Pardon the Ravens

by Alan Hruska

  Templeton calls Monday morning while Alec is trying to clean up his office.

  “Can you get up here this afternoon?” Bill says. “Around two?”

  “What now? Rivera’s on another rampage?”

  “Rivera? No. He’s so covered in kudos, he’d grin if you kicked him in the balls.”

  “So? What’s happening?”

  “Don’t ask so many questions. Just get your ass up here.”

  At the stroke of two, Alec opens Templeton’s door.

  “Ah, Alec,” says Bill, as if surprised to see him. He gets up. “Come on,” he says, heading out of the office.

  “Whoa! Where we going?”

  “Jocko wants to see you.”

  “You going to tell me what it’s about? Or do you get off on watching me sweat?”

  “Just follow me, will ya? Christ, you’re getting to be a pain in the ass.”

  The door opens on the same executive committee assemblage that had confronted Alec on Friday. Except this time, they’re looking at Alec as he walks into the room, and there’s a smile on everyone’s face. Jocko, standing at the head of the table, says, “C’mere!” indicating the one empty seat next to his. As Alec sits, Jocko lifts off the wall the largest samurai sword in his collection and places it in its scabbard in Alec’s hands. “It’s yours,” says the chief executive.

  Alec looks around the table at faces grinning now even harder and feels as if he’s elevating from the chair.

  Jocko, laughing, says, “Speechless, huh? I thought of asking you to kneel and dubbing you Sir Alec, but, what the hell! That’s a bit over the top.”

  “And this isn’t?” Alec says. “I’m overwhelmed, Jocko. Thank you.”

  “I like my warriors to win,” Rush says in a tone whose jocularity is underscored with intent.

  As if on cue, the meeting gives Alec a standing ovation. Even Bill Templeton, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, joins in.

  “So how does it feel?” asks Marius Shilling, leading the way around the crowded tables. “Seeing your photograph in the papers, your face on the telly? Exhilarating, right?”

  “Life goes on,” Alec says.

  “Bullcrap,” says Shilling. “You must be floating on air.”

  Alec laughs, taking a seat at a table against the wall in the Down Town Association dining room where Shilling has invited him to lunch. He glances at the high damask-swathed windows, the dark wood paneling, the leather upholstery. Little has changed here, he thinks, in a century. And the atmosphere is palpable: the hush of money, the weight of power. A waiter, an ancient retainer, takes their orders for lunch, meaning he snatches up a slip of paper on which Shilling has scribbled their selections.

  “Don’t underestimate the significance of publicity,” Marius says. “It’s a prize beyond price.”

  “You and Braddock,” says Alec.

  “Ben would know.”

  “You have any idea how simple that case was? Legally?”

  “Matters not, my boy. No one understands litigation from press accounts anyway.”

  Alec laughs again. “Maybe so.”

  “At any rate,” says Shilling, “I’m offly glad you could join me for lunch.”

  It takes Alec a second to crack “offly.” “Blue Points and Dover sole?” he says. “A bit better than a sandwich at my desk.”

  “There is something particular I wished to discuss with you.”

  “About our case?”

  “No,” says Shilling. “In fact, not about our case.”

  He looks disappointed in Alec’s lack of response.

  “Are you all right?” Shilling asks.

  “Sorry. I seem off? I’m kind of distracted at the moment.”

  “Anti-climax?” Shilling suggests.

  “No, no. I’m sorry. A personal matter. You were saying there was something….”

  “Particular. Yes. It’s a bit delicate, but I think well within the bounds of propriety. The question I’d like to put to you is, have you ever considered making a lateral move?”

  “A what?”

  “There are advantages to doing so, you know.”

  “You’re talking about my leaving Kendall, Blake?” says Alec.

  “You wouldn’t be the first,” Shilling says.

  “Well, of course not. But—”

  “How long do you think it will take you to become a partner there—if they take you in? Another six to eight years? Look, Alec. I like planting seeds. Kernels of ideas that perhaps wouldn’t otherwise enter one’s head.”

  “Are you making me an offer?” Alec says, faintly amused.

  “I love your directness. We haven’t even had our first course. Yes. Let’s be direct. I’m making you an offer. Come to my firm, I’ll make you a partner within two years. With the classic proviso, of course.”

  “That I don’t screw up.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I’m flattered, Marius, but no.”

  Shilling looks stupefied. “You don’t even want to think about it?”

  “I don’t even want to talk about it.”

  “My, my, so precipitous. You think Kendall, Blake so superior to my firm?”

  Alec doesn’t answer.

  “You know,” Shilling says, “the financial rewards of partnership are a good deal more flexible in my firm than they are at Kendall, where partners are paid on a lockstep basis, by class.”

  “I actually did know that,” says Alec.

  “And, in our shop, only one person decides on the distributions each partner receives.”

  “That person being yourself?”

  “I have that privilege,” says Shilling, with a bow of his head.

  “So in your firm, it pays to stay in your favor.”

  Marius looks at him inquiringly. “All right. Let’s table the subject. You will find, my friend, that I am not an irresolute suitor.” He gives Alec his warmest smile. “And ‘no’ is not an answer I readily accept.”

  “I may stay for lunch then?” says Alec, glancing at the waiter bringing their oysters.

  “Ha!” Shilling says. “I love it! I hope, my dear friend, there will be many lunches. Many!”

  SIXTY

  An early spring can startle you, conjured out of yesterday’s cold ground. But everyone adjusts, thinks Carrie. To the cruelty of April. She admires her daughter seriously at play. Or is it just me?

  Sarah plays. Carrie watches. In the park. How normal, mother and child.

  No one plays with Sarah, however. No other mothers come over to have a good chat. Carrie can see why. She’s marked, and not only physically. I no doubt appear to be looking at nothing, at least nothing of this world. No one likes a woman with a blank stare in her eyes, let alone purple cheekbones.

  Vito, sunning on a bench near the sandbox, removes an enormous cigar from the pocket of his leisure suit jacket and lights up. Nannies give him furious looks. Young mothers start drawing their children away. With a sigh, Vito, not totally insensitive to naked contempt, stalks off, out of the playground, to a bench on the encircling path.

  On the other side of the playground fence, about thirty yards away, Alec watches it all. Carrie and her child have removed their jackets in the sun, and Carrie wears dark glasses. She sits on the side of the sandbox, one hand aimlessly sifting, while Sarah plays a few feet away.

  Seeing Vito leave, Alec heads toward them.

  In his vision they float among the daffodils outside the far gate. He sees Carrie, not that surprised, fixated on him as he comes near. Easing down beside her, he feels exhilaration laced with dread.

  She speaks in a fierce whisper. “This is not a good idea, Alec.”

  He sees the bruises beneath her dark lenses. “He’s hurt you again.”

  Sarah looks up from her digging with momentary interest. A streak of sand glints on her small, pale cheek. Carrie gives a furtive glance to the playground entrance.

  “He’ll kill you Alec, you understand? It means nothing to Phil to have someone killed.”
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br />   “We’ll get a court order. Put him in jail if he comes within twenty feet of you.”

  “Court order! Please!”

  Spying Vito lumbering back into the playground, she grabs their jackets. “Go away, Alec. You have no idea of the trouble you’re making.”

  “I can protect you,” he says, barely recognizing his own hoarse voice. “Come with me. We’ll leave the city.”

  Carrie shakes her head vehemently, at the same time pulling Sarah from the sandbox, brushing her cheek.

  “Carrie, please listen to me!”

  A few steps away, she turns. “I can’t do this,” she says, balancing Sarah and jackets in her arms. She then pivots toward Vito, who is glaring at Alec, while grinding his cigar into the pavement.

  “What the hell’s the goddamn point, Carrie?” Alec calls as she hastens away.

  Women at the swings stare openly at Alec, then down at the ground with embarrassment for him. Another young woman, blond and imperious, having just entered the playground with twin five-year-old boys, says to them sharply, “Go play!” They’re off. Then, turning on Alec, she says, “What the fuck was that?”

  It’s like stepping into another life.

  “Darcy! Jesus! What’re you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?”

  “Who’re those kids?”

  “Those kids are my sister’s kids. I am their aunt. I therefore have a perfectly good reason for being in this playground. And it looks very much to me like you don’t.”

  “I have to go.”

  “And leave me guessing for the rest of my life about what I’ve just seen? And, more to the point, heard?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “The hell you will.” She swings back toward the gate, stops, and beckons. “Alec!”

  “Timing sucks.”

  “That’s not my fault,” she says.

  Darcy thumps down on the bench vacated by Vito and stares Alec into settling on the other end.

  “Now tell me about this melodrama I just witnessed.”

  “Freakish coincidence, your being here,” he says, his mind not on this conversation.

  “No doubt. But I was.”

  He wants to be off.

  “Goes to show,” she says. “Can’t believe what you read in the papers. Here I was thinking you’re leading this fabulous life, slaying dragons in every courtroom, becoming trial lawyer of the year, or whatever they call it, and what’s the reality? You’re screaming Stella in the park at some woman with a kid. Who is that woman?”

  “You wouldn’t know her.”

  “Obviously. So who is she, and how do you know her?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Did you know her before we broke up?”

  “No.”

  “So couldn’t be that long a story.”

  “Aren’t you worried your nephews might run off?”

  “They’re fine. That’s what the gate’s for. And they don’t listen to me, anyway.”

  “Darcy, I will call you, but this isn’t the time, I really—”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I gotta go!’

  “Alec! Who the hell is she?”

  He takes in the sky, finding no solace. “You’ve heard of a guy named Phil Anwar?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “He’s what they call a capo. Mafia. The boss of the mob here in New York.”

  “Okay. I suppose someone’s got to be that. And this girl has something to do with him?”

  “She’s married to him.”

  Darcy regards her former boyfriend as if he were a total stranger. “And you’re in love with her?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You’re lusting after some mobster’s wife?”

  “We were living together.”

  “Were you? Brilliant! And now he’s got her back?”

  “That’s right. It would seem… by coercion.”

  “Jesus, Alec.”

  “It’s not pretty.”

  “It’s not sane. Not for you. But you won’t listen to me either, will you? Like those kids. Look at ’em! I think they’re ganging up on some four-year-old. I better break that up.”

  “See ya.”

  “You won’t listen to me, will you?”

  Alec’s laugh is directed at himself.

  “You’re in a bad hole, Alec. You damn well ought to be climbing out of it.”

  He watches her go, having never before felt such a rift between the normal world, which she represents, and the dystopia which he’s inhabiting.

  Phil often works in the paneled study of his Central Park West apartment, in lieu of his office downtown. It depends very much on the paintings he’s in the mood for. Here he keeps several Fauve works, notably a Vlaminck bridge scene with flaming water, and a Derain forest of twisted trees. That morning’s news from his source in the U.S. Attorney’s office makes the Fauvists more fitting company.

  The word is that Sancerre has a witness on Phil and will soon be convening a grand jury. Phil’s made a study of the subject of grand juries. Originally they were devised to protect ordinary citizens from the influence of the evil prosecutors of the Crown. Grand juries ensured that no man could be indicted and made to stand trial unless a group of his peers said it was fair. Now the reality is that any grand jury is easily sent in any direction the prosecutor cares to point it. These people generally aren’t very knowledgeable or bright; they’re almost never shown any conflicting evidence that isn’t discredited or overwhelmed; and defense lawyers are never allowed in the room. So the system is used by the prosecution simply as a means of forcing testimony from unprotected witnesses in advance of trial on a transcript that defense counsel don’t even get to see, unless the prosecution decides to use it. All this is done under the fiction that grand jury secrecy benefits the accused—a banner waved frequently by prosecutors and courts without acknowledging the irony involved, much less the hypocrisy of which they’re all guilty.

  Grudgingly, Phil admires the whole setup. Screw the accused with a system supposedly put in place for his protection. It’s exactly what Phil would do were he on the other side.

  Phil’s source also states that he will keep his eye peeled for the identity of the witness and that, in the meantime, Phil should be exceptionally careful. Phil makes a mental note. When this guy’s usefulness ends, get rid of him. Terminally, if necessary. It’s a huge mistake to lecture Phil on the obvious. He hates condescension and can spot it a mile away.

  The pressing question is, who’s the government witness? Could be any of his own men, his own wife, Whitman Poole, or any of Poole’s men, although they shouldn’t know enough to matter. On balance, he suspects Carrie. And it’s getting progressively depressing to have her around. Problem is, having just gotten rid of her father, the time is not propitious for Phil to dispose of his wife.

  He thinks he has a better idea. But before letting her go, on his terms, why not have a little sport with her—send her off with something to think about.

  SIXTY-ONE

  In Ben Braddock’s office, it is Alec who is pacing.

  Braddock says, “So you are involved with this woman.”

  “I’m in love with her,” Alec says.

  Braddock sniffs. “Drug addict,” he says, as if listing her credentials. “Mafiosa. Excellent choice. Not even counting the fact that she’s already married. To a murderous thug.”

  “You know the DA—”

  “Quite well. And I’d happily call him. And then what? What’s he going to do? Give you and your girlfriend protection twenty-four hours a day? Forever? He’ll say, ‘Get a court order, and call me when he violates it.’ By which time you won’t need protection. You’ll be dead.”

  “So anyone who wants to can raise an army, come after you—even warn you he’s going to do it—and no one can do anything to stop the violence.”

  “That’s about right, except who needs an army? All you need is a gun.”

 
“Great world.”

  “Civilization’s a thin veneer, my friend. And the system of justice designed to preserve it? Even thinner.” Braddock shrugs at the unhelpfulness of his own observation. “Look, Alec. You love this woman? Leave her alone.”

  Alec’s gesture declares this to be out of the question.

  “Then take her and her child to some little town somewhere, and hide.”

  Alec likes this no better.

  “Good,” says Braddock. “It’s not what I want you to do either. What I want you to do is to try the goddamn diesel oil case.”

  “What does Rand want?”

  Braddock takes out the Times, which is still running the dregs of the Ikuda story on its front page. “You remember that first lesson I gave you?”

  “The one about ink.”

  “Ink. Exactly. So what do you suppose? That damn fool, that puffed-up general you represent, he sees your picture in the newspapers, and guess what? He believes what he reads. About you. I told you. Doesn’t have to be true. He’s now telling his friends he’s got the hottest young trial lawyer in the city.”

  They both notice Madge Harlan standing at the open door. “There’s a call in your office,” she informs Alec. “From a Miss Madigan. She says it’s urgent. You want it switched in here?”

  “No, I’ll take it there,” says Alec, already on his way, as Ben Braddock watches with a pitying frown.

  “Carrie?” Alec, holding the phone, swings his butt at the door to his office to close it.

  “You still willing?”

  “Yes. Sarah too. I’ll get a car. We’ll leave town.”

  “I’m not sure I can travel.”

  “What happened?”

  “Just hurry,” she says. “Take a cab. To the church nursery school at 85th and Park. I’ll be outside.”

  As Alec pulls up in a taxi, Carrie sits on the church steps with Sarah. They have one suitcase between them. Sarah looks puzzled and a little distraught, as if she knows something’s amiss, and her mom’s not telling her what is going on.

  Alec gazes at Carrie inquiringly as he loads her suitcase into the trunk. “Where’re the heavies?”

  “He’s letting me go.”