No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (3 page)

I looked at him and shrugged.

"Can you do the job or not? You seem to have
doubts."

I stood up. "I can do the job. I'll get you
results. If the price is right." I stepped over to the window.
The wind whistled and cracked from tower to tower and whipped
tendrils of cloud against the glass. "Expenses could run quite
high. Out of town and all that," I said over my shoulder. "This
is thirty-five thousand dollars, " he said. That turned me
around fast enough. Instead of a check, a $5.98 pressed-paper attaché
case had appeared on the deep-glow wood of his status desk. It had to
mean cash. I went to the desk and opened the case greedily. It was
cash.
 
The case contained, in
addition, those odds and ends, like photos and a dossier on the man,
considered useful by most investigators. Nice, but it was the long
green that held my attention.

"In addition, there will be a like sum when you
hand me an accurate summary or transcript of Mr. Wood's testi mony."

"That'll be all right," I said.
 

3
SHUTTLE

I LIFTED WAYNE
up in the
air. He giggled and grinned. I did too.

"I'm gonna be away for a while," I told
him.

"Are you going on a mission?"

"Yes," I told him solemnly.

"Wow," he replied. "Do it to them
before they do it to us.

"I will," I promised, and put him down. He
grabbed his school things and tore out the door. "See ya,"
he yelled as it closed.

"Will you be good while you're in Washington?"
Glenda asked me when I walked back to my coffee.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"There is a certain school of thought, among
men, so I have heard, that out-of-town doesn't count. "

"The line is, 'Under five minutes and
out-of-town doesn't count.' "

"I don't want a line, I want an answer. Are you
going to be good?" She said it with a smile, but the tension was
real.

She loved me. She took good care of me. She helped
pick up the pieces when they were strewn all over hell and Avenue C.
Or at least she stood by me, gentle, accepting and patient, while I
picked them up. I figured I might be good. I figured that was a real
serious possibility.

"Sure," I said, looked her in the eye and
smiled.

I found my attorney, Gerry Yaskowitz, in the hall of
New York Criminal Court, which is where I always found him. He had
just finished a plea bargain for a midlevel heroin dealer and just
started an argument with the Korean manager of the Far-Out Far-East
Big Apple Health Spa. The spa offered "the ultimate in
relaxation, calming exotic atmosphere, lovely Oriental hostesses to
serve you in the Oriental manner, best of satisfaction guaranteed."
The Korean was giggling and offering to pay in barter.

"You cheap son of a bitch," Gerry said. "Do
I look like the kind of guy who needs it that bad?" The Korean
giggled even more. "OK. You cheap son of a bitch, I want my fee,
in cash, up front, and you can throw in the barter on top."

At that point I interrupted.

"Tell me, Gerald, what kind of trouble can I get
into if I do a little bugging, maybe a B and E?"

"Depends. Who and where?"

"The SEC, probably," I told him.

"Are you getting stupid again? Are you back on
drugs? You want my opinion, my expert legal advice, backed by many
sleazy years in a sleazy racket, namely the law: Don't. Do not do it.
And I am going to send you a bill for that advice, because it is very
serious advice and worth money."

"Yeah, well, I have just accepted a whole lot of
bread, and to do what I have accepted it for may, just may, require
that."

He looked up and down the hall, pulled me close and
said, "In the first place, be very careful. In the second place
. . ." he scribbled a name and number ". . . here, a good
well-connected D.C. criminal attorney. Remember, I was not an
accessory before the fact."

Gerald was right. It was only money and not worth my
license, which is my living, and certainly not worth prison, which I
truly dislike. I doubted very much that there was any completely
legal way to get what Choate Haven wanted, and it was not so much
that I was willing to do anything for money but that the risk itself
intrigued me. Dumb. While I packed a kit that included a variety of
microphones, cameras and picklocks, I filled in my partner, Joey D',
on what I was doing.

"Yeah, tine," he said, "just don't do
anything stupid while you're down there. You know you have a good
thing going with Glenda. That one, she's a real lady. And you got a
good thing going with the kid. Don't go fucking it up." All that
and he hadn't even heard me call Sandy to say I would soon be in D.C.

"What is with you?" I said.

"Ahh, you just gotta restless look about you
lately, and most guys, when they go outa town . . . Just don' go
looking for trouble."

I really wished I had a trench coat to hunch up on my
shoulders when I walked out the door, turned and said, "Trouble
is my business."

I caught the last shuttle
down to the nation's capital.

* * *

Sandra Klein met me at National Airport.

We looked at each other. Past and present fused, and
history swirled around us like curlicues of confetti. She was just
lovely, serious, bright, one of the few moments of good sense I
showed back in the bum-it-up and break-it-down years. We were magic
makers in a long-distance romance with nothing but love and laughter
every time one or the other of us got off a jet. Sandy was a writer
and therapist. Unlike most members of either breed she was sensible
and shrewd. She knew there was no future in the condition I was in,
and possibly in who I am. She did the eminently sensible thing. She
left me.

Catalog time. Taking accounts. Reading minds. From
our very first glance, we never had to speak to know. She looked
relieved. I had worried her once. I seem to do that to a lot of
people. But I looked healthier, happier, younger than I had, than she
expected. And calmer. But the same years had hurt her, and the aging
was sharp, as if five years ago had been the peak of the bloom. And
she had trouble. I didn't want that. I wanted her to be the happiest
woman in the world.

She smiled at me for thinking that last thought and
reached over and touched my cheek. Then we both turned away to make
the mind reading stop. She started the car and neither of us spoke
until we were over the dirty gray Potomac. She asked if I would have
dimer with her and I said sure.

I really did have a legitimate reason for seeing her.
Choate Haven had made up a list of Wood's habits and tastes, and
said, "If I know Edgar, he will never, this side of
incarceration, give up his automobile or his compulsion for
nouvelle
cuisine
." When Sandy's first book came
out she had been on the talk show, cocktail party and reception
circuit. I figured she knew the "in" eateries. I explained
all that to her, and she said she would help.

When we were together she had talked about the search
for a "life partner" with the clarity and sense with which
others approach career choices. She was intuitive, loving, lusty when
appropriate, a genuine adult. I had been sure, then, that she would
choose well. She was not only on my personal best all-time top-ten
list, I had her slated as most likely to succeed at marriage. I was
sure, now, that when she opened the door of her apartment we would be
alone.

We were.

I didn't ask where her husband was. I guessed out of
town. I didn't ask when he would be back. I guessed not that night.

"
Do you want something to drink?" she
asked. "Or would you rather not."

"Oh, I take a glass now and again. It's only a
problem when I'm doing that other thing too . . . and I don't do that
shit nooo more."

"I'm glad," she said and she looked it. "I
used to worry about you .... And now . . . you look good. "
 
I reached out and touched her face, the
way she had mine in the car. She reached up with both hands and
pressed my hand first to her cheek, then to her lips. Then she was in
my arms, eyes wet, face pressed to my chest, holding on.

One part of me was paternal. The other remembered all
too clearly the way she orgasmed. That rising, rising moan of rhythm.
And separate parts of my body remembered, each by itself, the
different ways we used to get there .... I pushed back from her and
looked her in the eyes.

"I have been living with a woman for four years,
that's practically a record for me .... Not only that, I've been
faithful for three, which is certainly a record."

I held her close, her hair soft against my cheek, her
tears moist on my chest, loving her as much as I ever had. And
relieved as hell that I was not the one she had chosen, not the one
to have made those tears.

The Watergate is conveniently located, tucked into a
curve of the Potomac between Georgetown and the marble of government
town. It holds some of my fondest memories, as it does for most
Americans, and it was where I spent that night alone.

Still, the first thing that Glenda said when I called
home the next morning was, "How is Sandy, and don't tell me you
haven't seen her."

"Fine, and happily
married," I said, awed by the range of her radar. Then Wayne
stole the phone and saved me from protesting too much. He didn't want
to go to school. He wanted to go out and play in the rain. "I
like puddles," he said. Also, he wanted to join a squash club,
just like me.

* * *

I called my congressman, John Straightman. He was
willing to see me right away. That was very gratifying. Particularly
since I didn't even vote in his district. Four years previous, his
connection had been picked up with three keys of coke. The search and
seizure was correct, the warrant was good, Miranda was read and New
York's finest were not on sale that day. The dealer figured he could
trade the congressman for at least a reduction to a misdemeanor.

The D.A. had mixed feelings. On the one hand, all
that potential publicity. On the other, the congressman had a lot of
friends. Perhaps if the dealer had handed the D.A. a rock solid case
all wrapped in ribbon, there would have been no indecision. As it
was, it was only a lead. To do something real with it, the D.A.'s
office would have to set up a sale, with witnesses, wires and the
rest, and avoid entrapment and the other technicalities that can blow
a case.

One of the prosecutors had been a classmate of
William Contact, the congressman's chief aide. The D.A. allowed as
how a leak along that line might be all right.

Willie got in touch with me. The dealer was out on
bail. I was able to get the right kind of introduction to him and
tempted him down to Atlanta on the promise of a four-kilo buy. He was
busted in Georgia and found out the Atlanta cops didn't give a damn
about some story about a Yankee congressman's evil ways. The New York
case was stashed in the pending pending tile, and the dealer got a
whole chunk of his life scheduled for a Georgia work farm.

I was ushered in to see the man moments after I
arrived. He told the receptionist to hold the calls and greeted me
fulsomely. Full smile, full, firm handshake, with the elbow grasp
thrown in. I realized that he was afraid of me.

"Relax," I said. "You paid me to do a
job. It was done. Now forget about it."

"
Is that your code?" he said in a tone
meant to be jocular.

"Yeah," I said deadpan. "But you can
do me a favor."

"What can I do for you? Name it, you have it."

"I want some information," I said.
Straightman lived in ellipses and could hear omissions ring the way
most of us hear church bells toll. He understood there was no need to
know what his left hand was doing.

"Let's get Willie on this one," he said,
taking me by the elbow and leading me to his left hand who had a
connecting office. "I'll let him know he's to give you full
cooperation. If he doesn't give satisfaction, get back to me."

We smiled. Proud that we had handled so many delicate
issues so quickly and discreetly and with so little said. He handed
me over to Willie, repeating his full-cooperation routine.

Willie greeted me with genuine enthusiasm. We were on
the same level in a way. We did our deeds based on other people's
needs, particularly when they ran to the gray areas and beyond. Maybe
the only real difference between us was that he was staff, I was
free-lance.

To Willie, someplace to talk meant someplace we could
not possibly be overheard. We got into his car, but even that was not
considered suitable, though I thought it was pretentious of him to
think he was important enough for people to bug his car. The
Watergate, of course, was not a place that anyone paranoid about
listening devices wants to talk, so we ended up at the Jefferson
Memorial, walking through the trees around the Tidal Basin.

It had been raining when I left New York. In D.C. the
sky was slate-grey drifting between a dreary mist and drizzle.