Crime & Punishment: the Prequel

I'd like to thank Ken for a final proof of this.

*****

It took two weeks, but Lynda was ready. The first thing that Monday morning she did exactly as Steven had asked, she made an appointment to see the US Attorney for just after five that afternoon.

"I'm going to need time to set things up. When you speak to her just tell her what I asked you to, no more and no less," he said.

"What if she asks me questions?"

"You shrug. You have no idea. I was being very secretive. Remember less is more in this."

She went to work as if to toil on her open cases without any real intent to do any work. She doubted she would be employed by the US Attorney's office for much longer. At precisely five p.m. she got the call to Ms. Ross-Jordan's office.

She entered the U.S. Attorney's private office to find Nancy Ross Jordan seated not behind the big executive desk but on one of the conversational chairs at the side of her office. Nancy waved Lynda to a seat on the opposing couch. A bottle of blue label scotch was on the coffee table. There were two glasses.

"I felt like a cocktail. It's been a long day," Nancy began, "Will you join me?"

"I'd love to," Lynda said suddenly losing all the fear that had been plaguing her all day.

She had spent a glorious weekend with Steven. Saturday, they rode the train into the city to do touristy things. They looked at the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. They took in a Broadway show, the Band Visit. She had loved it but was fairly sure that Steven hated it. On Sunday, he had taken her to where he grew up and showed her his old haunts, including the Brooklyn Museum, the botanical gardens, and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. He described skateboarding down the Library steps with his friend Pat.

They had a last beautiful weekend, but a specter hung over it. By then he had made his plan with O'Reilly. They had little on their side, and they knew it. Steven was to be the bait. He didn't tell this specifically to Lynda, but he was sure she was smart enough to know it.

Monday came all too soon, and now she was here seated across from the most powerful lawyer in New York about to tell her a bunch of lies mixed with just enough truth. Her life, Steven's life, and others she didn't even know depended on her being believed.

"So, do you have something for me?" Nancy asked.

"Well something, but I'm not sure what you can use it for," Lynda said and paused as if reflecting.

"Go on let me be the judge," Nancy prompted.

"Apparently, Steven is about to make some kind of deal with a lawyer for the governor. Something about a file and the governor has agreed to help him with a statute of limitations problem."

"Did you get the lawyer's name?"

"No, he didn't mention it only that the man worked unofficially for the governor. I didn't want to press for minor details for fear of making him suspicious. But he did say that the deal was made in the Albany Law School and quite recently."

"Anything else?"

"No, but he mentioned the statute of limitations several times and exchanging the file for the reopening when the legislation was signed into law."

"Did he say when this would happen?"

"No firm date, but the governor is under some pressure to make it soon."

"Did he say where this file is?"

"No, only that he had it."

Nancy proceeded to pepper her with questions for half an hour, but all Lynda did was follow her instructions and shrugged off the question with, "I don't know, or he didn't say."

The final question was the one Lynda was waiting for.

"When do you expect to see him again?"

"Not for a few days. He's meeting his wife tomorrow. I believe he's going to ask her for a divorce."

"He actually intends to walk away from his wife. Are you sure that he is not just telling you what you want to hear?"

"Well nothing is certain, but he seemed genuinely upset about something to do with her current boyfriend. He wouldn't say what, but it seemed to have caused a change in his attitude."

Nancy seemed to ponder this a moment, "Well thank you and please keep me informed as to developments."

Lynda understood that she was being dismissed and was happy to get out of that office. She could feel Nancy's eyes critically appraising her as she left. She hoped Steven was right when he said, "It doesn't matter whether she buys the story completely as long as she can't fully dismiss it."

*****

"More tea Steven?" Katherine DeVoe Singleton asked.

Not for the first time, Steven Fitzgerald wondered how a woman in her late fifties could be so damned beautiful and utterly sexual. Steven's mother-in-law gave him that suggestive smile of hers that promised so many things she had no intention of delivering. The flirting was something innate and meaningless, something women of her class and station did without thinking. Steven knew, after all, he was married to almost an exact copy.

Katherine DeVoe, as she was known in society, the wife of that Singleton fellow who runs some kind of insurance business, didn't like her youngest son-in-law. She didn't trust the man she referred to as the Leprechaun.

"Oh, he's pretty enough and shrewd beyond doubt, but those eyes of his. There's a demon in the man," she told her husband. Joe Singleton had no real feelings for his two sons-in-law, one way or the other. Neither figured in his world as anything other than a source of possible heirs. The Teacher had produced with his daughter Mary, and the lawyer with Sue had not. It was the extent of the thought; he gave to the men clearly fools to have married his independent and promiscuous daughters. Neither son-in-law sought a cent of his money in return for marrying those difficult women which Singleton saw as stupid rather than laudable.

"So, what is it that you want Steven?" Katherine asked the niceties being completed.

"A favor," he replied.

"A financial favor?"

"No, I need you to hold a briefcase for me in your bank's security vault. No questions asked and no attempt to open the locked case. And you mustn't under any circumstance tell anyone I gave it to you, or that you have it."

"Sounds very mysterious."

"No, just dangerous."

"May I ask how long you expect me to keep this case."

"Until I return for it, or until you know I'm dead."

Katherine DeVoe was visibly shaken by the man's blunt reference to his own mortality but refused to give in to plebeian emotion.

"What may I expect in return for this service."

"I won't divorce your daughter. I'll let her divorce me. She can play the wronged party," he replied.

Katherine thought this over. The man had cause, she knew, and for some time, she had suspected, he was on the verge. Moreover, there was no doubt that most decent men would never marry either of her daughters. Bed them yes, but to love and cherish them as a husband was a grave mistake.

"I suspect the contents of the case are very important. In the event you are—unable—to return what do you want me to do with it?"

"Sidney Levy is the attorney general of New York. If I'm killed, I want, you to give the case to him. Tell him it comes from Steven Fitzgerald and Jimmy O'Reilly has the keys. He'll know what to do when he sees what's in the case."

Katherine could only raise her eyebrows at this.

"He's a man of integrity, a man close to his family and faithful to his God. He is the kind of man who could never have obtained the contents of the case, but exactly the man to trust with those contents. A lot of lives are going to depend on you, Katherine," Steven said.

She didn't know how to take this and wanted to ask why her, but before she could he answered for her.

"You raised three exceptional children despite their sexual proclivities, and you are an honest woman yourself despite all the temptations the world has thrown at you," he said.

"And I own a bank with a large vault," she added as they both laughed. It was a nervous and very tense laugh.

*****

Gerald Hawkins' phone call came as Carrie was entering her office Tuesday morning. "What news?" she said as she recognized his voice.

"They took the victims to Kinshasa, but the more serious cases were then flown out to France. We are making arrangements to have any serious American cases treated at our military hospital in Germany. They have the expertise with this type of injury.

"I'm afraid your Mrs. O'Reilly falls into the serious category. Although I'm also told that she is a hero for the way she aided in the treatment of the other victims. She is a very brave and dedicated physician.

Officially, the names of the killed and injured will be released about 7:00 p.m. our time that's around 2:00 p.m. your time. We should have all the families notified by then. If you reach Mr. O'Reilly before I do, please tell him we will be doing everything possible for his wife. I have his home and work numbers, but no one seems to be answering."

"I certainly will try to reach him, but he seems to be unavailable."

"Oh, I thought—I mean I heard—Well, please do what you can to reach him and, by all means, give him my number. The consul wishes to be as helpful as possible. From our point of view, she is a notable American hero."

Carrie could see Gerry's point of view, and she could guess what he had heard about her relationship with James O'Reilly. In the circumstances, that put her in a very bad light, but damn it, she loved the man, and now he had disappeared. "Where the hell have you gone, Jimmy?"

*****

The windows of the public housing project either faced the river or overlooked the small women's college. Sofia Thompson's apartment was on the college side six floors up near the top of the building. Sofie was a big woman with very dark skin. She had raised three children in this apartment. She was forty-eight and in reasonably good health but living alone now since all her children were grown.

"You would think that at least one of them could have given me a grandchild," she told Jimmy. Leroy Thompson was Sofie's oldest son and a former client of Jimmy's. Leroy still owed Jimmy money from the last time O'Rilley had gotten him off of the drug charges brought by the NY State Police. Leroy was now up in Vermont as he would say, "Busting his hump because the drug business just ain't as profitable as it once was."

Jimmy was holding up with Sofie for a few days in exchange for the forgiveness of Leroy's bill. He left his cell phone in the office and had a burner phone for staying in touch with his sister, Tara and Steven Fitzgerald. In the meantime, he stared out the window and perused the ledger he had taken from Cecilia Porter. He was pretty sure he knew what the ledger was about, but he still needed some questions answered.

Fitzgerald had the dangerous job of playing the bait, but in case the bait got taken, then someone had to survive to tell the tale. It was Tuesday, and this was the first possible day for the other side to act, according to Fitzgerald who Jimmy suspected was holding back some of what he knew, but then Jimmy hadn't told him about the ledger. He missed his kids, but his sister's wife, Lisa had taken them to visit with her parents to keep them safe.

As he looked out the window overlooking the women's college with its nineteenth-century buildings grouped around the Troy city commons, he knew he couldn't hole up much longer. He needed to get in on the action. The waiting game was getting to him. He trusted his sister, Tara and her colleagues to watch Greco, but he wasn't as sure of Polly and Brandt on Patterson. As the day slipped away, he became more and more nervous.

*****

Steven Fitzgerald was also getting nervous. He was in a suite at the Midtown Marriott in Manhattan. He had seen all the major players in the NYASAV group that afternoon. They had shared coffee and room service sandwiches as he explained the choices they had. They were none too pleased. Jason Applewood and his group wanted a big fight in the courts, but the majority wanted an apology from the Church and some form of reasonable recompense.

"They took so much from us. It's unfair not to be required to give something back," said the only woman in the room, a fiftyish matron who spoke eloquently of her molestation at age ten. Steven offered equal doses of sympathy and harsh reality.

"The best you can hope for is reasonable recompense. There will be no adequate retribution. Vengeance, as the bible teaches us, belongs to God. Go after something more than money, and you will have no satisfaction at all," Steven told them.

"But do we have the file?"

"Trust me just a little longer. We are either going to get compensation, or there will be the biggest scandal in this state's history," he told them.

This promise seemed to satisfy them. When he was finally alone, He decided to take a shower and catch some sleep. He was fairly sure things would begin that evening, and he wanted to be rested and ready. The knock at the door caught him entering the shower. He pulled on one of the hotel robes and answered the door, but not without a degree of trepidation.

"Susan you're early, I thought we agreed to meet at five," he said as she walked in the door.

"You needn't be so surprised that I came early. I have some things to say or did you think you could just discard me like an old pair of shoes. I'm your wife!"

"I set it all out in the note I left for you," he replied.

"Sorry, I can't live this way any longer," she said quoting the opening line of the three-page explanation he had put on the kitchen table along with his wedding ring.

"I said a lot more than that."

"But it's what you didn't mention that counts."

"Sorry, I'm not following you."

She didn't answer immediately but walked to the suite's minibar and got herself a water. Then she sat down in one of the suite's upholstered chairs and crossing her legs; she gave him a firm stare.

"You didn't mention that we are both Catholic and were married in the church. You didn't say you no longer loved me. You didn't say you love the woman you are leaving me for. You didn't say what has changed to cause you to leave me now, and finally, you didn't say you were going to divorce me."

"There are no children of this marriage, and you have the money to buy yourself an annulment. So, I figure the Catholic part is no problem for you. As to the rest, put it down to my no longer wishing to be a cuckold. I mean to change my life and move on."

"Very good my sentiments exactly. I intend to be the faithful wife from here on in," she said, which only made him smile.

"Don't you dare laugh at me," she said as her temper rose, but she forced it back down, "As to an annulment, I don't want one and money cut's two ways. I can pay to keep one from happening."

"Very confident, are we?"

"No, just being practical which I think you are not. "

"What! You think I still need your money? I have what they call a reputation. I can go anywhere, and I'm leaving not just you but that pack of legal leeches who call themselves my partners."

"Really, cutting us all off? You're going to ride into the sunset with your little girlfriend, but did you tell her your deep dark secret. You know that's what hurt me the most, the fact you hid your pain from me. A woman, even a promiscuous cow like me, wants to believe her man will turn to her with his problems.

"What kind of wife doesn't know whether her husband was sexually abused as a child? You don't need to answer because the answer is obvious. It's a woman who is no true wife at all, but I have an excuse. I didn't have a true husband. He lied and misled me."

"I see it's all my fault," Steven smirked.

"No, I never said it was your fault. However, I believe I'm entitled to a fair chance at this marriage. If I screw it up, I won't fight you on a divorce, but please give me my chance."

"Susan, please try to understand. I'm working through a lot of issues. I don't need yours on top of mine."

"That's the point. I need to help you get through this trouble. I just want my chance to be your wife." As she said this, she began moving toward him. The tears were cascading down her cheeks to fall from the beautiful chin that so many men had adored.

Steven was a bit shocked for he realized he had never seen Susan cry before. He wanted to comfort her. He knew that he still loved her in spite of her faults, and that he would always love her. It was simply impossible for him to go on living in a marriage with her.

"Susan be reasonable, you know this marriage has failed. Let's try to exit this as friends," he said as softly as he could.

"But I can't give you up. You're the only man who ever loved me for who I am. Not because I was beautiful, you loved me for me."

"I'm sorry. I've tried, but I can't go on this way."

"But I'll change. You'll see things will change," she said between sobs.

"Please understand, I'm trying to do what's best for both of us," he said as he put his arms around her. She was shaking, and the tears were flowing.

"Then do this for me make love to me one last time, and I won't ask anything more of you."

"I don't think that would be wise," he said, but as he did, she turned her head and gave him a passionate kiss. Her body molded to his as it always did. He had often wondered if other men experienced the same passion from his wife. Did she meld into others as she did to him? Was this something special or just the average occurrence? Then she pushed him back and stripped the robe he wore, and all thought left him.

She wanted to be on the bottom facing him, and he obliged her. It was slow, but there was no foreplay. She wanted straight intercourse, and she took him to orgasm not once but three times. When it was over, he knew that no other woman would ever arouse him as she did or make the act of love feel so complete.

She sent him to the shower first, and when he came out, she was dressed and ready to leave. "I'm sorry for all the mistakes I have made," she said, and when he tried to speak, she placed three fingers over his lips and said," remember no matter what happens in the future. I will never regret what we just did."

With these last words, she exited the hotel suite, and he was left alone with the pain of the love he knew was lost to them. When the last call came, it was late near midnight, but he was ready or as ready as a man can ever be to face death.

*****

Ed Brandt had followed Polly and Patterson to a house in Loudonville. It was a side hall colonial, not a big house but more than one man needed. Polly had been playing her part well. She had gotten close to Patterson. She said that he had been acting even more erratic in the last few weeks, and rather worried. However, tonight Ed judged the man to be in a good mood.

Frank took Polly out to dinner and happily knocked back the drinks to the point that he let Polly drive them home. Ed watched the two enter the house, and he sat back in the driver's seat of his dark-brown Chevy Lumina to wait for the girl to come out. The arrangement was that she would exit a little before midnight and take a cab to the diner at the Latham Circle where Ed would meet her for coffee.

Brandt pulled his car around to a side road where he was relatively out of sight but had a view of the front and back door of Patterson's house. As he settled in to wait there came a knock on his window that scared the bejesus out of him. It was Jimmy O'Reilly.

"What you doing here?" Ed demanded.

"Figured you might need some help. I got a feeling something is going down."

"FEELING?"

"Mr. Anthony Greco is racing toward NYC like a bat out of hell. My sister and two of her investigators are right on his tail. So, what is our friend Patterson up to?"

"Nothing much, he seems to be celebrating something. Polly's in there with him. If he holds true to course, he will be through with her around midnight. She calls a cab and meets me at a diner."