Undue Influence

Chapter 11

This morning is what they call an early-dismissal day at Sarah’s school. Class is out at eleven so that teachers can attend a conference. I am doing lunch with my daughter, a treat at one of those pizza places with big singing dummies where they dispense tokens to play games and take all your change.

We’re sprawled at a table over a twelve-inch disk filled with cheese, the processed kind a cow would never recognize, sharing a pitcher of Coke. Sarah is big round eyes and smiles, struggling with a string of cheese that has stretched longer than the reach of her arms.

It snaps and she chews. She rubs her mouth with her sleeve.

I hand her a napkin.

‘Kevin’s been kissing me again.’ She says this out of the blue with her mouth full, reaching for her Coke.

Kevin is the little second-grader in her class who has taken a shine to my daughter. He hasn’t heard that girls are yucky yet. I am told that disease sets in among the boys about the third grade. I can’t wait.

‘Tell him to stop,’ I say.

‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘I kinda like it.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

‘We’re not French kissing,’ she says.

I roll my eyes skyward. Nikki, I need you. ‘Where did you hear that?’ I say.

‘Hear what?’ A face of toothless wonderment, her two front ones gone.

‘About French kissing.’

‘Courtney showed us, at the sleep-over. She knows all that stuff.’ Courtney is one of her little girlfriends, a foot taller than Sarah but the same age. She is the authority on everything. It seems size at this age is a big thing.

‘We will talk about this later,’ I tell her.

I need some time for perspective. I will talk to Laurel.

‘Why do we have to talk?’

‘Never mind. Just tell Kevin to stop kissing you.’

‘All right. I’ll try to remember,’ she says.

She grabs a bunch of tokens, still chewing on cheese and half-cooked dough, and heads for the helicopter ride. She’s been waiting for ten minutes to get her chance.

I take the opportunity to call the office from the pay phone near the rest rooms. I can see Sarah across the way as the thing lights up. She pulls the control stick and the little chopper lifts on its hydraulic arm, maybe four feet off the ground.

I dial and get the receptionist.

‘Hello, Sally, it’s Paul. Any messages?’

‘Let’s see.’ I hear her pawing through slips at the other end.

‘Your one o’clock canceled. He wants to reschedule next week. Department twelve called, motions in Vega are due the fourteenth.’

‘Who’s the judge?’ These are the pretrial motions in Laurel’s case. Whoever hears these is likely to be our trial judge.

‘Don’t know,’ she says.

‘Check the court roster.’

‘A new one’s due out. Reassignments,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to call over there and find out who it is?’

‘Yeah. And put a note on my desk.’

‘Will do. And one more message. Marcie Reed called.’

‘Who?’

‘She says her name is Reed.’

‘I don’t know any Reed. Did she say what it’s about?’

‘No.’

I’m racking my brain. Then it hits me. Marcie — the woman from the post office. Kathy Merlow’s friend.

‘Did she leave a phone number?’

She gives it to me and I write in on the back of a business card.

I thank her, hang up, and dial.

‘Postal Service. Can I help you?’ A man’s voice.

‘Marcie Reed, please.’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘Paul Madriani, returning her call.’

‘Just a minute.’

I hear him hollering Marcie’s name. He calls out several times. Several minutes go by, a lot of shuffling and noise on the other end. Then suddenly a voice, in the female timbre and very tentative.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello. Ms. Reed? This is Paul Madriani.’

‘Oh, yeah. You’re returning my call.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I uh… I saw your name and your picture in the paper,’ she says. Dead silence on the other end.

I wonder for a moment if the line’s gone dead.

‘Hello? Are you there?’ I ask.

‘Yeah. I’m still here,’ she says. ‘The woman you’re defending, is she the one you told me about, the one you want Kathy Merlow to help?’

‘She is. Do you know where I can find Mrs. Merlow?’

‘Maybe. I might be able to help you.’

‘How?’

‘I can’t talk on the phone. They monitor our calls,’ she says. ‘They keep track of the time we’re on the phone. If they catch us making personal calls — ’

She leaves the thought hanging, but I can hear the swift glide of the guillotine blade in its runners. The sweatshop school of management. They spend two million designing a chic logo for better image, an eagle’s head with a beak like the Sunset Limited, but still they can’t resist shoveling metric tons of psychic guano on the help.

‘Can we get together? I can meet you wherever you say,’ I tell her. ‘My office?’

‘No. No — I don’t want to do that. Besides, I can’t leave here during the day.’

‘After work?’ I say.

‘I have to pick up my kids from the sitter. How about over here?’

‘The post office?’ I say.

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you sure you won’t get in trouble?’

‘Mr. Haslid is off today.’ For Marcie Reed trouble starts with an H.

‘He was the shouter on the loading dock?’ I say.

‘Yeah. But he’s gone today.’

And the mice will play, I think.

‘Why not.’

‘I take my lunch at one. I have forty minutes,’ she says. ‘We can talk in Kathy’s old office. There’s nobody in there right now.’

I look at my watch. It’s nearly twelve-forty.

‘Do I come to the front counter?’

‘No. Don’t do that. I’ll meet you on the loading dock. One o’clock. Gotta go now,’ and she hangs up.

Sarah’s run out of tokens and is grounded playing with the stick, a little blond boy eyeing the craft jealously. I pluck her out of the helicopter and make his day. I will have to cut short the date with my daughter, drop her at day care a little early.

On the loading dock two mail carriers are putting letter crates into the back of little jeeplike vans. There’s no sign of Marcie Reed, so I hang back at the end of the alley. I’m about five minutes late, and I begin to wonder if she has already come and gone, or had second thoughts about talking to me.

I lean against the wall of a building, one eye on my watch, the other on the loading dock. Several minutes pass and finally the door opens. It’s Marcie. I move down the alley until she sees me. She says something to one of the guys working on the dock.

He stops long enough to look at her, hands on his hips. He shakes his head.

As I get closer I can hear part of their conversation. ‘You get caught, it’s your ass,’ he says.

She appears undaunted and waves me on.

‘You’re late. I thought you weren’t comin’,’ she says.

‘I had to drop my daughter at day care.’

‘I don’t have much time.’ She’s carrying a sack in her hand. I assume her lunch.

The two men on the dock are sizing me up, the look in their eyes, like get caught inside and you’re dead meat.

‘Are you sure this is all right?’

‘Yeah. It’s okay, but let’s not stand out here,’ she says. To Marcie okay means not getting caught. There’s the gleam of excitement in her eye. The boss is gone, time to play.

I climb the dock. The looks I get from the two mail handlers tell me I am probably violating several sections of postal regulations, thoughts of the inspector upstairs with his badge and gun.

‘Are you sure it’s okay? There’s a coffee shop down the street. My treat,’ I tell her. Last gambit to do it off-site.

‘It’s all right.’ She looks at me, like grow some balls. Marcie strikes me as one of those impish characters, hammered all her life, always in trouble, capable of feigning great fright but never truly afraid, something from never-never land.

I’m on her heels and we’re through the swinging door, the one with the big red sign on it:

AUTHORIZED POSTAL PERSONNEL ONLY

Inside is a maze of tables, canvas mail bags tied open to metal hooks, rolling dollies and carts. Maybe a dozen people, dressed in various versions of the uniform, blue-gray shirts with the postal emblem on the shoulders, jeans, and sneakers.

‘How old’s your kid?’ she says. Small talk as we walk, under her breath.

‘Seven,’ I whisper. I feel like some teenager sneaking onto the driving range after hours to steal balls.

‘Same as my boy,’ she says. We are doing a circuitous course at a quick-step that seems to take us the long way, around mail carts and stacks of sorting trays, skirting any contact with other employees. I can see hands flipping letters, and midriffs as they work at tables one aisle over, the upper bodies concealed by cabinets that I assume on their side contain pigeonholes for mail or parcels being sorted.

Near the front of the building Marcie stops. She’s fumbling with several keys in the lock of a door — dark, mottled glass in the upper part of the frame. Stenciled on the glass the words

CUSTOMER SERVICES

She finds the right key, flips on the light, and we are inside, with the door closed. She finally takes a deep breath.

‘There, that wasn’t so bad,’ she says. She turns to look at me. The excitement of a mission accomplished written in her eyes. The frizzled ends of her pigtails look like she’s stuck her finger in a light socket. Freckles on her face. If she were a little shorter, she could pass for one of Sarah’s friends.

She sits in the chair on the other side of a clean desk, just a little dust on the surface of green metal, and catches her breath.

I drop my attaché case on a chair in the corner and slide the other chair over, in front of the door, and sit. Inside my briefcase I have a little tape recorder in case Marcie knows something and is willing to talk on tape. If not, there is a note pad.

‘I take it if they catch you here with me, you could lose your job?’ I say.

She doesn’t answer. Instead she’s looking at me, studying me up and down, taking stock before she talks. I’m waiting for the pitch. How much is this worth? Marcie’s information market.

‘Is this Kathy Merlow’s office?’

She nods. ‘It was,’ she says. ‘For two months and four days. Before she left.’

There’s a sweater hanging on a hook on the back wall. A few directories on a bookshelf. The look of an abandoned office.

‘You must have got to know her in a short time?’

‘Soulmates,’ she says. ‘Kathy and I had some things in common. Management didn’t like us,’ she says.

‘Did she go on to another job?’

She shakes her head and continues to look at me.

‘What exactly did she do?’ I nod toward the stenciled letters. ‘What’s customer services?’

‘A title.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s what they gave her. An office and a title and a paycheck,’ she says.

‘She must have been civil service?’ I say.

‘Not exactly.’

‘How do you get a job — ’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ she says. ‘We can talk about all that later. Right now I need to know a few things. This charge against your client. I need to know whether there’s anything you can do to get her off without Kathy’s help.’

The way she says this makes me wonder who’s asking the question, Marcie or Kathy Merlow?

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘A trial is a crap shoot. This one I wouldn’t want to bet on.’

Maybe she’s testing the ante, I think, trying to find out how much her information is worth.

‘Do you know where the Merlows are?’ I say.

She turns to the bag she’s been carrying. It’s on the desk. I think maybe I’m finally going to get some answers.

She opens it. Takes out a package, wrapped in waxed paper. Peanut butter and jelly on white bread.

‘You want half?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘How much do you know about Kathy and her husband?’

I know that they lived next door to the house where the murder occurred. I think they saw something that night.’

She gives me a face, no confirmation. But she has told me enough already for me to put the pieces together.

‘Then they haven’t told you,’ she says.

‘Told me what? Who’s “they”?’

She seems mystified, like there is something manifest, an obvious item I have missed. Part of the equation.

‘What do you know?’ I ask her.

‘I know your client didn’t do it.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I know who did it, and why.’

‘Kathy Merlow told you this?’

Her expression is a stone idol, but I can read yes in her eyes.

‘What did she tell you?’

‘Someone was hired to do it.’

‘The murder?’

She nods.

‘Who hired the killer?’

‘You want more, you gotta talk to her, to Kathy.’

‘Fine. Tell me where she is.’

A lot of deep sighing from across the desk, nervous hands all of a sudden, fingers to the mouth. I notice that her nails are chewed to the quick.

She studies me for a long moment, quiet contemplation. Then she reaches down and slides open the center desk drawer. She pulls out a small white envelope, the kind that carry little thank-you notes. I can see a penned scrawl on the outside.

‘I got this about a week ago,’ she says. ‘It’s a note from Kathy. Nobody else knows about it. I don’t think George even knows she sent it. She wanted something she left behind. I mailed it to her yesterday. I have to have your word that if I tell you where she is, you won’t tell anyone else. You’ll talk to her yourself. You won’t send somebody else.’

I give her a face, consternation. ‘Depends where she is,’ I say. ‘I’m preparing for a trial. Usually we use an investigator.’

She starts to slip the envelope back into the drawer.

‘Okay,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll talk to her alone. Nobody else. But I may have to subpoena her.’

She gives me a smile. ‘Good luck.’

There’s a rap on the glass behind my head. Cramped quarters. I look at her.

She is white as a sheet, more than a little fear. She’s looking at the shadow through the glass.

She silently mouths a single word: ‘Haslid.’

I read her lips.

But the light is on. Whoever is outside can see us through the translucent door.

He knocks again.

She gives me a little shrug, a concession like we may as well open it up and take our licks.

I do the honors. I get the door open just enough for the guy to stick his head through. It’s the mail carrier from the loading dock.

I can hear her breath of relief from this side of the desk. Marcie is hyperventilating.

‘Goddamn it, Howard — you took five years off my life.’

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Maybe you’ll get the hell out of here and go back to work.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Courier with a package for you.’

‘For me?’

‘That’s what he says.’

I get up, move the chair away from the door. Outside is a guy in another uniform — dark blue, with white running shoes, a white stripe down the side of his uniform pants, a private courier. He is young, maybe late twenties, good-looking, square jaw, hair cut close like something from the military. He’s either wearing an undersized shirt or maybe he does weights in his off-hours.

‘Got an express packet,’ he says.

‘This is looking like a fucking convention.’ Howard is pissed. ‘I’m supposed to be in charge when the man’s gone, and you put me on the spot,’ he says. ‘Finish up and get the hell out of there. He’s not supposed to be in here.’ The guy’s looking at me. ‘And you’re not supposed to be in that office.’

‘Just a couple more minutes,’ Marcie tells him.

Howard is the kind who screams and yells a lot, uses profanity like it is a second language. But he lacks a command presence. In any shouting match I suspect that infants probably throw up on his shirt and dogs lick his face.

Marcie looks at the courier. ‘Who’s sending me a package?’ she says.

‘Sign here.’ The deliveryman is in the middle. He just wants to do his job and run. He can’t get through the door, so he hands me the letter pack and a clipboard with the form to be signed.

‘She’s number eighteen.’ He puts an X on the line for her signature.

The package is heavy, bowing out the seams of its cardboard container.

‘And you’ — Howard, the postal employee, is looking at me’ — somebody wants to see you at the loading dock.’

‘Me?’

‘Is there anybody else in there?’

‘Nobody knows I’m here,’ I tell him.

‘Good for you,’ he says. ‘All I know is that somebody wants to talk to the guy who’s inside meeting with Marcie. Somebody knows you’re here.’

‘Who is it?’

‘What am I, Western Union?’ he says.

Marcie’s finished with the clipboard and I hand it back. The deliveryman is gone like a shot. At a quick jog he’s headed for his van. Howard looks at him, shakes his head, a mocking grin, like he’s seen the kind before, some butt-licking hustler looking to make an impression with his employer. Howard’s civil service. Besides, he knows there isn’t a hope in hell of his owning the post office one day.

I follow him out toward the loading dock. This time we take the direct route, through the center of the sorting area. Employees looking at me. Little sniggers. I can see Howard’s head shaking from behind. Like he’s running a tour and escort service.

We get to the dock. Howard’s friend is still loading the other van. Except for Howard and me, he is alone on the dock.

‘Where did he go? The guy who wanted to see me?’

Howard scratches his head, walks to the edge of the dock, and looks down the alley. Nobody. He asks the other carrier.

‘I dunno. Here a minute ago. Musta got tired waiting and left,’ he says. He gives us the government-issue shrug.

I look up the alley the other way. The courier is at the curb, standing at the open door of a vehicle, looking back over his shoulder in my direction. There’s no one else in sight, just an old lady and a vagrant walking down the sidewalk that cuts the alley at Seventh Street.

‘If he comes back, tell him to wait.’ I’m looking at Howard.

‘What am I — your messenger?’

‘I’m going back inside. Unfinished business,’ I tell him.

Howard gives me the look, the face of authority, withering like blossoms in a drought. He makes no effort to stop me. Alas, the man is not management material.

I head back through the door, wondering who could have been looking for me here. I didn’t tell the office where I was going. It couldn’t be Harry. One of those nagging things, like a ringing phone in the night, with nothing but heavy breathing on the line. An annoyance. I try to put it out of my mind.

As I clear the mail-sorting area, I am still filtering the sights from the loading dock, like light through a camera lens set on a quick shutter speed, fading images being processed, the man’s silhouette at the curb. Why, I think, would a private courier be getting into the backseat of a dark sedan?

The thought is fused in my mind by the searing blast, the flash of light followed in an instant by heat that toasts my face. The concussion sends me reeling against the wall. Splinters of wood, particles of glass spray my body like gravel shot from the barrel of a gun. In a dreamscape I find myself sprawled, supine, bathed in the warmth of glowing embers. Dazed, things move about me, over my head, white and blue butterflies.

My eyes focus. Little shards floating in the air, not butterflies, but pieces of papers, singed at the edges, drifting down. One of these settles on my nose, balanced perfectly, then teeters toward one eye. I close the lid, surprised that I can muster that much control over any part of my body.

Slowly I stagger to one knee, then two. Hands and knees, I feel for the wall, warm sweat running down my face. I can hear nothing but the ringing in my ears. People are moving about me now, soundless emissions coming from agitated faces. One of them takes my arm. He says something in my face, but I can’t hear. I shake my head, motion with my hands, like speak up. Only the ringing in my ears. He steadies me against the wall and moves toward the door, the office where Marcie is.

I’m holding my head with one hand. Wet warmth. I look at my palm, glistening with blood. It is not warm sweat that is trickling down my cheek.

The door to the office where Marcie is has disintegrated. The glass blown out of the upper portion. The lower panel of wood is a fringe of splinters. What is left of the chair that I had been sitting in has been blown through the door.

Two guys kick out what’s left of the lower panel. One of them steps through.

Mouths are moving, people trying to shout, but they have all lost their voices.

‘Somebody call 911,’ I say. But I don’t hear the words.

Two of the clerks have come from the front counter.

I steady my legs and push myself forward to the doorway. My head is ringing. The pounding in my ears. A wave of nausea. I turn toward the wall like I am going to retch, but force it down. I fight for control.

From the doorway I can see nothing of Marcie. The chair where she was sitting has been blown over backwards. It rests partially embedded in the wall behind the desk. One of its wooden arms splintered. No sign of Marcie.

I move inside the room and steady myself with my hands on the desk, little droplets of blood forming with the dust and shards of paper on its surface.

Then I see her. On the floor, sprawled on her back. The clothing gone from her upper body. Only her bra, which is singed, and a few strings of fabric from one sleeve remain to cover her frail torso.

I look at her face, singed and burned, even more innocent and childlike now, gripped in the sleep of death. One man at the pulse of what is left of her thin wrist, looking up, shaking his head, a universal message requiring no words.

People are beginning to congregate at the door. I see my briefcase, flattened against the wall, its surface scarred like a pistol target, a half dozen nails through its thick latigo.

Then I see it on the floor, near the chair and my briefcase. The little envelope. The note that Marcie pulled from the drawer of the desk. The one sent to her by Kathy Merlow. Its edges are charred.

I move in a world of ringing silence. People are milling toward the desk, at once curious and recoiling. Their thoughts for the moment fixed on the fragile form on the floor. Tiptoeing over to look.

I slip behind two of the women who have pushed their way to the edge of the desk. I reach for my case, tattered, its cover imploded by the force of the blast, studded with nails.

In as fluid a motion as I can manage, I reach down, trapping the little envelope on the floor between two bloodied fingers. As I rise up, no one seems to notice that there is one less scrap of paper on the floor. Another wave of nausea. I catch the bile in my throat and swallow hard. My hand to my mouth. Bloodied prints on the little envelope. Slowly I back from the room. I can see over the front counter, two federal cops in blue uniforms and shiny badges. They’re headed for the door that leads back here.

I walk, stumble, pick up my pace, try to make a straight line to the rear of the building.

On the loading dock I am alone. Everyone is inside. I manage to get down the stairs, tripping and dripping as I walk, moving as quickly as I can toward the safety of my car, clutching the little envelope in my hands, my only link to Kathy Merlow and what she knows.