Hostile Witness (33 page)

The night before I had lain in my bed thinking of being at Blaine, Cox. Veronica hadn’t called and I hadn’t been able to sleep, but I didn’t miss her or my sleep that night. I stayed warm into the early hours thinking about my own burnished desk and leather couch, thinking about my visitors waiting for me under the fake portrait of Josiah Blaine, thinking of my name on that letterhead. It was coming, it was coming, late maybe, but coming all the same. I would call Bismark, Tom, now that we would be working side by side, I would call Tom when I had a chance and set up an interview.

“Good morning, Victor,” said Prescott as I set my bag on the table. “Eggert’s putting on an accountant who did work for Citizens for a United Philadelphia today. In a few days it will be the executive director of the committee. We have to be very careful in questioning these witnesses,
since CUP is in a very sensitive position. It’s almost here as a defendant. I’ll handle both examinations.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Fine. And I don’t expect you’ll be speaking to my client outside my presence again, do you understand?”

“I asked the councilman if he wanted his attorney there and he said no.”

“Do it again and I’ll pull your ticket,” he said rather sweetly. “And don’t doubt that I can.”

I set out my notebooks and papers and pads and placed my briefcase underneath the table. When I was set I turned around to scan the audience. Chester was standing in the corner of the courtroom talking with the councilman and Chuckie Lamb. I noticed Leslie Moore and her sister, Renee, seated side by side behind the defense table. There was Herm Finklebaum, the toy king of 44th Street, in the back. And then I saw someone I didn’t expect to see at all.

On the aisle, alone, sitting erect, a tall, bald man, wearing a very fine suit. I recognized him right off. He was Tom Bismark, managing partner of Blaine, Cox, my new boss to be, here, I assumed, to see me at work. He would be disappointed to find I was asking no questions today, or any day really. I smiled and he smiled back, so I went over to formalize our introduction.

“Mr. Bismark, hello. I’m Victor Carl.”

He stood and shook my hand. “Yes, I know, Victor.” He spoke quite crisply. “Or is it Vic?”

“Whatever.”

“Sam Guthrie has spoken very highly of you, Vic.”

“Good old Guthrie,” I said. “If you’re here just for the show, I won’t be doing much today. We’ve agreed that Mr. Prescott will be handling today’s examinations.”

“That’s fine,” said Tom Bismark. “Just fine. That’s exactly as Bill and I discussed it.”

“Bill and you? I don’t understand.”

“Oh, I’m not here for the show, Vic,” he said. “I’m working. Blaine, Cox is corporate counsel to CUP. I’m here to make sure the reputation of our client is not besmirched in this trial.”

“I see.”

“I’m certain, Vic, that you’ll cooperate in every way possible.”

“Sure, Tom,” I said, and I actually winked. “Anything I can do, you let me know.”

I sat down at the defense table and started doodling on my yellow pad. So it wasn’t just the
Saltz
money, or my fees, or my deal with the Bishop brothers that were at risk. And it wasn’t just my prospective directorship on CUP or the councilman’s grand dreams of good works, either. A job had been added to the mix, not a job at Talbott, Kittredge, no, that would have been a bit too obvious, but at Blaine, Cox, yes. Stay quiet, smile, stop asking those foolish questions, stop barging in on the councilman’s morning
shvitz,
just sit back and let Chet take the rap and the future was mine. I could do that, yes I could. I could play ball, yes I could. Yes I could. Maybe.

There was something so wrong here, and not just the idea that I was for sale. I knew what I was, knew it in my pained heart: I was small-time. There are those in the world destined to be names, those who might fight their way to near namehood, and those, like myself, who would give it all up for a handful of change. And that’s what troubled me here. I wasn’t being offered a handful of change, I was being offered everything. The price was far too high. Play ball and your dreams will all come true could only mean that playing ball involved something bigger and dirtier than I could now imagine. Dreams don’t come true on the cheap. And it could also only mean that there was an opportunity for me not to play ball. I didn’t see it yet, couldn’t see any other option but to follow along in court like a lap dog, but it was there, it had to be,
or so much pressure would not have been brought to bear. As I drew ferociously on that pad, circles and diamonds and six-cornered stars, I decided then and there to keep looking for answers. See, I could play ball, I could sit back and keep my mouth shut and be the best little cabana boy these pricks had ever seen, but only when I knew all that I would have to kick under the carpet for my lucre. If I had any nobility at all it was this: I would not sell myself short.

THAT VERY EVENING I DROVE
through the wilds of Northeast Philadelphia, huge shopping plazas and multiplexes and rows of stores selling pizza and pharmaceuticals and Buster Brown shoes. As I searched for one specific address on Cottman Avenue I passed the Toys ’$$$ Us, passed the Herman’s World of Sporting Goods, passed the Clover discount store, passed the John Wanamaker’s department store. This was the part of the city that looked like every other place in America, strip malls and chain stores, glowing plastic signs held high over the landscape by great metal stanchions. I passed the Northeast High School grounds and then spied the numbers I was looking for and turned left into the lot. It was a low brick building, L-shaped with only one entrance, right in the crook of the L. I drove around the lot a bit, just to get my bearings, and then parked near the entrance. The metal letters bolted into the brick above the door read:
ST. VINCENT’S HOME FOR THE AGED
.

There was a lobby with hospital lobby furnishings, plush orange chairs, bare coffee tables, nondescript prints of flowers on the green walls. Out of that lobby was one door that led inside to the home and in front of that door, behind a counter, was a guard. He wore blue with a cop hat and as I got closer I could see the gun. A large register squatted atop the counter.

“I’m here to visit one of the patients,” I said. “A Mrs. Connie Lamb.”

“Are you family?” asked the guard. His nametag said James P. Strickling. He was an older man, with deep lines of dissatisfaction fanning out from either side of his pinched mouth.

“A friend of the family,” I said.

“After eight I can’t let you in unless you’re family,” he said.

“I’m sort of a cousin,” I said.

“Well, then, I sort of can’t let you in,” he said.

I knew what that meant. I could read it in that dissatisfied face as clear as a tabloid headline. I slipped my wallet from my back pocket and pulled out a twenty. “I just want to say hello.”

He looked at me.

I pulled out another twenty. “Just to cheer up the old lady.”

He looked at me.

I opened my wallet wide and stared inside. I pulled out a five and two ones. “That’s all I have.”

“That’s not enough,” he said. And then he laughed, a big hearty laugh that shocked me, coming as it was from this dour-faced man behind the counter. “Take your money back, son. If I could be bought I wouldn’t be worthy of this uniform, now would I?”

I took a closer look. It was a private security agency uniform, some sleazy outfit that hired retired guys off the street, gave them a gun, and stuck them behind a booth as fodder should anything go wrong. What I figured, as I embarrassedly picked up my money, was that the uniform wasn’t worthy of this Mr. Strickling.

He picked up his phone. “I’ll get an attendant, we’ll see if a visit’s all right.”

While a heavy woman in a nurse’s outfit waited for me on the other side of the door, I was required to record my entrance in the register. Strickling checked my driver’s license and then pointed out where I should sign. I signed and he filled in the date and time.

“You’ll have to sign out, too,” he said. Then he winked. “Enjoy your visit, Mr. Carl.”

I followed the heavy woman down the hallway, past a meeting area with a television on, past a recreation area with men and women sitting in their chairs and playing chess or crocheting or just plain shaking. And there were the rooms, of course, many with their doors open, the residents lying in bed, waiting.

“I’m sure Mrs. Lamb will appreciate your visit,” said the woman attendant. “All she ever sees is her son.”

“He here today?” I asked.

“Not today,” she said.

“Are visitors allowed to stay overnight?” I asked.

“Of course not,” she said, looking at me sideways.

“I didn’t think so.”

This is what I had been told by Veronica and Chester both. I had been told that Chuckie Lamb was visiting his mother the night that Bissonette had been beaten to comatosity, that he had stayed overnight because she was especially ill that day, that he had been in the nursing home the whole of the time of the beating. I didn’t buy it. Chuckie didn’t seem the type to care that much. And did I mention the smell? It was a medley of favorites: cat piss and overcooked string beans and the sharp scent of the alcohol swab they give you before they prick you at the doctor’s. I couldn’t see Chuckie spending more than five minutes at a time in that smell.

“Mrs. Lamb,” said the attendant in a loud voice, leaning over the bed once we were inside her private room. Chuckie Lamb, the dutiful son, had sprung for the best. There were flowers in a vase and nice curtains and on a table was a boom box and a stack of cassettes, opera. “Mrs. Lamb. You have a visitor.” She straightened up, smiled at me, and stood by the door while I approached the bed.

Mrs. Lamb stared past me, up at the ceiling, her gums working one against the other, her eyes darting back and
forth, back and forth, not seeing me in their journeys back and forth. She was a small, toad-faced woman, shriveled, her skin, even with its deep cracks, tight against her face.

“Hello, Aunt Connie,” I said.

Just the gums worked in response to my greeting.

“She likes it if you hold her hand,” said the attendant.

It sat atop her sheet like a withered claw. I leaned over and touched it, barely able to hide my revulsion. “You look good, Aunt Connie.”

Just the gums working. She seemed as delighted to have her hand held by me as I was to hold it. I had wanted to ask her some questions, see if I could get anything definitive from her about her son’s alibi, but I wouldn’t get it out of that face, those lips, those god-awful gums.

“Doesn’t say much, does she?” I said when we were out of there.

“Not anymore,” said the attendant. “Your aunt’s been very sick. There were times we didn’t think she’d make it, but she’s stronger than she looks.”

“When she gets seriously ill, is it possible then for a visitor to stay over?” I asked.

She didn’t stop walking me back to the lobby as she spoke. “If we believe the end might be imminent, and there is a private room, then sometimes we let immediate family stay. But no nephews, Mr. Carl, just spouses, siblings, or children.”

“Does cousin Chuckie come often?” I asked.

“All the time,” she said with a smile. “He’s a very devoted son. I’ll be sure to let him know you were here.”

“That’s not necessary,” I said. “We’re not so close anymore.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Carl,” said Strickling when I had been deposited back outside into that lobby. “Those books are private records.”

“But it’s very important,” I said, reaching again for my wallet and then stopping when he shook his head. “Listen, Mr. Strickling. I’ll level with you. I’m a lawyer.”

“Well in that case…” said Strickling, laughing at me.

Being a lawyer might have meant something at some time, but not anymore. I knew I was in trouble when I was forced to resort to the truth. “I’m representing a man accused of a murder, Mr. Strickling, a murder I think Mr. Lamb might be involved in. He says he was here overnight the night of the murder. I just want to check it out.”

“Oh, right. I seen you on TV,” said Strickling. “You’re representing Councilman Moore.”

“His aide, actually. I just want to know if Chuckie was here the night Zack Bissonette was beaten into a coma.”

“I saw Bissonette play down at the Vet,” said Strickling. “What a bum. I remember once, ninth inning of a tie ball game, slow bounder to second, the guy kicks it. He kicks it. Like he thought he was playing soccer. Two runs scored.” He took a deep breath. “Well, seeing as you were on TV and all, what’s that date again?”

That was it, I guess. Lawyers were as nothing in the new scheme of things, as were scholars and doctors and businessmen. But have your face flashed for a few seconds on TV and all of a sudden you were somebody to be trusted, to be revered, someone to do favors for. I gave him the date and he searched below the counter for the applicable register. With a heave he lifted it up and turned it around to let me look. There it was, Chuckie’s signature going in at 9:37
P.M.
the night of the murder and not leaving until 6:45 the next morning.

“Could this have been faked?” I asked.

“No, sir,” said Strickling. “In fact, I signed him out. That’s my writing there. I was on the late shift. So I can tell you for a fact he didn’t leave between midnight and six-forty-five.”

“Any other exits?” I asked.

“Just emergency exits, and alarms go off if they’re used. We’ve had some thefts and we have lots of drugs here, so we’re pretty careful.”

“And that’s his signature?”

He turned the book around and looked. Then he opened the most recent register to a few days back. There was Chuckie’s signature signing in and out. It was the same.

So that was it. I shrugged at Strickling and he smiled at me and wished me a good night. I left the lobby and stood outside at the entrance and thought a bit. I believed the registers because I believed Strickling. He had two jobs at that place, to carry a gun and to keep the registers, and Strickling would do both jobs with an integrity I could only admire, not match. So Chuckie Lamb hadn’t been threatening me because he had killed Zack Bissonette. Maybe he had ended up with part of the quarter of a million and was trying to protect his stake, as likely a possibility as any, Chuckie the thief. But he wasn’t Chuckie the killer. Too bad, too, because I would have liked nothing better than to nail Chuckie Lamb for murder. Well, maybe one thing would be better: nailing that bastard Guthrie.