Tracy Garvin stuck her head in the door.
“Well?” Steve said.
“That man is definitely pissed off.”
“No, no,” Steve said. “I mean-”
Tracy held up her hands. “Relax. Mark Taylor’s men picked him up. They’ll follow him until further notice.”
Steve exhaled and his features relaxed. He smiled. “Nice work.”
“Just routine.”
“Yeah, as if we had a routine. How’d you work it out?”
“Nothing to it,” Tracy said. “We have no Halsburg case. No surprise there. We have no cases at all. Any name you picked would do. So you had to be trying to tell me to get a message to Mark Taylor without tipping off Jenson. The only thing I could think of was you wanted to have him followed, or you wanted him thrown out of your office. I couldn’t really see you calling in detectives to give the guy the bum’s rush-not at that point, anyway-so I figured you must want him tailed.”
“You figured right.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I think I made a bad mistake, and I want to try to make up for it.”
Tracy frowned. “What do you mean, a bad mistake?”
Steve rubbed his head. “Tell you what. There’s no point my going through this whole thing twice. Why don’t you give Mark Taylor a ring, tell him to drop down here. I need to fill him in anyway.”
“Sure,” Tracy said. She went in the outer office to make the call.
Steve Winslow leaned back in his chair and rubbed his head again. Jesus Christ. Once, just once, it would be nice to have a client come in, tell him the facts and retain him in the case. Just once it would be nice to approach a case from the point of view of knowing what the hell was going on.
Steve chuckled. No, it probably wouldn’t. A case like that would probably be boring as hell.
The door opened and Tracy Garvin ushered Mark Taylor into the room.
Taylor said, “Hi, Steve,” and flopped his two hundred and twenty pounds into the clients’ chair. Taylor was Steve’s age, in fact had been his roommate at college. He had been an exceptional linebacker with pro aspirations, before an injury had ended the dream. Instead he ran the Taylor Detective Agency, and had offices in Steve’s building. Or rather, Steve had offices in his building. The Taylor Detective Agency had been there for years. When Steve had finally scraped up enough money to set up a practice, Mark Taylor had put in a word with the super to get Steve in.
“Hi, Mark. You pick him up?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s covered. I got a man on him, and he’ll stick like glue, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
“That’s what I figured. Of course, I couldn’t be sure.” Taylor grinned, jerked his finger at Tracy Garvin. “Tracy here calls me up, says, ‘I think Steve wants someone followed.’”
“That’s not what I said,” Tracy protested.
“Maybe not in those words,” Taylor said, “but that’s the gist of it. Anyway, she gives me a rundown of what happened, says she figures that means you want this guy tailed. The way she tells it, I figure you do too. But I’m a nice guy, and I don’t want Tracy out on a limb taking the responsibility on herself, so I gave her the chance of a lifetime, Taylor special, money-back guaranteed surveillance.”
Steve grinned. “What the hell is that?”
“I told her I’d follow the guy, and if it turned out that wasn’t what you wanted, there’s no charge.”
“It’s what I wanted.”
“Good. Then I’ll bill you. So what’s the scoop? Why am I tailing this guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s helpful. Glad you called me down here. Otherwise, I’d be working in the dark.”
“Yeah, well that’s the problem,” Steve said. “In this case, we’re working in the dark.”
“You got a client?”
“In a way.”
“Oh, great. I can’t wait to find out what way that is.” Taylor turned to Tracy. “Is he putting me on?”
“No.”
“All right, Steve, what’s the pitch? What do you mean, in a way? You got a client or not?”
Steve shrugged. “That’s open to interpretation. More to the point, no client asked me to tail Jenson. I did that on my own initiative.”
“Is Jenson the client?”
“No.”
“Then who is?”
Steve rubbed his head. “O.K. Let me give you a brief rundown. This morning an old ragged man off the street comes into my office and asks me a whole bunch of questions about probate law.”
Mark Taylor started at him. “What?”
“That’s right.”
“A street bum?”
“One of the homeless. And he doesn’t tell me his problems, like you’d expect a guy like that to do. No names, no specifics. No, the guy just wants to discuss abstract points of law.”
“A homeless guy?”
“Yeah. He asks me a whole bunch of questions and I answer them. He still doesn’t say why he wants to know. Then he gets up, throws two hundred bucks on my desk, and walks out.”
Taylor’s jaw dropped open. “A homeless guy paid you two hundred bucks?”
Steve grinned, put up his hands. “Hang on. You ain’t heard nothing yet. This afternoon another man comes into my office. Carl Jenson. The person your men are tailing. Tells me the street guy’s his uncle-his great uncle actually. And get this-he tells me this uncle’s an eccentric multimillionaire who’s lost his marbles, sold his house out from under him, and went to live with the homeless on the subway.”
Taylor blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. Jenson’s argument is his uncle’s mentally incompetent, so anything I do for him won’t be legally binding. His pitch is, if I throw in with him against his uncle and help him get his hands on the money, he’ll pay me a whopping big fee.”
“Jesus Christ. So that’s why you decided to have him tailed?”
“Actually, I decided the moment he told me his uncle was worth money.”
“Why was that?”
“Because that’s when I realized I’d made a big mistake.”
“How?”
“By giving his uncle advice.”
“Why? Because he’s not mentally competent?”
Steve shook his head. “No. Besides, we’ve only got Jenson’s word for that. For all we know, the guy may be perfectly sane.”
“A millionaire living on the subway?”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s insane. But that’s not the point. The point is, I shouldn’t have given him advice at all.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t tell me what his problem was. He just discussed abstract points of law.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything. A lawyer’s not a reference book. A lawyer’s job is to take the facts of the case, and apply the law to them. If the lawyer doesn’t get the facts, if the lawyer just tells the client the law and lets the client go off and apply the law himself, that’s the worst thing a lawyer can do.”
“Why?”
“Because every case is different. And the law may or may not apply. And even if it does, the law is constantly changing. That’s what legal precedents are all about. You take the facts of the case and you say, ‘Ah, that’s similar to this previous case. The same laws should apply.’ Or, if you don’t want it to apply, you say, ‘Ah, the reason it’s different from Coosbaine vs. Markowitz is this,’ and then you argue that point, and if you win, your case becomes a legal precedent.
“But, you see, it all depends on the facts of the individual case. So for a lawyer to tell a client the law without knowing the facts of the case is totally irresponsible. The results could be disastrous.”
“Then why’d you do it?” Taylor asked.
Steve shook his head. “I told you. I made a mistake. This morning I had two men waiting to see me. A businessman and a homeless man. I asked Tracy to show in the businessman, and she needled me about it-the homeless man was here first.”
Tracy opened her mouth to protest.
Steve held up his hand. “No, no. You were absolutely right. I’m just explaining what happened. Anyway, I saw the businessman first. For a number of reasons: the businessman would be impatient, he wouldn’t want to wait; the street guy would be more interesting, I saved him for last. Perfectly reasonable. But for all that, Tracy was basically right. All liberal protestations notwithstanding, I’m a snob and a bigot and I saw the rich man first.”
Steve chuckled and shook his head. “So what do I do? I take the rich man with his hundred-thousand-dollar retainer and throw him out of my office.”
Mark’s eyes widened. “Hundred-thousand-dollar retainer?”
“Yeah.”
“You turned down a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Believe me, we didn’t want it.”
Taylor rubbed his head. “Jesus Christ.”
“So I throw him out of my office, then I bring the street guy in, sit him down, treat him like a king, and sit there talking probate law with him like it was the most natural thing in the world.”
Steve frowned and shook his head. “Only it wasn’t. And if he’d been a normal client and not a street person, I wouldn’t have been talking abstract law with him. I’d have made him tell me the facts of the case. If he wouldn’t, I’d have sent him on his way. Only I didn’t. I was too busy bending over backwards playing Mr. Liberal. But hey, what’s the harm? None of it matters anyway, the guy’s only a street person. What the hell difference does it make how he changes his will? Then Carl Jenson tells me the guy’s a multimillionaire and suddenly it makes all the difference in the world. The guy asked me for advice. I gave it to him. If he goes out and tries to apply it himself, the results could be disastrous.
“And that’s just for starters. Add to that the fact the man may or may not be a lunatic. Throw in the fact he’s got a half a dozen greedy relatives trying to prove he is. Add in the fact they’re the people in the will he’s talking about. And top it off with the fact some of the things he’s asking me about smacked of collusion and fraud.”
Taylor whistled. “Jesus Christ.”
“Right,” Steve said. “The bottom line is, I am in one hell of a mess. And the worst thing about it is, it’s my own damn fault. I put myself there. I got no one to blame but myself.
“So, you ask me why I want to follow Jenson. I guess the answer is, because it’s too late to follow the bum.
“So, stick with Jenson and find out anything you can. If by any chance he should lead you to Jack Walsh-that’s the bum by the way-drop Jenson and tail him. Frankly, I don’t think he will. But tell your men to be alert.”
“Right,” Taylor said. “But how will they know?”
“Know what?”
“The street guy. Suppose Jenson goes looking for this guy on the subway? Suppose he talks to the homeless down there. There’s a million of ‘em. How are they gonna spot this Jack Walsh?”
“I never said it was gonna be easy, Mark. But if it’s our man, I think you’ll know it. The way I see it, if Jenson finds him, he’ll stick to him like glue.”
“If that happens, then what?”
Steve shrugged. “Damned if I know. Anyway, that’s our best-case-scenario. Frankly, I doubt if Jenson will see him again.”
“So what’s the point?”
“Damned if I know. All I know is, I’m in a mess and I want all the information I can get.”
Taylor thought that over. He shook his head. “Jesus, what a mess.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. He thought a moment. Then he chuckled. “The way I see it, there’s only one saving grace.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
Steve jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m off the hook with Tracy.”
Tracy looked at him. “What?”
Steve smiled. “Yeah. About the homeless man and the businessman. Seeing the rich man first.” Steve shrugged. “The way things turned out, I actually saw the rich man last.”