Judge & Jury Read online

  Copyright © 2006 by James Patterson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group USA

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com

  First eBook Edition: July 2006

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-6700-9

  Contents

  The novels of James Patterson

  Dedication

  Prologue: THE WEDDING

  One

  Two

  Three

  Part One: THE FIRST TRIAL

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part Two: RETRIAL

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Part Three: THE EEL

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Part Four: HAIFA

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Part Five: EL FIN DEL MUNDO

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Epilogue: ONE YEAR LATER

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  About the Authors

  The novels of James Patterson

  FEATURING ALEX CROSS

  Mary, Mary

  Pop Goes the Weasel

  London Bridges

  Cat & Mouse

  The Big Bad Wolf

  Jack & Jill

  Four Blind Mice

  Kiss the Girls

  Violets Are Blue

  Along Came a Spider

  Roses Are Red

  THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB

  The 5th Horseman (and Maxine Paetro)

  4th of July (and Maxine Paetro)

  3rd Degree (and Andrew Gross)

  2nd Chance (and Andrew Gross)

  1st to Die

  OTHER BOOKS

  Maximum Ride: School’s Out—Forever

  Beach Road (and Peter de Jonge)

  Lifeguard (and Andrew Gross)

  Maximum Ride

  Honeymoon (and Howard Roughan)

  santaKid

  Sam’s Letters to Jennifer

  The Lake House

  The Jester (and Andrew Gross)

  The Beach House (and Peter de Jonge)

  Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas

  Cradle and All

  Black Friday

  When the Wind Blows

  See How They Run

  Miracle on the 17th Green (and Peter de Jonge)

  Hide & Seek

  The Midnight Club

  Season of the Machete

  The Thomas Berryman Number

  For more information about James Patterson’s novels, visit www.jamespatterson.com

  This book is dedicated to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and all those who contribute to this worthy cause.

  The authors would also like to thank Kevin Palardy, Mary Ellen Murphy, and especially Anne Heausler Dupont. Thanks to Jim Kingsdale, whose travels to Patagonia were illuminating.

  Prologue

  THE WEDDING

  One

  MY NAME IS NICK PELLISANTE, and this is where it started for me, one summer out on Long Island at “the wedding of weddings.” I was watching the bride celebrating at the head of the dance line as it festively wound through the tables. A conga line. I groaned. I hated conga lines.

  I should mention that I was watching the scene through high-powered binoculars. I followed as the bride slung her ample, lace-covered rear end in every direction, toppling a glass of red wine, trying to coax some bowling ball of a relative who was scarfing down a plate of stuffed clams up into the procession. Meanwhile, the grinning, affable groom did his Gowanus Expressway best just to hang on.

  Lucky couple, I thought, wincing, thinking ten years down the line. Lucky me, to get to watch. All part of the job.

  As special agent in charge of section C-10, the FBI’s Organized Crime Unit in New York, I was heading up a stakeout of a wiseguy wedding at the posh South Fork Club in Montauk. Everybody who was anybody was here, assuming you were into wiseguys.

  Everybody except for the one man I was really looking for.

  The Boss. The Capo di tutti capi. Dominic Cavello. They called him the Electrician because he had started in that trade, pulling off construction scams in New Jersey.
The guy was bad, terror-level-red bad. And I had a slew of warrants on him, for murder, extortion, union tampering, and conspiracy to finance narcotics.

  Some of my buddies at the Bureau said Cavello was already in Sicily, laughing at us. Another rumor had him in the Dominican Republic at a resort he owned. Others had him in Costa Rica, in the UAE, even in Moscow.

  But I had a hunch that he was here, somewhere in this noisy crowd on the South Fork Club’s beautiful back deck. His ego was too large. I’d been tracking him for three years, and I expect he knew it. But nothing, not even the federal government, was going to make Dominic Cavello miss his closest niece’s wedding.

  “Cannoli One, this is Cannoli Two,” a voice deadpanned in my earpiece.

  It was Special Agent Manny Oliva, whom I’d stationed down on the dunes with Ed Sinclair. Manny grew up in the projects of Newark, then got himself a law degree at Rutgers. He’d been assigned to my C-10 unit straight out of Quantico.

  “Anything on the radar, Nick? Nothing but sand and seagulls here.”

  “Yeah,” I said, dishing it back, “ziti mostly. A little lasagna with hot sausages, some stuffed shrimp and parmigiana.”

  “Stop! You’re making me hungry down here, Nicky Smiles.”

  Nicky Smiles. That’s what the guys I was close to in the unit called me. Maybe because I was blessed with a pretty nice grin. More likely it was because I’d grown up with a bunch of these wiseguys in Bay Ridge, and my name ended in a vowel. Plus, I knew more about La Cosa Nostra than just about anyone else in the Bureau, and I was offended by what this scum had done to the reputations of all Italian Americans: my own family, friends of mine who couldn’t have been more law-abiding, and, of course, myself.

  So where the hell are you, you sly sonovabitch? You’re here, aren’t you, Cavello? I swept the binoculars along the dance line.

  The procession had snaked all the way around the deck by now, past all the juiced-up goombahs in tuxedos with purple shirts and their high-hairdo wives busting through their gowns. The bride sidled up to a table of old-timers, padrones in bolo ties sipping espresso, trading old tales. One or two of the faces looked familiar.

  That’s when the bride made her mistake.

  She singled out one of the old men, leaned down, and kissed him on the cheek. The balding man was in a wheelchair, hands on his lap. He looked feeble and out of it, as if he were recovering from an illness, maybe a stroke. He had on thick black-rimmed glasses, no eyebrows, like Uncle Junior on The Sopranos.

  I stood up and focused the lens on him. I watched her take him by the hands and try to get him up. The guy looked like he couldn’t pee upright, and he could barely wrap his arms around her, never mind get up and dance.

  Then my heart slammed to a stop.

  You arrogant sonovabitch! You came!

  “Tom, Robin, that old geezer with the black glasses. The bride just gave him a kiss.”

  “Yeah,” Tom Roach came back. He was inside a van in the parking lot watching pictures sent from cameras planted in the club. “I got him. What’s the problem?”

  I took a step closer, zooming in with the lens.

  “No problem. That’s Dominic Cavello!”

  Two

  “THIS IS A GO!” I barked into the mike attached to my shirt collar. “Target is a bald male in black glasses, seated in a wheelchair at a table on the left-hand side of the deck. It’s Cavello! He is to be treated as armed and likely to resist.”

  From where I was, I had a firsthand view of the next few minutes of action. Tom Roach and Robin Hammill jumped out of the van in the parking lot and headed for the entrance.

  We had manpower, backup all over the place—even agents posing as bartenders and waiters on the inside. I had a Coast Guard cutter half a mile offshore, with an Apache helicopter that could be mobilized if necessary.

  Not even Dominic Cavello would turn his brother’s daughter’s wedding into a firefight, right?

  Wrong.

  A couple of hoods in light-blue tuxedos were taking a smoke break outside when they spotted my team coming out of the van. One headed back inside while the other blocked their approach. “Sorry, this is a private affair. . . .”

  Tom Roach flashed his shield. “Now it’s open to the public. FBI.”

  I zoomed back to the other wiseguy hurrying out to the wedding party on the deck. He ran up to the crippled old man in the wheelchair.

  I was right! It was definitely Cavello! But our cover was shot.

  “We’re blown!” I yelled, fixing on the commotion on the deck. “Everybody close in on Cavello! Manny, you and Ed stay put and cover the dunes. Taylor,” I called out to an agent posing as a waiter, “wait for Tom’s crew.”

  Then Cavello jumped out of the wheelchair, suddenly the healthiest guy in the world. Steve Taylor put down his serving tray and pulled a gun from under his jacket. “FBI!” he yelled.

  I heard a shot and watched Taylor go down and stay down.

  Chaos erupted. Guests were scurrying around the deck, some shrieking, others ducking under tables. A few of the well-known mob bosses were hurrying toward the exits.

  I refocused on Cavello. He was hunched over, slinking through the crowd, still in disguise. He was making a path toward the stairs leading down to the beach.

  I took out my Glock and hopped off the ledge I’d been perched on. Then I ran for the clubhouse along the shore road.

  I stayed near the white clapboard clubhouse, then ran in the restaurant’s front door and through to the deck. I could still see Cavello. He had peeled off his black glasses. He shoved an old woman out of his way and leaped over a wooden fence—then he was running toward the dunes.

  We had him!

  Three

  “MANNY, ED, he’s headed toward you!”

  I saw where Cavello was going. He was trying to get to a helicopter up on the point, obviously his helicopter. I pushed through the crowd, shoving people out of the way. At the edge of the deck, I looked down.

  Cavello was stumbling over the grassy dunes, making his way along the beach.

  Then he ducked behind a tall dune, and I lost sight of him.

  I shouted into the radio, “Manny, Ed, he should be on you any second now.”

  “I got him, Nick,” Manny squawked.

  “Federal agents,” I heard Manny shout through the radio.

  Then there were shots. Two quick ones—followed by four or five more in rapid succession.

  My blood turned to ice. Oh, Jesus. I leaped over the fence, then ran down the dunes toward the beach. I lost my footing and fell to one knee. I righted myself and hurtled in the direction of the shots.

  I stopped.

  Two bodies were lying faceup on the beach. My heart was pumping. I ran to them, sliding in the sand, which was stained dark with blood.

  Oh, dear God, no.

  I knew that Manny was dead. Ed Sinclair was gurgling blood, a gunshot wound in his chest.

  Dominic Cavello was fifty yards ahead, holding his wounded shoulder but getting away.

  “Manny and Ed are down,” I yelled into the mike. “Get help here now!”

  Cavello was running toward a helicopter. The cabin door was open. I took off after him.

  “Cavello, stop!” I shouted. “I’ll shoot!”

  Cavello looked back over his shoulder. He didn’t stop though.

  I squeezed the trigger of my gun—twice. The second bullet slammed into his thigh.

  The godfather reached for his leg and buckled. But he kept going, dragging the leg, like some desperate animal that wouldn’t quit. I heard a thwack, thwack, thwack—and saw the Coast Guard Apache coming into sight.

  “That’s it,” I yelled ahead, aiming my Glock again. “You’re done! The next shot goes through your head.”

  Cavello pulled himself to an exhausted stop. He put his hands in the air and slowly turned.

  He had no gun. I didn’t know where he’d thrown it, maybe into the sea. He’d been close enough. A grin was etched on his face despite
the bullets in his thigh and shoulder.

  “Nicky Smiles,” he said, “if I knew you wanted to be at my niece’s wedding, all you had to do was ask. I woulda sent you an invitation. Engraved.”

  My head felt like it was going to explode. I’d lost two men, maybe three, over this filth. I walked up to Cavello, my Glock pointed at his chest. He met my eyes with a mocking smile. “You know, that’s the problem with Italian weddings, Pellisante, everybody’s got a gun.”

  I slugged him, and Cavello fell to one knee. For a second I thought he was going to fight me, but he just stood up, shook his head, and laughed.

  So I hit Cavello again, with everything I had left in me.

  This time, he stayed down.

  Part One

  THE FIRST TRIAL

  Chapter 1

  IN HIS HOUSE on Yehuda Street in Haifa, high above the sky-blue Mediterranean, Richard Nordeshenko tried the King’s Indian Defense. The pawn break, Kasparov’s famous attack. From there Kasparov had dismantled Tukmakov in the Russian Championship in 1981.

  Across from Nordeshenko a young boy countered by matching the pawn. His father nodded, pleased with the move. “And why does the pawn create such an advantage?” Nordeshenko asked.

  “Because it blocks freeing up of your queenside rook,” the boy answered quickly. “And the advance of your pawn to a queen. Correct?”

  “Correct.” Nordeshenko beamed at his son. “And when did the queen first acquire the powers that it holds today?”

  “Around fifteen hundred,” his son answered. “In Europe. Up until then it merely moved two spaces, up and down. But . . .”

  “Bravo, Pavel!”

  Affectionately, he mussed his son’s blond hair. For an eleven-year-old, Pavel was learning quickly.

  The boy glanced silently over the board, then moved his rook. Nordeshenko saw what his son was up to. He had once been in the third tier of Glasskov’s chess academy in Kiev. Still, he pretended to ignore it and pushed forward his attack on the opposite side, exposing a pawn.

  “You’re letting me win, Father,” the boy declared, refusing to take it. “Besides, you said just one game. Then you would teach me . . .”

  “Teach you?” Nordeshenko teased him, knowing precisely what he meant. “You can teach me.”

  “Not chess, Father.” The boy looked up. “Poker.”

  “Ah, poker?” Nordeshenko feigned surprise. “To play poker, Pavel, you must have something to bet.”

  “I have something,” the boy insisted. “I have six dollars in coins. I’ve been saving up. And over a hundred soccer cards. Perfect condition.”