Kill All the Lawyers

Twenty-Nine

Carl Drake's suite at the Four Seasons was pretty much what Steve expected. Beige sofas with thick pillows in the living room, gray marble in the bath, a curved desk of blond wood in the tidy office. The windows looked across Biscayne Bay, glistening turquoise in the midday sun. Key Biscayne was a green atoll in the distance, a dozen sailboats visible on the far side of the causeway. Just what you would demand for twelve hundred bucks a night.

But who was paying for it? Before he even settled into the sofa, Steve was struck with the notion that The Queen would never get a shilling out of Carl Drake. No matter how much money Drake stole, he seemed to be the kind of guy who enjoyed spending every last cent.

Steve had filed the usual dilatory motions to slow down the mortgage foreclosure, but that could buy The Queen only so much time. Today, he intended to shake some money out of Drake. It was the first of two unpleasant tasks on his calendar, the second being a court-ordered appointment with William Kreeger, M.D.

"What'll it be, Steve?" Drake asked pleasantly, standing at the gleaming marble-topped bar. "Champagne? Cristal."

"No thanks, Carl."

"Wait. I'm good at this. I know from dinner that you drink tequila after dark. Now, as for the daytime. ." Drake fingered a bottle of single-malt Scotch, then eyed a bottle of Maker's Mark. "I'm betting you're a bourbon man."

"Hemlock, if you have it. Drano on the rocks if you don't."

"Been a rough week, has it?" Laying on a bit of a British accent. Stopping just short of saying "old chap."

"Carl, this is uncomfortable for me," Steve said.

Drake poured himself a Scotch over ice, walked to a facing sofa and perched on the arm. He wore linen slacks the color of melted butter and a shimmering blue shirt, the fabric so soft, it invited petting. "Did Irene ask you to come?"

"She ordered me not to."

"Do you frequently disregard your clients' instructions?"

"All the time. I figure if they were so smart, they wouldn't need my counsel."

Drake gave him a pleasant smile. It seemed to be a well-practiced gesture from a well-mannered, well-accented smoothie.

Steve took a breath and surveyed the room. A portrait of Sir Francis Drake sat on an easel. A map of the seven seas, circa 1550, was pinned to a display board. A polyurethane block embedded with gold coins- Spanish doubloons, Steve supposed-sat on the desk, a seductive tease for any possible heirs of the sixteenth-century privateer. A calfskin briefcase bulged with papers.

Steve turned back to Drake and said: "What do you have in the pockets of those fancy pants you're wearing?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Wallet? Keys? Take them out."

"Are you robbing me?"

"When I hang you off your balcony by your ankles, I don't want you to lose anything."

Drake laughed, the Scotch jiggling in his glass, a golden whirlpool. "I guess that's called a 'shakedown,' isn't it? But from what I hear, you can't afford any more dates in Criminal Court."

"You're gonna give Irene back her money."

"Oh, would that I could. The money's already gone to pay expenses in the administration of the estate."

"Like room service at the Four Seasons?"

"As a matter of fact, my travel expenses are included. But the payoff to Irene will far exceed-"

"At dinner, you said there were no fees."

"I'm afraid I wasn't totally forthcoming. But I was loath to discuss business on Irene's birthday, and my little deception seemed a good way to short-circuit the conversation."

"You're good, Drake. You're what my father would call 'slick as owl shit.' "

Drake hoisted his glass. "A toast to your father, then."

"Did you know the bank foreclosed on Irene's condo?"

Drake's suntanned face froze momentarily. "The hell you say."

"She's too embarrassed to tell you. Just like you're too embarrassed to tell her you're a con man. There's no estate of Sir Francis Drake. You're just pulling a scam. I'm guessing that ritzy briefcase of yours holds a first-class ticket to wherever scumbags go when the Grand Jury starts issuing subpoenas."

Drake stood, walked to the bar, and poured himself another Scotch. "Foreclosure? I don't understand it. Irene led me to believe she had millions."

"It's a role she plays."

Drake gave a little rueful laugh. "Seems I'm the one who's been conned."

"One difference, Drake. Irene didn't steal your money."

"I never intended to hurt her. She's very special to me."

"I'll bet you say that to all the widows."

"This is different." He took a long pull on his drink. His crisp British accent seemed to have been replaced by flatter tones-Chicago, maybe-and his shoulders slumped. Losing some of his polish, Drake seemed uncomfortable and out of place, like Vice President Cheney in a Speedo.

Drake nodded toward the briefcase. "The plane ticket's there, all right, Solomon. Rio de Janeiro. I'm usually gone by now. I stayed only because of Irene. The damn truth is, I'm in love with her."

"Great. Invite me to the wedding. After you pay her back."

"I wish I could. Truly. But the money's gone."

Steve considered himself a human polygraph machine. Looking at Carl Drake at that moment, the man's mask slipping away, his brow furrowing, his voice choked with regret, the machine said the con artist was telling the truth. For some reason, that only made Steve angrier. "Dammit, Drake. You say you love her, but you stole the roof from over her head."

"Are you going to hang me off the balcony, then?"

"I would, but I sprained my wrist hitting a guy. I'd probably drop you."

"Then what shall we do?"

"Let's have that drink," Steve said. "Bourbon will be just fine."

Cabanas-tents of flowing white cotton-blossomed like sails in the breeze. At poolside, Steve and Drake sat in the shade of a sabal palm and sipped their drinks, a soft breeze scented with suntan oil wafting over them.

"You could still go to Rio," Steve said. "There's nothing I could do to stop you."

"Too depressing," Drake said. "That's where Charles Ponzi went."

"The Ponzi pyramid scheme?"

"That's him. Fled to Italy, then Rio. Became a smuggler."

"Must be your hero. Like me following Rickey Henderson. A's to Yankees to Padres to Mets. Stealing bases wherever he went."

"Charles Ponzi died in the charity ward of a Brazilian hospital." There was a touch of sadness in Drake's voice. "I don't want to end like that."

Steve took a second to admire two sun-worshipping young women in bikinis. "Rickey Henderson ended up back in the minors."

"The shame is, I'm quite good at my work," Drake told him. "When I find a mark, I always look for the weakness that lets me pry loose the money."

"Greed, I would think."

"Sure, with the traditional cons. But I was always drawn to people who yearned to be something larger than themselves. You tell people they're descended from Sir Francis Drake, all their defenses evaporate. They dream that their current lives were destined to be greater or more meaningful. Then I turn a seemingly harmless conceit into a way to relieve them of their money."

"You don't sound particularly sorry about being a thief."

Drake shrugged. "We are who we are."

Echoing Irene's words. An incontrovertible fact of human nature.

"So what happened to the money, Drake?"

"I paid off debts. Gambling losses. A real estate investment trust that went belly-up. Even a gold mine that tapped out. I'm broke."

"Why not stay until you rip off enough people to get ahead?"

Drake sniffed at the suggestion. "That's what an amateur would do. A professional knows that it's better to bail out a month early than a day late. I had my usual story ready. Complications with the estate. Must fly to London. That buys a few weeks, and by then, I'm setting up shop in South America."

"And the reason you're not on the beach at Impanema is that you fell in love?"

Drake tipped his glass forward, the ice cubes clinking, the drinker's signal of affirmation. "I wanted to tell Irene everything. Beg for forgiveness. Promise to go straight so she and I could start a life together."

"Where? In the condo that's being foreclosed?"

"As I have no residence of my own, that was a distinct possibility." Drake emitted a laugh that was more of a sigh. "It's turning out rather like an O. Henry story, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't know. Henry Aaron, I might know."

"Oh, I think you understand me quite well. You're a good deal smarter than you let on. And you're an excellent judge of character."

"When I was a kid, I'd go to my father's courtroom and watch trials. For a while, I'd close my eyes and just listen to witnesses. Then I'd cover my ears and just watch. I'd put everything I'd seen and heard together. It was a game I played to figure out who was lying."

"It serves you well to this day. You saw through me in an instant."

"Wasn't that hard. I'm just surprised Irene came to me for help. I'm not on the list of her five hundred favorite people."

"Oh, you're wrong about that. Irene likes you. Worries about you because of that Dr. Bill character. She thinks you're playing with fire there."

That stopped Steve. "What does she know about that?"

"What you say to Victoria she repeats to Irene, who then tells me."

Of course. Mothers and daughters.

"Jeez, next you'll be telling me the last time we had sex."

"Two weeks, Tuesday. Right after Sports Center."

"During. The hockey highlights gave us a window."

"I've listened to Dr. Bill on the radio," Drake said. "All that psychobabble to sell worthless books and tapes."

"Do you know about his theory of evolutionary psychology? We're all hardwired for murder. We're programmed by millions of years of evolution that favors survival of those who slaughter their enemies."

"And all this time, I thought we were just programmed for larceny."

"It's a pretty simple theory. Our genes carry the same murderous impulses as Paleolithic man."

"Interesting," Drake said. "If our DNA instructs us to kill, why fight it? The ideal rationalization for murder."

They each sipped their drinks, mulling it over. "Kreeger says I'm just as much a killer as he is," Steve said, after a moment. "For a while, I thought he was planting that seed in my brain, trying to set me up to kill my sister."

"And now?"

"Some days, he says we're both killers. And some days, we're both heroes. Kreeger claims he rescued a girl the way I rescued my nephew. But what Kreeger really did was sick and twisted."

"It sounds like a game to him. Putting you through the wringer like that."

"Whenever the bastard mentions Bobby's name, a chill goes up my spine."

"He's found your weakness, then."

"My nephew?"

"Your love for him. If Kreeger wanted to hurt you, he'd go after the child. Isn't that apparent?"

Too much so, Steve thought.

The way to cripple me, the way to inflict pain without end, would be to hurt Bobby.

What kind of man would do such a thing? Bill Kreeger would. The man who sees himself as the product of millions of years of evolution.

But then, so am I.

Kreeger was wrong about most things, but he was right about something. It's an essential truth of human nature that to protect those we love, every one of us will kill.