by Alan Hruska
She grabs the grocery bags from him and takes them into the kitchen.
Alec looks for a place to sit down, finally settling on one of those canvas sling contraptions which hammocks him into its sagging depression. He hears activity in the kitchen, water being run, then water running in the bathroom. She emerges. Flash of blue, scrubbed clean, shiny face, forehead cowled with wetness at her hairline. “You look preposterous in that chair,” she says.
He tries to look comfortable. She isn’t fooled and strides off for the coffee. Then imprisons him further by handing him a cup. “Black?”
He takes it and tries to drink, but this is made difficult by the angle at which he is sitting. “Oh, come on,” she says, looking at him impatiently. With one hand she removes the cup; with the other, she pulls him out of the chair. They sit on the carpet, knees to knees. She is taking his breath away.
“So,” he says finally. “You know a guy named Whitman Poole?”
She gives him a look of surprise that turns questioning.
“I have a case,” he says, “that hinges on whether this guy, Whitman Poole, was bribed. He was—I can win. For the company that got ripped off—U.S. Safety Vault and Maritime.”
She considers this. “Maybe I need a lawyer.”
“Maybe you do,” he says.
“What about you?”
It takes him a moment. “Interesting idea.”
Her head hangs low, exposing the nape of her neck.
Why is she doing that?
“If I were your lawyer,” he says, fascinated by this view of her, “you could tell me what you know in confidence. I’ll then be able to figure out whether there’s a conflict. But whatever you tell me will be privileged. And you own the privilege, so I can’t disclose what you tell me without your consent. You’ll be protected.”
Her head bobs up with a flurry of hair. “Wow! Lots to think about.”
“Yeah, there is.”
“Trouble is, hard to think right now.”
“Why’s that?”
“There’s this guy coming around. He’s already late.”
“What kind of guy?”
“Kind of guy who brings things.”
“I see. That kind of guy.”
“You being judgmental?” she asks.
Before Alec can answer, there’s a knock on the door.
She springs up like a gymnast. “Can I borrow twenty dollars?”
Alec, unhappily, fishes out a bill and hands it to her. Carrie, bounding to the door, quickly concludes her transaction in the hall. Alec hears a man’s guttural voice but does not see him. The door shuts. Carrie returns, sits splay-kneed, displays a small bottle and downs the contents. “Methadone.”
“Why not get it at a hospital?” he asks. “Get in a program? Or, better yet, kick it all? I could help you.”
“Oh yeah? Why would you do that?”
“I dunno,” he says.
“I’m broken, you’re gonna fix me?”
“Don’t,” he says.
“What?”
“I like you.” It just comes out of him.
“Not smart.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He’s in free-fall and, instinctively, leaning closer. He can feel her breath on his skin.
“So maybe you’re not on a white horse,” she says. “Maybe this is darker. Junkie girl—there for the taking?”
“Is that what you think?”
“You’re not denying it.”
“What I know is… I really… like you, okay? I’m just saying it. There’s no plan here. In fact—” He laughs. “There is a plan, and this is against it.”
“So maybe I like you too,” she says. “But, of course, being a broken person—unlike you—I can’t trust my feelings.”
“You think I’m broken?”
“Falling for a junkie? What do you think?”
She smiles and closes her eyes for a moment. “Takes a while to hit. The methadone. When it does… umm… like a blanket of love.” She laughs softly. Throwing back her head and laughing. Leaning back on outstretched arms and curling up around her chin her slender shoulders.
He’s right in her face. Her breath this close smells of peppermint and coffee. In one deft cross-armed motion, she yanks her tank top over her head. Her small bare breasts and mussed hair completely undo him. She pulls him up and toward the bedroom. He watches her slide into bed.
“Hurry!” she says, shivering in a draft, gathering the covers over her—then, just like that, passing out.
Her sleep is not peaceful. Almost at once she falls into dreams that distort her face and make her legs thrash.
Alec lies on top of the covers beside her. He both realizes what is happening and questions his sanity for allowing it to occur. How could it be that a woman as delightful as Darcy could not touch his heart, despite years of lovemaking and laughter, while an unfortunate creature like Carrie, after a very few hours and those spent mainly with her being unconscious, could now be burrowing into him as if she were the missing part of his cells? He knows—no one has to tell him—how stupid it is to open one’s life to an addict; how alluring a young woman this good-looking can be exposing such neediness and vulnerability. He knows it and yet thinks he sees more. In her face, though not calm, which he studies until he sleeps, he sees the beauty behind the disease.
TWENTY-FIVE
It’s raining in Carrie’s bedroom. Alec wakes up and, for almost a minute of sluggish consciousness, watches the drops drip down from the ceiling. It finally dawns on him that he’s lying under a leak in the roof. Hauling himself out of bed, he realizes he’s not only wet, but alone.
He flips the light on in her bathroom to a surreal horror. Floating in the pond the rain has made of the floor are bent hypodermic needles, glassine envelopes, and other drug paraphernalia.
He checks the living room and kitchen, though he already knows she’s gone. It’s eight thirty-seven at night. The phone now—amazingly—works. He calls for a Scull’s Angels cab, waits for it forever, and finally has himself transported to downtown Manhattan, operating under the delusion he might still get some work done.
Inside his office, he closes the door. Then he turns off the lights and sits at his desk. Thoughts race about and collide in his head like passengers in a terminal dashing for their trains. From the darkness of a huge window, fifty-eight stories into the sky, the city rises, bedecked in glints of far-off lights as dazzling as the galaxy.
TWENTY-SIX
Friday morning. Phil is standing behind his bar, blending fruit drinks for his visitor. Since the house is built on the side of a hill, one end of the basement is not subterranean, but offers a view, through French windows, of an inlet to Long Island Sound. It’s not the best time to be there, however. The sun bouncing off the inlet floods the entirety of the wide, knotty-pined room.
Little John Cuitano, on a bar stool, has his back to the sun, but the rays off the mirror flash in his eyes. He lifts his pen from the ink drawing he’s committing to one of Phil’s napkins, squints and shifts position. “You’ve lost her, I hear.”
“Bullshit,” Phil says.
“It’s what I’m hearing.”
“Oh, yes? From whom?”
“From those who know, Phil.”
“What?” says Phil, refilling Little John’s glass. “You’ve got a birdie in my group now?”
“Word travels. To interested parties. You know the process.”
As Little John resumes sketching, his bulk sags over each side of the stool. Two of his lieutenants hover over him. Vito stands off to the side, and Phil, planting his elbows on the bar, inclines his face toward his guest.
“Word like that?” Phil says. “Ain’t worth shit.”
“That right?” says Little John, as if pretending to have just learned something, though still concentrating on the drawing.
Phil steps back but shows a bit of exasperation. “I told you, John. Trust me on this.”
“I think you should appreciate my level
of anxiety.”
“I do, John.”
“And I think you should share it.”
“But I do share it.”
“If it were my situation, I’d take care of it.”
“And I am.”
Cuitano finally looks up. “Not… the safe way.”
“It’s not your situation,” Phil says coldly.
“Getting close to being that is what I’m telling you.”
“You understand,” Phil says, “the feds are not unaware of her existence. She disappears, and who are they coming for?”
“They don’t seem overly excited about Aaron. Who has already disappeared.”
“They’re looking for him. So are we. But I’m sure you can see the difference.”
“You’re looking for him, you’re saying?” Little John’s bulbous nose wrinkles with distrust.
“Every day,” Phil says.
The door opens suddenly. Sam Brno appears with an overalled workman.
“Sorry,” Sam says. “Didn’t know anyone was in here.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Phil says.
“I work for Abigail. Plan says we put a smoke detector down here.”
“What’s your name?”
“Me? Sam.”
“Sam.” Phil goes to genial. “Later, okay?”
“Sure.” Sam leaves with his workman, who closes the door.
Little John gives Phil a look of, What the hell! Phil says, “We gotta live too, John. Like everyone else. Maybe if you had told me you were coming….”
The fat man makes a harrumphing sound and admires his doodle, a surprisingly accomplished rendering of an MP5 submachine gun. He shows it to Phil. “The safe way,” he says. “And I’d be doing you a favor. No trace, just like Aaron. But clean for you. Lots of advantages here, Phil. Think about it.”
Later that morning, a meeting assembles in Mac’s office. The room has the same basic architecture as Alec’s, but is otherwise worlds apart. It’s a corner office with six windows, decorated, surprisingly, in a French provincial style to Mac’s wife’s specifications. Associates, like Alec, are given one-windowed cells, with standard fabrics and furniture. Also, the surfaces in Mac’s room are clean—precisely because the materials littering the offices of Alec and other associates are summarized by them for Mac and other senior partners. Mac’s office, moreover, is studded with the artifacts of great victories in court, and graced by photographs of grown children and their young progeny. Neither grandkids nor triumphs are probable for associates. They’re expected to leave before either eventuality, if they haven’t made partner in ten years.
Harvey Grand arrives first in all his finery. When Alec enters, Harvey extends his hand but doesn’t rise. Harvey is known to say little at meetings, unless asked. Mac had once said of him, “He’s a quiet man who sees evil everywhere, and it amuses him.”
Harvey is not amused by Alec’s report, however, nor by the fact that Macalister seems intrigued by the possibility presented.
“You want us to represent this woman?” Mac says.
“It’s not such a crazy idea,” says Alec.
Mac looks to Harvey who takes out his pad. “Current drug intake?” Harvey says. “About thirty, forty milligrams a day methadone. Does a gram of coke a day to prevent the methadone from blocking the pleasures of heroin. Then, of course, she does enough heroin and blow to keep her high. Comes to at least seven-hundred, maybe eight-hundred-fifty bucks a week. She’ll be on the streets soon, if the mob doesn’t take her out first. Hasn’t paid rent in four months, and the landlord’s already got a judgment filed against her.”
Mac turns to Alec. “This fits our client profile?”
“She’s not going to talk to us otherwise,” Alec says.
Harvey flips a page in his notebook. “There’s another side to this. Carrie’s husband. Phil Anwar. He’s got no record, which just attests to his power, because everyone working for him’s got a rap sheet that unwinds like a roll of toilet paper. And Phil’s grandfather’s name isn’t Anwar. It’s Angiapello. I assume you’ve heard of this family, Mac.”
“Mob family,” says Macalister.
“With an interesting history. Recent history. After the grand-dad came Phil’s uncle, a dandy called Don Giovanni, who ran the mob for twenty years, then retired. Which is unheard of. He’s said to have fallen in love with the British lifestyle and moved to London. He handed the crown to Phil, but bloody warfare ensued. The result of that was a pax between Phil and a creep called Little John Cuitano, who controls most of New Jersey.”
“You mean the mobs there.”
“No, I mean the state.”
“With Anwar in New York.”
“The City, Long Island, bits of Connecticut, and whatever Little John doesn’t own in New Jersey. Every U.S. Attorney in the tri-state has been trying to break up this organization for the last thirty years.”
“And Anwar is connected to Martini?”
“Only through Carrie’s connection to Martini’s lawyer, Weinfeld,” Harvey says. “So far as we know.”
“You’re saying—as we assumed from the start—the whole swindle was likely a mob job?”
Harvey shrugs.
Mac gets up and goes to the window. “So,” he says, “we’re trying to prove that Whitman Poole was taking from the Cosa Nostra. There’s a shitload of witnesses—including Poole—ready to swear he wasn’t. Jury believes that, our client gets hosed. On the other hand, we’ve got one witness who, with ten minutes of testimony, might be able to blow the whole fucking case out of the water, but she could OD any minute, or get shot.” He swivels around. “Dunno, Harvey. Don’t think this is a close one.”
“You think what?” says Harvey. “That because you represent her she’s gonna hand you Phil Anwar as the guy who bribed Poole? Let me tell you. Carrie married this guy when she was nineteen. He’s been beating the crap outta her regularly since then and now has their kid, a four-year-old girl—a hostage Carrie never sees again in case she steps outta line. So you know what’s more likely than her helping us? That she’ll do anything this guy asks, including double-dealing you. On the witness stand. Just when you’ve got no way to bail out.”
Silence for a moment as they consider that all-too-real scenario.
“I see the risk,” Mac says evenly. “I see the upside. I’m going for the gain.” He fixes again on Alec.
“I might have trouble finding her this time,” Alec says.
“Wouldn’t worry,” says Harvey, his voice caustic. “You gave her money for drugs? She’ll find you. If she’s still alive.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Saturday morning. Alec, in the shower when the doorbell rings, wraps himself in a towel to answer it. Carrie’s outside, looking up at him, fresh-faced from the cold air, a little high, and a bit bedraggled, wearing a gabardine coat over the same clothes he last saw her in.
“I could render myself into your state,” she says with a grin, “or you could render yourself into mine.”
He lets her in. “Shampoo’s in the shower,” he says.
Letting out a laugh, she takes over the bathroom. Alec dresses in the bedroom, listens to the sound of water running. Whatever, exactly, she had in mind with that invitation, he’s resisting the temptation to find out.
Carrie’s in the shower, a small tiled stall. She’s thinking she hasn’t fooled him much with her act of bravado. She’s frightened and sick. She stands directly under the stream, allowing it to cascade down on her head and over her shoulders. Her face is hidden by a tent of water and hair, and her weeping, by the noise of the shower.
The leaves have turned late this fall, despite the mysterious appearance and disappearance of the one early snow. Shockingly colored things, they travel the air in the tangle of branches or decay in the wet grass. Alec leads Carrie to the same path he’d once walked with Darcy, up to the track around the reservoir. A nice, if inexplicable, distinction: when Carrie halts, leans her back against the wire fence and turns her face up to
the sun, it stops his heart.
“My firm will represent you,” he says, “if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t care about that,” she says. “I have two things to tell you. One’s a gift from me to you.”
He puts his hands high up on the fence, his face close to hers. She draws a breath to ground herself.
“You say your case depends on whether a stuffed-shirt asshole named Whitman Poole was taking bribes? Four times I delivered envelopes to him from Aaron Weinfeld.”
“Did you really?” Alec utters under his breath.
“I thought you’d like that one.”
“You know what was in the envelopes?”
“I typed what was in the envelopes. Checks. Each two-fifty large.”
A rush of excitement mixes with fear for her. Alec comes away from the fence. “You’re willing to say this on the witness stand?”
“Wouldn’t be much of a gift if I weren’t, would it? Only—”
“What?”
“Can a wife testify against her husband?”
“He’s not a party to our case. But also, about something like this? Absolutely. You wouldn’t be testifying about a confidential communication, much less the kind the rule is supposed to protect. You’d be testifying about your own acts—writing and delivering checks.”
“Good.” She stares at Alec intently. “The other thing I want to tell you is that, this afternoon, I’m checking myself into a hospital.” After a moment of indecision, she adds, “I have a daughter, Alec.”
His face shows nothing.
“I want her back,” she says. “When I’m clean, I’ll fight for her.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay? Okay? Do you have any idea what I’m saying? What’s involved?”
“Yes,” he says flatly. “I do. Believe me.”
“Okay,” she says, relenting. Then looks out over the reservoir. “I’ve got to get clean. For Sarah. For us. For me. We’re not going to make it—you and I—if I’m not clean and sober.”
“We’re not going to make it?” he says.
