Intruder

by Peter Blauner

  Sensing his uneasiness, Susan puts down her cigarillo. “Maybe before we get into any of the details, we should discuss the price of justice.”

  Jake looks up at her, like a dog facing a rolled-up newspaper. “How much?”

  “My fee is fifty thousand dollars, plus twenty-five hundred a day if it goes to trial.”

  She holds his gaze for a few seconds before her composure begins to dissolve and an embarrassed smile begins to tug at the corners of her mouth.

  “You know what?” says Jake, “I’ll give you fifty. But it’s worth more.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. And you’ll never be a top-ranked criminal attorney until you go home and practice saying, ‘My fee is one hundred thousand dollars,’ into the bathroom mirror without cracking up.”

  She begins to chuckle and for the first time he feels a human connection with her.

  “So do I get a break for giving you good advice?” he asks.

  Her smile fades. “Just write me a check for what you have right now. I understand if you need time to raise the rest.” Her cigarillo smolders in the ashtray. “Now what else can you tell me about this case?”

  47

  Yo, what time is it?” the man with the hard round gut asks.

  “I don’t know.” John G. can’t bear to look at him.

  A jaundice-yellow sun over 145th Street. Hardly any traffic. Locked-up storefronts. Four gray men stand on the sidewalk, looking down at their feet.

  The regular Narcotics Anonymous meeting was canceled at the Interfaith Volunteers Center, so John G. and three other homeless men have been sent to an uptown meeting. However, the people running it haven’t arrived yet with the keys.

  “You got to put jelly to jelly,” says the man with the round gut, who calls himself Mao.

  “So are they coming or not?” asks John, standing next to him and staring at the corrugated gate pulled over the front of the clinic. “They’re supposed to be open at two-thirty.”

  Over these last few days, he’s been struggling to replace the orderliness of the drug addict’s life—scoring, smoking, bugging, chilling—with the orderliness of the recovery cycle. He keeps telling himself that every meeting, every clinic counts. If one gets canceled, he feels despondent and in danger of falling into bad old habits.

  Stay clean. Easy does it. One day at a time. He’s trying to keep all the NA slogans in his head.

  The other three guys stamp their feet and sniffle quietly. A man walks by in a white Muslim skullcap, talking on a cellular phone. John G. wonders idly about the effect of all those radio waves going through the air.

  “You got to put smelly to smelly,” says Mao.

  “Say, you wanna go get a beer?” says the man standing to the left of John, a stout coffee-colored man named Charles Harris, who claims he was once a cop in Nassau County.

  “Nah, you know. I start drinking, the medication doesn’t work as well.” John shuffles his feet.

  “Yo, come on, man. Let’s just split a forty.”

  “Nah, they’re gonna be open any minute.”

  He’s beginning to wonder if he should spend so much time hanging around people like Charles, who are always trying to get him high.

  Two women walk by with white Muslim scarves covering their heads and faces.

  “You got to put belly to belly,” says Mao, wiggling his big gut at them. “Say sisters! What time is it?”

  “Yo, shut up, fool,” says Charles Harris. “Their man hear you talk like that, he’ll come on over here and stomp your head with them big old Muslim feet. They leave a treadmark on your face, just say Property of Allah.”

  The man on the far left, who’s freakishly thin like a sideshow contortionist, opens his eyes for the first time in five minutes.

  “I tell you what happened the other night?” he says. “I was hanging out behind Saks Fifth Avenue going through the Dumpsters, right? So this limo pulls up and this old white guy gets out, dressed real nice. Right? So he goes up to the Dumpster next to mine and starts going through it with his white gloves. And I’m like, ‘What’s up with that?’ Right? He says, ‘Fifty-seven years ago, I was living like a bum and I found two bags of cash in this garbage.’ Two thousand dollars, man. Started his whole business. Launched his career. So now every Friday night, he comes back to see if they make the same mistake.”

  “So what’s your point?” asks John G.

  “Anything could happen on the street, you hang out long enough.”

  “Yo, what time is it?” asks Mao.

  “Say, fuck this shit, man,” Charles Harris interrupts, poking his tongue into the right side of his cheek and then the left. “Let’s go get high. These people ain’t coming. They probably got car trouble. They’re stuck on the LIE. They don’t care about us.”

  Another strong gust of wind blows down 145th Street, taking garbage and grit in its wake.

  “I wanna hang out,” John G. demurs. “They ought to be here any minute.”

  It’s hard putting things back together. All the connections that seemed so obvious on drugs are no longer there. Random displacement. Molecules pushing molecules. It doesn’t make quite as much sense anymore. He’s going to have to put the world back together the hard way. He’d gotten used to living like a dog and rummaging through garbage cans. Getting high whenever the urge hit. Now there’s all these rules to contend with. Having to shower every day, signing in for your bed, making meetings, taking your medication. Ms. Greenglass on your back all the time. No wonder you had so many guys bugging out from the stress.

  “How’s long’s it been since you got high anyway?” asks Charles.

  “I dunno. Two, three weeks.”

  Easy does it. One day at a time. Since he stopped taking drugs, his teeth have started falling out and he only takes a shit about once every three days.

  “So that’s long enough,” says Charles. “You been good. So come the fuck on. I got my man Marcus selling me jumbos on consignment. You smoke every tenth bottle and sell the rest, you got a habit that pays for itself. It’s a beautiful thing, man.”

  “Nah, nah, I’m really trying to stop,” says John.

  Charles pulls his face back, as if it’s a camera lens going for a wide angle. “What? You wanna smoke some cheeba? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Don’t be shy. I’m down with that.”

  “No, I’m trying to work on my steps, man.”

  “Your steps?”

  “Yeah, you know the Twelve Steps.”

  Step Seven: We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

  “Yo, man, let’s ride on,” says Charles. “Let’s the four of us go around the corner, share a bottle of Brass Monkey. I used to help my man at the liquor store with his security. He’d give us a bottle on credit.”

  “Yo, I asked what motherfuckin’ time it was,” says Mao with the big gut to no one in particular.

  John’s heard enough. He turns on Charles. “Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone? Don’t I have enough problems? Why do you want to see me get high so badly? Am I making you nervous or something?”

  Even as he says this, though, his resolve is weakening. Step One: We admitted we were powerless over drugs and alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. So fucking what? What difference would it make if he went around the corner and smoked a joint with Charles? Who else would he be hurting?

  On the other hand, maybe he’s hurt enough people already. Step Eight: We made a list of all persons we harmed, and became willing to make amends to them.

  He’s been thinking lately he’d like to see Margo again. It’s a good goal for him to concentrate on when he gets up in the morning. Instead of just figuring out how to waste the day getting high. He wants to stay focused on putting things back together. But he’s not sure if he’s ready to see her just yet. Maybe he has to build up to it.

  “Hey, that’s the lady,” says Freakshow Slim on the left.

  He points to a big blonde woman struggling to get out of a
broken-down Town & Country station wagon with a blue food cooler. Sister Patrice, from Manhasset. She crosses the street, getting the keys out of her red barn jacket.

  “You got to put deli to deli,” says Mao.

  “Shut up, fool.” Charles is already backing away from the group. Weirded out by the sudden proximity to the meeting, where the fluorescent lights will be bright, the coffee will be lukewarm, and the expectations for him to stay clean will be serious. “I’m outta here. I’m gonna get high. Then I’m gonna go get some stinky on my hangy-down thang.”

  “You mean you’re gonna get laid?” John asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “I doubt that,” says John, who wishes he were going with him anyway—women or no women.

  Charles’s face shrivels in the wind. “Yeah, me too.”

  He scoots across the street, leaving John to figure out the best way to say he’s sorry.

  48

  Jake’s secretary, Deborah, is home sick with a savage yeast infection, so he’s having to field some of his own calls.

  “Mr. Schiff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Please hold for J. Harrell Pearson.”

  Jake silently curses to himself. J. Harrell Pearson is the head of the fourth-largest motor oil company in the country. He is calling to scream. J. Harrell likes to scream. In fact, he likes screaming better than most people like eating. Sometimes he’ll experience spontaneous nosebleeds while berating a boardroom full of junior executives. This time he is almost certainly calling to scream because Jake and the accountants he’s brought in have only managed to put him in the second-lowest tax bracket possible, instead of the lowest. J. Harrell will be handing the government no larger a proportion of his income than a city bus driver, yet he will still shriek about having been raped.

  Jake braces himself for the opening salvo as a buzzer goes off on his phone. There’s a knock at the door. Someone is coming in. He tries to remember if he asked for coffee and a bagel this morning. If Deborah were here, she’d have it organized. Instead, somebody else’s secretary is buzzing the delivery boy in, probably while keeping two clients on hold on the phone.

  Jake half rises as his door opens and a man who looks like the Las Vegas singer Jerry Vale walks briskly into the room.

  “Mr. Schiff, you’re under arrest,” he says, whipping out a black billfold and displaying a gold shield.

  Jake’s eyes flick over to the left and he sees two young uniform officers with well-defined bodies and unformed faces have followed the man with the shield into the room. Meanwhile, J. Harrell Pearson has gotten on the phone.

  “Schiff, goddamn it, how could you do this to me?!” he squawks. “Have you no compassion?!”

  It’s a moment so surreal and disorienting that all Jake can think to ask himself is: Why is Jerry Vale trying to arrest me?

  “Mr. Schiff, please put the phone down,” says the man with the gold shield, who is clearly a detective.

  “Harrell, I gotta go,” Jake says into the phone.

  “Don’t hang up on me! I won’t pay this bill . . .”

  The phone goes back on the hook and Jake stands there, looking from the detective to the two uniform cops. For several days he’s been telling himself this scene might take place, but now he finds himself totally unprepared, a diver without swimming lessons. Somehow, despite all his knowledge and experience, he’d been hoping Susan Hoffman could have made these charges go away.

  “Mr. Schiff, my name is Marinelli. I’m from the Midtown North detective squad,” says the detective, dropping the billfold and the shield back into a pocket of his brown suit. “Please stand against the desk and assume the position.”

  “Come on, guys.” Jake holds up his hands. “We don’t have to do it this way. We all know the drill here. You could’ve called my lawyer. I would’ve surrendered downtown.”

  “Assume the position,” says the detective, hardening his voice and giving him no slack.

  He turns to one of the uniformed cops, a pale pug-nosed kid who can’t be more than five years older than Alex. “Go ahead, frisk him,” he says.

  Jake dutifully turns his back, spreads his legs, and puts both hands on the edge of his desk. They’re really going to do this, he thinks. Unbelievable. They probably have a special routine worked out to punish defense lawyers.

  The young cop starts out by slapping both of Jake’s thighs, still a little sore from the run in the park with Dana last weekend. The kid brings his right hand up sharply as if he’s about to grab Jake’s balls and Jake starts to pull away a little.

  “Easy there, pally,” says the young cop.

  “You know this isn’t right,” says Jake. “We could still work things out. I’ll call my lawyer, we’ll meet you down in Part Forty-seven.”

  “We do things by the book here,” the detective says in his sour rhythmless voice. He turns to the other young cop, a strapping buck with puffy cheeks and a pencil-thin moustache. “Cuff him already. In the front.”

  Jake presents his wrists and the cop with the moustache puts the handcuffs on as tight as he can. His name tag says Pollo. Chicken. Jake tries to catch his eye and nod as if to say, It’s okay, you’re just doing your job. Anything. Just to stimulate a little human contact and make things easier further down the line. But the young cop steadfastly refuses to look at him. He’s probably been coached beforehand, Jake realizes.

  “All right, let’s walk him,” says Detective Marinelli.

  “Look,” says Jake. “I got a trench coat in my closet over there. Maybe you can just throw it over my hands, so everyone outside doesn’t see the cuffs.”

  They all ignore him and Jake decides to keep his mouth shut. Every time he says something, it just encourages them to mistreat him. Clearly, the decision has been made somewhere up the chain of command to maximize embarrassment with this arrest.

  The detective leads the way out the door with the two younger cops coming up behind Jake.

  Word has spread quickly across the office and a crowd has gathered around Deborah’s empty desk. If she’d been here, Jake thinks, the cops wouldn’t have been able to get in without her giving him fair warning. Instead, the secretaries, paralegals, associates, and senior partners have all had a chance to stop what they are doing and come to watch his moment of ultimate humiliation.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” says the detective, stopping to address the crowd, “this man is being arrested for the charge of murder. Officers from our precinct will be back in a few hours to recanvass this office. We would appreciate your cooperation. Thank you.”

  Jake sees Todd Bracken watching from the edge of the crowd with a look of surprised wonder. With his open mouth, he could be saying, Why, I didn’t know you sailed, Jake.

  Deeper in the pack, Mike Sayon and Charlie Dorian exchange grim huffy looks. What will this mean for the image of the firm? You can almost hear them telecommunicating like a couple of wizened old extraterrestrials in a Spielberg film. Next to them, Kenneth Daugherty looks as if he’s enduring the suffering of the ages. Since Todd Bracken’s father died, Kenneth has assumed the position of the firm’s grand old man. Only a select few knew he was actually a doddering idiot who hid in his office all day playing Game Boy.

  Jake hears the murmurs and sees attractive women who’d once given him appraising looks casting their eyes down. Just to complete the spectacle of shame, Detective Marinelli begins to recite his Miranda rights for the benefit of the crowd, stumbling a few times because he’s clearly out of practice. Obviously, the crack-heads and drunken miscreants he usually arrests don’t get the full warning.

  “You have the right to an attorney,” says the detective, putting special emphasis on the words. “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

  Jake looks up at the room full of lawyers. A sea of gray flannel and cold eyes. He feels like a fish caught in the jaws of a larger predator while the rest of the natural order looks on impassively.

  “Call my wife,” he says as t
he cops start to take him away. “Somebody please call my wife.”

  There’s some stirring in the crowd. Todd Bracken peels off to go back to his office. Mike Sayon claps a hand on Charlie Dorian’s shoulder, as if he’s the one in need of comfort. And old Kenneth Daugherty is busy staring down into a secretary’s cleavage. Life in the office is already going back to normal. Bills will be sent, phone calls will be returned, motions will be answered. And after ten years at this firm, Jake realizes he doesn’t have anyone who’s enough of a friend to even call his family for him.

  49

  Mr. Cardi, will you please tell us why you decided to cooperate as a witness in the case against Mr. Schiff?”

  “I felt it was my duty as a citizen,” says Philip.

  He’s sitting in a book-lined conference room at the Manhattan DA’s office, being questioned by Ms. Fusco again. His new lawyer, a sandy-haired, ruddy-faced guy named Jim Dunning, sits in a corner quietly, like he’s dying for a cigarette. The lighting is less harsh and the coffee is a little stronger than in the other rooms he’s been in here.

  “Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that you were arrested on a different charge and decided to make a deal?” Ms. Fusco says, like a schoolteacher correcting a remedial student.

  Philip twists in his chair. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “And isn’t it true, Mr. Cardi, that the other charge stemmed from an incident in which you cut off another man’s nipple?”

  Philip frowns, waits for his lawyer to interrupt, then raises his hand. “Forgive me, miss,” he says. “But is it really necessary for us to reexamine all this bullshit? I mean, we’re not Boy Scouts, right? We all know what I’m doing here.”

  Ms. Fusco stands up, making her hemline drop and ruining Philip’s view of her knees.

  “Listen, Philip. Mr. Schiff has just been taken into custody. This is a very important case to our office. If you’re going to testify before a jury at trial, we have to establish your credibility and your motivation. So don’t fuck around.”