Hostile Witness (32 page)

JOSIAH BLAINE WAS A
shriveled old scoundrel who huddled before his rolltop desk late into the night in his second-floor law office two blocks away from the courts in City Hall. I’m speaking now of a different time, when the law was a less pervasive thing and a ten-thousand-dollar case was as big as they came. Josiah Blaine practiced law at the turn of the century, representing envelope makers and hat blockers, collections mostly, first the dunning letters and then the confessions of judgment, attachments of the bank accounts, foreclosures, all for fifty or a hundred dollars, plus interest, plus costs. He owned a building at 6th and Green in the old Jewish section and once a month, on the first of the month exactly, except on Saturdays when it was impossible to get the Jews to pay him because they couldn’t touch money on Shabbos, an excuse to get away with an extra day he would have told you if you asked him or even if you hadn’t, he would roam the hallways, bent at the waist, banging on the doors and shouting at Mr. Pearlstein and Mrs. Himmelfarb and Mr. Carlkovsky, my great-grandfather Carlkovsky, to come up with the rent or face eviction the very next day. His wanderings through the hall were in the early mornings, too early for his tenants to escape his dreaded monthly knock on the door. And true to his word, those who were late would find the men in their apartments hauling out the mattresses, rolling up the rugs, tossing pots out the
window to the street, where they clanged to great effect, clearing the place for a new extended family that had come up with the deposit and first month’s rent.

When Josiah Blaine grew too arthritic to march through the hallways of his slum on Green Street, he sponsored Everett Cox to the bar so he would have someone to collect his rents on the first of the month and to file his confessions of judgment with the court. When Everett Cox, incapacitated by great quantities of alcohol, found himself unable to rise early enough to effectively collect the rents, he hired Samuel Amber as a clerk to do it for him, promising to study him in the law, a promise he was unable to fulfill because of the great quantities of alcohol. But Amber studied on his own and it was finally Josiah Blaine, now over eighty and rapidly losing his mind, who sponsored him before the bar. It was this Amber, of the Bryn Mawr Ambers, though in those early days they were not then of elegant Bryn Mawr but of Fishtown, it was Amber, Lauren Amber Guthrie’s great-grandfather Amber, who began to add some semblance of modernity to the office’s practice of law. He hired clerks to do the menial labor, he bought drinks for fellow lawyers in the bars surrounding City Hall, he obtained a position with the city from which he was able, for a small percentage to the city solicitor, to shuttle a nice piece of the city’s legal work to the firm. Everett Cox insisted that the firm hire his son, Everett Jr., who embezzled city funds, a crime that it cost a considerable amount for Amber to buy his firm out of, but there was now enough work for more clerks and more lawyers and eventually more partners. By the time Josiah Blaine died, mad as a hatter, threatening his nurses with eviction, the offices had moved to the Fidelity Building, a corner suite, and there were eight names on the door.

In the firm’s offices now there was a painting, on the frame of which a brass nameplate read
JOSIAH BLAINE
,
OUNDER
. The face in the painting was noble, blue eyed, a ferocious moustache like the elder Holmes, a fine head of hair. It was a face of solidity, of propriety, a founder’s face, but it was not the face of Josiah Blaine. Lauren Amber had told me the truth one late night as we lay together in my bed. Her great-grandfather had found the painting among the bric-a-brac of an estate he was administering and thought it projected the proper image.

On an afternoon when our trial was recessed due to a pressing engagement Judge Gimbel had with his dentist, I was sitting in a tapestried wing chair directly under that very painting of Josiah Blaine. The offices of Blaine, Cox, Amber and Cox were not in One Liberty Place but in one of the older, less obtrusive buildings in the city. Blaine, Cox was one of Philadelphia’s older, less obtrusive law firms, with well-monied clients and estate lawyers managing the wealth of the city’s grandest grandes dames. The firm’s two hundred lawyers practiced respectfully, discreet litigation, sensible corporate work. The bankruptcy department was exiled to a lower floor so as not to make the corporate types nervous. There was something so solid in the dark wood paneling, something so white-shoed and blue-blooded, something so foreign to me that I felt as if the fake Josiah Blaine in the painting above my head was staring down at me with those cold blue eyes, demanding my monthly rent, threatening me with eviction if I didn’t come through.

“Mr. Guthrie will see you now, Mr. Carl,” said the receptionist. “He’s sending his secretary up to get you.”

That was the way they did it in the big firms, they sent emissaries for the visitors to summon them into the meetings. I didn’t like being summoned, but Guthrie had said he wanted to meet and I had some questions to ask my dear former partner, a cuckold prone to violent rages, questions about his wife, from whom he had separated, and about a man with whom she was cheating while they were still
together, a man who now was dead. I was out to find a murderer, so with the afternoon free I had told Ellie to set up the meeting and she had.

When the emissary from on high came I recognized her.

“Hello, Carolyn,” I said. She was a tall African-American, pretty, competent, and an awesome typist. I knew about the typing because she had been our secretary before Guthrie brought her to Blaine, Cox, along with the files he stole.

“It’s good to see you, Mr. Carl,” she said as she began to lead me through the wide hallways of her new firm.

“How are they treating you here?”

“They pay us for overtime.”

“Terrific.”

“And we work plenty of overtime.”

I followed Carolyn through winding hallways of wood and secretaries, remarkably busy for seven in the evening. When Carolyn worked for us she was always out the door at 4:58 on the nose. “I have to catch the train,” she’d say, “or there’s nothing else to get me home at a reasonable hour.” Now, getting paid for overtime, she seemed to have no trouble catching the later West Trenton Local. It’s funny what a little thing like time-and-a-half will do to a train schedule.

“Guthrie, you bastard,” I said after Carolyn had led me into his office.

“You look like crap,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Hey, what are friends for? Sit down, Vic. So this is your first time in my new digs, right? What do you think?”

What I thought was that this was everything I had ever wanted and I resented the hell out of him for it. The big office, the leather couch, the burnished desk, the window overlooking City Hall, the freshly painted walls and fancy phone and computer on his desk for his e-mail. I
recognized the painting behind his chair. I pointed at it and said, “Wasn’t that in our offices?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Excuse me a moment while I call the police. You must have stolen it along with the files.”

He winked. “I’ll messenger it over tomorrow if you want.”

“I want. Along with the files.”

“If only I could, Vic. Truthfully, they’ve been more headache than anything else. I’d love to dump them. But the clients all wanted to stick with me. Hell, there’s more than enough work here to keep me busy.”

“What about the
Saltz
case?”

“I asked Lou what he wanted to do and he said he thought I was a prick for leaving and to let you have it.”

“He said that?”

“What did I care, it was a dog. But I heard you got a settlement anyway. You guys ever find that accountant?”

“No.”

“And a settlement even so. I should get a part of it, don’t you think? After all, I brought it in. A referral fee?”

“Sue me.”

“I don’t sue friends, Vic.”

“No, you just screw them in the ass.”

“Still sore, huh?”

“What gives you that idea?” I asked while looking out the window.

“Maybe I can make it up to you?”

“I never figured you for a suicide, Guthrie.”

“So hostile, Vic? Have you considered therapy?”

“I’d rather buy a gun.”

“It was only business. I understand Lizzie is finally hooking up with Community Legal Services.”

Word traveled fast, especially when the word was bad and it was about me. I didn’t want to go into the whole sorry mess, especially not with Guthrie. “It’s a consentual
thing,” I explained. “I’ve been doing more criminal and investment work than she felt comfortable with. When she found they had an opening she decided she would take it.”

“That’s terrific for her,” said Guthrie. “It’s where Lizzie belonged all along. And it makes what I wanted to meet with you about easier for everyone. The reason I wanted to get together is that Tom Bismark was asking about you. You know Tom? The managing partner here?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, though I did. Not personally, the Tom Bismarks of the city didn’t waste their time with second-raters like me, but I had seen him in one of the bars with Jimmy. He had been out with his wife, cheating on his mistress, or so Jimmy had said.

“Tom caught you on the news with this trial of yours, the Jimmy Moore case. How did you get that, anyway?”

“They scoured the city for the most desperate shyster they could find and my name naturally came up.”

“No, really.”

I shrugged. I didn’t want him to know that what I had said was the absolute truth.

“Well, he saw you on the news and asked me about you. It seems they’re trying to build up their white-collar crime department here and are looking for some laterals with trial experience. I told Tom you’d be terrific.”

“You said that? Why?”

“’Cause you’re a friend, a buddy.”

“Skip it.”

“It’s the truth, Vic, nothing but. I gave him a glowing report and he wants to talk to you about joining the firm.”

“This firm?”

“Of course. After the trial.”

“Why would this firm be interested in me?”

“Frankly, I don’t know, Vic. I thought they’d have more sense. But you’re in a high-profile case, I lied about your ability, things are just breaking right. Don’t let this opportunity slip through your fingers.”

“I’m doing pretty well by myself right now,” I said. “It wouldn’t be so easy to just up and join here. Leases and stuff.”

“Hey, Vic. No pressure. Forget it if you want.” He leaned back at his desk and smiled at me. “But I know you. You’re just like me. This is something you’ve always wanted, and when it’s offered to you you’re going to jump for it. Like a show dog. Look at this office, look at the paneling on the lobby walls, paneling an inch thick. Look at what you can be a part of. You’re just like me, Vic. You want it. Set up a meeting with Tom after the trial.”

God, how I had hated Guthrie. I had hated his clothes and his shoes and his handsome twisted face and his supercilious manner and his slicked hair and his ability to absorb insults as if they were compliments. The idea of ever again becoming his partner was unthinkable, but now here I was about to be offered a job at his new firm, the job of my dreams. When he said it was something I had always wanted he was right. When he said I would jump at it he was right again. And when he said I was just like him I hated the very idea of it, but I guess, dammit, he was right about that too. Beth could have convinced me otherwise, maybe, but she had gone off to serve the poor and so I was left with becoming Guthrie. God help me.

Although he didn’t know it, by reminding me how very alike we were Guthrie was confirming all the more my suspicions about him and Bissonette. I knew how angry I would have become if everything I had gained in a marriage to an Amber was falling from me in an affair between my wife and some broken-down ballplayer, I knew how desperate, how irrationally ruthless, how murderous. And I knew something else, something I had learned with great gusto from my own carnal knowledge of his wife before she was his wife and which was confirmed by Slocum after consulting with Bissonette’s little black book. Lauren
Amber Guthrie was a five-star in bed, someone almost worth dying for.

“What’s really going on between you and Lauren?” I said, steering the subject to where I wanted it. “I was really saddened to hear about the problems.” I lied, yes, but with sincerity.

“They’re only temporary, trust me,” he said, but the way his face fell into a strange, sad cast I knew he was lying too.

“Were you playing around on her, Sam?”

“Jesus, no,” he said quickly. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

“Then what?”

He swiveled in his chair to look out the window. “It just happened. Come on, Vic, you of all people know what she’s like.”

“Which is what?”

He took in a breath of frustration. “Flighty. Maddeningly independent. With the attention span of a mosquito.”

“So she was cheating on you, was that it?”

“I don’t think I want to talk about it, Vic.”

“You don’t think your problems with her will affect you here at your firm, do you?”

He didn’t answer right off, but I had suspected the answer. Married to an Amber, the partnership decision on him, two or three years hence, was assured. If he was just a Guthrie, with no name, no contacts, nothing but ability, he would be out on his butt within six months. “We’ll work it out,” he said. “I know we will.”

“Well, at least Bissonette’s out of the way, right?”

It was the way he turned and looked at me that said everything I wanted to know. His head swiveled and his eyes were so full of pain and fear. His jaw quivered, his face paled, the sweat on his forehead glistened with an oily sheen. It was on his face as clear as an affidavit. His wife had been screwing Zack Bissonette and he knew it, he
knew it, he knew all about it, and the knowledge was killing him. I was ready to bet then and there that it had killed Bissonette, too.

I walked into the courtroom the next morning deeply distracted. It wasn’t just that I suspected my former partner of being a murderer. That was almost a pleasant thought. I had no idea of how to prove it, of course, except by talking it over with Lauren, with whom I had already set up a dinner at a far too expensive restaurant, but I figured that when I found out enough I’d simply put Lauren on the stand, have her identify the picture, have her tell about her husband’s violent rages, and then stand back and let the jury draw its own conclusions. Afterwards, I’d turn whatever I had over to Slocum and let him do the legwork to clear up the murder charges. But that wasn’t all that was on my mind. My distracted air that day arose from the offer that had been magically bestowed upon me.