With reporters shouting questions, the crowd passed down the marble hallway. De Sallo remained silent but waved his hand like a Rose Parade queen. On the ceiling intricate flowers were patterned on squares of green and red and were bordered with painted gray mazes, and to Gray seemed suffocating. He and Anna Renthal shuffled along at the end of the throng.
"We'll wait two years, then indict him again," Anna said with false cheer. "We'll get him next time, Owen."
"Yeah, you bet we will." His voice was doubtful.
They passed the metal detector. The guard, from a private security company, thrust a notepad and pen at De Sallo, who paused to sign it.
The guard beamed. "My kids'll be thrilled."
A bottleneck developed at the revolving door. Gray and Anna Renthal were the last to push through. Outside they passed between two of the fourteen columns fronting the building. Topping the columns were Corinthian capitals, each with rows of acanthus leaves appearing to have wilted in the summer heat. Above the columns, carved on the entablature in block letters, was "United States Court House."
Gray saw a bank of microphones set up near the sidewalk. The reporters had known they would get an interview irrespective of the verdict, because had the jury convicted De Sallo, bail pending appeal would have been immediately posted.
Anna shaded her eyes against the glaucous midday light. "A world record, I swear. Must be forty mikes."
A mob of reporters was gathered around the microphones. A dozen videotape cameras on tripods surrounded the mikes. Furiously working their cameras, photographers flanked De Sallo as he descended the steps.
"This way, Chinaman," some shouted. "Just a few more."
"He's usually camera shy," Anna said, descending the stairs next to Gray. She carried her briefcase in one hand and three volumes of the US Code under her other arm.
Gray replied, "This is his chance to make you and me and especially Frank look like dunces. He won't pass it up."
Behind them, the thirty-two stories of the United States Court House rose to the gold-leafed pyramid roof. The building had been designed to blend with the neoclassic structures on both sides. Foley Square was a collection of traffic islands, each with ragged hedges and a few uneven trees. Across the square was the United States Court for International Trade. The cabbies had stopped their vehicles to gawk at the commotion.
De Sallo stepped down to the microphones. Many reporters pushed their hand-held recorders toward him. Questions were shouted until he held up both hands.
"I just got a couple of things to let you guys in on," he said in his street accent.
When Gray and Anna started away, a reporter from the swarm yelled, "You're next, Owen. Stick around, will you?"
Gray knew better than to duck the press. Part of his job at times like this was damage control. He gripped his briefcase handle with both hands and waited his turn.
The Chinaman's soldiers gathered around their boss. A short distance from the microphones Pete Coates also waited. He would give the NYPD's version of the verdict.
Wind tugged at strands of De Sallo's wig. He patted them down with a hand. He began, "Let me first say that America is a great country."
A flock of pigeons lifted from Foley Square, passing over the Chambers Street subway station, then toward Federal Plaza. To the south was the Municipal Building.
De Sallo held forth magnificently, "I would like to thank my beloved father, whose memory I carry with me like a wallet. And my mother, still alive but on the brink, who gave me the courage to be—"
At that instant the Chinaman's head ruptured. Brains and bone blew out the back of his head in a spray of crimson and gray gore. Slivers of De Sallo's skull and brain and shreds of his toupee rained on his soldiers.
The body, its face now a mask with nothing behind it, fell heavily to the steps. It rolled against the microphone stand, the flap of face dragging after it, streaking the steps in red.
Screams and oaths filled the square. A dozen handguns and one Uzi abruptly appeared in the hands of the agents and detectives. Pots Asperanti pulled out a .38 snubnose, having somehow snuck it in and out of the courthouse. Pots waved his pistol at imaginary targets, then quickly slid it back into his coat, nervously scanning the FBI agents.
Spectators ran for cover, some up the steps into the courthouse, others toward the subway station. Several taxis drove onto the sidewalk trying to flee the scene. One yellow bounced into a USA Today dispenser, crumpling the box.
The agents scanned the crowd, then the rooftops and windows, looking for the killer. They had heard nothing, no shot. And now they saw nothing.
Asperanti rolled De Sallo's body over. A hole the size of a dime had been punched between his eyes. Detritus from De Sallo's head oozed down the steps.
Asperanti said softly, "Son of bitch, Boatman, we better—" He turned to find Garbanto.
Garbanto had also collapsed to the steps, where he sat with his hand over his suit's wide lapel. Blood oozed between his fingers. The bullet that had ended De Sallo's life had also clipped Garbanto's shoulder. He blinked rapidly but made no sound. He was splattered with his boss's blood and brains.
"Goddamn, Boatman, I've seen you look better." Asperanti tried to lift Garbanto to his feet, but the wounded man swayed, then sank back to the steps. Asperanti sat next to him to wait for help.
Anna Renthal dropped to the steps, books falling from her arm. Her mouth fished open. Her breath whistled. "This time I mean it. I'm going to be sick."
Holding his revolver near his ear, Pete Coates said with ill-disguised glee, "I'll take that over a guilty verdict any day."
Owen Gray bent to help Anna, but his gaze remained on the growing congregation around the body. He said quietly, "I'm going to bring up Pots on a weapons charge. He's got no license for that pistol."
Her eyes wide, Anna looked up at him. "Owen, a man just died. Murdered. And you're worried about a weapons charge on a two-bit hood?"
Gray's face was as cold as a carving. His eyes were shadowed and remote. His impassiveness, his refusal to register the slightest emotion, had abruptly given Gray an aura of uncontrolled violence.
He said, "Pots blew me a kiss once too often."
She touched his sleeve. "Owen, goddamnit. We've just witnessed a killing."
She yanked her hand back from a particle of De Sallo's head that had landed on Gray's jacket.
Anna swallowed repeatedly, fighting sickness. Then her voice rose. "I'm shaking from head to toe. Doesn't this get to you?"
Gray looked down at his sleeve, then casually brushed the scrap away. "Pots has a sheet, so he's looking at two years."
"Owen, listen to me," she cried out. "You… you're frightening me."
"Anna, I'm not going to get misty-eyed over some mafioso getting shot, probably by some other hoodlum." He gathered her books and helped her to her feet. "Come on. We deserve a couple of beers."
The wail of bubbletops and an ambulance trying to enter Foley Square resonated between the buildings. Down the block cabdrivers honked angrily at the delay.
"Owen…"
Gray moved down the steps toward Pearl Street, leaving the baffled assembly behind. Anna unsteadily hurried after him.
CHAPTER TWO
The hand-printed sign on Owen Gray's apartment door read "U.N. Security Council" and was stuck there by two Sesame Street Band-Aids, one of Big Bird and the other of the Count. Gray could hear the sparkling notes of a piano through the door.
He had spent that entire day at his desk replaying the Chinaman's trial in his mind, re-introducing the evidence and re-questioning the witnesses, trying to alter yesterday's acquittal. He had been unable to leave his frustration at the office and had worn it home on the subway like a yoke, but at the piano's bright sounds it suddenly lifted.