“Search incident to arrest,” said Breger without looking up from the suitcase. “Chimel v. California.”
“I know the damn cite. How’d you know he was here?”
“Where do you think you are, Mr. Carl? A woman is found shot dead in her bed, all the doors locked, the windows, no evidence of a break-in, no evidence of a robbery. You think we let the only other person in the house walk without a tail? Stone was following from the moment you left here. Saw him sneak out of your building, grab a cab, take it here, where I had been waiting all night just in case, hoping he would do exactly what he did.”
“Well, aren’t you the clever pair.”
“Clothes,” he said as he continued his search through the suitcase, “toothbrush, a prescription of”—he held the bottle away from his face and squinted at the label—“Viagra. Anticipating some fun, was he? And what is this? An envelope filled with cash. It’s not the three thousand, we already logged that, and it was much slimmer. Whoa. Ten, twenty, maybe fifty, sixty. Our Mr. Forrest had plans. Oh, and look, how sweet, his passport.”
“Is that what you were hoping to find?”
“It is what I was expecting to find. The coroner called in a preliminary report. Said Miss Prouix was beaten before she was killed. Her left eye was bruised.”
I fought to keep my emotions in check, I bit the inside of my cheek and fought to bat not an eyelash as I heard about the bruise. I stood stone-still and watched as Breger kept searching the suitcase and then, disappointed, started in on the car, the glove compartment, the back seat, the trunk. Finding nothing, he called over to Stone, “You pat him down?”
“Only a wallet,” said Stone, leaning against the side of the car into which she had deposited Guy.
“What are you missing?” I managed to get out.
“The gun. We still have not found the gun. I figure the gun is the final rail in your buddy’s prison cell.”
“Is that what you figure?”
I didn’t wait for an answer, I simply turned and walked toward one of the police cars with its lights still flashing. Guy was sitting forward in the back seat, his mouth tight, his fists clenched behind his back. He looked at me angrily when I came over, and I looked away, hoping to hide what it truly was I felt about him.
“I didn’t do it,” he said through clenched teeth. “Victor, I swear I didn’t do it.”
“Don’t talk,” I advised him while surveying the scene, purposely avoiding his gaze.
“I loved her, you know I loved her. How could I have killed her? Victor, I swear I didn’t do it.”
“What did I just tell you? Don’t say anything to anybody, especially when you’re sitting in a police car. Don’t talk to the cop driving you to the station, don’t talk to the cop processing you for admittance, and for heaven’s sake don’t talk to whatever greaseball they happen to stick you with in the lockup. Do you understand?”
“Will they let me out today?”
“Do you understand what I said?”
“Yes. I understand. I was in the same damn Criminal Law class as you, Victor. Will they let me out of jail today?”
“You were running away. You had sixty thousand dollars and a passport. They’re going to charge you with murder. No judge, even a suburban judge, is going to grant you bail. You’re in till your trial.”
“I am so cooked.”
“Yes you are.”
“Will you represent me?”
I turned to stare at him.
“I’m desperate,” he said. “I need someone I trust. At least for now. I need someone who understands. Victor, I’m begging you. Will you represent me?”
It didn’t take me a moment to make up my mind, it didn’t take me a moment to run through the implications and make up my mind. “Yes. I’ll represent you.”
He gave me a wan smile.
I returned it along with a chuck on the shoulder. “Now there’s something I need to do, all right? So do as I say, and I’ll see you at the arraignment.”
I waited as one of the uniforms shut the car door and another climbed behind the wheel. With the lights still on, they drove Guy away, into the dying night. I suppressed a smile and headed over to Breger, who was continuing to search through the Beemer.
“You might want to know, Detective, that Guy Forrest just asked me to represent him on more than a temporary basis, and I agreed.”
“Bully. You get a retainer?”
“I was hoping it was in that envelope you found.”
“That envelope, along with its contents, is evidence. Evidence, as you well know, stays in our custody all the way through appeal.”
“Too bad,” I said as I reached into my pocket. “It would have looked nice in piles on my desk. Still, we’ll see what the judge has to say about it. But I have something for you. I can’t tell you how I got this, attorney-client privilege now in full force and effect, but I believe I’m obligated as an officer of the court to turn it over, as it may be material to your investigation.”
I pulled my hand out of my coat pocket and offered what was in its grasp to Detective Breger. The detective’s eyes bulged.
“Is that…?”
“You have tests to identify it, don’t you?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Well, then.”
He took the bag with the gun and hefted it in his hand, and something suddenly went out of me, something ugly and hard. It was as if a brutal rod of steel had been extracted from my spine.
“I might have been rude back there,” said Breger, still gazing at the gun.
“Are you trying to apologize for your manner, Detective?”
“I want you to know that I am sorry if I was rude. I should not have been rude. You’re a guy just trying to do your job. It has been noted that you went after him when you discovered he sneaked out of your place. It has been noted that you tried to stop him from running and he knocked you down with his suitcase. It has now been noted that you turned over what might prove to be the murder weapon. The law says you need to turn it over, I know, but still, nine out of ten would have buried it. So all of that has been noted, and I am sorry if I was rude back there.”
“Okay,” I said.
He nodded and, without saying another word, headed off to show his shiny new prize to his partner.
I stayed at the scene until all the police, car by car, had left, until the dawn had fully broken through and the morning stretched and twittered and came alive. I thought about what had happened that night, what I had lost, what I had just done, what I had just set about to do. I felt my weary sadness turn to determination. I was glad the gun was gone. It was all wrong for me, a gun, like boxing gloves on a poet. But that didn’t mean it was over, that didn’t mean I was through.
How can you defend a man you know is guilty?
No matter where I was, at a bar or a ball game, whenever my profession was discovered, the inevitable question was raised. And never yet had I found an adequate answer.
Oh, I knew the Constitution, I could cite the Sixth Amendment backward and forward, the case law, too, but still the question always gave me pause. Where in the Constitution did it provide that every participant in a criminal trial was duty bound to seek the ends of justice with the sole exception of the attorney for the defense? Where in the Constitution did it say that assistance of counsel meant assistance in escaping the just consequences of your merciless crime? I had been asked the question dozens of times, and now, here, with my lover dead on a mattress on the floor, I finally had my answer: I can’t, I won’t. And it wasn’t enough to refuse the case, let someone else do the dirty work. This was no time to punt. A decision had been made to discover the truth and be certain it was served. A decision had been made, and I would follow it through. I had discovered the truth that very night, in my apartment when Guy lied so shamelessly and later, on the street, when he whacked me with his suitcase as he was about to make good his escape from justice. The second part, I was sure, would be a snap.
&nb
sp; Yes indeed, I’d represent that son of a bitch. What better way to keep my pledge? What better way to remember Hailey Prouix?
6
SHE SITS across from me, leaning away from me, arms crossed, legs crossed. She leans away from me, but her bright red lips are curved and challenging. She raises her cigarette to her mouth. Her blue eyes, framed dramatically by the dark rails of her glasses, squint from the smoke. Her narrowed gaze rakes across my face, down my throat. I look at her and forget to breathe.
“Victor,” says Guy Forrest, sitting beside her at the table, “I’d like to you to meet Hailey Prouix.”
“So pleased,” I say, and I am.
We are in a Spanish restaurant on Twelfth Street, modern, cruelly lit, cold stone tables for the hot paella. You want comfort, stay in bed. Guy had called and asked me to meet him, and here I am, forgetting to breathe, and I feel a love surging inside me. Love, not for her, because she is nothing yet but possibilities, instead love for my dear friend Guy, who thought well enough of me to introduce me to her, to set up this setup. Was ever a friend dearer?
But they are sitting side by side. That should have been my clue.
We order drinks, we chat. I smile and do my best to be charming. I am jolly, I am self-deprecating, I am wry. Oh, am I wry. Guy tells me Hailey is also a lawyer. I make a joke. He tells Hailey that he and I went to law school together. She asks what kind of law I do.
“Mostly criminal defense, but I also pursue the intentional torts that flow out of crime. Fraud, assault, the occasional wrongful death.”
“Lucrative?”
“Sometimes, sometimes not, but it keeps me busy. Though not as busy as they keep Guy at Dawson, Cricket. How’s the sweatshop, Guy?”
“Fine, I suppose, but I’m not going to be there much longer.”
I stare at him blankly. I hadn’t heard through the legal grapevine that he had been in trouble at his firm.
“I’m taking a page from your book,” says Guy. “I’m going to try it on my own.”
“You’re six months from partnership.”
“I want something new.”
“What does Leila say?”
“She doesn’t have a say,” he says as he puts an arm around Hailey. “I’m leaving her, too.”
Ah, so there it is. My charming smile freezes on my face, the love I had felt for a loyal friend withers. This isn’t a setup, this is an announcement. I turn my head to look at her. Her lovely lips are pursed, as if she were examining me for some reason, as if there were something she might want from me. She smashes out her cigarette and excuses herself. Guy scrambles to stand as she slides out of her seat, and we both watch while she walks down the aisle. She walks as if she knows what she is doing, as if she has been walking near all her life.
“You look happy,” I say to Guy, even though he suddenly looks positively miserable.
“Oh, I am. Like I’ve never been before.”
“Where are you going to live?”
“She has a small house. Nothing fancy. A sofa, a table, a mattress on the floor.”
“A mattress on the floor?”
He gives a boyish half grin that makes me want to smash him in the face. He reads my expression, and the grin dies. “You don’t approve,” he says.
“It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove, is it? I’m only trying to understand what you’re doing.”
“I’ve decided to change my life.”
I snap my fingers. “Just like that.”
“I don’t have a choice. I love her, Victor. What else is there to understand? I’m sick in love with her.”
And just then he looks it, sick in love, as if love were an illness that he has caught, an exotic virus that was biding its time in the nuclei of his cells until it burst forth to ravage him.
“Well, that’s great, Guy,” I say, “just great. I’m glad for you. Really.”
I take a sip of my Sea Breeze and I am suffused with the bitter aftertaste of disappointment. But is it with Guy, with what he is going to do to his wife and his children and the image I had held of his happy, happy family, or is it because he hasn’t brought her to this restaurant for me?
When she returns, the conversation is awkward, charmless, wryless. There is no longer flirtation in the air. Guy talks, I listen, Hailey smokes. But at the end, as we part and say our good-byes, in a moment while Guy looks away, I am staring once again at her lips when they silently mouth “Call me,” and I do.
WE MEET for a drink after work. Nothing secret or surreptitious, we are in the open, in a public place, the bar of a famous restaurant where Guy could march in at any time, but he won’t. Even so, he is with us, as real a presence as the man with the toupee and the flowered tie sitting two stools down. Hailey drinks an Absolut martini, I drink my usual Sea Breeze. The man with the toupee drinks Scotch. Hailey’s eyes are bluer than I remember, her lips freshly lacquered and in constant motion, hovering uneasily just beneath a smile. I can’t take my eyes off them, they are devouring.
“I have a client that might be facing criminal charges,” she says. “I wondered if you wanted to handle the case.”
“So this is a business meeting.”
“What did you think it was?” Her words are accusatory, but her smile is anything but. It feels like a seduction, but I wonder who is seducing whom.
“I thought we were going to talk about Guy,” I say.
“No we weren’t.”
“You’re going to destroy him, aren’t you?”
“And that would concern you?”
“He’s my friend.”
“And that’s why you’re here, having a drink with me, because he’s your friend?”
“You phrase questions like a psychiatrist, not a lawyer.”
“Objection noted. Answer the question.”
“There you go. Fine deposition form.”
“You’re not here having a drink with me because Guy is your friend, are you, Mr. Carl?”
“No.”
“Good. At least that’s settled.”
“Is it so easy?”
“Yes, yes it is.”
And she is right.
WE COURT like Victorians, slowly, chastely. The strange omnipresence of Guy is our chaperon. He is always there, the guy with the afro, the guy in the tweed suit, the guy cross-dressing who thinks we can’t tell. He is always there, and his presence lets us pretend that we want only to be friends. Merely friends. That is all. Isn’t it obvious?
There are more drinks in the twilight. She crosses her legs and we bump knees. Just the thought of her turns me blue, but she won’t let me kiss her. She says that nothing can ever happen, that she is devoted to Guy. Her admonitions allow me to assuage any guilt that our meetings are other than innocent, but when she crosses her legs, we bump knees.
On nights when Guy is busy, we have dinner. She orders fish but barely eats a thing. She drinks more than she ought and smokes when she drinks. Mostly what we do is talk. We talk of incidental things, our cases, our tastes in movies. She is not one for weepy chick flicks. She likes action-adventure, she likes explosions. Arnold. John Woo. She has a longing for Sylvester Stallone.
“Whatever happened to him?” I ask.
“He tried to get serious.”
“Is that fatal?”
“Always.”
“You’ve never been serious?” I say.
“I didn’t say that. But whenever I’ve been serious, I’ve been seriously bad.”
“You exaggerate.”
“No, no I don’t.”
“Tell me about it, tell me the worst.”
“Are you a priest? I could only tell a priest.”
“I didn’t know you were religious.”
“I’m not, and that’s why. So I never have to tell.”
“It’s not that bad, I’m sure.”
“That’s sweet of you. Or dim of you. One or the other. Which is it?”
“Sweet?”
“Too bad. There is nothing more appealing
sometimes than an utter lack of imagination.”
“Has Guy moved in yet?”
“Oh, yes. Yes he has.”
“How is it, living with Guy?”
“Like a dream.”
“You sound overwhelmed with joy.”
“I never knew bliss could feel this way.”
She has no sense of humor, but she laughs well. She is a grand audience, she is Ed McMahon if Ed McMahon wore a size four. I make wisecracks, and she pretends they are funnier than they really are, and I let her. We tell stories of our childhoods and treat them like revelations, when all they are are stories culled to hide the revelations. I tell her how my mother left when I was still in my boyhood, how she now lives with some alcoholic cowboy in Arizona. I tell her how my father still cuts lawns even with half a lung. She tells me of the tragic death of her father.
This is what I learn of her past, the bones of her life as she relates them to me. She was born in West Virginia, on the western edge of the Appalachian Mountains. Her daddy was a Cajun who came north looking for work in the lumber mills. They went to church every Sunday, had a house with a verandah on the high side of the river. She walked to school with her sister, came home to a plate of cookies and milk each afternoon, played in the park across from the courthouse. She was eight when a load of timber came loose during stacking and crushed her father to death.
There was no pension, no payout. He had been working all those years as an independent contractor. There was insurance, but barely enough for the burial. Her mother worked, but even so, things grew very hard very quickly and although she was still only a child at the time, in all her years after, she never forgot the bitter taste of financial desperation. In order to help out, her mother’s brother moved in and joined his wages with his sister’s. No family of his own, a drinker and gambler, her uncle settled down long enough to help raise the family. Eight years he lived with them, until the strain became too much and he disappeared, presumably to start again with the drinking and the gambling. But by then his job was complete, the girls were almost grown.
Hailey was popular, pretty, a prom queen who walked the high school halls arm in arm with the star halfback. Awarded a church scholarship, she left home to attend a small college in Maryland, and for the first time she concentrated more on her studies than on her social life. To her great surprise she discovered that she was good at academics. Dean’s-list good. Good enough for the church scholarship to be extended to graduate school if she wanted to attend, and she did. She never forgot what had happened to her father and family, never forgot how an unfair contract and unsafe conditions had left her family on the brink. It was that experience, she told me, that had sent her into the law, and when she said it, there was none of the ironic tone that normally left you looking for the explanatory footnotes. A law school in New Jersey gave her enough aid so that with the scholarship and loans she could make a go of it. Three years later she landed an associate’s position with a small but profitable plaintiff’s firm in Philadelphia. Four years after that, when an affair with the managing partner created a scandal, she took a stack of files and went out on her own.
Fatal Flaw Page 5
