Page 254 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
“Uh, yeah, well, I was subpoenaed so I had to come and do what’s right.”
“Was it right to kill Giuseppe di Carlo?”
“Well, no, but maybe we didn’t kill him,” he denied, looking like a deer in the headlights.
Merda.
“Oh? You shot at him, but you don’t think you killed him?” Dennis pressed.
“Well, I’m pretty sure he was already on the floor when we pulled up, but it happened quick. I can’t be sure.”
Dennis turned to face our table, his smile a slight, evil curl of lips.
I was going to kill thebastardo.
“It’s funny you should say that because forensic evidence suggests that Giuseppe di Carlo was hit withtwodifferent types of bullets. Those from a Colt 6920 and also those from a Gen 4 Glock 19. Were you carrying such a gun that day, Mr. Andretti?”
“No,” Carter said, effectively ruining the strength of his testimony for our defense. “No, we weren’t.”
When Dennis moved back to his seat after his cross-examination period ended thirty minutes later, he did it with the expression of a cat who ate the canary.
I couldn’t wait to make thestronzochoke on it.
On the fourth day of the trial, a bomb dropped.
I wasn’t surprised, but I was probably the only one because I’d been the one to make the bomb itself.
I’d decided it was time because despite our first two witnesses lending credible doubt to the assumption that Dante hadn’t killed Giuseppe di Carlo, Dennis had done a fine fucking job of discrediting them.
He was a dog with his first bone, and his desperateness lent him a feral edge I’d never seen in him before.
But that was okay because I was desperate too.
Dennis was just fighting for his career.
I was fighting for my capo and our life together.
There was no other option but to win.
Hence the bomb.
Dennis was still cross-examining Carter Andretti when Ricardo entered the courtroom, striding down the crowded aisle with purpose. He held a leather portfolio and an iPad under one arm. All the eyes in the courtroom tracked him, Carter Andretti and Dennis forgotten entirely.
Ric leaned over the partition between the spectators and our defense table so I could meet him halfway.
He whispered in my ear. “This is already working out beautifully.”
We had orchestrated the entire thing.
The legal process was complex, a quick, quick, slow dance of tempo from arrest and arraignment to the slow grind on the way to trial. But the trial itself was always a flurry of steps, the tempo fast enough to keep you on your toes, anxiously anticipating your partner’s next move so you could match it.
Until then, this RICO case had been entirely led by Dennis O’Malley.
But I was taking the lead now, and I was going to dictate the moves.
“I have everything cued up on the iPad,” Ric continued. “Good luck.”
I took the portfolio and iPad from him. There was an old wisdom in law that you should put the opponent on trial when you had a weak defense, and I intended to do exactly that.
