Summitt

Chapter Sixteen

The rain that had threatened most of the day was coming down hard by the time Selby arrived at George Thomson’s home. Dom Lorso opened the door, introduced himself and said abruptly, “Mr. Thomson’s waiting. It’s this way.”

The lights in the study shone on leather furniture and the black surfaces of wet windows. Thomson was at his desk, with his back to French doors and the illuminated terraces. Tubs of box cedars glistened there, and beyond them were dark lawns and trees.

Thomson said, “You can sit down if you want, Mr. Selby. I asked you here because we’ve got some things to straighten out. I’m not your friend or your enemy. You can take that on faith or dismiss it as bullshit. I don’t care. What happened at Longwood today could have been a misunderstanding, a mistake on your daughter’s part, an overreaction on yours. That’s how I figure it. Obviously, you’ve got other ideas. I think we should talk it over, try to put a lid on before something gets out of hand. You want a cigar, or a drink?”

Selby shook his head and took a chair facing Thomson’s desk. Dom Lorso stood watching him, a cigarette between his lips.

Thomson lit a cigar with a desk lighter. “You mind if I lead off, Selby?”

“Go ahead.”

“If my son hurt or raped any young girl, I’d still get him the best lawyer I could, not to help him weasel his way out of it but to make sure he had a chance to get the kind of therapy he needed, at some institution that would treat him until he was cured, if that took his whole lifetime. But I’d stand behind him and try to help him. That’s what I’d do if I thought he was guilty. So you can be sure I don’t intend to let him be hounded and framed for something he didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with. That’s all the explaining I intend to do, Selby. The doctor at Chester General said Earl’s lucky he didn’t lose an eye. A splinter of glass came close to going straight through it when he hit that greenhouse. His mother’s under sedation — she got hysterical when they brought him home. He’s upstairs now. In my view, Selby, you and your daughter have a goddamn heavy tab to pick up. I hope you can handle it. But I asked you here to talk. If you’ve got anything to say, I’ll listen.”

Selby said, “My daughter has twenty-twenty vision, Thomson. She had a long look at the man who raped her. She says it was your son.”

Thomson shrugged. “If that’s all you got to say, we don’t have anything to talk about. But you better understand one thing, Selby. You’re never going to hurt my boy again. I want you to understand that. It’s really why I asked you here, to make sure you got that through your head.”

Selby said, “I’ll make the same speech, Thomson. Your son will never lay a hand on my daughter again. Believe it.”

Thomson waved smoke from his face, as if trying to see Selby more clearly. “You think this is a tennis game we’re playing, some tit-for-tat horseshit? You think I’m putting on an act for your benefit, or that I’m lying, or my son is?”

“That’s occurred to me,” Selby said.

Dom Lorso moved closer. “Don’t press your luck, big man. We’re being gents for the time being.”

A red light flared against the terrace windows. Thomson said, “This will be Captain Slocum. My attorney Allan Davic is already here. You have any objection to them joining us?”

Dom Lorso blew a stream of smoke down at Selby. He said, “I don’t see what the shit we’re being so polite about. He’ll talk to ’em now, Giorgio, or in jail-later. I’d just as soon make it later.”

Lorso’s face was flushed. A bristling, attack-dog ferocity was running in currents through the little Sicilian. He looked ready to explode.

Selby said quietly, “Mr. Lorso, don’t blow smoke at me again, and don’t press me. Mr. Thomson, I don’t mind talking to Captain Slocum. He’s a good storyteller. Now go open the door.”

Lorso’s flush deepened, but Thomson raised a hand. “Let it go, Dom.”

Lorso walked out. Thomson stared at the darkness beyond the terrace windows, ignoring Selby. From the foyer a doorbell sounded, its echoes trembling through the big study.

Allan Davic entered with Captain Slocum and Dom Lorso. There were no introductions, only a hostile silence in which the attorney removed a silver pencil from his pocket and wrote the date on a yellow legal pad.

Davic was in his forties, with a stocky body neatly compacted within a well-cut three-piece suit. His hair was dark and streaked with gray. Deep grooves lined the sides of his nose.

His thick glasses were coated by reflections from Thomson’s desk lamp. It was impossible for Selby to guess who or what the lawyer was looking at.

Captain Slocum broke the silence. “Selby, I told you this morning Earl Thomson wasn’t involved with what happened to your daughter. I told you we’d checked out every move he’d made, established where he was every minute of the time. Are you going to sit there and pretend you weren’t informed personally by me that our investigation cleared Earl Thomson?”

Selby said, “I didn’t come here to talk to you, Captain. Or to Mr. Davic. For the record, if this conversation is being taped, I haven’t been informed of it. I came here at Thomson’s invitation because he said he wanted to talk to me. Then he asked me if I’d mind if you people joined us. So far I haven’t heard anything that makes my coming out in the rain worth it.”

Davic adjusted his glasses. “Perhaps I can justify your braving the elements, Mr. Selby. I’m not sure you appreciate the gravity of your situation. As yet I don’t represent Earl Thomson against you or your daughter, so it isn’t improper for me to give you advice. Listen carefully to what Mr. Thomson and Captain Slocum have to say. They can put you to a great deal of expense, and trouble, if you force them to take legal action. Those are facts, Mr. Selby.”

“If you want my advice,” Selby said, “you’d better listen to a few more facts. Earl Thomson’s car was photographed at the place my daughter was raped, the same night it happened. His car is a red Porsche. My daughter was knocked from her bicycle earlier that same afternoon by a red car. There was red paint on her bike. But after Lieutenant Eberle came to my home like a common thief and walked off with the evidence, the red paint disappeared in the police lab.”

Pointing at Selby, Slocum said, “Eberle was acting under my orders. The lab found no red paint on that bicycle and you know it.”

“I suggest we keep our tempers, gentlemen.” Davic made a note on his pad. Glancing up, he said, “Mr. Selby, it’s obvious you intend to take an adversary stance. I’d prefer to settle this some other way. You were informed by Captain Slocum that Earl Thomson was not a suspect in your daughter’s case. Told that the testimony of disinterested witnesses placed Mr. Earl Thomson here in his own home at the time that the assault occurred. But you obviously didn’t bother to tell your daughter that. This morning, in front of witnesses, she accused Earl Thomson of committing a series of felonious attacks on her person, accusations which leave her open to charges of malicious slander. And you, Mr. Selby, committed physical assault and battery against” — Davic checked his legal pad — “one Richard Knarl and one Willie Joe Bast, friends of Earl Thomson, who were trying to dissuade your daughter from making a public nuisance of herself. The Bast and Knarl boys come from outstanding families. Their parents are outraged.”

“I’m sorry they’re upset,” Selby said, not bothering to check his anger. “If it helps, you can tell them that their goon sons got off lucky.”

Davic folded his hands. “I’ve given you good advice, Mr. Selby, but you’re obviously not about to take it. I have no alternative but to ask the county magistrate to place you and your daughter under sizable peace bonds, to restrain you both from any further harassment of Earl Thomson.

“Such court orders,” the lawyer continued, “are restrictive and punitive. A peace bond will enjoin you and your daughter from any personal contact whatsoever with Earl Thomson. You will not speak to him, write to him, or approach him within certain proscribed distances. If you drive your car past his house, or accost him in a public place, you will be subject to arrest and fines, and possibly a jail sentence. Further, the principal of your daughter’s school will be instructed to monitor her conversations with classmates to make sure that none of these slanders are repeated. As for you, Mr. Selby, if you make any more threatening gestures toward Earl Thomson, physically or verbally, you’ll pay a high price for it.”

“We’ll have your ass, Selby, if you ever think about bothering these people again,” Captain Slocum said.

Davic frowned at the crimson glare on his glasses. Another red light was flashing across the terrace, and over the wet branches of the tubbed cedars.

Slocum went on: “I spelled everything out for you, Selby.”

“Hold it, Walter.” Thomson nodded to Dom Lorso.

“Mr. Thomson, I was trying to explain that—”

“I understand, Captain, but that can wait. Dom, see who it is.”

A revolving dome-light splintered the darkness beyond the study windows.

Voices sounded from the foyer, Lorso’s first, then a man’s. From somewhere behind the house, dogs were barking, their howls carrying above the rain.

Lorso’s voice rose angrily. Thomson stood and walked from the study, Slocum got up and followed him. When the door closed behind them, the voices in the foyer subsided into murmurs.

Davic studied Selby. “I’m glad to have a chance for a few words in private,” he said. “Do you smoke, by the way?”

Good cop, bad cop, Selby thought. A cigarette, the understanding smile... “I don’t smoke,” he said.

Davic nodded. “Good. It’s counterproductive to jog for miles, eat sensibly and then have to do business in smog-alert conditions.”

He removed his glasses. His eyes were hard and brown and expressionless. “Don’t think I’m being presumptuous, Mr. Selby, if I say I understand how you feel. I don’t have children of my own, but I do have a niece who is very dear to me. I know how I’d feel if she were hurt in any way. So I do have an idea what you and your daughter have been through. Even the most familiar sights and sounds must seem frightening and threatening to her. Speeding automobiles, dark roads, a stranger asking directions, they can only heighten her feelings of terror, depression, even what I believe is called cognitive dysfunction. She’s got to overcome all that. But if you persist in ignoring the facts of the police investigation you’ll only add to her insecurity. Wouldn’t it be more helpful to explain to her that she simply made a mistake today? I know your circumstances, I know that the child’s mother is deceased.” Davic’s expression was understanding. “Actually, Mr. Selby, a vacation might be the best therapy now, a pleasant trip to distract her from these painful associations. Otherwise your daughter may see the man who assaulted her every time she steps from your house — delivery boys, truck drivers, construction workers, even teachers. If you can’t convince her to trust the police, she’ll be living in a nightmare of terrified fantasies, imagining him stalking her, chasing her down streets, sitting beside her in buses.” He shrugged. “She could be making these same accusations about other people, conceivably for the rest of her life.”

Selby studied the windows shimmering with the flare of the police lights.

Davic said, “What do you think of my suggestion, Mr. Selby?”

“A vacation for Shana? It’s worth considering.”

There were pieces that didn’t fit together, Selby thought, a puzzle whose outlines he couldn’t define, whose very existence might be the work of his nerves or imagination.

“But you’re not considering it, are you, Mr. Selby?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I didn’t think so. All right, let’s cut out the bullshit. You’re ass-deep in trouble. You’re dealing with rich, powerful people. There’s nothing to negotiate here. You’ve got no options. No, I’ll amend that. You can determine to some extent just how badly you and your daughter will be hurt.”

“How do we go about that?”

“First, we want a letter from your daughter admitting she was mistaken in every detail and particular of her charges against Earl Thomson.”

“That’s for starters?”

“Correct. Then I’ll need a sworn statement from you, Selby, repudiating your daughter’s accusations and expressing your regret at the distress her malicious actions caused Earl Thomson and his family. Also—”

“Save your breath, Davic. You’re bluffing. You said too much.”

Davic tried to recover. “Don’t bank on that, Selby. I told you these people are rich and powerful. That’s a distinction even smart people aren’t always aware of. Money can influence things. Power can destroy them. Let me give you a historical example. Adolf Hitler stipulated certain conditions to Neville Chamberlain. In a meeting at Munich he told the prime minister of Great Britain that the issues of Poland, Poland itself, in fact, were not negotiable, could not and would not be placed on the agenda. Chamberlain agreed. Poland was not negotiable. Now that’s power, Selby, and it has nothing to do with money. A country centuries old, with an empire of forests and lakes and mountains, a country of soldiers and artists, scientists, great traditions, Copernicus, Pulaski, millions of human beings — and one man, not a god or a conqueror from a distant planet but one human being who might have been pulling up his pants after defecating, or poking a bit of rotting meat with a toothpick, that man announced that Poland was not subject to negotiations — couldn’t be discussed, mentioned, talked about in any way at all because he’d made up his mind and that was the end of it — for Poland, for Chamberlain and damn near for the rest of the world... We’re not all the same... I’ve no talent for power, I decided to become rich. What was your choice, Selby?”

“I never had your problem.”

“Mr. Thomson told me you were a professional athlete, a jock was his word. Wasn’t there a kind of power in that? Millions of people watch those games and millions of dollars are bet on them. I recall reading about a teammate of yours — Goldbirn, I believe it was.” Davic nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, Goldbirn, Jerry Goldbirn, that was his name. Wasn’t he involved in some dubious financial deals?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Selby said untruthfully.

“I thought he’d agreed to throw some games for people in Chicago and Las Vegas. Of course, it might have been just rumors. But if they were true, it was fortunate Goldbirn was injured in practice before he could compromise himself.”

Selby watched the red lights on the windows and thought about how this lawyer with the masked eyes had checked on Sarah and Jerry Goldbirn...

Selby remembered Jerry going up for the pass on a spring afternoon in dummy scrimmage, his hands reaching for the ball with lazy precision. And he remembered lowering his head and hitting Goldbirn — a tap would have told the backfield coach he’d beaten the play — but Selby had hit Jerry at full speed with his legs driving, a blind-side shot that had broken Goldbirn’s collarbone and four of his ribs and put him out for the rest of the season...

Davic said, “Well, it ended happily enough for Mr. Goldbirn, didn’t it? Virtue enforced by accident, one might say. Or was that how it was, Mr. Selby? An accident?”

“It was a mix-up in the defensive signals,” Selby again replied untruthfully. “I had a play contact sign. Goldbirn wasn’t expecting it.”

“So he sat out the season,” Davic said, “and never had the chance to throw a game, even if he’d wanted to.”

“Rumors, Mr. Davic.”

“Then in a circuitous fashion,” Davic said, “you saved Goldbirn’s ass, didn’t you, Selby? Was he grateful?”

“What you’re asking, Davic, is whether I was involved in a payoff.”

“You’re a hostile person, Selby.”

“Maybe. What happened to Goldbirn was an accident. But when people get in each other’s way, even accidentally, they can get hurt.”

“In professional football, you mean?”

“That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“Tell me, were you expecting that second police car?”

“What matters,” Selby said, “is that you weren’t, Mr. Davic. And neither was Thomson.”

A scream sounded somewhere above them, cutting the tension like a falling knife. The lawyer stood so quickly that his legal pad fell to the floor. The doors from the foyer were pushed open and Thomson walked into the study, his face scored with anger. A sheet of parchment paper with a black seal attached to it was crushed in his hand.

“It’s a warrant,” he told Davic, and shoved the paper at him. “You hear me? There’s a DA here and one of Slocum’s cops, a detective named Wilger. They’re actually trying to hang it on Earl... the rape, kidnapping—”

Davic took the warrant and scanned it. “It’s in order, Mr. Thomson. But I can’t accept service. Bail has been waived.”

“They’re lying. Earl’s fingerprints... they say they’re all over the garage at Vinegar Hill, that’s what they’re tying to tell me.”

Davic said, “The preliminary hearing is set for nine tomorrow in Magistrate Teague’s court in Muhlenburg. We can reserve any plea until—”

“I sent Slocum over there already. My son’s not going to line up with a bunch of winos and vagrants.”

The screaming upstairs had stopped; the only sound in the study was Thomson’s heavy breathing.

“Your son has to honor this warrant. He’ll be a fugitive from justice if—”

Dom Lorso had begun to raise his voice at someone in the foyer and Selby heard a familiar voice, a lighter one, trying to interrupt the outbursts.

The front doors of Thomson’s house were opened, and the wind and rain swept around Dorcas Brett. When Selby entered the foyer he was struck by Lorso’s rage and by the whiteness of her face.

Lorso turned around when he heard Selby, but his eyes went past him to the second floor landing where a woman in the shadows watched from a wheelchair. A stocky man in white trousers and a white shirt stood behind her.

Thomson and Davic came in then, the lawyer holding Thomson’s arm. “As your attorney,” he said insistently, “I don’t want you to say another word, George. Not one word.”

Thomson shook off Davic’s hand. “I’ll say what I want. Selby, you get out of my house. Your daughter is lying, you hear?”

“Listen to your lawyer—”

“I told you to get out of here. I’ll make you and her regret you ever started this.”

Selby said, “You’re making it easier for me to do something I’m trying hard not to. You’d better understand that.”

“George,” Davic said tensely. “Don’t say anything else.”

“If you do,” Selby said, “if you say one more word, Thomson, I’ll do what I’m trying not to. I’ll go up those stairs and kick in doors until I find him.”

For an instant the atmosphere was volatile; any sudden movement could have touched it off.

Dorcas Brett put a hand tightly on Selby’s arm. “We have work to do, I think we’d better go.”

“Okay,” he said, “okay.” But his voice sounded strange to him, thick and hoarse with the effort he made to control it.

They were in the driveway beside her car before the white anger faded and Selby saw things clearly again, the rain slanting around them and the worried look in her eyes.

“Are you all right, Mr. Selby?”

“Yes,” he said, and touched her arm. Her raincoat was slick and wet. Her presence steadied him.

“There’s a diner on the pike,” she said. “On the left-hand side before Golden Road. I’ll wait for you there, all right?”

“Yes, sure.”

Selby stood staring at Thomson’s sprawling house as she drove off, listening to the barking dogs in the kennels and wondering from which of those many dark windows Earl Thomson might be watching him...

Dom Lorso’s emotions were in check, his tone matter-of-fact as he said, “If we don’t pay them back for this, Davic, we lose Earl. If you don’t show him the kind of loyalty he understands and needs, you might as well forget what you’re over here for. They dragged that filth into his home, they shamed him in front of his mother. I know what that did to Earl. I know better than his father. So we don’t take it Mr. Counselor. We can’t.”

“Let’s be clear about this,” Davic said, leaving the window. “If you want peace officers hit, Mr. Lorso, I imagine you have the necessary phone numbers. If you don’t, I’ll lend you mine. But that would be a miscalculation, I assure you.”

“Respect never hurt anybody,” Lorso said. “She could’ve let us know what was coming down, spared him and his mother the humiliation. Screw the miscalculation shit. Call those characters I fixed up the other night in Philadelphia. The Cadles. I’m not talking about a contract, I’m talking respect, fear of God.”

Davic was silent a moment and then shrugged indifferently. “Where’s the DA likely to be tonight?”

“Her office probably. But I’ll check Eberle at the district to make sure.”

Davic picked up Thomson’s phone and dialed a number. After speaking briefly to a man named Ben, he broke the connection. “Your decision, Mr. Lorso,” he said. “Remember that.”

Dom Lorso lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke at him. “So fucking what, Counselor? That kind of decision makes itself.”

George Thomson came downstairs as Davic was leaving. His face was pale and strained, but he had recovered his composure; his eyes were hard with a disciplined angry anticipation.

“Hold it a minute,” he said to Davic. “I got something for you before you go.”

Opening a wall safe behind a framed hunting print, Thomson removed a bulky cardboard file with metal-tipped corners. He presented it to Davic who read aloud the stenciled information on its front cover, U.S. ARMY, K/S-36663864. O.C. CONFIDENTIAL.

“A court-martial transcript,” Thomson told him, “a trial that took place in South Korea. I want you to study it and use it. Harry Selby’s father was in my outfit. A fuck-up named Jonas Selby. We nailed his ass with charges just this side of murder. You want my guess, Harry Selby is after me and my son now. That’s why he’s concocted the shit about Earl raping his daughter — I was the senior officer who presided on the court-martial. I sent that sonofabitch, Jonas Selby, to the stockade for five years.”

The attorney studied the classification on the file: o.c. confidential. “A question occurs, of course,” he said.

“You mean where I got hold of that transcript?”

Davic smiled faintly. “No, I understand things like that. You paid for it. But how does Harry Selby know of your connection to his father? He couldn’t have seen the transcript. He couldn’t get a look at anything classified O.C.”

“You’re right.” Thomson’s tone was hard and complacent. “He tried though, a few years ago, and struck out. So did the DA just recently. My guess is Harry Selby got a lead from his brother.”

“Let me explain something,” Davic said. “If I included this material in a court trial, and it’s premature to think this business will ever go that far, but if I do, the People can cross-examine and tear into every point and issue I raise. Do you understand that?”

“You’ve done your job, Davic. I understand what you’re saying.”

Thomson went to the bar and poured himself a half glass of Scotch. “But when I get hit, I hit back. Harry Selby and his cunt daughter are going to find that out.”