She says weakly, “I just can’t believe he is capable of murdering anyone. You don’t know him. I know what your point is, but until I see some evidence, I just can’t accept he might have killed Art.”
I laugh triumphantly.
“Evidence! What do you want evidence for? There’s a ton of evidence the world wasn’t created in seven days, and you couldn’t care less about that. If Leigh goes to prison for the rest of her life for a crime her father committed, I guess that’s okay, because facts only matter when you want them to.”
“You’re not being fair,” Rainey says, her voice almost fading out.
“It’s not the same thing.”
Who is fair? Is anything or anybody fair?
“No, I guess you’re right,” I say sarcastically.
“Unless you can look it up in the Book of Genesis that Shane Norman killed Art Wallace, it could never have happened.”
Rainey says, her voice tremulous, “I have to go.”
With this, she hangs up, leaving me feeling almost gleeful. It’s about time she and Sarah learned they can’t have it both ways. They’ve both been so obnoxious it’s made me want to puke. Even if Norman’s got an alibi, they’ll never feel the same way about him again. Even if the son of a bitch didn’t have the guts to do it, he had murder in his heart. That’s got to be a sin in his book.
Shades of Jimmy Carter. These people drive me up the wall. The phone rings, and I pick it up, knowing it is Rainey. She’s decided she wasn’t in such a hurry after all. She’s too smart to stay in la-la land indefinitely.
“Hi!” I say, more cheerful than I’ve been all day.
“Gideon,” Chet says, his voice scratchy but full of life, “we’ve finally got something on Wallace that might lead somewhere. I’m down at my office with my investigator. Can you come down? I’m finally feeling a little better.”
“Sure,” I say, looking at my watch. I’ve had the feeling Bracken has been avoiding me. It’s about time I heard from him.
“I’ll be right there.”
I scribble a note for Sarah. For once this week she will be waiting up for me. Woogie, sensing I’m going out, thinks he may be getting a walk and begins to bark and jump up against my legs.
“You’re not going,” I explain.
“No!”
Frightened by my tone, he slinks away into the hall.
Though I am glad that Chet seems to be finally doing something on this case, I am disappointed he isn’t calling me to tell me about Norman’s alibi. Woogie turns and gives me a look that leaves no doubt he is pissed off at me. Lately, somebody’s always mad about something in this house.
Downtown is not a fun place after dark, and tonight is no exception. What little life there is gives me the creeps. I am no stranger to criminals, but the older I get, the more I like to see them sitting politely by me in a courtroom filled with cops. The shadowy figures walking the streets tonight are possibly candidates for future clients because there is absolutely nothing going on here after 6 p.m. that will find its way into the hands of a tax collector. The dream to revitalize the downtown center dies harder than the Terminator. As I drive down between the Layman and Adcock buildings on my way to chet’s office, I view the remains of the latest mall. A Wal-Mart would have to open up down here before real shoppers would come back downtown, and that is about as likely as Paul Simon doing a concert in my living room.
Bracken owns his own small one-story building near the courthouse, but with its barred windows, it looks more like a reconverted bunker from World War II than a law office. Dressed in jeans that fit him only slightly better than the jeans he was wearing the night I ate dinner at his place, he lets me in the heavy metal door, saying “Glad I caught you at home.”
I have been to his office once before, on the Sarver case. The law books in his library, overflowing before, seem to have multiplied. In fact, there is little in his office except books. Lawyers as famous and rich as Bracken usually cover their walls with crap that lets clients know how great they are. His walls are bare. Who will get his books? He probably pays more in updates and supplements than I make in a year. Many criminal lawyers, myself included, hate research. Judging by his library. Bracken must love it. I go to the law library at gunpoint.
“No problem,” I say as another man walks into the room. As little direction as Bracken has provided I would have driven to Memphis for this conversation.
“This is Daffy McSpadden, my investigator on the case,” Chet says, introducing me to a short, dumpy guy in his thirties with slightly crossed eyes. He is wearing a gray suit and striped tie and, except for his eyes, looks normal enough, until I notice his feet. He is wearing sandals. Though I get only a glance, I swear his toes are webbed. Surely not.
“How are you?” I ask, unable to call him Daffy. His hand feels like the skin of a reptile. This is one guy who didn’t get his job on his looks.
Instead of speaking, he nods, which makes me fear that he can emit only quacking sounds. I look uneasily at Chet. Maybe he is beginning to suffer dementia.
Daffy seems like a character out of a Batman movie.
Chet commands, “Daffy, tell him what you’ve run across.”
Daffy nods eagerly as we seat ourselves at a small conference table in the library. Speaking in a rapid monotone, he says, “Among Mr. Wallace’s other business interests, all legitimate so far as I’ve been able to tell, is evidence of a deal for pornographic videos produced in the Netherlands which probably went sour with a buyer in New York. Wallace found a distributor in San Francisco who later accused him of cheating on the price. The distributor, who reportedly has connections with some pretty tough customers, was obviously leaning on Wallace to come up with two hundred thousand dollars in cash to make things right. Wallace was acting as broker on the money transaction but apparently not an honest one.”
Art, you old sleazoid, I think. Yet a little extra profit on that kind of deal would be easy enough to conceal.
It’s not the kind of market that puts out a big Christmas catalog.
“How do we know all this?” I ask Daffy, but it is Bracken who answers.
“I had him,” Bracken says, nodding at Daffy, “do some digging on a series of phone calls Art made to San Francisco the month before he died. On the surface it appears legitimate, but if you represent enough crooks, you begin to sniff a distinct odor. The paperwork behind the calls didn’t check out; and, with a little work. Daffy heard enough rumors about the buyer to guess at a connection. I wasn’t certain about the skimming until Leigh admitted it to me this afternoon after I confronted her. She said Art had been threatened, but she was afraid to tell me. Art said they would come after her, too, if she talked. He was still trying to come up with the cash when he died.”
I lean against the table and look at Daffy’s crossed eyes with grudging respect.
“The cops don’t know about this?”
Daffy answers, with a snicker, “Are you kidding?
They might have spent five minutes checking out his phone bill.”
Poor Leigh, I think. No wonder she looked so grim.
If I were in her situation, I’d keep my mouth shut, too, and count on Chet Bracken to do his magic.
“Why didn’t Wallace pay off?” I ask Chet.
“I thought he was loaded.”
Daffy volunteers, “Two hundred thousand takes a while to come back from the laundry. The problem is that some guys get their feelings hurt when they’re taken and aren’t very understanding of international currency laws. Wallace knew how to keep his money working, but that kept it from being as liquid as his creditor in this case would’ve liked. Rub-out guys aren’t paid to have a lot of patience.”
Rub-out guys. Great. I’m out of my league. Is this for real? The closest I’ve gotten to international currency was down in Colombia in the Peace Corps, and it seemed like play money, it bought so little. I look around Bracken’s library a little dazed. I didn’t sign on to spend the rest of my life wondering if
I’m going to have an unexpected dinner guest some night. I ask stupidly, “Do we call the cops?”
Across the table. Daffy coughs politely, and Chet tells him he can go home now.
“I’ve got sole custody of my five kids,” Daffy explains.
“I need to get to the house.”
Five kids! I have to wonder what the ex-mrs. Daffy looks like. And the children. Chet accompanies him into the hall and reaches for his wallet. I suspect Daffy is not averse to working off the books occasionally. With that many mouths to feed, he doesn’t have a lot left over to feed Uncle Sam, too. Chet walks back into the library and gives me a wan smile.
“So you want to turn this information over to the police, huh?”
I lean back in the leather chair and try to think, “We can’t protect her.”
Chet sits down across from me and pushes his thick brown hair back from his forehead.
“I’m sure not going to be around,” he says, grinning sourly at his own black humor.
“Look, this doesn’t add up, no matter how you do the math. Wallace was killed with a twenty-two pistol.
What kind of hit man uses a popgun? The cops searched the house and found nothing. There was no sign of a struggle, no forced entry. Wallace was hardly the type to invite his killer inside for a cup of coffee and then draw an x on his forehead for him. He would have fought like hell. If Wallace was really worried about his health, don’t you think the cops would have found a weapon or two around his house?”
I rub my eyes, trying to keep up. By this time of night, my I.Q. is in the single digits.
“So she’s making all this up?”
Chet looks down at the papers in front of him.
“Maybe the death threat, I don’t know. It’s not like I can call up the distributor in San Francisco and get him to go on David Letterman to talk about this deal. Maybe Leigh’s getting a little desperate. Maybe she made up the threat because she’s scared the porn business will come out in court, and pull her father and mother into the slime. This could really be a problem for her family.”
People are weird. She’s on trial for murder, and she’s worried about her daddy’s reputation?
“Maybe Shane knew about the porn stuff and killed Wallace,” I suggest, taking the opportunity to raise the subject of Norman’s alibi.
“I could see that a lot quicker than him killing Wallace because he was keeping Leigh away from the church.”
Chet fidgets in his chair. As his face becomes thinner, his ears seem to get larger.
“That’s garbage,” he says curtly.
“He’s seen a lot worse than what Wallace was involved in.”
Perhaps so, but not where his own daughter is concerned.
God damn it. I feel my face burning. The son of a bitch still hasn’t checked out Norman’s alibi. What has Norman got on him? Chet must have confessed to some crime and has had to cut some deal. So much for confidentiality between priest and penitent. Norman could leak information about Chet in a million different ways, and Chet won’t be around to save his reputation.
But surely Norman wouldn’t risk his daughter’s freedom this way. What in the hell is going on? I realize I’m beginning to think of Norman as a thug instead of one of the most respected men in the state. The odd thing is that I like the man. In some ways he and I don’t seem all that much different. Hell, yes, I could murder someone. And so could Norman.
“So what do we do with this?” I ask, watching Chet take a beer from a cooler he has beside his chair. I wouldn’t mind a beer right now, but, feeling like a junior law clerk, I don’t ask.
Chet makes a face as he untwists the cap from the bottle.
“At this point we’ll follow it until it dries up or we run out of time. Even if it turns out to be worth less than dog crap, we’ve got to throw some sand in the jury’s face. Shit, we don’t have any choice. This is all we’ve got at the moment. I want you to go to San Francisco and see what you can find out about the distributor. If we have to put Leigh on the stand with this story, we need to know a hell of a lot more than we do now.”
Why should I go? I’m a lawyer, not an investigator.
“Can’t Daffy go or someone else? There’re a million guys who’d love a free trip.”
Chet shakes his head and takes a long draft before he speaks.
“What I’m mainly interested in is you finding someone out there whom we can qualify as an expert witness to testify that Leigh and Art had something to worry about. An investigator won’t have that kind of credibility. I’d go myself if I were in better shape.”
With the trial only little more than a week away I feel I’m being gotten out of the way. From a defense standpoint, it’s not a wild-goose chase; Chet is right. We’ve got to give the jury area son to acquit Leigh, but it is as if there’s something here Chet doesn’t want me to find.
The main tent is in Blackwell County, not San Francisco.
“Shouldn’t we be asking for a continuance?” I ask, searching his face for clues.
Chet looks down at the table and winces as if he had just discovered some kind of flaw in the wood.
“We wouldn’t get it. Besides, I may not have that kind of time. Trust me on this one,” he says, glancing up at me with an attempt at a smile.
“My track record is pretty damn good. I may not even put Leigh on to testify, but we’ve got to be prepared to go with this story if we have to.”
My mouth feels dry, but for some reason I decide not to ask for anything to drink. This case feels terrible.
Yet, I can’t argue with him. He has won acquittals for some clients for whom I would have been satisfied to accept a plea bargain of life imprisonment. I warn him, “I’ve got to be back no later than Thursday night. I’ve got a custody case to get ready for Friday I told you about.”
Chet nods absently and slides me a file.
“My Visa is in there, and so are Daffy’s notes. I’d like to see you gone by tomorrow night.” He stands up, dismissing me.
“I promised Wynona I’d get home early. Call me tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to decipher Daffy’s handwriting. I won’t be coming into the office.”
Wondering what’s on my calendar for the next two or three days, I let myself out of the heavy, fortresslike door. I can put off an uncontested divorce, and Dan, who owes me one, can make an appearance for me in municipal court on a DWI I know is scheduled. As I pull away from the curb, I feel a strong need to discuss this recent turn of events with Dan. I don’t understand what Chet is doing in this case. As good for nothing as Dan can be sometimes, he provides a decent sounding board.
I take Skyline Drive along the Arkansas River, knowing he and Brenda will be through with dinner and watching TV, which is all they do until bedtime, so I probably won’t be interrupting anything. With money on both sides of her family, and none on his, Brenda keeps Dan on a short leash, although why she doesn’t cut it altogether probably neither of them understands.
He says they were put on earth to make each other miserable, and from the expression on her face when she answers the door, tonight is no exception.
“Sorry not to call first, Brenda,” I say, without an ounce of sincerity in my voice, “but I need to talk to your old man if he’s not yet comatose.”
Brenda, who is smaller than Dan but not by much, jams her hands into an old gray cardigan sweater she is wearing over extra-large sweats and stares warily at her husband’s best friend.
“Come on in,” she decides.
“He’s still awake. But just barely.”
I look down at my watch. It is not quite eight o’clock. Married love: almost as exciting as bachelorhood.
She leads me down a hall toward the back of the house.
“How are you, Brenda?” I ask, pleased as a life insurance salesman to gain entrance. My theory is that this would be a relatively happy union if they would quit trying to conceive children and try to buy a couple instead. Brenda can afford it. If they would, then Brenda cou
ld quit trying to make Dan grow up and turn her attention to kids who at least have a chance of maturing.
For an answer, Brenda says, her voice rich with the snideness she is famous for, “I hear Sarah has found Jesus.”
The carpet in the hall is so lush I nearly stumble.
“I guess there are worse ways to spend your time,” I say, unwilling to incur Brenda’s full wrath, but also unwilling to deny my own flesh and blood. I can kick my own kid around, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let somebody else.
As usual, Brenda has the last word.
“I can’t imagine what they’d be,” she says, leading me into the den.
“Gideon’s here,” she informs her husband over the sound of a documentary on what appear to be dolphins and other sea creatures. My theory is we love animals because they can’t talk back. If they could, there’d be no end to their grievances against us. Wholesale slaughter not the least of them.
His head bent low over a bowl of cheese dip, Dan looks up with a sheepish expression. He has assured me he is on a strict diet.
“Come to check on me, huh?” he says, grinning.
“It’s gotten so bad in this country that you can’t even lie to your friends without them getting suspicious. Want a beer?” he says, punching the remote.
Beside Dan’s recliner, separated by a small table, is a couch that makes into a bed. As good friends as Dan and I have become, I have been in this room only a time or two before. Dan prefers to escape, and Brenda’s parties don’t include me. I can feel Brenda’s disapproval radiating next to me.
“Love one.” I’d drink an entire case if I thought I could get her goat.
Dan lifts his obese body half out of the chair and reaches to his left to open a door to a small refrigerator.
“Take your pick,” he says. From where I’m standing, I can see a six-pack of Miller Lite and at least as many soft drinks in cans. If he had a microwave in here, they could rent out the rest of the house.
“I’m going to bed,” Brenda announces, and Dan climbs out of his chair and pads across the room to pacify her. Obviously irritated, nevertheless she lets him kiss her on the cheek and pat her wide shoulders. Like so many fat women, she has a pretty face.
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