Pleading Guilty (8 page)

By now Martin was explaining the Committee's plan, how I was searching for Bert in the hope he could be persuaded to relent. From Jake, Martin asked brief forbearance, a couple of weeks, with the promise that at the end I'd provide a full report. To sum up, he came and sat on the forward edge of his desk. "If we can tell Bert that you, that TN, is looking at this in an understanding way," he said to Jake, "I think there's a chance
,
a real chance, to get the money back. If we do, we can, perhaps, avoid the scandal. That truly strikes me as best for everyone." He stopped. Martin had made his appeal, all his formidable charm and powers turned on Jake. Now we waited. It was, on the whole, a moment of high daring. Gage & Griswell was probably about to join the lost city of Atlantis as a civilization that fell into the sea. I thought Wash might black out, and even my skin was crawling, anticipating Jake's reaction. Jake, for his part, looked worse than I'd ever seen him, the fatal gray of a man in shock.

"Unbelievable." That was the first thing Jake said. He got to his feet and walked a circle one way and then the other around his chair. "How am I ever going to handle this upstairs?" He asked this question mostly of himself, fingertips at his lips, and it was clear he did not know the answer. He stood there, visibly pained, not quite willing to discuss the repercussions, as if they were lexically beyond him, like a man who could not bear to utter dirty words.

"We're here to help you," Wash said.

"Oh, you've helped a lot," said Jake and winced at the thought. TN lately had been on hard times, if a company with gross earnings of four billion every year can be described that way. Almost everything they own--the hotels, the rent-a-car companies, the airlines--is sensitive to fluctuations in travel, of which there had been damn little since our warlette against So-damn Insane. No surprise either, since anybody with a college business course could have told you that covey of enterprises would move cyclically. To diversify, TN a decade ago bought a traveler's check business and from that made an entry into the world of Sunbelt banking, just in time to watch their loan portfolio go to hell. After the suicidal fare wars of last summer, the company lost about 600 million bucks, the third bad year in a row. To stein the bleeding, the outside directors brought in Tadeusz Krzysinski as CEO, the first person ever to advance above the level of vice-president who was not homegrown.

Among many reforms, Tad has cracked the whip on expenses and by all accounts has been prodding Jake about his relationship with G &G, on the theory that there should be more competition for TN's legal work. Krzysinski has been heard to speak warmly of a zoo-lawyer firm in Columbus he grew to like when he was in his last incarnation, as president of Red Carpet Rental Car.

This, to say the least, is a subject of concern at Gage & Criswell, since TN has never been less than i8 percent of our revenues. Martin and Wash have been trying to convert Krzysinski, lunching with him, inviting him to meetings, reminding him repeatedly how expensive it would be to replace our knowledge of TN's structure and past legal affairs. In response, Krzysinski has emphasized that the decision is Jake's--his General Counsel, like most, must have free rein to choose the outside lawyers he works with--a deft move since both Jake and G &G have their supporters on TN's board. But Jake has a seasoned corporate bureaucrat's lust for terrain. He covets a seat on the board, the title of Vice-Chairman, which only Krzysinski can award him, and evinces a toadying willingness to please his new Chairman, with whom in truth he seems frequently ill at ease..
. A
s often happens in corporation land, there's been more talk than action. Jake has sent only a few morsels to Columbus, as he does with many other firms. But in business, like baseball, senior management is often behind you right up to the day you get the ax. Jake by now had turned to me. "This is very sensitive. Mack, I want to know about everything you're doing. And for God's sake," he added, "be discreet."

Jake is accustomed to being an executive. He stood a moment, medium height and lean, a hand placed over his eyes. He was wearing a smart double-breasted suit, a subtle glen plaid, and his initials--J
. A. K. E
.: John Andrew Kenneth Eiger--a favored decorative element, had showed on his shirtsleeve when he pointed at me. "Jesus Christ," Jake said in final reflection and with nothing further left.

Wash rose in his wake. In extremis his aging face had taken on the texture of a gourd, and he hung there, a mystery to himself, torn between remonstrating with Martin and comforting Jake, and finally chose the latter. A grade-schooler knew what he was going to say: Give us time. Don't be rash. Once we find Kamin, this can be worked out.

Behind the thousand-year oak, Martin watched them vanish and asked me, "So what do you think?" He had his hands across his tummy, his face tucked down shrewdly between the matching braces, so that his chin rested on his fancy handmade shirt of jazzy vertical stripes.

"I'll let you know as soon as I get feeling again in my limbs." My heart was still flapping. "I thought we weren't going to say anything."

Martin is one of those men who abound in the legal profession whose brains seem to make them a quarter larger than life. His mind is always zipping along at the speed of an electron. You sit down with him and feel surrounded on all sides. Jesus Christ, you wonder, what is this fellow thinking? I know he's turned over every word I've said three times before I get another one out of my mouth. Accompanying this kind of intellectual hand-speed is a canny grasp of human nature. To what uses all of this is put is not necessarily clear. Martin would not be mistaken for Mother Teresa. Like anybody else who has whizzed along the fast track in the practice of law, he can cut your heart out if need be. And talking to him, as I
. Y
, is a kind of contest, in which his clever, warm remarks, his conveyed sense that he knows just what you mean, is somehow never mutual. I know you; you don't know me. His true residence is out-of-bounds, somewhere in the neighborhood of Mount Olympus. But Martin was rarely as mystifying as he was now. He seemed unshaken by anything that had occurred here. He met my inquiry with an inscrutable little tip of the hand, as if he could not alter bygones. "What do you think Krzysinski's going to say when Jake tells him about this?" I asked.

Martin closed his eyes to weigh the inquiry, as if it had not occurred to him yet, and when he looked back a little wrinkle of something close to humor, an embracing irony, briefly crossed his worn face. He stood to regard me, as another of his funny clocks began to chatter like a chipmunk somewhere in the room.

"I think you'd better find Bert," he told me.

Chapter
VI. THE SECRET LIFE OF

A. Good News

Most of the time as I am recording this, talking it through, I do not see the faces of Carl and Wash and Martin. I can't really imagine them with the pages in their hands. So there must be someone else I mean to talk to, sitting here in my rummage-sale bedroom late at night. In the stillness the voice seems to be the spirit, the way a candle is best represented by a flame. Maybe the Dictaphone's a medium, then, a way to enhance communication with the dear departed. Maybe this is really an extended message to sweet Elaine, with whom I used to speak three times a day. Today I've felt her absence starkly, the willing ear to whom I've muttered stray remarks, even as I sat in my office, shiftless and sour, feeling perplexed by the hunt for Bert. I stared again at the statement from the Kam Roberts bank card. My feet were on my desk, a large period piece with the formidable tiered look of a steamship, its rosy surface lost in a patchwork of discarded telephone messages, throwaway memos, and various briefs and transcripts that I was yet to file. When I came in at G &G with Jake Eiger's backing and made partner during those initial years when Jake drowned me in work, I ha
d t
he option to redecorate this room but never got around to it, too drunk to care I guess. I've lived all this time with what is in reality secondhand stuff, the big walnut desk, the glass-paned bookcases, two leather gooseneck chairs with brass studs, a nice, if worn, Oriental rug, a personal computer, and my own clutter. The only object I care much about is on the wall, a terrific Beckmann print--the usual dissipated people in a cafe. By daylight I have a fine view of the river and the west edge of Center City, girded by the Interstate, U
. S
. 843.

I thought sullenly about how I was going to make Martin happy and find Bert. I still wanted to talk to the flight attendant in the apartment above his, but I didn't have her name--she hadn't left it on the mailbox--and the notion of putting myself in the vicinity of that stiff again gave me the willies. I phoned long-distance information for Scottsdale and after two calls found Bert's sister, Mrs. Cheryl Moeller, whom I'd met when the ma was buried. She didn't know where her brother was and had not heard from him in months, which was par for the course. She couldn't remember any pal of Bert's named Archie either. She didn't sound as if she liked her brother any better than she ever had and ended up reassuring me that Bert was going to turn up, as usual.

Fellas, Elaine--whoever I'm talking to--I have to tell you, your investigator was stumped. I went over the statement one more time. Why was Bert booking hotel rooms on game nights when he had an empty apartment a mile away? Purely on a flyer, I called U Inn. I got the hotel operator and did what we used to refer to in Financial as a pretext call. I said I was trying to get information on a guy I'd had a business meeting with at U Inn on December i8. I'd lost my entire file in a taxi and was hoping maybe they had a forwarding address or phone for him. "What's this gentleman's name?" the hotel operator asked. "Kam Roberts." I was looking for any clue to Bert's present whereabouts. I heard a few computer keys click, then spen
t m
ost of eternity on hold, but finally got a fellow named Trilby who said he was the Associate Manager. He asked first thing for my name and number, which I gave him.

"I'll check our records, Mr. Malloy, and ask Mr. Roberts to call you."

Wrong idea. Bert didn't figure to stick around for an encounter with any of his partners.

"I'm on vacation after today. I really need to reach him. Any chance of that?"

"Just a moment." It was a good deal longer than that, but Trilby sounded quite pleased with himself when he returned. "Mr. Malloy, you must have ESP. He's a guest in the hotel." My heart stopped.

"Kam Roberts is? You're sure?"

He laughed. "Well, I wouldn't say that anybody here knows him, but there's a gentleman by that name checked in to Room 622. Should I have him call you? Or can we tell him when you'll be coming by?"

I thought. "Can I talk to him?"

He returned after I'd heard an extended symphonic version of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head."

"There's no answer there, Mr. Malloy. Why don't you stop by at the end of the day and we'll get him a message you'll be here."

"Sure," I said. "Or I'll call."

"Call or come by," said Trilby. He was writing a note.

After I put down the phone, I sat a long time looking at the river. There was one building across the way, still wearing Yuletide festoonery, lights and a skirt of holly across the roof. It didn't make much sense. Bert had reason to be laying low--his partners, the police, and maybe even whoever had stuffed that bug-eyed businessman in his refrigerator were all after him. But why hide in Kindle, where sooner or later he'd run into somebody he knew? Whatever, I had to get down there fast, before

Bert got this
lame brained
message in which I'd used my actual factual name, the sight of which undoubtedly would lead him to scoot once more.

I took the elevator down and crossed the street to the health club where I play racquetball with Brushy. I jumped into my sweats and shoved my wallet in a pocket, then started jogging. It was 28 degrees so I hauled my broad Irish backside down the avenues with some dispatch, but I ran out of wind after about four blocks and went back and forth, running till my smoked-up lungs felt like I'd breathed in bleach, then stopping and letting sweat freeze up on my nose.

I cruised out of Center City into the neighborhoods where the two-family houses roosted like hens behind the frozen lawns and the leafless trees, stark and black, loomed above the parkways. Lured by my mood, I jogged a few blocks out of my way into the edges of the ghetto, so I could pass St. Bridget's School. It is a stucco building split by long cracks the shape of lightning. There, for more than thirty-one years, Elaine was the school librarian--"feeding the starving," as she put it. This was a person of iron convictions. With our ma, I turned myself into a sort of human tetherball, always close enough to be pounded back in another direction when she'd go off her nut and rage about one thing or another, but Elaine was smarter and held her distance. She developed, through this exercise, I suppose, a strongly contrary temperament. When everyone was sitting, Elaine was standing; she wandered around the kitchen when the family dined. She preferred her solitary self to any company, and that never seemed to change.

She ended up one of those Catholic spinsters, a spiritual type who never quite joined the secular world, at 5
:00
a
. M
. Mass every morning, always palling around with the nuns and identifying people, and even store locations, throughout the tri-cities by their parish. She had her worldly moments, some gentlemen friends with whom she sinned, and she was a terrific card too, one of these clever old Irish gals with a bracing wit. All Ma'
s s
harpness was still resident in her, but where Bess took to the cudgel of spiteful words and judgments, Elaine's humor was aimed principally at herself. These little muttered cracks as you left your seat, turned your back, and always an arrow to the heart. Her only failing she came by naturally--she drank a bit. The night she left our house, goofy from plum brandies, and turned up the off ramp and headed onto U
. S
. 843 was the final drunken evening of my life.