Hostile witness vc-1

by William Lashner

  It was big and rather simple, with a white couch and a huge desk. Bookshelves climbed halfway up the wall, filled with even more legal tomes, digests, hornbooks, compilations of decisions by ancient British courts. Between the books on one wall was a television set. The rest of the walls were painted blue and covered with artwork, good stuff, too, by the looks of it, colorful abstracts and bright impressionistic oils. No doggies playing poker on Tony Baloney's walls. And then, so motionless I almost missed her, sitting on the couch was a startlingly beautiful woman, dark and small, in a tight white dress, her legs crossed and the veins in her dangling foot pulsing out of a white high heel.

  Tony finally made his way back into his office. "What in fucking hell is going on, Carl?" he said between gasps.

  "I thought your client was going to be a good boy."

  "Who? The landlord? Giamoticos?"

  "That's right," I said. "Well, Spiros flunked his probation."

  "What are we talking about?"

  I took the plastic bag over to the desk, littered with stacks of papers and files, and dumped its contents onto the desktop.

  "God, man," shouted Tony. "Jesus Christ. Now what did you have to go and do that for?"

  What lay now on Tony Baloney's desk was a dachshund, Oscar I think its name was, owned by a woman in my building, the dog chocolate brown and very dead, its neck snapped, its belly slit open, its intestines oozing out like thick glossy eels. I had found him on my doorstep that night when I had straggled home after an evening with the Bishops and knew immediately from where he had come. Veronica's landlord, Spiros Giamoticos. He must have picked my name off the motion I filed and was trying to scare me off from helping Veronica. I thought old Tony should see firsthand the crap his client was pulling. From out of the dog's entrails a dark viscous liquid was puddling over Tony's papers.

  I looked over at the woman on the couch, wondering if I had gone too far, but she wasn't screaming, she wasn't even flinching. A smile appeared on her dark pretty face and between her painted lips I could just glimpse an array of twisted brown teeth. Her smile was scarier than the dead dog. I turned away from her as soon as I saw it.

  "Giamoticos left this for me on my doorstep," I said.

  "On your step?" asked Tony.

  "That's right," I said. "You were going to keep him under control, remember? You vouched for him, remember?"

  He looked at me closely, like he was looking for something, then he loosed a sharp, quick stream of Spanish and the woman on the couch stood up and walked out the door. On her way out she grabbed hold of the bottom of her dress and yanked it down.

  "A client," said Tony Baloney with a shrug. "'So lust, though to a radiant angel linked, will sate itself in a celestial bed, and prey on garbage.' Hamlet's ghost."

  "Cut with the quotes," I said.

  "Look, take a seat." He gestured to the couch.

  "I'll stand," I said.

  "Well, I'll sit, if that's all right," he said, dropping onto the couch. He carefully leaned his cane beside him. "These late-night conferences consume much of a man. Now, how shall we clean up that mess?" He casually gestured at his desk, as if a carcass lying on its top was not an unusual sight.

  I held out the plastic bag still in my hand and dropped it onto the floor. "Use this if you like."

  "No, you'll clean my desk, Victor," he said.

  "Not in this life," I said. "Do something about Giamoticos and make sure it sticks."

  "You know, this whole sorry chain of events, Victor, is putting me in a difficult position. There are attorney-client considerations that are putting me in a very difficult position. Not to mention my obligations to the bar. Come on. Sit down."

  I remained standing. "What are you going to do to stop Giamoticos?"

  "I shouldn't have taken the case," he said as if to no one in particular. "My daughter calls me and right off I know what the story is. And it's just getting more complicated." He raised his head to me. "You're an esteemed member of the bar, Victor. Let's do a hypothetical."

  "I'm not here to play law student."

  "Humor me," he said. "A simple hypothetical, like in the ethics exam we all cheated on. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, we are representing a client accused of doing something deeply nefarious."

  "Like a Greek accused of killing cats."

  He pointed at me like I had guessed a word in charades. "Exactly so. Hypothetically, of course. And we also have another client who has nothing to do with the first. And this other client tells us, with the full protection of the attorney-client privilege, that he does as a practice what the first client is wrongly accused of doing. See where I'm going here?"

  "Not exactly," I said.

  "Been feeling a bit sluggish lately, darling? Any troubles concentrating? No sinus clogs?" He sniffed loudly twice. "No sniffles?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Let's expand our hypothetical a bit. Struggle to keep up, if you can. Now let us say a lawyer shows up accusing the first client of doing something to him, something which we figure was not done by the first client but by the second client. Right-o? And now we have a problem. Because if it was done by the second client then in all likelihood the lawyer is involved in activities that he shouldn't be involved in. Activities that can impinge upon his fitness to stand before the bar. Now tell me, Victor. Do we have a duty to inform the bar association about this lawyer?"

  "What kinds of activities?" I said, starting to get the horrifying idea behind Tony Baloney's hypothetical.

  "You don't see me chairing any bar association committees, do you, Victor?" he said in a calm, quiet voice. "They don't take my photograph two-stepping at the Andrew Hamilton Ball with the other high-flying members of our bar. I'm an outcast. And you know why, Victor, don't you? It's my clientele. Can you guess now what type of activities this hypothetical second client is involved in? I'll make it very simple for you."

  He leaned forward, smiled at me, and shouted, "DRUGS!"

  I jumped back at the shout.

  "You see," he continued, "we, hypothetically, have one client who has a wide distribution network. When he distributes on credit, and bills aren't paid, he leaves what he calls his calling card. And that calling card happens to be dead animals. Furry little things generally, with their necks snapped and their bellies slit. And then, funny thing, he generally gets paid what he's owed. It's so much more effective than a dunning letter, wouldn't you say? So in all likelihood, it is not a hypothetical Greek landlord leaving these little calling cards. It is a hypothetical drug dealer and he's leaving these calling cards for his hypothetical drug addict clients."

  I pulled a chair around and sat down because I had to. "Norvel Goodwin," I said quietly.

  "Hypothetically, of course. I gave you a message for Jimmy and I expected you would pick up on it."

  "I thought it was a threat," I said.

  "Yes, judgment is the first thing to go. I've been there before you. 'How use doth breed a habit in a man.'"

  "It's not what you think," I said.

  "It never is. Clean my desk, Victor. There are supplies in the back closet."

  I didn't move, didn't respond. I just sat there staring at him.

  "What kind of asshole would come into my office," he said, "and dump a gutted dog on my desk to advertise that he is a drug addict? What kind of asshole would do that unless he is crying out for help and wants me to report him? And I will tell you, Vic, right now you look like you could use some help, you know. I mean, right now, Vic sweetheart, you look like hell."

  I was sure I did just then. I was blanching. What Tony Baloney had just explained hit me like a short quick blow to the stomach, one of those shots you subconsciously know is coming but takes your breath away just the same.

  "So clean up my desk, darling," he said. "Clean it now."

  I tried to stand, but I couldn't. I was helpless, in shock, because what I realized just then was that Norvel Goodwin had risen like a specter to once again threaten my life. And
what I realized just then was that Veronica, with whom I had fallen in love, was once again hopelessly addicted to drugs. And what I realized just then was that in all our wild and brutal sex this drug addict whom I loved might have given me the plague. And what I realized just then was that it was over with me and her and I didn't I didn't I didn't want it to be over at all. I couldn't stand just then because I realized all of that, but it wasn't only all of that. I couldn't stand just then because at the same time I was realizing all of that I also realized exactly who had murdered Zack Bissonette and all that I would have to give up to prove it.

  Part IV

  The Defenestration

  42

  I GREW UP WITH MY FATHER in a Spanish-style bungalow in a suburban enclave of Spanish-style bungalows the developer had enthusiastically titled Hollywood. There was the Hollywood Tavern, where the working men of Hollywood escaped to a cool, red-tinged darkness and twenty-five-cent beers, the Hollywood Drugstore, dusty plate windows with small, hand-lettered signs, and an all-night donut shop that broke the tradition and was not called Hollywood Donuts but instead Donut Towne, the final "e" the only bit of class remaining in the neighborhood. It wasn't a terrible place to live, this Hollywood, and after the war when it had just been built it had been quite a thing, but it wasn't much compared to the sprawling five-bedroomed manses with rolling lawns that surrounded it.

  There was something about my neighborhood that I had always thought pathetic. Maybe it was the way the houses seemed to have been built rundown, maybe it was the way a scrappy flora had risen through the sidewalk cracks, turning the concrete slabs into rubble, and nobody did a thing about it. Maybe it was the whole idea of there being a Hollywood in the middle of this suburb outside of Philadelphia, as if in that little six-block area of cracked and decaying bungalows there lived John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart and Vera Miles and Yvette Mimieux, making movies and throwing barbecues in their seedy little backyards. I guess if the whole of the school district had been made of places like Hollywood I wouldn't have minded it so much, but it was a rich school district and my classmates were rich and I wasn't. Though we had a television and heat and always enough food, I could never shake the feeling that I grew up in a slum.

  The Sunday after my meeting with Tony Baloney I drove past Donut Towne and the Hollywood Tavern and into the maw of my childhood. The trees that had been big and sturdy in my youth were now ancient and twisted. Many had fallen, taking the sidewalk with them, and this, along with the surviving trees having just shed their autumn leaves, had the effect of letting fall a cold, hard light so that the neighborhood seemed brighter than I ever remembered it to be. Every time I came back home the neighborhood seemed brighter than I ever remembered it to be. Nome, Alaska, during the six-month darkness of winter would be brighter than I ever remembered my old neighborhood to be. There, in front of that ranch house, there was where Tommy DiNardo used to beat me up after elementary school. Oh and there, over there, was where Debbie Paulsen jumped on top of me and, holding me down, kissed me and licked me and felt up my chest. Was I the only boy in my neighborhood to be raped by Debbie Paulsen, five feet and 180 pounds of frustrated Catholic flesh? And yes, there, right there, in a gap under that porch, fixed now so that you'd never know, but there was where I hid the day my mother left, shouting curses at my father as he snarled silently back at her from our front stoop. Ah, childhood in Hollywood, did ever shit smell sweeter?

  I guess I was coming home for perspective. I had a decision to make and I figured here was where I would make it. I had to decide what I wanted, what my obligations were, how to attack my future. I had to decide what I should be when I grew up, and so home I came, to my father. I hadn't called but I knew he'd be there. The Eagles were on television, which gave him a fine excuse to do that which he did every night after work and all day Saturdays and Sundays: sit in front of the tube, drink beer, cough. I dropped the knocker twice onto the door. There was a button there to press, but it hadn't worked since I was nine.

  "What do you want?" my father said when he opened the door and saw his son standing behind the screen with a sickly smile on his face.

  I lifted the six-pack of Rolling Rock beer I had brought. "You watching the game?"

  He turned from me without opening the screen door and shambled back to his seat. "No. There's golf on Channel Six."

  In case you missed it, that was my father's idea of a joke.

  I think to understand my father you had to have understood my mother, all that she wanted, all that she felt she missed out on in her life because of marrying my father, the reasons that she left us for a trailer in Arizona. Unfortunately I had never understood anything about my mother beyond the fact that she was committably crazy and so my father remained something of a mystery too. He was a big man, bristly white hair, thick fingers, a quiet, hardworking, unambitious man with a bitterness cultivated by his ten years with my mother, a bitterness that had now bloomed into an ugly overripe flower he wore pinned to his breast like some beastly corsage. It was this same bitterness, I believed, that had manifested itself as the spots on his lungs that the X-rays were not erasing, just holding in check. The doctors all said he should be dead by now, he told me over and over, and I could never tell if he said it out of pride or disappointment.

  I sat down on the sofa and twisted off the top of a Rock. He was in the easy chair, a can of Iron City in his hand. You could buy Iron City in the deli for $1.72 a six-pack. My father always had a taste for the finer things.

  "How are they doing?" I asked.

  "They're bums."

  "The Eagles or the Jets?"

  "They're all bums." He coughed, a loud hacking cough that brought up something. He spit into a paper towel on the table beside the chair and didn't look at it. "And the money they make. These bums couldn't hold the jockstraps of players like Bednarik and Gifford."

  "Then why do you watch every week?"

  "To have my judgment confirmed."

  "I haven't seen you in a while. You look pretty good."

  He coughed again. "The doctors all tell me I should be dead by now."

  "Yeah, but what do they know, right?"

  "That's what I always say."

  "Is that so?"

  "Now you're being a smartass."

  "One of my inherited traits."

  "From your mother."

  "No. From you."

  His face grayed and he hacked out something else for the paper towel. "Ah, what do you know?"

  "What's the score?" I asked.

  "Fourteen-seven, Eagles."

  "They're not playing like bums today."

  "This is the Jets. Let's see them play the Cowboys. In their hearts they's bums."

  We watched the game in near silence, throwing out charming bons mots as the play progressed, things like "He's got hands like feet," when a receiver dropped a ball, and "He couldn't tackle his sister," when a running back spun off a safety's hit, but basically keeping our thoughts to ourselves, the television commentary interrupted only by my father's coughs. We even sat in front of the halftime show, snippets from the band, hyperactivity from the commentators in the booth, a string of commercials about cars and beer. Sometime during the third quarter I realized that my beer was warming, so I took the now half-empty six into the kitchen. What I saw in the refrigerator was depressing. There was beer, there was an old milk carton, there were things I couldn't identify in the back. Ice was growing from the refrigerant cables. What was so depressing was that the inside of my father's refrigerator looked very much like the inside of my own.

  "You should clean out your fridge sometime," I said when I sat back down.

  "Why?"

  Why indeed? Stumped again, I thought. Stumped again by my father.

  "What about that five thousand you owe me?" he asked after the game, when the only thing on was the golf tournament on Channel 6, which my father had decided to watch rather than do the unthinkable and turn off the set.

  "That was what I came about," I s
aid. "Or something like it."

  "Well, do you got it or not?"

  "Do you need it?"

  "I could use it, sure," he said.

  "I could get it if you need it."

  "I didn't say I needed it."

  "You said you could use it."

  "It's not the same thing. Everyone could use it. Donald Trump could use it, but he don't need it."

  "Bad example," I said.

  "Yeah, well, maybe."

  "Do you need it?"

  "No."

  "Good," I said. "Because I don't have it."

  The tournament leader pulled a five-footer past the hole.

  "That's not to mean I couldn't use it," he said.

  "I'll get it for you, then."

  "Look at that putt he missed," my father said, waving disgustedly at the screen. "Bums. For fifth place they get fifty thou. Who the hell cares about winning anymore?"

  So we watched golf for a bit, seduced into somnolence by the rhythm of the game, the setup, the waggle, the step back, the waggle, the swing, ball disappearing into the screen only to reappear as a tiny speck spinning forward on the fairway. The shadows in the house were getting longer now, the room was darkening. I glanced over during one of the crucial putts and my father was asleep in the chair, head back, mouth open, breathing noisily through his diseased and rotting lungs. He woke up with a start when Greg Norman made a long twisting putt and the crowd applauded wildly.

  "Who? What?" he stammered.

  "Norman just made a putt."

  "There's a bum. You want to know how to become a great golfer? Play Norman in a playoff."

  "The trick is getting to the playoff in the first place."

  "There's always a trick," he said. "I'm just telling you how is all."

  "Tell me about Grandpop," I said and that quieted him for a moment.