Legal Tender (28 page)

“That was a long time ago.”

“I see.”

He sighed. “Anyway, you’re on trial in a week.”

I was on trial right now. “Yes.”

“You said you needed help. In your memo.”

“Help?” Stupid, stupid, stupid. Help!

“It was a silly memo, Miss Frost,” he said, with a trace of the sternness I remembered. “You don’t know us very well, in the main office. No one will help you here if they can’t bill it.”

“No?” Tell me about it.

“Not nowadays. In my day, we all helped each other. We wouldn’t think of billing a client for helping a colleague. We ate lunch together then. Even had tea and a snack together. We were partners then. Truly. Partners.”

“Snacks? At Grun?”

“Oh, yes.” He smiled shakily at the memory. “Mr. Chase would make some tea and we’d all have tea and chocolate together. Just a piece, in the afternoon. Chase, myself, and McAlpine. Later, Steinman.”

“Chocolate?” I forgot the cops for a moment, intrigued.

“Yes, chocolate. Now, Steinman, he loved chocolate more than all of us put together. Had to have some every day.”

“What kind of chocolate, Mr. Grun?” Say
light chocolate.
Was that how it started?

“Always the same kind. We, all of us, liked the same kind.”

Say
light.
So that was it. Not tyranny, comradeship. Collegiality. I felt terrible. I’d misjudged him, and for years.

“Do you like chocolate, Miss Frost?”

It didn’t have to think about it this time. “I love chocolate, Mr. Grun.”

“What kind of chocolate, light or dark?”

“Light, only.” I felt a welling-up, unaccountably.

“Dark, it’s too bitter.”

“I agree.”

He smiled shakily. “Light chocolate is a wonderful thing.”

“It is.”

“Some things in life cannot be improved upon.”

“Like golden retrievers.”

He smiled again. “Are you a dog lover, Miss Frost?”

“Yes.”

“I like cats, myself.”

I thought of Jamie 17, back with Sam. I actually missed her. “They’re okay, too.”

“I had a cat once, my Tiger. She was striped. She liked to eat cream cheese. Licked it right off my finger.” He nodded. “We all helped each other, then. It didn’t matter if it could be billed or not. Not in the least. Why bill it and make your friend look bad, eh?”

Why, indeed.

“That’s how you build a law firm. Not with cases, not even with clients. With friendships. They grow from there, in reputation. In strength. They become … organic, that way.”

I thought of R & B. Mark had been right. It was gone as soon as we were gone.

“The value is in the friendships, in the core.” He breathed in deeply. “Well, here I am. I saw your memo, I knew you’d be working today. I thought I might be of some assistance. Could you possibly use my assistance, Miss Frost?”

Oh no. I didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve worked on many securities cases. Argued twenty-five before the United States Supreme Court.”

“Twenty-five?” I thought of my one dumb feather.

“I don’t mind document work. I like to work hard.”

But there were no documents, there wasn’t even a case. I didn’t know what to do. It reminded me of my mother, and that gave me a solution. It would slow me down, but I couldn’t run off now and leave him feeling more useless than he already did. “I certainly could use your help, Mr. Grun. I’d be honored.”

“Why, thank you.” He nodded graciously.

“First, let me tell you the facts.”

“No documents?”

“No. If I may, let me give you my opening argument.”

“As you wish.”

“It’s a jury trial, so I want the opening to be just right.”

“Good girl. Juries make their decisions after the opening. Be respectful. Don’t talk down to them. Wear blue, I always did.”

“I will,” I told him, and began a story. A bedtime story in which an upstart computer company wanted to know the truth, but all the more powerful computer companies were lying to the little chip company and the government. I made up the story as I went along, taking half of it from my own predicament and the other half from what little securities law I knew.

He listened thoughtfully and in time grew very still, not flinching even when the afternoon sun edged in a brilliant square onto his face. He had fallen into that sound sleep known only to old men and golden retrievers. So I packed up my files, grabbed my clothes and briefcase, wrote him a little note, and left.

I dashed to the security gate and slipped under it, down the stifling elevator to the lobby. I’d be safe away from the Silver Bullet, out of sight somewhere. There were a million places I could go. The airport, the train station. I needed a place to collect my thoughts, stow my stuff.

29th Floor.

I had to figure out who killed Mark, and something Grun had said was sticking with me. In the back of my mind. I couldn’t quite articulate it.

25th Floor.

About law firms. Collegiality. I thought of Mark, dead, and R & B, defunct. The associates. Who had put the bloody scissors in my apartment? I flipped backwards through time, in my mind.

15th Floor.

Hattie had said something. Who had brought some stuff to my apartment? Renee Butler. She said she’d brought books I’d lent her. Had she planted the scissors?

10th Floor.

Was Butler the one? If she were, she’d put on a good act for me. And she always seemed to like Mark, but maybe that was for Eve’s benefit. But how had she found Bill? And why?

Lobby Floor.
The elevator doors opened. I was about to step out but caught myself at the last minute.

Three cops were standing together in the middle of the lobby. Not the blonde or black cop, new ones. With them was a man in a dark suit whose rasp I’d recognize on a bet. Detective Meehan, from Homicide.

My heart stopped. I couldn’t go into the lobby. I was too scared to fake Linda Frost anymore and it wouldn’t work anyway, not with Meehan. It would be over.

I wanted out of the building. The freight elevator stood open across the hall. I’d used it once, moving my stuff the day I’d left Grun. It led to the basement and the parking garage.

I slipped out of the elevator, slid along the marble wall into the freight cab, and hit the first button I saw.

I
got off the freight elevator on the lowest level of the parking garage, my mind racing. Had the cops found Sam? Was Meehan looking for me? Where was Azzic? I had to get away, but I didn’t want to leave town. I had to follow up on Renee Butler.

I hoisted my stuff over my shoulder and hurried across the almost-empty garage, looking around for the exit stairs. Suddenly there was a blast of police sirens. I broke into a run and streaked across the garage. The only sounds were my heels, my panting, and the sirens.

I had to find a way out. I passed a metal
MONTHLY PARKING
sign on a stand and looked left. An exit ramp spiraled up like a corkscrew. I took it and ran up and up until I got dizzy and the hot yellow arrows led the way out in a blur.

E
XIT
, a red neon sign blinked from across the garage floor. I got a bead on it and had almost reached the cashier’s booth when I froze on the spot.

There was a uniformed cop inside the booth, talking with the cashier and a red-jacketed security guard. I did an about-face and hustled back into the lot. I needed to get out of sight, but where? The sirens blared louder.

I dropped between a blue Taurus and a station wagon and scrambled away from the booth, using the parked cars as cover. I didn’t know what to do when I reached the end of the line. I was trapped. I squatted low, panting, dipping a knee into spilled motor oil on the gritty cement floor. The sirens blared louder. More cops would be here any minute. I tried the handle of the Ford but it was locked. I looked wildly around, but there was no way out. Then I saw it.

Two parking spaces over, in the ceiling of the garage. A large, square-cut hole between the beams of the garage roof. A black oblong on the sooty concrete with its lumpy fireproofing. An Acme portable hole! I would have laughed if I weren’t scared shitless.

I had to get to the hole and the dark green car parked near it, but between here and there were no cars for cover. I would be exposed. The sirens screamed. My throat tightened. I had to go, they’d find me here. I inched to the edge of the row and peeked out. The cop and the guards were still in the booth. I waited until the cop’s back was turned and sprinted for the green car.

I reached it, panting hard, more from fear than exertion. There were no shouts so I guessed I hadn’t been seen. I leaned against the car, relieved. It was a Range Rover, and felt sturdy against my shoulder. It would need to be. The hole in the garage roof was catty-corner to it.

I inched up and peeked through the tinted car window at the booth. The cop was joking with the pretty cashier.
Go now.

I reached up and threw my clothes and briefcase on the roof of the car. Then I stuck my toe in the door handle and scaled the side of the tall car to its pebbled top and sunroof. As soon as I got there I flattened, breathing shallowly. So far, so good. No voices, no shouts. I looked up at the hole. Salvation. I eyeballed the distance from the hole to the roof. It was as far away as I was tall. I could do it, maybe.

I took an anxious peek sideways at the booth. The group was beginning to break up. I was out of time. I picked up my purse and pitched it into the blackness of the hole, like a bean bag into a clown’s mouth. The purse landed inside and I pitched the canvas briefcase in after it. A soft thud. Neither rolled back out, so I figured there was room for me.

The sirens shrieked. They were right outside the building. I didn’t dare look back at the booth. I hooked my clothes on the back of my neck, then scrambled to my feet and jumped into the dark hole, grabbing onto the jagged sides, hoisting myself mightily to get my chest in. I crawled forward on my elbows until my legs were inside. I lunged the final yard and was in all the way.

I had no idea why this hole was here, but it stunk. I wriggled forward, unable to see a thing in the pitch black, wishing I had a penlight or something more useful than a dog picture on my keychain. I dragged myself farther into the darkness. The stench got stronger. I reached my purse and my briefcase, realizing it was a tunnel of some kind. A very stinky tunnel. In three feet the odor grew unbearable and I was crawling in something cool. Crumbly. Revolting.

What was it? I scooped some up and held it under my nose, propping myself on my arms. I couldn’t see a thing, but it smelled like shit. Then I sniffed again and realized that it was. Manure. I recoiled in disgust, but couldn’t back out. Why would there be manure in a parking garage? Then I remembered the man-made forest in the atrium of the building. Their root system must have been between the ground floor and the garage, and was evidently serviced from this crawlspace. I was in deep shit, no joke.

Suddenly I heard men’s voices. My heart pounded, I forgot about the smell. The voices moved closer, underneath the hole. I held my breath. Directly below me, a guard was telling a farmer’s daughter joke. I didn’t listen for the punchline. The voices receded, then disappeared. I exhaled with relief and spit the dirt out of my mouth.

It was all downhill from there. I spent the night in muck, watching the minutes tick by on the glowing green digits on my watch. By 5:30
A.M
., I hadn’t slept at all, I felt so raw and anxious. My knees were killing me, scraped up, and my back was crampy. My hair reeked of dung, and you could grow mushrooms in my mouth. But the sirens had subsided and I was safe. Quiet descended like a blessing. Still I had to get out of the tunnel before the business day started.

I looked over my shoulder toward the lighted square of the tunnel’s entrance. I tried to turn around but it was too narrow, so I grabbed my stuff and crawled in reverse, toward the light. I reached the hole and straddled it, then did a push-up and looked down. The green Range Rover was still there. Were the cops? I squirmed backward and peered out.

No cops or guards were in sight, just an elderly cashier, evidently the morning shift, filing her nails in front of a portable TV flickering in the booth. Time to go.