The Warriors Read online

  THE WARRIORS

  Also by Paul Batista

  Death’s Witness

  Extraordinary Rendition

  The Borzoi Killings

  Manhattan Lockdown

  THE WARRIORS

  A NOVEL

  PAUL BATISTA

  Copyright © 2018 by Paul Batista

  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.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-60809-318-2

  Cover Design by Christian Fuenfhausen

  Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing

  Sarasota, Florida

  www.oceanviewpub.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  To Betsy McCaughey, with all my love.

  CONTENTS

  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

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THE WARRIORS

  CHAPTER 1

  RAQUEL REMATTI—TALL, VIGOROUS, dressed in black—was on her feet as soon as Judge Naomi Goldstein said, “Your witness, Ms. Rematti.”

  Even before she reached the podium next to the seventeen men and women in the jury box, Raquel asked Gordon Hughes, “How long did you work for the Senator?”

  “Seven years, Ms. Rematti.”

  “From the time she ran her first race for the Senate, correct?”

  “Just before, that’s right.”

  “And you had worked for President Young before that, correct?”

  Gordon Hughes had been taught by the prosecutors that it was important to lean slightly forward and look at the jurors when he answered every question: it gave him, they said, a rapport with the men and women in the jury box. It would also, they said, make him seem less impressed and intimidated by the legendary and striking Raquel Rematti. And it also gave him those crucial moments to think about the question and the answer instead of just reacting. He said, “I did.”

  “You were with the Senator when her husband was assassinated, isn’t that right?”

  “I was.”

  “In fact, you were in that hotel room in Seattle with her when the Secret Service called to tell her that President Young had been killed by a suicide bomber?”

  “That’s right.”

  Raquel had come to know her client well in the months after the Senator first learned she was under investigation for fund-raising fraud, theft by her of campaign contributions, money laundering, and tax evasion in connection with the early stages of her race for the presidency. Now five feet away from Angelina Baldesteri as the Senator sat impassively at the defense table, Raquel sensed the almost imperceptible tension in this coolest of any person she had ever known. For years she had used the words stone-cold killer to describe some of her clients who were, in fact, stone-cold killers. She had come to believe she had encountered in Angelina Baldesteri somebody who was stone-cold, even though she faced life in prison and the complete destruction of her reputation. Yet this was the first time Raquel had picked up any sense of tension in her client.

  “And in that room in Seattle, on that awful night, you cried when you heard the news about the President’s violent death?”

  “I did.”

  “And the President’s wife cried, too, correct?”

  “I honestly don’t remember that, Ms. Rematti,” Gordon Hughes said. “Senator Baldesteri, even when she was the First Lady, was a stoic.”

  “And you’re not a stoic, are you, Mr. Hughes?”

  “No.”

  “And we all know that because when the prosecutor asked you two days ago how you feel now about the crimes you committed, you cried, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “For all of us to see, correct, sir?”

  “It wasn’t my intention to cry. It just happened that way.”

  “Just like that night in Seattle when word came that the President was killed, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Raquel was now at the podium. Although she had listened to Gordon Hughes testify against her client for two days, Raquel didn’t have a single note in front of her. She knew exactly what she intended to do.

  “Let me ask you this, Mr. Hughes: When FBI agents knocked on your door in your townhouse on DuPont Circle in Washington at six in the morning, did you cry?”

  “No.”

  “When they told you that you and Senator Baldesteri were the target of a criminal investigation for tax evasion and fund-raising fraud and money laundering, did you cry?”

  “I was upset, I think.”

  “You think? That was nine months ago, wasn’t it? You remember crying when the Senator’s husband was blown up years ago by an ISIS suicide bomber in Manhattan, but you don’t remember crying when seven FBI agents arrived at your home at six in the morning and told you that they and the Justice Department believe you concealed twenty-six million dollars in payments and never reported that to the IRS or to the Federal Election Commission? And you can’t today remember how you reacted to that, is that right?”

  “I told them they were wrong. It was a mistake. They had the wrong person. Their views and impressions were wrong.”

  “When you said all that, sir, you were lying to federal agents, isn’t that right?”

  “I was.”

  “And you are a lawyer, aren’t you?”

  “I was then.”

  “And you know that lying to federal agents, even when you’re not under oath, is a crime, correct?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about how best to protect Senator Baldesteri. She had just started serious meetings to talk about running for President.”

  Hughes was a large man, a onetime college football player. He looked like a solid Midwesterner, the kind of man who might inspire confidence in places like Oklahoma City, Minneapolis, and the myriad other cities in which Raquel over her three-decade career had tried cases. But this trial was in Manhattan, and most of the carefully selected members of the jury, five black men, four black women, three Jews who were New York natives, two WASPs
from the Upper East Side, a Chinese grocery store-owner, a Muslim college professor, and a beautiful Latina from the Bronx, were not likely to have the same warm, trusting reaction to this blond man that jurors in a city like Indianapolis might have.

  Raquel, who had often wondered why the shrewd Louisiana-born and Wellesley-educated Angelina Baldesteri had ever brought a man like Hughes into her innermost circle, wanted to transform this bland Midwesterner into a snake oil salesman, a huckster, a modern-day Elmer Gantry.

  “How much time did you spend, sir, wanting to protect the Senator after the FBI came calling on you?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Was it as long as a day?”

  “I’m not sure. It made me uncomfortable to lie.”

  “Lying makes you uncomfortable, Mr. Hughes? Is that what you are telling us?”

  “It is.”

  To Raquel’s left and next to the jury box was an easel with large sheets of white paper, a relic of old elementary school classrooms.

  “You told Mr. Decker on direct examination that you signed a cooperation agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office three days after the FBI first visited you, isn’t that right?”

  Hunter Decker, now seated motionless at the prosecution table, was the lead Government attorney.

  “That’s right,” Hughes said.

  “And in that cooperation agreement you promised to tell the Government everything you now say you knew about the process of the funding for the Senator’s campaign, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  As Raquel saw, Hughes gave that confidential, you-can-trust-me glance at the jurors. Covertly glancing at the two rows of people in the jury box, she was pleased to see that, unlike at the outset of his testimony, some of the jurors deliberately did not return Hughes’ trust-me glance.

  “And when you signed that agreement with the prosecutors to cooperate against the Senator you also agreed to tell them about every single crime you ever committed?”

  “I did.”

  “And you let them know about your crimes, didn’t you, because you’re a man of your word?”

  Raquel spoke quietly but distinctly. Even the dozens of spectators in the fully occupied gallery, many of them reporters from the Times, the Washington Post, Fox, and CNN, heard the clarity of her distinctive, measured voice.

  “I did,” Gordon Hughes answered. “I did what I said I would do.”

  “And yesterday you told Mr. Decker, the judge, and the jury what your crimes were, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Raquel took a black Magic Marker from the narrow shelf on the easel that faced the jurors. She wrote rapidly at the top of the white sheet, Gordon Hughes’ Crimes.

  “And the first thing you said was that you haven’t filed tax returns for three years?”

  “I’m late.”

  “Unlike the people on the jury, you don’t have to pay taxes on time, do you?”

  For the first time since Raquel started her cross-examination, Hunter Decker stood. “Objection.”

  Judge Naomi Goldstein, seventy-five and appointed by Ronald Reagan, didn’t hesitate to say, “Overruled.” No elaboration, no discussion. She rarely spoke. She was a minimalist judge.

  In big, block-size letters Raquel wrote, in her best parochial school handwriting, Crime 1: Tax Cheat. “You see those words, Mr. Hughes?”

  “I do.”

  “And you are a tax cheat, correct?”

  “I was.”

  “You pleaded guilty to that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Incidentally, sir, have you paid any of the taxes that you owe?”

  “No one has asked me to.”

  “You have to be asked? Do you have some sort of special status that requires somebody to ask you before you pay?”

  “No. I just don’t have the money.”

  “Let me ask you this: You testified yesterday, didn’t you, that you were in the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco a year ago with Dr. Joseph Chuang?”

  “I did. That was one of the questions I was asked by Mr. Decker.”

  “And you told Mr. Decker that Dr. Chuang was a high-level executive of the Sino Oil Company in Shanghai, correct?”

  “Dr. Chuang told me that. I said it to Mr. Decker.”

  “The biggest oil producer in China, isn’t that right?”

  “I had been told that. I can’t be sure. But it’s big.”

  “And Dr. Chuang came to the meeting with two Chinese associates, correct? Mr. Wan and Mr. Tin?”

  “Yes. The Chinese are like nuns. They travel in groups.”

  Raquel had one of those fleeting moments of pleasure any trial offers up for a lawyer: Hughes had just insulted the Chinese juror. “And that group, as you told Mr. Decker, left Tumi suitcases with you that contained two million dollars in used one-hundred-dollar bills, correct, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you use that money to pay your taxes?”

  “Obviously not.” Hughes paused, glancing at the jury. “In any event, it wasn’t my money. The money belonged to Senator Baldesteri.”

  “Belonged to Senator Baldesteri, is that right, sir?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What does belong mean to you?”

  “Belonged means belonged, Ms. Rematti.”

  “She owned it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Was she in the room when Dr. Chuang and his friends were there?”

  “No.”

  “Was anyone else in the room when the Tumi suitcases were given to you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever hand the money to the Senator?”

  “No.”

  “Yet she owned the money, the cash belonged to her, is that your testimony, sir?”

  “It was for her campaign. Her use.”

  “And we know that because you tell us that, correct, sir?”

  “I was her campaign manager. So I knew that.”

  “And you’re a liar, aren’t you?”

  He answered that question just as the prosecutors had instructed him to answer it: “From time to time.”

  “And this is one of those times, correct?”

  Hunter Decker, a handsome man in a blue suit, stood. “Objection.”

  Barely audible even though she wore a tiny microphone on the white collar of her black robe, Naomi Goldstein whispered, “Overruled.”

  Gordon Hughes leaned toward the jury. “No, not this time. Everything I’ve said is the truth.”

  Without hesitating, Raquel wrote on the big sheet of paper, Crime 2: Bankruptcy Cheat.

  “You see those words, Mr. Hughes?”

  “I do.”

  “You were in the casino business, Mr. Hughes, is that right?”

  “Not for long, but yes, I was.”

  “And before the FBI made its visit to you, you were once a part owner of a casino in Atlantic City, am I right?”

  “Yes, along with other people.”

  “And you filed a bankruptcy petition, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. The casino was in trouble. Gambling in Atlantic City was unraveling. Ask Donald Trump. He tells everyone the same thing.”

  “And on that filing you made in bankruptcy court for your casino you lied about who its real owners were?”

  “I did.”

  “And you admitted that to Mr. Decker and the FBI so that you could get the benefits of leniency under your plea agreement to testify against Senator Baldesteri, correct?”

  “That was a crime I committed, Ms. Rematti. So, just as I was required to do, I came forward and volunteered the information that I had lied in the bankruptcy proceeding. Before that, no one knew that I had. I could just as easily have kept it to myself.”

  “My, that was considerate of you. But you didn’t tell the whole truth even then, did you? And you’re not telling the whole truth about the bankruptcy cheating even now, are you?”

  Angelina Baldesteri during one of her first meetings with Raquel h
ad described Gordon Hughes as “powerful, loud, hard-driving, and effective.” But those words had not yet described the mild-mannered Midwestern man on the stand for the last two days. “He must be on lethal quantities of Valium,” the Senator had said to Raquel after the first day of Hughes’ testimony to explain his subdued demeanor.

  “That’s not true, Ms. Rematti. I disclosed the names of all the partners in the casino, and I pleaded guilty to lying to the Bankruptcy Court, and at some point after this trial—Senator Baldesteri’s trial—I’ll be sentenced for that crime, too.”

  “Isn’t it true you are still leaving out the name Oscar Caliente as one of your partners in the casino?”

  “No.”

  “No? You know who Mr. Caliente is, don’t you?”

  And, as Gordon Hughes took a longer pause than usual, Raquel detected, by the instincts formed after years as a trial lawyer who was now renowned as one of the four or five best criminal defense attorneys in the country and the only one who was a woman, the emergence of that hard edge the Senator had described. This time Gordon Hughes stared with a tough-guy, supercilious edge at Raquel without glancing at the jury. “You know him better than I do, Ms. Rematti. Just put your name on Google and the words Oscar Caliente appear in dozens of matches with your name.”

  Raquel knew how important it was never to let a witness take control. “Listen carefully, sir: You know who Mr. Caliente is, correct?”

  “Google tells me he’s the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel in the United States and that just two or three years ago you represented someone—I think he was called The Blade of the Hamptons—who worked for Oscar Caliente.”

  Years earlier, Raquel would have looked at the judge and said, “Your Honor, move to strike the answer as non-responsive.” But by now she’d learned that too-formal sounding statements not only made her seem defensive and anxious to hide something from the jurors but were also futile: even if the judge agreed and instructed the jury to disregard the challenged answer, the bell couldn’t be unrung.

  Raquel asked, “Did you ever meet with Oscar Caliente?”

  Remembering the instructions given to him by Decker and his assistants, Gordon Hughes now softened his expression, leaning confidently toward the jurors, and said, “I did.”

  “Who did you understand him to be?”