The Judgment (2 page)

“I’m not big on child-molester cases.”

“This isn’t one of those things, Charley. As far as I know, the priest is quite innocent. Frankly, he’s a bit of an eccentric, but he’s a good priest. The people love him. You’d be doing an act of Christian charity if you undertook helping him out.”

“I’ll do what I can. What’s his name?”

“Father Charles Albertus. Everyone calls him Father Chuck. That’s the name he goes by unless he’s writing checks. Maybe even then, as far as I know.”

In my mind I formed a picture of a rail-thin priest in a
sackcloth shirt, with long hair and a wispy beard, smoking a cigarette held in the European fashion. And sandals, Roman style.

“Does he know you’re contacting me?”

“I told him I would. He’ll be expecting your call. He serves as pastor of a small parish in Hub City, and also he’s the priest for a half dozen rural missions, small churches spread out all over the Thumb. We used to have priests for all those places, but there’s a shortage, as you probably know.”

“Give me the number,” I said, with a slight touch of annoyance and resignation in my voice.

I sighed to myself. No longer was I a church-going Catholic, but there was still a strong pull, an echo, I suppose, of boyhood loyalty and a nod to how I was brought up. Confession every Saturday; early Mass on Sunday morning and Holy Communion; the almost reverential respect my parents taught me to have for our parish priest.

Perhaps because of all that, I never charged Bishop Solar my full fee. Sometimes I didn’t charge him at all.

Which is probably one of the main reasons the good bishop thought of me in the first place.

I was about to dial the priest, but before I had a chance, Mrs. Fenton popped in again.

“Do you know a Mark Conroy? He says he’s a police chief.”

I nodded. “He’s Detroit’s deputy chief. Why?”

She raised a disapproving eyebrow. In Mrs. Fenton’s mind you were either what you said you were or you were a rank pretender. By her expression, I knew that she did not approve of deputy chiefs running around claiming they were the big cheeses.

“In Detroit, the deputy chief is called chief. Like a lieutenant colonel is called colonel in the army. Besides, Conroy is the real chief. He runs the Detroit Police Department,” I said. “The other chief you read about is a
political front man for the mayor. I know Conroy. Why do you ask?”

Her deepening frown indicated she wasn’t completely satisfied despite my explanation. “He’s on the phone. He wants to speak to you.”

It wouldn’t be like hearing from an old friend. I dislike very few people, but Mark Conroy years ago made it to my short list. The feeling, as far as I knew, was mutual.

“He’s on line two,” she said as she left.

I picked up the phone and punched the button.

“Sloan here. What do you want?”

“It’s a personal matter.” The voice was as I remembered it, smooth but with an underlying hint of authority, perhaps even menace.

“Legal?”

There was a pause. “Yes.”

“Look, Conroy, you and I have never really been friends. I think you’d be better off seeing another attorney.”

“Are you afraid to talk to me?”

“Of course not.”

“It’s urgent.”

“I’m busy this afternoon. Tomorrow I can see you at three o’clock. All right?”

“How about right now?”

“It’s an hour’s drive up here. I have an appointment in an hour.”

I didn’t, but I didn’t want to admit it, not to Conroy. I wanted him to think I was so successful, I didn’t have a free minute in the day.

“I’m in your parking lot,” he said, a humorless chuckle in his voice. “All I need is an hour of your time, probably less.”

“Car phone?”

“What else?”

“All right, if you insist. Come up.”

“Up that outside stairway I see?”

“It’s the only way up. It may not look it, but it’s safe enough.”

The top cops of the Detroit department wear uniforms that a South American dictator might envy. Their hats have enough gold braid to supply the British navy. And medals! I never knew what they were for, but each top cop has row after colorful row on his uniform chest. The official police badge, set above the ribbons, looks almost dowdy by comparison. They like white gloves, and anything leather on their bodies is always polished to mirror quality.

Mark Conroy came dressed in civilian clothes. It was almost a disappointment.

He was a handsome man, the product of a multitude of bloodlines. Thick chested, wide shoulders, and an inch shy of six feet. Officially, he was black, but he could have been anything—Italian, Greek, South American—with a slightly tanned skin, by genes rather than by sun and strong features topped by black, close-cut, curly hair.

It was his olive-black eyes everyone always remembered. Hard eyes, knowing. Eyes that seemed to search other faces like two probing lasers. Friendly one minute, frightening the next.

I didn’t get up. He took a chair across from me and looked around at my office.

“Who’s your decorator, Charles Dickens?”

A half smile, an expression closer to a sneer, played on his full lips.

“You don’t like it?” I asked.

The sneering smile broadened. “I love it. It looks like something out of the last century. Cracked leather and musty books. It has its own special atmosphere, but then so does a morgue. Where the hell did you get this stuff?”

“Most of it was here when I moved in a few years ago. It belonged to a very old lawyer who died.”

“You should have buried all this with him.”

I studied him for a moment. His slate gray suit didn’t look like it came off the rack. His shoes appeared handmade,
as did the monogrammed shirt and silk tie. Conroy was forty-five but looked younger. He had made his reputation as a gutsy cop who worked undercover and feared nothing. Combining brains with nerve, he rocketed through the ranks to chief of detectives before the age of forty, a first in the department’s history. The mayor appointed him as deputy chief when he appointed the new chief. The new chief was smart politically, but had proved himself a stupid cop. Conroy got the second top job to keep the department running and out of trouble. “You still hate me because of the Mickleberg case, don’t you?” he asked, those black eyes fixed on mine.

“You lied on the stand and you sent an innocent man to prison for life for a crime he didn’t commit.”

“Innocent?” This time the sneer was definitely a sneer. “The problem with lawyers is you people treat crime like a game of tennis, little rules for everything. Clay court or law court, it’s the same thing to you. You have to stand in a certain place, do certain things, and you can’t step over certain lines. Justice for you people is just a game for gentlemen.”

“Nice speech. Give it often?”

Those eyes hardened even more. “Harry Mickleberg was going up and down Gratiot Avenue, killing and robbing the owners of small stores. He was good at it. That’s how he got your fee, by the way, from one of those robberies. We knew it was him who was doing the killing, from informers and other information, but none of it good enough to make a case, at least under your rules. Mickleberg grew up in reform school and spent more time in prison than he did out. He had nice hobbies like sodomizing his sister. Did you know that? If you were making a list of undesirables, you’d have to put Harry pretty high up there.”

Those damn eyes of his had an almost hypnotic effect. He continued in his command voice. Crisp, professional, no nonsense.

“We caught him with a gun that had been used in a
murder. It wasn’t his gun, and he hadn’t done the killing, but we took the bastard down anyway. I took him down. I was the homicide detective in charge, as you recall. I told a few small white lies on the stand, as we both know. Even you couldn’t shake me, which is the real reason why you don’t like me. I beat you. But from my point of view, I took that prick off the streets for life and saved a few lives in the process. I didn’t play by your neat little rules, but justice got done anyway.”

I could feel anger rising and I knew my face was reddening.

He looked past me at my view of the river. “I don’t need you to like me, Sloan. But I do need a good lawyer. An honest one.”

“I don’t want the case.”

“You don’t even know what it is. Don’t your rules call for some measure of fairness?”

“Yes, unlike yours. Mine are called professional ethics.”

“You still off the stuff?” he asked.

“Booze, you mean?”

He nodded.

My problem had often been headlined in the newspapers, and not so long ago. It was all a matter of public record, though I resented the question. But I answered him, to show, I think, that it didn’t bother me.

“I’m what is termed a recovering alcoholic. What that means, as a practical manner, is that I don’t drink today. Sobriety is a day-to-day thing. So far, I’ve been successful for quite some time.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re something of an enigma to me, Sloan. You were once one of Detroit’s courtroom big shooters, then the booze got you and you got disbarred. You seem to have licked your problem but you’re still tucked away up here. Why?”

“I wasn’t disbarred. They suspended me from practice for a year. To lawyers, there’s a big difference between disbarment and suspension. Disbarment marks you for life. I escaped that.”

His chuckle was devoid of humor. “Tennis rules, like I said.”

“If that’s how you look at it. In any event, after the year’s suspension, I came up here to live a quiet life and to stay out of trouble.”

“You’ve had some big cases since, then,” he said. “And you won them.”

“I’m good at what I do. I’m a trial lawyer, and experienced. That’s all I have to offer as my stock-in-trade. And, when I want to, I pick my cases.”

He smiled, exhibiting perfect white teeth. “Years ago they whispered you were crooked, that you weren’t above pulling a few dishonest tricks to win. You know, a little bribe here, a little bribe there.”

That was the media. It made a better story. And, frankly, at that time, it was good for business. “Everybody wants a lawyer who can put the fix in. I didn’t then, and I don’t now.”

“I know that.” Those eyes of his seemed to almost glitter. “I’d know if you were crooked, believe me. You’re honest. And that’s what I need, an honest lawyer.”

“There are a lot of them around. I told you, I don’t want your case.”

“But you haven’t heard what it is yet. At least give me that courtesy.”

“You’d only be wasting your time”—I paused—“and money,” I added, to remind him that this was business and I didn’t have to sit there and listen to him for free.

He nodded. “It’s my time.” He smiled. “And my money.”

“If that’s what you want to do, go on.”

He shifted slightly to make himself more comfortable in the old chair.

“The mayor appointed me as deputy chief in an off moment just to make sure the department wasn’t run into the ground or sold to France.”

“I know the situation.”

He paused. “Am I protected here, the lawyer-client thing?”

I nodded. “For this visit only, you are my client. I will charge you for my time. What you say here is privileged and can go no further.”

He blinked, then continued. “I knew what I was getting into when I took thé deputy chief job. The department has been my life. I watched it go from a spit-and-polish outfit to a Turkish bazaar. Half the cops have something going on the side. It’s like being the chief operating officer of a mall. Everybody is doing a little business.”

“If you knew that, why did you take the job?”

“It was important to me. I thought, over time, I might be able to make things better.”

“Sure.”

He smiled. “I mean it, whether you believe me or not. Anyway, I think in the past couple of years I’ve done some good. We don’t have the money or the people to do a proper job, but I like to think we have come a long way.”

“How about crooked cops?”

He raised his hands as if in surrender. “There are a lot fewer than when I took over. There’s a lot of money out there on the street. Sometimes, especially for a young cop, temptation overcomes common sense. Anyway, I cleaned up Internal Affairs, put my own people in there, and we’ve been weeding out as many bad cops as we can, as a practical matter.”

“A practical matter that can cover a lot of territory. Or very little, depending on your point of view.”

“I’ll get down to specifics,” he said. “My boss, on paper anyway, is too stupid to steal. That’s done for him by others.”

“Oh?”

“Our mayor is a multimillionaire. He had to borrow car fare when he was elected. Does that tell you anything?”

“The feds have tried to nail him, and each time they failed. He’s either honest or smart as hell.”

“Smart. He has the mind of a twelfth-century Italian merchant. And he has his hand in almost everything that goes on in this town.”

“So arrest him.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

He smiled, but it slid into another sneer. “Because of lawyer rules, mostly. We know who his bagmen are. Who his drug contacts are. We have everything, except a willing witness, or something to convince a jury of a payoff.”

“Did you actually start an investigation?”

He nodded. “With my own selected people, or so I thought, called the Untouchables. We have more spies at headquarters than the CIA ever did in Russia. Some report to the drug dealers, some to me, some to the mayor.”

“What’s all this got to do with your problem?”

“If you had a bloodhound on your trail, what would you do?” He paused only for effect. “You’d shoot the dog, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, this is the mayor’s version of shooting the dog. He can’t fire me. That would raise too many questions, and it would be embarrassing if I told what I know. That leaves murder, which is messy, especially if you don’t need to resort to it.”

“Are you saying the mayor is trying to frame you?”

“God, you’re quick, Sloan.”

“And just how does the mayor propose to do this?”

For the first time he looked nervous. Those eyes seemed to have lost some of their intensity. “They say I stole from a police department fund, a fund founded with confiscated drug money.”