Pardon the Ravens

by Alan Hruska

  “Well, it’s in Syosset.”

  “That’s a pretty good drive from here.”

  “I’ve had worse,” says Sam, settling into a lounger.

  “What about the work itself?”

  “It’s okay. Security systems, mainly. Burglar alarms, smoke detectors, you know the kind of things.”

  “You do the installations yourself?”

  “We have crews.”

  “We?”

  “There’s a woman who owns it.”

  “The company?”

  “Right.”

  “And what’s she like?”

  “Seems decent enough.”

  “Age?”

  “Probably a little younger than me.”

  “Married?”

  “A widow.”

  “Good-looking?”

  “A handsome woman, yes.”

  Alec gives him a look.

  Sam gives one laugh. “Right,” he says.

  They lapse into silence.

  Sam says, “Your work?”

  “I’ve got a new case.”

  “Oh yeah? Big one?”

  “Pretty big, yeah.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Huge swindle. Diesel oil. Guy stole more than a billion dollars’ worth.”

  “Oh, yeah, heard about that. That yours?”

  “Well, the firm’s.”

  “Diesel. Whatta you know. And who you representing?”

  “The company he stole it from. And its directors.”

  “The big shots.”

  “You could say.”

  “They want their money back?”

  “It’s more complicated.”

  “Yeah. Would be. So you’ll be working those crazy hours again.”

  “Yeah,” Alec says. “No doubt.”

  Silence.

  Sam says, “There’s a basketball game on tonight.”

  “That right?”

  “Wanna take a look?”

  “Sure.”

  Sam flips on the set, finds the right channel. They watch for a while until Alec looks at his watch.

  “When’s your train?” Sam asks.

  “I’ve got a half hour.”

  “Half hour,” says Sam. “Whatta you know.” And they continue watching.

  TWENTY

  Mac and Alec enter one of the larger courtrooms in the State Courthouse on Foley Square. They’re immediately mobbed by more than twenty lawyers serving them with affidavits.

  Taking a seat on a back bench, Alec asks, “Want me to try to read these? Before the judge comes in?”

  “That pile of recyclable horseshit?” says Mac. “Don’t waste your time.”

  Alec looks about the spacious, once-elegant room. Paint peels from the ceiling; benches wobble out of their fastenings; once-carpeted floors gather grime on an institutional vinyl. There then appears through the doors a towering gray-haired figure to whom all eyes swing. He stands there a moment with a matinee-idol tilt to his aquiline nose and an attitude of proprietorship.

  “Si Rosenkranz?” Alec asks Mac in a whisper.

  “The one and only.”

  The other lawyers surge to greet him with the homage shown to a mafia boss. Si chats with each group briefly and moves on. He holds up fingers, shakes hands, sparks laughs with the kind of remarks deemed funny only when uttered by very important people.

  Alec again leans over to Mac. “He’s making deals?”

  “Splitting the pie, baby. Doling out shares of the fee. I told you not to waste time with those affidavits.”

  A sharp knock quiets the room. The bailiff springs to his feet. “Hear ye, hear ye! All rise! The Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, is now in session, the Honorable Jacob Kaye presiding. Draw near, and ye shall be heard.”

  To the chant, the judge streams in, black robe swishing, equine face lined vertically with discontent. Assuming the bench, he peers into the assemblage until spotting someone familiar. “Mr. Rosenkranz?” he says in reedy Bronx tones.

  Si stands decorously. “Yes, your Honor?”

  The judge lifts a stack of affidavits, then allows them to fall with a thud. “I have here a considerable quantity of paper.”

  “You may put it aside, your Honor.”

  “Twenty-two, no, twenty-three affidavits. Each proclaiming the lawyer who wrote it to be the model of all men and uniquely qualified to be lead counsel in this action.”

  “All no doubt true,” Si says.

  “But you have arrived at an accommodation?”

  “We have, your Honor.”

  “In which you will be lead counsel.”

  “I have that honor, your Honor. And we will be filing a new, consolidated complaint within three weeks.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” the jurist says. “Defense counsel wish to be heard? Mr. Macalister?”

  Mac stands. “Not at this time, your Honor.”

  A beefy man with a shaven head rises from the first row. One notices the suit. It could have been shaped to his form only by dint of many long fittings. “Nothing to add at this time, your Honor,” he says with a soft Germanic burr. “We’ll await the amended pleading.”

  “And what is your role, Mr. Shilling?” Judge Kaye asks.

  “I’ve been retained by U.S. Safety as special counsel—to achieve a settlement with the banks, who, as your Honor knows, now hold the warehouse receipts originally given to Mr. Martini in exchange for oil. I’ve also been asked by the company to consult on this litigation.”

  Judge Kaye looks amused. “You are to advise U.S. Safety on Mr. Macalister’s handling of the case?”

  “A second opinion, your Honor. So to speak.”

  “How nice for Mr. Macalister. Another lawyer right at his back.” Getting up, the judge looks sharply at the court reporter. “That was off the record.”

  “All rise!” sings the bailiff as the jurist escapes.

  Coming up the aisle, Si Rosenkranz leans in toward Macalister. “Mac, let’s talk.”

  The two older lawyers and Alec wind their way down a back hall and troop into an empty jury room, a low-ceilinged box with a long, battered table and twelve chairs. Mac goes into the lavatory but retreats quickly. “Christ! Nothing works in this place anymore. First the judges go, then the toilets.”

  “You think anything ever worked here?” Si says.

  “Well, you know, you hear stories—” Mac gets a faraway look—“of real judges. Evenhanded. Smart. Dispensing justice like it was meant to be—in great rooms of which these are the mere ruins.”

  “A myth,” scoffs Rosenkranz.

  “I know,” Mac says. “Pretty story, though.”

  Si turns to Alec. “You’re the kid who got all that publicity in that Pharmex-Biogram price-fixing case?”

  Mac does the belated introductions. “Alec Brno. Simon Rosenkranz.”

  They shake hands, then Si, taking one side of the table, gestures for the others to sit across from him. It’s a time-worn ritual, Rosenkranz’s play, but there are different ways for their respective roles to be enacted. “So tell me, Mac,” says Si, “after you get Shilling out of your hair, what do you plan to do with this case?”

  “Me? It’s your fucking case. I didn’t bring it.”

  “And I did. Which reminds me. Where’s the thanks?”

  Si turns to Alec. “With lawyers I don’t like? I give warning, ‘I’m never gonna sue your clients again.’ Scares ’em shitless. They’d fucking starve.” Si appreciates his own humor with a rheumy guffaw. “Okay, Mac. Seriously. Whatta you gonna do with this case?”

  “Try it, I expect.”

  “You’re a lot smarter than that.”

  “I’m just a big dumb jock from Texas.”

  “I wish,” Si says. “Look. Let me tell you what we have here, okay?”

  “You gonna show your hand?” Macalister says. “Lay it on me, boy. You have my full attention.”

  Si gives a sympathetic glance to Alec. “What we have here is an unforgi
vable mess, okay? A major financial institution exposing itself to a one-point-two-billion-dollar risk—for the sake of what? A few million dollars in warehousing fees? I mean, Jesus!”

  He looks at both men for effect; neither shows anything, though Alec’s thinking, The jury’ll love this guy!

  “But not to worry, right?” Si continues. “Safe as houses. A ton of the company’s paper—warehouse receipts, as good as money—is turned over to a real honorable guy. Sal Martini. Fresh from the slammer. What was the man in for? Fraud! Scheme just like this one.”

  Si gives Mac and Alec a moment to appreciate the humor. “So here’s this white-shoe company,” he continues, “with its white-shoe board in front of an immigrant jury. And who’s the man on the spot, the guy the company gets to run the warehousing business? An Ivy League twit named Whitman Poole, who’s recently been fired from two other jobs. It’s Poole who gives this ex-con Martini more than one billion dollars in warehouse receipts for phantom barrels of oil. You think the jury’s not gonna think that Poole was reckless? And that your board shouldn’t be held responsible for letting him do it?” He smiles at Macalister, who gives nothing back. Alec, now standing, is peering out the one window in the room, over the rooftops of Chinatown.

  “Oh, and Alec,” Rosenkranz says. “You’ll appreciate this. You won that price-fixing case by proving that a company CEO hired a shithead named Carl Raffon? I’m going to win this case the same way—on top of everything else I’ve got. Because guess who U.S. Safety hired to check out the security in Bayonne? You got it! Same shithead! Carl Raffon!” Si’s phlegm-filled laugh is almost infectious. “I love irony! I really do!”

  Coming from the courthouse, Alec says, “You know what I’m thinking?”

  Mac, not breaking stride, shows Alec a pained smirk. “Probably.”

  “Guy running that warehouse business—Whitman Poole—wasn’t just stupid.”

  “Nobody,” says Mac, “is that stupid.”

  “Which is how we win,” Alec says.

  “Which is how we win. We may be legally responsible for the stupidity of our managers, but not for their dishonesty.”

  “So how do we prove it? That Poole was taking?”

  “We call Harvey,” Mac says. “Put him on two tracks right away: your buddy Raffon, the wiretapper; and anybody around Sal Martini—starting with his lawyer, the lawyer’s secretary, etcetera. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Abigail says, “Turn right onto Goose Hollow Road,” and the Ford pickup, slowing barely, swerves sharply, throwing her up against him.

  “Little more notice would be good,” Sam says, steadying the vehicle on the right-hand side of the road. He stubs out a cigarette in an ashtray already bulging with butts.

  “Yeah, well, I just saw it,” she says.

  “So what’s the name of the family we’re seeing?” On the narrow winding road, he’s doing about twenty-five miles an hour, but the old catalogues on the floor slide back and forth with each shift in direction.

  “It’s a big estate, half mile from here.”

  “You don’t want to tell me the name?”

  “Anwar,” she says, bending to collect the catalogues. She stacks them in her lap, distractedly and unnecessarily. “The family name is Anwar.”

  “You’re kidding,” he says.

  “You know them?” Her tone seems deliberately light.

  “I know a Phil Anwar, at least of him.”

  “That’s the guy.”

  Takes him a moment.

  “Jesus, Abby.”

  “He’s very polite.”

  “You work for the mob?”

  “Turn right on Sycamore. Plenty of notice this time. Three blocks from here. And he’s not even home.”

  “You think that matters?”

  “Look. I’m not the D.A. The man needs a burglar alarm, I put it in.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What more?”

  “How the hell did you get involved with this guy in the first place? Didn’t you know who he was?”

  She takes time before answering. “In the beginning, we almost went under. Bank had called the loan, we didn’t have the money. There are a lot of home security businesses on the Island. At least there were then. Phil showed up. He’s not going to go to one of the big companies. He trusted us more. Maybe it was the Italian name. Got along with my husband.”

  “One customer? That saved your business?”

  “He’s got a lot of friends.”

  Sam senses something’s wrong here, or missing, and she sees that.

  “All right,” she says, “I might as well tell you. I get a lot of work from these families.”

  “Enough to pay off the bank loan?”

  “I haven’t paid off the bank loan.”

  “But the bank just dropped its demand.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When Anwar became your customer.”

  “That’s right.”

  Sam doesn’t even like the sound of her voice now. It’s brittle. He says, “He runs the dockworkers’ local I left.”

  “I know. He know you?”

  “Never met the man.”

  “So it’s okay.”

  “You think it’s okay?”

  “It’ll do.”

  “I don’t love it,” he says, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “I don’t love a lot of things.”

  “That’s great,” he says sourly.

  “You gotta love everything you do?”

  “We’re talking low-lifes here.”

  “Lotta people hate ’em,” she says. “That’s why they need security systems.”

  He’s thinking hard. “What aren’t you telling me, Abby?”

  “Nothing,” she says with resentment.

  “It’s dangerous, working for these people.”

  “You don’t have to do these jobs, Sam.”

  “Oh right. Just leave you out there.”

  “We’re civilians to these people. They don’t mess with civilians.”

  “Unless you pick something up,” he says. “Like information.”

  “Well, we’ll try not to do that.”

  “While getting into their telephone lines to plug in our systems.”

  Sam pulls up at the front gate, and they sit there for a moment.

  He asks, “How tight was your husband with this group?”

  “A little business socializing, that’s all.”

  “Parties? He take you?”

  “No. Fishing trips sometimes.”

  “What?”

  “Stop, Sam!”

  “Your husband died on a fishing trip!”

  “Jesus! You’re absolutely paranoid. You can’t imagine how solicitous Phil was.”

  “Really. And was there some inquiry?”

  “Of course. The cops were all over it. If there was any possibility of what you’re thinking—”

  “Would have come out? How? Anyone else on that trip other than mobsters?”

  They sit in more silence.

  “You wanna just drop me off?” she says.

  “What I wanna do is keep going. Away from here. With you in the truck.”

  “I can’t do that, Sam.”

  “Right,” he says wearily.

  She gets out to open the gate, like the opening of a box: one named for a more famous—and mythological—female.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Nighttime at the firm. Most of the associates have yet to leave. The desk and every surface of Alec’s single-windowed office are littered with open case books and documents. When the phone rings, he has to find it from beneath some papers. “Brno.”

  Harvey Grand stands in an unlit phone booth in Queens. “All right, Alec, here’s what’s happening. Carl Raffon? There’s probably something there. So far he’s ducking me—which means he’s scared and doesn’t want to talk. I’ll stay on that, of course. The other guy—Sal Martini’s lawyer—is an individual practitioner on Duane Street, name
of Aaron Weinfeld. This man’s gone. Poof. Vanished. Doubtful Aaron’s still among the living.” He pauses to let a derelict weave by.

  “Harvey?”

  “His office manager, however? A twenty-four-year-old named Carrie Madigan? Who you’ve met. Still alive, if barely. She’s a junkie.”

  “A drug addict? The girl you were with in court last week?”

  “Two arrests for possession, which were dropped, and two federal charges for transportation with intent to sell, which are still pending. The U.S. Attorney seems to be taking a particular interest in her. I’m a couple of blocks from her building now, a three-family in Bayswater. She, however, ain’t there. Guy who lives upstairs from her thinks she’s staying with a friend of hers, who this guy once dated. A Thelma Rosbach, who lives at 1264 Grand Concourse in the Bronx. No apartment number. All I could get was fourth floor.”

  “Have you called Mac?”

  Harvey’s laugh is a rumble.

  “It’s only nine,” Alec says.

  “How long have you worked for him?”

  “You’re telling me what? He’s asleep?” Alec pauses. “Blind drunk?”

  “Let’s just say, a conversation with Mac at this hour would not be productive. Or remembered.”

  “All right,” Alec says. “I’ll meet you up there.”

  Harvey hesitates. “We could let it go until the morning.”

  “You’re kidding, right? We’ve got a potential key witness to a billion-dollar swindle who’s floating around the drug pits of the city—could OD or get killed any second—and you think we can wait?”

  “Killed?” muses Harvey. “If they—whoever they are—wanted her dead, she’d be gone by now.”

  “Like Weinfeld,” Alec says.

  “I’m still looking for him.”

  “I’m going up there,” Alec says.

  “I’ll pick you up, then,” says Harvey.

  “No, look. On second thought, you’re in the ass end of Queens—”

  “Ass end? What do you know about where I am?”

  “I grew up around there, Harvey.”

  “Oh… really.”

  “I’m on my way. You go home. I’ll call, if I get something.”