Hostile Witness Part 30

"Then I want Victor to keep following Prescott's orders. Prescott doesn't want Victor to ask any questions of Michael Ruffing."

"Is that right?" I asked.

"That's what he wants. The councilman's a loyal man, all he demands is loyalty in return. I've seen it over and over, people doubting him and him coming through for them. Get me the proof or do what Prescott tells you."

I slapped the table lightly. "Well, I guess that's that," I said. "The decision's made."

"Why don't you give us a minute alone, Chester," said Beth.

After he left we stayed there in silence for a while, Beth and I. I couldn't bring myself to look at her, afraid of what I would see in her eyes. I thought she'd start out by screaming at me, but she didn't. Her voice when it came was soft and even, but I could still feel the emotion in it.

"You should get the h.e.l.l out of this case," she said. "Cause a mistrial, leave Prescott holding a leaking paper bag with his spoiled strategy inside."

"The judge won't let me go," I said.

"Then you should get Chester back in here and convince him that he's getting screwed."

"He's the client," I said. "He made his decision."

"You could convince him," she said. "What you told him was absolute bulls.h.i.+t and you know it. He listens to you, G.o.d knows why, but he does. You could change his mind, give him a fighting chance."

"And then do what? What evidence do I have? What can I ask Ruffing that will change anything? It would be different if I had something concrete to use."

"Would it?"

I didn't say anything.

"So what are you going to do now, Victor?"

"Just what my client wants me to do," I said. "Nothing."

"I can't accept that," she said.

"It's not your case."

"It's my name on the letterhead."

"Yes, but it was the retainer I got in this case that finally paid the stationery bill. The decision has been made," I said. "Whatever happens, it's my responsibility."

She gave me that d.a.m.n sigh again and I shuddered as if I had been hit about my shoulders with a stick. "They've been trying for years to get me to work down at Community Legal Services," she said. "Perillo called me again about CLS just last week. He has an opening for me. The pay's steady, and there's plenty of work."

"Beth," I said, but that's all I could say, because when I finally looked up at her she was facing away from me and in the hunch of her shoulders was a sadness I had never seen in her before, a sadness that shocked me into silence.

"I think I'm going to accept his offer," she said, and I knew then why she was turned away from me; Beth would sooner have me see her naked than have me see her cry. "Don't you know, Victor, haven't you learned yet that the one thing we're never allowed to do in this life is nothing?"

"Beth," I said again, and again that was all I could say, because before I could say anything else she was out the door.

This is what I realized just then. I realized that the difference between those who got what they wanted and those who didn't was not merely talent or brains or grace under pressure, the difference was that those who got what they wanted simply wanted it more than those who didn't. Well, dammit, I knew what I wanted and I knew just how bad I wanted it, too. I was sick of our outdated law books, of our scruffy copier, of the dunning letters and collection calls and my same three suits and my frayed collars and the worry over small change that had kept me tossing on the sofa as the late show droned. I was sick of our second-cla.s.s practice, sick of my second-cla.s.s life. I wanted my share of the wealth and glory in this world, I wanted money, and if my wants were shallow then sue me, dammit, for I was third generation now, American to the core, and what I wanted was only what this country had taught me to want. And it taught me how to get it, too. As Beth walked out of that room I learned that she simply didn't want it all as much as I did. Too bad for her. Maybe she belonged at Community Legal Services, working in a cubicle, handling landlordtenant disputes for families on welfare, but not me, no sir.

When Judge Gimbel came back on the bench and brought the jury into the courtroom and asked me, "Now, Mr. Carl, do you have any questions for this witness?" he might just as well have been asking whether I had any doubts about how badly I wanted the success that Prescott was promising, because the answer would have been exactly the same.

"No, Your Honor," I said without hesitation. "None at all."

When I sat down again Prescott was smiling at me. It was a warm smile, and what I interpreted that smile to mean was, "Welcome to the club." I smiled too.

Now, when I think back on that smile of mine, full as it was with hope and antic.i.p.ation and deference to my patron, I think of the chuckle it must have given to that b.a.s.t.a.r.d and I can't help but wince.

32.

I WAS IN MY OFFICE ALONE, late, checking through my mail and making calls, when Morris phoned with the bad news. I had spent another awful day in court, the only kind I seemed to allow myself, another day where I sat silently beside my client and let the evidence spill over him like ocean waves unchecked by any reef. And afterwards I had come back to the office to find it deserted again. I had not seen Beth since the afternoon of Ruffing's cross-examination. She was conveniently absent when I was around but I noticed that the personal effects in her office, the photograph of her father, the photograph of her sisters, the little outhouse whose doors opened up with the touch of a b.u.t.ton that she got such a kick out of, one by one the personal effects were disappearing. She was leaving, no doubt, she had meant what she had said, Beth always meant what she said. And so we would no longer be GUTHRIE, DERRINGER AND CARL or DERRINGER AND CARL but just plain AND CARL, and each night thereafter would be like that night, where I was left alone with nothing but the emptiness of the office and a pathetic stack of mail. On the high road to success.

My mail that day was much like my mail every day, letters confirming conversations on the telephone that in no way matched the descriptions in the letters, advertis.e.m.e.nts for legal journals and continuing legal education courses, an accounting firm's brochure listing all the exciting ways it could make my practice more successful, when in fact the success it was seeking was its own. And then, in an ominous manila envelope, on crisp paper backed with a blue piece of cardboard, I found an answer. No, it wasn't an answer to life's more perplexing questions, like why we exist or how to drink beer and laugh at the same time without getting suds up your nose. What it was, actually, was an answer to the motion for a protective order I had filed on Veronica's behalf against one Spiros Giamoticos, Veronica's landlord, who had been leaving dead animals in front of her doorway in an effort to chase her out of her bargain lease.

Giamoticos was being represented by Tony Baloney, which was a surprise since Anthony Bolignari, Esq., dubbed Tony Baloney by the admiring press, was one of the more successful and expensive drug lawyers in the city, an interesting choice of counsel for a deranged landlord. You wouldn't see Tony at the Philadelphia Bar a.s.sociation dances or lunching at the Union League, even though he outearned most of the big-time corporate types. There is a certain pungency to drug lawyers, to mob lawyers, to those attorneys who represent society's outlaws, a smell that makes such lawyers unwelcome in the more hallowed hallways of the bar. Where you saw Tony Baloney was on the evening news, his cheeks jiggling beneath his wide walrus mustache as he explained in overwrought language the details of still another acquittal for one of his clients.

The answer Tony had filed stated very simply that Spiros Giamoticos had not done any of the things Veronica had claimed he had done, which was not a surprise because Tony's clients always pleaded not guilty, even when the cocaine was found inside their intestinal tracts, wrapped in greased prophylactics swallowed before boarding the plane from Bogota.

"Yes, Victor," said Tony Baloney into the phone, after I had waited on hold for a solid five minutes. "Not surprised you are calling. This nasty Giamoticos matter, I a.s.sume." His voice was high, exuberant, punctuated by the deep breaths of the asthmatic. "My daughter resides in that very building. Giamoticos brings your motion to her. Like a devoted father I agree to take the case. I expect you'll do your best to make me regret it."

"Is he going to stop the animal killing c.r.a.p?"

"It's not him, Victor. He says he didn't do it."

"You sound like you've said that before."

He laughed. "Yes, well," he said. "Maybe I have. That's the speech for the lummoxes in the DA's office all right. But sometimes it happens to be true."

"He killed her cat," I said. "I know. I was forced to clean it up. The tenant I represent has a bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt lease and he wants her out so he killed her cat."

"'Courage, man. What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.'"

"You speaking Spanish?"

"Not a devotee of the Bard, hey, Victor? Too bad. There's more to learn of law from Shakespeare than from all the digests put together. So tell me what it is your client wants."

"What she wants, Tony, is to be left alone."

"Well then, darling, how about a deal?" he asked. "You withdraw this scabrous motion. My guy will swear to be a perfect gentleman. Follow the letter of the law. Stay forty paces from your client."

"Like he's on probation?"

"Just like."

"No skulking around hallways, no more dead birds from him?"

"I'll vouch for him. He didn't do it. He wants no trouble. The whole legal thing scares the ouzo out of him. It seems the law is different in Greece. I keep telling him there are no firing squads in America." I could hear him pound his desk as he shouted, "There are no firing squads in America!"

"Deal," I said.

"Good, Victor. Good. Now this Veronica Ashland. She's Jimmy Moore's friend, isn't she?"

"I have nothing else to say."

"Discretion is good, Victor. I like that. I need to be discreet too. But even so, Jimmy and I used to be buddies. A drink or two together now and then. But after what happened to Nadine he wrote me off. The wrong side, or some nonsense like that. She was a good kid too, Nadine. Her biggest problem was her father. Jimmy thinks he's a new man, that what's past is prologue. 'But love is blind, and lovers cannot see.' Merchant of Venice, Victor."

"I don't understand," I said, and I didn't. All I could catch was that he was trying to threaten Jimmy through me and I didn't like it. I had received enough threats in this case to last me a lifetime.

"I can't say anything more at the moment. Discretion, right? Just tell him what I said. And if he wants to call me, he can."

"Sure," I said, but I didn't feel very messenger-boyish just then, especially not for fat Tony Baloney. I figured I would let him threaten the councilman on his own.

So it was back to the mail, reviewing letters, dictating missives of my own into the little tape machine for Ellie to butcher on the typewriter the next day, marking it all down on my time sheets in six-minute increments to be billed. That's what I was doing when Morris called.

"Vey is mir, Victor. It pains me to have to call you this evening, I hope you appreciate that. During the short time we have worked together, Victor, and I mean this with all sincerity, you have become like mishpocheh to me. I wouldn't say like a son because, frankly, we haven't become that close, but a nephew, maybe, a distant nephew, a nephew from a foreign country, a Czechoslovakian nephew, yes? And so, being that you have become as dear to me as a Czechoslovakian nephew, it pains me to tell you what I have to tell you."

"What is it you have to tell me, Morris?"

"First I want you to know that we left, mine son and I, not a single stone but that we turned it and not a single path but that we followed it to nowhere."

"Just tell me, Morris."

"Your Mr. Stocker, your thief, I know he is somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico, I know it, I can taste it, he is so trayf you wouldn't believe, but still I can taste him on his boat, floating happily, bobbing up and down, as happy as a Cossack on a sea of vodka, that happy, Victor. He is there, I know it, but where I can't tell you. If I could tell you where he was then I'd be a happy man, but such is life that we are not to know such happiness until we find ha'olum haba'ah. Do you know what such is that, Victor? Ha'olum haba'ah?"

"No."

"How will you get there if you don't know what it is?"

"What is it?"

"The world to come."

"Heaven?"

"Of a sort, but better. No angels with wings, no annoying harp music, and the food, Victor, all the food is kosher."

"I a.s.sume they have pastrami there."

"What, you think you go all that way for egg salad?"

"So what you are telling me, Morris, is that you can't find Stocker."

"I'm calling tonight because you gave me three weeks and tomorrow is exactly three weeks to a day from when you hired me and so mine time is up. I would spend the extra day and call you tomorrow but it's Friday and preparing for the Shabbos I wanted not to forget."

"Don't worry about it, Morris, you got farther than I ever expected, you even got farther than the FBI in finding the guy."

"So that's such a challenge? Being as mine investigation has come to a close, I will be sending along a tzatel with my charges, sending it tomorrow, in fact. Now, just as a point of curiosity, to who should I send mine tzatel, to you or to mine friend Benny Lefkowitz who told me to see you?"

"You should send it to Mr. Lefkowitz, Morris. He'll s.h.i.+p it over to me, but he and the other clients are paying it."

"Perfect, I just thought I should know. So, Victor, that is that. Do you have anything else you need investigating? Anything you want Morris Kapustin to look into?"

"Nothing right now, Morris."

"You keep me in mind, Victor, and I would be very appreciative. I feel very bad about this, Victor. Anything you need, any help at all, you give Morris a call."

"Sure."

"A gezunt ahf dein kopf, mein freint. And don't be a shmendrick, call me sometime. We'll do lunch."

"We'll do lunch?"

"A guy like me, I could have been in Hollywood, why not? John Garfield, Jewish. Goldwyn and Mayer and Fox, all Jewish. So why not Morris Kapustin?"

"No reason, Morris. No reason at all."

I wasn't feeling the same pain as Morris over his news. What it meant was that the deadline for finding Stocker had pa.s.sed without a positive result and I could now settle the Saltz case for the $120,000 offered by Prescott, from which I would immediately deduct my one-third share, forty thousand dollars, forty thousand sweet smelling, crisply crinkling, beautifully off-green, satisfyingly stiff new dollar bills. I could feel the rough texture between my fingers already. In antic.i.p.ation of Morris's failure I had sent out release forms to the clients with self-addressed, stamped return envelopes. One by one the envelopes had come back and I opened them gleefully, like a child receiving birthday cards. Eight releases, each of them duly executed and ready for turning over to Prescott in exchange for a sweet little check made out for one hundred and twenty thou. With Morris throwing in the tallis, I was ready to settle.

And the man with whom I had to settle was ready for me.

"Good morning, Victor," said Prescott as he strolled into court the morning after Morris's final call. As always, he was followed by his legion of natty and intense Talbott, Kittredge lawyers. "This morning I'll carry the cross-examination of the crime scene search officer. I've gone over the reports with my own experts and I think I'm best qualified to minimize his effectiveness."

"That's fine, sir." I said.

"Splendid," he said as he looked through a sheaf of doc.u.ments handed him by Brett with two t's.

"By the way, sir," I said. "I have those releases for the Saltz settlement. I'm sorry it was so late but I had a hard time getting them back from all my clients, vacations and such."

"The Saltz settlement?"

"Madeline sent us over the final settlement agreement and we've signed that too."

"Did my clients sign?" he said, still looking through his doc.u.ments.

"Not yet."

"Hmmm. Well, Victor, I'm sorry, but I don't believe that deal is still operative."

A sickening fear rose from my groin and grabbed my throat. "What are you talking about?" I said. "We had a deal."

"We reached an agreement, yes, but that was with the expectation of an immediate settlement. When you hadn't gotten back to us we thought the deal was off and proceeded accordingly."

"Accordingly?"