Clever Fox

by Judge Jeanine Pirro

Genres: Female Sleuths; Thrillers

Synopsis

Prosecutor Dani Fox finds herself amidst warring crime families in the aftermath of a murdered Mafia capo's daughter. Drawing from her own past as a dynamic, hard-charging district attorney and judge, Emmy award winner Jeanine Pirro's page-turner is ripped from the headlines, full of gripping details, authentic thrills, and suspenseful realism that can only come from a courtroom litigator who's been in the trenches. Prosecutor Dani Fox has handled some gruesome homicide cases, but her investigation into the brutal murder of a local Mafia capo's daughter goes from tricky to downright dangerous. Although the victim has ties to the New Jersey Mafia, she was also secretly engaged in an affair with someone from a rival New York crime family. As if squaring off against two powerful crime families weren't enough, Dani suspects that the murder is more than a simple crime of passion, and getting to the bottom of this grisly homicide puts Dani and her long-term boyfriend, Will, in harm's way. Clever Fox has you rooting for Dani in this deadly fight between the ace prosecutor and an elusive and dangerous killer.

Release date: July 2, 2013

Publisher: Hachette Books

Print pages: 301

Sample

Twelve minutes before midnight, December 31, 1979

“Get ready!” Will Harris exclaimed as he wrapped his left arm around my waist while hoisting a plastic cup of champagne to his lips with his other hand. “I can’t think of anyone who I’d rather be spending New Year’s Eve with.”

He leaned down and gently kissed my cheek.

“I feel exactly the same way,” I replied.

But his comment made me curious. It sounded as if he had done a mental inventory of all the women in his life before he’d decided that I was his best choice for the evening. Or maybe that was just the prosecutor in me coming out, reading too much into what was clearly supposed to be a compliment. Maybe it was because I had been hurt and lost at love before. My former boyfriend, Bob, had taken away my faith in men. Could I ever believe a guy again? How would I know if it was real?

Both of us looked upward at the glittering ball on the rooftop of One Times Square. It was a clear night, the stars visible in a dark blue sky.

Will had wanted to spend New Year’s Eve at my house in suburban White Plains, New York, lounging in front of a cozy fire counting down the final seconds of 1979 along with Dick Clark.

But I’d insisted on escaping into Manhattan to watch the ball drop in Times Square.

My name is Dani Fox and I’m an assistant district attorney in Westchester County, a wealthy suburban enclave. I’m our county’s only female prosecutor. Just 110 male assistant district attorneys and me. My specialties are crimes against women and children. Two years ago, I created one of the nation’s first Domestic Violence Units and I often spend my days prosecuting husbands who believe their marriage vows give them the right to beat their wives senseless.

These last few months have been especially difficult. My boyfriend, Will, is a reporter at the White Plains Daily and he chronicled several of the incidents that have turned my life topsy-turvy. My troubles began after I filed charges against Carlos Gonzales, a popular Hispanic businessman who’d beaten and raped his teenage daughter. It was a high-profile case and as soon as I got a jury to convict him, our esteemed Federal Bureau of Investigation rushed in to save him because they wanted Gonzales’s help in a Manhattan drug case and that was considered more important than punishing a father for beating and raping his own daughter. The Justice Department offered Gonzales a free pass. In return for his testimony, he was told that he’d get a new identity and a fresh start in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Oh yeah, the Feds were also going to relocate his younger kids with him. I was horrified, did some digging, and discovered that this dirtbag had also murdered his wife. Her death had been considered a suicide. I got a jury to convict him again, which stopped the FBI from turning him loose. As you can imagine, that case hadn’t made me any friends in the FBI.

On the same night that Gonzales was convicted, I was attacked in my own house by a deranged husband intent on carving the word bitch into my chest. Fortunately for me, Detective Tommy O’Brien, a big Irish cop who works with me at our unit, arrived just in time to stop the attack by firing a gut-ripping round of buckshot into my knife-wielding assailant.

Like I said, 1979 was a tough year.

There were some good things, though. My pet pig, Wilbur, had survived a nasty encounter with pneumonia and nearly died. And I’d started dating Will, although I doubt Will would appreciate being lumped together with my pig’s nearly fatal cold when it came to recalling the year’s highlights.

Being with him—Will, not Wilbur—in Times Square tonight was exactly what I needed to take my mind off the pain and suffering that I witnessed every day in my office. It is heartbreaking to see the violence that men commit against the very women whom they’d promised to love and cherish as long as they both shall live.

“Five minutes!” Will said, sounding like an excited schoolboy.

I glanced at him. No one would mistake him for a fashion model, but Will was nice looking, tall, and fit. He had a strong jaw, a mop of sandy brown hair that always seemed to need a trim, and wore wire-rim glasses that he was constantly pushing up on his nose. It was his personality that first attracted me to him. Will was curious and smart, a workaholic—just like me—and passionate about his job. If you asked Will who he worked for, he wouldn’t answer with the name of the company that owned the White Plains Daily. A corporate official might have signed his paycheck, but Will said that he worked for the public.

The mob in Times Square crowded together more tightly. A tipsy, tall brunette bumped against me, spilling her champagne on my new black leather coat. I didn’t complain. ’Tis the season. “Nineteen eighty is going to be our year,” Will declared.

Our year? What, exactly, had he meant? There were still parts of Will that remained a mystery; parts that I felt he was keeping hidden from me. Maybe he is just more private than I am. I say what’s on my mind and rarely hold anything back when I’m in a relationship. Maybe Will is just more cautious about protecting himself from being hurt.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven,” everyone began chanting in unison.

Will and I joined in.

“Six, five, four.”

I felt wonderful. It wasn’t the cheap champagne that Will had brought with us. It was a feeling of anticipation, renewal, and saying goodbye to one hell of an awful year!

“Three, two, one!”

A roar of “Happy New Year!” enveloped us as Will pulled me close and we kissed. I stood on my toes with my hands around his neck.

We held each other tightly for a minute and were about to kiss again when I felt the pager in my coat pocket shaking. The pager in his jacket began vibrating, too. We reached for them simultaneously. The only pages I get are emergencies so I knew it was not some New Year’s Eve greeting from a friend. When the police call, they use a number code on my pager to tip me off. Will’s newspaper does the same. We glanced at our codes and both said, “Shit!”

Without uttering another word, Will guided me through the sea of loud partygoers who were completely oblivious to the fact that someone had just been murdered. From a pay phone in a jammed bar on Forty-Third Street, I called the Yonkers police dispatcher who’d paged me.

“The vic’s a woman,” he said matter-of-factly. “Murdered and more.”

“And more?”

“Some asshole cut pieces of her skin off.”

“Butchered?”

“Tortured.”

I handed Will the phone after I finished my call. He dialed the newspaper’s city desk. After he finished, he said, “Sorry, Dani, this isn’t how I expected the first night of our new year together to end.”

“Me, either,” I replied, grabbing the lapel of his coat, pulling him close, and kissing him. But my mind was already miles away. Someone around us broke into a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.”

“How you getting there?” Will yelled above the singing.

“The usual. Squad car. Lights and sirens.”

Will knew better than to ask for a ride. Arriving together would have crossed a line. “I got to go,” he said. “It’s going to take me much longer to get to Yonkers than you.”

As he started to leave, I said, “See you at the homicide.”

The Dunwoodie neighborhood in Yonkers is known as Little Italy for obvious reasons. It’s a long-established Italian immigrant enclave.

Over the years, Yonkers has not kept up with the wealthy Westchester villages that edge it. The neighborhood is more middle-class New Jersey than upper-class New York.

A black-and-white drove me to a brick building in the 800 block on Midland Avenue, where a half dozen uniformed Yonkers officers were loitering near the front entrance. The cops directed me to Apartment 306, where another uniformed officer was guarding the door. He studied my credentials for several moments before stepping aside. Cops still aren’t used to seeing a woman prosecutor, especially at a homicide, and especially a prosecutor who still had tiny shreds of ticker tape on her coat from an interrupted Times Square celebration.

As soon as I entered, I spotted Detective O’Brien speaking to one of our county’s medical examiners in the apartment’s tiny living room, which didn’t contain a single piece of furniture. How odd.

O’Brien was a real-life cliché of an Irish detective in his midfifties, with graying red hair, a beer belly dangling over his belt, and an ever-present toothpick tucked into the corner of his mouth. We hadn’t hit it off when we’d first met, mainly because he belongs to a generation of dinosaur cops who think women do not belong on a police force or in the D.A.’s office. I consider him a work in progress.

“A new year—a new stiff,” O’Brien said. “I’ve kept ’em out. That way you’ll see what the killer saw. Take a deep breath before you go in.” He nodded toward the apartment’s only bedroom.

“Dispatch said she’d been cut up,” I replied.

“Cut up? Skinned and filleted, I’d say.”

I stepped inside. The victim was dangling from an electrical cord as if she were a side of beef hanging in a meat locker. I put her at about twenty-seven, my age, but I couldn’t be sure because of her condition. At first glance, it looked as if she were wearing a bright red jumpsuit, because of all the blood. Her attacker had slashed her face and cut pieces of skin from her breasts, abdomen, thighs, and buttocks. He’d made surgical cuts, removing swatches about the size of a standard envelope.

I tried to keep focused and ignore the gore. Because she was limp, it was hard to guess her height, but I estimated she was about five foot, four inches, and weighed about 120 pounds. She was busty and although the killer had removed skin from her breasts, they were perfectly formed. Too perfectly formed. She’d definitely had breast augmentation surgery.

I stepped closer for a better look, fighting the urge to gag. The victim had shoulder-length raven hair and, judging from the clothing that had been cut from her body and dropped on the floor, she had been wearing a pricey designer label, along with a sexy black bra and panties. There wasn’t a bedspread on the double bed. It’s cream-colored satin sheets were sprinkled with blood like a Jackson Pollock painting.

The large gold band and huge diamond on her finger showed she was married. Her left pinkie finger had been amputated by her attacker. He’d probably dropped it on the shag carpet just as he had done with the pieces of flesh that he had cut from her body.

“Judging from the spatters,” O’Brien said, coming up behind me, “she was alive when he did this to her.”

Blood on the bed, walls, and carpet showed clearly that she’d twisted and possibly even tried to kick her attacker, in the process raining blood all around her. The pain must have been unimaginable. By the time death had finally come, it would have been a relief.

“She got a name?” I asked.

“No purse. No ID. The building’s manager and superintendent is waiting downstairs for us. As you probably guessed by now, no one actually lived here.”

I glanced at the open bedroom closet. Empty wire coat hangers were all that was inside it. The double bed was the only piece of furniture in the entire apartment.

“A love nest?” I asked.

“Love?” O’Brien scoffed.

“What would you call this?”

“A nookie nest,” O’Brien beamed, clearly proud of the alliteration.

“Nookies?”

“I’m trying not to say ‘fuck’ so often. You know, a New Year resolution. I’ve been told the word offends women.”

I thought for a moment about O’Brien’s uptight girlfriend. I could imagine her lecturing him about his salty language. “I’m glad you’re getting more sensitive,” I replied. “Now, who the fuck found her?”

“Nice,” he said, smiling.

“The super found her. The victim showed up here twice a week in the afternoons, regular as clockwork. Stayed a few hours. He came in here just before midnight and found her.”

“Why’d he come in?”

“Looking for leaking water. Upstairs unit flooded. He was worried water was leaking down.”

“Did he know her name?”

“She went by Vicky. That’s it.”

“How about her boyfriend?”

O’Brien shrugged. “Super never saw the man’s face until today.”

“C’mon, O’Brien, how could she rent this place—or he rent it—without telling the superintendent a name?”

“This apartment,” he replied, “is rented by a Yonkers law firm.”

I shot him a surprised look. “Anyone we know?”

O’Brien smiled. “Gallo & Conti. Ring a bell, counselor?”

The law firm of Gallo & Conti was infamous for having only one client, Nicholas Persico, better known as “the Butcher.” He was a capo in the Battaglia crime family, one of the five New York Mafia families. Persico ran “Little Italy” with an iron fist from a family-owned butcher shop in the heart of Yonkers. Wielding a cleaver was also how he reportedly liked to end the lives of his victims, although no one in law enforcement had ever been able to tie any murders directly to him.

“Seems a bit obvious, doesn’t it?” I replied.

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. They aren’t all mysteries.”

“But they are tragedies,” I replied, “especially when someone dies like this. Strung up and tortured. We’re dealing with a real sicko here.”

O’Brien pointed toward a radio alarm clock on the floor next to the bed. “I’m guessing he started cutting on her around three-thirty.”

I glanced at the time on the radio.

The killer had used its cord to bind his victim’s hands. The dial was stopped at 3:35. “Nice observation,” I said.

“I have my moments. Let’s go talk to the super.”

“Give me a second.”

I looked at the dead woman. It was so sad. A life snuffed out. Why? And why so cruelly? I wanted to make sure I remembered every cut, every piece of missing flesh, every torture that her killer had inflicted. I wanted to be able to describe this scene to jurors so vividly that they would understand how much this woman had suffered before she’d finally welcomed death.

“I just made a New Year’s resolution,” I announced, when I walked out of the bedroom and joined O’Brien. “I’m going to make sure this fucking bastard doesn’t get away with this.”

Roman Mancini met us at the door of his first-floor apartment wearing a sweat-stained wife-beater T-shirt, baggy brown pants, and well-worn slippers.

“Me and my wife, Maggie,” Mancini said, “have been managing this building for fifteen years and never had no trouble like this.” His apartment reeked of cigarettes, old coffee grounds, and booze. He nodded toward two threadbare chairs in a musty living room and plopped himself down on a lime-green couch across from them. Two long-haired cats were curled up on the sofa.

“My wife’s not feeling well,” Mancini explained. “She’s got respiratory problems. Asthma. She went to bed early tonight, around ten, so she don’t even know nothing happened. If it’s okay, I’d rather not get her up.”

“Let’s start with you,” I said, sitting in the blue chair. The yellow one had a third cat sleeping on it. O’Brien made eye contact with the feline as he walked over. He scooped up the cat and placed it on the floor before the pet could react. Mancini was short, stocky, and hairy everywhere but on his bald head. The stench of alcohol in the room implied a drinking habit.

“What can you tell us about the woman upstairs?” I asked.

“Not much. I mean, whenever I saw her, she always just said ‘hello’ but nothing more. I knew what they was doing up there, though.”

“Doing up there?” I repeated, playing dumb.

“Her and that man—meeting there for sex twice a week.”

“When did these trysts start?”

“Trysts?”

“Meetings.”

“Oh, sex. Three months ago. This young fellow comes around and looks at the apartment. Now, I run a respectable place. Most tenants are older. We don’t attract a young crowd in this building. The kids want someplace modern.”

Based on the Mancinis’ unit, I guessed the place hadn’t been remodeled since the 1940s.

Continuing, Mancini said, “I asked this young fellow why he wanted to move into our building. That’s when he tells me, it ain’t for him. He works at this law firm and he’s renting it for a boss. He says the boss works late and needs a place to stay. The check he gave me didn’t bounce, so I figure, what the hell?”

“I’d like a copy of the rental agreement,” I said.

“I already pulled it out of the file. Now, my wife, she’s the one who keeps track of the paperwork. I fix things up around here and keep the place running, you know, unclogging toilets, putting in lightbulbs, that sort of thing. In this job, I get to know all our tenants and which ones are okay and which ones are never happy.”

Mancini fetched a manila file folder from a nearby desk. Inside was a standard rental agreement filled out on October 1, 1979, and signed by Alberto Bianchi. Under the renter’s address, Bianchi had written: Gallo & Conti, LLP, Attorneys at Law, 50 S. Broadway, Yonkers, New York, 10701.

“Did Alberto Bianchi ever show up here again?” I asked.

“That kid? Naw. A couple days after he rents the place, a moving company brings in a double bed and mattress, but I don’t see them hauling in any other furniture. Then this woman—the one upstairs who’s dead now—she shows up carrying towels and sheets and pillows. When I see her, I figure she’s either a secretary at the law firm or the boss’s wife fixing it up for him, you know?”

“You didn’t think she was the law partner?”

“C’mon,” he said, breaking into a grin. “A woman attorney in charge?”

He suddenly realized that he was speaking to a woman attorney in charge and said, “I mean, no offense, but, I just figured she was a secretary. Anyway, I did notice she had a wedding ring on and she dressed way too nice for a maid service or any other service—if you get my drift.”

“I don’t,” I said. “You assumed she wasn’t an attorney because she was a woman so you immediately decided she either was a secretary, the boss’s wife, or what? A hooker?”

Mancini twisted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes, I thought she might be a hooker, but then, I got to thinking that hookers don’t bring their own satin sheets.” He grinned, revealing a crooked row of cigarette-stained teeth.

“Did you learn this woman’s name?”

“She told me it was Vicky but I didn’t buy it because one day when she was walking up the stairs, I called, ‘Hey Vicky,’ and she didn’t turn around or nothing. Then she must’ve realized it because she looked down at me and said, ‘Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.’ ”

“Tell me about her boyfriend.”

“The front entrance to our building is right next to our apartment so I keep a pretty good eye on who comes and goes around here. The neighborhood has gone to hell recently so the tenants appreciate the fact that I just don’t let people wander around our halls.”

“I get it. You notice strangers,” I said, trying to hurry him up.

“Damn right. Strangers stick out and this guy stuck out.”

“In what way?”

“Vicky comes in every Tuesday and Friday afternoon at exactly two o’clock. Fifteen minutes later, a limo arrives and a man gets out and goes up to the apartment. We don’t get many limos coming here.”

“A limo?”

“The same one every week. Anyway, around four o’clock, this man comes out of the apartment and gets in the car and leaves. Then Vicky would come down a few minutes later. You could set your watch by them two. Twice a week for two hours.”

“Did he ever tell you his name?”

“No. He never said ‘boo’ to me. Now here’s the odd part. He always showed up here dressed in a long coat wearing a hat and sunglasses and he kept his collar up. It was like he was trying to hide his identity. One day, I made a point of being in the hallway when he comes in and I tried to talk to him. I said, ‘How’s it going, buddy?’ ”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He walks right by me and doesn’t say a goddamn word. Not even ‘hello.’ I told my wife, ‘Hey, they pay the rent each month and they aren’t causing no trouble so why should we care if they’re cheating on their spouses. It ain’t none of our business.’ ”

O’Brien joined our conversation. “Tell her about the car.”

“My wife and me thought it didn’t make sense. Here’s this guy who wants to keep his face covered and won’t tell us his name, but he arrives every Tuesday and Friday in the same damn limo with the same damn driver and the driver always parks directly in front of our building by the entrance. I went out one day and tried to speak to him, you know, engage him in a bit of polite conversation. But all he said was he was from the law firm.”

O’Brien said, “Go on, tell her what else you thought.”

“I thought he was one of those guys—you know.” He raised his index finger up and pressed it against the side of his nose.

O’Brien said, “You mean connected.”

“Yeah,” Mancini said. “A mobster. That’s exactly what he looked like. But it’s bad luck to say it.”

“Did the driver ever tell you who his passenger was?” I asked.

“I didn’t ask.”

“And you never saw the passenger’s face?”

“Not until today.”

“You saw his face this afternoon before the murder?”

“That’s right. Vicky shows up right on schedule at two o’clock and she even wishes me a happy New Year. She’s got a bottle of bubbly and seems like she’s in a great mood. I check my watch and she’s right on time. Two o’clock.”

“It’s good that you know the exact time,” I said encouragingly.

“Yeah, I was working on one of our building’s front porch lights. I had my ladder next to the door and I notice the limo hadn’t arrived when it usually did. It always showed up at two-fifteen but it didn’t show up until two-thirty. Same car, same driver, only this time they’re fifteen minutes late. And this time when the man gets out of the backseat, he’s not wearing his trench coat or his hat and he doesn’t have his coat collar turned up. I was able to get a real good look at his face.”

“Can you describe him to us?” I asked.

“I sure as hell can because I was surprised by what I seen. He was older than me. Must have been in his seventies and he’s got a real ugly scar down the left side of his face and he’s fat. He looked like someone I should have recognized, you know. Like I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t place his face and it probably was just as well.” Again, Mancini raised his finger next to his nose.

I shot O’Brien a knowing glance.

Mancini said, “I looked down from my ladder and said, ‘Happy New Year,’ but he ignored me and went inside.”

“Did you see him later, when he came out of the apartment?”

“No. Maggie and me went down the street to a little place that serves an early-bird special. It was having an all-you-can-eat New Year’s Eve dinner for ten bucks. Drinks were half price. The only limit was you had to clear out by seven to make way for new customers. We both got a bit tipsy and by the time we got back here, the limo was gone.”

“What time was that?”

“We got back around six-thirty.”

“When did you find the victim’s body?”

“Just before midnight. Actually, it was exactly eleven-fifty-five. I know because I’d fallen asleep here on the couch with my cats when I got a phone call. I’d left the television on and there was a clock in the corner of the picture tube counting down the New Year. The time on the television was eleven-fifteen—that’s when I woke up.”

“Why’d someone call you that late?”

“It was old lady Miller. She’s a widower and she’s always calling to bitch about something. She’s in her eighties and has cats, too. She called because her toilet was clogged and overflowing and she needed me to come right away.”

“You got her call at eleven-fifteen?” I repeated. “Seems late for a woman in her eighties to be awake.”

“Not old lady Miller. She stays up all night and sleeps during the day. She’s afraid of someone breaking in on her at nighttime. Besides, it’s New Year’s Eve, remember?”

“You went up to check her toilet?” O’Brien said.

“Yeah, I got up to her apartment and there was a good inch of water on the floor. I’ve shown her before how to use the shut off value under the commode, but them old ladies, they don’t remember and they’re too old to get on their knees and reach under the toilet. Anyway, I shut off the valve, unclogged the toilet, and then mopped up the water. I checked my watch when I left her apartment because I wanted to see if I had missed the ball drop in Times Square. That’s how I know it was exactly ten minutes before midnight when I left that old lady’s apartment.”

“Did you go straight to your apartment?”

“No. Old lady Henry lives in 406, directly above Apartment 306. I decided to check to see if water from Miss Henry’s place had leaked through the floor down into Vicky’s apartment. I was planning on just peeking inside because I knew no one stayed there overnight. If the place was flooded, then I would need to mop it up.”

“You used your master key to get in?” O’Brien said, leading him along.

“That’s right. I opened the door and went directly to the bathroom because I was in a hurry. I didn’t even look in the bedroom, which was dark anyway. The apartment was quiet and, like I said, I didn’t think anyone was in there. I turned on the bathroom light and checked the ceiling and sure enough water was dripping down. I’d left my mop and bucket in the hallway so I turned around to go get them and the bathroom light shone into the bedroom and that’s when I saw her. Vicky. Hanging there all bloody and cut up. I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe I was hallucinating because of the drinks from dinner but it wasn’t any damn dream. I ran down to our apartment and called the police right away because Vicky’s apartment don’t have a phone and besides, I wanted to get the hell out of there.”

“You didn’t wake up your wife and tell her?” I asked.

Mancini shook his head, indicating no. “Truth is, my wife likes to take a little nip now and then. She was pretty loaded when we got home. I’m not sure I could have gotten her up.” He hesitated and then added, “In fact, I could really use a drink now, too, if you don’t mind. My nerves are shot.”

. . .