Bad lawyer, p.16
Bad Lawyer, page 16
The wind hit me like a slap and I ducked my head instinctively, pulling my exposed neck down into the collar of my coat. Knapp nodded, smiled, turned the flashlight to the mouth of the alley.
“Way I figure it,” he said, “Talbot was shot somewhere else and ran into the alley to get away. You see this here?” His light flashed to a black pool. “That’s blood.” The light swung forward. “There’s more of it, here and here.” He was walking now, swinging the flashlight from side to side as he went. “That garbage can was knocked down when I got here. Most likely, he stumbled against it. There’s a palm print on the wall where he must’ve leaned. See the blood?”
As we moved forward, as Knapp rattled on and Brown watched me from behind, I felt myself tightening down. There’d been times in my life when I’d lived on defiance alone, on the pure refusal to submit. In that space, anger was sustenance, misery a badge of honor. Caleb would have understood, of course. Julie as well. Knapp, on the other hand, was after something entirely different. He wanted a murderer.
“Well, this is as far as he got.”
My head jerked up, following the beam of the flashlight as it swung quickly forward. I picked out the skeleton of a rusted shopping cart, a tilted, doorless refrigerator, a stack of paint cans against the wall. But I didn’t see Caleb, even when I looked at the dark circle in the center of the light.
“You wanna get a little closer, Mr. Kaplan? We gotta be sure it’s really your roommate here.”
What I wanted to do was turn and run, hit the nearest bar, drain a bottle of scotch. And I might have done it, too, if Knapp and his partner weren’t there to witness my shame. I flashed back to my grandfather, seeing his tiny round eyes in the darkness, his shy, sincere smile. “In dem days, Sidney, we was all tough guys. We had’a be.”
I stepped forward, sliding my feet as if on skis. Caleb was wearing a black coat, lying in a puddle of black blood; his round body seemed to flow into the larger shadow and for a moment I couldn’t locate a top and bottom. I could find neither his head nor his feet.
“Way I see it,” Knapp said, crossing the blood with the flashlight beam, “your buddy musta bled out. Exsanguinated. That’s what the ME will say in court. Exsanguinated.”
I slid up next to him, looked straight down his arm at Caleb’s unmarked features. Caleb was lying on his side, with his open left eye locked on his hand which lay, palm up, in front of his face. I wanted to touch him, felt it was somehow expected, but Detective Brown, as if he’d been lying in wait, yanked me back to reality.
“The guy’s frozen. Gotta be. Like a rock. The ME’s gonna have to nuke him in a microwave before they do the autopsy.”
They took me downtown, from the crime scene on 185th Street and Audubon Avenue, to the headquarters of the Manhattan North homicide squad on West 52nd Street. It was still early, barely ten o’clock, and the Upper West Side was just gearing up for its nightly run at oblivion. As we drove (and while Sgt. Knapp groused to his partner about a woman named Iris, a cop groupie who hung at his favorite bar, but wouldn’t give him the time of day) I stared into the windows of the bars and the nightclubs, drawn to the shadows, the glow of neon, the imagined hum of sexually charged conversation.
For most of my life, I’d walked into bars like an animal in search of a den. The best ones enveloped you, smothered you in quiet and safety, in the mixed odors of alcohol and tobacco, in the protective cloak of your personal fantasy. I could be whatever I wanted, even a big shot lawyer who won cases by day, partied until the break of dawn, never looked back to see who or what was gaining on him. Now, I’m not sure there was ever a time when I could sustain that life, that I wouldn’t have been a better (though less amusing) attorney if I’d stayed at home with a cup of cocoa.
They gave me a mug of coffee after we settled into chairs around Knapp’s desk, and offered me an oozing jelly doughnut which I refused. As before, Knapp asked most of the questions while his partner fixed me with what was surely meant to be an intimidating glare. Unfortunately, the tinted glasses only drew attention to the watery, allergic eyes behind them, so that Brown’s gaze had a tentative, almost pleading quality to it.
“Awright.” Knapp took a microcassette recorder from a desk drawer, held it up for my inspection. “Just for the record, this interview is being recorded.” Speaking very clearly, very slowly, he stated the day, the date, and the time, then my name, his own, his partner’s.
After the first hour, Brown left the room to check my alibi and I stopped paying attention. I’d already established the most important point, that my time was accounted for, and I wasn’t going to mention Guzman or his threats, not until I knew more about Julie’s situation. In truth, I was still holding out hope. Thinking maybe she’d gone out to interview a witness, or to visit an old lover. Maybe there was a note back at the apartment, stuck into the hall mirror, the proper place for notes in our household. Or maybe Julie was there now, afraid for her family, wondering where I was.
Brown was in a much better mood when he returned. “Hey, good news, counselor. I checked out your alibi and you come up clean as a whistle.” He bit into a doughnut, swallowed. “Yeah, I called that reporter, Morris. She says you were with her every minute. Course, bein’ as the public has the right to know, I had’a tell her what happened to ya buddy. She’s headin’ uptown with a photographer even as we speak.”
I sat down, shrugged my shoulders. “Is there something else we have to do here?”
He took me back over the same ground: what were Caleb’s duties, what was he working on when I left the office, did he keep a log of his activities, did I have any clients or witnesses who lived in Washington Heights, why didn’t I want to help the police find my roommate’s killer?
“Maybe what I should do,” he said after thirty minutes of verbal sparring, “is hold you as a material witness while I get a warrant, search your office.”
It was so stupid, I didn’t bother to reply directly. “The problem with cops is that they only have room in their heads for one idea at a time. You have no reason to believe that …” I hesitated, unable, for a moment, to say his name. “… that Caleb Talbot’s presence on 185th Street was work related. Maybe he was up there visiting a friend, maybe he was the victim of a street mugger, maybe your line of inquiry is pure bullshit.” I took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one up. “Better get out the Visine, Brown,” I told Knapp’s partner when he protested. “You want me to stay, I gotta access my nicotine delivery system.”
In the end, I promised to go through Caleb’s desk (this after refusing Knapp the same privilege on the grounds of client confidentiality), and pass along any piece of information specifically related to the day’s activities. I also gave them Caleb’s lover, Ettamae Harris, who they were going to find sooner or later. Ettamae lived in Harlem, the neighborhood directly south of Washington Heights.
“What I’m gonna do,” I told him as I stood up, “is call Ettamae, tell her what happened. And what I’m hoping is you’ll let me notify her before you knock on her door.”
“Hey, no problem,” Knapp said. “Everybody knows me, knows I’m a sensitive guy.”
I walked into a dark empty apartment and went directly to the phone in my office. I was determined to put it simply, get it over with: “Ettamae, Caleb’s dead.” But when she picked up, when I heard her sleepy, Southern voice mutter a querulous, “Helloooo,” I couldn’t get past the first word.
“Ettamae …” Again, something in my chest, some previously undiscovered organ, squeezed into a tight ball. My eyes filled, overflowed, my nose as well. I heard my own grunts—“Uh, uh, uh”—from so great a distance I couldn’t be sure I was making the sound. Nor, for a moment, when Ettamae’s wail exploded in my ear, was I sure the cry hadn’t come from my own throat.
Eventually, I managed to convey the two essential facts: dead and murdered. Eventually, Ettamae decided that she would inform the family. Eventually, I agreed to deal with the ME’s office, to retrieve the body after the autopsy, to have Caleb’s butchered remains transported to an unnamed funeral home.
Then I was alone, sitting in my swivel chair, the smoke from a cigarette spiraling upward, from control into chaos. I heard a siren outside my window, soft at first, then louder, more intrusive, as it came up Third Avenue. Though it might easily be coming from a fire engine or a police cruiser, I imagined it an ambulance, imagined Caleb’s body inside, still dressed, still bloody, in the final stage of its journey from an uptown alley to the morgue a few blocks away.
I’m not sure how long I sat there, lighting one cigarette after another, before the phone rang. I know I didn’t retrieve the messages on the answering machine, though I’m not sure why. Maybe I just wanted a little space, a few minutes of zombie calm before I began tilting at the windmill of New York violence.
The first call was from Phoebe Morris. Always the journalist, the consummate professional, she wanted my reaction to Caleb’s death. I refused, told her I wasn’t ready to make a statement, hung up when she persisted. The second, third, and fourth calls, which followed in quick succession, were from various television and print journalists whose names and affiliations were forgotten before they were off the line.
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.
Twenty
“HEY, 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’ youself 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.
