The Criminal Mind Read online

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

  Copyright 2021 Thomas Benigno

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, scanned, introduced into a retrieval system, or printed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or streaming devices without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.

  Contact email for press, licensing, book clubs, or speaking engagements: [email protected]

  Cover by Nathan Wampler

  Back cover script by Diana Benigno

  Book formatted by: ebookpbook.com

  ALSO BY THOMAS BENIGNO

  THE GOOD LAWYER

  THE CRIMINAL LAWYER

  To Giovanni Baptiste Benigno,

  My Stepfather-My Real Father

  1917-1976

  &

  To the Veterans and Heroes of the Vietnam War

  With Gratitude, Admiration and Love.

  —Draft Lottery #238—

  It is a man’s own mind,

   not his enemy or foe,

        that lures him to evil ways.

           Buddha

  December 2007.

  Somewhere in Upstate New York.

  I hear the voices again—coming from outside the box.

  Men’s voices in the cabin above me—getting louder.

  The floor is creaking everywhere.

  The ceiling hatch opens.

  Footsteps descend the stairs.

  I can smell the cigars and the liquor.

  I can hear men talking and laughing. They’re getting closer.

  I shut my eyes and see my friends in the playground.

  They’re on the swings. The moon is shining brightly above them.

  A drawer is pulled open next to me.

  There’s a grab for the keys.

  I’ll think of something else. I’ll think of Christmas. I’ll be home for Christmas.

  A key misses the lock that is inches from my ear—then clicks in.

  There’s another lock near my ankles.

  I’m slipping away again.

  More laughter. More drinking.

  I can hear the sound of liquor spilling.

  The second lock falls off.

  The lid opens.

  The light is blinding.

  Large blurry hands reach for me.

  I’m walking in the playground.

  I’m inside the box crying and screaming.

  I’m on a swing pumping myself higher.

  I hear the cries and screams of other children.

  Fear grows inside me like a monster about to tear me apart.

  I’m safe again—in the playground under a full moon and a thousand twinkling stars.

  December 2017.

  Midtown Manhattan.

  The seventy-two-year-old, legs amputated above the knee, tightened his grip on the wheelchair’s push ring. His daily battle: Not letting the New York City traffic finish what the Viet Cong tried to do, but failed.

  Competing with a cacophony of blaring horns, tires screeching and pedestrian chatter, he blurted obscenities as a plume of exhaust discharged indiscriminately from a passing city bus. But the instant he lifted a hand to swat the noxious cloud, the wheelchair sped toward the curb—cut only seconds away from being T-boned by all manner of vehicles that raced up 8th Avenue.

  “I got you,” gasped the young female voice behind him as she grabbed the chair by its grips and yanked the old veteran back onto the sidewalk.

  “Damn it,” squealed a passing businessman as the wheelchair toe-crushed one of his Bruno Maglis. Carrying an attaché case and wearing a long buttoned-down coat over a suit and tie, his face took on a disgusted yet constrained look. The target of his ire: The teenage girl and the bearded old man in the chair gazing up at him.

  As he calculated the wisdom of complaining further, his eyes settled on the veteran’s worn camouflage jacket and oversized sweatshirt, which was emblazoned with the faded cartoon heads of Minnie blowing Mickey a kiss, crossed over with an ‘X’ in black magic marker. But it wasn’t the sight of the old man, his trouser fatigues sewed shut above the knees, or the young girl gripping the chair that restrained him from leveling an expletive as the sting in his foot intensified. It was the message on the face of the wily veteran: Just give me an excuse and I will be only too happy to vise grip your executive balls.

  Seeing no percentage in further discourse, the businessman hurried off while the teenager uttered nervously: “I’m really sorry. I thought I had a good grip.”

  As a scraggly mix of white-and-gray hair spilled out of a trucker’s cap, the old man jostled in his wheelchair and cocked his head back. His stern gaze fixed on the petite girl behind him, intent on navigating them both across the busy avenue where an assorted mix of cars, taxis, buses and trucks were halted at the light.

  Where normally he would have barked a gruff “fuck off” at the slightest encroachment to the sanctity of his world, when he arrived at the opposite corner, he merely adjusted his seating position and turned to size up his chair’s uninvited caretaker.

  With straight, shoulder length brown hair, large brown eyes, and a light olive complexion, she was straining with determination as she steered the chair through the crowded sidewalk until a spot alongside a storefront window came into view where it could be safely parked.

  “Whew. I wasn’t sure I would make it,” she said, as she pressed the sole of her sneaker down on each of the chair’s brakes while the old man reached for a bag of M&Ms he had stuffed into his jacket pocket. “Are you okay now?” she asked, while smiling down at him. “Do you want me to wheel you somewhere else?”

  She looks like a sweet little angel, he thought to himself. In a pink ski jacket, designer jeans and clean white sneakers, she reminded him of his younger sister, who had been about the same size and age, and had smiled the same pretty smile the last time he saw her.

  “Want an M&M?” he asked matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, please,” she answered.

  He dropped several into her open hand.

  It was early December and snow was in the forecast for the New York Metropolitan Area. Add 20-odd degree winds, and that Eighth Avenue corner was beginning to feel closer to zero.

  “Are you sure you don’t need any more help?” she asked. “I can push you farther if you like.”

  “You can, can you?” The old man spoke with the haughty air of a cranky granddad.

  “Sure,” she said cutely.

  “I’m good.” His voice had a hoarse, raspy quality that would’ve seemed more than a bit disconcerting to most teenage girls. But not this one.

  Charlie Malone was a grouchy, unkempt amputee in a wheelchair—one among many people considered different and unusual who traveled along a Midtown Manhattan street, which had a much higher bar on the level of ‘different and unusual’ than just about anyplace else.

  As a passerby casually knocked into the arm of the chair, causing Charlie to scowl at everyone and everything around him, the young girl looked down at him unfazed. “You get mad a lot, don’t you?”

  He spun his chair in her direction and studied her for a moment, uncertain of what to say and do next until he saw something in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Her face had beco
me hardened and introspective. Her shoulders rose as if toughening up for a fight. Tilting her head to the side, the sweet teenage girl who had been standing before him suddenly took on the pugnacious demeanor of someone twice her age. But as quickly as this change came, it disappeared. Her shoulders dropped, and her facial expression softened as if nothing had happened in the interim.

  The veteran looked warily at her. He had his suspicions about what he saw, but decided to act none the wiser. “How old are you? Fourteen, fifteen?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “And where did you come from anyway?”

  She gulped like a reluctant child and pointed east. “I live a few blocks down.”

  “You mean like on Fifth, or maybe Park, or Lexington?”

  “On Park.” There was a hesitant tone in her voice.

  “You live on Park Avenue and you’re over here slumming on Eighth?” He threw his hands in the air. “Well then, I’m revising my age estimate. You must be younger than fourteen, because only a foolish little girl would be hanging out on Eighth Avenue with me, while a Park Avenue apartment was waiting for her at home.”

  “What does where I live have to do with anything, not to mention my missing a ‘thank you’ for helping you across the street?”

  “I thought I said, ‘thank you,’” he said pensively.

  “Well, you didn’t.”

  “Oh…then…thank you.” He spoke with uncharacteristic politeness, and instantly became both uncomfortable and embarrassed for doing so.

  “You’re welcome.” She looked away.

  “Okay, now tell me,” he said. “What’s your name and what are you doing up here?”

  “My name is Mia Langley, and for your information, I’m actually doing homework. I’m supposed to meet someone new and different, and write about them.”

  “Oh, so you weren’t just being a Good Samaritan?”

  “Yes, I was, and it wasn’t until you offered me the M&Ms that it occurred to me to write about you…maybe.” Charlie’s jaw dropped, a look of incredulity on his face. “But I want to write about someone good.” She hesitated, not sure how he would react. “Different, kind of, but interesting and good.”

  He laughed, following up with a warm smile that made him seem less the curmudgeon, and said: “Regardless, you shouldn’t be talking to strangers. And you shouldn’t be out on the streets of Eighth Avenue alone, school or no school.”

  Mia was blank-faced, standing with her hands in her jacket pockets, one dug deeper than the other due to a torn inseam and a nervous habit of pushing her hands down as she walked. “I may not look it, but I just turned eighteen,” she said, as she bobbed her head in confirmation.

  “Still, your mother is okay with you roaming the streets all by yourself?”

  “My birth mother died a long time ago. I’m adopted, and my adoptive mother trusts my judgment. She just doesn’t want me out late.”

  Charlie smiled, extended his hand and introduced himself. “Since your trusting mother’s okay with it, I’m Charlie Malone.” At the risk of being the subject of her homework, he told Mia a sanitized version of his life story, including his time in Vietnam—how he lost both his legs, and now lived in a center for veterans with disabilities on Eighth Avenue and 54th Street, made possible by the generosity of a rich benefactor.

  Mia stared down at him. “Did it hurt?’ she asked, her thoughts drifting to another place and time.

  “Did what hurt?”

  “When you lost your legs, did it hurt?”

  Normally, Charlie would have been outright annoyed at such a personal inquiry from a stranger, and would have reacted in kind, but the young girl’s innocence and apparent empathy evoked an altogether different response. “Not really,” he answered. “I was in what you would call ‘shock’ when it happened. Then everything went black. The hurt? That came later.”

  “The hurt came later?” Mia asked herself, as she glanced up at the sky. “I know what that’s like,” she added, gazing indiscriminately at the street traffic as she leaned against the storefront window and popped another M&M in her mouth. She then said, matter-of-factly: “Before I was adopted—when I was little—I used to get hurt a lot.” There was a peculiar sadness in her eyes.

  The old veteran looked at her curiously, while another New York City bus roared by, exhaust billowing behind it, its tires inches from the curb.

  Then as if a starter’s pistol had just gone off, Mia stepped away and ran after it.

  Careful to remain outside the line of traffic, she sprinted on-and-off the sidewalk, dodging street vendors, pedestrians, a crowd of Japanese tourists—and even a police officer on a horse.

  Quite capable of moving quickly in his wheelchair when he had to, Charlie pumped the push ring as hard as he could and gave chase.

  Struggling to catch his breath, he caught up to her at the next corner.

  The bus had come to a stop at the curb, and she was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk beside it. She had an anxious look on her face, as if she was searching for someone.

  “Why did you take off like that?” he asked. He was red-faced and breathing hard. “You scared the crap out of me. I thought something happened. I didn’t know what to think.”

  Mia took one look at him, hurried into a nearby coffee shop and returned with cup of water. “Here, drink some of this.”

  Charlie took a few gulps, then crumpled the cup in his hand and tossed it away. “Now what’s going on with you?”

  “I thought I saw someone, that’s all.”

  “What do you mean, ‘saw someone’?”

  “On the bus, in the window. This isn’t the first time.”

  “What in God’s name are you talking about?” Charlie’s speech was labored as he huffed in exasperation.

  “She tried to protect them,” she said, in a tone a few octaves lower.

  “She? Who is she?” Charlie was becoming increasingly agitated.

  “Mia,” she responded blankly.

  If not for the longing in the young girl’s eyes, he would have lost his patience entirely. “I thought you said your name was Mia.”

  “I never said that.” She shook her head, then stepped behind him, and grabbed the chair’s handgrips. She began talking to the back of his head as she turned him around and pushed him back in the direction they had come from. “One moment they’re there, and the next they’re gone.”

  “Who and what are you talking about?” Charlie was facing forward, but talking to the young girl behind him.

  “I can’t say,” she muttered.

  “You said you tried to protect them. Who did you try to protect?”

  “I said that?” She brought the chair to a stop and looked around. “Oh yeah. I guess I did. We’ll talk more the next time I see you.”

  “Why next time? Tell me now. Who was it you were trying to protect?” Charlie shouted to be heard over the street traffic.

  Mia ignored him and resumed pushing the chair until they returned to the corner beside the storefront window. “You okay to get back home?” she asked.

  Charlie did his best to hide his concern. “Of course I’m okay. I got here by myself, didn’t I?”

  “Not exactly. I helped you cross the street, remember? So, maybe next time you could help me with…something.” Mia smiled, and then with a half-moon wave of her hand, said “bye,” and hurried off.

  For reasons Charlie wasn’t fully aware of, he was heartbroken to see her leave. He remained on that corner until sunset—when the city lights became unbearably bright and the cold December night made sitting idle in a wheelchair on a Midtown Manhattan street corner nearly intolerable. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Mia, her peculiar personality, her errant youth—and her brash innocence.

  He grabbed both push-ring and slowly pumped himself back home.

  As
Charlie approached the entrance to the Veterans’ Center, he tightened his grip and worked his way up the handicap incline. Hurrying past security and ignoring the nod of the receptionist at the front desk, he sped down the hall.

  “Take it easy, Charlie!” she shouted.

  Given how he made his way around the city on a daily basis, it was a wonder that Charlie had any strength left in his arms at all. His veins, like green tracer wire, lined his biceps and forearms in such a grotesque fashion they often looked as if they were going to pop.

  At seventy-two years of age, the strength in Charlie’s upper body was a reminder to him—and a signal to all—that he was still vital and a force to be reckoned with, whether it was in the jungles of East Asia or back home in the real world. Though his caseworker had time and again offered to requisition a motorized chair, Charlie refused to even consider it. ‘Use it or lose it’ would echo inside his head as he rebelled in words and actions against the muscular atrophy that accompanied his disability and advancing age.

  Once inside his apartment, he easily picked himself off the chair and vaulted onto the bed with the mere use of his arms. Since he was almost always sweating—regardless of the temperature outside—he grabbed a bag of baby wipes from the night table, dropped flat on his back, and used one to cool his forehead while continuing to wonder about Mia. Was she running toward or away from something when she chased after that city bus? But more puzzling was her sudden transformation—referring to herself in the third person—her face and persona altering from one personality to another.

  I am a lawyer, but I don’t practice law anymore. The purpose of the profession I dreamed of as a little boy has long since eluded me. Having spent my career and most of my life as a criminal defense lawyer—four and a half years as a Legal Aid lawyer in the South Bronx and another twenty-five in private practice—successfully advocating for the guilty to go free, while also powerless at times to protect the those who weren’t—I realized I could do more good and save more innocent lives another way. No bitterness. No second-guessing. I left behind a career I had aspired to and loved, and one that has defined me more than anything else ever has, or ever will.