Blind Justice

29

“COME ON, GISELLE. EAT!”

It was a fair compromise. He’d filled her bowl with one-fourth Feline’s Fancy and three-fourths regular Cat Chow. He figured it would smell enough like what she preferred to get her started, till she developed a taste for the other. Eventually, he would wean her off the expensive brand altogether. He thought.

Apparently, Giselle didn’t see it that way. She circled the food bowl a few times. Her face crinkled; her whiskers shook. She stared at Ben with what he could have sworn were eyes of betrayal. Then she curled up in his easy chair, now covered with black cat hair, and acted as if he didn’t exist.

“Look, Giselle. I just can’t afford to feed you that ridiculously overpriced gourmet cat food every single day!”

She licked her paws idly, entirely oblivious to him.

“I repeat—”

He was interrupted by a knock at the door. He opened it to find Mrs. Marmelstein standing in the hallway.

“Is something wrong?” Ben asked.

“I didn’t want you to take this case in the first place,” she said emphatically. “I knew what would happen. Policemen waving their guns around, chasing crazed drug pushers, tramping, through my garden.…”

Ben’s eyebrows rose. “There was a police officer here?”

“Yes.” She gave him an accusatory look. “Looking for you, of course.”

“Did you get a name?”

“No. But he left a note.”

Ben took the note from Mrs. Marmelstein and unfolded it. It said: Third base—8:00. He checked his watch. It was already 8:30.

“Gotta go,” Ben murmured. “I may be late tonight.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Socializing with police hooligans. You’ll probably go to the pool halls. Visit some ladies of loose morals.”

Ben smiled. “I’ll leave before the loose morals get out of control. Did he really tramp through your garden?”

Mrs. Marmelstein sniffed. “Well, no. But only because I stopped him.”

Ben hadn’t been to a Tulsa Drillers game in years.

Not that he was a jock, but he did enjoy watching the Drillers play when he could. Actually, his favorite part was the hot dogs. They were awful, but that was part of the charm. He’d bought two at the stand downstairs and was carrying them, the foil wrappings sweating in his hands.

The game was already into the top of the sixth inning when he arrived. The Shreveport Captains were four runs ahead of the Drillers. A Shreveport victory seemed inevitable, and the crowd was thinning. It didn’t take Ben long to find Mike up in the cheap seats on the third baseline.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” Mike said.

“I didn’t get home till late.” Ben took the empty seat beside Mike and handed him a hot dog. “Got your note and came straight out here.”

Mike nodded. “I didn’t want to leave a message on your machine. I wanted to meet somewhere we could talk. Freely. Privately.”

“So you set up a meeting at a baseball stadium?”

“Sure. Buried in a crowd. Didn’t you ever read The Purloined Letter? The best hiding place is out in the open.” He paused to watch the shortstop trigger a magnificent double play. “Besides, I wanted to see the ball game.”

“What if Abshire sees you out here with me?”

“No chance. He’s back at FBI headquarters burning the midnight oil. He works on this case night and day.”

That was reassuring. “What did you want?”

Mike’s eyes didn’t waver from the ball game, “Ben, I don’t like what’s happening any more than you do. There’s nothing I can do about it, but I am…sorry.”

“Got any specifics?”

“Well, I find it tough to believe Christina stuffed a cache of drugs in a Betty Boop doll.”

“Then who did?”

“That’s the problem. I know both of the investigating officers who accompanied me to her apartment, and I’d swear they’re clean. No way they’d plant false evidence.”

“Someone did.”

Mike shrugged.

“What about the other evidence? What’s Abshire holding back?”

“As far as exculpatory evidence goes, nothing. I would’ve raised holy hell if he hadn’t shown you that paraffin report, though.”

Ben hoped that was right. But as he recalled, Mike was pretty tranquil at the time.

“Virtually all the evidence they’ve found goes against Christina. I gotta tell you, Ben, they’re building an airtight case. If this were in my jurisdiction, I’d ask the D. A. to press charges, too.”

“Even though you know Christina wouldn’t shoot anyone? Much less four times in the head?”

Mike didn’t say anything.

“Is there anything you can do to loosen up Abshire? Make him more reasonable?”

Mike laughed. “He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t listen to anyone, except maybe Stanford. Officially, he can’t go to the bathroom without Stanford’s okay. But a mere local cop like me he can blow off with impunity. Hell, I tried to get him to have the goddamn drug test done on Christina the day they brought her in. But he didn’t. He didn’t have to, so he didn’t.”

There was a sudden burst of shouting and applause. The Drillers batter had knocked the ball high and far. It flew into the outfield, soared and…yes! Over the fence for a grand slam. The crowd leaped to its feet, yelling, tooting horns, ringing cowbells. The batter nonchalantly floated around the bases. In the space of seconds, a hopeless defeat became a tie game. Things weren’t always what they seemed.

“You’re not exactly a fount of information tonight, Mike.”

“If you expected me to slide you some secret file that would break the case wide open—sorry. I couldn’t do that, even if such a file existed. Which it doesn’t.”

“If some new evidence comes to light, will you give me another call?”

“You know I can’t, Ben. I’ve got to play this by the book.”

Ben could not mask his disappointment.

“I took an oath to serve and protect the City of Tulsa and the United States of America. I’m on the prosecution side, and any act in opposition to them would be a betrayal of my oath.”

“Oh,” Ben said, blinking rapidly.

“Ben, you remember what I said about watching your backside? Well, it goes double now. There’s some serious trouble getting ready to go down—involving the mob, the South Americans, the FBI, everybody. And you’re right in the middle of it.”

“Thanks for the warning. It was good of you to meet me like this. I know you’re running some…career risks.”

Mike shrugged again. He was still looking away, but not at the ball game. His gaze seemed to be much further. “It was the least I could do.”

Ben had to agree. The least.

They sat together in silence. Ben felt almost invisible. Incorporeal. He snarfed down his hot dog and tried to focus on the game, without success. He just wasn’t interested; his attention kept drifting back to the gray void beside him that used to be his friend.

He slipped away during the seventh inning stretch.