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I don’t trust him at all to make the call on his own. I want the phone record that he placed the call with his attorney present, but not under duress. I don’t want him claiming someone intimidated him into making the call. Who knows who he’d name. I watch him dial before putting the phone to his ear.
“Speaker.”
He taps the button while it rings.
“Detective Morris.”
“Hello, Detective. My name is Arthur Cohenour. I’m calling because I have information about the Scotto case that my attorney is advising me to share.”
“Hello, Mr. Cohenour. Who is your attorney?”
“Sinead O’Malley.”
I can imagine what Philip Morris— yes, his parents really gave him the same name as a tobacco company —must be thinking right now. He and I do not get along. At all. Ever. I’ve impeached him on the stand six times. Yes, I have kept count. He’s a clean cop and a good one. I have ears like a dog when I listen to testimonies and compare them to depositions. I snag even the slightest thing I can make look like an inconsistency. It’s gotten six clients off.
“Ms. O’Malley, I assume you’re present.”
“I’m here, Detective Morris.”
I can practically hear him grimacing and grinding his teeth. It’s his usual reaction to me.
“Mr. Cohenour, what would you like to tell me?”
“I heard some men discussing Gabriele Scotto and the bombing, and they seemed to know he did it.”
“When did you hear this?”
“Two days after the bombing.”
“Where were you?”
“At the Grand Toucan in Atlantic City.”
“Were you intoxicated?”
Not surprising that’s one of the first questions. If my client hadn’t told me he heard this before going inside, I would have dismissed it as him probably being drunk as a fucking skunk.
“No. I heard them in the parking garage before I went inside.”
“They were just standing around talking about it?”
“They didn’t know I was sitting in my car with the window open, smoking a cigar. It’s a good luck thing. Their voices carried as they walked past.”
“What exactly did you hear?”
“One of them said Scotto was finally going down. The other said it was about time and that it serves him right for being so sloppy.”
“That isn’t enough to substantiate they know anything firsthand. They could have heard about it on the news.”
“Like I said, it was two days after it happened. It was the day before the NYPD arrested him.”
That’s suspect. But if that’s all he heard, none of us can be sure these men actually knew anything about the bombing. They could just be repeating gossip they heard through their associates who have dirty cops working for them. There’s any number of ways a syndicate could already know the NYPD was looking at Gabriele for this.
“Mr. Cohenour, you and Ms. O’Malley need to come down to the station to file a report. Ms. O’Malley, I assume this call means you intend to remain Mr. Cohenour’s attorney for this case and will no longer represent Mr. Scotto?”
“That is no longer guaranteed. Mr. Cohenour begins his own trial the day after tomorrow.”
I shoot my client a look that tells him not to question me. I’m going to call Diane, the ADA on this case. I’ll see if she’s willing to negotiate anything to plea down the charges or convince her to recommend the minimum sentence. If she says she’ll consider him testifying against Gabriele as a reason to go easier on Cohenour, then I have to step down from Gabriele’s case. If she says there’s nothing she will do, then I remain on this case for the duration of the grand larceny trial. But someone else at my firm will handle his involvement in Gabriele’s case. I’m not walking away from Gabriele. So far, Cohenour hasn’t said anything I wouldn’t learn through discovery. Nothing is privileged.
