I was almost becoming accustomed to her unreadable face.
“You can hire whoever you need,” she said.
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Look, Angel, I got retained in an emergency. I used to know Robin a long time ago when we were in high school together. You had just been arrested for murder and she was desperate to find an attorney, any attorney, who might be able to help. I was, as they say, in the right place at the right time, that’s all. I did what had to be done. Now, you need somebody else.”
“Could anyone have done better than you have?”
The question had caught me like an unexpected punch, and I hesitated. Actually, no one could have done any better. I thought of how to avoid saying that.
“Everything so far has just been preliminary. From here on in it gets rough. You’re going to need someone who has the expertise, the staff, and the equipment to match what the prosecutor is going to throw against you.”
“What’s the real reason you don’t want to continue?” she asked.
“I just told you.”
She shook her head. “No. You told me why I should get someone else. You didn’t tell me why you want out.”
I nodded. She was right, of course. It was another answer I wanted to avoid. Perhaps I wanted to avoid it because I really did want to continue, to enjoy again the feeling of being on top, of being a player, to answer the challenge like an old athlete returning to the arena. But that wasn’t the real reason, the one I didn’t want anyone to know.
But she was the client and her future was at stake. She was entitled.
“I don’t think I’ve got the nerve for this sort of thing anymore,” I said. My words hung in the air, heavy, as though they had assumed physical dimensions. “I’ve been away too long and I’ve been making mistakes that never would have happened years ago.”
“What mistakes? You did everything you promised to do.”
“You wanted the reason, Angel, and you’ve got it. Now, let’s talk about the lawyer who will try the case.”
“His name is still Charley Sloan,” she said quietly.
“What’s Robin say about that? She’s the one who paid the money.”
Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, the first sign of animation in that fabulous facade. “It’s my decision, not hers.”
“She agrees with Nate Golden, I assume.”
“We haven’t talked. We haven’t had time.”
“But you do listen to her. She is your stepmother, after all.”
For a moment I wondered if she had heard the question; there was a long pause, then she spoke. “I’ve never considered Robin a mother substitute, if that’s what you mean,” she said evenly. “She has been, perhaps, more like a friend, a best friend. I do listen to what she says, but I make up my own mind.”
“Do you know who Nate Golden is?”
“My father’s lawyer, at least in matters of business.”
“More than that,” I said. “Nate Golden is a former president of the state bar. A legal powerhouse. He’s interested in what happens to you, Angel. He wants you to have a different lawyer, the best money can buy.”
“So what?”
I laughed. “Kid, this Golden is what you might call connected. If I don’t get out of this case he’ll have me for breakfast. If I so much as burp, the state bar will use that as an excuse to disbar me. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
Her glance took in the office once again. “It doesn’t look as if you’d be losing very much.”
“Maybe not, but like they say, it’s a living. Not much, maybe, but better than a lot of other things I could end up doing.”
“Golden goes with whoever has the money,” she said.
I nodded. “I can’t argue that.”
“My father’s dead. I have the money now, or at least half of it. Nate Golden will do what I tell him to do.”
“Angel,” I said, “there’s an old rule of law. A person can’t profit from murder. If you end up convicted, you won’t get a cent from your father’s estate. Those are the rules. So if that misfortune should happen, you’d have no hold over Golden, would you?”
She didn’t bat an eyelash. “I think it might be good to have a lawyer who would be ruined if he lost.”
I sighed. “That’s the old gladiator rule: win or die.”
“I have money left by my mother. I’ll pay Robin back so you’ll have only one loyalty. Hire whoever you need, Charley, to get the job done. I’ll pay whatever’s needed.”
“Angel, think this over for a few days. Talk to Robin.”
“Robin expects you for dinner, by the way. I forgot to tell you.”
“Will Golden be there?”
“No. He’s going back to Detroit. The boat company sale is about to happen and he has to work on that.”
“Okay, I’ll come for dinner. We can discuss this further then.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. You’re my lawyer, I’m your client.”
“We’ll see.”
She studied me, again with no change of expression. When she spoke the words came out in the same even way, although I hardly expected the question.
“Would you like to fuck me, Charley?”
“Pardon?”
“Would you like to fuck me?”
How do ya answer that? She was young and beautiful and there was a surprising sexuality about her. Still, she was a client, and since she had just experienced things usually confronted only in nightmares, she was more than vulnerable. Besides, sex with clients was far more dangerous professionally than smoking around gasoline, an ethical consideration I had conveniently ignored with Robin.
Old Izzy Goldstein popped into my mind. Izzy, who had been Detroit’s leading divorce lawyer before he died. Izzy looked gay, wore a fresh flower in his lapel, and didn’t consider a woman to be his client until he had bedded her. Izzy had minced his way through more women than Casanova, had violated every canon in the lawyers’ code, but he had gotten away with it.
It must have been the flower.
“Angel, it’s common for women clients to see their male lawyers as some kind of savior, a knight come to rescue them. Lawyers know that and are careful not to take advantage. You’re a lovely, attractive young woman, but what you’re feeling is —”
She stood up, those ice-blue eyes fixed on mine. “Do you want to fuck me, or not?”
“Angel, as I said, I —”
She walked to the door. “Maybe not now,” she said, with no change of expression or voice, “but before this is all over, Charley, you’ll change your mind.”
And then she was gone.
*
LIKE a mystic studying a rock in the desert, I kept staring at the door long after Angel Harwell had left, as if somehow an explanation for everything might be found in the sooty window glass still bearing the name of Simon Matthews. Perhaps a rock held answers, but the window glass did not. Except it did arouse in me a curiosity about Simon Matthews.
He had sat in the chair I occupied so much that it leaned to one side. He had no family. This office had probably been his life, from what little Mitch had told me.
I had a lot of serious problems to think about. The least perplexing of which was what kind of life a long-dead tax lawyer might have lived. And perhaps that was what made it so appealing, since everything else seemed to arouse my anxiety.
Mitch, a very thorough, probate lawyer, would have made a careful inventory of everything in the office when the old man died. It was unlikely that he’d have missed anything of great value — old stocks, coins, anything like that. If they existed they would have been gathered and sold long ago.
But I wasn’t interested in coins or old stocks, just what kind of man had inhabited the place before me.
The old desk was pretty standard, with a middle drawer, three more on one side, two on the other.
The middle drawer held no secrets. It contained a jumble of old pens and paper clips, a few business cards, and the schedule of th
e 1987 Tigers with the date of each televised game circled in red. Apparently Simon Matthews had at least one other interest in addition to taxation.
I opened and surveyed the other drawers, finding mostly collections of ancient receipts, bills, and the other junk of life, bundled up and bound by rubber bands.
There was only one photograph. It was an old black-and-white, slightly out of focus, showing a young woman leaning against the fender of a big prewar Buick. It wasn’t provocative, just a pleasant memory of someone who had once been important. She was blonde, a little flat-chested and a bit big in the hip. Not my type, but obviously his. I wondered if she had been his girlfriend, or just someone he wished had been his girlfriend. The photo was one of those nostalgic little mysteries, the kind where you construct a story to match it There was nothing on the back to identify the subject or the reason it was taken or the year.
The deep drawer on the left-hand side held some old bank records and letters. I glanced through the accounts. Judging from the amounts, Simon had carefully marshaled his money, and while he wasn’t rich, he hadn’t been exactly scratching around for his next meal either.
The drawer looked deeper on the outside than it seemed to be inside. I used a ruler to measure the inner space against the outer depth. There was a false bottom.
Like every kid, I used to dream of finding hidden treasure. Suddenly, that old boyish excitement returned. I wondered if Simon had hidden away jewels or gold or something even better under the false bottom of the drawer. I cleared out the bank statements and papers and looked for an easy way to pry up the false bottom.
It was there, a small metal loop near the front of the drawer. I hooked a finger through and gently pried it up.
It was treasure, after a fashion. A pint of very expensive French brandy, nearly full. Next to it was a small .25 caliber chrome automatic, the kind of pistol called a purse gun. And at the back of the drawer were several glossy magazines.
The magazines were foreign and to characterize them as merely dirty would be a gross understatement. Old Simon Matthews, even at eighty, apparently had a taste for the perverse.
I flipped through the pages, which looked well worn. The pictures were not provocative, not to any person with normal appetites. The sex in several of the magazines was between humans and animals. It was like picking up a rock and finding twisting, writhing maggots. I tossed the magazines back where I had found them.
The automatic looked as if it had never been fired. I checked the clip. It was loaded. It was the kind of weapon described as a ladies’ gun, with imitation pearl panels inlaid along the small handle. You could hold the thing in the palm of one hand.
If Matthews had been a drunk he had had expensive tastes. The brandy bottle was capped with a little silver cup. I presumed Simon had taken a nip now and then as he flipped through the pages and fantasized about owning his own kennel.
I replaced everything quickly, as if somehow he might come back and catch me looking.
I wondered if burglars ever found such guilty little secrets when searching for loot. I had represented a number of burglars, but it was something that had never come up in conversation.
Old Judge Flynn, the Detroit scourge of criminal court, who had befriended me when I was just starting out, once told me that you could know everything about a person: his family, income, prejudices, medical problems. Everything except his sex life. Flynn said everyone had peculiar little sexual secrets, either in fantasy or in fact. His theory had proved true often enough. And it was certainly true of the late Mr. Matthews, Pickeral Point’s leading tax lawyer, baseball fan, and animal fancier.
I wonder how often he had sat where I was now, sipping from that small silver cup and poring over the magazines.
That thought propelled me from the lopsided chair. I would get rid of the brandy — I didn’t need the temptation. The little pistol was of no use and I could toss it in the river some night when I had nothing better to do. The magazines couldn’t be put out with the trash. I wouldn’t want someone thinking they belonged to me. I’d have to find someplace to bum them.
But that could keep. I put everything back the way I had found it.
I had other problems, much more pressing.
The situation with Angel would have to be resolved, if not at dinner, soon.
As I closed the office door to go to the Harwell place, I looked again at the name on the glass.
I wondered if Harrison Harwell had had a secret life. It might have been something as harmless as Matthews’s, who was just a toothless old geezer secretly slobbering over bestiality photographs, or possibly something much darker, much more sinister, something to do with why he died.
Monday I would call people to have Simon Matthews’s name scraped off the glass. Then I’d get rid of the crap in that old desk, maybe even the desk itself.
I felt like I needed to wash my hands.
*
FAME, as the poet said, is fleeting. It’s especially true in the electronic age. The big story had been the morning’s courtroom struggle and the release on bail of Angel Harwell, which had attracted enough newspeople to fill a small stadium. The film clips and interviews would play all weekend on the tube and the region’s newspaper pages. But that was the morning, and now, since there was nothing more to photograph, no more participants to shout questions at, the tumultuous parade had moved on.
The street in front of the Harwell place was as empty as an after-hours joint following a police raid. The two bored security men remained at their post at the entrance to the driveway. They waved me in with a show of stony indifference.
Robin met me at the door. She wore a loose, silky smock like an Arab caftan. I vividly pictured the body beneath that flowing cloth and experienced a jolt of sudden desire. She led me into the glass atrium, the place with the Jacuzzi.
“I know you don’t drink, Charley. Does that apply to wine, too?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Just one glass?”
“I’ll be frank, Robin. I’m not the kind of drunk who goes into a feeding frenzy after one drink. If I had one glass of wine it wouldn’t hurt me. But then tonight I would probably have another. Tomorrow, a couple more, plus maybe an after-dinner martini, and then before a week was out, I’d be back in business at the same old stand, slopping that stuff down until my brain was fried.”
“You make it sound as if that has happened.”
I nodded. “Among us it’s called a slip. ‘Slip’ is a nice little word that can cover anything from one beer on a hot day to a ten-day binge.”
“And you’ve done that? Slip?”
“Once. It started almost the way I described. I had been dry for months, and I convinced myself that meant I could handle the stuff. And I could. Just wine, a glass now and then. Of course, since I could handle that so well I had an occasional real drink, or a beer or two at lunch. And then, boom. Drunk for three days, really ripped. The cops picked me up on a golden-rule arrest, held me until I sobered up, and then let me go. I was on probation in Detroit, so if it had happened there I would have been in real trouble. Luckily for me, my downfall culminated in Cleveland.”
“What were you doing in Cleveland?”
I smiled. “I haven’t the foggiest idea. Does that give you some idea of the problem? Anyway, that’s the story of my one little slip.”
‘How about a lemonade?”
“Sounds good. Where’s Angel?”
“She’ll be down.” There was a small bar set up in the atrium with its own compact refrigerator Robin poured out my lemonade and a white wine for herself.
We sat facing the river.
“Nate Golden is quite adamant that you not try the case,” she said.
“He talked to me.”
Robin sipped the wine. “He doesn’t believe you really want out. He thinks you’re pretending.”
“What do you think?”
She smiled. “I don’t agree with him, if that’s what you mean. You’ve been up front wi
th me from the start, Charley. Of course, the more I told him that, the more he seemed to believe you were up to something sneaky.”
“Has he lined up a lawyer?”
She nodded. “Several. Angel refuses to even see them.”
“She will.”
“I don’t think so. Once Angel’s made up her mind, dynamite can’t change it.”
“Your friend Golden suggested that he bring in someone to try the case and that I stick around just to keep Angel happy. Maybe something like that can be worked out.”
Robin shook her head. “Sometimes Angel acts like a child, but she doesn’t think like one. Harrison was convinced she’s mentally ill, but even if she is, her intelligence is somewhere near genius level. You might be able to fool somebody else with a ruse like that, but not Angel.”
The lemonade was tart. “Something has to be settled quickly,” I said. “These cases take on a life of their own. Whoever tries this has to start now. There’s a tremendous amount of groundwork to be done.”
“And if Angel won’t accept anyone but you, what then?”
“Lincoln freed the slaves, as you recall. I can’t be forced to try the case.”
“Can you do that, just step aside?”
“Sometimes it’s a violation of ethics, if you’ve taken a fee to see a case all the way through. But I only agreed to handle things through the preliminary examination, so I can withdraw.”
“What about Angel?”
“Golden will get the best there is and that will be that.”
Robin sipped again at the wine. “She’s says that if you don’t try it she’ll plead guilty.”
“She just wants to get her way. She’d never do that.”
“I’m not so sure. She used to frighten me, even when she was growing up. She will do whatever she says she will, even if it’s foolish or dangerous. She will never back down. Harrison claimed it’s all part of her illness.”
I was about to ask about the illness when I noticed Robin’s eyes shift to a point behind me.
“Is that how you girls dressed for dinner in jail?” Robin smiled, but there was an cutting edge to her words.
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