A Clean Kill

by Mike Stewart

  The day before, while I was being shamed in Montgomery, Joey had intercepted Sheri’s friend, Bobbi Mactans, at my front door. Joey told me that Bobbi had screamed and spit and threatened him some—to which he had responded by explaining that he had absolutely no qualms about throwing a woman down my front steps. Bobbi had decided to leave.

  Now, over breakfast, I tried to convince Sheri to take some personal days away from work. I wanted to keep her away from her friend until I had a better handle on the Cort clan.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She looked at me as if I’d just asked why the sun comes up each morning. “Because I have responsibilities, Tom. You should understand that.”

  “Do you have any vacation days coming?”

  “Well, yes. But that’s not …”

  “How many?”

  Sheri’s skin flushed at the base of her neck, just above the indentation between her collarbones. She reached up and patted at the hot skin without thinking. “We’ve been busy on an expansion. Not everyone …”

  “How many weeks of vacation do you have saved up, Sheri?”

  Her eyes flashed something like pride. “Five or six.”

  “You’re kidding. How long have you worked there?”

  “A little over three years. And during that time I’ve had three promotions. You don’t move up like that lying on a beach, Tom.”

  “And you don’t live very long with nothing in your life but work. Damn, Sheri. It sounds like you’ve taken less than a week’s vacation in three years.”

  My client wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  I thought about telling her that no one employee is that important to a large corporation, that life is about balance, that no one ever lay on her death bed wishing she’d spent more time at work. Instead, I said, “What’s more important right now, Sheri? Crunching numbers for an insurance company or finding your mother’s killer?”

  It was a lousy, manipulative thing to say—especially since I wanted her to take time off more so I could keep an eye on her than because her presence might be a boon to the investigation. But the comment worked, the way lousy, manipulative behavior often does. Sheri agreed to take some time off and help.

  My young client was a personality type I’d seen too many times in my own profession—a perfectionist and workaholic with absolutely no clue of how to handle life and relationships outside the office.

  After breakfast, Sheri insisted on cleaning up the dishes. She felt she had ruined my career. I, on the other hand, felt that I had turned a simple wrongful death investigation into a major cluster-fuck. Between the two of us, the kitchen fairly oozed with guilt.

  Later, Sheri and Kai-Li retired to the living room where they swapped sections of the Mobile Register. Joey left to gather more information on Zion Thibbodeaux.

  I sat in my study wondering if it was time to call Judge Luther Savin.

  My plan was to get the judge on the phone and throw around the Cajun’s name, maybe make up some lies about how closely the judge had been tied to Chris Galerina, and see if anything stuck to the wall.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Tom?”

  I said I was.

  “This is Luther Savin, with the …”

  “Court of Criminal Appeals.”

  He paused. “Uh, yes. That’s right. Have I caught you at a bad time?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but not the way you mean it. I was sitting here thinking about calling you.”

  The judge paused again. “Are things beginning to add up for you, Tom?”

  Now I paused.

  Judge Savin laughed. “You think you’re the only smart lawyer in the state?” He paused only for effect. “I tried to get you early on in this thing, Tom. Are you ready now to sit down and have a little talk?”

  I noticed that, like the politician he was, the judge managed to use my first name in every other sentence. I said, “I just came from Montgomery last night …”

  “I know.”

  “And I’m not much in the mood to go back.” I glanced over at the recorder Joey had hooked up to my phone after my brother was killed. I punched the red record button. “Can’t we just talk about this now and save me a trip?”

  “You should learn to switch that thing on without stopping to think about it. It makes for a telling and pregnant pause the way you do it.”

  I found myself stopping once again to digest what he’d said.

  Judge Savin seemed to know too much and I too little. I needed Joey to finish his investigation and bring me up to speed on both Zion Thibbodeaux and the Russell & Wagler law firm before I stepped into a pissing contest with the judge.

  Finally, I said, “I’m not coming back up there today. I need a day or two to make arrangements.”

  The judge chuckled, and the phrase, a right jolly old elf, flashed across my thoughts the way silly things do.

  He said, “You don’t need a couple of days, Tom. You just want ’em. Anyway, you don’t have to ask Mister Walker to fly you up to the capital again. I came to you. I’m just up the road from you right now. I believe you know how to find the Mandrake Club.”

  A light snow swirled in the air like lint around a cotton gin, clinging to my clothes and dusting the dark needles of longleaf pines along the walkway to the clubhouse. The prancing copper horse at the roof’s apex swivelled in abrupt quarter-arcs as if unsure of where to go. I ducked under the covered veranda and made my way to the front door, where my old friend, Harvey, tipped his hat and opened the door.

  It was 2:00 on a weekday afternoon. It was freezing outside. The place was empty. I said, “Hello,” to the nothingness, and a young woman appeared.

  “Guess that’s the password.”

  She wrinkled her forehead. “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m here to see Judge Savin.”

  “Oh. Yes. Straight back and down the corridor to your left. The men’s locker room will be the second door on your right.”

  I thanked her and went straight back to the corridor on my left. Inside the locker room—perched on a wooden bench that ran the length of parallel rows of lockers—was the Honorable Luther Savin, Chief Judge of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. He wore nothing but a white terrycloth towel around his waist, and he looked, for all the world, like a pink, bearded Buddha. On either side of him stood his Backstreet Boys rejects, Chuck and Billy—the same two who had “insisted” I join the judge for lunch when I’d picked up the bar association disk for Kai-Li.

  The judge beamed. “Hello there. Good to see you, Tom.”

  Something white and hot flickered at the back of my mind. I know myself enough to know there’s something about old rich guys that triggers animosity in me. I even know myself well enough to have a pretty good idea why that is.

  I just looked at Judge Savin. He smiled. Then he stood and walked out of the room.

  I looked at Frick and Frack, Donnie and Marie, Chuck and Billy. “That was interesting.”

  Billy, the angry blond, squared off in front of me. “Take your clothes off.”

  I felt my sphincter tighten. Not much. Just a little. “I’ve gotta tell you, I’m more of a dinner-and-a-movie-first kind of guy.”

  Billy flushed. “Do it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I can make you.”

  I looked at his partner. “I thought you were the smart one, Chuck. Can you do something about this?”

  Chuckie shrugged. “I think I’ll let you and Billy work it out.”

  Billy grinned; then he stepped forward and threw a long, looping right at my jaw. I brought up my left fist next to my ear and took a decent blow on my shoulder. Pivoting while he was still off balance, I shot my right hand up between his cocked fists and grabbed him by the throat. Planting my foot and driving with my leg, back, and arm, I slammed Billy’s gelled blond head into the steel door of a locker.

  He collapsed. He wasn’t unconscious. But he wasn’t exactly conscious either.

&nb
sp; I looked up at Chuck. “You want me to undress too?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. As a matter of fact, I do. We,” and he pointed over his shoulder in the direction the judge had gone, “would like you to join us in the steam room.”

  “Very Sam Giancana.” I motioned at Billy with my chin. “That didn’t have to happen. All you had to do was explain.”

  “Billy takes some handling. Ever since you embarrassed us by heading back to Auburn instead of coming along to the judge’s house, he’s been talking about ‘straightening your shit out,’ as he puts it. You were gonna have to deal with him sooner or later. I thought you might as well get it over with.”

  “So, slamming him unconscious is going to make him less angry? Is that your story?”

  “Mr. McInnes, Billy’s pure trash. The judge wouldn’t like me saying it. But that’s just the way it is.” He nodded at the crumpled form of his unconscious cohort. “And I learned a long time ago that little Billy here doesn’t respect anyone who isn’t as violent as he is.”

  “Does he respect you and the judge?”

  Chuck smiled. “Please, remove your clothes. The, um, the meeting is waiting.”

  I reached under my shirt and peeled loose the miniature tape recorder that Kai-Li had helped tape to my chest. Chuck held out his palm. I handed the tiny machine over. He popped the tape out and dropped it into his shirt pocket.

  “Okay,” I said, “where’s my locker?”

  Twenty-two

  Judge Luther Savin’s rotundity shrank the steam room. He looked past me at the mostly naked young man who had followed me in. “Chuck. Step outside. Make sure we’re not interrupted.”

  I kept my eyes trained on my host. A puff of cool air washed over my bare back when Chuck exited the room. I heard the thud of the door and crossed to the far wall, where I planted my towel-wrapped butt on redwood planks and leaned my head and naked shoulders against a checkerboard of white tiles. I wanted a place where no one could get behind me—like Doc Holiday in a Tombstone saloon.

  Judge Savin asked, “Nervous?”

  “Careful.”

  The chief judge was covered from the neck down with a fine spray of white hair, as if he had shaved a white cat and rolled in the clippings. A spiky Vandyke covered his chin and pointed neat white arrows along his jaw. The close fringe of hair above his ears looked starched. Thick, snowy eyebrows curved upward into peaks near his temples.

  I tried to be friendly. “Billy’s an idiot.”

  Savin nodded.

  “Why do you keep someone like that around?”

  Savin hunched forward and looked at the floor. “He’s my son.” There was no apology or excuse in his tone, just a statement. Some time passed. I tried to imagine the trouble the kid must have given the old man, then realized I didn’t care.

  The benches were tiered where the judge sat, and he leaned back against the next bench up. Hot steam swirled around his head like heavy smoke when he moved. “How much do you know?”

  “How much do I know about what?”

  He thought about that, looking down at swirls of white fur on his hard round belly. “Chris Galerina offered you some money. I don’t know how much, but I’m guessing it was a pretty good chunk of change.”

  He stopped for me to say something. I just looked at him.

  “At any rate, he made an offer that you either turned down or he thought you were going to turn down. Either way, the poor jerk figured his life was shot and put a bullet in his brain.”

  He paused again, and I nodded.

  The judge wiped drops of sweat from his bright pink face with thick palms. An ornate gold ring bearing a two-carat blood ruby cut into the pudgy little finger of his left hand. “Let me tell you a story, Tom. And to understand this story, you need to forget about being Law Review at Duke, which is what you were, and think about being another kind of lawyer. Can you do that, Tom?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Good. Good. In this story, Tom, you’re a young guy working as a bank teller or an insurance salesman or maybe even a common laborer by day—every day of your life, if you get my point. And you want something better. You see all these lawyers driving around town in Mercedeses and BMWs, spending money, getting the good-looking tail, you know, the well-kept women with StairMaster asses and silicone tits.

  “So you apply to one of the unaccredited night schools. And you work your butt off. You study hard. Give your life up for three or four years to get a law degree. And guess what?”

  He stopped and looked at me, so I said, “What?”

  “Nobody’ll hire you. You beat the pavement, mail out résumés, and still no one cares. So you find a plaintiff’s lawyer who’ll give you a few loser cases to hustle. And, guess what? You find out you’re good at it. You know how to talk to common folk because you are one. So you push and push and push some more until you make it to a bigger, more lucrative firm, and on to another one after that. Years pass and you’re doing fine. But you’re never doing as fine as you want to be.”

  I decided to join in the conversation. “Who is?”

  The judge nodded. Sweat pellets flipped off his nose. “Who indeed, Tom? But, in this story I’m telling, you find the answer. You stumble onto the golden ring. All you gotta do is pull it, and out’s going to fall all the Kraut cars and silicone knockers you ever dreamed of.

  “You see, Tom, what you did was figure out that a hell of a lot of cases are lost—that poor, injured plaintiffs are forever denied justice—because only one or two obstinate, misguided jurors hold out for the defendant.

  “At first, you’re tempted to try a bribe or two. After all, what’s a bribe when you’re fighting to keep a wrongfully injured client off welfare. Like everything in the law, it’s really more an issue of balancing wrongs than it is balancing competing rights.” He paused—but just for a second as his eyes searched my face. “But, Tom, bribery’s not only wrong, it’s also dangerous. You’ve got to worry about wires and undercover stings and all sorts of nasty interferences. And the last thing you want is to get busted and—if you’re lucky enough to stay out of prison—go back to working at the bank or the insurance agency or maybe loading spools at the textile mill.

  “But here comes the good part. Someone—someone who comes quietly recommended by one or two of the richest lawyers in the state—comes to you and says: ‘Look, Tommy, how’d you like it if your win ratio improved by twenty or thirty points? You won’t win ’em all, but you’ll win more than you ever dreamed of.’

  “You’d listen to something like that, wouldn’t you, Tom?”

  I shifted my weight—the hot planks were making an impression—and wiped sweat out of my eyes. “I’d be curious.”

  Through the white haze of manufactured steam, I could see the judge bobbing his round head up and down. “Damn right you would! And here’s the kicker—nobody gets hurt.”

  The judge’s skin had grown progressively redder in the searing heat, and his white beard and horned eyebrows stood out in stark contrast to the shiny flush that enveloped him.

  Now, his voice rose and took on a slight echo in the tiny room. “You win. Your poor, injured schmuck of a client wins. And the corporate bad guys get what they have coming. And you get all this because one or two obstinate jurors get nothing more dangerous than a well-timed stomach bug or a case of the trots.” He held his palms in the air. An overhead bulb caught the ruby and momentarily threw crimson patterns on the tiled floor between us. “That’s it. The juror standing between you and the truth gets excused from jury duty due to illness, and someone—an alternate with better sense—takes her place.”

  I leaned forward and propped my elbows on my knees. “But who makes them sick? Is it this Zybo, this Zion Thibbodeaux, from Louisiana?”

  When I mentioned the Cajun’s name, Judge Savin wrinkled his forehead in puzzlement and swayed his whiskered jowls from side to side as if trying to make sense of nonsense.

  I marched ahead. You never know if so
meone will answer a question until you ask it. “And, obviously, jury deliberations are private. How would you know whose soup to cough in?”

  The judge leaned forward again, mirroring my posture, and rubbed his meaty palms together. “Hard to say, Tom. I’m really talking about a hypothetical situation here. Heck, Tom, this isn’t even my area. I’m a criminal judge.”

  Judge Savin paused.

  I wondered if he’d caught the double meaning in his words and stumbled. But his round, flushed, politician’s face revealed nothing but total concentration on his subject.

  He went on. “All I’m doing here, Tom, is proposing an idea—a, ah, fiction—to get you to examine your actions from a different perspective.”

  “Well, you’re definitely getting me thinking, judge.”

  “Good. Good. While you’re at it, consider this: With this alternate, hypothetical path to justice, if you will, no one ever dies. Not by design. Not by error. It cannot happen.”

  And that, I realized, was the crux of it. That was the central message of Judge Savin’s sermon. No one dies. Not by our hand. We both sat still. Soft lines of perspiration traced fine lines across the bare skin of my chest and legs—tickling like the touch of an insect’s legs.

  I decided to ask a practical question. “By any chance, is part of this thinking I’m doing going to help me keep my license to practice law?”

  The judge hoisted his girth off the bench and flashed a practiced smile. “You never can tell, Tom. You never can tell. Could do that and more. You try cases before juries, don’t you, Tom?” Then he opened the door and walked out, trailing a swirling train of steam in his wake.

  And now I’d said the magic words: Will this help me keep my license? My host’s work was done. He’d made his point about Kate Baneberry’s death. I’d gotten the hint about how to hang on to my law practice and maybe even join the poison-a-juror club to boot.

  He was gone; so I sat and thought. It’s what he wanted me to do. Some things were making sense. Some weren’t. Just like real life.

  I breathed in thick lungfuls of heat, and the dark bruise Zybo had punched into my chest pinched and throbbed with each expansion. I held up my palm and blew steam at it to feel the burn.