Cohen walked to Washington.
“Mr. Daniels asked to confer with counsel, privately,” he said.
“How did it go, Steve?”
“Matt did a hell of a good job, and I’m not saying that for any reason but giving credit where due.”
“I expected nothing less,” Washington said. “What are they going to talk about, would you think?”
“Probably my refusal to offer more of a deal than life without the possibility of parole.”
“You didn’t tell me about that.”
“You didn’t ask,” Cohen said. “The boss wants this guy off the streets permanently. I told her I had the feeling that there are unsolved rapes, maybe even murder-rapes, all over the country that are going to surface now that we’ve caught this guy.”
“Detective Lassiter spent fruitless hours on the telephone…”
“Calling big-city departments. I don’t think she would have gotten around to Daphne anytime soon.”
“I grant your point.”
“Well, anyway, Eileen said we couldn’t count on that, and she decided we have enough to go with here with no deal except life without parole.”
“Eileen’s tough,” Washington said, admiringly.
“Personally, I’d like to see the sonofabitch strapped to the gurney,” Cohen said. “But that’s emotional. The interests of the people are best served by ensuring that he’s behind bars permanently, rather than taking a chance that he’ll walk, or get out in ten years.”
“Isaac ‘Fort’ Festung,” Washington said. “He was sentenced to life and he’s walking around France eating grapes.”
“Yeah.”
“Any developments there?”
“The goddamn French are still dragging their heels. I think it has more to do with giving us the finger than anything else.”
“Anyone but Eileen would have probably given up,” Washington said. “She’s as tenacious as she is tough.”
He smiled.
“What’s funny?” Cohen asked.
“I just remembered ‘appealing to a higher jurisdiction,’ ” Washington said.
Cohen laughed.
When the Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon had been on the bench, a just-convicted felon, facing a long prison term, had jumped up from his seat in her courtroom, run to a window, crashed through it and jumped to his death in the interior courtyard of City Hall.
When asked by the press how she felt about this lamentable incident, Judge Solomon had replied, “I can only presume he was appealing to a higher jurisdiction.”
Matt came into Kenny’s office.
“I forgot one thing before I went in there,” he said. “The minute I opened my mouth, my back teeth b
egan to float.”
Cohen laughed.
“That happens to me,” he said. “Usually ten minutes into a thirty-minute concluding statement.”