history of that office, I can safely say she is the best-looking coroner in Passaic County history.
    She’s almost six feet tall, with jet-black hair and a body that is in Laurie’s league, which is to say the major league.
    She is also completely competent, a fact that often causes me aggravation. Just by the nature of the job and system, she is always a prosecution witness, so it becomes my job to make her look bad on the stand. Maybe someday I’ll succeed at it.
    It’s possible she feels sorry for me, because she goes out of her way to be helpful whenever she can, at least out of court. Since I go out of my way to take advantage of helpful people whenever I can, the relationship works pretty well for me.
    I’m in the lobby area telling the receptionist that I would like to talk to Janet when I see her through a window into the main office area. Even better, she sees me, and comes out into the lobby.
    “Andy, you’re not working again, are you? I mean, have you taken on a client?”
    “No.”
    She pretends to wipe her brow. “Whew, that’s a relief.”
    “Why?”
    “I have three years from August in the ‘when