The Underground Man

7

Mark Taylor flopped his bulk into the clients’ chair, pulled out his notebook and said, “Shoot.”

“I’ve got two jobs for you,” Steve said. “One’s easy, one’s hard.”

“I like the sound of the hard one.”

“Why’s that?”

“More money in it. You got a big retainer?”

“No.”

“Then I like it less. What’s up?”

“Remember the homeless millionaire?”

“Him again?”

“Yeah.”

“What about him?”

“He’s in Bellevue.”

“I’m not surprised. So?”

“So I gotta get him out.”

Taylor nodded. “That figures. I’m surprised the shrinks let him call you.”

“They didn’t.”

“No? Then how’d you hear about it?”

“From a kid with green hair.”

“What?”

Steve gave Mark Taylor a rundown on his meeting with Jeremy Dawson. Taylor listened without interrupting, adding an occasional grunt or writing an occasional note.

When Steve was finished, Taylor said, “O.K., what’s my end of this?”

“Julie Creston.”

“What about her?”

“Find her.”

“How?”

“You’re the detective. I’m just a lawyer. You got her stage name, her real name, some shows she was in, and a couple of hooker busts. You even know where she came from. She might have just gone home.”

“Yeah, and she might not,” Taylor said. “And this was months ago. By now in all probability she’s in another state doing another job under another name.”

“I thought you liked the hard ones, Mark. More money and all that.”

“Yeah. But I like to get results. O.K. I’ll put some men on it. So what’s the easy job?”

“That is the easy job, Mark.”

“You’re kidding.”

Steve grinned. “Yes, I am. That’s the hard job. The easy job is a piece of cake.” Steve jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Tracy’s typing up a writ of habeas corpus for Jack Walsh. When she’s finished, I need to have it served.”

Taylor nodded. “Can do. What happens then?”

“Then we got a dogfight. The hospital will resist it and we’ll wind up with a competency hearing.”

“How does that work?”

“I don’t know. I never had one.”

“So how you gonna handle it?”

“Smoothly, effortlessly, and with a great casual flair.”

“Fuck you. I mean really.”

Steve shook his head. “Beats the hell out of me.” He grinned. “Frankly, all I know about ‘em comes from reading Perry Mason murder mysteries.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all. Of course, Erie Stanley Gardner was a lawyer, so they should be fairly accurate.”

“Steve-”

“I know, I know. I’m only half kidding, Mark. The way I understand it, here’s the way it’s gonna go. We’ll serve the habeas corpus. A judge will schedule a competency hearing and order Bellevue to produce Jack Walsh in court. Bellevue won’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“You see, that’s the whole point. Walsh has been committed. That means a psychiatrist at Bellevue has certified him insane. Declared him incompetent. Well, if Bellevue takes the position Jack Walsh is incompetent to handle his affairs, they also have to take the position he’s incompetent to testify in court.

“So they won’t produce him. Instead they’ll produce the admitting psychiatrist to testify that he’s in no condition to be there.

“That’s fine. I’ll immediately raise a big stink, demanding that they produce Jack Walsh. At the same time, I’ll be hoping like hell they don’t do it.”

“Why is that?”

“You never saw Jack Walsh, did you?”

“No.”

“Right. If you had, you wouldn’t ask. Anyway, I don’t want to give the judge and the attorney a chance to go after him. I want to go after the psychiatrist.”

“The psychiatrist?”

“Yeah. Him and the relatives. First I’ll attack the psychiatrist on the grounds he had no basis for making his judgment. Then I’ll attack the relatives to show that they were motivated by personal interest.”

“Can you do that?”

“Probably. The relatives are a greedy bunch. I don’t expect them to come off well.

“The psychiatrist is another matter. If I could show he had a financial stake in this, I’d be home free. But that’s probably out of the question. Most likely he’ll be some highly respected shrink just doin’ what he thinks is right.”

“So there’s nothing you can do?”

“No, there’s plenty I can do. What I’ll have going for me is the fact the shrink only saw the guy once, and has to be basing his diagnosis on things the relatives told him.”

“So, say you can do all that. Then what?”

“Then,” Steve said, “the judge isn’t going to be swayed by the doctor’s assurance of the patient’s incompetence. He’ll issue a court order, and Bellevue will have to produce Jack Walsh in court.”

“Yeah. And what happens then?”

Steve shrugged. “Then we’re fucked.”