There was a long list of witnesses who had claimed that the dead cops were involved in criminal activities and two witnesses who at first claimed that the cops opened fire on Man (they gave nearly identical testimony), only to recant within three days of each other.
Even though Braun hadn’t mentioned it in his arguments, I couldn’t see why the former Leonard Compton would decide to take on the cops in a one-on-two shoot-out. He was a marksman and they trained professionals. Why not set himself up on some roof and take them out when they were on a job?
And why drop a case just because the client might have been guilty? It was the lawyer’s job to work with the law, not worry about right and wrong.
I must have read four hundred pages when I noticed that it was closing in on 5:00 a.m. I should have gone to bed, but all that evidence gave me a thought: If Adamo Cortez wasn’t actually the name of an NYPD cop, then maybe it was an official alias or a confidential informant.
It was at that moment I knew I was going to take both cases: my frame and A Free Man’s murder conviction.
I was born to be an investigator. For me it was like putting together a three-dimensional, naturalistic puzzle that in the end would be an exact representation of the real world.
From the deep bottom drawer of my ancient desk I took out two reams of paper, both pastel colored—one blue and the other pink. That way my outline of the two investigations could be stacked together while following two different strands. I had, in my failed career, used as many as five colors to keep my place.
I’d been paid two hundred fifty dollars to work an eight-hour day seeing if the two investigations made sense. I had a clear pathway because nobody knew what I was up to.
For the first step I took a white sheet from the top drawer and penned across the top COMMON ELEMENTS.
The first question shared by both cases was whether or not I needed a partner in the process.
I considered Gladstone Palmer. He was my friend; there was no doubt about that. He went into Rikers and made sure that I was safe in solitary. When I was working a seventy-hour week at two security jobs he lent me the money to start the detective service, then sent me my first few clients. And Glad knew how the department worked. He was connected to every precinct, every captain, and most foot soldiers of the NYPD. His input would be invaluable and…if he was able to clear my name, he might also clear a pathway to his own advancement.
But Glad’s strengths were also deficits. He did know all the important players on, and off, the force and so might be beholden to people I’d have to hurt. Add to that the fact that I was trying to clear a cop killer of the crimes he was accused of while admitting that he pulled the trigger…that would be of no help to my friend.
Patrolman First Class Henri Tourneau was another choice. The young Haitian-born cop’s father asked me to help him prepare for getting on the force. I guided Henri through every step, including training himself in computers so that he’d have a skill that most prospective cops lacked. Once he was in I counseled him on how to deal with everything from his captain to the rank and file. I told him what rules could be bent or broken and those that were sacrosanct.
One thing he was never to do was admit that I was anything other than a friend of his father’s.
Henri allowed me to roam through the general databases, but using him as a partner in these investigations was above and beyond for the young and recently married policeman.
No other cop fit the bill, and so I let my thoughts range wider. There were half a dozen PIs I knew from work I’d done over the years. But I wasn’t close enough to any of them to feel they could be trusted with issues so serious.
The sun was beginning to peek over the bank building across the street when I thought, reluctantly, of Melquarth Frost. Melquarth, or Mel as he was better known, was a vicious criminal.
Mel had done many things wrong in his life. He’d robbed banks, murdered rivals, tortured marks, set bombs, and belonged to a few dangerous heist crews that had executed some of the most daring robberies of the twenty-first century so far.
I came across the lifelong criminal when the FBI tasked a few city cops to shore up some gaps in a net they set for the Byron gang. Ted and Francis Byron were truly architects of crime. They had planned and carried out at least eight bank burglaries where they were able to blast out an inner wall through to cash-gorged vaults.
On these jobs they always took along a man like Mel in case there was a need to fight.
The job was done at a little after three on a Wednesday morning at a midtown bank on West Fifty-Sixth. I was guarding a subway grate on Sixty-Third that the feds said might be used as an exit. It was just me because they didn’t think it likely that anyone would get that far and the brass was charging them twenty-five hundred dollars a head for boots on the ground.
I listened to the takedown over a secure line that all the participants had. The explosion had come at 3:09. Soon after that, six of the seven bank robbers were captured without a round being fired.
There was a lot of chatter over the seventh perp. I stayed at my post because that was the job and I always did my job—unless there was a woman somewhere in the way.
Thirty-two minutes after the takedown the grate to the subway lifted slightly. I watched from shadow, timing my intervention.
I could have called for backup, but by then the suspect would have escaped. I could have shot him in the leg or foot, or killed him for that matter, but that’s just not the kind of man I am. So instead I waited until one hand shot up out of the ground, snapped a cuff on it, and quickly attached the other link to the heavy metal grating. Then I put the muzzle of my service revolver to the man’s head and said, “Let me see that other paw and it better be empty.”
I received the Medal of Exceptional Merit for the arrest, bestowed upon me by the chief himself. The FBI had me go to their headquarters, where the local director shook my hand.
All that honor went away when Melquarth was put on trial. The other six bank robbers were tried together, but because Mel was captured alone and quite far from the scene, his lawyer, Eugenia Potok, was able to separate him from the rest.
Before I testified, the prosecutor “interviewed” me, suggesting that maybe I heard the accused admit to being involved with the crime. The other men refused to bear witness against one another and so had Mel.
I could not, in good conscience, say anything but what I knew on the stand. I had determined early on in my career that as a cop I would always adhere to the letter and the spirit of the law. Law for me was scripture.
Melquarth beat the charges, and I was transferred to night duty on Staten Island for the next three years.
Time passed. I was framed, incarcerated, and thrown out on my ear—so it’s easy to understand how I might have forgotten all about Melquarth. And then, only two years ago, I was sitting in my office, looking out the window, and thinking about solitary confinement.
“Mr. Oliver,” Tara Grandisle, Aja’s predecessor, said over the intercom.
“Yes, Tara.”
“A Mr. Johnson to see you.”
“Who?”
“He says he wants to discuss a case with you.”
As far as I knew, this Mr. Johnson was just another prospective client. I had no idea that he was the man who earned me three years on a Staten Island boat.
“Send him in,” I said, pocketing my snub-nosed .32 just for insurance.
When Melquarth Frost walked through the door I nearly pulled my weapon.
My visitor smiled and held his arms out, revealing open palms.
I hit the intercom and said, “We need some pumpernickel for the pastrami.”
“Okay,” Tara said. That was our code for her to clear out.
“Mr. Oliver,” Mel said.
“Melquarth Frost.”
“You can call me Mel; all my friends do.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“That might be,” he said. “But I’m yours. Can I sit down?”
I thought about the request a beat longer than was civil and then said, “Sure.”
He was wearing a medium gray suit that was loose enough for freedom of movement but tailored in such a way to look businesslike.