Mortal Allies (49 page)

Imelda gave me a funny look when I came in, like she just knew I had something to do with this, although she wasn’t sure exactly what. Nobody else seemed curious or suspicious. The general mood was that God must really love gay folk because he’d just done a mighty big service for the cause.

I went back to Katherine’s office and poked my head in. She was seated at her desk, swiveling back and forth in her chair, looking quietly elated.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked, the picture of ignorant innocence.

“Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Bales and Choi disappeared. A nationwide search has been initiated.”

“No kidding? Disappeared, huh? Just like that, poof?”

“Weird, isn’t it? Carruthers called to tell me.”

“Yeah?”

“He wants to meet with me and Golden in his office in thirty minutes.”

I stepped in and dropped some papers on her desk. It was the voir dire strategy. I said, “Great news. Here’s what you asked for.” Then I turned around to leave.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“To the bar in the hotel.”

“What?”

“Lady, my day’s done. I busted my ass on these. I’m tired as hell, and I’m thirsty. I’m going to get roaring drunk and then climb into bed.”

A quizzical, perplexed look popped onto her face. “You don’t want to accompany me to see Carruthers?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Aren’t you at least curious?”

“Not the least bit.”

She stood up and came around to face me. She leaned against the front edge, butt backed against the desk, legs and arms crossed. “You think I can handle him myself?”

“You? You were first in the class. I’m just some second-place dunce who never got over it.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she said, taking a step toward me. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

“And you probably didn’t mean that part about no more meetings with the judge? No more strategy sessions? No more talking to the client?”

“Drummond, I was angry. Don’t you ever say things you regret when you’re angry?”

I ignored that. “Look, it’s no big thing. Really. I figure we’ve got, what — two, maybe three weeks of trial? I’m gonna treat it like the vacation you ruined. There’s plenty of good bars in this town, and some of those Korean women are gorgeous.”

“Damn it, Drummond, I’m sorry.”

“What is it about me that always makes you so mad?”

“You don’t always make me so mad.”

“The hell you say. Every time you look at me, your face turns red and you look like you want to break something.”

She walked right up to me. And she did the strangest damn thing. She reached up, pulled my head down, and kissed me. Not one of those puffy, wimpy, dry pecks either, but a glandular, wet, lingering one. On the lips, too.

I froze. She pressed her slim body against mine, and I froze more.

She finally pulled back, then looked up into my eyes, like she was searching for something. What, I didn’t know, but my eyes were blinking madly, because I was utterly, unconditionally confused. Just a few hours before she’d been ready to strangle me, and now she was pressed up against my body in a most tantalizing way. The woman was like a typhoon spinning out of control. What in the hell was going on?

“What was that?”

“What do you think it was?”

I gave her an awkward, silly smile. “I guess it was a, uh, a kiss, but I—”

But before I could get that thought out, she did it again. Only this time, I pulled her tightly against me and all our curves and angles and hollows and lumps fitted together. I can be gulled and suckered as easily as the next guy, but I swear I felt some real heat and electricity here. Her arms were wrapped tightly around my neck, and her hips were grinding against my lower body in a way that was pleasantly beguiling, which is a courtly way of describing a biological response one doesn’t bring up in mixed company.

I ran my fingers lightly down the middle of her back and felt her body tingle and shiver like a cat’s. I heard heavy breathing, only maybe it was me, because my own lungs were starting to make that happy heaving motion that lets your head know the rest of your body’s in the mood to do something naughty.

Now here’s something you’d probably never in a million years ever guess about me. When it comes to fragile emotional situations, I’m like . . . well, hopeless. I’m afflicted with the romantic equivalent of the bull-in-the-china-shop disease. I can’t help myself. I always say the wrong thing at the right moment. I’m brusque when I should be ticklish, blunt when I should be discreet, wisecracky when I should be mushy. In matters of the heart, I’m Dr. Kevorkian.

I felt this irrepressible need to say, “Hey, what the hell is this? Lesbians don’t kiss like that. Lesbians don’t rub their hips against guys that way. Lesbians don’t flush and tingle and get body purrs when guys caress them.”

I didn’t, though. I was about to, except suddenly someone was rapping knuckles on the door. I was saved by the bell, or the knock. Whatever.

Katherine hastily stepped back, rearranged her dress, unmussed her hair, and took a few deep breaths. I just leaned against the wall and watched her. I was too stunned to move. I was utterly bewildered.

She opened the door and Imelda barged in. She took one look at Katherine, then at me, still pressed against the wall, and her eyes suddenly got real narrow and her lips twisted at an odd angle.

But all she said was, “Time to leave for the judge’s office. You got everything you need?”

Katherine smiled demurely. “I think so. Major Drummond and I were just debating whether he should come along.”

“ ’Course he should,” Imelda huffed. “Allie, too. She’s been workin’ hard. Let her taste the moment.”

Katherine nodded at Imelda like this was what she’d intended all along. Her eyes were glued on me, though. “Drummond here seems to think he shouldn’t be there. I was just trying to persuade him that I might need his military expertise.”

Imelda whirled at me with a fierce glower. “You got some problem with that?”

I said, “No, uh, absolutely not. I’d be only too pleased.”

“Good,” Imelda announced, then departed, whistling through her teeth; an unconscious gesture of hers whenever she encounters something she can’t quite put a finger on.

Katherine walked past me, provocatively brushing her body against mine. “Come along, Attila.”

T
he look on Eddie’s face when he saw Allie enter Carruthers’s office made it worth the trip. He got to his feet like a good boy when the introductions were made, but for once the smooth bastard was running a little short of charismatic polish.

Eddie’s shorter than I am, and Allie’s taller than me, so she positively loomed over him. He stared up at her in shock. Also, Eddie’s one of those guys who spends a lot of time in the gym buffing up for the opposite sex, but Allie nearly forced him to his knees when they shook hands. She made it seem effortless, but you could literally hear the knuckles and bones in Eddie’s hand cracking. He had tears in his eyes when she let go.

I actually caught Eddie wiping his hands after he shook with her, and that really pissed me off. Allie saw it, too, and the look on her face reminded me of the way she’d glanced at me the first time I’d met her, that first night in Katherine’s hotel room. I can’t say I was real proud of that.

As for Carruthers, he never blinked an eye. He treated Allie respectfully, like the smart, upright, hardworking attorney she was. My estimation of him bounced up a few more notches.

He gruffly told us to have seats. He spent a moment overviewing the situation, noting that the trial was set to convene in sixteen hours and that some four hundred international journalists were now in country. They were lounging around every bar in Seoul, eagerly waiting to broadcast this intriguing and momentous trial to every breakfast table and living room in the world. He noted that all the appropriate preparations had been made. A special detachment of MPs had been flown over from the States to provide security. Army officers from peacekeeping and military assistance outposts had been plucked from the remotest corners of the globe in hopes of collecting a large enough assemblage of potential board members who weren’t tainted by the blizzard of publicity that attended this case. He noted the case was being heralded as the trial of the century, bigger than O.J.’s even, because so much seemed to weigh on the outcome; because some ghastly crimes had been committed; because the fate of an entire alliance stood on the brink; because important laws stood to be changed.

Eddie squirmed in his seat, because what Carruthers was not too faintly intimating was that a postponement at this stage was unthinkable.

Then Carruthers searched each of our faces and concluded, “All that notwithstanding, Major Golden has asked for a postponement.”

Katherine immediately barked, “On what grounds?”

Eddie said, “On the grounds that two key prosecution witnesses have mysteriously disappeared.”

Katherine shook her head like he had to be kidding. “I don’t get it. Two police officers have disappeared? I mean, please.”

Eddie shot forward in his seat. “I’m sure it’s just some silly mix-up. And I’m sure they’ll turn up within the next few days. All I’m asking for is an extension till Tuesday to get this straightened out.”

Katherine said, “And if they haven’t turned up by Tuesday?”

“Then I’ll go with what I’ve got.”

“I don’t see why you can’t go with you’ve got now.”

“Because the state’s case has been adversely affected by unforeseen circumstances. They were the two lead investigators, for God’s sake.”

“That’s your problem,” Katherine shot back. “You’re responsible for the accountability of your witnesses. I can’t help it if you misplaced them.”

I was enjoying this immensely. It wasn’t often that Eddie had to operate from a disadvantage. Come to think of it, I’d never even seen him at the fringe of anything remotely discomforting. Till now. He was actually sweating.

But Carruthers barked, “Stop the fencing. This isn’t the time to play lawyer games. Miss Carlson, can you live with the extension?”

Katherine coldly said, “Two days ago, after fifteen protesters were brutally slaughtered, I requested a postponement. Golden argued that a full-blown massacre was too insignificant.”

“I’m aware of that,” Carruthers said, which he surely was, since he ultimately was the one who made the decision not to reschedule. “But he didn’t argue that it was insignificant. He argued it was irrelevant. Remember the distinction.”

“All right,” Katherine said, inching forward in her own seat. “I’ll talk relevance. I’ve got an innocent client who’s already spent nearly two weeks in a hellhole the Koreans call a prison. He’s been beaten, mentally abused, isolated, fed only water and rice. The decision to put him there was made by our government. I don’t see why he should be subjected to another day of torture because the prosecutor can’t produce his witnesses.”

Eddie defiantly mumbled, “He won’t be hurt by another few days.”

Carruthers was starting to grind his teeth impatiently. His voice got real prickly. “Miss Carlson, I asked whether a postponement would create significant problems for your defense. Not your client, your defense.”

This was the moment when I decided to intervene. “Your Honor, could I have a private moment with my co-counsels?” I asked.

Katherine gave me a mystified look.

Eddie gave me a hopeful, pleading look.

Carruthers nodded. “The conference room is down the hallway to the left. Five minutes?”

Ordinarily, if you put three lawyers together in a room, five days wouldn’t be enough. But I said, “Five minutes would be fine.”

Then Katherine, Allie, and I filed out the door and down the hall. The moment the door closed, Katherine spun and faced me.

“What the hell’s this about?”

“We might want to think this through.”

“I have,” Katherine said, quite firmly. “That little bastard hasn’t given us a single break. Screw him.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“And there’s some other way?”

I backed away and leaned against the wall. My eyes roamed across both their faces. “Say we start tomorrow morning. How sure are we we’ll win?”

They were both attorneys and the answer to that was obvious.

Allie ran a hand through her spiky hair. “No trial’s ever a sure thing.”

And I calmly responded, “The first rule of law.”

Allie said, “He’ll have to reconstruct. He’ll have to use substitutes. There’s about ten other Korean police officers on his witness list and he has the two military policemen who first went to the scene. He has the pathologist and the lock specialist. They can fill in a lot of the gaps.”

And Katherine said, “And if we give him till Tuesday, he’ll use every minute to rebuild his case around those other witnesses. If we force him into court tomorrow, he’ll be disorganized and behind the curve.”

I rubbed my chin. “Yeah, that’s true.”

Katherine was now looking at me curiously. “But . . . ?”

“Look, nobody wants to cream Eddie worse than me. I’ve got two of his damn baseball bats in my closet.”

“But . . . ?” Katherine asked again.

“But I know Eddie. He might look like a mess today, but he won’t by tomorrow. Believe me. We don’t call him Fast Eddie for nothing. An ego like his won’t stay down long. In fact, when he comes to his senses and realizes he’s got two dirty cops on his hands, he’ll recognize his case is now less vulnerable.”

Allie said, “He’d have to be pretty good to pull that off.”

“Allie, he’s not just pretty good, he’s the best the Army’s got.”

She nodded.

Then I said, “But what if we could get the murder, rape, and necrophilia charges thrown out before the trial?”

“That’s a silly question,” Katherine said. Then she tilted her head sideways. “How?”

“Two days will buy us time to look into Choi’s and Bales’s activities. We know they’re rotten. What if we can prove that?”

Katherine was chewing on her lip. She was the lead counsel, so ultimately this was her decision. She stared at me hard. You could almost see her wheels spinning with the possibilities.