Undue Influence

Chapter 26

This afternoon it is nearly five when I get back to the office. There are messages, a pile of pink slips littering my desk.

I do telephone triage, and a phone message from Clem Olsen comes up on top. I dial and I get the Wolfman. He has some information, the print from Kathy Merlow’s tube of paint which I gave him at the reunion. But as usual Clem doesn’t want to talk on the phone.

The Brass Ring is one of those haunts of cops and lawyers, a block from the courthouse. It is to the legal profession what Geneva is to the U.N. — a place where warring sides can sit and talk. When I arrive there are maybe a dozen people inside, a few cops, a small cluster of deputy D.A.s at the bar, with a couple of public defenders exchanging stories of courthouse comedy and lore, slamming a dice cup for drinks.

Little snippets of the points I scored this afternoon in Laurel’s case have filtered here among those who follow such things. One of the P.D.s reaches out and slaps my back as I walk by, offers a good word, and encouragement to stick my pike further into the belly of the beast tomorrow.

In the chess match that is a trial, Morgan Cassidy has traded a knight for one of our pawns. In return for some veiled and foggy threats of death, she has now lost one of two pieces of hard physical evidence purporting to link Laurel to the scene of the crime: Melanie’s gold compact. The other, the bathroom rug, relies solely on Jack’s testimony for its proof — his word against Laurel’s that the rug was in Melanie’s bathroom the night of the murder.

Cassidy’s case begins to look more problematic with each passing day, and a few things become clear. Jimmy Lama’s early investigation is what is steering their theory, and I am beginning to get the feeling that Lama is taking Morgan for a ride. I think Jimmy’s chronic myopia has settled like the black Plague over them. It is a matter of Lama immersed in a vendetta.

It takes all my faculty for fantasy to imagine Lama’s passion to nail Laurel once he found out that I was related. For Jimmy this could only have fallen under the category of a magnificent obsession. As a cop assessing evidence, it has glazed his powers of perception. Once Lama knew of the relation between Laurel and me, there was only one suspect, one theory. Cassidy is now faced with hard facts which do not square with their early assumptions. All the ways a theory can go sour on you.

I would pay for status as a fly on their wall to hear the dressing-down Cassidy will give him for failing to review the courthouse tape to its end. If there is anything to aversion therapy, Lama will never leave a theater again before the credits finish rolling and the screen goes dark.

The dice cup is being slammed on the bar, a bang and the roar of voices as one of them is stuck with a round of drinks. As I look up I see Clem coming through the door. He swings between some tables, shakes a few hands, a couple of cops off the day shift. I hear the Wolfman, gravel in his throat, then bits and pieces of some off-color joke in a Mexican dialect, followed by a lot of laughter. This is Clem the politician. Next week he may be working Community Relations and telling these same guys that positive racial attitudes all start at home with an open mind and a clear conscience. Clem is the only man I know who could sit through five days of sexual sensitivity training and cop a feel from the female instructor as his graduation prize.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he says. ‘Hope you haven’t been here long.’

I wave this off, and gesture to the seat on the other side of the table.

I don’t get the Wolfman routine this afternoon. Instead Clem is looking over his shoulder, worried what his friends might think if they see him consorting with the enemy in the midst of trial. He tells me I am too hot at the moment for the normal social chitchat of this place. Lama, he says, wants a pound of flesh, and while merchants in Venice might settle for my heart, according to Clem, Jimmy wants to start at the soft underside of my genitals.

‘What did you do to get him so pissed off?’ he asks. ‘Ranting and raving all over the office,’ he tells me. ‘Jimmy has trouble deciding whose name to take in vain, yours, or as he puts it, “that cunt” they forced him to work with.’

Clem looks at me. ‘Who’s trying the case?’ he says.

‘Morgan Cassidy,’ I tell him.

‘Oh.’ Nothing more, like maybe Clem concurs in Lama’s initial assessment.

Clem wants to go for one of the back booths, where we can talk in private. Not be disturbed, as he says.

We do it. The waitress comes up. Clem orders a boilermaker. I do grapefruit juice.

‘On the wagon?’ he says.

I have to pick up Sarah from the baby-sitter’s in a few minutes. I tell him this and he nods like he understands. Since Nikki’s death I have a heightened sense of responsibility for my daughter, and a whole new appreciation for single parents. I have often wondered about the things that stick in a kid’s mind as they grow older and realize that there is a darker seam to life, that the smell that always seemed to float about Dad’s head like an ether was not Aqua Velva after all.

‘Did you hear about Louis Cousins?’ he says.

Cousins, the kid on trial across the hall from us, was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder a week ago.

I shake my head.

‘Jury came back an hour ago.’ Clem extends his arm straight out in a fist, then turns it over and does a thumbs-down gesture like Caesar. ‘Death,’ he says.

I cannot say that I am surprised by this. Psychological defenses rooted in allegations of childhood abuses have been trotted out all too often of late, and overexposed in the press. Like knock-off Colonials in a housing tract, they are losing their impact.

The implication for us, however, is that the press will now be free. We will be garnering a larger share of the attention, which I could just as well do without.

Clem’s in no hurry. I think he figures I’m good for a dozen drinks. I will buy him a gift certificate at the bar and let him carouse with his friends.

‘What did you find out?’ I ask him.

‘Nothing on the picture,’ he says. ‘Struck out on all counts.’ Clem is talking about the photo given to me by Dana of the man known as Lyle Simmons, who if she is right was the triggerman seen with Jack in the bar across the river — the courier who delivered the bomb to the post office — and the guy who took out the Merlows. I would have figured, being that busy, he would have had a record to rival Capone.

‘We checked all the aliases,’ he says. ‘Without prints…’ He makes a face like dream on. ‘Which brings us to the other matter.’

He’s talking about the fingerprint of Kathy Merlow from the tube of paint I palmed off the grass during our encounter in Hawaii.

‘Took almost an hour on the computer.’ This doesn’t sound like much, but on the high-speed automated system of scanning an hour is a lifetime. ‘We got a hit,’ he says.

Clem pulls a slip of paper from his pocket. ‘One Carla Leopold, born Paterson, New Jersey, August twenty-six, nineteen and-’

‘Save the background, let’s cut to the chase,’ I tell him.

‘This is the good part,’ he says. ‘Honors graduate, Columbia, degree in accountancy.’

‘You sure we’re talking about the same woman?’

He gives me a big grin. ‘Employed by one of the large accounting firms in New York City, five years’ experience. Next employer Regal International Trading Consortium, corporate accountant and bookkeeper. Employed two years.’

‘Where is this leading us?’ I ask him.

‘Bear with me,’ he says. ‘Regal is one of the new line of trading and investment houses. They make their money the new and improved way.’

‘How’s that?’

‘They launder it,’ says Clem.

He sits looking at me, big round eyes across the table, like how’s them apples?

The waitress arrives with our drinks. Clem starts slurping the foam off his iced mug. I give the woman payment and a tip and she leaves us.

‘Word is you got narco-dollars, Regal International will buy you a piece of the rock,’ says Clem. ‘They do Rumpelstiltskin and his straw routine one better. They turn white shit that goes up somebody else’s nose into tax-free-no-load muni bonds. Or at least they did until two years ago.’

‘What happened?’

He takes a drink of draft, knowing he has my attention now.

‘IRS and Justice came down around their ears. Full-court press. Indicted all the principals. Tried to get them to roll over on their clients. On the theory that you always follow the money, they called in your girl Carla.’

I’m giving him funny faces, not exactly tracking on where he’s headed.

‘Seems with the heat on, her former employers had funny notions about downsizing. Layoffs were done off a barge, after a cement facial, somewhere up the Hudson. Two of her cohorts, other bean counters, went the way of the disappeared,’ he says. ‘Ms. Leopold suddenly realized her career options were being limited. She agreed to testify in return for some kind of a deal. She copped a plea, mail fraud, conspiracy, and racketeering, multiple counts. That’s how her prints showed up in the computer,’ he says. ‘In return she was supposed to get sanctuary.’

‘Supposed to?’ I say.

‘She never got the benefit of the bargain.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean she’d be thirty-three if she was still alive.’

Clem knows about her death. I am wondering how.

‘An auto accident on the Jersey Turnpike in the middle of a blizzard,’ says Clem. ‘A year ago last November.’

With this I am sitting bolt upright. I nearly choke on grapefruit juice as the acid singes my throat.

‘Body burned beyond recognition. Car went up like a fucking buzz-bomb. Word is, it may have been an o.c. hit.’ Clem’s jargon for the underbelly of life — organized crime.

He is asking me where I got the fingerprint on the paint tube. According to Clem, the guy who ran the check on the computer for him at State Justice is now curious.

I dodge this with a lot of verbal feints and weaves, and finally distract him with a question.

‘Are you sure about the print, couldn’t be a mistake?’ I say.

‘No way. Positive make,’ he tells me. ‘Matches on more than a dozen points of comparison. Little ridges that don’t lie.’

Clem’s still waiting for an answer about where I got the print. He may have to wait until hell freezes.

At this moment I am certain that my face is a mask of glazed expressions as I conjure the enigma that was Kathy Merlow, and a whole new universe of unanswered questions.

I see apparitions, the chalked and powdery complexion of death, visions of Nikki as I saw her alone on that last day to press the wedding band on her finger for the final time, alone among the tubes and tanks and other instruments of horror in the back rooms of the funeral parlor. Visions of Nikki laid out in white satin. It is an image I relive with regularity, though now it is invaded by other more disturbing pictures. The synapses of the brain trying to sort sense from confusion. Another face, images of fiery death, and Kathy Merlow. Somehow these two, Nikki and Merlow, have become snarled in my mind, as I am restrained, caught up, lathered in sweat. Flames, and a tangle of twisted metal on some unrecognized roadway. Blood on matted bedsheets, the palm trees of Hana, and a pitched ringing, relentless, insistent in my ears. Images give way to sound, Nikki and Kathy Merlow, faces fade as my brain finally sorts fact from phantasm. I roll over, untangle myself from the sheets of my bed, and pull the receiver from the phone. The ringing stops. Nightmares that pass for slumber.

I swing my legs and sit up in soaked bedsheets.

‘Hello — Paul?’ A voice, a million miles away, like something through a tube, familiar. It is Harry.

‘What the hell time is it?’ I say.

‘Five-thirty,’ he tells me. ‘Sorry to get you out of bed.’

‘It’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping well. What is it?’ I’m wiping perspiration from my forehead, sleep from my eyes.

‘Have you seen the morning paper?’ he says.

‘No. Why?’

‘I think you better take a look. And do yourself a favor,’ he says. ‘Sit down before you open it.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Somebody has inserted a blade, at the sixth cervical vertebra, about eight inches in.’

‘To who?’ I ask.

‘To you, my friend. Second lead, page one, above the fold,’ he tells me. ‘ “Local Defense Attorney Linked to Postal Bombing.” ’

‘Oh, shit.’ I sit, still trying to chase visions of dread from my sleep-ravaged brain. My mind at this moment begins to swim, struggling to sort the real fears from the imagined.

‘I don’t get it,’ I say. ‘The feds already questioned me.’

‘It doesn’t say anything about that. Just that your fingerprints were found all over the place after the bombing, and that certain employees saw you talking to the dead postal worker moments before the blast. Somebody’s doing a number,’ he says.

‘I think you better get yourself together. I’ll meet you at the office.’ Harry hangs up.

I start to forage for clothes, my mind racing to assess the damage that this will do to Laurel’s case, a trial in midstream, scandal affecting her lawyer.

Then I pick up the phone and dial Mrs. Bailey. I will need coverage with Sarah. I am abusing the old lady’s good nature, but as always she is there for my daughter, more than I can say for myself. She will be over in ten minutes.

I’m in my underwear, buttoning up my pants, when I dial again. This time it is a groggy feline voice at the other end, something sultry from sleep.

‘Hello. It’s Paul. I need some help,’ I tell her.

‘What is it?’

‘Somebody’s tagged me with the bombing. In this morning’s paper.’

‘What. Who would-’

‘I don’t have time to talk. I need your help. There’s a judge who’s going to be taking a long hard look at me this morning. An explanation from some authoritative source could go a long way,’ I tell her.

‘I don’t understand,’ she says.

‘Neither do I.’

Silence on the other end. ‘Sure. Whatever I can do. Where can I meet you?’ asks Dana.

We set a time, the county courthouse, and I hang up.

For nearly two hours we assess damage while walking the floor at the office, Harry and I. As the arching light of dawn turns to day, I can see the incandescent lights as they dim on the Capitol dome five blocks away.

We reread the story, first silently, then out loud to each other, looking for nuances we may have missed. We explore the possible sources. Harry is thinking Jack. By now he would have gotten word that he is the centerpiece of my case. He is well connected with the press. But Harry hasn’t told me how Jack would get the information that my prints were found at the scene, with the wraps thrown around a pending investigation.

The staff reporter on the byline is not a name I have heard before. It is the stuff of which scandal is made. Attributions to ‘highly placed but unnamed sources close to the investigation.’ It does not say, in so many words, that I am a suspect, but in the interests of a good story buries me in a mud slide of inference and innuendo. If this were the Inquisition, they would be pouring hot lead in my ear by morning as a means of leading me to the Lord and coaxing my confession.

What makes this most baffling is that I have come clean with the FBI, hours of questioning behind closed doors. They know precisely what I was doing talking with Marcie Reed. All I can figure is some enterprising reporter who got his hands on only half of the story.

The problem as we see it, and Harry sums it up quickly, is that the jurors in Laurel’s case are not shielded from this news. It would not be covered by the court’s gag order, there being no obvious link between the bombing and Melanie’s murder. Left as it is, the jury, seeing my name coupled with the events at the post office, would not be believing much that I say in Laurel’s defense, the case of one felon pleading the cause of another.

‘He can’t mask it, but maybe he can take the tinge off. An instruction to the jury.’ Harry’s talking about Judge Woodruff. We have called four times in the last hour. He’s not yet in chambers, though by now he has no doubt read his morning paper.

‘It’s probably just a one-day story,’ I say. ‘By tomorrow it’ll be old news, off the front page, explained and corrected.’

‘You sound like the fucking founding fathers,’ says Harry. ‘An innocent’s notion of the First Amendment,’ he tells me.

This from a man who spends his life reading the newspaper.

‘Hang on to your nuts,’ he says. ‘They don’t call it the press for nothing.’

‘They got the facts wrong. They’ll fix it,’ I say.

‘Like the man said, fifteen minutes of fame,’ says Harry. ‘You get yours by flashlight up the kazoo.’

I tell him to relax. I try the judge on the phone. Now the clerk’s not answering. We can’t wait any longer, so we decide to walk the few blocks to the courthouse. We can die of anxiety there as well as here. Besides, by now Dana should be on her way over.

We drop down the elevator in the building. I step out and get my first glimpse of them. A van with a dish on top parked out front. Then two more down the block. I wonder if maybe there’s a fire in one of the high-rises. Then, as I step out onto the street, I get a microphone in the face.

‘Mr. Madriani, what can you tell us about the bombing?’

Another guy with a pen and pad. ‘Are you being charged? Are you talking to authorities?’

‘How long have you been under investigation?’

Harry is looking at me. ‘Holy shit.’

We grab the doors, step back inside, close them, and turn the lock. We’re getting a lot of glare from the strobes on the cameras bouncing off the glass of the door. A horde is now moving in.

One of the more enterprising souls is pulling on the handles, rattling the heavy door in its frame.

Harry’s got my elbow, dragging me toward a door down the hall. The way to the garage. We get in his car, and as we come up the ramp to the street there is another throng.

‘I should have put you in the fucking trunk,’ he says. ‘Hang on.’

He nearly runs some guy down who is so burdened with batteries and lights he cannot move.

‘So much for a one-day story,’ he says. ‘Any more theories?’

I look back over my shoulder out the rear window, and a few of them are running for their cars. A woman reporter with her camera crew is hoofing it down the street, figuring I am due in court and it’s only three blocks.

Harry asks me what I think Dana will do about all this.

‘I’m hoping she’ll vouch for me with Woodruff. Tell him what happened, that I was merely interviewing a client. That I’m not a suspect.’

‘You’ve been bitten by the love bug,’ he says. ‘She is probably the leaker.’

When I look over at him I see a lot of wrinkles and furrows, advice to the lovelorn from Harry. He is talking about Dana like he suspects she has lifted her leg, making me the leakee.

‘Why would she? She has nothing to gain.’

‘Birds of a feather,’ he says.

‘You mean Cassidy?’

‘I mean estrogen’s thicker than water,’ he says. ‘There are some of them who get off just tubing some poor slob.’ The ‘them’ Harry is talking about is the other half of humanity, the vast fairer sex. ‘Maybe you didn’t scratch the right itch the last time you got it on.’ Harry’s getting personal now. ‘I warned you,’ he says. ‘Two female prosecutors.’

Harry thinks the enmity in the workplace toward males is something genetic, like the encoding on the X chromosome, that there will be no peace until women are sent home. He’s still blinking, wondering how a gender that makes up more than half of the species acquired all the perks of minority status and got its head under the tent of affirmative action.

‘There are rules in this stuff, like the canon of ethics,’ he says. ‘We all know the first one: “Thou shalt not dip thy quill in the company ink.” ’

I remind him that Dana doesn’t work for us.

The second, he says: ‘ “Beware of false prosecutors who come to you in the night in sheep’s clothing or slinky garb, for they are ravening wolves,” ’ he says. To Harry there is little that is sacred.

I give him a smile but don’t say anything.

‘Sure, laugh,’ he says. ‘But it ain’t me running down the street who’s being chased by Tabloid Mary,’ he says. ‘It’s your ass that’s in the flames. Burnt offerings to the god of yellow journalism,’ says Harry.

In the distance a half block away I can hear some asshole shouting, ‘There he is!’ The patter of feet, heels on concrete, like a stampede of hookers ahead of the paddy wagon.

We’re making for the sanctuary of court, across the intersection between the parking lot and the courthouse, against a light that says DON’T WALK. We are nearly hit by a car. We run up the ramp to the back door.

It takes us a couple of minutes to negotiate the metal detector. It is here that the first camera crew catches us. Harry is panting, out of breath, busy putting his belt with its metal buckle back through the loops in his pants. Pictures at five. We move away. They try to follow. The guard is pointing to the conveyor belt and telling them to unstrap for inspection.

Harry turns around and gives them the finger. Their lights still on, film still whirring. ‘See you assholes upstairs,’ he says. ‘And leave the fucking cameras and mikes outside, in the hall,’ he tells them. Harry Hinds on public relations.

He sees the look on my face. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘They gotta bleep out all the bad stuff.’ Harry’s never heard of lip-reading.

We look like two brush salesmen toting sample cases as we finally make it to the elevator. Harry’s is filled with exhibits and pieces of evidence for our case. My own has lined-out questions for examination, in the case of today, for Jack Vega, who is due up in the state’s case — if I am not suspended from the practice before then.

When we arrive at the clerk’s station behind the courtroom, Dana is already inside with Woodruff. The clerk knocks on the door and we are told to wait a couple of minutes. Morgan Cassidy has been summoned by the judge and is on her way. Woodruff apparently is concerned by appearances of ex parte communications. He doesn’t want one of the lawyers inside behind closed doors without opposing counsel being present.

Two minutes later Cassidy breezes into the office, followed by Jimmy Lama. She walks past us like we are not there, nothing but an imperious look. Lama’s expression is dour, like maybe he’s not looking forward to this meeting.

The clerk opens the door and we all press into chambers. Woodruff is seated behind a large mahogany desk. Dana has one of the two stuffed club chairs across from him. Her briefcase is in her lap.

‘Your honor, if I could explain.’ I don’t waste any time. ‘I take it you’ve seen the morning paper?’

Woodruff has his hand up. ‘I’ve seen it and I’ve talked to Ms. Colby. She’s already told me what happened,’ he says. ‘An inaccurate news story,’ he says. ‘Right now I’m more concerned about how it got in the paper.’ He means whether there is some ulterior motive for this, and whether it takes its inspiration from the trial.

Woodruff may have the bushy eyebrows and the genteel twinkle of Walter Cronkite, but this morning he is a mean face, all of it aimed at Morgan Cassidy. There has been no love lost between her and the judge.

‘What can you tell us about this, Ms. Cassidy?’

‘Not a thing, your honor. You don’t think-’

‘Well, it didn’t come from our shop,’ says Dana.

Cassidy gives her a look to kill.

Harry’s smiling. The other side of the gender conspiracy — a catfight.

‘How about your people?’ Dana’s looking at Jimmy Lama.

His Adam’s apple comes halfway up, and then does a jackknife. A lot of nervous eyeing of the judge. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘I thought the postal investigation was a federal affair?’

‘We called in the local bomb squad, and forensic support,’ says Dana.

‘Maybe we should get whoever headed it up over here,’ says Woodruff.

‘No need. They’re here already,’ says Dana. ‘Lieutenant Lama was local liaison.’

With this Jimmy is seven shades of purple, a lot of fidgeting and nervous glances, more than a few of them in my direction. Lama on the carpet. Woodruff demanding answers. Who had access to information? The fingerprint reports?

‘It didn’t come from our side,’ says Jimmy. Absolute denials which he undercuts a moment later with assurances that he’ll check it out and get back to the judge.

‘By this afternoon,’ says Woodruff.

‘You got it,’ says Lama.

‘What?’

‘Your honor,’ says Jimmy.

Woodruff gives him a look that says, ‘That’s better.’

Lama’s muttering to Cassidy. Denials sputtering like they are out of gas. ‘Our people wouldn’t do this.’

All of them except one, and I am looking at him right now. There is no longer any mystery in my mind as to the source of this news story. Humiliation over the courthouse tape, the loss of the compact as evidence was the last straw. This is classic Lama, time-honored techniques designed to screw one’s opponent. To Jimmy life is one large board game of getting even. Something tells me there is no way Woodruff will ever prove Lama was involved. He would have more layers of insulation on this than the average Eskimo. A dozen people between himself and the reporter, his name or fingerprints on nothing. Under the circumstances the court cannot call the reporter who wrote the story onto the carpet and demand to know his sources. Ostensibly Woodruff has no jurisdiction. The information in the article does not relate to evidence in our case. It is all tangential, intended only to cripple me as counsel. In this Lama has been deft.

Woodruff wrings his hands over the desk, making noises about a mistrial. At this moment, given the holes we have punched in their case, this would be a gift-wrapped package to Cassidy. She now knows our theory of defense. She could shore it up and try the case again.

The judge says he will poll the jury to see how many have read the article, what effect it has had. In the meantime he will craft an instruction. He orders Lama to return after today’s session to report progress on this, his inquiries regarding the story. Jimmy is bowing and scraping. Your typical toady in the face of authority, Lama is vowing to get to the bottom of it.

By five o’clock he’ll be back with iron-clad assurances that nobody in the department was involved, and Woodruff will be left as I am, to harbor empty suspicions without proof.

Lama and Cassidy head out to the courtroom to prepare for the day’s session. Harry follows them. Dana and I huddle in the hallway just beyond the clerk’s station.

‘That bitch,’ she says. I am struck by her language. This is an anger I have not seen in Dana before. Her face is flushed, her hands shaking. She is looking at the wall behind me at this moment, not engaging my eyes. The expletive uttered as if she were talking to herself. As if I were not present.

‘She’s spent months trying to derail the appointment,’ she says. Dana’s talking about her judicial aspirations. Her wrath, it seems, is predicated on something more than her personal loyalty to me. Cassidy in her denials to the court has in her own inimitable way implied that if it was not the local authorities whose indiscretions led to the embarrassing news article, then there is only one other possibility — it had to be Dana or some of her people. She does not take kindly to being played the stooge.

‘Fine. That’s the way they want it,’ she says, ‘we’ll give it to them in spades. A little leveling of the playing field,’ she tells me. ‘When do they swear Jack?’ she asks.

‘This morning,’ I tell her. ‘He’s first up.’

‘Then he’s fair game anytime after that?’

I nod.

‘You’ll have unsealed indictments and public records of conviction, certified copies by noon,’ she says. ‘I’ll see to it that a courier delivers them.’

I thank her for standing up for me, explaining to Woodruff.

‘All in a day’s work,’ she says. But now she tells me there is bad news. Things are not going well in their search for the witness who saw Jack with the man they know as Lyle Simmons in the bar across the river. The guy has completely dropped from sight.

‘Your people haven’t stopped looking?’ I say.

‘No. But I don’t want to mislead you either. The man hasn’t been seen in more than two months. He has strong inducements to stay lost. The unrelated criminal charges,’ she says. ‘If we do find him, it may not be in time.’

‘The man’s a linchpin in my case,’ I tell her.

‘You can make a case on Jack without him. He’s dirty,’ she says. ‘You know it wasn’t his child. The guy was burning with jealousy. He used the death of his wife to try and cut a deal on his sentence. There will be letters to that effect in the file,’ she says. ‘You can draw and quarter him.’

‘I wish you were on the jury,’ I tell her.

‘Their case is hemorrhaging faster than a peptic ulcer,’ she says. ‘The compact which no longer ties your client to the scene, a silencer, all the signs of a hired job. And Mr. Vega with a motive. Sounds like that’s where it’s at,’ she says.

‘It would be that much stronger with a triggerman.’

‘You want it all,’ she says. ‘We’ll try. But you shouldn’t count on it.’ The way she says this makes me think I am being told to make other arrangements, something short of the best evidence. I begin to wonder if this witness of theirs is not dead.

‘Are you free tonight?’ she asks.

‘Except for fatherhood,’ I tell her. ‘Dinner my place?’

She tells me she will bring the wine.

‘Say seven,’ I say.

She smiles. Then a warm and wet peck on the cheek in the dark corridor.

As she turns on her heels and heads down the hall, I see Harry, sitting in a chair in the clerk’s station, taking this all in, his face an etching of paternal disapproval, like some patriarch whose eldest son has just run off with the village trollop.