The Innocent Woman

21

“Let me tell you the facts of life.”

“You’re really pissed, aren’t you?”

“What gave you your first clue?”

Tracy blinked up at him, tried to see his eyes in the glow from the street light. They were on the corner just outside Branstein’s building.

“Steve,” she said.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here before the cops come.”

“You think they will?”

“Are you kidding? He’s calling them now. If he mentions my name, it’s jackpot time, and Stams himself may show up. I sure don’t want to be standing here if he does.”

He took Tracy by the arm and pulled her down the street. The action was rough, the grip tight, hurting her arm.

“Hey, hey,” Tracy said. “Take it easy. I’m coming.”

Steve released her arm and they walked along rapidly, not talking, till they reached Canal.

Steve stopped, turned around. “Okay,” he said. “I’m putting you in a cab. Before I do, I got something to say.”

“You’re upset I went over there?”

“No kidding.”

“It’s a judgment call. You weren’t there and it seemed the thing to do.”

“It wasn’t.”

“So I gather. You wanna beat me up, or you wanna tell me why?”

“You know why. You’re overboard on this one from the word go. You take the client up to the murder scene, leave a convenient fingerprint behind and whisk her out of there. Then when I’m running around trying to patch that one up, you rush out and call on a witness.”

“Because you weren’t available and I wanted to get to him before the cops did.”

“The cops weren’t getting to him,” Steve said. “And he wasn’t getting to them. There was absolutely nothing to connect him to the case.”

“Maybe so, but-”

“And look what you did,” Steve said. “Will you stop to consider what you did?”

“I know it’s a mess.”

“Do you?” Steve said. “Well, let me define it for you. This guy had no idea anything had gone on, and still wouldn’t if we hadn’t told him. He only remembers Amy going in there because we reminded him of it.”

“He can’t identify her.”

“So what,” Steve said. “Don’t you see the big bummer here? Don’t you see what we’ve done?” Steve paused, exhaled. “The guy closed his shop at nine. If Amy got there and called the cops at ten, why is this guy a witness at all? Obviously he isn’t. He’s peripheral. Clearly irrelevant and one of the last people in the world you’d ever think of.

“So what happens? We think of him first. Rush out there and interview him the night of the crime. Before the police even know he exists. What does that do? That elevates him from peripheral witness to prime witness. If the guy’s important to us, there must be something we know. I don’t care how dumb Stams is, he can still figure that.

“So what’s the upshot? The store owner’s not the witness anymore. Our client’s the witness. She had to have seen him earlier for us to have even known about him.”

“She didn’t see him earlier,” Tracy said.

“Right. I did. Big fucking deal. Same difference. If I saw him, by extension I saw him because of something my client told me.”

“At least he didn’t recognize you.”

“Yeah, and look how I had to dress up to make sure he didn’t.”

“Even so, doesn’t that count for something if he tries to identify you later on?”

“Small victory and beside the point,” Steve said. “The point is, our client’s dead. We took a non-witness and made him a star. We don’t go there, even if the guy tells his story, it barely implicates Amy at all. Because there’s no connection. But now there is. Her attorney rushed out there to try to break down the identification. Before the cops even knew there was one. Conclusion? There must have been an identification to break down.”

Tracy’s eyes glistened. He lip trembled. “I was only trying to help.”

“No, you weren’t,” Steve said. “You know what you were doing? You were trying to play Della Street. It’s the books you read. Your head’s so full of murder mysteries, you think life is like that. You can’t run around contaminating murder scenes and holding out on the cops, pulling a fast one with the witnesses and all that. I got bad news for you. I’m not Perry Mason, and there doesn’t have to be a happy ending.

“And our client? For all we know she’s guilty, she’s going to take a fall, and she’s going to pull us down with her. I, for one, don’t really want to go.”

“That’s not fair,” Tracy said.

“Oh, isn’t it? I’ve done a lot of things tonight that I wouldn’t have done if it wasn’t your ass on the line. Sending her back there to find the body again. You think I’d have done that if you hadn’t whisked her out of there the first time?” Steve stopped, shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so hard on you. But it makes me crazy-thinking if I don’t cover this up, the cops are going to nail you.”

“They’re not gonna nail me.”

“Oh no? You left your fingerprints at the scene of the crime, and you rushed out to tamper with a witness. You think Branstein isn’t going to remember you showed up even before I did?”

Tracy took a long breath, then blew it out again. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Yeah,” Steve said. He stepped out in the street, raised his hand.

“What you doing?”

“I’m putting you in a cab. I want you to go home and get some sleep while you still can.” Steve grimaced. Shook his head. “Because tomorrow, all hell’s gonna break loose.”