by Harlan Coben
Hester Crimstein looked at Win. “It speaks.”
Win smiled.
Myron said, “You think I’m a suspect?”
“Sure, why not? It’s called reasonable doubt, sweet buns. I’m a defense attorney. We’re big on reasonable doubt.”
“Much as I’d like to help, there was a witness to my whereabouts.”
“Who?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Another shrug. “You’re the one who said you wanted to help. Good night.” She looked at Win. “By the way, you’re the perfect man—good-looking and nearly mute.”
“Careful,” Win said to her.
“Why?”
Win pointed at Myron with his thumb. “Any minute now he’s going to turn on the charm and reduce your willpower to rubble.”
She looked at Myron and burst out laughing.
Myron tried again. “So what happened?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m her friend.”
“Yeah, I think you already said that.”
“I’m her best friend. I care about her.”
“Fine. Tomorrow I’ll pass her a note during study hall, find out if she likes you too. Then you can meet at Pop’s and share a soda.”
“That’s not what I—” Myron stopped, gave her the slow, slightly put-out-but-here-to-help smile. Smile 18: the Michael Landon model, except he couldn’t crinkle the eyebrow. “I’d just like to know what happened. You can appreciate that.”
Her face softened, and she nodded. “You went to law school, right?”
“Yes.”
“At Harvard no less.”
“Yes.”
“So maybe you were absent the day they went over a little something we call attorney-client privilege. I can recommend some wonderful books on the subject, if you’d like. Or maybe you can watch any episode of Law & Order. They usually talk about it right before the old DA grouses to Sam Waterston that he’s got no case and should cut a deal.”
So much for charm. “You’re just covering your ass,” Myron said.
She looked behind her and down. Then she frowned. “No easy task, I assure you.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a hotshot attorney.”
She sighed, crossed her arms. “Okay, Myron, let’s hear it. Why am I covering my ass? Why am I not the hotshot attorney you thought I was?”
“Because they didn’t let Esperanza surrender. Because they dragged her in in cuffs. Because they’re holding her overnight instead of getting her through the system in the same day. Why?”
She dropped her hands to her sides. “Good question, Myron. Why do you think?”
“Because someone there doesn’t like her high-profile attorney. Someone in the DA’s office probably has a hard-on for you and is taking it out on your client.”
She nodded. “Good possibility. But I have another one.”
“What?”
“Maybe they don’t like her employer.”
“Me?”
She started for the door. “Do us all a favor, Myron. Stay out of this. Just keep away. And maybe get yourself a lawyer.”
Hester Crimstein spun around and disappeared inside then. Myron turned toward Win. Win was bent at the waist, squinting at Myron’s crotch. “What the hell are you doing?”
Still squinting. “I wanted to see if she left you with even a sliver of a testicle.”
“Very funny. What do you think she meant about them not liking her employer?”
“Not a clue,” Win said. Then: “You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“What?”
“For your charm’s seemingly lackluster performance. You forgot a crucial component in all this.”
“That being?”
“Ms. Crimstein had an affair with Esperanza.”
Myron saw where he was going with this. “Of course. She must be a lesbian.”
“Precisely. It’s the only rational explanation for her ability to resist you.”
“That, or a really bizarre paranormal event.”
Win nodded. They started walking down Central Park West.
“This is also further proof of a very frightening adage,” Win said.
“What’s that?”
“Most women you encounter are lesbians.”
Myron nodded. “Almost every one.”
CHAPTER
6
They walked the two blocks to Win’s place, watched a little television, went to bed. Myron lay in the dark exhausted, but sleep remained elusive. He thought about Jessica. Then he tried to think about Brenda, but the automatic defense mechanism deflected that one. Still too raw. And he thought about Terese. She was alone on that island tonight for the first time. During the day the island’s solitude was peaceful and quiet and welcome; at night the solitude felt more like dark isolation, the island’s black walls closing in, silent and cloying as a buried coffin. He and Terese had always slept wrapped in each other’s arms. Now he pictured her lying in that deep blackness alone. And he worried about her. He woke up the next morning at seven. Win was already gone, but he’d scribbled a note that he’d meet up with Myron at the courthouse at nine. Myron grabbed a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, discerned with a digging left hand that Win had already extracted the free toy inside, showered, dressed, checked his watch. Eight o’clock. Plenty of time to reach the courthouse in time.
He took the elevator down and crossed the famed Dakota courtyard. He had just reached the corner of Seventy-second Street and Central Park West when he spotted the three familiar figures. Myron felt his pulse quicken. FJ, short for Frank Junior, was bookended by two huge guys. The two huge guys looked like lab experiments gone very wrong, as if someone had potently mixed genetic glandular excess with anabolic steroids. They wore tank tops and those drawstring weightlifting pants that looked suspiciously like ugly pajama bottoms.
Young FJ silently smiled at Myron with thin lips. He sported a purple-blue suit so shiny it looked like someone had sprayed it with a sealant. FJ didn’t move, didn’t say anything, just smiled at Myron with unblinking eyes and those thin lips.
Today’s word, boys and girls, is reptilian.
FJ finally took a step forward. “Heard you were back in town, Myron.”
Myron bit back a rejoinder—it wasn’t a very cutting one, something about the nice welcoming party—and kept his mouth shut.
“Remember our last conversation?” FJ continued.
“Vaguely.”
“I mentioned something about killing you, right?”
“It might have come up,” Myron said. “I don’t remember. So many tough guys, so many threats.”
The Bookends tried to scowl, but even their faces were overmuscled, and the movement took too much effort. They settled back into the steady frowns and lowered the eyebrows a bit.
“Actually, I was going to carry through with it,” FJ continued. “About a month ago. I followed you out to some graveyard in New Jersey. I even sneaked up behind you with my gun out. Funny thing, no?”
Myron nodded. “Like Henny Youngman wrote it.”
FJ tilted his head. “Don’t you want to know why I didn’t kill you?”
“Because of Win.”
The sound of his name was like a cold glass of water in the faces of both Bookends. The two giants actually stepped back but recovered quickly with a few flexes. FJ remained unruffled. “Win doesn’t scare me,” he said.
“Even the dumbest animal,” Myron said, “has an innate survival mechanism.”
FJ’s eyes met Myron’s. Myron tried to maintain contact, but it was hard. There was nothing behind FJ’s eyes but rot and decay; it was like staring into the broken windows of an abandoned building. “Sticks and stones, Myron. Sticks and stones. I didn’t kill you because, well, you already looked so miserable. It was as though—how to put this?—as though killing you would have been an act of mercy. Like I said before, funny, right?”
“You should consider stand-up,” Myron agreed.
FJ chuckled and waved a we
ll-manicured hand at nothing in particular. “Anyway, bygones. My father and uncle like you, and yes, we see no reason to antagonize Win unnecessarily. They don’t want you dead, so neither do I.”
His father and uncle were Frank and Herman Ache, two of New York’s legendary leading leg breakers. The elder Aches had grown up on the streets, slaughtered more people than the next guy, moved up the ladder. Herman, the older brother and big cheese, was in his sixties now and liked to pretend he wasn’t scum by surrounding himself with the finer things in life: restricted clubs that didn’t want him, nouveau-riche art exhibits, well-coiffed charities, midtown French maître d’s who treated anyone who tipped with less than a Jackson like something they couldn’t scrape off the soles of their shoes. In other words, a higher-income scum. Herman’s younger brother, Frank, the psycho who had produced the equally psycho offspring who now stood in front of Myron, remained what he had always been: an ugly hatchet man who considered K mart velour sweatsuits haute couture. Frank had calmed down over the last few years, but it never quite worked for him. Life, it seemed, had little meaning for Frank Senior without someone to torture or maim.
“What do you want, FJ?”
“I have a business proposition for you.”
“Gee, I just know this is really going to interest me.”
“I want to buy you out.”
The Aches ran TruPro, a rather large sports representation firm. TruPro had always been devoid of any semblance of scruples, recruiting young athletes with as much moral restraint as a politician planning a fund-raiser. But then their owner stacked up debts. Bad debts. The debts that attract the wrong kind of fungus. The appropriately named Ache brothers, the fungi in question, moved in and, like the parasitic entities they were, ate away all signs of life and were now gnawing on the carcass.
Still, being a sports agent was a legit way of making a living, sort of, and Frank Senior, wanting for his son what all fathers wanted, handed young FJ the reins straight out of business school. In theory FJ was supposed to run TruPro as legitimately as possible. His father had killed and maimed so that his son wouldn’t have to—yep, the classic American dream with, granted, a rather deranged twist. But FJ seemed incapable of freeing himself from the old familial shackles. Why was a question that fascinated Myron. Was FJ’s evil genetic, passed down from his father like a prominent nose, or was he, like so many other children, simply trying to gain his father’s acceptance by proving the acorn could be as ferociously psychotic as the oak?
Nature or nurture. The argument rages on.
“MB SportsReps is not for sale,” Myron said.
“I think you’re being foolish.”
Myron nodded. “I’ll file that under ‘One Day I Might Even Care.’”
The Bookends sort of grumbled, took a step forward, and cracked their necks in unison. Myron pointed to one, then the other. “Who does your choreography?”
They wanted to be insulted—you could just tell—except neither one of them knew what the word choreography meant.
FJ asked, “Do you know how many clients MB SportsReps lost in the last few weeks?”
“A lot?”
“I’d say a quarter of your list. A couple of them went with us.”
Myron whistled, feigned nonchalant, but he was not happy to hear this. “I’ll get them back.”
“You think so?” FJ again smiled the reptilian smile; Myron almost expected a forked tongue to dart out between his lips. “Do you know how many more are going to leave when they hear about Esperanza’s arrest?”
“A lot?”
“You’ll be lucky to have one left.”
“Hey, then I’ll be like Jerry Maguire. Did you see that movie? Show me the money? I love black people?” Myron gave FJ his best Tom Cruise earnest. “You. Complete. Me.”
FJ remained cool. “I’m willing to be generous, Myron.”
“I’m sure you are, FJ, but the answer is still no.”
“I don’t care how clean your rep used to be. Nobody can survive the sort of money scandal you’re about to go through.”
It wasn’t a money scandal, but Myron was not in the mood to issue corrections. “Are we finished, FJ?”
“Sure.” FJ gave him one last scaly smile. The smile seemed to jump off his face, crawl toward Myron, and then slither its way up his back. “But why don’t we get together and have lunch?”
“Any time,” Myron said. “You have a cellular?”
“Of course.”
“Call my partner right away and set it up.”
“Isn’t she in jail?”
Myron snapped his fingers. “Drat.”
FJ found that amusing. “I mentioned that some of your old clients are now using my services.”
“So you did.”
“If you contact any of them”—he paused, thought it over—“I’d feel obliged to retaliate. Do I make myself clear?”
FJ was maybe twenty-five years old, less than a year out of Harvard Business School. He had gone undergrad to Princeton. Smart kid. Or powerful father. Either way, rumor had it that when a Princeton professor was about to accuse FJ of plagiarism, the professor disappeared and only his tongue was found—on the pillow of another professor who had considered leveling the same charges.
“Crystal, FJ.”
“Great, Myron. Then we’ll talk again.”
If Myron still had his tongue.
The three men slid into their car and drove off without another word. Myron slowed his heart rate and checked his watch. Court time.
CHAPTER
7
The courtroom in Hackensack looked very much like the ones you see on television. Shows like The Practice and Law & Order and even Judge Judy capture the physical appearance pretty well. They can’t of course capture the essence emanating from the little things: the faint, underlying stench of fear-induced sweat, the overuse of disinfectant, the slightly sticky feel to all the benches and tables and handrails—what Myron liked to call the ooze factors.
Myron had his checkbook ready so bail could be posted immediately. He and Win had gone over it last night and figured the judge would come in around fifty to seventy-five grand. Esperanza had no record and a steady job. Those factors would play in her favor. If the money was higher, no problem. Myron’s pockets might be only semideep, but Win’s net worth was on par with the GNP of a small European country.
There were droves of reporters parked outside, tons of vans with wrapped cables and satellite dishes, and of course phallic antennas, stretching toward the heavens as though in search of the elusive god of higher ratings. Court TV was there. News 2 New York. ABC News. CNN. Eyewitness News. Every city in every region of the country had an Eyewitness News. Why? What was so appealing about that name? There were also the new sleazoid TV shows, like Hard Copy, Access Hollywood, Current Affair, though the distinction between them and the local news was becoming murky to the point of nonexistent. Hey, at least Hard Copy and the like were somewhat honest about the fact that they served no redeeming social value. And they didn’t subject you to weathermen.
A couple of reporters recognized Myron and called out. Myron put on his game face—serious, unyielding, concerned, confident—and no-commented his way through them. When he entered the courtroom, he spotted Big Cyndi first—no surprise since she stuck out like Louis Farrakhan at B’nai B’rith. She was jammed into the aisle of a row empty except for Win. Not unusual. If you wanted to save seats, send Big Cyndi; people did not relish excusing themselves to squeeze past her. Most opted to stand. Or go home even.
Myron slid into Big Cyndi’s row, actually high-stepping over two knees that looked like batting helmets, and sat between his friends.
Big Cyndi had not changed from last night or even washed up. The steady rain had rinsed out some of the hair dye; purple and yellow streaks had dried on the front and back of her neck. Her makeup, always applied in amounts thick enough to make a plaster bust, had also suffered under the rain’s onslaught, her face now resembling multicolor
ed menorah candles left too long in the sun.
In some major cities, murder arraignments were commonplace and handled in factory-line fashion. Not so here in Hackensack. This was big time—a murder case involving a celebrity. There would be no rush.
The bailiff started calling cases.
“I had a visitor this morning,” Myron whispered to Win.
“Oh?”
“FJ and two goons.”
“Ah,” Win said. “Was the cover boy for Modern Mobster voicing his usual medley of colorful threats?”
“Yes.”
Win almost smiled. “We should kill him.”
“No.”
“You’re just putting off the inevitable.”
“He’s Frank Ache’s son, Win. You just don’t kill Frank Ache’s son.”
“I see. Then you’d rather kill somebody from a better family?”
Win logic. It made sense in the scariest way possible. “Let’s just see how it plays out, okay?”
“Don’t put off until tomorrow what must be exterminated today.”
Myron nodded. “You should write one of those life-instruction books.”
They fell into silence. Cases went by—a breaking and entering, a couple of assaults, too many car thefts. Every suspect looked young, guilty, and angry. Always scowling. Tough guys. Myron tried not to make a face, tried to remember innocent until proven guilty, tried to remember that Esperanza too was a suspect. But it didn’t help much.
Finally Myron saw Hester Crimstein sweep into the courtroom, decked out in her best professional civvies: a sleek beige suit, cream blouse, and a tad overcoiffed, over-frosted hair. She took her spot at the defense table, and the room fell silent. Two guards led Esperanza through an open door. Myron saw her, and something akin to a mule kicked him in the chest.
Esperanza was dressed in a court-issued fluorescent orange jumpsuit. Forget gray or stripes—if a prisoner wanted to escape, he was going to stick out like a neon light in a monastery. Her hands were cuffed in front of her. Myron knew that Esperanza was petite—maybe five-two, a hundred pounds—but he had never seen her look so small. She kept her head high, defiant. Classic Esperanza. If she was afraid, she wasn’t showing it.
