Hostile Witness (14 page)

“Tough shift?”

“Up all night and then Slocum drags me in for this,” said the detective.

“Want me to get you some coffee?” I asked sweetly.

“No, just hurry it up, all right?”

I continued going through the papers, all the time keeping an eye on Detective Griffin as he kept a tired eye on me. He blinked a couple of times and then opened his eyes wide. His neck again began to droop and slowly his head fell off to the side until his cheek rested on his shoulder.

Out of the love chest I quickly grabbed one of the boar’s head casino chips and one of the condoms for good measure, stuffing both into my inside suit pocket. Then I took hold of the pictures and shuffled back to the photograph of the long pale woman. It wasn’t only the body that I recognized. On her arm, the same arm that was reaching back to get a solid hold on Zack Bissonette’s testicles, were two thick gold bracelets, stamped with runes and encrusted with diamonds. I considered taking that picture, too, taking it to protect her, but thought I might need it in Slocum’s possession if things turned out like I now suspected they might.

The photographs were back in the box and I was looking through one of the file folders when Detective Griffin snapped awake with a gasp. He blinked at me and grunted and turned back again to his paper.

“Hey,” he said after a few moments. “Can you believe this new stuff about Roseanne? Jesus. Listen to this.”

I listened. I figured I owed him that.

“MAYBE I’M NOT A LAWYER,”
said Dr. Louis Saltz. “But it seems to me that until we find that crooked accountant, Stocker, we can’t really know the value of our case.” Saltz was a tall, gangly man with a long face and hairy arms who had a way of seeming to have figured out everything, which I guess is good in a doctor but which just then I was finding annoying.

“That’s true to a point,” I said. “Stocker collated the figures and made the projections that we claim were fraudulent. If we could put him on the stand and if he testified that the defendants told him to cook the books, we’d win for sure. We’d get punitive damages, too.”

“Exactly,” said Saltz, with a rich smile directed around the room. “We’d wipe the bastards out.”

We were in the conference room shared by all of Vimhoff’s tenants, the same ratty little place in which I had deposed Mrs. Osbourne and ruined Winston Osbourne’s life. In the room was a narrow formica table and walls of cheap particleboard bookshelves stocked with accounting journals and tax codes and sets of law books now out of date. Ellie used to spend hours each week updating our sets from West Publishing, from Collier, from BNA, replacing the pocket parts, slipping in the new pages, lining up the most recent volumes, making sure our
Shepard’s Citations
were absolutely current. But after Guthrie left and invoices went unpaid, one by one our contracts were cancelled and
the updates stopped coming. A legal library falls out of date with a startling quickness. The fear of having our crucial arguments trumped by a recent case not in our now dated law books sent us scurrying to the Bar Association library, where for five dollars a day we could wander like ghosts around the association’s volumes with the rest of those second-rate lawyers too poor to own their own books. We could have sold what books we had for a small amount, but we kept them out of vanity—to the untrained eye these volumes gave the conference room a lawyerly sheen. Of course, when we met with other lawyers we always arranged to meet in their offices because to another lawyer, familiar with the volumes, our incomplete sets proclaimed with utter clarity our financial despair. But it wasn’t other lawyers I was meeting with that afternoon, it was Saltz and five of his fellow limited partners, there to discuss the settlement offer bestowed upon us by the good graces of William Prescott III.

“The problem, Lou,” I said, “is that we aren’t going to find Stocker before the trial. We’re not the only ones looking for him, there’s also the FBI and the IRS. The guy skipped town with other people’s money and his only goal in life now is not to be found.”

I looked at Saltz and then turned my gaze on the other men in the meeting. They were all white, middle-aged guys with so much money they couldn’t keep from throwing it away, which was exactly the state to which I aspired. Along with Saltz were another doctor, an owner of a plumbing supply company, a jewelry seller named Lefkowitz, and two partners in some sort of import/export thing that I never quite could figure out. There were two other plaintiffs who couldn’t make the meeting but had given their proxies to Saltz. I was trying to convince them all to accept Prescott’s settlement offer. Prescott had told me the check was already cut. If my plaintiffs said yes that afternoon, I could have the forty thou in our account by Tuesday.

“And even if we find Stocker,” I continued, hammering home my point, “we don’t know what he’ll say. He could bury us.”

“No way,” said Saltz. “The guy’s crooked as a corkscrew.”

“Can’t we just say how dishonest their accountant was?” asked Benny Lefkowitz, the jeweler. “Isn’t that enough to prove they lied on their projections?”

“What he did in other situations doesn’t prove he cooked the books here,” I said. “The judge will never let the jury hear it.”

“Let’s cut through the bullshit,” said Leon Costello, one of the import/export guys. He was a fat, well-dressed man with some sort of dragon ring on his left pinky. “What are you thinking here, Victor? I mean, with your percentage you got the most at stake, right? What do you say we do?”

“My gut says jump at it,” I said. “If we go to trial now, we’ll probably lose. When they were only offering five grand I was ready to roll the dice. But now they’ve put some real money on the table.”

“If their position is so strong, why offer anything?” asked Lefkowitz.

“It’s the way big firms work,” I said. “They bill the hell out of a case until it gets near to trial and then they settle. That way they suck out all the money they can without ever risking a loss.”

“I don’t think we can make this decision until we find Stocker,” said Saltz. “Or at least give it one more shot. What’s to lose? If we don’t find him by the trial we’ll just take the money.”

“If we don’t agree quickly, Lou,” I said, “they’re going to pull the offer.”

“What was that?” said the other doctor, a podiatrist.

“They are offering us this amount so they don’t have to spend the money to prepare for trial,” I explained. “If they have to spend that money, then they might decide to screw
the offer and try the thing. And if they do, I believe they’re going to beat us.”

“That’s not fair,” said the podiatrist, a stricken look on his face. “They offer us a hundred and twenty thousand, that’s what we should get.”

“The only way to make sure we get it is to agree to the settlement now.”

“How much time do you think we have?” asked Lefkowitz.

“Not much, a few days, maybe a week. But they could pull the offer at any time.”

“All right,” said Costello. “I heard enough.”

“Maybe we should talk a bit privately, without you, Victor,” said Saltz. “Is that all right?”

“Sure,” I said, standing. “You’re the clients.”

I stood in the hallway outside the room and again mentally spent the settlement money. With the fifteen-thousand-dollar retainer for the Chester Concannon case we were almost current with our bills and had paid Ellie what we owed her. We had even gotten Vimhoff off our backs by paying rent. My share of the forty thousand would be enough to start getting my financial life in order, to almost bring me current on my student loans, to even start paying back my father. Down the line there would be more money from CUP for my defense of Concannon, not to mention the fees I would make on the Valley Hunt Estates deal with the Bishop brothers, from whom that very day I had accepted the outside counsel spot, with enough work promised to keep Derringer and Carl going for half a year. Oh man, yes, things were looking up.

I had played the meeting perfectly, I thought. Saltz was my biggest problem, seeking as he was the big hit, but I figured the others would each take the ten thousand and run. As soon as I told them of the offer, I knew it was as if the money was already in their pockets. Then, at the end of the meeting, I raised the possibility of the offer being
withdrawn, as if a pickpocket were reaching into their wallets and pulling out ten one-thousand dollar bills. These guys didn’t build their fortunes by giving back ten grand here and there. At last I was starting to learn the secrets of the rich: whenever you have a chance for money grab it, quickly, clutch it to your chest as if it were life itself. That’s how the rich got rich and that’s how I would get rich too. Their signed releases were my first step. I had already instructed Ellie to prepare the documents so as to waste as little time as possible and they were now in the conference room, in a maroon folder, sitting in the middle of the table like a glorious centerpiece.

It was Saltz who came out to get me.

“We’ve reached a consensus,” said Saltz when I was seated back at the table.

“We’re gonna accept the offer,” said Costello.

“Terrific,” I said, reaching for the file with the releases.

“But not just yet,” said Costello.

“We want you to try one more time to find Stocker,” said Saltz.

“There’s a private investigator I use,” said Lefkowitz. “The diamond business is full of swindlers and you get taken now and then no matter how careful you are. This guy always comes through for me.”

“We’re going to give this guy three weeks to find that accountant son of a bitch,” said Costello.

“We’ll cover his cost,” said Saltz. “We think the offer will still be good in three weeks.”

“And if it’s not, they can go to hell,” said Costello. “We don’t like being pressured.”

“If he comes up empty,” said Saltz, “we’ll take the hundred and twenty grand. But if he finds him, we’ll nail those bastards to a cross.”

“Frankly, Victor,” said Costello. “We’re all in agreement. Ten thousand dollars plus or minus is not going to change our lives. But these guys took us for a ride and now
if we can make them pay big time, it’s worth the risk. This goes way beyond money.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” said Saltz. “And we know you’ll want us to stick to our principles.”

“Do you have a piece of paper for me?” said Lefkowitz. I reached into the file and took out one of the unsigned releases. He turned it over and scribbled on the back. “This is the name of my guy. I’ll call him tonight and set up a meeting for you tomorrow. Tomorrow’s Friday, so sometime early is better. About ten? Fine. He’ll be here at ten.”

He slid the release back to me. I read the name out loud. “Morris Kapustin? What kind of private eye has a name like Morris Kapustin?”

“He’s tougher than he sounds,” said Lefkowitz. “Morris is something special.”

“Give him the three weeks,” said Costello. “If he craps out then take the money, quick. We don’t need another meeting.”

“Is that all right?” asked Saltz.

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” I said.

“That a boy,” said Saltz.

“I’m an easy guy to get along with,” said Costello. “But I hate being taken and those bastards took me.”

“You and Morris will get them,” said Lefkowitz.

“That’s right,” said Costello. “Pound a stake through their fucking hearts.”

I WAS WALKING SALTZ
through our small reception area, feeling almost desperate about having to wait for my cut of the settlement, when I saw Veronica sitting on the Naugahyde couch by the door. She was wearing her short black dress with dark stockings and black high heels. Her legs were crossed in a way that was hard not to notice. When Saltz saw her he stopped walking and stared.

“Veronica,” I said. “This is a surprise.”

“Your receptionist told me I could wait here. Is she always so unpleasant?”

“Unpleasantness is Rita’s special talent,” I said. “Give me a minute.”

I dragged Saltz out of the office. He didn’t seem to want to talk about the case anymore. “Is she a friend of yours?”

“A client of sorts. She has a landlord problem.”

“If she needs a doctor,” said Saltz, “give her my name.”

“She’s a little young for a cardiologist,” I said.

“I’m versatile,” said Saltz. He leaned backwards to peer through the windowed door. From where we were standing we could only see her long stockinged legs. “Besides,” he said, tapping me on the chest, “that girl’s a walking heart attack.”

“So, Veronica,” I said when I came back into the office. “Another critter turn up dead on your doorstep?”

She was fiddling around in her little black purse. “I was
just in your part of town and I thought we could have a drink together.”

“I have too much work.”

“When can you get free?” she asked.

“December.”

She placed her feet beneath her and stood up gracefully. “I’m supposed to meet Jimmy for dinner tonight at eight. Let’s have a drink beforehand.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I have too much work. There’s the trial and…”

She placed her hand on my arm. “I have two hours free. It’s so sad when I am forced to drink alone.”

“Then don’t drink. Go to a bookstore. Catch a movie.”

“But it’s happy hour, Victor.”

“I really can’t.”

“Of course you can. Didn’t you have fun last night?”

“Yes,” I said, and I did.

Despite the overt threat of that limousine parked on Church Street, I had let Veronica take me to the Society Hill Bar and Grill, where we drank cocktails and listened to the bearded piano player and talked about nothing and laughed and talked some more and were both ever so clever. There was something about Veronica, a certain carelessness maybe, that brought forth a depraved charm I didn’t know existed within me, and I liked it. I had always seen myself as a social cluck, dull witted, slow, my conversation frozen with indecision during blind dates or cocktail parties. But sitting at the bar with Veronica, being raked with the gazes of the other men there, all wondering what a jerk like me was doing with someone like her, feeding off her sweet perverseness, my self-confidence blossomed. I was something more than I had ever been. I told stories and she laughed. I kept up my end of a sparkling conversation. I was Henry James, I was James Bond, I was a raconteur.

“Do you have another engagement this evening?” she
asked. “A date?” Her pretty lips twisted into a smirk as she stood before me.

“No,” I said. “That’s not it.”

“Well then,” she said. “Let’s go. Carolina’s is just up the street.”

I hesitated for a moment. I was weakening and she could see it. She moved a step closer and lifted her face up to mine and then the phone rang.

I pulled away, turned my back on her, and answered it. “Derringer and Carl.”

“What are you doing asking questions about a corpse?” said the familiar, high barking voice on the phone. “You’re forgetting your role.”

“Screw you,” I said to Chuckie Lamb, suddenly defensive about my visit to Slocum and examination of the murder evidence, all contrary to my client’s firm instructions. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Your job is not to sneak into the DA’s office and plot. Your job is to sit quietly and shut up. That’s what they’re paying you to do.”

“I know what my job is,” I said. “What I don’t know is why you are so pissed off that I’m doing it. Although I have my suspicions.”

“Oh, you’re a brain all right, Vic,” he said. “You keep looking and you might find something you don’t want to find, something that could get you hurt.”

“So that’s the way it is,” I said. “What this call is all about.” I tried to sound hard but I could feel the flutter of fear rise along my spine. I had never been threatened before, not like that, not by someone like Chuckie Lamb, who I had no doubt could turn murderous if he wanted to, who maybe already had.

“I just think you should know exactly what you’re getting into, Vic.”

“You’re doing me a public service, is that it?”

“Now you got it.”

“Give me one reason I should listen to you and be afraid.”

“I’ll give you a quarter of a million reasons, you small-time loser.”

I turned around suddenly. Veronica was standing by the far wall, looking at a print of some flowers, but it wasn’t a very interesting print. Vimhoff had bought it for fifteen bucks, framed, and I doubted if it grabbed all of Veronica’s attention. Did she know who I was talking to? I didn’t want her to know, didn’t want her to have anything to do with my role in this case. I lowered my voice. I knew there was a $250,000 discrepancy between the funds claimed to be given to Concannon by Ruffing and the funds apparently received by CUP, though until that moment I hadn’t focused on it. But Chuckie had made a slip, had inadvertently let me know that it was important.

“So where are they?” I asked, still looking at the pretty curve of Veronica’s back. “All those reasons.”

“Lay off and you’ll live longer,” said Chuckie Lamb.

“So it is a threat, isn’t it?” My hand started to shake and I couldn’t stop it. I grabbed the receiver with the other hand. That helped, but not much. “It’s been a pleasure, but I can’t talk anymore now,” I said. “There’s someone here.”

“Someone I might know?”

“None of your business.”

“Someone involved with the case?”

“Not really.”

“Long legs, thin hips, the face of a spoiled child?”

Just that instant Veronica turned around and looked at me. “Yes, actually,” I said. “That’s it exactly.”

“Then you are as good as wasted already,” he said.

“Anything interesting?” asked Veronica after Chuckie had hung up and I held the telephone in a still shaking hand.

“No,” I said, putting the phone down slowly. “It was nothing. Just another debt collector.”

“Oh, the terrible strain,” she said. “I can see it on you. You simply must come with me for a drink. To calm your nerves.” It was not a question, it was a statement of fact, and before I could convince myself that I really ought to refuse she said, “Besides, Jimmy wants you to join us for dinner and he insisted I don’t accept no for an answer.”

Carolina’s is one of those places where suits congregate after office hours to pretend their lives are worthy of a beer commercial. There’s a restaurant that serves squab and monkfish and asparagus bundles tied with a yellow silk ribbon, but the real action is off to the side, where women with flat bellies go to have their drinks bought for them by Italian suits standing three layers deep at the bar. Guthrie and I used to go to Carolina’s when we were still partners and still friends and we’d laugh at the scene, even as we scanned for a pair of willing eyes. Guthrie is a handsome dog, broad and swarthy, and he’d usually end up leaning over something comely, laying on his saccharine charm as I clutched my beer, my back against the wall, watching. If there was a friend he’d call me over, but that never worked because after Guthrie had his choice the friend was generally not much worth it or, if she was, she’d have her eye on Guthrie. I always associated Carolina’s with failure, so I hated everything about the place, the too expensive drinks, the blank white walls, the forced expressions of self-satisfaction that were worn there like a uniform. But I must admit, it felt different to be there with a beautiful woman who laughed at my jokes and leaned close as she whispered her confidences.

“My jaw is too heavy,” she said, rubbing the back of her fingers along her jawbone. “It’s like the jaw of a wrestler.”

“You’re being silly,” I said. “Do you want another drink?”

“Of course. No, it’s not silly. I have a jaw like that giant wrestler, what was his name, Alex or something.”

I waved for the bartender. “Andre the Giant?”

“Yes. I have a jaw like his.”

“No you don’t. Your jaw is beautiful.”

“You’re sweet to lie for me. Here, feel it.” She took my hand and placed my palm upon her jawline. Her hand was cool and dry, her cheek smooth. My thumb rested in the hollow beneath her chin. She held my hand there for moment. “That’s why the modeling didn’t work. That and my legs.”

“Now you’re being very silly. Another Sea Breeze and Absolut martini,” I said to the bartender, who nodded at me while he stared at Veronica.

“We have to go soon,” she said. “After this drink. We’re meeting them at a place on Tenth Street. A private room. It’s all very serious.”

“What does Jimmy want to see me for?”

“Chet will be there,” she said. “Chet’s always there. And I think your friend Prescott.”

“And Chuckie too, I assume.”

“No, not Chuckie. He’s off visiting his mother.”

“His mother, huh? He doesn’t seem the type.”

“Oh, he’s always off visiting his mother. But I think they want to talk about the trial anyway and, as far as the trial goes, Chuckie’s out of the loop.” Now that was interesting. So Chuckie wasn’t threatening me on behalf of Chester or the councilman. He wasn’t authorized to make the call, he was freelancing, threatening me only on behalf of Chuckie.

“How can you drink that?” she said, pointing to the bright purple Sea Breeze in the highball glass the bartender placed in front of me.

“It tastes like summer. Besides, if I started drinking martinis I’d collapse before I could step out of this place.”

“Cheers,” she said, lifting her clear martini glass and
downing a swallow. “Some nights I need a start on the champagne.”

“Victor Carl, Victor Carl,” said a loud nasal voice that I recognized immediately. “Looking very sharp indeed.” I felt something in the pit of my stomach the moment I heard that voice. Its owner was a tall, handsome man with short black hair, greased and combed straight back. Athletic shoulders filled his olive-green suit. He had a smartass smile and a bright yellow tie and he slapped me hard on the back as if I were a fraternity buddy.

“Guthrie, you bastard,” I said to my ex-partner as flatly as I could manage.

“Looking good, Vic,” he said. I really didn’t like being called Vic and I especially didn’t like being called Vic by him. “First I see you popping up on the nightly news and now in Carolina’s with the most beautiful woman in Philadelphia.” He turned his smartass smile on Veronica. “You’re coming up in the world, I must say.”

“I’m associating with a better class of people now,” I said, looking at him very carefully, trying to see the violence Lauren said was in him.

“Since Vic has forgotten his manners,” he said to Veronica, “let me introduce myself. I’m Guthrie. Samuel Guthrie.”

“And I’m interested,” said Veronica, ignoring his outstretched hand. “Not interested.”

“Oooh. Very tart.”

“Watch it,” I said.

“No offense meant. How’s business, Vic? You busy?”

“Busy as hell,” I said. For some reason lawyers always ask each other if they are busy and the response is always that they are busy as hell, even if they’re not. “Funny, things seemed to pick up just after you left.”

“Well, that’s grand,” he said. “I told you my leaving was the best for all of us. How’s Lizzie? That biological clock of hers still ticking?”

“Beth’s just fine, she’s a champ,” I said, suddenly angry. “By the way, we ran into your wife the night before last at the Art Museum.”

The smartass smile fled like a roach when the kitchen light is switched on. It cheered me to see it disappear. “I couldn’t make it,” he said. “I’ve been mondo busy at Blaine, Cox. And it’s not just the quantity of the work that’s so amazing, Vic, it’s also the quality.”

“She said you were separated,” I went on, not taking the seque he offered me about his new firm, preferring to let him squirm.

“What did she do? Sit you down and tell you all her problems? Be sure to charge her the two hundred bucks. Every shrink in the city already has.”

“She seemed pretty happy to my untrained eye,” I said.

“It’s a mask. Just the other day she said she pined for me.”

“So you’re getting back together then?” I asked.

“When I’m ready. I think I’ll let her hang for a bit. I’m enjoying being on my own again.” He gave Veronica a patented Guthrie smile, all confidence and innuendo, but this night it seemed a bit wan. “Listen, Vic, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Can we get together sometime?”

“For you I’m booked until the millennium.”

“I’ll have Carolyn get in touch with Ellie and set something up.”

“Oh, the anticipation,” I said slowly.

“It’ll be worth your while.” He turned back to Veronica and reached into his inside pocket. “Let me give you my card. If you need anything, a will, lunch, anything, give me a call. My home number’s on the back.”

“I’m sorry Mr.…” she glanced at the card. “Whatever. But I don’t need any more insurance.”

“I don’t sell insurance.”

“Funny, you strike me as someone who would sell insurance.” She ripped his card in half and let the pieces drop to the floor.

“My man Victor,” he said, shaking his head. “We really need to talk.”

“A friend of yours?” asked Veronica after he had left.

“He used to be, before he deserted us for a big firm paying him lots of money. Stole our best files, too.”

“You’re better off without him. He’s a cocky little bastard.”

“I used to think he was charming.”

“He still does,” she said. “But he’s torn up about his wife.”

“It seemed like he was taking it pretty well.”

“It was in his eyes. I read eyes, you know.”

“So you told me.”

“His eyes were very sad, very ugly. He’s desperate for her.”

“For a desperate guy he was coming on to you all right,” I said.