I nodded. The same question had been on my mind, too. And I thought I had an answer.
“They didn’t know about the first attempt,” I said. “The first group was the Capparellis. The people who killed Kathy Rubinkowski. These guys tonight? Ten to one says they’re with Manning. They don’t look like mobsters. They look like corn-fed white Aryan supremacists.”
“So now you got two different groups wanting to kill you,” Lightner said. “That’s a lot even for you, Kolarich.”
63
Peter Ramini listened respectfully as Father DiGuardi’s homily wore on. The guy could talk. He was good people, and Lord knows, he’d heard a lot from Ramini over the years-not everything, and not in detail, but plenty. But damn if his homilies didn’t go on.
“Our readings today alert us to something great about to begin,” he told the packed Mass. “Night is ending. Dawn is at hand. Stay awake. Put on the armor of light. Let us begin waiting today in joyful hope for the coming of our savior.”
Ramini’s eyes drifted next to him, to Donnie. This was the first time he’d seen Donnie in a church. Ramini, he came most Sundays. He never quite challenged himself about why.
Donnie didn’t look happy. Why would he be? Two of Paulie Capparelli’s best men, Sal and Augie, died in that alley, trying to take out Kolarich.
“We must ask questions during this Advent season,” said Father DiGuardi. “Are we listening? Are we paying attention? Are we looking to what will be-or are we already there?”
The time between the homily and communion felt like the same amount of time Moses spent with his people in the desert. But soon the congregants stood, row by row, and shuffled out to receive the bread and wine.
Neither Ramini nor Donnie moved. They were in the back pew, nobody behind them, and for the moment nobody in front or next to them, either.
Donnie pulled a candy bar out of his jacket pocket, opened it, and took a bite.
“Don, for Christ’s sake. We’re in the house of God here.”
It didn’t seem to move Donnie. He leaned into Ramini. “You wanna wait on Kolarich?” Donnie said. “Paulie says okay. For now, we wait.”
Ramini nodded.
“For now,” Donnie repeated. “You’re sure Kolarich killed Sal and Augie himself?”
“I’m sure,” said Ramini. “Who else woulda done it?” He looked at Donnie. “I saw it with my own eyes, Don.”
It was the only story Ramini could tell the boss. The truth was out of the question. He knew Paulie would greet it with skepticism-Kolarich was just some lawyer, not a trained killer who could take out two attackers-but in the end, he figured Paulie would give Ramini the benefit of the doubt. Ramini had earned that respect. But he was running out of rope, he knew.
“For now, we wait,” Donnie said. “But two things, Petey. Okay?”
“Okay, two things.”
“One: If you think this lawyer’s getting close to us, no more waiting. If you gotta shoot him in fucking court, you do it. Right?”
“Right. And second?”
“Second,” said Donnie. “When this thing’s over, the trial and whatnot, and we’re all happy? Well, Paulie still ain’t so happy, see what I’m sayin’? Sal and Augie were good earners. Nobody kills two of our boys and walks away. Can’t have that. Right?”
Donnie finished up the candy bar and crunched the wrapper in his hand. The parishioners were starting to return to the pews in front of them, so the conversation would end.
Donnie leaned in to Ramini again. “What happens when the trial’s over, Pete?”
Ramini sighed. “Kolarich dies,” he said.
“And who dies if he don’t?”
Ramini nodded. “I do,” he said.
“You and everyone you love, Pete. You know the rules.” Donnie patted Ramini on the knee and walked out of the church.
64
Judge Nash was yelling at Wendy Kotowski and me before we even made it to the lectern to argue the pretrial motions. He thought the volume of our submissions was too great. He was right, but it wasn’t that unusual an amount, thirty-one motions in all. I was hoping that he would direct his wrath more at the prosecution, which technically had filed more than me, but that was wishful thinking.
A few years ago, Judge Nash put a hard limit on the number of pretrial submissions by each side. But the appellate court slapped him down. Criminal cases invoke the Bill of Rights, constitutional protections against the state unfairly throwing people in prison, and when a defendant’s liberty is at stake, arbitrarily limiting the amount of arguments he can make was viewed as a nonstarter.
But that didn’t mean Judge Nash had to like it. His official limitation became an unspoken one, and when lawyers exceeded it, they heard about it.
The judge began to bark out rulings. Without oral argument, only the papers we submitted, he was rattling off rulings on evidentiary objections and testimony limitations. The prosecution couldn’t use their fancy computers during jury selection to look up the criminal histories of potential jurors unless they provided those same resources to the defense. (Score one for me.) The defense couldn’t raise Kathy Rubinkowski’s criminal record-which I had no intention of doing, given that her crime was criminal trespass, a PETA protest of an animal testing lab when she was a freshman in college. The prosecution tried to limit what I could say to the potential jurors during voir dire, because Wendy Kotowski knew me well, but the judge shot her down and said he could decide objections as they came.
It went like that in bullet fashion. Twenty-five of our thirty-one motions were decided in the space of five minutes, as the judge read through his rulings.
I scribbled down his rulings as best I could. My head was foggy. The hotel bed I was sleeping on these days wasn’t to my liking, and I woke up this morning with a stiff neck and a headache, which was nice because it gave my bum left knee some company.
The judge allowed oral argument on some of the big issues. He gave me a full hearing on our motion to exclude Tom Stoller’s so-called confession. My principal argument was that Tom didn’t knowingly waive his right to counsel. In the videotape, the coppers asked him whether he understood his rights, and he nodded vaguely. He never spoke aloud. I argued that the consent should have been verbal or at least unequivocal. Tom Stoller had nervous twitches, as one could clearly see from the videotape and as my expert would testify, and a nod of the head was about as rare for Tom as taking a breath.
The judge glanced over at Tom, sitting in the detainee holding area to his left, during this argument. Tom incessantly licked his lips and wiggled his fingers to no end. His head would move a decent amount, but as he sat here today, more or less unconcerned with what was taking place, his head was relatively still. It was when he was nervous that he bobbed his head more.
We went back and forth for a long time on that. I knew my opponent well, and I could see that Wendy Kotowski was nervous. She thought she was vulnerable on this one. I hadn’t expected to win this argument, but as I listened to the give-and-take between the judge and Wendy, I suddenly gained hope.
But then the judge shattered my illusion in the space of ten seconds. “I will allow the videotape but give the defense full leeway on this one. The defense is free to revisit this issue at a later time.”
“Judge, we had requested an evidentiary hearing,” I reminded him. I wanted the court, before trial, to hear from the police and maybe even Tom on this topic. I’d spent much of yesterday-Sunday-preparing for a hearing.
“We’ll proceed as I indicated,” said the judge.
I hated it when judges deferred rulings. He was going to let the evidence in and then decide afterward, after hearing all of the evidence, whether Tom had consented to questioning. By then, the jury would have heard Tom’s statements. The judge would then have the choice of granting our motion, which would require him either to instruct the jury to disregard the evidence-yeah, sure-or to erase the trial and start over at square one with a new jury. Or he could deny my motion and move the case to verdict and get this case off his docket. It didn’t take Nostradamus to predict which option he would prefer.