“I’ll be brief,” Alpha said, as politely as a salesperson making a cold call. “Tell Jimmy Whitlow we are missing the delivery. And we need to know who took it. Him? Or her? Or somebody else? Because until we find that out, we ain’t paying one dollar for nobody’s lawyer fees.”
Myrna put one hand to her forehead and the other out in mock protest. “Whoa. Too much, too fast for me. Joe, get a pen and write this stuff down. A delivery of something, you say? And somebody paying lawyer fees?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Alpha. “I said nobody is going to pay a dollar until we get back what’s missing and find out who took it.”
Myrna froze and mulled that one over for all of second. “Oh,” she
said, fetching her cigarette from the ashtray for a puff. “I thought you were trying to say somebody had paid up Jimmy Whitlow’s lawyer fees. We still owe Dr. Green a lot of money, and we just bought ourselves a pretrial appeal.” Her voice dropped as she artfully slipped the name into her sentence. Her manner was casual, but she glanced through smoke and watched Alpha’s response.
“I said,” Alpha repeated, flushing slightly, “we don’t pay one dollar of lawyer fees until we get a straight story and both briefcases.” Then he bowed slightly and asked, “Who’s Dr. Green?” His manner was deferential, as if he would be the first to admit that he might not have the right to know.
Watson was beginning to understand that these were bad guys who had been to charm school, where they had been trained to present the best possible front at all times, the better to conceal malignant hatreds and ugly social agendas. If they could all go out for drinks and dinner, Watson would probably go home convinced that some synergistic mix of hatred and patriotism was the answer to our nation’s problems.
Myrna took a long look at what she could see of Alpha’s face, then she smacked herself in the head with her palm. “I am up-fucking big time,” she said. “Dr. Green is our expert in another case. Right, Joe? What is it, that prisoners’ rights case, ain’t it?
Joe nodded.
“Ai, yi, yi,” said Myrna. “So many cases. Sorry, boys, I get them mixed up.”
“You are one of them free appointment lawyers, right?” Alpha asked, turning suddenly in Joe’s direction. “Jimmy ain’t paying you, is he? Buck ain’t giving you money, is he?”
Watson glanced at Myrna. “The court appointed me to represent James Whitlow,” said Joe.
“What about you?” said Alpha, wheeling his mirror shades in Myrna’s direction. “I guess we pretty well know you don’t work for nothing.”
Myrna blew a ribbon of smoke in Alpha’s direction. “Joe’s a buddy. He used to work for me. I’m helping him out. Giving him some advice. That OK with you?”
Alpha set his jaw and said, “We got word that Jimmy needed money for investigators and experts and such. We can’t help Jimmy Whitlow with lawyer fees until we find out what happened to the delivery.”
“Happened?” asked Myrna.
The two visored heads turned together again.
“When Jimmy was in Des Peres County,” said Alpha, “we asked him what happened to the briefcases, and he told us his wife put them in the trunk of his car after the … person died, and before the cops came.”
“No shit?” said Myrna.
“Jimmy said she
said
she put them in the trunk of the car,” inserted Beta, who was apparently eager to display his alertness to the nuances of hearsay. “He didn’t actually
see
her put them in the car. He was in the house. He didn’t see what she done with them.”
Alpha’s shoes creaked again when he turned to look at Beta, using body language meant to convince his junior partner that his next interruption would be his last.
“Jimmy claims he told her to put the briefcases in the trunk,” said Alpha by way of clarification. “So then we went to Miss Mary. And we said, ‘Where’s the briefcases?’ And she said, ‘Jimmy put them in the trunk of the car.’ ”
“Pretty easy so far,” said Myrna. “Sounds like the briefcases are in the trunk of the car.”
“
Were
in the trunk, maybe,” said Alpha. “The car got towed and Miss Mary had to go get it out. So we offered to follow her when she went to fetch it. She ran into some trouble there because it weren’t registered and she had to dig around back at the house to find the title. Next day, we followed her back out to get the car and sort of helped her look in the trunk, where we found
one
empty briefcase.”
Beta flourished the black leather briefcase, popped the locks on it, and splayed it open on Myrna’s desk.
“Empty,” he said. “Nothing in it but a fucking calculator.”
Watson saw a device with a liquid crystal display and a keypad protruding from the flap in the divider. It was no calculator, but it looked familiar. He’d seen it before, or maybe a picture of it. A news photo?
“So we got how many missing briefcases?” asked Myrna. “Two? Three? Joe, are you getting this down? We gonna have to send a message from these gentlemen to Jimmy Whitlow.”
Joe grabbed a legal pad and mumbled, “He says she says she put them in the trunk of the car. Three briefcases.”
“I never said it was three briefcases,” said Alpha. “It’s
two
briefcases.” He turned and looked at his companion. “Well, really I guess we are talking about one briefcase. That there is the other one, which we found in the trunk of the car, but there ain’t nothing in it. Which means somebody
put everything into one briefcase and took it out of the car, or maybe never even put it in the car.”
“Stop right there,” said Myrna. “What car?”
The heads turned together.
“We got Jimmy’s car,” said Alpha. “We got one briefcase. But there ain’t nothing in it. All of it is missing, and we want it back.”
“Got that, Joe?” asked Myrna. “They want
all of it
back.”
Alpha bristled, apparently reviewing the conversation so far and concluding he’d said too much.
“Tell Jimmy Whitlow, no lawyer money until we get it back with a straight story about what happened. If not, he better be damn sure he don’t know where it is.”
“You bet,” said Myrna. “And we will tell Jimmy Whitlow everything you told us to tell him. Is there a number he can call?”
Alpha stared, too dumb to tell whether Myrna was being smart with him. “He knows how to reach us,” he said.
Watson cleared his throat and carefully acknowledged Beta with a deferential glance before addressing Alpha. “If the cops had the car towed, maybe they took whatever was in the briefcases. Is that possible?”
Both men stiffened, and their faces blanked in the throes of radical new ideas.
“Uh,” said Alpha, “we don’t know for sure, but we don’t think it was the cops who had the car towed.”
“Why?” jeered Myrna. “Because they didn’t send you a fucking letter? If the cops took it, they are probably looking for the guys who are looking for whatever is missing. Or maybe they are asking Mary Whitlow about what they found in the trunk of her car. And maybe she is telling them that you are looking for what they got out of the trunk of the car. Anything is possible.”
“What about Buck?” asked Alpha. “Have you talked to Buck?”
“Buck?” said Myrna. “Who’s Buck?”
Alpha looked at Beta, then bore down on Myrna. “Lady, I said we ain’t cops. So cut the crap. Mary Whitlow claims that Buck talked to Jimmy about all of this. And that means we want to talk to Buck. But it seems that Buck is suddenly out of town. So, if Buck calls you, you tell him to call us.”
“Buck,” said Myrna flatly.
Alpha fixed his gaze on Myrna. “Buck ain’t paying you, is he?”
“Nobody pays me,” said Myrna. “As soon as they do, I’m gonna get myself a real office instead of this shithole.”
“We figure he might call you because you got him out of trouble last time,” said Alpha.
Myrna shrugged and glanced at Joe. “Whatever you say, gentlemen. If anybody named Buck calls we will tell him two big guys are looking for him.”
Alpha motioned toward the door and let Beta go first. Then he grabbed the doorknob, turned, and said, “And if we don’t hear from Jimmy and Buck real soon, we will come back here.”
The door shut. Myrna heaved a big sigh through pursed lips and puffed cheeks. They both tiptoed to the door and listened to the men grunting to each other and leaving through the back door.
“Fuck me a new asshole,” she whispered.
Watson was shaking all over and wondering where he could find some alcohol, like right away. Then, he would need a phone to call Sandra and tell her she had been right. Yes, honey! Darling!
You were right!
I have endangered myself, my career, my home, my children. I am going back to Stern, Pale on my hands and knees. I temporarily lost my mind. Synaptic brownout. I was not myself. I was beside myself, watching myself. Somebody else was moving my entire body.
“Militia, right?” hissed Watson.
“Maybe
patriots
would be a better word,” she said, “since, according to Harper, your client is one of them.”
“Who’s paying us if they aren’t?” asked Watson. “And
you
,” he said, anger getting the better of fear. “You’re Buck’s lawyer. You sent me that letter.”
Myrna looked away and mumbled something, then marched over and grabbed the Gitanes from her desktop.
She looked at him hard, wrinkled her nose, and took a deep breath.
“Joey, sit down,” she said, as she walked around to the other side of her desk. “We need to talk a little.”
Her tone suggested they had more than a little to talk about, and he didn’t like the partneresque maneuver of retreating to the control side of a desk.
“I told you how the criminal bar sticks together when the prosecutors and the press and the IRS come around wanting to examine our billing records and seeking privileged information about who is paying who. Well …”
“Well what?” asked Watson. “I’m not a prosecutor or the IRS.”
“Buck sorta called me after Jimmy Whitlow got arrested. You were still down at Stern, Pale.”
“Buck called you?”
“Yeah,” said Myrna, “because this friend of his had been arrested for killing a black. Money might be available, but it would be the kind of money the government couldn’t know about. I couldn’t take the case, because then the government might try to hook Jimmy up with Buck and the paintball warriors, because awhile ago I represented Buck on a little weapons charge, which only happened because Buck ended up in a building that had some rocket-propelled grenades and a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile in it. God as my witness, they weren’t his. He didn’t even know they were there! Anyway the government floated some conspiracy shit, trying to say Buck was one of these Eagle Warriors or whatever. And me and the other lawyers got them off. Case closed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” asked Watson.
“I didn’t know!” she said. “Buck said it was just a regular fuckup. Crime of passion. No militia business. Cash money. But we needed to be careful because …”
“Because Jimmy Whitlow
belongs
to the fucking militia, right?” yelled Watson, almost hitting a woman.
“I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t think he said it that way. Anyway, then we found out you got appointed, and I thought, Small world! And we started thinking could you maybe help,” she faltered, “or better, could we maybe help
you
with the case. And then we started thinking, what if those Stern, Pale white-shoe bastards started pressuring you and what if you couldn’t devote enough time to the case? And then Buck sorta let it be known that this money could be made available. ’Course, I never ask where money is coming from, but I sorta let Buck know that you probably needed money. Especially if it came to pass that you would have to quit the big firm.”
Watson felt his internal temperature drop with the chilly realization that yet another professional was using him—for his own good, of course. And now, here was the professional equivalent of his big sister telling him he was sorta, kinda, something like a marionette on a stage run by militia defense lawyers.
“What else did you sorta tell them?”
“Well, really it was Buck doing the telling,” she said. “He knew you
had been appointed. I said I knew you, and he said there were certain interested parties.”
“Parties interested in?”
“Jimmy Whitlow,” she said, reaching for the Gitanes. “And Buck sorta wanted to know what kind of a job you would do. And I said, of course, I thought you would do a great job on the research and writing angles, because you had done research and writing for me.”
She lit up and inhaled.
“And?” asked Watson.
“And he sorta said, ‘Yeah, but what if Jimmy Whitlow had really done it? Would Joe still be all fired up on the con law issues? Would he still go the extra mile on the research if there was some evidence about how maybe Jimmy Whitlow had …’ ”
“Killed a black guy because he hates black people,” said Watson, feeling his face get hot.
“Joey,” she pleaded. “He was probably just talking about the killing part or the militia business. I got no idea! I’m every bit as much in the dark on this as you. I thought the Eagle Scouts were paying us! Like I said, I don’t ask money questions. Buck’s pulling some shit. Or your client is pulling some shit. Or the Eagle boys are pulling some shit. All I told Buck was that maybe you wouldn’t be working in a place like that if you had more money, which would give you a choice in the matter.”
“You told them I could be bought?”
“I told them you’d probably rather be doing something else. Criminal law. Isn’t that what you told me? Didn’t we used to talk about that? Before the wife took charge of your career?”
He felt a shadow fall somewhere behind his eyes.
“Whoops,” she said. “That was not what I meant to say.”
“Who’s
them
and why didn’t you tell me about
them
before?”
“Them who?” she said. “You think I know? It ain’t them, apparently. It’s fucking Buck. Buck is fucking me. He’s fucking you. The only person he ain’t fucking as near as I can tell is Jimmy Whitlow. I didn’t know anything about any missing briefcase. Maybe Mary Whitlow has the briefcase. Maybe the cops have the briefcase!” she exulted. “By the way, put your feelings aside and let me say, that was pure genius, Joey. I don’t know for sure, but you may have saved your client’s life and damn near resolved the case with one crucial remark. Brilliant!”