Hostile Witness

57

ONCE AGAIN I WAS RIDING the marble-lined elevator to the fifty-fourth floor of One Liberty Place, rising to the offices of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, coming as a visitor, not a member of the caste, coming as a supplicant, as one of the unworthy. But on this ride, at least, I was no longer lugging along a deep-seated resentment. I had been resentful of my exclusion from the hallways of the rich and powerful when I believed I belonged by right of merit, of talent, by right of my innate inner quality. But that belief had fled before the reality of my failure in United States v. Moore and Concannon. Not only was I not going to be offered a place at the glorious head table of the law, but the only thing I had proven at that trial was that I was inadequate to take it on my own. The jury had come back after only six hours of deliberations. Jimmy Moore acquitted of all counts; Chester Concannon guilty of Hobbs Act extortion, guilty of Hobbs Act assault, guilty of racketeering. Guilty, guilty, guilty. The words from the jury foreman were like the tolling of some unwholesome melancholy bell. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Six hours of deliberations and Chester Concannon was gone.

There was nothing I could do to salvage the trial after Veronica, my star witness, buried Chester with her testimony. I finally snapped out of my self-pitying stupor and had her declared a hostile witness, so that I could cross-examine her, and then went at her tooth and tong, attacking her credibility, attacking her story, attacking her lies. And they were lies, yes. She had told me the truth in her apartment the black night I subpoenaed her. I had no doubt but that it was Jimmy Moore who had taken that quarter of a million, cash, and handed it over to Norvel Goodwin, resurrecting with fresh capital Goodwin’s moribund grip on the crack cocaine market in Philadelphia. I had no doubt but that Jimmy Moore had killed Zack Bissonette with the Mike Schmidt autographed baseball bat, that it was Jimmy Moore who had battered him into a coma and left him sucking air through the blood oozing out of his mangled face. But with all of my hammering, all of my badgering, all of my bombast, I was not able to shake her story. My only hope was to put myself on the stand and contradict her. I was the only one who could impeach her with what she had told me that night in her apartment and so I passionately requested that Judge Gimbel let me testify.

“Mr. Carl,” he said, with all the indignation his high position allowed him, “I’m not going to let a lawyer testify in my courtroom at a trial that he is conducting. That is a clear violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct. You’re experienced enough to know you need an investigator or another third party to question a witness if you intend to impeach that witness’s testimony with the interrogation. They still teach that in law school, I believe, and I’m not about to start changing the rules now. Was there anyone else in the room when she made her statement to you?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Did she sign a written statement?”

“No, sir.”

“Is there any tape recording or video of what she said?”

“No, sir.”

“Well then, Mr. Carl, you can ask her what she said to you that night, but you will not be able to personally contradict, do you understand?”

“I object, Your Honor.”

“Exception noted for the record,” said the judge. “Any more questions for this witness?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Then go to it, Mr. Carl. You’ve got work to do.”

And go to it I did, but to no avail. There had always been something slippery about Veronica, she was soft and silky but I could never really get a hold of her, could never pin her down. Even when I had her tied to those bedposts I could never really pin her down. That was the way she was in bed and that was the way she was on the stand too, smooth, clear, but slippery when pressed. And in the end I failed. There was really no way to succeed once she blurted out her lies. If only I had forced her to sign a statement. If only I had placed Sheldon at the doorway with his stethoscope to listen to our conversation. If only I had recognized early on in her testimony the prepared evasiveness with which she answered questions about the bank account and quickly stopped my examination before the real damage was done. If only I hadn’t been such a fuckup.

Even before she was finished testifying I had asked the court for a recess and, along with Beth, ran to the clerk’s office for a fresh subpoena, filling it out on the ride down the courthouse elevator. There was one other person, I knew, who could contradict her story, the person who had been the liaison between Jimmy Moore and Norvel Goodwin, who had set up the deal for the quarter of a million and had told Goodwin where Veronica had been hiding out the day she was to testify. The same person who had been with Jimmy Moore the night of the murder, the man whose footprints had been encased in Bissonette’s vomit and Bissonette’s blood. I filled in Henry’s name hastily as I rode down to the ground floor and Beth fished in her pocketbook for a check for the witness fee. The murder had happened on Henry’s night off and he had flashed an alibi to the cops, who had been all too willing to believe the driver so as to put the blame on Concannon, but I was sure now that Henry’s alibi was a lie. In a desperate trot I ran to the Market Street exit of the courthouse, where I was sure the councilman’s limo would be waiting with Henry sitting calmly inside. He was my last chance. I spotted that black cat of a car at the corner of the building and rushed to it, tapping on the window, thrusting the papers inside as soon as there was a gap big enough to fit my arm. But the face underneath the chauffeur’s cap was white, not black, and he looked at me uncomprehendingly as the papers waved before him.

“Where’s Henry?” I asked.

“Kingston.”

“New York?”

“Jamaica. He went back to his family. Something about it being too damn cold up here, and I don’t blame him one bit.”

Six hours of deliberations and then the solemn tolling of the bell. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Eggert proved willing to settle for a councilman’s aide if he couldn’t get a councilman. He saw that he had a sure conviction in Chester Concannon, and a now shaky chance against Jimmy, and so in his closing he went after Chester with a fury. In detail he listed his crimes, the extortion, the murder, the taking for his own purposes of the quarter of a million dollars in cash, proven incontrovertibly by the records of cash deposits into and withdrawals from the checking account with Chester Concannon’s name on it, all calmly put into evidence by Prescott when he took his turn with Veronica. In Eggert’s forty-minute closing he spent thirty minutes on Chet Concannon. He tried, of course, to link Councilman Moore to his aide, but even that attempt only further highlighted his argument that Chester was the real culprit here.

Prescott didn’t have to say much when his turn to close arrived. He gave his public servant speech, blamed Moore’s indictment on politics. Concannon was guilty, he told them, that was no longer in doubt. The only question remaining was what vile motives led the United States Attorney to indict the councilman too. “When you acquit Jimmy Moore,” he argued, “you are not only acquitting an innocent man. You are also sending a message to the powers in this city that you will not tolerate the persecution of a man who is fighting for the poor, the downtrodden, who is fighting the scourge of drugs on our streets, who is fighting for you. Ladies and gentlemen, politics has its time and place, during campaigns, during elections, even in the legislative process, but it has no place before the grand jury. Mr. Eggert forgot exactly who he works for when he indicted Councilman Moore. Before the grand jury and before this court he was working for the councilman’s political opponents, acting for their and his political gain. Tell him that he works not for the powerful, not for himself, but for you. Tell him the clearest way you can, tell him with an acquittal. Send Jimmy Moore back to his good work.”

I closed too, of course. I stood before that jury and spoke about Chester Concannon and reasonable doubt and how Jimmy Moore had conspired to have his aide take the fall. Oh, I let it rip, I did. But it was a lost cause and I knew it and the jury knew it and when the eyes started rolling and the yawns came, first from Mr. Thompkins, who ran his own printing business and who I knew would be a tough sell, and then from the cynical Mrs. Simpson, whom I was counting on if I had any chance, it was as good as over. I kept pounding away, repeating “reasonable doubt,” “reasonable doubt,” “reasonable doubt,” as if I were a hypnotist trying to induce some post-trial daze in the jurors. I gave it the college try for dear old Chet, yes I did, but it mattered not a whit. Six hours of deliberations and the groaning moan of the great iron bell of justice: guilty, guilty, guilty.

There was a gay tinkling ring as the elevator stopped at the fifty-fourth floor and the doors slid open. Talbott, Kittredge and Chase. That huge expanse of lobby, beautiful and sterile; that blonde receptionist, beautiful and cold. Maybe there was another reason my resentment had vanished. Maybe the brass ring had been tarnished for me. If deceit and betrayal were the price of admission, I’d just as soon sit it out. That was something I had learned about myself, something good. I had learned enough bad about myself, my incompetence, my capacity for self-delusion, my steep leanings toward venality, but I had learned good things, too. I looked around at the riches of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase and decided that maybe I just didn’t want it anymore. Well, the receptionist I wanted still, let’s be honest, she was something, sure, but the rest could all go to hell for all I cared. And maybe, just maybe, I would do my part to send it there.

“William Prescott, please,” I said to the receptionist.

“Who can I say is here?”

“You don’t remember me?”

She gave one of those patented tosses of her mousse-swept hair and said, “No. I don’t.”

“Victor Carl.”

Her eyes opened wide for just an instant, just long enough so I knew that the story had spread through the whole of the firm, from partners to associates to secretaries to the receptionist. Even the cleaning crew, I bet, had a good laugh at my expense.

“Take a seat please, Mr. Carl, and I’ll tell his secretary you’re here.”

“Don’t bother,” I said as I headed toward the stairs. “I know the way.”

She stood up. “You can’t go unescorted Mr. Carl. That’s policy.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said without stopping. “But it’s your policy and I don’t work here.”

By the time I reached the stairs on my way to Prescott’s office she was already barking about me on the phone.

Up the wide circling stairs with the burnished rail, along the lucratively noisy hallways with secretaries typing vigorously and lawyers bustling in and out of their offices as they hurried to fill up their time sheets with billable hours, around the corners and past the richly furnished conference rooms, generously outfitted with legal pads and embossed pens and soft drinks. I had just reached the custodian’s closet, where I had spent desperate hours with Sheldon waiting for the hall to empty, when a flustered Janice rushed to meet me. She wasn’t as efficiently pretty as I remembered her to be on our first meeting, though the difference might have been mine.

“Oh, Mr. Carl,” she said. “You can’t just wander around the office alone.”

I lifted my hands. “No staplers in my pockets, honest.”

“It’s policy,” she said. “Mr. Prescott is on a conference call. I’ll take you to a meeting room to wait for him if you’d like.”

“That’s all right, Janice,” I said as I started again toward Prescott’s office, brushing past her. “But I’ll just wait with Billy. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

She sort of chugged after me saying something or other, but I ignored her. Why I was being so obstreperous is clear to me now. One result of my experience at the trial was to loose some shackle from my neck. I had always felt that there was a right way to behave, a right way to dress, a right manner to affect, as if all these rights would add up to something tangible, and add up to something tangible they did. What they added up to was a slavery of the soul. I had so wanted to be them I pretended to be like them, which only made it easier for them to kick me in the groin and step on my face whenever they liked. I was playing a losing game because I was playing on their turf, by their rules, number one of which stated that they always won and I always lost. But I guess I had lost one too many times. My long bitter period of obeisance had passed. I was reveling in my freedom to be whatever I chose, even if what I chose to be was rude.

The door to his office was open a crack. With Janice just behind, I skirted her work station, pushed open the door, walked into his office, plopped down onto one of the tapestry chairs across from his desk. Prescott was sitting straight-backed in his suit jacket, talking into the phone. When he saw me his face startled but quickly composed itself again.

Janice, in the doorway, said, “I tried to stop him, Mr. Prescott,” but Prescott waved her off and she backed out, closing the door behind her.

“Sam, Sam, Sam,” said Prescott into the phone while he smiled at me. “We will get you everything you’ve asked for, I promise, but we need that opinion letter by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. We’re going to the printer tomorrow night and it has to be ready by then.” He spun his finger in the air, indicating that this Sam on the other end was going on and on. He winked at me. “Listen, Sam. I have to go, I have someone in my office. Simon and Jack, stay on the line and talk with Sam about getting him all that he needs. We’ll satisfy you, Sam, but we need you to move on this, all right? Let me know before the end of the day of your progress.”

When he hung up he shook his head. “Some lawyers are so timid about opinion letters it’s amazing that any deal ever gets done. Valley Hunt Estates. We have the interim financing and we’re ready to go. It’s going to be a killer deal. Too bad you’re not a part of it anymore.”

I shrugged.

“But you’ll be gratified to know that we gave the business to your friend Sam Guthrie over at Blaine, Cox,” said Prescott. “He, at least, seems grateful for the opportunity. So, Victor, what brings you unbidden once again to our offices?”

I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a manila envelope, which I tossed onto his desk. “I wanted to personally serve our motion for a new trial that we’re filing today with Judge Gimbel. In it I lay out in detail everything that happened from the moment I was hired to defend Chester Concannon.”

“I see,” said Prescott as he opened the envelope and scanned the lengthy motion inside. “I expected as much. And frankly, Victor, I wish you luck. Jimmy’s been acquitted in the federal trial and the murder charges against him have been dropped. Nothing would please me more than for Chester to get off also.”

“I don’t think the judge will see it so benignly.”

He shrugged his shoulders as he continued leafing through the motion.

“You set me up,” I said.

“Yes,” said Prescott. “It wasn’t so hard to do.”

“You figured the only way to really clear Jimmy of the charges was to put them off on Chet, and the surest way to get the jury to believe it all was to get Chet’s lawyer to do the dirty work for you. If you had called Veronica to lie on the stand it would have looked obvious and no one would have bought it. But for Chet’s lawyer to put her on and to have her bury him, well, that clinched it.”

“Effective, wouldn’t you say?”

“And totally improper.”

“No, Victor, that is where you’re wrong. We were doing everything in our power to defend our client. The Sixth Amendment requires no less. Were you following the same high standard, hmmm?”

“It’s patently improper to have a witness perjure herself, even if you don’t call her.”

“But who’s to say it was perjury?”

“She told me the truth when I subpoenaed her.”

“Maybe that was the lie.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What you think and what you can prove are two very different things. I must say, Victor, you surprised me. The whole Veronica thing was very risky. I thought all our inducements for you to cooperate would stop you from going after Jimmy. I assumed that was our surest way to win, to just have Chester sit there and eat whatever we handed him. I hired you because I thought you’d come cheap, but Jimmy suspected you’d turn into a crusader. I guess he’s a better judge of character than I. So to be safe he dangled Veronica before you just in case you decided to play it noble. It worked out better than we could have hoped. You snapped at her like a trout at a perfectly tied fly. We actually expected that she’d have to tell you everything, but your investigation was amazingly thorough. The more you found out, the easier it was for us. But then when you put her on the stand, that was the riskiest part of all. You see, Victor, you seemed to have a great influence on that poor girl, greater than you know. We weren’t sure what she was going to say until she said it. Her actual testimony was a great relief to all of us.”

“You planned it all from the day you hired me.”

“From the day Pete McCrae died, yes. Pete we knew we could trust but with his inconvenient death, well, then we needed you, or someone like you. It was too big a case to count on luck. We had all kinds of strategies and contingency plans but in the end we needed something dramatic to win it, and you certainly gave us that, Victor.”

“In fact, you had been setting up Concannon even before the indictment. It was you who told Jimmy to open the bank account with Chester’s name on it.”

“Now you’re guessing,” said Prescott.

“It was the amount of the deposits and withdrawals that clued me. Federal regulations require cash transactions of over ten grand to be reported to the Treasury Department. Which means you knew all along that Jimmy was giving the money to Goodwin, capitalizing a drug dealer to set up a steady stream of funds for his rehabilitation projects. That’s why Goodwin killed Chuckie, to keep him from telling me about it, and why Goodwin tried to stop Veronica from testifying. It must have been Henry who told Goodwin where Veronica was hiding. Goodwin sent his henchmen after her, fearing she would disclose the arrangement, not knowing all the time that she was in your pocket.”

“I’m certainly not going to confirm such scurrilous accusations,” said Prescott. “One never knows who is taping what, hmmm? But if it all were true, think of the beauty of it. Drug consumers are going to buy drugs no matter what. It is an inelastic demand. But with just a little venture capital, effectively applied, a piece of the profits of the sales would go to helping victims and to drying up the market. The more successful the marketing venture, the more active it would be in sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Pure pragmatism, Victor, a free-market solution to a previously intractable problem.”

“And the kids dying from stray bullets as Goodwin battles to expand his turf?”

“Collateral damage,” said Prescott. “Unavoidable.”

“Jimmy is preying on the weak, profiting from murder to salve the wound of his daughter’s death,” I said. “It’s immoral.”

“Morality is a mere luxury in this world, Victor,” said Prescott. “It is the enemy of achievement, the last bastion of the failed. Learn that and someday you might learn what it is to be a lawyer.”

“If that’s what it takes I’d sooner cut lawns.”

“As you wish. But I’m actually glad you’re here, Victor. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I’ve been out of town.”

“I can understand. The embarrassment. I’ve talked it over with CUP and, with the trial finished, they’ve decided that they won’t sue you for the retainer so long as you give up your claim to any additional fees.”

“That doesn’t even cover half of what I’m owed.”

“Some is better than none, Victor, any day of the week.”

“I think I’ll hold out for it all.”

“That’s fine. I understand Sam Guthrie has already drafted the complaint.”

“So I’ll counterclaim, then. Save me the filing fees.”

“You shouldn’t take it all so personally, Victor. It was only business. Actually, you were better in court than I expected. It’s too bad it had to conclude like it did. I’m sure we could have worked very profitably together.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “By the way, I’ll be shortly filing a motion to amend the complaint in Saltz v. Metropolitan Investors.”

“A little late, Victor. Trial’s in less than two weeks.”

“Oh, I think the judge will let me amend the complaint to add two new defendants.”

“New defendants?” he asked, the crow’s-feet around his eyes deepening. “Who?”

“Well, Billy, I told you I was out of town. Where I was, actually, was in Corpus Christi, Texas, with my partner, visiting the Downtown Marina. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

By the frozen expression on his face I could tell that he had.

“Well, it seems that our mutual accountant friend Frederick Stocker was docking his pretty new sailboat at that very marina. We showed up there just yesterday, Billy, and, in an amazing coincidence, we arrived at the marina pretty much at the same time as the FBI. And somehow in all the fuss of his arrest and my dropping a subpoena in his lap Mr. Stocker seemed to think that you were somehow mixed up in the Feds finding out where he was, though I haven’t a clue, really, as to how he got that idea, unless it was something I said. Do you think that might have been it?”

His whole face seemed to harden and contract, every muscle tensing one against the other. His blue eyes turned cold and steely but still he didn’t move.

“Well, anyway,” I continued, “he told a strange story about how the lawyer for the general partners in the Saltz partnership had an undisclosed interest in the deal and how, with the market turning against the project, he convinced the accountant to doctor up the numbers in the prospectus, promising him that no one would ever know. It was this lawyer who he says induced him to defraud my clients and then helped him hide away after he ran off with stolen money. And the funny thing, Billy, is he says that this lawyer fellow is you. Imagine that. Which is why, Billy, we’re adding you and your partners as defendants. Now I’m a realist and I figure a smart fellow like you will have shielded most of his assets, so you’re probably judgment-proof. I figure the best we can do with you is to pull your ticket to practice, send you to that lucrative hell for ex-lawyers where you’ll become a lobbyist or some other lowlife scavenger. But Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, why I’m betting that’s a damn deep pocket.”

His face had turned a whitish gray. “It’s too late to amend,” he said. “The statute of limitations has run.”

“Not technically. It stops running if information is denied to a party due to fraud, which your hiding of Stocker would constitute.”

“I’ll beat you in court. Any day of the week.”

I stood up. “Maybe so, but this Stocker is a very articulate man. I’m certain he’ll make a fine witness.”

I turned to walk out of his office, but just before I reached the door he said with a bravado as pale as the coloring of his face, “Victor, wait. Maybe we should talk some more.”

58

THE FADED BLUE CHEVETTE, liberally sprinkled with rust, was parked on Chestnut Street, waiting for me as I came out of One Liberty Place after my meeting with Prescott. Chestnut Street was closed to normal street traffic at that point and a uniformed policeman was leaning in the window of the car.

“You going to ticket this wreck?” I asked the cop.

The officer leaned back and grinned at me. “There’s not enough solid metal left to pin the citation to.”

“You pull back one of those windshield wipers,” I said, “and the rear bumper falls off.”

“Oh man,” said Slocum from inside. “You guys should be in vaudeville. Get in, Carl, you’re twenty minutes late.”

I ducked in the passenger door and the Chevette groaned forward. At 15th Street it turned right and then took another right onto Walnut, going west. “How did your meeting with Prescott go?”

“Just fine,” I said. “Six hundred thousand to settle a case that wasn’t worth a dime two days ago.”

“You going to take it?”

“Nope. I’m going to see him and raise him,” I said. “I appreciate you coming.”

“We’ll see what she has to tell us. I have my doubts.”

“Frankly, I was surprised to see you waiting for me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m surprised I came. By the way, don’t try to roll down your window. The thingamajig is broken and it collapses if you try.”

We drove past the University of Pennsylvania and then into West Philly, sagging old row houses with decaying porches, small grocery stores, a mattress outlet, seafood stores, a pool hall on the second floor of a crumbling tenement. We were in the middle of a stream of fine automobiles flowing through the synchronized lights on the one-way roadway, heading out of the city to the suburbs, where the taxes were low and the schools safe and the grass in the public parks cut biweekly.

“There are guys in the office,” volunteered Slocum, his voice soft and surprisingly serious, “who say that anyone can convict the guilty, but only a real prosecutor can convict the innocent. I’m not one of them. Last thing I ever want to do is fry someone who didn’t do it. If something smells I won’t cover it up and hope nobody notices as some poor fool rots in jail; it is up to me to find out what exactly is smelling and what I need to do about it.”

“What smells in your murder case against Concannon?”

“I had no choice but to drop the indictment against Councilman Moore,” said Slocum. “After the testimony of your brilliant witness the DA herself ordered the case dismissed. But I heard your little friend testify and if you ask me she was lying. The DA wants me to put her on the stand to hammer the last nail in your boy’s coffin. The thought of it makes me sick.”

“You should go into private practice,” I said with a bitter laugh, “where anything goes and there’s nothing to trouble your conscience except where to cash your checks. Maybe then you could buy yourself a car with a window that actually goes up and down.”

“Wouldn’t know how to handle all that luxury. Besides, the knife you gave me seems actually to have been the one that sliced Chuckie Lamb’s throat. There was blood on the spring. What tests we could do showed it matched his type. We’re holding Wayman right now. Someone sure did a number on him before we got there.”

“So you’re maybe starting to believe the stories I’ve been spinning?”

“I’m starting to listen. That’s as much as you’re going to get.”

“That’s all I want,” I said.

When Walnut Street ended he turned right onto 63rd Street, dipped under the tracks of the Market Street elevated, and headed north, alongside trolley tracks, past dark decrepit houses into the dark fall night.

“So what I’m saying,” he went on, “is that I’m willing to go this far with you because I think it’s my job to find the truth. But no further. I’m going to catch hell for this as it is when word gets out, which it will, and it might even cost me my job. My boss was an obscure common pleas judge before Moore put her up for DA. Now she thinks she’s going to be a senator.”

“I appreciate it,” I said.

“I’m not doing it for you. I’m not even doing it for Concannon. But I’m not going in front of a jury to ask for death if I’m not sure.”

We were in Wynnefield now, still the city but there were no longer row houses along the dark wide streets, instead large stone homes with wide porches and peaked roofs. There were lawns and nice cars and, though it was all just a little shabby from age, even the shabbiness was a nice touch. Slocum pulled up in front of a large stone colonial with stained-glass windows across the front door. There were bright lights gleaming from the top of the house, illuminating the broad front lawn, and the windows were lit as if a party was roaring inside.

“You been here before?” I asked.

“Fund-raisers,” he said. “It’s better to shell out now and then to the boys in power than to be ringing up head-hunters.”

He slipped out of his car and I followed, carrying my briefcase with the bullet hole in one flank. At the door with the stained-glass windows Slocum stepped aside so that I could do the knocking. “It’s your show,” he said.

I lifted the large brass knocker with the head of a lion and let it drop.

There was nothing for a few minutes and I dropped the knocker twice more before the door opened slowly. It was Renee, Leslie Moore’s sister, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, her face heavy with liquor. No late night on the town for her tonight. “Well, lookee here, it’s that thief Chester Concannon’s lawyer,” she said, swinging slightly as she leaned on the door. “Sorry, Mr. Carl, but Jimmy’s not here right now. Maybe you should come back in your next life.”

“I’m not here to see Jimmy, Renee. I’m here to see Leslie.”

“She’s not here either,” she said in thickened syllables, but her glance back and to the left gave her away.

“Why don’t you ask her if she’ll talk to me,” I said.

“No, I won’t,” said Renee, but even as she said it the slight figure of Leslie Moore, in print dress and low heels, her arms crossed tightly across her chest, appeared behind her.

“I thought you’d come,” said Leslie softly. “I just didn’t know when.”

I looked up at Renee and she shrugged in resignation and swung with the door as it opened, letting Slocum and me inside.

Leslie took our coats and led us to a formal living room with red walls and fancy couches. The fabrics were striped and elegant, with maroons and hunter greens and golds, and underneath everything was a rich oriental carpet in a deep navy blue. Everything was in place in this room, the prints of hummingbirds in the gold-leaf frames, the formal photographs on the end tables. There were no bottles or half-drunken glasses or any signs of recent habitation. This was the room where Jimmy hit up the wealthy for contributions, where the show was put on. There was another room somewhere in that large stone house, I was sure, where Renee and Leslie did their drinking when the councilman was out on the town without them, and that room was undoubtedly not so tidy.

Slocum and I sat side by side on a couch. Leslie sat across from us on a thin upholstered chair, Louis the Something I figured. Renee stood alongside the now cold fireplace like the lord of the manor. There was a long moment of silence.

“Can I get you something to drink?” asked Leslie finally.

“No, thank you,” said Slocum.

“Coffee would be great,” I said. I was in no hurry to leave.

Leslie looked up at Renee, who widened her eyes and then gave her a little snort.

“Excuse me,” said Leslie, and she left to make the coffee.

“The councilman’s in Chicago,” said Renee.

“I know,” I said.

“Of course you know. You wouldn’t have the guts to show up here if he was in town.”

I shrugged.

“He’s at the National Urban Conference. He’s a featured speaker. He’s going to be on the dais with the President.”

“Imagine that,” I said. “The same President whose administration indicted him for extortion and racketeering just six months ago.”

“Well, now that that little misunderstanding is cleared up, thanks to you,” said Renee with a drunken sneer, “I guess the President is starting to think about the twenty-three electoral votes that might just hinge on the half-million voters that CUP can deliver.”

“I didn’t know you were so politically keen, Renee.”

“Someone has to watch his back from the vipers out to bring him down. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? But you’re too late. They’re together again, like lovebirds. She’s moved back into his room, so your little scheme’s not going to work.”

“We’re just here to ask some questions,” said Slocum.

“Oh, I know who you are, Mr. District Attorney. You should be ashamed, all that Jimmy’s done for your people and now you plotting with this shyster.”

Slocum slowly took off his glasses and lifted the end of his tie to wipe off the lenses. Very carefully he cleaned, first one side, then the other, then the first again. He put his glasses back on. In the time it took to clean his glasses the jumble of quivering muscle at the edge of his jaw subsided. With his glasses back on he said calmly, “I don’t plot. And the only shameful thing in this room, ma’am, is you.”

“I made some for you, too, Mr. Slocum,” said Leslie, bringing in a tray with a porcelain teapot and four matching cups.

“Thank you,” he said.

She poured three cups. We both leaned forward to pick up a cup and saucer and then leaned back into the couch. Renee stayed by the fireplace, now seeming to inspect the mantelshelf for cracks with her fingertips.

“I’m here to take you up on your promise, Mrs. Moore,” I said before taking a sip of the coffee.

“She didn’t make any promise to you,” said Renee sharply.

“No, Renee,” I said. “I’m sorry but you’re mistaken. I know you saw us talking in the courtroom hallway, and I assume you spread the word to the councilman, which may explain certain things, but you did not hear what we said to each other. Only Leslie and I know what was said and what she promised.”

“Would you like some sugar with that, Mr. Slocum?” asked Leslie.

“No, thank you,” he said.

“I must admit,” I continued, “I was confused for a while. It was Chuckie’s murder and my being shot at that confused me. You see, when you told me that you had heard the voices on the wind and that you wouldn’t let them kill Chester, I had assumed you were referring to the same people who had killed Chuckie and were maybe trying to kill me too. At that time I had thought that maybe your husband was in some way responsible for Chuckie’s death and for the attempts on my life and that somehow you had stumbled on that information. I have since learned that I was mistaken. Chuckie was killed by a drug dealer whose operation is being financed by your husband.”

“Lies,” hissed Renee. “All lies.”

“He joined with the devil,” I said, “to build his monument to Nadine.”

Mrs. Moore didn’t seem flustered in the least by the accusation. “Some cream, Mr. Slocum?” she said. “Or would you prefer tea?”

“No, thank you,” said Slocum. “This is fine.”

“And at the trial,” I continued, “to my chagrin, I learned I was being set up as a dupe by your husband and his lawyer. No one ever tries to kill their dupe. Dead I was of no use to them, alive I could set him free, which I eventually did. So, while I was on a recent trip down South I began to wonder who it was you were promising to protect Chester from.”

“What kind of nonsense are you talking to us about, Mr. Carl?” asked Renee.

“Oh, Leslie understands exactly what I’m saying, Renee.”

“How about some cookies, Mr. Slocum?” said Leslie. “I have some fine cookies in the pantry. Let me get them for you.”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Slocum. “Really, I’m fine.”

“Chet’s in jail now,” I said. “His bail has been revoked. He is awaiting sentencing on the federal charges, preparing for his trial in state court on the murder charge. I visited him just yesterday. He is not adjusting well. He is a little too thin, a little too handsome, which is a very bad combination in prison. During our conversation he almost broke down into tears. You know Chet, you know his self-control. He is cracking. He is of no consequence anymore in the larger scheme of things, a threat to no one. There is only one man who is trying to kill him now.”

I took another sip of my coffee, staring at Leslie even as I tilted my head down to the cup. Her eyes were moist, cast downward, and her hands nervously clutched one the other.

“In another month,” I said, “Chet is going to stand trial for murder. Mr. Slocum is going to prosecute the case. He is going to ask the jury to sentence Chet to death. And I believe, Mrs. Moore, you can stop Mr. Slocum from killing Chet Concannon, just like you promised.”

After a long pause, Leslie said, “Renee, please, why don’t you get yourself another drink.”

“I think I should stay right here,” she said, “and keep my eye on Mr. Carl, make sure he doesn’t steal the ashtrays.”

“Get the drink, Renee,” Leslie said, her voice suddenly filled with an authority I didn’t know she could muster.

Renee shrugged and headed out to that other, less tidy room.

When she had left Leslie said, “I can’t tell you what you want to know, Mr. Carl.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“We have had difficult times in our marriage, I won’t deny that. And after Nadine’s death, for the longest time there was nothing left for either of us. I can understand now how he could seek comfort with that girl. But the ordeal of this trial has resurrected our commitment to each other. We have gone to counseling, we have opened our hearts to one another. It has changed both our lives, I am sure. It is as it was when we were first starting out together. In fact, it is better.”

“Chester Concannon is going to be put to death with a lethal injection, Mrs. Moore,” I said.

“We have both learned again what it means to give, to cherish one another, to trust.”

“They’re going to strap him to a gurney, tightly binding his arms and legs with leather straps,” I said, “and stick a needle in his arm. And attached to that needle will be an intravenous sack filled with a deadly barbiturate, the fluid laced with a chemical paralytic agent to make sure he doesn’t jerk the needle out of his arm as they kill him.”

“We have both learned again what it is to love.”

“They’re going to empty that sack into his arm,” I said, “and his muscles will freeze and his brain will slow from the drugs and Chester Concannon will fall into unconsciousness and die from barbiturates just like Nadine fell into unconsciousness and died from barbiturates.”

“Stop it, stop it now,” she said and then, still without looking at me, in a whisper, “You don’t understand. We have renewed our vows to each other, we have reaffirmed our commitments. He will no longer cheat on me, he has promised, and I will love him again, as I had loved him before I stopped loving him. We are together again, I can’t turn against him now.”

“You mean you won’t.”

Her head lifted and she stared squarely at me. “That’s right, Mr. Carl, I won’t. I can’t be forced to testify against my husband, is that right, Mr. Slocum?”

“That is correct, Mrs. Moore,” said Slocum. “We cannot force you to testify against your husband. But what we are talking about here is testifying in favor of Mr. Concannon.”

“And you would want me to testify?”

“I don’t want to kill an innocent man,” said Slocum.

“Then let him go.”

“I can’t, Mrs. Moore, without evidence. Right now, as it stands, I believe I’m going to convict him of first degree murder.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Carl. I am so sorry.”

“So am I,” I said, reaching for my briefcase. “Sorrier than you can know.”

I placed the briefcase on my lap, bullet hole side up. It was a brown leather number, with thick strips binding the edges, a Hartmann, one of the finest cases made. It was a gift, from my uncle Sammy, a message of his faith in my future. It was a solid briefcase, the briefcase of a successful lawyer. I used to like heaving it around, as if the accoutrements could define the man. Now it embarrassed me. All the more for what it contained. I freed the leather straps guarding the latches and opened the case. From inside I pulled out a manila envelope. Carefully I closed the case and placed it on the rug beside the couch and unfastened the metal clasp holding the envelope shut. Then I brought out the photographs.

Morris had had them taken for me. He had complained about the assignment. “I don’t do such stuff, prowling with a camera in the dead of night,” he said. “I am an investigator, not a piece of dreck.” But when I told him what it was all about and how a man’s life might depend on those photographs, and how I was out of town in Corpus Christi and couldn’t do it myself, he relented. “There might be nothing, you know that, Victor, nothing at all.” I told him I knew that, but that I had a hunch. “You and your hunches, where have your hunches gotten you, mine freint. Take my advice, and keep your hunches away from the racetrack and maybe you won’t die a beggar.” Of course he had not taken the photographs himself, as he might have been recognized, but he gave the assignment to Sheldon. “All the stuff he has,” said Morris. “These fancy-schmancy cameras, lenses like telescopes, special meters like from NASA, special filters, special film, a regular Eisenstadt. So tell me, Victor, why when it’s time for a picture of me and mine wife, the heads he cuts off like an executioner.” But in these photographs, Sheldon had not cut off the heads.

I placed the first on the coffee table, facing Leslie.

It was a high-resolution black-and-white photograph from inside one of the terminals still under renovation at the Philadelphia International Airport. Gate D5, a United Airlines gate, where two attendants were taking tickets at the counter and handing out seat assignments. On the board was listed Flight 595 to Chicago, leaving 4:55 P.M. In front of the counter, posing for the photographer, was a man holding up a copy of the Daily News. The headline running the entire length of the page read, “EAGLES SACK PACK,” touting the Eagles’ great surge to.500 on the preceding Sunday.

“This was taken Monday at the airport,” I said.

“And?” asked Leslie.

Slocum too was looking at me, wondering what I was doing.

The next picture was of the same counter, with the same attendants. To the side of the counter was a barrel-chested man in a belted raincoat, a garment bag hanging by a long strap from his shoulder. The man was Jimmy Moore.

“This is the flight he took Monday,” I said, “to get him to Chicago for the first day of the conference.”

“That’s right,” said Leslie. “He called me from the airport to say good-bye. To say he loved me and missed me already.”

“Yes, I’m not surprised,” I said, showing her the next photograph.

It was a wide-angle shot of the same terminal, the counter now on the right and Jimmy sitting on a chair in the waiting lounge, talking on his cellular phone.

“I don’t understand your point, Mr. Carl,” she said.

“I want you to look at the counter, Mrs. Moore. Do you see the woman there, in the heavy overcoat, with her back to us, getting ticketed?”

“And?”

I showed her the next picture. An announcement had been made and the first-class passengers had been asked to board. Jimmy was handing his ticket to an attendant at the mouth of the ramp. The woman in the overcoat was still getting ticketed at the counter.

Without saying anything I placed the next photograph before her. The corners of the prior photographs peeked out from the edges of the latest. Jimmy Moore had boarded, he was no longer in the photograph. The woman at the counter had received her seat assignment and boarding pass and had turned to leave the counter. Just as she was leaving the counter she had taken a glance behind her, looking left over her shoulder and the moment of that glance was when Sheldon had snapped the shutter. Her face was clearly visible in the photograph. It was Veronica Ashland.

I couldn’t bear to look at Mrs. Moore as she examined that photograph. I heard her breathing, soft and steady, and the scrape of teeth.

I took out the last photograph and placed it atop the picture with Veronica’s face. In this final photograph Veronica, her back again turned to us, was handing her boarding pass to the attendant at the mouth of the gate.

“It could be a coincidence,” said Leslie, her voice as weak as a whisper.

“Yes, it could,” I said.

I reached for the photographs to place them back in the envelope, but she tapped my wrist and I let my hand drop. She pulled out the next to last photograph and stared at it, stared at the beautiful face glancing over her left shoulder, soft hair, rounded, gentle nose, limpid eyes wide and scared, as if their owner could feel the camera capturing her image.

“You are despicable, Mr. Carl,” said Leslie Moore, and she was absolutely right.

When I had pulled this selfsame trick on Winston Osbourne at that deposition of his wife I had thought myself a very clever young man. In those heady days of my still aspiring youth I viewed myself incapable of the fatal folly and thus felt morally justified to present the bill to others. But I could feel no such justification now. How could I accuse Jimmy Moore of moral failure in continuing on with Veronica Ashland when I had hung my coat and my ethics on a post outside that very same door? And how could I blithely ever sit across the table and inflict the pain I was inflicting when I now knew exactly what that pain felt like? To see that photograph of Veronica, with whom, in my seemingly infinite capacity for self-delusion, I had still hoped for some future, to see Veronica checking onto that plane to continue her affair with the murderous Jimmy Moore was almost more than I could bear. And finally, how could I ever again muster the self-righteousness needed to present the fruits of another’s folly when I had been guilty of a folly so grand as to send a man to prison and possibly to death? I was despicable and the photographs I had brought would have stained my hands with their sordidness if I hadn’t felt so sordid already.

But there was a difference between my exposure of Tiffany LeGrand to Mrs. Osbourne and the exposure of the continuing relationship between Jimmy and Veronica to Mrs. Moore. I had exposed the exotic existence of Ms. LeGrand, destroyed a marriage, destroyed a man, spread pain and disillusionment, for money. I wouldn’t do that again, I swore, not for mere riches, I swore, though all the time I was swearing I knew that mammon has its power over all of us. The photographs I had brought to Mrs. Moore were not about money, they were about a man’s life, an innocent man in jail facing death, a man whom I had failed, and so, though I knew I was stooping, I would stoop as low as I was able. I had no more pride left, no more false notions of self-importance. I would crawl on my belly like a reptile if it would save Chester Concannon, and crawling I was.

By the time Renee had returned Leslie had fled the room, her thin writhing hands clutched around her neck.

“Where’s Leslie gone off to now?” said a slurring Renee, with a half-empty highball glass in her hand.

“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “She told us to wait.”

Renee looked at me and then at Slocum and then she spied the photographs still piled on the coffee table. She stepped over and sat down and went through them one by one, in reverse order, like watching a horror movie backwards.

“You bastards,” she said. “You goddamn bastards.” She stood up. “I won’t let you get away with it.”

As she was leaving the room Slocum said in his calm voice, “You know what obstruction of justice is, ma’am?”

She stopped and turned to stare at him.

“About five years is what it is,” he said.

Before she could respond Leslie had come back into the room, clutching a crumpled brown paper bag. Her eyes were red, her face puffy from her tears so that her sharp cheekbones had softened. She threw the bag into my chest.

“Take it and go,” she said.

I looked inside. It was a white shirt, crusted and torn, splattered with the dark maroon of dried blood. On the sleeve was embroidered JDM.

We took it and went.

“We’ll send the shirt over to the lab,” said Slocum as he let me out of the car outside my apartment. “Check out the blood. I’ll let you know in a few days whether there’s a match with Bissonette.”

“It will match,” I said. “Down to the last guanine rung of the DNA ladder.”

“Even so, Concannon will still end up serving most of his federal time.”

“I know,” I said. “And between you and me, his fund-raising was more extortion than anything else, so it’s not totally undeserved. But he shouldn’t die for killing a man he didn’t kill.”

We looked at each other for a moment. “You did good tonight, Carl,” said Slocum.

“Then how come I don’t feel good?”

“You didn’t tell that lady anything she didn’t already know.”

I shrugged sadly and headed up the steps to my building. Slocum was waiting for me to go inside, as if he were dropping off a baby-sitter. I opened the door to my vestibule and waved him away. The Chevette ground its gears and pulled off into the night.

When I turned to enter the vestibule Winston Osbourne was standing there before me, like the ghost of all my past transgressions.

“Victor. I’ve been waiting so long for you.”

He was shaking with a ferocious chill, his hands jammed into his raincoat, his sallow, hollowed face staring at me, cocked at a crazed angle.

“Victor,” he said in his shaky, lockjawed Brahmin voice. “I’ve come for my car. Give me back my car.”

“Mr. Osbourne, Winston,” I said once my nerves had settled from the surprise. “I’m glad to see you, actually. I have good news for you.”

“Give me back my car.”

I closed my eyes in sadness. “I’m sorry, Mr. Osbourne. It’s been sold already. But the good news is that I’ve talked everything over with Mr. Sussman and he’s willing to forgive the rest of your debt. I have to sign a few papers and satisfy the judgments on you, but then you’ll be perfectly free to start over again.”

“But where am I to go, Victor? How can I get from point A to point B without my father’s car? It is a straight line, yes, a direct route, but I need my car to get there. What would you have me do, Victor?”

“There’s always the subway.”

“Don’t mock me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Osbourne. I truly am, more than you know. You look cold, not well. Come on upstairs and I’ll make you some tea if you want. But with regard to your finances, there is nothing more I can do for you.”

“You can give me back my car.”

“I can’t do that, it’s been sold already and the new owners have good title under the law.”

“Then you can waltz with me, Victor,” he said and he pulled out a small, shiny automatic pistol from the pocket of his raincoat.

I stared at the pistol for a moment, the gun shaking wildly in his palsied hand, his opaque, striated fingernails grown even longer than I remembered. I was transfixed by the pistol until all the fear seemed to bleed out of me. I raised my head and looked into his eyes. They were sallow, shot through with lightning streaks of blood. They darted back and forth, as uncontrolled as his hand. Then I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing.

While I had been feeling sorry for him he had been shooting at me. No wonder he missed, his hand shaking like that, uncontrollable, wild. It was too pathetic for me to even have considered before. But at the same time I realized there was a purer justice at work here than I could have fathomed. I should have realized long before that if I were to be killed it would not be the Jimmy Moores or the Enrico Raffaellos or even the Norvel Goodwins who would do the killing. It would be the scion of the Osbournes, the grandly Protestant, socially registered Osbournes, who would do me in. With a silver bullet, no doubt, for how else do you kill a Jew? And I deserved it, too, for the temerity to even consider joining their club. Here was Winston Osbourne, with his little pistol and his silver bullet, out to finish that dream forever, as if it could have survived my failures, as if I even wanted it anymore, as if it ever had worth. So I laughed, hard and loud. I threw my head back and laughed at everything I had ever wished for, ever wanted, all my deepest, shallowest desires. I stepped back and leaned against the wall of mailboxes and laughed.

It felt good, too, until he shot me.

59

THE GOOD NEWS, I suppose, is that it didn’t kill me.

The bad news is that it really hurt a lot.

The bullet went into my chest just below my right shoulder and smashed through a few underdeveloped muscles, including the pectoralis minor, the name of which I considered an insult and tried to convince the doctor to change to something like pectoralis mucho grande, though she didn’t seem amused. After it ripped through my pectoralis mucho grande the bullet hit a rib, bounced around a bit, and clipped off a piece of my right lung. That would explain the sucking sound I heard as I slid down the wall of the vestibule; it was air seeping out of my lung, causing a condition called pneumothorax. What happened then is that my lung filled with blood. That was like drowning in ten feet of water without needing goggles to see the world slipping away.

Winston Osbourne could have finished me off right there. I was not one of those heroes who, with a chest full of lead, was ready to fight his way out of a jam. One little.38 slug and I was slumped on the floor of the vestibule in shock, bleeding, breathing the sharp smell of saltpeter into my remaining operative lung, waiting to be finished off. But for some reason, maybe the tremendous report of the shot ringing in that tiny vestibule or the sight of me sliding down the wall with a bullet in my chest or the blood and urine pooling around me, I never knew, but for some reason after that first shot he ran.

I was found by one of the older divorced women who lived in my building, coming down the stairs, cocked forward at the waist with caution, a broom in her hand held like a baseball bat, investigating the gunshot. It was nice of her to call the ambulance and save my life, but I would have preferred if she hadn’t screamed so loudly when she discovered me lying there. I jerked involuntarily at the sound and that hurt as much as the gunshot itself.

Have I mentioned that I don’t do well with pain?

The pathetic history of my life didn’t pass before my eyes as I lay in that vestibule. That treat waited until I was in Graduate Hospital, out of intensive care, ready to receive a seemingly endless stream of visitors. The shooting was in the paper, front page of the Daily News, “CONCANNON LAWYER BLASTED AGAIN,” and so they came, one after the other, old friends from high school, old lovers, my ex-fiancée Julie, who is now unhappily married to a proctologist, yes there is a God, lawyers with whom I had tangled in court, law school classmates who had achieved a success I couldn’t match, Rita, Vimhoff, Ellie, Guthrie that bastard, Lauren, Dominic and Jasper and Virgil, trundling in loudly together like the Three Stooges, Saltz, Lefkowitz, Judge Gimbel, Slocum, even the mayor, with television cameras in tow.

Beth came every day after work and sat by my bed during visiting hours. She was there when my test results for HIV came back negative and we each raised a urine-colored apple juice in gratitude to whatever angel had been looking out for me. We talked about the Saltz case, and how much money we’d earn, and then we talked about how, after my debacle in the Concannon case, I’d never get another client. I had a rich dim future ahead of me, which, as I lay in that bed, fighting off an infection in my chest, pus draining like curdled milk from a tube running out of my side, didn’t seem so bad. She visited as regularly as a relative, Beth did, which was nice of her since my mother decided not to come in from Arizona, seeing that I survived and all, though she assured me in the letter that she would have dropped everything for my funeral. My father visited only now and then to grumble.

“What’s that you got there?” he said, pointing to a large book that lay on my bed table.

“A get-well gift from a friend,” I said. “Someone who knew Grandpop. It’s the first book of the Talmud.”

“Who the hell would give you something like that?”

“He’s a private investigator. He thought it would be good for me. The start of my education. I might like it, who knows? It’s mostly translated into English, though there’s still some Hebrew, and your favorite language, Aramaic.”

“My father wasted his time on that crap.”

“Really?”

“I remember he read it every Saturday and then, when he was already in his sixties, he finished the last book and threw a party. A lot of smelly old men smoking cigars and farting.”

“What did he do on Saturdays after he finished?”

“He started over again, volume one, from the very first words.”

So that’s what I did in the hospital, I read Morris’s Talmud, starting, like my grandfather, at volume one. There was a section in Hebrew in the middle and then a translation with commentaries surrounding it, all in English except for those from some guy Rashi, who wrote in his own alphabet that they didn’t bother to translate. It was all about property and contracts and torts, like the first year of law school, except it was different in a strange soulful way. The first section was about a piece of cloth claimed by two men. Cut it in half, the book said. Sounded right to me.

In my first week back at Derringer and Carl I had a visitor, a Michael Tombelli from down on Two Street in South Philly. He was a dark young man with a scary smile and thick belly. He sat down across from me with a sneer, leaned back, and put his feet on my desk.

“I got a little problem, Vic.”

“Call me Mr. Carl, Michael,” I said. “And take your feet off my desk.”

“Sure thing,” he said with his smile as his feet dropped loudly. “A couple days ago I get stopped by the cops on Oregon Avenue.”

“Were you speeding?”

“Sort of.”

“Pay the fine,” I advised.

“Yeah, right, well, I would, sure, but then they tell me the car is stolen.”

“Imagine that.”

“You borrow a car from a friend and look what happens.”

“So you’re up for grand theft auto, is that the story?”

“And they find a gun in the trunk.”

“A pistol?”

“A Chinese MAK-90 assault rifle modified for fully automatic performance.”

“You’re a deer hunter, I suppose?”

“You’d be surprised how fast those suckers can run.”

“And still, with all these problems, you are walking around, eating cheese steaks, grabbing a beer at the corner tavern?”

“The prison cap.”

“Such a wonderful thing for nice young men like yourself. You’re right, Michael, you do have a problem. So what are you doing here?”

“I need a lawyer.”

“Yes, you do, Michael. But I haven’t been so successful on the criminal side. I’m sticking to civil law from now on.”

“What, you’re not going to take my case?”

“That’s right. Now, after you get out of jail, if you want to sue the friend who lent you the stolen car with the automatic rifle inside, give me a call and I’ll see what I can do.”

“But I was sent.”

“You were sent?”

“Yeah. I was sent. The man told me to come here and that you should become my lawyer.”

“The man sent you. What man?”

“The big guy.”

“I’m supposed to guess, is that it, Michael? This man who sent you, he was big as in tall or as in fat?”

“Now I know you’re putting me on. Mr. Raffaello sent me, said you would take care of me, said you owed him a favor.”

“Oh,” I said slowly. “That man.”

“He told me to give you this.” He reached into his brown leather bomber jacket and pulled out a stack of bills, green and dirty, bound with a rubber band. He tossed the stack onto my desk. I didn’t reach for it.

“What’s that, Michael?”

“Ten thou. He told me to give it to you, like an up-front fee.”

“My retainer?”

“Yeah. That’s it. Your retainer.”

I knew it would come, I just didn’t know when or what. I thought maybe I’d get a call in the middle of the night, a soft voice telling me to show up at some deserted corner in South Philly for my instructions. I had already decided I wouldn’t kill anybody for him, but I had also decided that I would do anything short of that. The surreptitious delivery, the stashing of stolen goods, the hiding of a fugitive until the heat died down. I owed Enrico Raffaello, yes I did, and even though it hadn’t turned out well for me it was a debt I would have to repay. I was almost disappointed that repaying my debt would be so pedestrian – represent Michael Tombelli and I was off the hook.

“Hey,” said Michael. “You’re the guy shot by the wacko they stuck in that loony bin up there in Haverford.”

“That’s right,” I said.

He leaned forward. “What did it feel like, getting shot and all?”

“I figure you’ll find out for yourself someday, Michael.”

“Not me. I’m too smart for any of that. But my buddy Peter Cressi, he plays it so far to the edge you never know. You know Peter?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“He’s coming in too, today or tomorrow. Nothing serious, just a DUI. But he’ll be back. He’s the guy what they should put up in the loony bin.”

“Tell me something, Michael,” I said. “Am I on a list of some sort now? Are your friends going to keep coming in to see me?”

“You bet, Mr. Carl. The word’s out that you’re the guy when we have our little problems.” His smile again. “You’re going to be busier’n shit.”

“Now I understand,” I said, and I did. No more worrying about my future, it was set in Carrara marble. “All right. Michael, here’s the word, and you should tell it to your friend Peter and anyone else who is going to come visiting. The law says I can’t accept any money that is the fruit of an illegal transaction, so any money you give me has to be clean. You understand what I just said?”

He scrunched up his eyes and rubbed the back of his hand across his nose and then said, “Sure, yeah.”

“Is this money from a drug transaction?” I asked.

“Hey, wait, what do you take me for?”

“Is this money stolen?”

“Get out of here. Rest assured, Mr. Carl, I work hard for my money.”

“Knowing the law as well as you do, can I, in good conscience, take this money, Michael?”

“Trust me, Mr. Carl,” he said with his broad smile.

I looked at him very carefully, weighed everything, and then I took hold of the bundle of bills and placed it in my desk drawer. “Wait just a second,” I said as I reached into my drawer for some letterhead, “while I write up a receipt.”

“Receipt?” he said, as if he had never heard of the word before. “What’s with the receipt? I paid you cash.”

“Lawyers who don’t give receipts for cash sometimes have the peculiar problem of forgetting to report the payments to the IRS.”

“Yeah, isn’t that funny,” said Michael Tombelli. “That’s what happened to my last lawyer. He just got four years.”

“First I’ll write out your receipt, Michael,” I said, “and then we’ll discuss what to tell the District Attorney.”

So that was that. I had once aspired to walk among the paneled corridors of wealth and power with the elite names of the legal world. I had wanted to shed my past and my heritage as a snake sheds its skin and ascend to Olympian heights. Now I would skulk around the City Hall courtrooms, representing baby mobsters and other lowlifes as they tried to minimize their jail time for their petty and not-so-petty crimes, socking away my retainers and advising my dear clients how to stay just to the right side of that narrow and shifting line. I knew what life was like for a lawyer who represented the members of the mob. It was no different than for a lawyer like Tony Baloney, who spent his life defending drug dealing scum. He was scorned by his fellow practitioners, excluded from the finer firms, from the prestigious clubs, from the sober-minded committees of the bar association. Aspersions were cast as to his integrity, his veracity, his fitness to stand before the bar. He was investigated relentlessly by the District Attorney, he was hunted like wild game by federal authorities, his taxes were audited each and every year. He became a pariah.

I had found my calling.