Show of Evil

Sixteen

The red rays of dawn filtered through the wooden slats of the shutters, casting long, harsh shadows across the hardwood floors. Vail lay on his back and stared up at the pickled-blonde cathedral ceiling, softly crimson in the floor's reflection of morning light. Vail turned his head. Jane lay on her side, her forehead resting against his arm. He pulled the feather comforter up over her naked shoulders and slid out of her bed, gathering up his clothes and shoes from where they were strung out across the floor.

'Whew!' he said to himself, remembering how they had got there.

Tudor Manor was one of an ensemble of mansions built in the mid-Twenties and modelled after the Tudor mansions of England. From the outside they seemed strangely incongruous with the more midwestern architecture of Rogers Park. Each building (there were four in what was collectively known as Tudor Estates) had sweeping projecting gables decorated with gargoyles and crenellations, a slate roof, ornamental chimney pots, and towering casement windows.

Inside, Venable had turned her apartment into a bright, cheery place. Its walls were painted in soft pastels, the woodwork and cabinets were pickled-white oak. There was a large living room with casement windows facing Indian Bounty Park, fifty yards away. The rear wall of the room faced a hedged courtyard and was divided by a bullet-shaped copper-and-glass atrium, which towered up to the bedroom above. Two tall ficus trees dominated its core and climbing plants adorned its glass walls. Begonias, narcissi, and impatiens wove colourful patterns between and around the two trees. There was a guest bedroom and a formal dining room and a kitchen that looked like a chef's dream.

He found filters and a pound of coffee in the freezer and started the coffee before heading into the guest bath. Thirty minutes later, dressed in the previous night's wrinkled suit and shirt, he poured two cups of coffee and took one back up the stairs to the bedroom.

He placed her cup on the night table, leaned over the bed, and kissed her on the cheek. She stirred for a moment and reached out for him. Her arm fell across the empty sheet. She opened one eye and squinted up at him.

'You're due in court in three hours,' said Vail. 'Pryor won't be happy if you're late. If you'd like to hustle, you can join me at Butterfly's for breakfast.'

She rolled over onto her back.

'I'll be busy for the next three hours,' she said sleepily.

'You got something up your sleeve, Lawyer Venable?'

She pulled the comforter slowly down until it was two inches below her navel, held her arms towards the ceiling, and wiggled them slowly.

'No sleeves,' she said.

'You're gonna catch cold.'

'I always wake up this way,' she said. 'It's too chilly to fall back to sleep. And I wouldn't dare set foot in Butterfly's this soon. It's your turf. They'd probably lynch me.'

'I thought we were putting all that behind us.'

'After Stoddard.'

'That's Shana's problem.'

'We'll see where we stand after the bail hearing.'

He leaned over her, supporting himself on both arms, and kissed her on the mouth. 'Great,' he said.

'See you in court.'

On the way out, he picked up the downstairs phone and dialled Stenner's car phone.

Stenner answered on the first ring. 'Where are you? I'm parked in front. Been calling you for fifteen minutes.'

'Pick me up on the Estes-Rockwell corner of Indian Bounty Park,' Vail said.

'What are you doing out there?'

'Jogging. I ran out of breath.'

'Damn it, what do you mean standing on a street corner in broad—'

Vail hung up. He'd heard it all before. He headed across the park towards the far side, stopped once, and looked back. The shutters were open on one of the bedroom windows and she was watching him, wrapped only in the down comforter. She didn't wave; she just watched. Vail smiled up at her and walked through the park.

Stenner's concern for Vail went back four years, just after Flaherty had joined the Wild Bunch. Vail leaned over backwards to be impartial, but in his heart Shana Parver and Dermott Flaherty were his two favourites, probably because he saw in them his own rebellious spirit. Parver rebelling against her rich parents, Flaherty against the streets where he grew up.

Flaherty had been an angry kid, always in trouble, living on the streets, getting into fistfights, shoplifting, picking pockets, and heading for big trouble. He had one saving grace: he loved school. It was the one place he could rise above his desperate life. When he was busted for picking the pocket of a Red Sox fan and scalping the two tickets from his wallet, a kindly judge, who knew about him and was impressed with his grades, sent him to a half-way house for hardcase juveniles, where they kicked his ass and wore him out with leather belts and tried to whip the anger out of the wrathful orphan. The kid never cried.

One cold night, sitting in a bare, unheated closet that served as solitary, he had a revelation: His only asset was his brain. Intelligence was the only way out of the bleak, dead-end street he was heading down. Back on the street, he scrounged for a living, earned pocket money brawling in illegal backroom bare-knuckle fights, focused his anger on books. He became a voracious, self-motivated, straight-A student. Top of his class.

Once a month he hitched rides three hundred miles to Ossining to spend thirty minutes with the man who was responsible for his dreary existence.

'I'm gonna be a lawyer,' he would tell the man. 'I'm gonna get ya out.'

'Fuck lawyers,' the man would answer. 'Lawyers is why I'm here.'

He changed his name from Flavin to Flaherty, lived on fast-food hamburgers and chocolate bars to keep up his energy, avoided friendships, fearful they would find out who he was. He lived in fear of that. When he graduated from college, he decided to put distance between himself and Rochester and hitchhiked west until he ran out of money in Chicago. He applied for a scholarship, spent hours in the public library studying for the qualification tests. His scores were astronomical. For a kid of twenty-three, he seemed to have more than a passing knowledge of the law. Nobody knew why, nobody asked, but he impressed the review board enough to earn himself a full scholarship for one year, with the future hanging on what he showed during the first four quarters. He got a job as a night janitor in one of the city skyscrapers, slept on a pallet in the utility room. When he wasn't studying, he was in the courtroom, taking notes, watching the big boys in action, always rooting for the defendants and nursing an inbred hatred of prosecutors until he saw Vail in action, read about his young Wild Bunch, and realized, reluctantly, after a year that the assistant DA had become his idol. At the end of his first year he was courting a 3.8. Two more years on scholarship and he waltzed out with his law degree and with summa cum laude on his sheepskin.

He was twenty-seven at the time. Streetwise. Tough. Antisocial. Brilliant.

He had offers but chose to work for a broken-down old warhorse named Sid Bernstein, a once blazing star in the legal world who had turned to alcohol and coke to get through the day. For one year, Flaherty honed his skills studying the old boy's cases; reading law books; and dragging the old drunk out of bed, holding him under ice-cold showers and pumping the blackest coffee into him, dressing him and getting him into the courtroom, then prompting him through each case with notes scratched out on legal pads and law books marked with self-stick notes. One morning when Bernstein failed to show up at the office, he went to Bernstein's apartment and discovered that his boss was in the hospital. Pneumonia. The old guy lasted five days.

Sitting in Bernstein's drab office after the funeral, staring at the battered law books and worn-out cardboard file folders, he looked up and saw a handsome black woman standing in the office doorway.

'Dermott Flaherty?'

'Yes.'

'Sorry about Bernstein.'

The kid didn't know how to answer that. Bernstein was a cross he had borne for a year and a half. His sympathy for the man was superficial.

'Thanks,' he said. 'What can I do for you?'

'Are you taking over the practice?'

'Nothing to take over. Just trying to figure out what to do with his stuff. Uh, was there something…?'

'How'd you like a job?'

'Doing what?'

'Law, what else?'

'For who?'

'Ever hear of Martin Vail?'

When he came in for his interview with Vail, he was wearing a black turtleneck, a tweed jacket he had bought at a Division Street pawnshop for six bucks, and tennis shoes. He had no expectations.

'We've been watching you in court,' said Vail. 'You've been dragging old Sid Bernstein through life for a year and a half.'

'It was a job.'

'You've got quite a transcript, Mr Flaherty. Probably could have landed a pretty good spot with some of the better law firms around town. How come you picked Sid?'

'Figured I could learn more from him.'

'You actually tried most of his cases,' Vail said, flipping through papers in a file.

'You been checking up on me?' Belligerently.

'Bother you, does it?'

Flaherty shrugged.

'You're originally from Rochester, New York?'

Flaherty hesitated, stared down at the file. Finally: 'I guess so.'

'You guess so? You don't know where you're from?' Vail said with a laugh.

'I put that behind me.'

'Why? You did pretty well for a homeless kid with no parents. How long were you on your own? When did you lose your mother and father?'

Flaherty stood up suddenly, his fists balled up, his face red with fury. His reaction surprised Vail.

'Forget it,' Flaherty said, heading for the door.

'What's your problem, son? You've got the makings of a great lawyer, but you have a chip the size of Mount Rushmore on your shoulder.'

'It won't work,' Flaherty said.

'What won't work? Sit down, talk to me. You don't want to talk about Rochester, forget it, we won't talk about Rochester.'

Flaherty sat down. 'Can I smoke?' he asked.

Vail wheeled his chair to the exhaust fan and flicked it on. He lit up, too.

'Sooner or later you'll find out.'

'Find out what, son? What kind of load are you carrying?'

'M'mom died when I was nine.'

'Okay.'

He looked at Vail and sadness seemed to invest itself in his rugged young features.

'Actually… actually, she didn't die. Actually what happened… See, what happened…' And then he said out loud something he had bottled inside himself for years. 'Actually my old man killed her. Beat her to death with his bare hands. He's on death row at Sing Sing. Been there… twenty years. I used to think… I used to think that I'd get to be a lawyer and then… then I'd spring him, and then I'd take him out, and then…'

'And then what?' Vail asked softly.

'Then I'd beat him the way he beat my mom. Beat him and beat him until…' The young man fell silent and sat puffing on his cigarette.

'When's the last time you saw him?' Vail asked.

'Before I came out here four years ago. I used to go see him once a month. I never even wrote after I left.'

'Dermott?'

'Yeah?'

'Your father died two years ago. Heart attack.'

'You knew about all that?'

'Naomi - Naomi Chance, the lady that came to see you when Sid died? Naomi knows everything, Dermott. You're one helluva young lawyer. The thing with your father? You put that behind you. It wasn't your fault, anyway. Thing is, we're pretty tight here. What the press calls the Wild Bunch. They're very supportive of each other. They'll expect the same of you. What I'm saying is, it's too heavy a load. Maybe if you share it, maybe if you put it behind you forever, maybe you can forget it. You want a job?'

Stenner had been sceptical about the new kid, who seemed sullen and involuted and dressed in black like a funeral director and who was basically, as Stenner put it, 'a street punk'. The Shoulders case had changed all that and it put Vail in jeopardy for the first time in his life.

Jake Shoulders, whose felony record prevented him from owning liquor stores, gun shops, restaurants, and bars, kept a low profile, but he was known in the DA's office. His game was blackmail and extortion and city hall was his target. Staff members, department heads, councilmen, anybody who had anything to hide, eventually appeared on Shoulders's list. Then he spread out into the restaurant business, obtained liquor licences under phony names, even got a piece of the airport action. Obviously he was paying off somebody in the city, somebody high up, somebody who raked it off the top and let the health and police inspectors earn their cuts by making sure the licences were nicely covered up and easily approved.

Vail and his team knew what Shoulders was up to, but they could not make the city connection. Without it, it was just another bust. By tying it to the city hall gang, they could do real damage to a corrupt bunch that had run the city for too long. Vail needed a linchpin, a witness or evidence that would tie Shoulders directly to city hall. The break came when a three-time loser named Bobby Bellinger was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Facing life without parole, Bollinger, who was only thirty-three, decided to toot his whistle in exchange for immunity and a ticket out of town. He called Stenner, who had arrested him his third time down. Stenner got him off the street and holed him up in a run-down hotel on Erie Street. Then Bollinger became troublesome.

'Bollinger is waffling,' Stenner told Vail one morning.

'What's his problem?'

'Perks.'

'We gave him perks.'

'He's suffering from the "more" syndrome.'

'What else?'

'Witness protection out of state. A job making one hundred thou a year. Name change and we clear his record. A new car. He says they'll be able to trace his Corvette.'

Vail chuckled. 'No yacht?'

'He says that's less than he's making now on the docks.'

'Does he also say he's guilty of a felony? Has three priors? He goes in for good this time.'

'I think he's forgot about that.'

'Remind him.'

'How far are you willing to go?'

'I'll go with the witness programme and the name change goes with it. We can probably arrange something out of state. His record goes into limbo with his old name, so he gets that. But no hundred grand. We'll support him for three months while he's in a retraining programme. After that he's on his own. And he can ride a bicycle.'

'What if he still says no?'

'We'll max him out with the judge; he's a three-time loser.'

'He came to us, Marty.'

'He came to us because if he stays around here, he's a dead man. He's looking for a ticket out and a free ride.'

'He says he can give us the link we've been looking for.'

'That's what he says. Look, I'm not going to buy a conviction for one hundred grand a year. Tell me I'm wrong on this, Abel.'

'I don't know. His way, we bring down the city hall bums, get rid of Bollinger while we're at it. Let some other state put up with him.'

Vail stopped and lit a cigarette. He walked around in a tight little circle for a minute or so.

'He'll also stand up in court,' said Stenner. 'Part of the deal.'

'Christ, I never know how you're gonna jump on these things, Abel.' Vail leaned against the wall and blew smoke towards the floor. 'I don't like Bollinger. I don't like doing business with him. No matter where he ends up, he's always going to be up to something. He wouldn't know how to straighten out. And I'm still sceptical about whether he can link our case up. But… okay, give him my proposal first. Scare him with the options. If you have to, twenty-five thou for six months. And no car, that's out. Tell him to dump the Vette and use the take for a down payment.'

'Maybe I can sell that.'

'Give it a shot then. It gets sticky, we'll good-guy, bad-guy him. He already has you pegged as the negotiator, so you play the hero. Take Flaherty for the bad guy.'

'Flaherty?'

'I think he'll surprise you, Abel. Let him play it his way. When he takes over, stand back, let him do it.'

Flaherty looked tough enough to play a mean cop. He bordered on handsome with coal-black hair and dark brown eyes, but his rugged, brooding Irish features were marred by a slightly flattened nose and a scar over one eye.

In the fleabag hotel, Stenner sat talking to Bollinger, a grungy redhead with bad teeth and a worse attitude. Flaherty sat in a corner of the room watching the proceedings, wearing a .38 under his arm.

'Shit,' Bollinger snapped, 'I'm giving up everything, man. Friends, my place, my car, every fuckin' thing, and he's pissin' about one hundred grand a year and a car to replace my Vette!'

'I'll tell you what you're not giving up,' said Stenner.

'Oh yeah, what's that?'

'The rest of your life, Bobby. No parole. And when we do nail down this case, you'll be hauled in again for aiding and abetting. You won't see daylight until my son runs for president and my son hasn't been born yet.'

'This is great, just fuckin' great, man. I come to you with a reasonable — '

'A hundred grand a year and a new joy waggon is not reasonable. Sell your vehicle. Get something nice with the down payment.'

'What are you, my business manager?'

Stenner said, 'You could look at it that way.'

'I do this, I'm on the dodge the rest of my life.'

'Then it's Joliet. They'll pop you there - if not before. You're running. This way, we make the reservations and pick up the tab.'

'Well, then, I guess it boils down to how bad you want my information, huh?'

'No, it boils down to how bad you want to stay alive. You want to shoot craps with your life for a damn car?'

Bellinger's lips were getting dry. He licked them nervously. That fucking DA is calling my hand.

'How long's this gonna take?' he asked.

'As long as it takes. Could be a year before we put the case together and get into court.'

'A year! In this fuckin' funeral parlour!'

'Christ, why don't we find him a nice place out in the goddamn country,' Flaherty snarled.

Bellinger looked over at Flaherty, who was clipping his fingernails. Who the hell is this guy He looked back at Stenner.

'No pie for a fuckin' year?' he whined.

'Pie?'

'You know… the old ying-yang,' Bellinger said with a lascivious grin. 'I deserve that much.'

Flaherty suddenly exploded. He threw the fingernail clippers across the room and charged at Bollinger with such fury that he surprised even Stenner. He shoved past the detective and loomed over Bollinger.

'You don't deserve shit,' he snarled.

He slid an easy chair over with his foot and sat down in front of Bollinger, leaning forward with his face an inch from the mobster and spoke in a low, nasty monotone.

'I know all the tricks, Bobby. Know why? Because I've been there. I know what you're thinking right now. I know what you're gonna say before you say it. I'm hip, Bobby. Understand?'

Bellinger's eyes bulged with uncertainty.

'The major, here, tries to treat you like a decent human being, what'd we get? A cheap brand of grift. You been playin' us like a fiddle for two days. Well, I just took your goddamn bow away from you. Forget the fuckin' Corvette and the fuckin' one hundred grand job. You're off the goddamn sleeve. Do you understand? Am I getting through that fat head of yours?'

'I got myself—'

'You got yourself to blame, that's what you got yourself. Now here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna give up everything. Names, dates, times, places, whatever the action was, you're gonna give it up. Try to con us, you lose your ticket. Dodge the questions, you lose your ticket. You tell us one goddamn lie, you lose your fuckin' ticket.'

Bollinger turned to Stenner for help. The quiet man ignored him.

'And after we make the bust, you're gonna stand up in court and sing on these guys like the canary you are—'

'Goddamn you, I had a deal working -' Bollinger started to interrupt.

'You didn't have shit. You don't cooperate, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna drop the charges on you and turn you out on the street, and just before we do? - just before they open up those pearly fuckin' gates? - we're gonna drop dimes all over this town that you jumped on the stoolie wagon. You'll be a dead man. They'll whack you before you get to the corner.'

Stenner sat back and watched Flaherty's performance with awe. He knew the Irishman had been a street kid, but he had never seen him in action before, not like this. Flaherty began jabbing home his points with a forefinger. 'So we're gonna start over because right now you don't have a goddamn thing. You made some talk and we made some talk, but nobody said "yea", and nobody said "nay". Nobody said bullshit. Now what's it gonna be, Bobby? Do I turn on the tape recorder, or do you take a trip to the icebox?'

Bellinger looked pleadingly at Stenner.

'Man's got a point,' Stenner said casually.

'Let's hear your story,' Flaherty said. 'Now.'

Bollinger looked back and forth between his two captors and then said, 'I was the bagman.'

'For who?'

'Shoulders.'

'And who?'

Bollinger hesitated for a moment, then said, 'Roznick.'

'Vic Roznick? The city manager?' Stenner said with surprise.

'How many Roznicks you know?'

'How did you make the delivery?'

'I get a call. I go to the Shamrock Club on West Erie. Shoulders has an office on the second floor. He gives me a briefcase fulla twenties and fifties. I take it to a parking lot on Illinois near the Trib. The trunk's unlocked. I put the case in, that's it.'

'How do you know what was in the case?' Stenner asked.

'Christ, Jake counted it out right in fronta me. Tells me there's a fuckin' dollar missin' it's my ass.'

'And it was Roznick's car?'

'Sometimes. I sat in my car half a dozen times and watched him come out, dip into the trunk, and split with the case. Other times it was Glen Scott, Eddie Malone, Pete Yankovitch.'

'City staff?'

'Yeah. Different places for them. Shoulders had 'em all over a barrel. Stuff they did years ago. Videotape. Audio. Photos. Get 'em on a hook, then make the deal. They cooperate, he pays off and lets 'em off the spike.'

'Once they're in, they never get out,' Stenner said.

'I even shot some photos.'

'Why?' Stenner asked.

'To cover my ass, y'know, just in case.'

'You mean to do a little blackmailing of your own, don't you?' Flaherty suggested.

Bollinger shrugged but did not answer.

'You got pictures of these pickups?' Flaherty asked.

'Yeah. They oughta be worth a little extra.'

'Part of the deal,' Flaherty snapped back.

'I, uh… I got sompin' else maybe worth a new Vette.'

'It better be good,' said Flaherty.

'There's paper out on your boss.'

Stenner stood up, his eyes narrowed. 'Who you talking about, Yancey?'

'No, man. The piranha.'

'Piranha?' Flaherty asked.

'Vail. They're scared shitless of him. Can't be bought. Never know where he's gonna jump next.'

'You saying there's a contract out on Martin Vail?' Flaherty said fiercely. 'Who?'

'Do we have a deal on the Vette?' Bollinger asked with a smile.

With a growl, Flaherty pulled the .38 out of his shoulder holster. He jammed it under Bellinger's nose.

'Don't fuck with us. Who put out the contract and who's doing the job? You say it now or I swear to God I'll throw you out the damn window.'

'Hey, hey…' Bollinger said, turning pale.

Stenner reached out and laid his hand over the gun. 'Answer those two questions right now, Bobby,' he said sternly.

'Shoulders. It's like two hundred K.'

'Shoulders ordered the hit?'

'Yeah, but I think maybe they're all in on it. You know, the whole gang chipped in.'

'Who's the shooter?' Flaherty said. His voice had gone dead.

'You better cover me on this.'

'Who's the fuckin' shooter?'

Bellinger sighed. He was beginning to sweat. 'It's a cop, does Shoulders's tricks.'

'A cop?' Stenner said. 'What cop?'

'Look I… I…' Bollinger stammered.

'What cop?' Flaherty demanded.

'His name's Heintz,' Bollinger babbled.

'Lou Heintz? A sergeant?' Stenner said.

'That's the one.'

'You know him, Major?' Flaherty asked.

'Oh yes, Lou Heintz. Doesn't surprise me a bit. When is this supposed to go down?'

Bollinger shrugged. 'Whenever. It's paid for.'

'My God,' Stenner said, and headed for the phone.

'This better be the McCoy,' said Flaherty.

'Who the hell are you, anyways?' Bollinger whimpered.

Flaherty smiled for the first time. 'I'm the guy who's gonna make you the greatest song-and-dance man since Fred Astaire,' he said.

And he had. It had taken eighteen months, but Flaherty had successfully prosecuted Shoulders, two of his henchmen, three department heads, the city manager, and an assistant city attorney and set in motion Meyer's successful cases against the two city councilmen. All of them were still in prison.

Bollinger was in Oregon with orders never to set foot east of the Mississippi River.

Lou Heintz, the killer motorcycle cop, had vanished. And Stenner had immediately become Vail's bodyguard, picking him up every morning, delivering him to meetings, watching his back constantly, usually delivering him home at night.

About a year later, Heintz was found dead in an abandoned car in Pittsburgh with four .22s in the back of his head. It was written off as a gang hit. Nobody would ever know whether it involved the contract on Martin Vail or not.

But Stenner never stopped his surveillance. He had been Vail's constant companion ever since, except at those times when Vail managed to shake him. Like the night before.

Vail was still deep in reminiscence when Stenner pulled up in the car. He glared up at his boss and shook his head.

'Right out in the open,' he said as Vail got into the car. 'Alone. Perfect target.'

'Please, Abel. That's over. Heintz is dead, Shoulders is doing ten years.'

'Once warned…'

'Okay. You know I appreciate your concern. I just need a little privacy every once in a while. Kinda like sneaking out when you were a kid.'

'I never sneaked out when I was a kid.'

'I think I knew that, Abel.'

Stenner looked at Vail's wrinkled suit and twisted tie. 'You want to go home and change?' he asked.

'Hell with it,' Vail said.

'You're in court this morning and Naomi says you have a lunch with Paul Rainey.'

'Butterfly's, Major. I want breakfast. Anyway, it's not my case, it's Parver's. I'm just going to sit in the back of the courtroom and spectate.'

'How about the lunch with Rainey?'

'I'll pick up the tab. He won't care what I'm wearing.'