Alibi by Sydney Bauer Page A

fence—State or defense—who had the balls to mess with him.
    He ran his hands over his shiny dark hair and his tongue over his straight white teeth—involuntary habits that assured his good grooming in the absence of a mirror. And then he felt a slight furrow form in his smooth olive-skinned brow as he realized how patient he had been. He had been playing brides-maid to his less than competent superior, Suffolk County DA Loretta Scaturro for seven long years, which was definitely long enough. He had won her two elections by providing the balls to her banality, giving her platform the edge it lacked, promising and achieving a new high in criminal convictions and devoting his talents to kicking some serious lowlife butt. He treated every case like it was a battle—refusing the pussy plea bargains and going for broke in sensational and highly publicized trials. He fostered his reputation for intolerance and called for long sentences, most of the time nailing the maximum. And he continued to take the ultimate pleasure in watching defense attorney after defense attorney scurry from his courtroom wondering how in the hell their “surefire acquittal client” ended up with a pat on the back and life without parole.
    Katz felt himself smile. The self-recognition was deserved, and definitely felt good. Of course there had been glitches—such as the horrendous Rayna Martin trial two years ago. But that was only because his moralistic boss had been afraid to commit to some unconventional but necessary interpretations of the law. Not to mention the fact that Martin’s lawyer, David Cavanaugh, was good friends with Joe Mannix—the lead investigator on the case.
    Which brought him back to Mannix. There was no love lost between the two lawmen. In fact, Katz knew that Mannix hated his guts. But Katz was no stranger to animosity and most of the time he thrived on it, and so . . . It was time Mannix and McKay got their acts together. They had to deliver and they had to do it now. For the Nagoshi case was Katz’s ticket to the big time, and there was no way a couple of middle-class cops were going to ruin this for him.
    No way.

9
    “I swear to God, H. Edgar,” said a red-faced Heath Westinghouse as he pushed hard against the double glass doors from Tort Room B and bounded out into the parquetry floored corridor beyond. “That man is out to get us. Did you see the way he targeted us?
    “ ‘Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of the need for inventive approaches to capital growth, Mr. Westinghouse,’ ” mimicked Westinghouse. “I mean, what the hell was that supposed to mean?”
    “He’s just jealous,” said H. Edgar.
    “You bet your ass he’s jealous. He has one of those ‘short’ man, ‘poor’ man, ‘I’m a little asshole with a miniscule dick’ man complexes whereby his sole purpose in life is to persecute those more fortunate. What a freaking pig.”
    They were talking about Professor Karl D. Heffer—a new member of the faculty who was teaching a recently introduced series of subjects related to corporate law and the concepts of entrepreneurial application. The aim was to teach the budding attorneys ways of “thinking out of the box”—looking for new ways for both client and attorney to make fresh capital on top of the existing billing practices.
    “You have to come at it from his perspective, my friend,” said H. Edgar. “The man probably comes from some middle-class burb in Iowa. He’s small, overweight and seriously lacking in any compensatory form of charisma. He sees us sitting there and thinks we’ve had it easy—that we have sat on our proverbials for the past twenty-odd years getting Mommy and Daddy to fund our entire parasitic existence.”
    “The fuck they did. If I recall correctly, it wasn’t my dad scoring top one percent in the SATs or touchdowns on the football field.”
    “Exactly, but the chip on his less-than-substantial shoulders tells him otherwise.”
    Heath stopped