The Baxter Trust

27

“You son of a bitch!”

To understate it, Sheila Benton was not happy. She was glaring daggers through the wire mesh screen in the visiting room.

Steve Winslow, on the other hand, was in rare good humor. He had gotten a good night’s sleep. He had showered and shaved, and attended to his cuts and bruises. His jacket and tie were the same, but he had put on clean socks and underwear, a clean shirt and a clean pair of pants.

And he had money in the pockets.

“Nice talk,” he said sardonically. “Why am I a son of a bitch?”

“You know why,” Sheila said between clenched teeth. “You told Uncle Max I was taking drugs.”

“He was here, then?”

“I’ll say he was here! Do you know what you’ve done? Do you have any idea? You’ve probably fucked me out of my entire inheritance.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ve got eleven years to work your way back into his good graces.”

“Yeah! Great. Why the hell’d you have to tell him I was taking drugs?”

“I had to.”

“Yeah. I know. He told me. You needed the money.”

“That was only part of it. I had to get him to call off Marston, Marston, and Cramden before they bungled you into a first-degree-murder rap.”

Sheila laughed sarcastically. “Oh, sure. Here you are, the great savior. What the hell makes you think they’d do any worse a job than you’ve been doing?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’d sure like to hear what they would have said when you asked them to pick up your cocaine for you.”

She had been preparing another angry retort, but that stopped her. “Oh. Did you get it?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

She lowered her voice. “Do you have it on you?”

Steve looked at her in disbelief. “No, I do not ‘have it on’ me. I have enough trouble without walking around with drugs in my pockets. Did you know the police picked me up and frisked me last night?”

“That was before they knew who you were. Now that they think you’re clean you’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Yeah. Sure. So now you’d like me to smuggle cocaine into jail for you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it. And you can forget it. All we need right now is for the cops to catch you with drugs.”

Sheila smiled, and, once again, Steve had to admire her spunk. In spite of everything, she was playing with him. Teasing him.

“Oh, you’re just so conservative,” she said.

He shook his head, chuckled. “I’m glad to hear it. In the past two days I’ve had to resort to blackmail and possession of dope. It’s nice to know that when I’m brought up before the bar association I’ll have a character witness of your stature to assure them my conduct has always been one of strict legal decorum.”

“See,” she said. “You even sound like a stuffy old lawyer.”

“Right, that’s what I am. A stuffy old conservative lawyer. Now if you’d like to talk to a hip, free-thinking swinger, there’s one out there waiting to see you just as soon as we’re through.”

“Oh?”

“Johnny.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Johnny’s here to see you. He’s here today, and I’ll bet he was here yesterday, right?”

She looked at him. “Why?”

“Was he?”

“Yes. Of course he was.”

“Ain’t love grand,” Steve said. Sheila started to make an angry retort, but he held up his hands. “No, no. No offense. I was just wondering about something.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “What?”

“Well, what with you and Johnny being such good buddies and all, and him being here yesterday and again today to see you and all, I’m just wondering why it was you asked me to pick up your coke.”

“Oh.”

“Any answer will do.”

She looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Isn’t it obvious? You were here first. I couldn’t let the cops find it, so I asked you. If Johnny’d been here first I’d have asked him.”

Steve pursed his lips and nodded. “Good. Not true, but good.”

Her eyes flickered. “What do you mean, ‘not true?’”

“Well, let me give you my version of what happened,” Steve said. “I think you’re the type of girl who manipulates men for your own purposes. You always have been and you always will be. You do it by getting them involved with you. I don’t mean necessarily physically involved, just involved. That’s what you did with me. You had me pick up your coke so I’d be involved with you. So you’d feel you had a hold over me.

“That’s one reason. There was another. You did it to save your pride. You had to tell me the window-shopping was a lie, so you had to tell me about buying the coke. You didn’t like that. That put you on the defensive. It made you feel as if you were a little girl, and I was the grownup in charge. So what you did was, you put yourself back in charge by getting me to do your bidding.”

“That’s not true,” Sheila said.

He shook his head. “It has to be. You know why? A minute ago you were asking me if I’d brought it with me. Well, you knew perfectly well I wouldn’t. But if you’d really wanted some, if that was your main concern, aside from getting it away from the cops, well there’s good old Johnny out there who would have been just stupid enough to smuggle it in here for you.”

Sheila was about to make a reply, but Steve held up his hand to cut her off. “But forget that. You didn’t really want that. You’re not that stupid, and you’re not as much of an airhead as you like to pretend to be. You just asked me if I had it on me so you could needle me about being too conservative. Because that’s how you operate. That’s how you deal with men. Kid ’em, tease ’em, needle ’em, keep ’em off their guard. And the thing is, that’s stupid, ’cause you don’t have to do that with me. I’m your lawyer. I’m on your side. I’m working for you. So you don’t have to play that kind of game.”

He expected a gruff answer. He didn’t get one. She just looked at him. And there was something in that look, something guileful and crafty that told him that somehow his assessment of the situation was wrong.

“You’re right. I don’t,” she said, and her manner reminded him of a cat playing with a mouse.

It didn’t take long for him to learn why.

“Did you know,” Sheila almost purred, “Uncle Max investigated you?”

Steve had known this was coming sooner or later. He just hadn’t expected it now. He tried to keep a straight face. “Oh?”

“Yeah, that’s another reason he was so furious with me. He said I was insane to hire a lawyer I knew nothing about to handle a murder case. So he made it his business to find out.”

Steve said nothing. He sat and waited.

“It seems you haven’t always been a lawyer. You used to be an actor. The only trouble was, you couldn’t get any work. You know why? Because you’re a pain in the ass. Because you’re too much trouble. You’re like the actor in that movie-who was it? — Dustin Hoffman, who was such a pain in the ass no one would hire him so he had to dress up like a woman to get any work. You wouldn’t take direction. You thought you knew everything. You fought with directors and writers. You had opinions about everything, and you didn’t know how to shut up.”

She paused and looked at him. “Who would have thought it of you?” she said.

“So,” she went on, “you alienated everyone. You were determined not to take shit from anyone, so the result was you took shit from everyone. You were your own worst enemy, and you fucked yourself every chance you got.

“It got to a point where no one would work with you anymore. So you gave up. You quit acting, and you worked your way through law school. You just got out a year ago. You went to work for the law firm of Wilson and Doyle. You handled one case for them. They fired you. You haven’t worked since.”

She stopped talking and just looked at him.

He sighed. “I see.”

“Is it true?”

“Yeah. It’s true. They fired me. You wanna know why?”

“No, but I know you’re dying to tell me.”

“Shit.”

“Go on. Tell me.”

“Forget it.”

“No. I’m sorry. Tell me.”

“Okay.” He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face. “Well, it was my first case. A hit-and-run. An elderly man struck down at a crosswalk. The man accused of driving the car was our client. I wasn’t handling the case. I was just assigned to get experience. My job was to coordinate information for the real lawyer. Mainly to answer the phone and fetch coffee. I wasn’t supposed to do anything.

“Well, I found out the victim had regained consciousness and the police were going to drag our client up to the hospital to see if he could identify him. Well, you know what that means. Or maybe you don’t. But anyway, in a hit-and-run, nine times out of ten the victim never even saw the car coming. At best, he just caught a glimpse while trying to dive out of the way. But the police go to him and tell him they got the guy who hit him, but they want him to take a look to make sure. So when they drag the guy in there the victim usually identifies him without even stopping to think about it. After that, your client doesn’t stand a chance.”

He paused. “So?”

“So, I got a guy about our client’s age and description and rushed him down to the hospital before the police got there. Sure enough, the victim took one look at him and said, That’s the guy. So, when the police showed up fifteen minutes later with our client, the victim said, ‘Naw, that can’t be the guy. I just saw the guy who hit me and it wasn’t him.’“

She was looking at him with genuine interest. “So they fired you?”

He shrugged. “The police were pretty mad. They came down on Wilson and Doyle hard. Well, they should have backed me up-what I’d done might have been sharp practice, but it was perfectly legal. But they didn’t want to stand the flack, so they fired me. The irony is, because of what I’d done our client beat the rap.”

“Was he innocent?”

“How the hell should I know?” Steve said. “I’m a lawyer, not a judge and jury. My job is to present my client’s case in the best possible light. I do everything I can to prove him innocent. The prosecution does everything it can to prove him guilty. The jury decides. The minute I start trying to decide if a client’s innocent or guilty I’m violating that client’s right to a trial by jury.”

Sheila, quietly undercutting him, said, “Was he guilty?”

“He… uh… yeah, he was guilty, guilty as hell,” Steve said. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead.

She sat watching him. She was intrigued. She’d scored with the question, “Was he guilty?” She’d really gotten to him. She’d expected to get to him with the news she knew he’d been fired, but she hadn’t. It had bothered him, but not badly. Not like this. It was unexpected, and it was interesting.

“Did you know it?” she asked.

He looked at her. “Know what?”

“Did you know he was guilty?”

“What’s the difference?”

“I’d like to know.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my lawyer, and what happens to me depends on you, and I need to know how you work. Did you know he was guilty?”

He sighed. “I found out later. I didn’t know at the time.”

“What do you mean at the time?”

“When I did it. Pulled the stunt. I believed the story, what the other lawyers on the case told me. The guy was innocent, the cops had gotten the wrong man, and were trying to force an identification. It’s an old line. Only I was the one who swallowed it.”

“Would you have done it if you’d known?”

“Hell, no.” Steve rubbed his head. “But I was stupid. I read it wrong. I thought it was a case of an innocent man being wronged. It wasn’t. It was a case of some rich son of a bitch hiring a bunch of high-priced lawyers to try to get himself out of a mess. And I helped. Like a damn fool, I helped. It’s kind of funny, really. My one act as a lawyer, and what did it do? It got me fired, it let some rich bastard beat the rap, and it earned good old Wilson and Doyle a whopping big fee.”

Sheila was looking at him closely. “You wouldn’t have done it if you’d known he was guilty?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Yeah. You did. Are you telling me you wouldn’t defend me if you thought I was guilty?”

“I wasn’t telling you that, no.”

“But you wouldn’t, would you?”

“No.”

“What would you do?”

“If I thought you were guilty? I’d withdraw from the case.”

“Well,” she said, sarcastically. “Isn’t that just fine. Here you are, defending me, and any time things start to look a little black, you can just decide I’m guilty and walk away.”

“That isn’t going to happen.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because you’re innocent.”

“Oh, you’ve decided that, have you? Of course you have, or you wouldn’t have taken the case. Well, that’s just great. And just why are you so sure I’m innocent?”

The needling was getting to him. “I’ll tell you why,” he snapped. “Because of what I told you before. Because you’re a shrewd, calculating, manipulative woman. Because, whatever else you are, you’re not dumb. Now, I wouldn’t put it past you to have killed this guy-you might have done it-but not like that. It’s too stupid. You kill him in your apartment with your knife after taking his blackmail letter to the police, and you haven’t even thought up a decent story to tell. All you say is, ‘I don’t know who he is, I don’t know what he’s doing here, I don’t know who killed him.’ I mean, hell, you’re either the stupidest murderer that ever lived, or else you’re innocent.”

“Oh, great,” she said. “That’s why you think I’m innocent. That I couldn’t be that stupid. Not that you have any confidence in me.”

“Confidence in you?” he said. “Hell, you change your story every time I talk to you. You really inspire confidence.” Suddenly he felt very tired. “All right, that’s the story. That’s the way things are. Now you know the whole thing. And you know where we stand. So it’s up to you. You want to fire me?”

She looked at him. “If I do, it means the end of your law practice, doesn’t it?”

He smiled mirthlessly. “I have no law practice. At least I’ll be twenty-five grand to the good.”

“No, you won’t. Uncle Max will stop payment on the check.”

He shook his head. “Don’t kid yourself. I cashed that check the minute his bank opened this morning.”

She smiled. “You know, you’re not as dumb as you look.”