Pardon the Ravens

by Alan Hruska

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Or maybe you’re just fucking her to get evidence.”

  “You finished?”

  “Listen to me! Hard! Right now, I’ve got no reason to hurt you. In fact, if Carrie really likes you, keeping you breathing gives her another reason to behave. But the thing is, Alec, any time I want, you’re gone. That’s not a challenge for me, you understand? And her—” he laughs—“all I need to do is deliver a package. She does herself.”

  Alec listens to the hum, too alarmed by the threat just made to say anything.

  “In fact…” Phil says again, letting it drift, and hangs up.

  Alec holds onto the dead receiver as if he’s been stun-gunned into paralysis. Then he bolts from his seat, grabbing his coat, thinking it may already be too late.

  In Alec’s apartment, every light blazes, but Carrie’s gone. He calls out her name, checks the bedroom, then the bathroom, where he sees what he expected to find. A hypodermic needle lolls in the sink. It looks alive, ready to move. Like a gigantic water bug from hell.

  Half-past twelve, Alec stares at soundless images on a TV screen. He’s in a chair in the living room with one hand on the telephone. When it rings, it’s a wrong number.

  Alec lies in bed, tossing, every few minutes glancing at the clock. It’s two forty-three a.m. He gets up, pulls out the yellow pages, and starts calling the hospitals.

  Alec goes through the motions of the day. He travels to work, does some, returns home, eats what’s in the refrigerator, and waits for a call. By eleven, he’s asleep in the living room chair. At two in the morning, he drags himself to bed.

  Past a receptionist and a bullpen of young assistants, Alec barrels into the inner office of Harvey Grand.

  “Alec? You look like shit.”

  “Why do people keep telling me that?”

  “Because it’s true?”

  Harvey’s office is low rent. Near Penn Station, an old loft. Battered wood desk, fire-sale hotel chairs, and sofa. Volumes of New York case books on the shelves, law school diploma on the wall, no other decorations. Harvey has no shame when it comes to billing clients. Doubtless his office is designed to state that their money isn’t going into the furnishings.

  “I want you to help me find somebody,” Alec says.

  “Is this business?”

  “It was. Now it’s personal.”

  Harvey wags his head with pity. “You mean her.”

  Alec’s silence confirms it.

  “You’ve gotten tangled up with a drug addict—a mobster’s wife—and your principal witness in a case coming up… when?”

  “Two, three months. She may not have to testify. Whitman Poole’s fled.”

  “You think it matters? To how this looks? To how it will affect you?”

  Alec stares at him numbly, and Harvey comes from behind his desk. “Mac will have your ass for this. Braddock too. Make partner? You’ll be lucky to keep your job. What the fuck are you doing, Alec? Is this a rescue fantasy? You’re supposed to be smart.”

  Alec sinks into Harvey’s sofa. He knows all this. For him, at the moment, it’s beside the point. “Will you help me find her, Harvey, or not?”

  “She’s gone missing. Addicts do that.” He sits across from Alec and the sofa sags at his end. “How long?”

  “Two days.”

  Harvey nods. Alec looks sick.

  “Let me tell you what I’m hearing,” Harvey says. “Here’s this… kid, really. Estranged wife with a lot of information in her head. The capos don’t like that. The only thing keeping her alive is Phil, believe it or not. He may actually care for this woman.”

  “As a punching bag.”

  “Whatever. I’ll track her for you,” Harvey says, “but she’ll probably call you before I can find her. She’s been bingeing two days? Long enough for her not to give a shit about getting yelled at by you.”

  “That’s what I want, you think? To yell at her?”

  “It’s the normal reaction. And she’ll take it. A lot easier than peddling her tushie on 10th Avenue.”

  Alec, face dark, gets up to leave.

  Harvey says, “One more thing. Rent a new apartment. Under another name. You hear me?”

  Alec, home in bed, turns off the light. Then lies there sleeplessly. Head splitting, muscles tight, body resistant to any tricks for relaxing. Two hours like this. Then the doorbell rings.

  It’s Carrie, strung out and twitchy. She breezes in. “Sorry,” she says, speech slurred, but putting on an act again. In the middle of the room, she finds the back of a chair, steadies herself. “Bit of a relapse. Almost died. Need a shower, darling, rather desperately. Then we’ll talk, and you’ll tell me how angry you are.”

  He thinks of Harvey predicting an outburst from him. Not Alec’s style. He bottles it, which is worse.

  He fixes coffee, lightheaded now with mixed anger and relief. He listens to the shower noise and tries to imagine the sort of nightmare she’s just lived through.

  He has a tray on the bed when she emerges in his bathrobe.

  “When did the drugs start?” His tone is sharp. This is not the question he most urgently wants answered, but it will do.

  “Twelve,” she says, going to a mirror with a hairbrush. “Maybe thirteen, no later. All I needed? A beer at a party. Then, booze, pot, coke, pills. Slippery slope, usual progression.” She pulls the brush down hard in her hair. The shower has apparently revived her strength.

  “The heroin. When did that start?”

  Where have you been? Whom have you been with?

  “The heroin was Phil. But I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “What was I doing?” Her laugh sounds like a cry. “I’m an addict. That first hit you think, so this is what I’ve been missing. You think, I can control this, take it or leave it. Until your life turns to shit.”

  Her lids press together as if reacting to a migraine. “Some people—a beer, several drinks, a joint—then they can leave it alone. But with addicts—one taste, there’s no more ‘leave it alone.’ You’re on automatic pilot.”

  He looks skeptical, which she sees in the mirror. She turns. “You’re not getting this,” she says.

  “I understand it well enough.”

  “No. I don’t think so,” she says, her voice rough, unfamiliar. “The thing about addicts is—active addicts—there’s no peace for them. No joy. There are only demons. When addicts look like they’re resting, their demons are screaming.” She starts picking at her arm, and Alec realizes she’s gouging herself. On her forearms, deep red pits.

  “What are you doing, Carrie?” he says, leaping up, no release for his anger.

  She stares at him. Still picking. Pride beaks on her face like a plate. “I call my demon Iago. You probably think that’s pathetic, self-dramatizing. But let me tell you, the name fits. Iago is pure evil. He wants me to live in the streets, so he gets me to bring the streets into the apartment. He wants me to abuse anyone who might love me, so I’ll lose their support. He wants me to use! He’s furious when I deprive him. And his tricks to deprive me of anything but the drug are diabolically clever.”

  “Carrie….” He seizes her wrists, stops her hands from picking at her skin, but she wrenches free, thrusts her face at him.

  “See, Alec, what you don’t understand—addicts will do anything to get high. I live to get high. Everything I see makes me want to use!”

  As he reaches again, she grabs his wrist, holds it out. “Even the veins in your arm.”

  She rakes her teeth against the inside of his forearm. He lifts her by the neck and shoulders and slams her to the wall. His hands grip her throat. She pounds his chest, crying out with frustration, “It’s hopeless!”

  “No, it’s not,” he says, hands sliding down her, no longer caring about whom she’s been with. Like wounded animals they cling.

  FORTY-TWO

  Jim Velsor, managing director of the Metropolitan Outreac
h Program, has a cubicle office in a building on 6th Avenue housing a conglomeration of private clinics. Inside the cubicle, Carrie sits rigidly on a straight-backed chair. She’s already been interviewed. From the doorway, Velsor, wearing a black polo shirt, pants, and sneakers, beckons Alec to join them.

  Velsor is a long, thin man with faded blue eyes and straight black hair. He has the look of an often-rehabilitated addict, which is to say, skin discolored like a patchwork of grafts.

  “Metropolitan Outreach,” Velsor says, admitting Alec and shutting the door, “has two locations. Detox is done here. Afterwards, patients are brought to our facility in New Jersey. It’s near Morristown. Rural. Lots of grass, trees, fresh air. And good food.”

  Alec, taking the one other chair, glances at Carrie. She has the look of a sparrow dropped down a chimney: a little stunned, frightened, making herself small. “Sounds good,” she says.

  Velsor plunks down on the front edge of his desk. “The cost is seven-hundred-fifty dollars a week.”

  “That’s more than I make,” Alec says.

  “We can arrange a payment plan.”

  “We’ll have to arrange something,” says Alec.

  “The detox is five days,” Velsor says. “It’s safe. Relatively safe… if you’re honest with us.”

  Alec says, “She’s already detoxed this year.”

  “Not unusual,” Velsor says. “And not a problem. What is…” He stares at Carrie as if not quite believing what she’s told him. “Daily methadone intake, twenty milligrams, right?”

  She gives this a tight nod.

  “Anything higher, Carrie, the detox is too dangerous. You could have a seizure. You do understand this?”

  Carrie is silent.

  Both men are staring at her.

  “I get it, I get it!” she says.

  The men exchange looks.

  Alec asks, “What are the odds? On recovery?”

  “Well….”

  “I’d really like a no-bullshit answer to that.”

  Velsor again fixes on Carrie. “She knows. The numbers aren’t good. I can’t be sure yet whether she wants to stop. Whether it’s taken enough away from her yet.”

  Carrie fires out of her chair. “Oh, really!” she says. “My daughter, my pride, my self-esteem!”

  Velsor’s heard it before—or something like it—from too many people, including himself. “There’s always more to lose, Carrie. That’s the goddamn truth.” He gets to his feet. “I’ll leave you two for a few minutes.”

  As Velsor exits, Alec closes the door. “What is your methadone intake?”

  “Don’t ask,” Carrie says.

  “As if it’s meaningless? You heard what he said.”

  “It’s okay,” she says stepping close to him.

  “Not okay! What are you doing, Carrie? Some form of penance?”

  “I want this, Alec. He’s wrong about…” She flutters her hand. “All that.”

  “Then get the methadone level down on your own. Gradually.”

  She looks as if she might cry. “I can’t.”

  Alec, protesting, feels her hand covering his mouth and her slight frame gluing itself to him. Velsor returns, and she wraps her arms around Alec’s waist even harder, digging in her chin and elbows and refusing to let go.

  Alec, returning the hug, looks helplessly at the psychologist. Velsor says gently, “Carrie.” He taps her on the shoulder, and she breaks the clench.

  “Ri-ight,” she says, as if nothing had happened.

  “We ought to get started,” he says. Then, to Alec, “You all right on the money end? One of our administrators is waiting to talk to you.”

  “I’ll work out something,” Alec says.

  Velsor nods sympathetically.

  The two men shake hands, and Carrie, giving Alec a movie-ish brave smile over one shoulder, follows Velsor down the hall.

  Heading home in a cab, Alec thinks back on the scene he’s driving away from. Once again, Carrie’s in rehab. Being detoxified. Lying somewhere in a hospital, demons screaming in her head. And Alec can’t help her, can’t talk to her, can’t do anything but wait, while imagining the pain she’s in. Which he does throughout the night, the morning, and going to work. Where no one knows or cares anything about it.

  Alec’s secretary, Joni, a Gina Lollobrigida lookalike from Bayonne High School, makes him listen before he can even get to his coffee. “Judge Braddock called. I took it down verbatim, and I quote. ‘When you see him, you get his ass in here, pronto. You hear? Not even a pee first.’” Bowlegged in black tights, she smirks fondly at Alec. “Pretty clear message. Doesn’t seem to vary his theme much, does he?”

  Frank Macalister is two steps ahead of Alec into Braddock’s office, where the presiding partner is pacing. “Shilling called me last night at home,” he says, swinging on Macalister. “Tried you first, but apparently doesn’t have your M.O. You gotta start laying off the sauce, Mac.”

  Macalister waves his hand dismissively.

  Braddock, frowning, goes on. “Seems this no-goodnik, Whit Poole, has returned. Hurts our case. You agree?”

  “Of course.”

  “Way I see it, despite all the money, it’s a simple issue for the jury. Warehousing tons of oil is essentially a no-risk business, if the guy managing it has any brains and is honest. And this guy Poole had come highly recommended. So if Poole was being bribed to defraud the directors, then they and the company were not at fault. They were victims too. But if Poole was stupid—honest, but stupid—then our clients, the people who hired him and left him screwing up, are gonna end up paying for this mess. You agree with that?”

  “I do,” says Mac. “The legal issues are more complicated, but that’s what it boils down to for the jury.”

  “How much more complicated?” Braddock spits out in the general direction of Alec.

  “Oh, Christ! A hornets’ nest. U.S. Safety ran the warehousing business through a subsidiary corporation—so the first set of issues concerns the permeability of the corporate veil.”

  “And?”

  “Permeable as hell,” Alec says. “I think we can ignore the fact it even existed. The company did, which is the problem.”

  “So. Next set of issues. As to the directors.”

  “They can be liable to the corporation—for simple negligence. And the stockholders—courtesy of Si Rosenkranz—are asserting that claim derivatively, on behalf of the corporation. The directors’ negligence would consist of either hiring an incompetent like Poole, or letting him do business with a felon, or just failing to discover Martini’s scheme. Or the directors could be liable for gross negligence—in other words, recklessness—in which case the claim is more serious.”

  “You mean fraud.”

  “Right. To prove fraud, the stockholders have to show that the company’s financial reports were not only wrong—and they plainly were off by more than a billion dollars—but that the errors were published with intent to defraud the stockholders. The directors’ problem is, to publish erroneous financial information recklessly is the same thing as publishing with the intent to defraud, as a matter of law. So, if the directors were reckless, they are also guilty of fraud. And the stockholders’ fraud claim is a direct one, not only against the directors, but also against the corporation, which is legally responsible for the acts and omissions of the directors.”

  “Which is the claim Rosenkranz is pushing,” Mac says. “He’s got little real interest in the directors. They don’t have enough money. He’s after the corporation and its insurance policy, which overlaps with and subsumes the smaller insurance covering directors’ liability.”

  “I see,” Braddock says. “I was wondering why no one was asserting that our representation of both the corporation and the directors was a conflict, at least on the stockholders’ derivative claim.”

  “Well, as a technical matter,” Alec says, “on the derivative claim, Shilling represents the corporation. Although it’s a nominal representation, because the
corporation is only a nominal party on that claim—and, most importantly, Si is probably going to drop the claim. He thinks it will only confuse the jury.”

  “So he’ll try only the fraud charge, based on a theory of recklessness,” Braddock says.

  “Exactly,” says Alec. “It’s the one way Rosenkranz has to recover directly against the corporation and grab the insurance money.”

  “Does Shilling agree we’re likely to win this case before the jury if Poole was bribed by Martini, and lose if he was just stupid?”

  Mac shrugs. “We don’t talk very much.”

  “Hey! Way to go, Mac. You and co-counsel in a five-hundred-million-dollar case. Don’t talk? Don’t fucking talk?”

  Madge Harlan opens the door. “Marius Shilling. On one, Judge.”

  Braddock flips on the speaker. “Marius? You hear from that son-of-a-bitch Poole? What’s he saying? Why’d he run?”

  “That the shame was just too much for the poor man.” Shilling’s accent crackles in the box. “Being blamed for being negligent—‘And maybe I was,’ he says.”

  “How convenient for Rosenkranz,” notes Alec.

  “But,” Shilling says, “you have the means to break down Poole’s story. I mean the girl. Carrie Madigan. She gave Poole the checks from Martini’s lawyer, Weinfeld. And she’s working with you, right?”

  Braddock and Mac both turn to Alec.

  “We’ll get back to you on that, Marius,” Alec says.

  Mac’s eyes open wide.

  Braddock hangs up the call, cutting off Shilling’s response. The judge gazes at Alec.

  “She’s in rehab,” Alec says, lowering himself slowly into a chair.

  Braddock says, “You have something to do with this?”

  “Yes.”

  Mac, still standing, arms folded over his head, says with a frightening sweetness, “Are you sleeping with her?” At Alec’s expression, Macalister looks skyward. Then he starts walking. Halfway out the door he explodes. “Fucking hell, Alec! I told you!” The door slams so hard that the paintings rattle.