Bitter Truth

by William Lashner

  “You’d be surprised,” I said. “I’m here for Cressi. Peter Cressi. Some sort of gun problem.”

  Henry looked through his papers and started nodding. “Yeah, I’d guess trying to buy a hundred and seventy-nine illegally modified automatic assault weapons, three grenade launchers, and a flamethrower from an undercover cop would constitute some sort of gun problem.”

  “He’s a collector.”

  “Uh huh,” said Henry, drawing out his disbelief.

  “No, really.”

  “You don’t gots to lie to me, Mr. Carl. You don’t see me wearing robes, do you? Your Cressi will be in the next batch. I know what you want, uh huh. I’ll get you out of here soon as I can.”

  “You’re a good man, Henry.”

  “Don’t be telling me, be telling my wife.”

  They brought up the next batch of prisoners, twenty cuffed wrist to wrist, led into the little holding cell behind the bench upon which I uneasily sat. In the middle of the group was Peter Cressi, tall, curly hair flowing long and black behind his ears, broad shoulders, unbelievably handsome. His blue silk shirt, black pants, pointed shiny boots were in stark contrast to the baggy shin-high jeans and hightop sneakers of his new compatriots. As he shuffled through the room he smiled casually at me, as casually as if seeing a neighbor across the street, and I smiled back. Cressi’s gaze drifted up to the benches in the gallery, behind the Plexiglas. When it fell onto Dante’s stern face Cressi’s features twisted into some sort of fearful reverence.

  I didn’t like Cressi, actually. There was something ugly and arrogant about him, something uneasy. He was one of those guys who sort of danced while he spoke, as if his bladder was always full to bursting, but you sensed it wasn’t his bladder acting up, it was a little organ of evil urging him to go forth and do bad. I didn’t like Cressi, but getting the likes of Peter Cressi out of the troubles their little organs of evil got them into was how I now made my living.

  I never planned to be a criminal defense attorney, I never planned a lot of things that had happened to my life, like the Soviets never planned for Chernobyl to glow through the long Ukrainian night, but criminal law was what I practiced now. I represented in the American legal system a group of men whose allegiance was not to God and country but to family, not to their natural-born families but to a family with ties that bound so tightly they cut into the flesh. It was a family grown fat and wealthy through selling drugs, pimping women, infiltrating trade unions, and extorting great sums from legitimate industry, from scamming what could be scammed, from loan sharking, from outright thievery, from violence and mayhem and murder. It was the criminal family headed by Enrico Raffaello. I didn’t like the work and I didn’t like the clients and I didn’t like myself while I did the work for the clients. I wanted out, but Enrico Raffaello had once done me the favor of saving my life and so I didn’t have much choice anymore.

  “All right,” said Pauling, back on the bench from his visit to his chambers. “Let’s get started.”

  There were three prisoners in the column of seats beside where I sat, ready to be called to the bar, and the Commissioner was already looking at the first, a young boy with a smirk on his face, when Henry called out Peter Cressi’s name.

  “Come on up, son,” said Pauling to the boy. Henry whispered in the Commissioner’s ear. Pauling closed his eyes with exasperation. “Bring out Mr. Cressi,” he said.

  I stood and slid to the table.

  “I assume you’re here to represent this miscreant, Mr. Carl,” said Pauling as they brought Cressi out from the holding cell.

  “This alleged miscreant, yes sir.”

  When Cressi stood by my side I gave him a stern look of reprobation. He snickered back and did his little dance.

  “Mr. Cressi,” said Commissioner Pauling, interrupting our charming little moment, “you are hereby charged with one hundred and eighty-three counts of the illegal purchase of firearms in violation of the Pennsylvania Penal Code. You are also charged with conspiracy to commit those offenses. Now I’m going to read you the factual basis for those charges, so you listen up.” The commissioner took hold of the police report and started reading. I knew what had happened, I had heard all of it that morning when I was woken by a call to my apartment informing me of Cressi’s arrest. The arrest must have been something, Cressi with a Ryder truck, driving out to a warehouse in the Northeast to find waiting for him not the crates of rifles and weapons he had expected but instead a squadron of SWAT cops, guns pointed straight at Peter’s handsome face. The cops had been expecting an army, I guess, not just some wiseguy with a rented truck.

  “Your Honor, with regard to bail,” I said, “Mr. Cressi is a lifelong resident of the city, living at home with his elderly mother, who is dependent on his care.” This was one of those lawyer lies. I knew Cressi’s mother, she was a spry fifty-year-old bingo fiend, but Peter did make sure she took her hypertension medication every morning. “Mr. Cressi has no intention of fleeing and, as this is not in any way a violent crime, poses no threat to the community. We ask that he be allowed to sign his own bail.”

  “What was he going to do with those guns, counselor? Aerate his lawn?”

  “Mr. Cressi is a collector,” I said. I saw Henry shaking in his seat as he fought to stifle his laughter.

  “What about the flame-thrower?”

  “Would you believe Mr. Cressi was having a problem with roaches?”

  The commissioner didn’t so much as crack a smile, which was a bad sign. “These weapons are illegal contraband, not allowed to be owned by anyone, even so-called collectors.”

  “We have a constitutional argument on that, your honor.”

  “Spare me the Second Amendment, counselor, please. Your client was buying enough guns to wage a war. Three hundred and sixty-six thousand, ten percent cash,” said the Commissioner with a quick pound of his gavel.

  “Your Honor, I believe that’s terribly excessive.”

  “Two thousand per weapon seems fair to me. I think Mr. Cressi should spend some time in jail. That’s all, next case.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, fighting to keep all sarcasm out of my voice. I turned to Earl Dante, sitting patiently on the gallery bench behind the Plexiglas, and nodded at him.

  Dante gave a look of resigned exasperation, like he would give to a mechanic who has just explained that his car needed an expensive new water pump. Then the loan shark, followed by the hulk in his workout suit, stood and headed out the gallery’s doors, taking his briefcase to the waiting bail clerk. As my gaze followed them out I noticed the thin blonde woman in the leather jacket staring at Cressi and me with something more than idle curiosity.

  I turned and gave Cressi a complicated series of instructions. “Keep your mouth shut till you’re bailed out, Peter. You got that?”

  “What you think, I’m an idiot here?”

  “I’m not the one buying guns from cops. Just do as I say and then meet me at my office tomorrow morning so we can figure out where to go from here. And be sure to bring my usual retainer.”

  “I always do.”

  “I’ll give you that, Peter.” I looked back up to the blonde woman who was still watching us. “You know her?” I asked with a flick of my head to the gallery.

  He looked up. “Nah, she’s not my type, a scrag like that.”

  “Then if you don’t know her and I don’t know her, why’s she staring?”

  He smiled. “When you look and dress like I do, you know, you get used to it.”

  “That must be it,” I said. “I bet you’ll look even more dashing in your orange jumpsuit.”

  Just then a bailiff grabbed Cressi’s arm and started leading him back to the holding cell.

  “See if you can stay out of trouble until tomorrow morning,” I said to him as the Commissioner read out another in his endless list of names.

  But Cressi was wrong about in whom the blonde was interested. She was waiting outside the Roundhouse for me. “Mr. Carl?”


  “That’s right.”

  “Your office said I could find you here.”

  “And here I am,” I said with a tight smile. It was not a moment poised with promise, her standing before me just then. She was in her mid-twenties, small, her bleached hair hacked to ear’s length, as if with a cleaver. Black lipstick, black nail polish, mascara globbed around her eyes like a cry for help. Under her black leather was a blue work shirt, originally the property of some stiff named Lenny, and a thrift-shop–quality pleated skirt. She had five earrings in her right ear and her left nostril was pierced and she looked like one of those impoverished art students who hang outside the Chinese buy-it-by-the-pound buffet on Chestnut Street. A small black handbag hung low from her shoulder. On the bare ankle above one of her black platform shoes was the tattoo of a rose, and that I noticed it there meant I was checking her out, like men invariably check out every woman they ever meet. Not bad, actually. Cressi was right, she was scrawny, and her face was pinched with apprehension, but there was something there, maybe just youth, but something.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  She looked around. “Can we, like, talk somewhere?”

  “You can walk me to the subway,” I said as I headed south to Market Street. I wasn’t all that interested in what she had to say. From the look of her I had her figured. She had fished my name out of the Yellow Pages and found I was a criminal attorney and wanted me now to help get her boyfriend out of the stir. Of course he was innocent and wrongfully convicted and of course the trial had been a sham and of course she couldn’t pay me right off but if I could only help out from the goodness of my heart she would promise to pay me later. About once a week I got just such a call from a desperate relative or girlfriend trolling for lawyers through the phone book. And what I told each of them I would end up telling her: that nobody does anything from the goodness of his heart and I was no different.

  She watched me go and then ran to catch up, doing a hop skip in her platform shoes to keep pace with my stride. “I need your help, Mr. Carl.”

  “My docket’s full right now.”

  “I’m in serious trouble.”

  “All my clients are in serious trouble.”

  “But I’m not like all your clients.”

  “That’s right, my clients have all paid me a retainer for my services. They have bought my loyalty and attention with their cash. Will you be able to pay me a retainer, Ms….?”

  “Shaw. Caroline Shaw. How much?”

  “Five thousand for a routine criminal matter.”

  “This is not routine, I am certain.”

  “Well in that case it might be more.”

  “I can pay,” she said. “That’s not a problem.”

  I stopped at that. I was expecting an excuse, a promise, a plea, I was not expecting to hear that payment was not a problem. I stopped and turned and took a closer look. Even though she dressed like a waif she held herself regally, her shoulders back, her head high, which was a trick, really, in those ridiculous platform shoes. The eyes within those raccoon bands of mascara were blue and sharply in focus, the eyes of a law student or an accomplished liar. And she spoke better then I would have expected from the outfit. “What do you want me to do for you, Ms. Shaw?”

  “I want you to find out who killed my sister.”

  That was new. I tilted my head. “I thought you said you were in trouble?”

  “I think I might be next.”

  “Well that is a problem, and I wish you well. But you should be going to the police. It’s their job to investigate murders and protect citizens, my job is to get the murderers off. Good day, Ms. Shaw,” I said as I turned and started again to walk south to the subway.

  “I told you I’d be willing to pay,” she said as she skipped and hopped again to stay with me, her shoes clopping on the cement walk. “Doesn’t that matter?”

  “That matters a heap,” I said as I kept walking, “but signing a check is one thing, having the check clear is entirely another.”

  “But it will,” she said. “And I need your help. I’m scared.”

  “Go to the police.”

  “So you’re not going to help me?” Her voice had turned pathetic and after it came out she stopped walking beside me. It wasn’t tough to keep going, no tougher than passing a homeless beggar without dropping a quarter in her cup. We learn to just walk on in the city, but even as I walked on I could still hear her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if you don’t help me. I think whoever killed her is going to kill me next. I’m desperate, Mr. Carl. I carry this but I’m still scared all the time.”

  I stopped again and, with a feeling of dread, I turned around. She was holding an automatic pistol pointed at my heart.

  “Won’t you help me, Mr. Carl? Please? You don’t know how desperate I am.”

  The gun had a black dull finish, rakish lines, it was small-bore, sure, but its bore was still large enough to kill a generation’s best hope in a hotel ballroom, not to mention a small-time criminal attorney who was nobody’s best hope for anything.

  I’ll say this for her, she knew how to grab my attention.

  3

  “PUT THE GUN AWAY,” I said in my sharpest voice.

  “I didn’t mean, oh God no, I…” Her hand wavered and the barrel drooped as if the gun had gone limp.

  “Put the gun away,” I said again, and it wasn’t as brave as it sounds because the only other options were to run, exposing my back to the .22 slug, or pissing my pants, which no matter how intense the immediate relief makes really an awful mess. And after I told her to put the gun away, told her twice for emphasis, she did just as I said, stuck it right back in her handbag, all of which was unbelievably gratifying for me in a superhero sort of way.

  Until she started crying.

  “Oh no, now don’t do that,” I said, “no no don’t no.”

  I stepped toward her as she collapsed in a sitting position to the sidewalk, crying, the thick mascara around her eyes running in lines down her cheek, her nose reddening. She wiped her face with a black leather sleeve, smearing everything.

  “Don’t cry, please please, it will be all right. We’ll go somewhere, we’ll talk, just please please stop crying, please.”

  I couldn’t leave her there after that, sitting on the ground like she was, crying black tears that splattered on the cement. In a different era I would have offered to buy her a good stiff drink, but this wasn’t a different era, so what I offered to buy her instead was a cappuccino. She let me drag her to a coffee shop a few blocks east. It was a beat little place with old stuffed couches and chairs, a few rickety tables, its back walls filled with shelves of musty used paperbacks. I was drinking a black coffee, decaf actually, since the sight of her gun aimed at my heart had given me enough of a start for the morning. Caroline was sitting across from me at one of the tables, her arms crossed, in front of her the cappuccino, pale, frothy, sprinkled with cinnamon, and completely untouched. Her eyes now were red and smeared and sad. There were a few others in the joint, young and mangy in their slacker outfits, greasy hair and flannel shirts, sandals. Caroline looked right at home. In my blue suit I felt like a narc.

  “Do you have a license for that gun?” I asked.

  “I suppose I need one, don’t I?”

  I nodded and took a sip from my mug. “Take some sound legal advice and throw the gun away. I should turn you in, actually, for your own good, though I won’t. It goes against my…”

  “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” she said, interrupting me mid-sentence, and before I could answer she was already rummaging again in that little black handbag. I must admit I didn’t like seeing her hand back inside that bag, but all she brought out this time was a pack of Camel Lights. She managed to light her cigarette with her arms still crossed.

  I looked her over again and guessed to myself that she was a clerk in a video store, or a part-time student at Philadelphia Community College, or maybe both. “What is it you do, Carolin
e?”

  “I’m between things at the moment,” she said, leaning forward, looking for something on the table. Finding nothing, she tossed her spent match atop the brown sprinkled foam of her cappuccino. I had just spent $2.50 for her liquid ashtray. I assumed she would have preferred the drink. “Last month I was a photographer. Next month maybe I’ll take up tap dancing.”

  “An unwavering commitment to caprice, I see.”

  She laughed a laugh so full of rue I felt like I was watching Betty Davis tilt her head back, stretch her white neck. “Exactly. I aspire to live my life like a character in a sitcom, every week a new and perky adventure.”

  “What’s the title of this episode?”

  “Into the Maw, or maybe Into the Mall, because after this I need to go to the Gallery and buy some tampons. Why were you in that stupid little courtroom this morning?”

  I took another sip of coffee. “One of my clients attempted to buy one hundred and seventy-nine automatic rifles, three grenade launchers, and a flamethrower from an undercover cop.”

  “Is he in the mob, this client of yours?”

  “There is no mob. It is a figment of the press’s imagination.”

  “Then what was he going to do with all those guns?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “I had heard you were a mob lawyer. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  I made an effort to stare at her without blinking as I let the comment slide off me like a glob of phlegm.

  Yes, a majority of my clients just happened to be junior associates of Mr. Raffaello, like I said, but I was no house counsel, no mob lawyer. At least not technically. I merely handled their cases after they allegedly committed their alleged crimes, nothing more. And though my clients never flipped, never ratted out the organization that fed them since they were pups, that sustained them, that took care of their families and their futures, though my clients never informed on the family, the decision not to inform was made well before they ever stepped into my office. And was I really representing these men, or was I instead enforcing the promises made to all citizens in the Constitution of the United States? Wasn’t I among the noblest defenders of those sacred rights for which our forefathers fought and died? Who among us was doing more to protect liberty, to ensure justice? Who among us was doing more to safeguard the American way of life?