Another Side Of Privacy: The Fig Tree Murders

Another Side of Privacy:

The Fig Tree Murders

By

Paul Wolfle

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Paul Wolfle on Smashwords

Another Side of Privacy:

The Fig Tree Murders

Copyright© 2012 by Paul Wolfle

Thank you for downloading this eBook. Your support and respect for the property of this author is greatly appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Adult Reading Material

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I hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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ANOTHER SIDE OF PRIVACY:

THE FIG TREE MURDERS

Sometimes the most often wasted attract the most balanced and sane. – Woody Guthrie

Chapter 1: A Questionable Plunge

Official reports suggested the victim, Vitorio Martinelli, 59, of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, died after falling from a ladder in his backyard. By all accounts he was pruning a fig tree next to his garage immediately before the fatal tumble occurred. Though publicly, the New York City Police Department, or NYPD, indicated there was no evidence that a crime had been committed, sources close to the case had their doubts about Martinelli’s alleged fall. If he did plummet from the ladder, it was probably not the cause of his death.

Though the circumstances surrounding the accident seemed rather suspicious, without credible evidence, there was little else the authorities could do. Martinelli was found laying face down, with several gashes on the side of his forehead, near the left eye. A ladder was lying nearby. Logic would have it that he fell and struck his head on the remnants of a standard size cement masonry block, 8x8x16-inches, which police located in the grass next to where the body was found. The scratches on Martinelli’s head looked like they could have been caused by the rough edges of those busted slabs. Other grayish bits and pieces, assumed to be from the small neatly stacked pile of blocks in the far corner of the yard, were strewn about the lawn.

But some law enforcement officials questioned whether a fall from an eight-foot ladder could have created enough force to cause such a lethal collision with the ground. Simply put, Martinelli was probably not high enough for the spill to have killed him, particularly since he was in good health. Other than a torn meniscus in his right knee, he had no other preexisting medical issues.

Due to municipal budget cuts and personnel reductions, as well as a sluggish economy, no further inquiry of the matter was planned by the police. The Medical Examiner’s office ultimately listed Vitorio Martinelli’s cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head and nothing else about a fall or a ladder. Once the Medical Examiner listed a non-incriminating cause of death on the certificate, the NYPD was required to close its case.

Frieda Koenig, the editor of headlineaccuracy.com, a growing online news service with a number of small field offices across the country, knew all about the ladder incident involving Martinelli. Headquartered in Manhattan, Koenig, 35, tall, blond, sophisticated and attractive, was initially alerted to the circumstances surrounding Martinelli’s death through a confidential contact she had at the NYPD. Details of the story were not yet made available to the rest of the media. As a result, Martinelli’s death flew under the radar of the insatiable journalists and ravenous paparazzi that normally cover this particular police blotter.

As news professionals go, Koenig had a reputation for being tenacious. When it came to the death of Vitorio Martinelli, though the authorities felt there was insufficient proof that a crime had been committed, she smelled a rat. She was also a big believer in hunches. That meant, in order to get at the real story behind Martinelli’s passing, some investigatory field work would be needed. Martinelli’s questionable plunge took place in Bensonhurst, just a 20 minute car ride down the Belt Parkway from Andy Stone. It was only natural that Koenig assigned the task to him.

Andy Stone, 33, a college-educated freelance web journalist, had been contributing original material as a part-time field reporter to headlineaccuracy.com for more than a year. Andy was as difficult as much as he was clever and definitely not the kind of person with whom others liked to tangle. His defiant nature often led him into trouble. Nevertheless, in spite of those qualities, he had an excellent working relationship with Frieda Koenig, his supervisor.

Muscular and tall with dark hair and blue eyes, Andy was mostly German and Italian with a bit of Irish and Norwegian thrown in for good measure. He shared an apartment on the beach, in Ocean Inlet, Long Island, with his wife, Kim, 32, a marketing entrepreneur and dark haired beauty. Ocean Inlet is located on the south shore of western Tricester County, near the Queens border.

Cyber journalism was Andy’s specialty. His work was mentioned in quite a few places online. Over time, readers had developed a high regard for his unique opinions. Though his chief interests were socio-political topics and music, Andy’s writing brought integrity to any website, no matter the subject. Consequently, Frieda Koenig was happy to have him onboard as a member of the staff.

While the details of Martinelli’s accident remained sketchy, Frieda Koenig’s police contact provided the names and addresses of potential witnesses, quietly copied from a classified departmental memo. Where should her investigation about such a tragic but questionable occurrence begin? Obviously, right where any seasoned private-eye or veteran newspaper editor on television would start, that is, at the scene of the alleged crime. She dialed up Andy for a video-chat, right away.

…Okay Frieda, let me get this straight…a guy is dead, there’s a questionable set of circumstances surrounding his death and the cops don’t think a crime was committed…but off the record they think a crime might have been committed.

You got it.

And this thing with Vitorio Martinelli, it happened six weeks ago.

That’s right.

Now explain to me what we’re gonna do.

Hold on, Andy…it’s not what ‘we’ but ‘you’ are gonna do….you are going to go to Bensonhurst in order to take a look at Vitorio Martinelli’s backyard. It’s not far from you, right?

That’s right. It’s just a quick ride down the Belt Parkway.

Great, that’s what I thought...I want you to go there and see what the place looks like… Martinelli was allegedly trimming a fig tree…get a picture of that tree, but be careful. If his death ever becomes an issue, we’ll already have a photo on hand…except right now, our dilemma is, how will you know what a fig tree looks like when you get to Martinelli’s house?

That’s not gonna be a problem…fig trees are a big deal with Italian people….I’m part Italian and I had a close relative, Uncle Patsy, who grew fig trees. They were his pride and joy. Plus, whenever I went over to his house, I watered those trees. ‘Do I know what a fig tree looks like?’ Oh man, are you kidding me? I could draw you a picture right now, blindfolded! Shall I give you the common name of a fig tree, ‘Ficus Carica’ or would you just like the genus, which is ‘Ficus.’

Andy, that’s fantastic. Go for it then. But I have to make something perfectly clear, because I don’t want to get you upset.

Whaddaya mean?

You do great work, but I have to insist that you refrain from publishing any articles about the Martinelli story until I give the go ahead on each and every one…you’ve been with us long enough to know that this Martinelli story, this is a little different…don’t forget, we have to avoid slander and libel and those goddamn privacy policies.

Oh no, don’t get me started on those things. I still can’t believe the federal government forces everyone over 21 to buy those friggin things.

You know Andy, in our business, maligning someone in an article is something to be conscious of at all times… but violating a person’s privacy policy is a different ballgame all together…something like that could land us in a lot of hot water. Those things carry hefty penalties and sometimes even criminal sentences...If we find out something about Martinelli’s death we have to make sure we don’t step on anybody’s toes when we divulge it.

I’m always wondering, ‘How in the hell did all this privacy shit come about?’

I dunno Andy, but let’s not get into politics…let’s just deal with what we’ve got. Privacy polices have been around for years and they’re not going away any time soon….it’s because there’s too much money involved…we have to avoid slander accusations as well as those dreaded policies. That’s why I’m not publishing anything about Martinelli yet. We need to get a handle on this thing before proceeding.

You have my word that I won’t publish anything about the Martinelli incident until you say it’s okay. Frieda, that’s a promise.

Fantastic! Then let’s go get a photo of that intriguing fig tree that Mr. Martinelli owned. He was supposedly pruning it in his back yard. I don’t know too much about the property other than it’s a single family home. I also don’t know if this guy had more than one fig tree, but if he did, get a picture of them all. I mean, how many could he have?

What about the ladder…you said he was on a ladder or something?

Yeah, that’s right. He was apparently standing on a ladder which I think was leaning up against his garage…I guess that’s where the fig tree is…get a shot of the ladder, too, if it’s still there.

I’ll go when no one is around, really early in the morning.

That’s up to you, but just be cautious. I don’t want to read some story about you online, ‘Man arrested on private property while taking pictures in Brooklyn’, or worse, ‘Man shot trespassing in Brooklyn’.

Yeah right, I don’t want you reading my obituary.

Chapter 2: A Fig Tree Is Missing

The next morning Andy headed off at 6:00 am for a quick trip to the Martinelli home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. The distance from Ocean Inlet was approximately 17 miles one way, going west on the Belt Parkway. The morning sun, already well above the horizon, provided plenty of bright light for outdoor photographs.

As Andy raced down the left lane of the parkway, he scrupulously itemized the facts of the story in his mind. It was like he was cramming for a test. Never being a person to do things half-assed, he was always thorough when it came to researching his articles. That trait was probably due to leftover baggage from his Catholic school upbringing which he frequently tried to forget.

At a glance, the specifics of Vitorio Martinelli’s demise seemed pretty innocuous. On August 17, a hot and muggy day, at approximately 7:30 am, while dressed in casual light brown pinstripe cotton/polyester pants and a thin white tank-top, stereotypically referred to as a wife-beater, is said to have gone out to prune his fig tree.

All appeared to be fairly normal. Being such an ethnic neighborhood, there were probably hundreds of people in the Bensonhurst vicinity who owned at least one fig tree. It appeared Martinelli was, as they say, on his own property with his own ladder when he died, not engaged in any type of unusual activity. Consequently, there was no general liability issue or Worker’s Compensation claim to pursue.

On the date of the accident, an ambulance and two NYPD patrol cars responded to the scene. Frieda’s police contact suggested there were potential witnesses, Jack Rubio and Derek Johnston. It sounded as if the two hadn’t actually seen Martinelli fall, or at least that’s what they told police.

The pair said they found Martinelli unconscious and sprawled out on the grass in his back yard, near a wooden ladder that was lying nearby. His widow, Lena Martinelli, 53, was in the house at the time. It was reported that she came outside to find Johnston and Rubio perched over her husband’s lifeless body. Distraught, while shrieking in Italian, Lena Martinelli ran inside and called her daughter on the phone. The married couple has two adult children who reside out of state. A neighbor across the street saw what was happening and called 911. The police ultimately dismissed the event as a tragic accident.

At present, while in transit to the deceased’s home, Andy reached the Mill Basin drawbridge on the Belt Parkway, where traffic slowed to a customary crawl, long enough to ponder Frieda’s words-of-warning about slander and privacy policies. Though Privacy Policies had become an American way of life, Andy hated them and their evil parent, Privacy Allocation, with a passion.

Privacy Allocation, or as it’s sometimes abbreviated, PA, started during the initial days of the post-911 Patriot Act. That’s when legislators in Washington seized full control of the nation’s affairs, united as well as individual. The feds grabbed unprecedented power and then turned it into a profitable exercise of corruption and greed. After that, privacy policies became bloated instruments of wealth for the high and mighty in the United States.

Since then, starting at the age of 21, every American citizen has been required to buy a privacy policy. Residents who don’t comply are often left to the ever-present throngs of insatiable paparazzi and ruthless rag journalists who are always creeping around in search of fresh quarry. This new breed of merciless, unremitting media is a contemporary phenomenon, born after the rise of privacy policies.

Uniquely American, privacy policies, modeled after domestic healthcare plans, offer a diversity of premium strategies. These assorted Privacy Allocation products permit different degrees of digital penetration into the private data of all U.S. citizens.

At the heart of the privacy policy scheme is one basic principle: the more a subscriber spends, the higher the insulation from public scrutiny. And of course, no more than a small well-connected crowd of brokers is licensed to negotiate the sale of these policies, owing to the colossal commissions involved. Are they merely enforcement pay-offs from the government? Perhaps yes.

Only society’s uber-elite, like rock stars, professional athletes, Wall Street executives, famous politicians and Internet legends, have the ability to keep their personal information completely out of sight. They are the only ones who can afford the finest government-issued privacy policies, thereby ensuring the greatest padding against prying and phishing.

Run of the mill folks cannot buy costlier privacy policies; they live under a constant menace from the ever invasive, public eye, where gangs of coldblooded journalists wait with baited breath to swoop in for their feeding.

In this day and age, every bit of a person’s personal information is collected, starting from birth. All vital statistics