House Witness

by Mike Lawson

  She gave him a little wave and got off the bar stool as he walked toward her. He wasn’t surprised she recognized him; all she had to do was google him to find his picture. Close up, he could see her eyes were blue and her complexion was fair and flawless.

  “Let’s take a booth,” she said.

  Watching her walk ahead of him to the booth was one of life’s small, but extraordinary pleasures.

  David Slade had cheated on his wife, but only three times, and the last time had been ten years ago. He had a beautiful wife, she was the mother of his two children, and he didn’t want to lose her. But he knew if he ever had the opportunity to sleep with this woman, he would do so without hesitation.

  Slade ordered a martini, and while waiting for it to arrive, he said, “I was told you were part of a team.”

  “I am,” she said, “I work with a partner. But you’ll never meet him or speak to him. That’s for his protection. He’s the one who handles the, shall we say, more complex tasks.”

  By “complex,” he assumed she meant illegal.

  “We need to talk about the money first,” she said. “Our price is two million. And that’s not negotiable.”

  Slade nodded. “That’s what I was told to expect.”

  “Good. You have a week to deposit a million into our account. We know it takes a little time to arrange for that kind of money. But if you take more than a week, we’ll walk.”

  “I don’t think so,” Slade said. “How do I know you won’t take the money and I never hear from you again? I certainly can’t go to the police.”

  “David, we don’t advertise. We work on a referral basis. If we went around cheating our clients and failing to perform, you never would have heard of us in the first place.” Before Slade could object again, she continued.

  “We’ll expect the other million a week before the trial starts. By then we’ll have done our job. That is, we’ll have provided you with a viable defense. Whether you win or lose at trial will depend on you. We don’t expect you to pay us if we haven’t done our job, but if we have, and if you fail to pay us, then I can assure you that we will use our considerable talents to come after you and Henry Rosenthal. And I’m not talking about a lawsuit, David.”

  Slade nodded. He could see there was no point in arguing with her. He had no doubt that if he didn’t agree to her terms she would walk. And it wasn’t like it was his money anyway.

  “The other thing is, your client will be expected to pay any expenses related to dealing with the witnesses.”

  He assumed she was talking about bribes. “Understood,” Slade said. “So what’s your plan?”

  “Our plan is to make sure that all, or at least the most important, witnesses don’t testify against Toby. Those who do testify will support your defense. And I can’t be more specific at this point, as we haven’t started looking at the witnesses in detail. And I have to be honest with you here: We’ve never had a case where we’ve had to deal with five witnesses; this is not going to be easy. We will also assist you in providing a plausible suspect for who killed Dominic DiNunzio. We’re assuming that’s your defense: that Toby left the bar, never returned, and someone else entered and killed DiNunzio.”

  “Are you a lawyer?” Slade asked.

  “No, but my partner is.”

  “So what do you need from me?”

  “Everything you have on the witnesses and DiNunzio. Make copies of your files and I’ll send a messenger to your office tomorrow to pick them up. But the files aren’t the main thing we need from you.”

  “So what is?”

  “Time. We need you to be prepared to delay the trial if we need more time; with five witnesses, that’s imperative. So get ready to ask for a delay, and after you’ve gotten one, get ready to ask for another. When’s the trial scheduled to start?”

  “June seventeenth. For a felony case in the state of New York, the prosecution has to be prepared to go to trial ninety days after the arraignment. But nobody expects that to happen. The judge and the ADA both know I’ll ask for a delay, and I won’t have a problem getting one. How much time do you need?”

  “We won’t know until we’ve had time to review everything: the witnesses, their statements, the victim, et cetera. But don’t ask for a delay yet, because as soon as we have everything in place, it will be to our advantage to have the trial as soon as possible. So, for now, figure out how to get a delay if we need one, then after that, figure out how to get another. That’s your primary job at this point: Delay the trial until everything is in place.”

  She removed a folded piece of paper and a cell phone from her purse. “Use that phone to communicate with me, but only if necessary. My number is in the contacts list.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “David, do you seriously think I’m going to give you my real name? Anyway, don’t call me. Send text messages. You can never tell who might be listening in on phone calls these days. So if we need to talk, send a text and we’ll arrange a meeting. But we won’t be meeting very often. It’s not in your best interest or ours for us to be seen together.

  “On that piece of paper are instructions for the best way to transfer the money. We have a lot of experience at this and suggest you follow the instructions. It’ll be safer for you and Henry Rosenthal if you do it our way. But the main thing is, wire the money to the account specified. After we have it, we’ll make it vanish.”

  She rose from the table. “I think that’s all for now. I’ll be in touch, but like I said, not very often. Don’t pester me for status reports.”

  She rose from the table and walked away, and he watched her until she was out of sight.

  He wondered if she slept with her partner. Whoever he was, even if she wasn’t sleeping with him, he was a lucky man.

  11

  Fourteen years earlier

  Charleston, South Carolina—May 2002

  Ella Fields met Bill Cantwell at the yacht club.

  He was at a table with a woman about his age and an older couple. The couple were their sixties, married, and members of the club. Ella had served them before; the woman was a bit of a snob but her husband was nice.

  The woman with Bill was in her mid-thirties. She was slender and attractive, although not a beauty queen. As for Bill, well, he was a hunk in Ella’s opinion. Tall, maybe six two, and well built, with muscular forearms and strong wrists. He had thick dark hair, a perfect straight nose, warm brown eyes, and a cleft in his chin. He reminded her of that old actor James Garner.

  They all ordered margaritas and Bill pulled out his wallet and handed Ella a Visa. She noticed he was wearing a Rolex. “Start us a tab, please,” he said.

  The other man objected, saying, “Hell, Bill, you don’t need to do that. You’ve paid for everything today. And it’s my club, for crying out loud.”

  “No, no, it’s on me,” Bill said. “I appreciate you showing me around and helping me out.”

  Ella went back to the bar to place their order, but before she handed the bartender the credit card she looked at it. The name on it was William S. Cantwell.

  Ella served the foursome their drinks and a plate of appetizers, and about twenty minutes later Bill left the table and walked toward her. She was standing at the end of the bar where the bartender placed the drink orders.

  He smiled at her—fantastic smile, perfect white teeth—and said, “They think I’m over here ordering another round, which I am, but would you mind doing me a favor?”

  She raised an eyebrow instead of answering.

  “Serve the drinks, but about five minutes after you do, come back to the table and say, ‘Are you Bill Cantwell? Your secretary is on the phone at the hostess desk, and needs to speak to you urgently.’ Can you remember all that?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” Ella said, like: How dumb do you think I am?

  Bill got it, and smiled. “Sorry. But will you do this for me?”

  “Sure,” she said. She noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and that
his shoes were Mephistos—about the most expensive casual shoes you can buy.

  She served the drinks and five minutes later, as he’d asked, she walked up to his table. “Are you Bill Cantwell?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, pretending to be puzzled.

  “Your secretary is on the phone and said she needs to speak to you urgently.”

  Bill pulled out his cell phone and looked at the screen. “Damn, I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

  The young woman with him asked Ella, “How did you know who Bill was?” She sounded suspicious.

  Bill started to answer but before he did, Ella said, “His secretary told the hostess that he was very handsome and had dark hair and a cleft in his chin.”

  “Well, he certainly is handsome,” the older woman said, patting Bill’s forearm, but the younger one, Bill’s date, just frowned.

  “Let me see what she wants,” Bill said, and left the table.

  Ella went back to the bar and picked up an order for another table. She saw Bill return to his table, and it appeared as if he was making apologies for having to leave. He walked over to Ella. “Thanks. Let me have my credit card back, but keep the tab open, and give yourself a twenty percent tip. And this is also for you,” he said, and placed a fifty-dollar bill on the bar next to her hand. “You don’t need to share that with the other servers.”

  Ella was impressed. This guy was not a penny-pincher.

  He turned to walk away, then turned back and said, “I have to tell you that you’re one of loveliest young women I’ve ever seen.” Then he left without saying anything more.

  Ella didn’t know how to articulate it, but men were always telling her how pretty she was, and when they did, it was always a prelude to a come-on. With Bill Cantwell, somehow it hadn’t been like that. He was simply stating a fact, making an observation; he hadn’t been trying to seduce her. It was as if he simply appreciated her beauty and wanted her to know it. Whatever the case, she liked him, and hoped like crazy she’d see him again.

  Her wish came true.

  Bill Cantwell stopped by the yacht club bar the following night. This time he was wearing a suit—a lightweight gray one with a blue shirt and a tie that was a combination of colors but a perfect match for the jacket and shirt. The way the suit hung on him, Ella was willing to bet it had cost a bundle, and she was pretty sure the tie was Armani. She’d become quite the connoisseur of men’s clothing since she’d left Calhoun Falls.

  “There you are,” he said. She liked the way the skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “I would have been heartbroken if you hadn’t been working tonight.”

  “‘Heartbroken’?” she said, trying to make it sound as though she doubted that.

  “Are you working Saturday?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. She was, but if she had to, she’d call in sick. She hadn’t missed a day since she started working at the club.

  “Good. Another couple and I are going to take a cruise over to Isle of Palms. We’re planning to make a day of it: leave about ten, have mimosas on the way over, have lunch on the isle, do a little shopping, then be back by seven or eight in the evening. I have a boat moored down at City Marina.” He smiled again. “Fantastic boat—forty-five feet long, all the bells and whistles.”

  She wanted to go, she really did, but she had her rules, and she wasn’t going to break them just because the guy intrigued her. “I’d like to go, but I don’t really know you. You could be married.”

  He laughed. “Not anymore. I was once, back when I was about twenty-two and didn’t really know what I was getting into. No kids, either.”

  She wasn’t sure she liked that answer, the part about not knowing what he was getting into when he got married. What did he think he was getting into? She also wanted to ask how old he was. She was guessing thirty-four or -five, but instead of asking his age, she said, “Do you mind telling me what you do?”

  “Well, I have a law degree, but I don’t practice law. I’m not trying to be mysterious, but basically I fix things for other lawyers.”

  “You fix things?”

  “Yeah, and unfortunately I don’t carry three reference letters with me. So would you like to go on a little boat ride? I’m not going to kidnap you and sell you to white slavers.”

  She could tell he was becoming a tad impatient with her, and she didn’t want to blow this.

  “Sure,” she said. “It sounds like fun. I’ll meet you at the marina at ten.” She didn’t want him to pick her up; she wanted to have her car available so she could split as soon as the boat docked, if she wanted to. “What’s the name of the boat?”

  “House Odds. It’s docked at Pier B in the marina.”

  “House Odds?”

  “Yeah, you know. The odds are always in the house’s favor.”

  She didn’t know. She’d never been to a casino in her life.

  “The weather should be great, according to the forecast,” Bill said. “So bring a swimsuit if you feel like it, but dress casual for shopping and lunch. If it gets chilly or rains, there’s rain gear and windbreakers on the boat, so you don’t need to bring anything like that. See you Saturday.” He smiled again—and she felt her heart do a backflip.

  After he left, she almost had a panic attack. She was nineteen years old and had never been on a boat before, not a rowboat or a canoe or a ferry. She wondered if she might get seasick. Wouldn’t that be perfect, her puking over the side of his fancy boat.

  She also needed to go shopping. She had a bikini, one she’d worn the last two years of high school, and she had no doubt it would still fit. The problem was that it looked cheap—because it was. So before Saturday she needed to buy a new bikini, and she needed an outfit to wear on a boat. Shorts, a nice top, a lightweight sweater, some cute tennis shoes. Maybe a baseball cap. This little boat ride was going to cost her at least two hundred bucks. She hoped like hell that this guy was worth it.

  She arrived at the marina early, about nine-thirty, and found the pier where the boat was docked, but didn’t walk down to it. She didn’t want to seem overeager. At five before ten, she strolled down the pier and saw it: House Odds. As Bill had said, it was magnificent: a sleek, gleaming white hull, shining brass rails, polished hardwood decks. There was a flying bridge, so you could steer from the outside or inside depending on the weather, and a bunch of antennas and other things she thought might possibly be sonar or radar devices. An awning covered a sundeck.

  She didn’t see anyone on the boat, however. She called, “Hello?” A moment later Bill stuck his head out of a door that she discovered later was called a “hatch” and led to the galley. “Hey, you’re here,” he said. “Come aboard.”

  He was wearing white shorts—he had nice muscular legs—a faded red polo shirt, and Top-Siders without socks. “Patty and Bryan should be here in just a minute. Would you like a mimosa?”

  “Uh, sure,” she said, but she planned to just sip it. She didn’t know if she was going to get seasick but figured that alcohol at ten in the morning wouldn’t help.

  He started to hand her the drink, then pulled it back and said, “You are old enough to drink, aren’t you?”

  She thought about lying. She figured she could pass for twenty-one, as she wasn’t usually asked to show her ID when she went to bars. She supposed one reason bartenders didn’t card her was that they liked having nice-looking young women present. Plus Charleston was a wink-and-look-the-other-way sort of town. When she did have to show ID, she had a poorly made fake that she’d been given by a guy during her senior year in high school, and it worked 99 percent of the time.

  But she decided not to lie. If there was any future with this guy, she didn’t want to start off with that particular lie.

  “I’m nineteen,” she said.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “I’m robbing the cradle.” But she could tell he didn’t feel too bad about it.

  To change the subject, she said, “This is a beautiful boat. Do you own it?”

&nbs
p; “Hell, no. I’d never buy a boat. Something’s always breaking on the damn things, and most of the people who own them only use them three or four times a year. I just rented this one to impress you.”

  “Well, I’m impressed,” she said—and she was. “Where’s your house in Charleston?”

  “I don’t have a home here. I live—” Then he stopped and yelled to a couple standing on the pier, “Hey there. You’re late for drinks. Come aboard.”

  But Ella was still thinking about the fact that he didn’t live in Charleston, and her reaction was: That’s not good.

  “Look,” he said to her, “we’ll talk later. But I have to warn you, I need to spend some time on this trip talking to Bryan. I’m trying to convince him to do something for me. So just have a good time and we’ll talk a lot more—I want to talk to you a lot more—but it’ll probably be on the way back. You can help me drive the boat.”

  Bryan and Patty were a handsome couple. Bryan was about Bill’s age, maybe thirty-five. Patty was a long-legged redhead with eyes so green they had to be contacts. She was older than Ella, maybe twenty-five. They all had mimosas—Ella was still on the first one Bill had given her—and made small talk about the weather and how much fun Isle of Palms was going to be and about Bill’s fabulous boat.

  They got under way, Bill and Bryan going up to the flying bridge while Ella and Patty pulled out lounge chairs and sat on the sundeck at the rear of the boat. A few minutes later, Patty stripped off her shorts and T-shirt to reveal a tiny, neon blue bikini. Ella did the same, pleased that she was built better than Patty.

  She found out that Patty worked as a secretary for a judge and Bryan was a homicide cop. Bill had told her he was a lawyer but didn’t practice law, and she wondered what he was trying to convince Bryan to do.