Hounded by David Rosenfelt

helpful.”
    “I’m on it.”
    Sam leaves, and I briefly ponder the implications of this. Nothing he gets me is admissible in court, because his hacking efforts are not legal. However, once I know what is there, I can subpoena the same records through proper channels, and then it becomes admissible.
    However, this may or may not be true with the GPS records. The fact of the matter is that knowing that Diaz’s phone was somewhere is not proof that Diaz was there. Someone else could have had his phone; I have no way to demonstrate otherwise. It would be up to the judge to determine if the jury can hear the information, and it’s probably a coin flip one way or the other what the decision would be.
    But whether or not it can be used in court, the investigative value could be great, and we will try to take every advantage of it. If Danny Diaz knew his killers, and I increasingly believe that he did, then this may lead us to them.
    But for now, all I can do is focus on those who knew Danny Diaz. To that end, I head down to Arturo’s Body Shop on Market Street in Paterson. It’s where Danny worked, alongside the man Laurie has determined was his best friend, Louis Cimino.
    I had called ahead, and Cimino seemed quite willing to talk to me. That was something of a surprise, since a close friend of the victim might generally be disinclined to help the person defending the accused killer. That didn’t mean Cimino was likely to try and help me, but talking was all I cared about at the moment.
    Often it takes many probing questions to draw people out, and then there are those like Louis Cimino. I can’t finish a question before he grabs on to it and commences a soliloquy.
    “Me and Danny, we were buddies, you know? I still look over at his station every day, and I can’t believe he’s not there. Like I think any second he’ll show up with a cup of coffee, like nothin’ happened.”
    “In the weeks before he died, was he acting—”
    Cimino nods vigorously as if he knows where I’m going, even though I could have finished the question with “acting in Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare in the Park?”
    “Weird, yeah,” he says. “Really weird. It wasn’t Danny at all; I told him he was like an alien. Juanita not being there, that was the problem. I wanted to tell him, ‘you’re better off, man,’ but he wouldn’t have listened.”
    “Better off?”
    “Yeah, she was fooling around, almost from the time they got married. He never had no idea, and I wasn’t gonna tell him. He’d have punched me out.”
    “Who was she fooling around with?”
    He shrugs. “No one special; one-night deals, you know? But she didn’t really want to be married, and she didn’t want no kid. Never did; she shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. And I guess she finally couldn’t take it no more. She told Danny she couldn’t breathe. What kind of bullshit is that? Can’t breathe? You open your mouth and you breathe. Give me a break.”
    “So her leaving made him act weird?”
    “At first. He kept talking about wanting her back, hoping she’d come back. But then one day, maybe two weeks before he died, not another word out of him. I mean nothing; he just went cold, you know? Like he was scared of something. Missed two days of work; Danny never missed work.”
    “And you don’t know why?” I asked.
    “Nah, he wouldn’t talk about it. And then all of a sudden he was dead, you know? Used to work right over there, and now he’s dead. I still can’t believe it.”
    “Who do you think killed him?”
    “I don’t know, but if I find out, that guy is gonna be in deep shit. I just want five minutes in a room with him.”
    I decide to ask the question straight out, in order to determine if I might want to call him as a witness. “You think it was Pete Stanton, the cop they arrested?”
    Cimino shakes his head. “No chance. That cop was good to them, and Danny used to tell me how much he loved the kid. You don’t love a