Bad Lawyer (21 page)

The fifth call, from Elizado Guzman, the only one I’d been expecting, was the only one that shocked me. I remember coming up out of the chair, pulling the phone off the table, being seized by a hatred so pure as to be actually cleansing.

“H
EY,
SEÑOR
KAPLAN, WHERE
you been? I’m tryin’ ta contac’ you all fuckin’ night.” His voice was actually gleeful, as if he’d pulled off a great practical joke. “You shouldn’ be keepin’ so late hours when you gotta work tomorrow. It’s gonna fuck you up.”

I watched the red light on the answering machine blink for a minute, watched the spools as they pulled tape across the heads, finally asked, “Why did you do it, Elizado? I thought we had a deal.”

“You know,
Señor
Kaplan,” he responded without hesitation, “I was also thinkin’ tha’ same shit. Tha’s why I’m takin’ it so hard when your peoples come up here messin’ in my business. Hey,
maricon
, tha’ was no part’a no deal.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear, took a deep breath. It was the basic lie, the one I’d been hearing on the lips of my criminal clients for most of my career. Though it had any number of variants, the lie always supported the same conclusions: don’t blame me; it wasn’t my fault. And I’m not sorry, either.

“Where are you, man? I don’ hear you.”

I put the phone to my ear, said, “Tell me what you want.”

“You secretary,
Señor
Kaplan, she agree to hang with us ’til you pay up your debt.” He hesitated briefly. “Course, I’m no sayin’ ezackly where she is. But she is definitely havin’ a good time.”

“Can I speak to her?” I was consciously avoiding the use of Julie’s name, was afraid of another breakdown.

“Oh, man, why you always makin’ troubles?”

“If I don’t speak to her, how do I know she’s alive?”

“I think wha’ you gotta worry about, man, is keepin’ you
self
alive. I’m gonna call you up in your office at six o’clock tomorrow night, see how you doin’. Meantimes, have a nice day.”

“Elizado, if I don’t speak to her, you can take your threats and stick them up your ass.
Comprende
?”

I hung up, waited for him to call back. When he didn’t, I lit a cigarette, dug the Slipper’s number out of my Rolodex. Benny Levine was there, of course, still conducting business despite his pending indictment. He listened to my story, muttering, “No shit, no shit,” as I went along. When I finished, he said, “See what I told ya? About these guys bein’ animals? I had a meet set up for the day after tomorrow, but this fuckin’ spic, he couldn’t wait forty-eight hours.”

I cut him off before he could work up a head of steam, dragged him back to the problem at hand. If I could somehow satisfy Guzman, Julie might still be saved. “What I need now is money. A loan, at the usual rates.”

“How much?”

“A hundred thousand, Benny. Between that and what I have in the bank, I can swing it.” I didn’t add, If Julie’s still alive. I kept that one to myself.

“I’ll make a few calls, see what’s what, get back to you in the morning,” he finally said. “But don’t be expectin’ no miracles.”

I remember falling asleep that night, though I don’t recall when. Only that I woke up in a chair in Julie’s room, the window was open slightly and a pair of light green curtains were fluttering in a very cold breeze. Outside, the pre-dawn sky was pale gray and flat, as if somebody had pressed a sheet of tin across the window frame. The net effect was cinematic ghostly, and the insistent ring of my doorbell, in those first moments of consciousness, seemed like the wail of a lost spirit.

I opened the door to find Phoebe Morris standing in the hallway. She was carrying New York’s three tabloids beneath her arm and she offered them to me without saying a word. I accepted her gift, thanked her, then closed the door in her face. To her credit, she didn’t ring the bell again.

At ten o’clock, Priscilla called from the bowels of the Rose Singer Jail on Rikers Island to offer condolences. We were, the both of us, constrained, knowing the DOC might well be monitoring the call. I think she wanted to tell me that it wasn’t her fault, but I refused to respond to her hints. Instead, I told her I’d be up to see her in a couple of days, that her defense would go forward, was going forward even as we spoke.

After I hung up, I went into the kitchen, made a pot of coffee, sat down at the table with a pad and pencil. An hour later, I’d compiled a list that raised as many questions as it answered:

1. Priscilla chooses a lawyer she has to pay instead of the free lawyer offered by the Women’s Council.

2. Priscilla has no money to pay this lawyer, and her mother, who has resources, refuses to finance a serious defense.

3. Priscilla’s apartment is burglarized.

4. Priscilla takes protective custody.

5. Thelma disappears.

6. Sid is threatened.

7. Caleb dies.

Beneath this list (and a mass of cross-outs) I’d written a series of questions. Why was there cocaine in the apartment when the cops arrived? How advanced was Byron’s liver disease at the time he was killed? Why is Priscilla so confident? What does it mean to be crushed? What does it mean to be a prisoner? How does helplessness actually feel? Can you be helpless and powerful at the same time?

As I said, my work created as many questions as it answered, questions that could only resolve themselves over time and with a great effort. Still, I knew, even as I listened to Benny Levine’s voice on the phone, that I was now obligated to seek a justice that went far beyond Elizado Guzman. And that in order to seek that justice, I would first have to define it.

“We gotta do a face-to-face, Sid,” Benny explained. “The phone don’t cut it for what you want.”

I agreed to meet him at a Second Avenue coffee shop, hung up, and shrugged into my coat. The phone rang as I unlocked the door, but I ignored it. I wanted to run, to burn off the tension, calm my body the way I’d calmed my emotions. And I might actually have done it, just lumbered off down the street, if I hadn’t met Phoebe Morris in the lobby.

“Please, Sid,” she said, falling into step alongside me, “hear me out. It won’t take a moment.” She grabbed my arm, perhaps by way of precluding a negative response. “I’m not talking about now, okay? You say you can’t talk and I accept that, but later on, after the trial, I want the whole story. Remember, I can help you here.”

We were standing on the sidewalk just outside my building. It was bitterly cold, as it had been for the better part of a week. A relentless wind stung my cheeks, filled my eyes so that Phoebe’s small features seemed about to melt.

“Start with this, Phoebe. Caleb Talbot’s death was in no way related to his professional life. You have this from Sidney Kaplan and …” I hesitated, wiped my eyes with a coat sleeve, cocked a malicious grin. “… and from the cops. From a highly placed source within the NYPD.”

Phoebe stepped away from me, her intensity dropping off in a series of tiny jerks. “And for me?” she asked.

“For you, Phoebe,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “the truth. When it’s all over, you get the truth.” I waited for another nod, then let my hand drop to my side. “And write that I was Caleb Talbot’s partner, not his employer. That he was my friend, that I loved him, that I’ll never stop missing him.”

It was crowded inside the Athenian Coffee Shop on Second Avenue, crowded, overheated, and very noisy. For a moment, coming in from the cold, I was disoriented; I literally couldn’t remember why I’d come. The restaurant was very bright, the Formica walls, counter, and tabletops reflecting the glare from a dozen hanging fixtures. I remember staring at the hostess, a heavy, middle-aged woman in a black dress that was too tight and too short for her years and her body, raising my hands to cup my half-frozen ears.

“One?” the woman repeated. She was holding a stack of menus, pressing them against her chest.

Before I could respond, I spotted Benny Levine half standing in a booth against the back wall. He was waving to me. “Hey, Sid, over here.”

I nodded to the hostess, crossed the room, shook Benny’s hand, dropped onto the bench seat like a sack of potatoes.

“You okay, Sid?” Benny’s smile faded. “You think you’re up for this?”

I took a deep breath, opened the menu lying on the table. “Lemme put it this way, Benny. After yesterday, I don’t think you could surprise me.”

Benny nodded, then sipped at his coffee. “The most I could get for you is twenty-five large, Sid. I asked around, but after what happened, nobody wants to take a chance on you. The twenty-five comes from me alone and it’s all I could spare.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. And even that’s a strain.”

I shrugged my acceptance. “I expect to hear from Guzman around six. You’ll have it then?” With my forty-plus, I could now offer Guzman sixty-five thousand dollars. Maybe it would be enough.

“I’ll be ready, Sid. Whenever you need me.”

The tone of the incoming calls changed during that endless, empty afternoon. People who’d known Caleb began to phone with their condolences. I was caught off guard the first time, as if the solicitous voice on the other end of the line was driving a nail into Caleb’s coffin. As if the muttered sentence, “I’m sorry,” made Caleb somehow more dead.

Everybody wanted to know when and where the funeral would be held. The when, of course, depended on the medical examiner who could, according to law (and if he had the space), hold the body until the end of time. The second question was answered by Ettamae who called just before three. The family, she explained without preamble, was determined to bring Caleb back to Brantley, Alabama, to bury him alongside his parents. I was welcome to come down, join the mourners, even share in the post-burial feast, but the peculiar relationship Caleb and I had developed over the years did not confer rights of any kind.

“I spoke to Miss Vera Benton,” Ettamae explained, “Caleb’s first cousin. I told her about you, Caleb, and Julie. I don’t think she got past the part about roommates.”

“It’s all right, Ettamae.” I could see Caleb’s family spread out on the wall as I spoke, see each and every smiling face, and the small white church in the background of so many of the photographs. “You going?”

“If I can scare up the money.”

“That’s no problem, Ettamae. Caleb had a little cash in a savings account. Not much, about five thousand dollars. He told me if anything happened to him, he wanted you to have it.”

It was a lie, a small act of generosity. Caleb had no money, had, instead, a closet filled with designer clothing.

“Shouldn’t that money go to his kin?”

“It was a joint account, Ettamae, with my name on it, so if you don’t take the money, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to resist temptation.”

The calls tapered off as the afternoon progressed, finally stopped altogether about four. Six o’clock came and went, with no call from Guzman, then seven, then eight. I’d like to report that time slowed down, that the minutes and seconds attained the individuality of descending knives, but I believe what happened is that in some important way, my mind (not to mention my heart) went numb. I know, for sure, that I should at least have called Benny, asked him to stay in place, and I never considered doing so.

If I’d remembered to lock the outer door I might have sat that way forever, a dusty figure in a secondhand chair behind a secondhand desk. As it was, at ten, when Harold Knapp finally strolled into my office, I didn’t jump, didn’t move at all for a moment or two. I recall Knapp slowly unbuttoning his coat to reveal a neatly pressed gray suit, a fresh white shirt and a red tie. His eyes were bright now, the dark shadows beneath them faded to a smoky beige.

“I just come from the scene of a multiple,” he told me. “Up in the Heights.” He took the chair in front of my desk, fixed me with a familiar childish stare. “About a block from where your buddy got hit. Way I read it, the main target was a mutt by the name of Elizado Guzman, but they slaughtered everybody in the apartment. The kids, everybody.”

He stopped abruptly, began to rummage through his pockets, finally produced a business card, one of mine, and tossed it on the desk. “I’m really not supposed to do this, being as the card’s evidence and all, but I thought you might wanna take a look. I mean, it came out of Guzman’s pocket, so it’s gotta be important, right?”

I remember pulling myself up at that point, a long process that began somewhere in my bowels. “What do you want, Knapp?”

He responded, in typical cop fashion, with a question of his own. “How come you’re in the office so late? You got an appointment?”

“The clock’s ticking.” I met and held his stare.

“Nine dead, Kaplan. Four males, three females, two children. I got a fucking right to ask what your card was doin’ in Guzman’s pocket.”

“I don’t know. And I don’t want to know.”

“You don’t wanna know?” His voice jumped a full octave. “And I suppose you don’t wanna know if Julia Gill was one of the victims?”

I think the question was supposed to shake me. After all, I hadn’t told Knapp about Julie being missing. But there were a dozen ways he could’ve learned about Julie, a dozen friends and enemies who’d have been more than happy to tell him. “If she was, I’m sure you’ll let me know.”

Knapp stared at me for a moment, mouth slightly open, eyes empty of all expression. He loathed me, I was sure of it, but he wouldn’t show his feelings. He wouldn’t give me the satisfaction. “Counselor,” he said as he picked up my business card and headed for the door, “I’ll be in touch. Count on it.”

I went for a walk before lunch on the following day, up to Macy’s, where I killed a half hour fingering ties and sport coats, then walked directly back, as if afraid I was going to miss something. The phone was ringing when I unlocked the door of our Third Avenue apartment, but I don’t remember hoping it was Julie, despite understanding that if she wasn’t part of the slaughter, she might well be alive. It wasn’t Julie, of course; it would never be Julie. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Jay Harrison from the
Post
. “On the record, Kaplan,” he said. “What was your business card doing in the pocket of a murdered drug dealer? And what did Elizado Guzman have to do with Caleb Talbot’s death?”