by Mike Stewart
A.U.M. is on the Auburn side of Montgomery, four or five miles outside the city limits, and the trip took less than an hour. And if someone was following the big blue Expedition, he or she was better at following than I was at spotting followers.
I was there early. Beth was waiting when I arrived. She had gelled hair, heavy makeup, and razor-thin eyebrows, and she was standing outside the entrance to the Student Life Center. As I approached on foot, she did something with her face that was intended to approximate a smile.
“Tom McInnes?”
“Yes, Beth. It’s nice to meet you in person.” We were face-to-face now. “Thank you for coming out on Sunday morning like this. I know it’s beyond the call of duty.”
“Dr. Cantil said it was an emergency. And, anyway, I’m meeting some girlfriends just down the road at one.” She had a Zip disk in one hand, and she tapped it against her thigh as she spoke. “We’re going Christmas shopping this afternoon.”
I smiled and nodded and looked at the disk.
Beth smiled and nodded and looked hard into my eyes.
Oh. I asked, “Can I pay you something for your trouble?”
Beth made the smile-face again. “I would usually say no. But I’ve gotten away from home this morning without any cash. So, you know …”
“Sure. Absolutely.” I reached into my pocket. “How about fifty dollars to help with Christmas shopping with your friends?”
She continued to look at me as if I hadn’t said anything.
Okay. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. There’s not much you can get these days for fifty dollars.”
She shook her head. I took out five twenties and held them out. Beth made her smile-face, and I got the disk.
Beth went inside the Student Life Center for some reason I didn’t know. I cut a diagonal across the central green and headed toward the gymnasium parking lot, where I’d left Joey’s Expedition. As I made the outside corner of the gym, I saw two young guys in golf clothes lounging against my vehicle, which seemed fine. It was, after all, a college campus, and they looked like college students. There was symmetry there.
I walked up to the giant Ford and popped the locks with the remote.
One of the guys, a big, athletic-looking kid with a Marc Anthony haircut, spoke up. “Are you Mr. McInnes?”
I opened the door, swung my backside onto the seat, and closed the metal door in his face. I admit that—in the absence of a likely stalker—it would have been a rude gesture. He tapped on the glass. “Mr. McInnes? Mr. McInnes, we’ve got a message from Judge Savin.”
Judge Luther Savin was the senior jurist on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. I cranked the engine and rolled down the window. “What’s the message?”
A blond kid with a whitewall haircut and long, thin sideburns came over to stand beside the kid with the wimpy Roman do. “Would you mind stepping out so we can talk?”
I smiled a nice, friendly smile. “What are you, the golf cops?”
The two men laughed. The blond reached for the door release. “Give us a break. The judge asked us …”
“Get your hands off my door.”
Blondie feigned shock, but he tried to open the locked door anyhow. “Sir.” The tone was growing firmer. “Judge Savin has asked us to invite you to his home.”
“Sorry. I’m busy.”
The blond kid reached through the window and plucked at the door lock. He said, “This is ridiculous.”
I propped my left elbow in the open window, where I pressed down hard on both the lock and the young man’s fingers. He yelped a little and snatched his fingers away.
The Roman hairdo looked at his friend. “Billy, step back from Mr. McInnes’s car.”
Blond Billy was red-faced, but he stepped back. The kid who had spoken turned to me and smiled. “Billy’s a little pushy. Look, my name’s Chuck Bryony. I’m Judge Savin’s law clerk. The judge asked us to come out here and invite you to lunch.”
“What’s he want?”
Chuck held up his palms. “He didn’t tell us. Just that he’d like you to join him for lunch, if that’s possible.”
I examined both young faces. “How’d Judge Savin know I’d be here?”
“He didn’t tell us that either. Look, this is getting silly. The judge called this morning and asked Billy and me to lunch. We’re supposed to play golf this afternoon at Montgomery Country Club. He asked us to stop by here and bring you along. I assumed you were a friend of his. I don’t know what’s got you spooked, but all we’re doing is passing along a lunch invitation.”
“And I guess Billy tried to help me with my door ’cause he’s got a crush on me.”
Chuck shrugged. “We’re pretty sure that Billy’s forte as an attorney will not turn out to be client relations.”
I smiled. “Where does the judge live?”
Billy spoke up. “Judge Savin said to have you ride with us.”
I nodded. “But that’s not really up to the judge, is it?”
Billy turned and walked away. Chuck smiled. “He lives over behind Huntingdon College. You know where that is?”
I nodded. “Sure. Just pull out and I’ll follow you.”
Chuck smiled again and told Billy to get in their car.
The two young men pulled out ahead of me in an indeterminate Japanese sports car that someone at a plant in Tokyo or Tennessee had had the bad taste to paint sunshine yellow. As we left campus, I began driving too fast. I accelerated to within two car lengths of the yellow car, and Billy, who was driving ahead of me, sped up. I pressed the accelerator harder still until I was within one car length of Billy’s rear bumper, and Billy once again did what people do under those circumstances and sped up ahead of me.
As we approached the interstate, Billy switched on his right-turn signal; so I switched on mine. He then hung a right toward Montgomery and accelerated down the entrance ramp onto I-85—clearly with the intention of putting some distance between the front of Joey’s giant Expedition and the tiny rear end of his toy car.
I, on the other hand, drove on past the ramp Billy had taken, crossed the overpass, and turned left toward Auburn.
Unless blond Billy got pissed off enough to drive a sports car with six inches of ground clearance across the median, he would have to go another three miles to the next exit to turn around. By the time he got back where he’d started, I would have a six- to seven-mile head start. I didn’t think he could catch me. But, if he did, what could he do about it? I’d just wanted to get out of the parking lot without another arrest-worthy altercation.
If Judge Savin’s clerks wanted to drive a hundred miles an hour to catch up and then tailgate me all the way to Auburn, they were welcome to it.
Fifteen minutes outside Auburn, I had seen nothing more of Billy and Chuck. I pulled out my cell phone and punched in Kai-Li Cantil’s home number.
A small voice answered. “Hello?”
“Yes. I was trying to reach Dr. Kai-Li Cantil.”
The tiny voice said, “Hang on,” and I heard a clack as the phone was dropped on a hard surface.
Almost a full minute passed before Kai-Li’s familiar accent crackled through the line. “Hello?”
“Hi. This is Tom.”
“Tom, I’m sorry. I was just stepping out of the bath.”
“Was that your daughter?”
“Yes. Was she polite? We’re working on phone manners.”
“She was fine. Look, I’m calling because I’ve got the disk.…”
Kai-Li interrupted. “Great. Tom, would you mind bringing it to my apartment? I don’t have a sitter, and I can’t leave Sunny here alone. And, believe me, we wouldn’t get much work done shut up in my little office with a six-year-old.”
I was curious about whether there was a husband around somewhere. And I wanted to ask about that very thing, but then that was none of my business. So all I said was, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I wanted to tell you about something strange that happened in Montgomery. Two men were waiting
for me in the parking lot at A.U.M. after I picked up the disk from Beth. They claimed to be law clerks for one of the judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals.”
“Which one? I mean, which judge?”
“Luther Savin. They said he wanted to invite me to Sunday lunch at his house.”
“Maybe he did.” She paused. “But then, how did he know you would be there? Did you tell anyone?”
“Nope.”
“You obviously didn’t go with them.”
“Nope.”
“I hope there was no disturbing of the peace this time.”
“No, no. I was a good boy.”
She paused. “Sunny and I were planning a lunch of microwave lasagne in about thirty minutes. You’re welcome to join us.”
“Kai-Li, are you sure you want me coming to your home? Somebody’s following me everywhere I go these days.”
“Actually,” she said, “someone seems to be way ahead of you. If anything, your movements seem to be following someone else’s plan.” And that was an infuriatingly accurate way to describe my progress on Sheri Baneberry’s case. She said, “So, considering all that, you may as well come since the Shadow already knows you’re thinking about it.”
“I think you should take this more seriously, Kai-Li.”
“Maybe. Come eat lunch anyway.”
“I don’t think so. On top of everything else, I’ve got a missing friend and a lot of unfinished business in Mobile. I’d like to get home this afternoon.”
“I thought you were going to stick around and play Sherlock Holmes with me.” Kai-Li’s voice lost body and, surprisingly, sounded almost like her daughter’s.
“I can’t, and I’m not sure it’d be a good idea even if I had the time. Right now, I’m not that worried about your level of involvement. Whoever followed me to Auburn was busy stealing my film at Tiger Tooth Photo while I was driving to your office. Maybe they knew about my trip to Montgomery because Beth told them about you, or maybe somebody followed me from the hotel.
“But, even if someone knows I came to see you … hell, I’m a lawyer and you’re a jury expert. I think the worst that could happen is someone might come see you and want to know what we talked about.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Cute. But, Kai-Li, if a Cajun gentleman stops by and you feel the least bit threatened or even uncomfortable, just go ahead and tell him everything you know. Is that a deal?”
“I’m no hero.”
“Good. Now as to this disk I got from Beth. Do you know the arboretum next to the university president’s mansion?”
She said, “Sure.”
“Okay, stop by there later this afternoon and look under a small bench about ten feet from the northeast end of the arched footbridge …”
Fourteen
It was dinnertime and black dark when I rolled onto my driveway in Point Clear. Coming through Fairhope minutes before, the downtown streets had sparkled with tiny Christmas bulbs scattered over trees and shrubs along the sidewalks—all of which now made my own abode seem particularly dark and neglected. With Susan a thousand miles away and no one else to worry about, I had already decided it would be a little silly to put up a tree. Now, though, it suddenly seemed just a little too damn depressing not to.
Inside the house, I flipped on lights, mixed a large scotch and soda in a plastic cup with WAR EAGLE printed on the side, and strolled out onto the downstairs deck. Eight hours behind the wheel of Joey’s Expedition had not improved the lingering effects of carbon-monoxide poisoning and crashing into a horse trough. Neither had the time allowed me to figure out what might have become of my investigator. Repeated cell-phone calls along the way—to my office and to Loutie Blue, even to a restaurant where Joey liked the crab cakes—had been useless. No one had heard from him. No one had seen him.
A drive-thru cheeseburger I’d snagged outside Mobile sat comfortably in my stomach next to a large fry and a fried apple pie—all good, solid, American cuisine. Otherwise, I felt like hell. A dull ache capped the back of my head. The bones in my legs felt thin and brittle. But the night air tasted cold and clean, and my neighbor’s pontoon-supported Christmas tree—just visible out on the bay through a small stand of twisted pines—moved lazily on black water like a dream of childhood.
I stepped down off the deck and kept going until Mobile Bay lapped the sand at my feet. The Grand Hotel lay down the beach to my right. I turned left and started walking. My drink sloshed, and I drank in gulps between strides. Beach homes with tasteful sprinklings of pinpoint lights drifted by on the left, and a hidden moon cast a soft glow over sand and water.
The ache at the back of my head dissipated into a tingling skullcap and disappeared. The muscles in my legs warmed and lent strength to aching joints. I was bushed. I thought of nothing. Soon the houses grew less familiar, and I realized I had been walking for most of an hour.
I turned toward home.
Forty minutes later, as I stepped into my own back yard, I could see him sitting on the steps. He wasn’t Joey or Jonathan Cort or even my Cajun stalker, but I did know the man from somewhere.
I stopped just inside the yard and called out. “Who’s there?”
“Tom McInnes?”
“Yeah, I know who I am. Who are you?”
“Whatsa matter with you?”
Whoever he was, he was drunk—maybe a drunk former client, maybe a vengeful drunk I’d once irritated on the witness stand, or maybe just some friendly, I’m-too-drunk-to-drive-home drunk. There were several options, but they all involved an inebriated stranger waiting for me in the dark.
It had been a long, exhausting day. I began to back toward the beach.
He called out. “Whoa! Wait up. Don’t you know me? We met before. Chris Galerina. I’m Chris Galerina. We need to talk, Tom.”
I stopped. “You were the plaintiffs’ lawyer on that fourteen-million-dollar Federal Life case.”
I could see his pale face bobbing up and down in the night.
“That’s the case where Kate Baneberry was a juror,” I said.
Clouds shifted, and the moonlight highlighted Galerina’s starched white shirt and loosened tie. He was bobbing his head again. “Yeah, that’s me. We met before. I met you at a bar party or a seminar or something. You remember?”
I didn’t answer.
“We need to talk, Tom. I’m telling you. We need to talk tonight.”
I called out. “Are you alone?”
His pale face bobbed some more above the white collar. “Yeah, I’m alone. But at least you got enough sense to ask. That’s what we need to talk over. You and me, we need to get some things straight. I’m here to help you, Tom. You may not believe it, but I drove out here tonight to save both of us a world of hurt.”
I glanced around the yard, listening hard for footfalls on sand.
If it was a trap and someone else—someone who planned to do me damage—was with Chris Galerina, then he or she was probably crouched behind me in the dark already. If it was a trap and Galerina was alone, well, I’d met the man and he did not put me in fear of my life. But, if it wasn’t a setup and a senior partner with Russell & Wagler wanted to talk about Kate and Jim Baneberry, then, hell, I had to hear this.
I started walking toward my drunken visitor. “Well then, Chris, I guess we better go inside and talk.”
Galerina stood as I walked up the stairs. When we met, I passed through a bourbon-flavored haze. He still wore suit pants, a starched shirt, and a loosened, hundred-dollar tie from work, but the man reeked.
I unlocked the door and walked in ahead of him. He followed; then he closed and locked the door himself.
I turned to look at him. “Have a seat.”
Galerina looked smaller inside. He stood about five-eight and looked soft around the middle and pretty much everywhere else. A black smudge of five-o’clock shadow glowed beneath nervous perspiration. It was forty degrees outside, and the man was sweating.
He walked to an upholstered chair and
sat down, draping his suit coat over his lap. He caught my eye and nodded at the empty WAR EAGLE cup in my hand. “You going to have another drink?”
“Would you like one?”
“Yeah. Thank you. Bourbon on the rocks.”
“It’s in the kitchen. I’ll be right back.”
I walked into the kitchen and looked longingly at the telephone. I wanted to talk to someone about Jim Baneberry’s lawyer sitting in my living room, but I didn’t know who that someone might be. So, what I did was mix two drinks and rejoin my uninvited guest.
Galerina thanked me and took the bourbon in his left hand. His right was pushed deep inside the folds of the suit coat in his lap.
I sat down opposite him and sipped my scotch. “What have you got in your hand, Chris?”
He turned to look at the door leading out onto the deck, then gulped down half his drink before answering. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
There was something odd about the way he was gripping whatever he had under the coat, like maybe his life depended on it. So it seemed to me that either he was inordinately fond of himself, or he had a gun. “Well then, why don’t you take your hand out of there?” I smiled. “It looks like you’re playing with yourself.”
Galerina flushed red. “I don’t think you know me well enough to talk to me like that.”
I said, “Yeah. And you don’t know me well enough to sit in my living room playing with yourself.”
My sweat-shiny guest sat his bourbon on the rug next to the chair and swiveled his neck to crack the tension out of it. “Fine. You wanna see what I’m playing with?” He eased a snub-nosed revolver out from beneath the coat. “This is what I’m playing with, Tom. This is what I’ve been playing with ever since you got in my business.”
“Did you come here to shoot me, Chris?”
“I came here to help you.”
“And, by any chance, does that include sending me to heaven? Because—just so you’ll know—I’m not real sure that’s where you’d be sending me.”
I was trying to break the tension. He didn’t smile. “I look crazy to you, don’t I, Tom? Crazy little wop lawyer come out here to shoot you and shoot myself. Is that what you think?”
