One Dog Night (7 page)

When he sees me, he jumps up, gives each dog a chewie to occupy them, and heads over to me. “Big news,” he says.

“I’m ready.”

“They want me to write a book.”

“Who does?”

The question throws him. “I don’t know … some book guy.”

This is already not going well. “A book guy? That’s all you know about him? Was he a big book guy? An old book guy?”

“Hold on a second,” he says, and walks over to his desk, opening the drawer. “He gave me his card.”

Willie hands me the card, which was given to him by Mr. Alexander Downey, the managing editor at a publishing house in New York. It seems legit, but who knows.

“So what exactly did he say?”

“That I should write a book, like my life story, and they’d put it out there. You know, print it out and stuff.”

“Anything else?”

“That they’d give me a lot of money. And I’d get it as soon as I say I’ll do it, before I even write the thing. But if I don’t write it, I have to give the money back. He wants me to have my agent call him.”

“Who’s your agent?” I ask, dreading the answer.

“You.”

“Willie, are you up for writing a book?”

“Sure. What’s the big deal?”

“Well, just to make sure, maybe you should read one first, so you’ll know what you’re getting into.” The only reading I’ve ever seen Willie do are his own press clippings.

“Come on, Andy, I told you a million times, I can’t do that. I get bored real easily; I read a ketchup bottle and I fall asleep.”

“It’s a big deal, Willie, a lot of work.”

“They said they’ll give me somebody to help. He’s helped other, you know, writers … like me.”

“I’m sure they will.”

“Hey, I’m gonna need some pens, and a lot of paper. You think maybe the helper guy will get me all that?”

I hold up the card. “Why don’t I call this guy, and then we’ll go from there.”

He nods. “Good idea. Hey, how many words are there in a book?”

“I don’t know, maybe eighty, a hundred thousand, or so.”

“How many words have we said? You know, since you got here and we’ve been talking.”

“Maybe a few hundred,” I say.

He’s clearly not pleased by my answer. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

He ponders this for a few moments. “Make sure they give me a good helper.”

“Do you know a man named Daniel Butler? People seem to call him Danny.”

Noah’s face shows no hint of recognition, and certainly no concern about my reason for asking the question.

“No, I don’t think so,” he says. “Should I?”

“Danny Butler is the reason you were arrested.”

He shakes his head. “I’m the reason I was arrested. But who is he?”

“He went to the FBI and told them that you confessed setting the fire to him. The conversation supposedly took place a few weeks after the fire.”

“That’s not possible.”

“How can you be sure of that? Maybe it was during one of your blackout periods?”

He shakes his head, more firmly this time, as if adamant. “No, when I realized what I had done, I went cold turkey. I still lived in homeless shelters for a while, but I have not put a drug into my system since that day.”

“So you don’t know him at all? He claims that he had breakfast with you at a homeless shelter, and that you were bragging about it.”

“I had breakfast with plenty of people at homeless shelters, but I never talked about the fire with anyone, at any time, until I got arrested and told Becky. And then you.”

I believe Noah is telling the truth. For one thing, he sounds sincere, though that is not terribly important. Plenty of sincere-sounding people have lied to me through their teeth. More significantly, he has no reason to lie. He’s already planning to admit his guilt and plead accordingly, so he gains nothing by denying his connection to Danny Butler.

“In his deposition, Butler goes on to say that you told him exactly how you had done it, where you set the fires, and the kind of chemicals you used. He said—”

“He’s lying, Andy.” For the first time, I hear something other than resignation in Noah’s voice. I hear a little anger.

“Why would he be lying?”

“I don’t know, but he’s lying. I’ve never had the slightest recollection of anything from that day. There is no possible way I accurately described to him what happened.”

“His story matches up with the forensic investigation.”

He thinks for a moment, frustration evident on his face. “I don’t know what to say.”

I hesitate before I continue. I’m crossing a bridge, and when I get to the other side and turn around, the bridge is going to be gone, and there won’t be any going back. And the problem is, I don’t want to get to the other side at all, and I absolutely dread getting stuck there.

“Noah, it’s important that you think about the implications of this. Let’s assume that you’re right, that you never had this incriminating conversation with Danny Butler.”

“I’m definitely right about that,” he says.

“Okay. Then how did he know the details? You couldn’t have had an accomplice, could you?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“So somebody else told Butler everything that happened, or he set the fire himself.”

“I set the fire.”

“You think that you did, I know that,” I say. “And maybe it’s true. But how did Butler find out about it? And why did he wait six years to come forward?”

Noah thinks about it and comes up with an explanation that is not completely out of left field. “You said his statement matched the forensics report. Well, maybe someone gave him the report. He read it, and attributed the information to me.”

“So he read it, and then framed someone he never met, you, while you were coincidentally hiding a belief in your own guilt.”

By now I’m pacing around the room, trying to make sense out of this. I’m sure Noah would be pacing as well, if he were not handcuffed to the metal table.

“Where does this leave us, Andy?”

“Well, I’m sorry, but what I should have already told you is that the prosecutor will not settle for anything other than life without the possibility of parole.”

He nods; it’s exactly what he expected, and probably what he wants. “I understand.”

“So there’s no rush to pleading guilty,” I say. “It’s not going to change your sentence.”

“I told you, I don’t want a trial.”

“Noah, in any negotiation, even one in which you hold no cards of any value, there is always time to make a bad deal.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means at any point you can interrupt the process and plead guilty, and that will put a stop to everything, and you’ll go away for the rest of your life. But I’m suggesting you hold off for a while, at least until we can explain what’s behind this Danny Butler situation.”

“You’re going to do that?” He rattles his handcuffs. “Because I’m sort of tied up.”

I nod. “I’ve got some free time.”

“You might regret that choice of words. Because I have no money to pay you.”

“You gave me Tara. I owe you one.”

“How do I get myself into these situations?”

Laurie and I are in bed; she’s reading, and I’m watching a
Seinfeld
rerun. I don’t actually have to “watch”
Seinfeld,
since once I hear a single sentence of any episode, it triggers my memory bank, and I know everything that is going to happen from that moment on. So this way I’m able to enjoy the show and obsess about life simultaneously.

Tara lies in the corner, on a large, puffy dog bed. She used to sleep in bed with us, but now prefers to be able to stretch out by herself.

“Which situation might that be?” Laurie asks.

“I have absolutely no desire to have a client, and I’d rather have a root canal without Novocain than take on a trial, much less a murder trial. So I accept a client for no reason at all—”

Laurie interrupts, pointing to Tara. “You did it as a favor to her.”

That doesn’t seem worthy of a response, so I don’t give her one. Instead, I continue. “But I catch a break. This client doesn’t want to go to trial; he wants to confess to anyone who will listen. So what do I do? I talk him out of pleading guilty, so that maybe we can have a trial.”

“Andy, you did the right thing. Now if you are finished beating yourself up, I’m trying to read this book.”

“How many words are in it?”

“How many words are in what? This book?”

“Yes, a publishing house wants Willie to write a book, but he’s afraid it’s going to take too many words.”

“God help us,” she says.

“Let’s get back to my situation,” I say. “Do I now have to investigate this thing?”

“You know you do.”

“Full scale, or a sweep-under-the-rug job?”

“Full scale,” she says.

“Will you help?”

“Now?”

“You know what I mean.” Laurie is an ex-cop, who when she’s not teaching college-level criminology, serves as my lead investigator. That’s obviously only when I have a client, but because I’m an idiot, I seem to have one now.

“Of course I will,” she says. “Now can I finish my book? I’ll count the words later; it might be distracting to do it as I read.”

“What are you reading?” I can’t tell, because she’s got one of those e-book readers.

“
War and Peace,
by Willie Miller,” she says.

I want to get back to obsessing about Noah’s case, so I say, “I’ll call a meeting of the team for tomorrow morning. With any luck we can find out that Noah is guilty as hell by the end of the day.”

“Mmmm,” Laurie says, not really listening because she’s started reading again.

“You know, we’re at an impasse here,” I say.

“How is that?”

“Well, you’re reading, and I want to have a conversation.”

She puts the book device down. “That is quite an impasse. How about a third choice? We could make love.”

“Sex?” I ask, not quite believing what I just heard.

She nods. “I believe there will be some sex involved. Consider it a reward for doing the right thing and helping Noah and Becky Galloway.”

“I see injustice and I need to right the wrong. That’s just who I am.” I’m undressing as I talk, to cut down on the time Laurie has to change her mind. It doesn’t seem like she will, because she has her clothes off faster than I do.

“Here’s to winning the trial,” she says.

“Don’t kill the mood.”

It’s been a while since the team has assembled.

Not as long as I’d like, but right now I don’t seem to have a choice. Any slight hope I had of backing out ended with my acceptance of Laurie’s “reward” last night. Not only wouldn’t I have given it back, but my intention is to perform just as nobly in the future, so as to get more rewards.

Present at this meeting, in addition to Laurie, Hike, Edna, and myself are Sam Willis and Marcus Clark. Sam is my accountant, but that is not his role here, especially since our client can’t afford to pay us. He is here because of his talent as computer hacker supreme. If we need to find out anything at all about anything at all, Sam can find it, so long as it resides in some computer, somewhere. Which is good, because pretty much everything in recorded history is in some computer, somewhere. The fact that much of the information is illegally obtained is something that has never kept either Sam or I awake at night.

Marcus Clark is an outstanding investigator, and an even better bodyguard. To perform both functions, he takes full advantage of the fact that he is the scariest and toughest human being on the planet.

He hardly ever talks, and when he does Laurie is the only one who can understand what he is grunting. But occasionally he seems to listen, so the goal is not to say anything that might make him angry.

In fact, no one in Marcus’s presence wants to even look at him; it seems the safest way to stay alive. So everybody just acts nonchalant, as if no one is terrified. It’s as if Godzilla walked through the streets of Tokyo, and the citizens just sauntered along, whistling and chatting amiably, as if nothing was amiss.

I grab some coffee and come into the room. Hike is telling Sam how the world is soon to end from an asteroid strike. “There are more asteroids out there than we have grains of sand on our beaches,” he says. “We’re like in a shooting gallery.”

“We’re not getting hit,” Sam says. He is the optimistic opposite of Hike.

“That’s what the dinosaurs said. You see any of them on the bus coming in this morning?”

“So you’re saying we’re all going to die?”

Hike nods solemnly. “If not this week, then next. Law of averages.”

I call the meeting to order. “We’ve got a client,” I say. “His name is Noah Galloway. We haven’t received the discovery yet, but Edna will pass out copies of the information we have so far.”

Edna looks stunned. “I was supposed to make copies?”

I nod. “Now that you say so, that’s probably a good way to do it. That way we’ll each have our own.”

She stands, folder in hand, and makes the trudge to the copy room. When she’s finished, we are going to have one exhausted Edna on our hands.

I give them the basic outline, which they can supplement by reading the documents, should Edna succeed in copying them. Then I lay out the individual assignments.

“Hike and I will go through the discovery, which I’m told we’ll have by close of business today. Sam, you should focus on digging up all available information on the fire, the victims, and Danny Butler.”

He seems disappointed. “That’s it? Did I mention I got a gun permit?”

“Yes, I believe you did. And if we need to shoot anyone, you’re our man.” Sam feels inhibited by being assigned only computer work; he wants to be out on the street gunning down bad guys.

“Laurie, you’ll be in charge of the investigation itself, and Marcus will work with you.” I briefly look over at Marcus to see if he has any reaction, but he doesn’t. He likes Laurie, so I use her as a buffer whenever I can.

Edna comes back into the room and announces, with obvious relief in her voice, that the copier is out of toner. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to rectify that technical a problem, so Sam says he’ll reload it when the meeting is over.

“We don’t have a lot of time on this,” I say, trying to get things back on track. “If it goes on too long, our client is going to preempt us and plead guilty.”