Hostile Witness Part 31

He lifted his head out of his papers and stared straight at me. "We've been preparing for trial, Victor. Haven't you?"

"I'll enforce the settlement," I said. "Judge Tifaro likes his calender clean, he won't let you yank the offer back."

"Oh, he'll holler and shake," he said, his gaze again upon his papers, as if I were no more consequential then a buzzing fly. "But it's been over three weeks, Victor. You can't expect my clients to wait forever. That offer has expired, it is gone, disappeared. It is as dead as Bissonette." Then he looked at me again and one of his sly, diplomatic smiles spread onto his face. "However, Victor, I'm sure my clients would be willing to rethink the settlement and to pay what had been previously agreed under certain conditions."

Here it was, I thought. Whatever the conditions, Prescott had been waiting to lower them upon me for a while, waiting as patiently as a spider having already woven his web.

"It seems," said Prescott, putting his arm around my shoulder and leaning in close so that he could speak in his lowest voice above a whisper, "that my clients happen to be very interested in this case. They have made certain deals with Councilman Moore concerning certain of their real estate ventures and it would be very inconvenient for them if Councilman Moore was convicted here and stripped of his council post."

"I'm not quite sure I understand."

"Don't be a cowboy, Victor. What they want is for you to keep staying out of my way. You do and, win or lose, you'll get your settlement."

"But I've been cooperative," I stammered.

"Yes, you have, Victor. We've all been extremely pleased with you. And if you remain cooperative we won't have any problems, will we?"

"This sounds something like blackmail," I said.

"Don't," said Prescott quickly, his voice dipping to a ferocious whisper, his hand now squeezing my shoulder harder, so hard it hurt. "Don't even think of using such language with me. For the rest of this trial you're just going to sit back and let me do whatever I have to do. I want you out of it. The Saltz offer was generous beyond belief, we both know it, you sit back and it is yours. But you act up in any way and it is dead and you'll get your b.a.l.l.s handed to you at the trial. I want you silent and docile for the rest of this trial, that's what we're paying you for. You step out of line and I'll absolutely destroy you."

With his grip still tight around my shoulder he pushed me down and I fell hard into my seat. I looked at the empty jury box, the dark maroon chairs swimming in the tears that had sprung to my eyes. In a pleasant voice Prescott said, "I think we understand each other now, Victor."

I didn't answer, but I didn't have to. We understood each other perfectly. Prescott believed he could read me like a comic book. He believed he could buy me for a mere forty thousand dollars, our cut of the Saltz settlement. He believed that for a minor monetary gain, and the hope of future deals, I would sit back and take a dive in the biggest trial of my life. He believed he understood all that burned inside me, all the hidden dreams and pent desires, and from that knowledge he thought he knew my price.

And so what if he might have been right, dammit, I didn't have to like it. I thought I was becoming a member of the caste by going along, but Prescott had just dressed me down like I was a cabana boy. I had a half a mind to spit it all back in his face, but only half a mind. After all, what could I do, realistically? Disregard my client's orders, defy the judge, try to slip in more references to Enrico Raffaello and his daughter's sad and deadly affair with Bissonette? That would leave me with nothing but a citation for contempt.

No, William Prescott III had turned me into his cabana boy and I was helpless to fight it. What else could I do but sit back and take the money?

33.

I WAS LYING ON THE COUCH in my apartment with the lights off, drinking a beer and occasionally banging the wall with my fist, when she called for me. I was banging in frustration at allowing myself to be bought, banging at whatever it was inside of me that kept me from fighting it. And I was banging at the way Prescott was playing me. It rankled. "Oh, cabana boy, bring me a drink. Oh, cabana boy, sit down and shut up and let me have my way with you. Oh, cabana boy..." I drank my beer and stared at the shadows of light that swept through my window from the street and bang, banged, waiting for the phone to ring. From the first trill I knew who it was.

"I'll be right over," I said into the handset and within thirty seconds I was out the door.

Even before my fall into outright wh.o.r.edom I had been running to Veronica whenever she called. She was like a drug to me, an addiction, and even when I wasn't with her, when I was sitting in the courtroom supposedly concentrating on the testimony I was not permitted to challenge or rebut, I couldn't keep my mind from drifting back to the salty smell and soft soft skin and the electric tongue. Jimmy, preoccupied with the trial, still slipped out now and then for a quiet rendezvous with his mistress, though his nights of carousing through the city with his entourage were on hold pending the verdict. Whenever he was with Veronica I worked late on Valley Hunt Estates or whatever else I could find to suck up my time and on those nights, whenever the Bishops weren't taking me out for dinner and filling me with wine, I would stop at the corner grill for my evening cheese steak and fall asleep to the brilliance of late-night television. But on the nights Veronica called I would hang up the phone and rush out the door and drive enthusiastically to Olde City.

For a while we had been meeting at bars for a drink or two before retiring to her apartment. There was something rea.s.suring about that, a restaurant for a late dinner, a bar for a nightcap. On those evenings out we could pretend that we were dating, as if we were a normal couple in a normal relations.h.i.+p satisfying our normal desires. But after the rear window of that hatchback exploded in front of my face I grew cautious of public places. And then there was that night in Carolina's.

"Oh, Jesus," she said, turning her head quickly away from me. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

We were at the far end of the bar, drinking our martinis and Sea Breezes, sharing cigarettes. She had begun smoking on our nights out, Camel Lights, and a cigarette was between her fingers now when her eyes widened with a shot of terror and she said, "Oh, Jesus," and she turned away from me.

I thought for an instant she was gasping at my face, which was a gasper, really, but that wasn't it. Behind me was the entrance and when I swiveled to grab a look, whom I saw walking in that entrance was Chester Concannon. I spun around again before he could see me.

"Oh, Jesus," she said. "We have to get out of here."

"Would he tell Jimmy?" I asked to the back of her head.

"Of course he would," she said. "And that's not all he'd do. Jesus. He has a wild crush on me, didn't you know?"

"No," I said.

"He told me on one of our nights out when he was bearding me. We got drunk together and he made a pa.s.s and told me. Jimmy and me is one thing," she said, sliding off her stool. "But if Chester knew about you he'd go nuts. Come on, follow me."

Without turning toward the entrance she headed for the rear of the room and I followed, hunching down so I might not be recognized from the back. We entered a short hallway with two lavatories and, at the end, an unmarked door. Veronica went to that door and opened it. Inside were shelves filled with supplies, toilet paper, and towels. There was just enough room for two to stand inside the closet.

"Did you know this was there?" I asked.

"No," she said, with a laugh. "But good thing it is."

"And you want us to hide from Chet in there?"

"I'm not the type to stay in closets," she said. "I want you to hide from Chester in there. Thirty minutes."

She left me in that closet, telling me that she would get Chet out of there before he saw me with her. I stood tall in the darkness, surrounded by the sweet menthol smell of urinal cakes, wondering at how far I had fallen that I had to hide from my clients in closets. This Veronica thing was impossible, I had told myself before and repeated it to myself inside that dark mentholated cave, but even as I swore to end it I knew I wouldn't. It was something obsessional and foolish and perverse, but it had evolved into something else too, it had evolved into something close to love. Twisted, yes, forged from depravity and desire, yes, but there it was, like a nugget in my chest. And no matter how impossible it might have been, no matter how doomed, I would stay in that closet to keep it alive as long as I had to. When by the green glowing hands of my watch I could tell a half-hour had pa.s.sed, I straightened my jacket and opened the door.

A woman standing in the hallway waiting for the ladies room saw me emerge from the closet and screamed.

"Funny," I said with a shrug. "I thought it was the men's room." And then, with all the dignity I could muster, I walked past her back into the bar.

So, for safety's sake, we didn't meet in bars or restaurants anymore. When she called for me I came running to her apartment, straight as if on a string, and the night I was bang banging on my walls in frustration was no different from any other night. She called, I ran, and we rolled around her bed like cats, sometimes playful, sometimes lupine, always carnal, and it was worth everything.

And when it was over it was always the same.

"You have to go," she said.

"Why?" It came out in a half-moan, dragged from the recesses of my sleep, a sleep that was eluding me in my own apartment but that attacked me as I lay in the warm muskiness of her bed.

"Because you do," she said.

"Let me stay. Let me sleep just a little bit more."

She pushed me hard, rolling me over toward the end of the bed, and I jerked awake in a panic of falling. "What?"

"You have to go," she said, "Just one night," I begged. "Let me spend just one night over."

"Absolutely not." She rose from the bed and put on a heavy terry cloth robe. She took a cigarette from the pack on her bedside table and lit it, inhaling deeply, and then leaned against a wall with her arms crossed. Smoke leaked out of her mouth, covering her face like a veil. "Your clothes are scattered here or there. Pick them up on your way out."

Generally, I had always believed there was no greater luxury after s.e.x than to be alone. It is something about men, about the way our bodies work, about the physiological effects of o.r.g.a.s.ms in our brains. The neurotransmitters that are released by s.e.x trigger those neurons that say turn over, pretend to sleep, maybe she'll just go away. Give us a beer afterwards and a remote control and an empty bedroom and we're halfway to heaven. Which is why men have invented the great after-s.e.x lies: "I have to be at work early," or, "I'm allergic to your cat," or "I have to pick up my laundry before the dry cleaner closes." The problem had always been getting away. Now I was desperately disappointed that she wouldn't let me stay.

The reason for the desperation was clear to me that night, and it was more than just that nugget of love in my chest. Nothing existed in my life that I could yet be proud of and nothing ever had. Who I was just then, Prescott's cabana boy, was no one I ever thought I'd ever want to be. But in her touch, her warmth, in her wet embrace, with Veronica I could lose myself. Her apartment had become a magic wonderland of sensuality and vice, a place separate from the rest of the world, which had suddenly turned even uglier for me. With her I was not Victor Carl, the shady lawyer who had been pa.s.sed over by the profession, first duped and then bought by those he would have had as peers, instead I was part of something wild and lost and satisfyingly perverse. With her I metamorphosed into a piece of a puzzle that promised so much and that only the two of us could possibly solve. With her I... let's just say with her I was someone else and someone else was very much what I wanted then to be. To force me to leave was to force me to become myself again. She didn't know how cruel she was being.

"Don't do this to me," I pleaded.

"I'm doing."

"You can't just use me and then toss me out. I'm not a tampon."

"No, you're not as useful."

"Why do you make me leave each night?"

She sucked smoke. "I like to wake up alone."

"Well, tonight I'm staying." I lay back in the bed, my arms crossed beneath my head.

"Then tonight's your last night."

I sat up. "You're not serious."

"I'm as serious as celibacy."

"I bet Jimmy stays over."

"Never," she said.

"Really? What's he like in bed?"

"The thing about men," she said, holding the cigarette in her lips while she stooped to pick up my T-s.h.i.+rt and then tossed it into my face, "is that they see s.e.x as a compet.i.tive sport. They want scores from the judges, a set for technical merit and a set for artistic impression."

"I'm just curious," I said, starting to dress.

"Well, how do you think he is?"

"Pa.s.sionate. He's a very pa.s.sionate man."

"He is."

"Yes?"

"So are you, Victor." With one of her bare feet she nudged a sneaker toward me. "Now put on your shoes and go."

"When will I see you again?"

"When I call," she said.

"I'll be waiting."

"Surprise me sometime, Victor," she said dryly, holding the cigarette in front of her face. "Let the phone ring more than once before you answer it."

Ever since the incident with the hatchback I had developed a small ritual upon leaving Veronica's apartment. There were no windows in the hallway, but the elevator had a scuffed Plexiglas side from which the residents could see out as they descended to the cobblestone plaza. When the elevator opened for me I slipped in and searched through the Plexiglas to see if anyone was waiting for me outside. My plan, if I saw anything suspicious, was to get off at a lower floor and cower, but that night, as best as I could see in the uneven light, the plaza was deserted. When the elevator reached the ground floor I looked carefully out the front gla.s.s door before I opened it. Again there was nothing.

Slowly I slid out the door and walked along the shadowy edge of the plaza to Church Street, the little cobble-stoned street on which Veronica's building sat. Like a little boy I looked both ways. Nothing, no car idling malevolently, no shadowy pedestrians lurking, no stray racc.o.o.ns. Relieved, I walked down Church Street to 3rd, where my car was parked. I was leaning over, my key in the driver's door, when I felt the hand clamp onto my shoulder.

I jumped, or I tried to jump, but the hand kept me pressed down on the ground like the gravity of some giant planet. I turned to see who was there. It was a tall bruiser, an older man with sallow yellow skin, a tan fedora, a loud plaid jacket, yellow pants, white shoes, a nose that had been run over by a forklift. He looked like an aging heavyweight retired to Miami Beach.

"You're Victor Carl," the man said in a ragged, nasal voice carved by one too many shots to the schnozzola.

"No," I said. "You got the wrong fellow."

Without taking his hand off my shoulder, the man reached into his plaid jacket and pulled out a piece of newspaper that he showed to me. It was a picture of Jimmy Moore and William Prescott talking to the press outside the courthouse, and there, behind Moore's shoulder, inside an ominous circle drawn with black, was me. Not a bad likeness, I thought as I stared at it. The paper made me look heavier and more handsome.

"No, that's some other guy."

"It sort of looks like youse."

"I got that kind of face," I said, and it would have been a pretty brave line if my voice hadn't cracked in the middle of it.

"Maybe it's not youse after all," said the bruiser. "Maybe not, you know, because the guy here in the picture, this guy looks like a handsome guy and you, you look like a punk. But there's a man wants to see youse. If it turns out youse ain't you then I'm sure he won't want to see youse no more."

"Huh?"

"Whatever. He's waiting up the block, here."

He squeezed the hand on my shoulder, yanking me away from my car and toward Arch Street.

"What about my keys? I left them in the car door."

"From what I hear," said the bruiser without slowing down, "this here's become a very safe neighborhood."

That was the sum of our conversation as he led me to Arch Street. The front, squared-off nose of some big white American car parked on Arch jutted out from behind a brick wall. I didn't know whose car it was, I couldn't tell if it was a limousine from what I could see. I expected it was Norvel Goodwin inside, or maybe Jimmy, but no matter who it was there waiting for me I knew it wasn't a good thing to be snagged by a bruiser outside Veronica's apartment after sticking my thing in her thang. I thought about running, but the hand was tight on my collarbone, squeezing so hard my shoulder rose as we walked. When we were closer to the car more of it came into view. It wasn't a limousine, it was a Cadillac, long, s.h.i.+ny, dangerous with chrome. Its windows were up and tinted black so that it was impossible to see inside.

The bruiser stopped me just in front of the rear door. He knocked on the window and slowly the door opened. For a moment I saw nothing but the blackness inside. And then a man stepped out and smiled at me.

"How's it going there, Sport?"

It was Jasper, the gregarious poker player at the Sons of Garibaldi Men's Club, and he was smiling at me in a way I didn't like.

"We want you should come for a ride with us," he said.

"Thanks, but I'd just as soon go home alone."

"C'mon, Sport, a short ride. I got someone here you need to meet."

As he was speaking the darkened window on the front pa.s.senger side opened slowly, electrically, and appearing like a ghost at some boardwalk house of horror was Dominic, Bissonette's second cousin twice removed, the hit man whom I had falsely accused of cheating. "Get in, kid," he said softly and, with a push from the bruiser, I was in the car.

There was an old man on my left and Jasper got in so that he was on my right. It was a big car, with a wide bench seat in the back, and there would have been plenty of room if Jasper hadn't jammed himself next to me. The bruiser closed the door and immediately went around the car to the driver's seat. The bench seat was black leather; the car smelled of Brylcreem. The old man on my left was looking out the window, out into the night. He wore a cream-colored suit, his thick hands were carefully laid one on the other in his lap. There was a diamond in his lapel. Slowly, easily, we pulled out on Arch Street and the bruiser turned up 2nd Street and we drove on for a while, south, toward Society Hill Towers, without anybody saying anything. And then the old man spoke.

"I wanted to meet you, Victor." His voice was soft and lightly sprinkled with an old world accent. When he turned I saw his face, pitted ugly, his hair gray but pulled back elegantly and heavily greased. "I thought it was time we should talk. Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," I said. The word came out in a gush of breath that I had been holding once I recognized the man. I had seen his face in newspaper photographs, on mug shots flashed on TV, in gory hard-boiled articles in Philadelphia magazine. The man sitting next to me, his swollen hands calmly resting on his lap but close enough to my throat so that he could have reached up and strangled me before I let out a yelp, that man was the boss of bosses, Enrico Raffaello.