Mean Streak Read Online Free PDF Page A

told the judge,” Matt surmised.
    â€œThere were two possibilities,” I explained. “Either my client was a very stupid man who was taken advantage of by an unscrupulous seller, or he—”
    â€œOr he was a very stupid man who stole a car and didn’t have the brains to fill out a bogus bill of sale with a believable seller’s name,” Riordan finished. “I take it you didn’t see fit to present the judge with that alternative.”
    â€œI told the judge my client was a cane-cutting peasant from Puerto Rico who got ripped off by a city slicker named Bobo,” I admitted.
    â€œWhat happened to the case?”
    â€œGod, I don’t remember. This happened years ago.”
    â€œBut you tried to get your guy a better deal on the basis of a bill of sale you had some reason to believe he might have forged. That might be penny ante stuff compared to Nunzie’s trip to Barbados, but the principle is the same. Does a good defense attorney look a gift horse in the mouth?”
    â€œHe does if the horse might turn around and bite him.”
    He considered that remark in silence; this horse had bitten Matt with a vengeance. But I did erase one of the two check marks I’d placed in my mental Hell, no column.
    â€œAnd then?” I prompted, bringing him back to the matter at hand.
    â€œAnd then Lazarus, the snake, put the squeeze on Nunzie,” he said. “He promised him a walk if he’d incriminate me in the phony alibi. Word on the street is that Nunzie bought the deal and told Lazarus that he was given the documents by my investigator.”
    â€œThis is Fat Jack Vance, the bail bondsman?” He was a legend in Manhattan court circles; the fat man and Riordan went back a long way together.
    Matt nodded. “The next word I hear is that Lazarus sent Nunzie into the grand jury to get an indictment for subornation of perjury against Jack and me.”
    â€œAnd right after that, Nunzie Aiello went missing,” I finished. Nunzie’s disappearance right after his grand jury appearance had been the subject of a certain amount of press speculation. Half the reporters in town thought he’d taken a strategic trip to the Old Country, while the other half had him swimming in the East River in cement shoes. Either way, his absence was Riordan’s reprieve. There could be no trial without the chief witness.
    â€œLazarus was steamed, I take it.”
    â€œLazarus was rabid,” Riordan amended. “Now there was even wild talk he was going to prove I killed Nunzie to prevent him from testifying against me.”
    I finished the story for him. “And then, last October, the Department of Sanitation towed a derelict car from under the Williamsburg Bridge. The car was in the pound for a month. It was about to be auctioned, when the guys inspecting it smelled something rotten. They opened the trunk, and there was Nunzie. One bullet to the head, another in the mouth.”
    â€œClassic,” was all Matt said. “The bullet in the mouth is a traditional way of marking an informer.”
    â€œDo you think Cretella did it?” I asked. This was, strictly speaking, irrelevant to Matt’s defense. But I had decided that if the answer was yes, Matt would have to keep looking for counsel. I could represent Matt himself without becoming known as a Mafia lawyer, but if there were deeper Mob crimes underlying Matt’s troubles, I preferred to stay on the Brooklyn side of the bridge.
    Matt’s eyes narrowed; at first, I thought he resented the question. But his thoughtful tone told me that he was thinking the matter through. “If Nunzie was shtupping me,” he said in an uncharacteristically tentative tone, “then he was probably sticking it to Frankie too. I’ve represented Frank Cretella for almost fifteen years now, and this isn’t the first of his former associates to be found with a bullet in his mouth.”
    â€œYou