Fanatics by Richard Hilary Weber Read Free Book Online

Botanic Garden, and in the distance on the other side of Flatbush Avenue, the Prospect Park Zoo.
    A prime location. Frank Murphy’s relieved conclusion, on admiring this view:
No close rooftops high enough for snipers.
    His assignment from Flo: “Just keep him home the rest of the day.”

Rearraignment
    1:42 P.M.
    Flo Ott entered Kings County Criminal Court in downtown Brooklyn for a rearraignment hearing scheduled for a two o’clock start.
    For an hour, she had to leave the threat to Cecil King’s life entirely in Frank Murphy’s hands, while waiting for the preliminary forensics report on Owen Smith’s corpse, and now keeping a promise to a friend caught in impossible trouble.
    A young woman named Annunziata “Annie” Agron had been arrested on a charge of armed robbery at an ATM machine on the corner of Seventh Avenue and President Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The arresting officers were William Patrick Magee and Antonio Francesco Dente, both patrolmen, both in their late twenties, both Staten Island residents.
    Flo was attending the rearraignment, not in any official capacity—no one had been killed during the alleged armed robbery—but simply to observe as a friend and a potential character witness on behalf of one of the two tenants in her home’s upstairs rental apartment: the accused felon of murderous intent, Annie Agron, a welfare department social worker.
    At the initial arraignment, a few hours after Annie Agron’s arrest, the court had assigned her a lawyer from the Legal Aid Society’s pool, to ensure appearances were kept up, all formalities fulfilled.
    The assigned lawyer had no time for preparation and not much attention span left by his seventh arraignment of the afternoon session.
    He was a harried young man, another victim of case overload, bouncing breathlessly from arraignments to trials to prison cell visitations. No surprise then, when the patrolmen’s version of Annie Agron’s alleged armed robbery proved compelling. But at least the Legal Aid lawyer secured bail for his client, a not impossible task, since the accused had no prior criminal record, was a city employee, and a college grad.
    Flo Ott’s other tenant, Annie’s roommate and partner, Betty Fitzgerald, was an experienced attorney, albeit a family-law expert, who’d never appeared at an arraignment or any other kind of criminal law procedure. Family law—separations, divorces, child custody suits—was her specialty.
    Betty Fitzgerald had no idea at the time that Annie had been arrested, and when she found out that Annie’s case at arraignment was referred on for trial consideration, she was desperate to find competent counsel. Flo Ott, their friend and landlady, recommended Robert J. Keating, Esq., Golden Bobby, the criminal defense bar’s ultimate aureate mouthpiece. Golden Bobby owed Flo a favor. Earlier that year, she’d certified a fat-fee client of his for a cooperative witness protection program.
    And Bobby was meticulous in repaying his business debts, particularly when the creditor was a prominent member of the law enforcement establishment. He stepped straight up to the plate for Annie Agron.
    “Well now, Lieutenant!” Golden Bobby greeted Flo in the hall outside the hearing room for the rearraignment. “How’s by you? What’s happening?”
    “Hi, Bobby.” Flo was no longer quite as amazed as she had been the winter before, when first meeting Robert J. Keating, Attorney-at-Law. She’d grown accustomed to his outsized presence, a sort of African Buddha, a bejeweled, mirthful, extramundane mass of a man: cappuccino-colored, six feet tall and, at about three hundred pounds, almost the same footage in circumference as in height. His shaved head, impeccable tailoring, and manicured nails projected a persuasive air of proximate perfection with the demeanor to match, as close to a resplendent demidivinity as one might ever expect to encounter in the criminal courts of New York City. On meeting Bobby for the