Dead Man's Thoughts

by Carolyn Wheat

  I looked at Dawn. What secret name did she go by? What was the key to her private language? I tried to reach back in time to my own twelve-year-old self. Then I factored in Nathan. Less than a year earlier, I’d had to come to terms with the murder of my lover. What I’d needed as much as—more than—sympathy, had been truth, solid, rock-bottom truth—no lies, no sugar coating. My momentary question about Dawn’s ability to handle truth evaporated when I recalled how many harsh realities she’d already faced in her life.

  Suddenly I knew what to say. The words that had carried me through ten years at Legal Aid. The words that had started as an office joke, then became a catch phrase, and finally a summing up of the whole criminal-law experience. “It’s a tough business,” I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible. The words themselves would mean nothing, but I hoped the tone would be more welcome than the phony sympathy she was probably expecting.

  Dawn stopped biting her lips. Her tortured mouth relaxed into a brief smile of relief. She picked up a phosphorescent-yellow tennis ball and began squeezing it with her right hand. It was a strengthening exercise, but she used it the way her father had used his fist-slapping movement—to relieve the tension. It seemed a step forward.

  “Did you find the body?” Dawn asked.

  I cleared my throat. This honesty stuff was going to be harder than I thought. “No,” I answered. “I came home just as the medics were taking her out.”

  “Who called the cops?” Her muscles knotted and relaxed, knotted and relaxed as her strong hand squeezed the ball.

  “I don’t know. Nobody does. Detective Button told me there was a 911 call, ‘Burglary in progress.’ Whoever called didn’t leave a name.”

  Dawn’s face relaxed from within. It was the same look she’d given her father in Family Court, when he’d finally agreed to the tennis camp.

  “Burglary,” she said. It sounded like a sigh. “Just some crummy stupid junkie who killed my mother for the TV.”

  She’d obviously seen a lot of six o’clock news programs, I thought. I would have given a lot to be able to leave it there, to agree with her that it had been a crummy burglar and the world was pretty crummy too, if such things could happen over a color TV. But I’d already agreed to a different proposition altogether. No lies.

  “It could have been a burglary,” I said carefully. “The police are checking on that too. But,” I added, “they’d like to talk to your father.”

  “No!” Her voice was a moan, but the very depth of its protest told me the thought was not a new one. She had been hiding in her bed from that ugly possibility, drowning her fear in her music. For a moment, I wanted to lie—or at least give her back her earphones—but I knew the reality would have to be faced sometime. Brad was a prime suspect, possibly a guilty one. She might have a lot more harsh reality to face in the near future.

  “There is a case against him,” I pointed out in a deliberately professional tone, as though this were a billable hour. “He said some wild things that day in court.” I looked into Dawn’s solemn face and put the case for the prosecution as baldly as I could. “Let’s face it,” I began. “He didn’t like your mother’s relationship with Congressman Lucenti. He hated your mother taking you to Washington. Those are pretty good motives.” Not to mention Brad’s history of violence toward his wife. I was sure Dawn, who’d been eight when Linda had sought sanctuary at the Safe Haven shelter, hadn’t forgotten.

  Dawn gave the tennis ball a final death-dealing squeeze and flung it with all her might. “I hate Congressman Lucenti!” she cried passionately. “It’s all his fault!”

  There was a tinkling crash as the tennis ball hit the mirror above the white-painted dresser, sharding it into a million glittering, sharp-edged pieces. On top of the dresser, a yellow china dog sat, decapitated by the falling glass.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Dawn moaned, jumping out of bed.

  “Get back in bed!” My voice was sharpened by shock. “Your bare feet!”

  “I’ll get a broom and clean it up,” Dawn promised, her voice tight. Her lips were working again; the look she gave me was the same mute apology she’d given her mother when she’d had trouble with her zipper in court.

  “Get back in that bed,” I ordered. Dawn did, but her eyes still darted as though she expected an angry Linda to come through the door and scold her. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, trying to smile. My stomach was knotted in a sympathetic response it took me a moment to recognize. When I did, I had Dawn’s secret. The deepest fear a child can know: It’s all my fault.

  “Oh, God,” I said, my eyes welling with tears. Of course—Dawn blamed herself for her parents’ divorce, and the permanent custody battle had only reinforced the feeling of guilt. Now it seemed that her mother was dead and her father a suspect because of her.

  I forced a laugh. “No harm done,” I said lightly. “What’s seven years’ bad luck?” Dawn gave me a wan smile for my effort, but then we sat in silence, trying not to think about it. Finally, Dawn broke the stillness.

  “He wouldn’t,” Dawn insisted. “He said crummy things sometimes, but he didn’t mean them. He was just acting out,” she explained, her voice a parody of her Aunt Marcy’s professional tone. My throat tightened as I listened.

  “He didn’t mean it,” Dawn repeated. “I know he didn’t.” She pleaded for my agreement.

  “Detective Button’s a good cop,” I said seriously. “He’ll check out all the angles. He’s not looking to pin it on anyone. If your father’s not guilty, he’ll find out who is.” I hoped to God I was right. The problem was I could be right and so could Button. Brad Ritchie could be guilty.

  Then Dawn’s agitated movement stopped and she fixed me with a calm, clear gaze. “He was going to take me away,” she announced. “That’s what he meant when he told Mom she’d be sorry,” she confided. “He was going to pick me up on Sunday for my visit with Granny, only instead of going to Bensonhurst we were going to drive all the way to Florida.” Dawn’s voice was confident, but her eyes were still pleading. “He said I wouldn’t need my clothes and stuff; he’d buy me everything new in Miami.” She looked at me expectantly, waiting for a ruling. I knew the signs. The kid was a born defender, and her lifelong client was Brad Ritchie.

  Judge Jameson sighed and gave counsel for the defense what she wanted. “I’ll tell Detective Button,” I promised. “It might make a difference if he knows your father was planning to kidnap you.” I hadn’t meant to use the word; my anger flared as I thought about the reality that lay behind Brad’s grandiose talk. A sorry trailer park. Dawn left alone while Brad, chronically unemployed, looked for work. Dawn trudging to school in Salvation Army castoffs. No more matches. No more coaching. No more camp. No more tennis.

  “It wasn’t kidnapping,” Dawn corrected sharply. “The man is my father.”

  “No.” I agreed. “Just custodial interference. A mere misdemeanor.” The last part I said under my breath.

  “Would you really have gone?” I asked aloud.

  Dawn gave it serious thought. “I didn’t want to move to crummy old Washington,” she said finally. I nodded; this was not news. The nod seemed to reassure her and she went on. “And Daddy needed me more than Mom did. Sometimes he’d get so sad when I had to go home on Sunday nights that he’d hold me and cry. Mom never cried.”

  Epitaph for Linda Ritchie. Mom never cried. Would she, I wondered, have cried if Brad had taken her daughter away from her? Or would she have found solace in the embrace of Congressman Lucenti?

  That thought led quickly to another one. Had Brad’s obvious jealousy of Lucenti been the final straw, the motive for Linda’s murder?

  Dawn was still arguing her case. “But if Daddy meant to take me to Florida,” she said earnestly, “then he had no reason to kill Mom.”

  I remembered my promise to tell Dawn nothing but the truth. I looked her straight in the eyes and gave my answer. “No,” I lied, my voice st
eady. “He had no reason.”

  3

  If I’d had a boss, I’d have called in sick. Since I was the boss, I told myself not to be a damned fool. Then I hauled myself out of my loft bed, hit the shower, and took my hangover down to the Morning Glory.

  I hadn’t made my own breakfast since my old friend Dorinda had opened the place six months earlier. She’d been talking about running her own restaurant for three years or so, but only after I bought the brownstone did the idea really seem feasible. She’d rented my ground floor and had been doing a steady business ever since. Any day now, New York magazine was going to write her up and I wouldn’t be able to get a stool to myself.

  Dorinda herself stood behind the counter, her thick, wheat-colored hair braided into a single pigtail. She wore a hand-appliquéd apron; her Lassie’s-mother look. She handed me a steaming mug of coffee without a word, knowing better than to expect conversation from me in the morning.

  I drank the coffee quickly, letting it warm me from the inside out, waiting for that caffeine rush I’m convinced starts my blood moving every day. As I handed it back to Dorinda for a refill, I pointed to the hand-lettered sign over the counter: Warm your cockles, it read, with a cheese-and-hot-pepper omelet. “With rye toast,” I added, as Dorinda walked over to the stove and started breaking eggs.

  The hot peppers burned away some of the fog, and by the time the breakfast crowd had thinned, I was capable of speech. Dorinda took away my plate, then came back, poured more coffee, and murmured, “I heard about Linda.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Tough business.” I kept my voice low, murder not being very good breakfast conversation.

  “I heard they arrested Brad,” she went on.

  “What!” My voice rose and I attracted curious stares. Dropping my voice again, I asked, “Where the hell did you get that, and me with the cops all night?”

  “Ezra told me,” she replied. Ezra Varshak was the reason she could afford the Morning Glory. After a lifetime of relationships with exciting losers, Dorinda had finally latched onto a winner. A man with money, eager to invest it in a vegetarian luncheonette in Cobble Hill. Since the place both fed me and helped pay my mortgage, I thoroughly approved. “He heard it on the all-news radio,” she explained.

  “Poor Dawn,” I whispered. “I wonder if she knows yet. I was with her last night,” I explained, looking into Dorinda’s concerned eyes.

  “How did she take it?”

  “Linda’s death? Not too badly, considering. What really bothered her was thinking about Brad’s arrest.”

  “I can relate to that,” Dorinda replied. The bitterness in her voice made me raise my eyebrows in a question I didn’t have to put into words.

  “Okay, so I didn’t like her,” Dorinda went on crossly. “I didn’t like her attitude and I didn’t like the way she treated Dawn.” She turned toward her front window, where the sun filtered through the potted herbs that hung there, fragrant substitutes for the boring spider plants that decorated more conventional restaurants.

  “I’m five-feet-ten,” Dorinda said finally. “I was five-feet-ten by the age of fourteen. The tallest girl Traverse City ever saw. They used to call me the Jolly Green Giant. I felt like a giraffe. Like my feet were these enormous things I couldn’t stand to look at.” She laughed suddenly and came back to me. “It’s okay now,” she explained. “I don’t mind Ezra’s being shorter than I am. But then …” She shook her head. “I used to wish I could eat a piece of mushroom like Alice and get back to being a regular-sized person again. So one day Linda and Dawn stop in here after shopping. They had these A&S shoe bags and all Linda did the whole time they were here was make these cute little jokes about how big Dawn’s feet were getting. Dawn tried to laugh, but I could see her slipping down into her chair, as though she was trying to shrink herself down to her mother’s size. It was all I could do to keep from telling Linda off. If you ask me, Dawn’s better off without her.”

  “She was a difficult woman,” I agreed, remembering her demanding attitude as a client.

  “She was a bitch,” Dorinda pronounced.

  We meditated on that thought while I downed my coffee and accepted another refill. This was a three-cup day if I’d ever seen one.

  “She made a will,” I said at last. “Marcy hired me as her lawyer for the probate proceedings.” I almost smiled as I recalled my open-mouthed shock of the night before. Not only had Marcy been incredibly businesslike for someone who’d just seen her sister on a slab, but she’d handed me five crisp hundreds as a retainer. I’d tried to look as though clients willingly paid me cash in advance every day of the week.

  “That doesn’t sound like Linda,” Dorinda remarked. “Making a will and all.”

  “No,” I agreed. “She never struck me as a woman who accepted the inevitability of death.” I shrugged. “Maybe she got a package deal with the divorce.”

  “I suppose Marcy will keep Dawn with her now,” Dorinda said, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.

  “I wish I knew,” I sighed. “I tried to bring it up last night, but all she said was she’d think it over and let me know.”

  “What about Linda’s mother? Or Brad’s?” Dorinda asked.

  I shook my head. “Linda’s mother’s out. She had major surgery a couple of months ago. She needs help to care for herself, let alone a twelve-year-old. As for Brad’s mother—” I broke off, thinking of the last time I’d seen Ma Ritchie in Family Court. She’d worked herself into hysterics, causing a twenty-minute recess. But that wasn’t the worst thing about Viola Ritchie.

  “She’s a dangerous woman,” I said, knowing it sounded dramatic. “She’s …” I broke off, unable to put words around my profound mistrust of Brad’s sweet-faced, gray-haired mother. “She’s Willy Loman,” I concluded lamely.

  Dorinda, mistress of the non sequitur, nodded knowingly, as though what I’d said had made sense to her.

  “She pumped poor Brad up with hot air and grandiose ambitions, so that the jobs he could get seemed like a giant comedown. Then, when he lost even those menial jobs, she helped him blame everyone but himself. I can see her doing the same thing to Dawn,” I went on, warming to the theme, “convincing her that she’s such a great tennis player that she doesn’t need to bother with silly things like practicing every day.”

  “You really care about Dawn, don’t you?” Dorinda’s steady gray eyes regarded me seriously.

  “I just want Marcy to make up her mind, that’s all,” I replied crossly, ignoring Dorinda’s knowing, sympathetic smile.

  All night I’d pictured Dawn, alone in her green-and-white room, with her tapes and her trophies for company. What I couldn’t see was Marcy holding Dawn, soothing her, letting Dawn sleep in her bed.

  If I wasn’t sure Marcy Sheldon really wanted custody, I was even less sure whether she wanted Dawn.

  If cops fall in love with the street, then criminal lawyers fall in love with the system. It’s a mainline shot of primo adrenaline, a daily fix of pure, uncut life. So I strapped up my arm and prepared to stick the needle in. I walked to court.

  Mr. Green was on my mind. He was my new boss, and a damned sight more demanding one than Milt Jacobs at Legal Aid had ever thought about being. Mr. Green is the fee, the bucks, the money. Get it up front, that’s the first rule of criminal law. On the theory that it’s hard getting money from a guy newly employed in the license-plate industry. And if you get your client off, collecting the fee still isn’t easy—the sucker will convince himself he was innocent all along and ought to be suing for false arrest instead of paying his lawyer.

  It’s a great philosophy, get the money up front, and one I was getting used to living by. The mortgage payments, the fuel bill, the office expenses, all helped remove the diffidence I had started with when it came to asking for money. But then there was Hattie Hopkins, who worked two cleaning jobs in spite of her arthritic fingers and rheumy cataract eyes. Who put on her best flowered hat every Sunday and rode three buses to the Foursquare G
ospel Church. Who would have given any amount of money to see her grandson Terrell go free. Only one hitch: Terrell was guilty as hell.

  “I ain’t takin’ no flea bargain,” Terrell said truculently.

  I faced him across an iron table. All around us were the iron sounds of the ninth-floor pens, the clanking of cell doors, the rasp of the huge keys turning in their locks, the raucous shouts of prisoners and corrections officers. The long tables ran the length of the interview room, lawyers sitting on one side, defendants on the other, all having essentially the same conversation.

  “Not a bad deal …”

  “But I ain’t did nothin’ …”

  “You’re a persistent felon. It’s ten-to-life minimum if you blow trial.”

  “My woman, she’ll come to court …”

  I sighed. I’d both heard and said all the above, and now I was about to say it again to Terrell. My life was being measured out in guilty pleas.

  I held up the police report and read it to my client. I knew there was no point in letting him read it for himself. He couldn’t. “This kid Duane Rogers,” I began, “says you showed him a gun in your waistband and said, ‘Yo, run the coat.’” No response; I might as well have been reading him the Dow Jones.

  “So Duane gave you the sheepskin,” I went on, “and then he went home and told his mother, who called the cops. Now here comes the hard part.” I looked up from the report and fixed Terrell with a long slow stare. “Duane Rogers not only described you to the cops, Terrell, he gave them your name and told them where you lived. He knew you, Terrell.”