Falls the Shadow

by William Lashner

  “How did you get them together?”

  “Oh, you know. I have my ways. What’s the Latin expression? Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.”

  “We didn’t learn that one in law school.”

  “It means: ‘A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.’ I push here, pull there, I reach in and help mold the clay of reality. It is what I do when I am not molding teeth. I slip horizontally through people’s lives and change them for the better. Check your shirt pocket, Victor.”

  I patted my pocket, reached in, pulled out a slip of paper. On it was written “Carol Kingsly” in script and then a phone number.

  “You saw her in the waiting room,” said Dr. Bob, “remember? She’s a lovely woman, with very refined tastes, not your normal cup of tea, I suppose, but a woman who, fortunately for you, also answered question sixteen in the new-patient questionnaire with a no. She’s waiting for your call.”

  “My call?”

  “Yes, your call, Victor. Do try to be pleasant, won’t you? And take my advice, dress sharp and never ever talk politics on your first date.”

  As I watched him leave, Tilda stepped forward. She draped my chest with a heavy lead apron. I pulled it low enough so that it covered my groin. Tilda noticed the gesture and shook her head.

  “What kind of men do you fancy, Tilda?” I said.

  “Hockey players and prison guards,” she said.

  “I guess I’ll have to lose a few more teeth.”

  “It can be arranged, bucko. Now, open up, ja.”

  I opened my mouth. She slipped a white piece of plastic-covered film over my teeth.

  “Close.”

  I closed. The edges of the plastic bladed painfully into the floor of my mouth. Tilda wrapped my face in her muscular hands and twisted my head until my neck cracked.

  27

  Inside the old YMCA building that served now as the district attorney’s offices, I pulled at my lower lip to expose the gap in my teeth. Beth, sitting next to me, grimaced at the sight. Mia Dalton leaned over her desk to get a better view.

  “It’s gone, all right,” said Mia Dalton. “What’s the brown gunk in the hole?”

  “A dressing. I accidentally removed the scab and exposed the bone.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It did, like someone jabbing a red-hot knife into my chops. But not anymore. My dentist took care of that.”

  “He any good?” said Detective Torricelli, standing behind Dalton’s desk. “I might be in the market for a molar masher.”

  Detective Torricelli was short and round, with the pug nose and swollen eyes of an angry porker. He had looked at my display with enough interest, and he was running his tongue along the inside of his cheek with enough determination to indicate that he might indeed have dental problems of his own.

  “Oh, he’s terrific, Detective, absolutely,” I said, putting on my most trustworthy expression. “And painless, too.”

  “Painless?”

  “Oh, yes. Painless. Such gentle hands. You should give him a try.”

  “Tell me why I don’t swallow the painless part, Carl?” said Torricelli.

  “Because you are a cynic with an irrational fear of dentists.”

  “I might be a cynic,” said Tommy Torricelli, “but ain’t nothing more rational than my fear of dentists.”

  “Do you mind if we get down to business?” said Beth. “We want to know if you’ve given any consideration to a plea offer for François.”

  “What are you looking for?” said Mia Dalton.

  “Something that would take into account the constitutional violation that underlay his prior conviction,” said Beth, her voice stellar with righteous indignation, “that would take into account the years he spent in jail as a result of the unjust conviction only a few days ago reversed by Judge Armstrong, that would recognize the price he has paid and allow him to walk out of jail with a sentence of time served.”

  “Yeah,” I added, “something like that.”

  As Beth spoke, Mia Dalton began hunting around her office, as if she had misplaced an item of great importance.

  “What are you searching for?” said Beth with some impatience.

  “The reporters that must be hidden here. Or why else would you be giving me a speech.”

  Torricelli snorted. Beth’s features collapsed with disappointment.

  “You’re not going to let him plea his way out of jail?” she said.

  Mia leaned back, crossed her arms. “Look at my face.”

  We both did. Mia Dalton was short and stocky, with the sharp eyes of a fighter. She had worked her way up the ladder in the district attorney’s office, from municipal court bench trials to homicide, based not on her flirtatious manner, because it wasn’t, or her pleasing personality, because she was more sandpaper than silk, but instead on her sheer willpower and dogged determination to prevail. The cops all hated working for her, because she worked them as hard as she worked herself, but they still fought to have her assigned to their cases, because she would invariably give them a win. In the hard-knuckled world of criminal law, nothing succeeded like success, and Mia Dalton was still rising. She was honest and smart and generally intolerant of fools, which was why I always felt a little uncomfortable in her presence.

  “Do I look like François Dubé’s fairy godmother?” she said.

  “I don’t see a wand,” I said.

  “Then there you go. Second-degree murder, twenty years, out in thirteen, three of which he already served. Let me know within forty-eight hours.”

  I turned to Beth and raised an eyebrow.

  She shook her head. “I can let you know right now. He won’t accept it. He wants out now.”

  “Then I guess we’re going to try this puppy,” said Dalton, not visibly displeased. “In all the time I’ve known Victor here, we’ve never gone up against each other in front of a jury. It should be interesting.”

  “We’ll need to examine the physical evidence as soon as possible,” I said. “That is, if you haven’t lost it after all these years.”

  “It’s all there,” said Torricelli. “Good to go.”

  “You both are welcome to examine it at your leisure,” said Dalton. “Everything that was let in in the last trial will be presented here.”

  “Except for Seamus Dent,” I said, “your crucial eyewitness.”

  “Not so crucial, but still, nice job on that, I must say. I was almost impressed.”

  “We aim to please.”

  “And, Beth, your argument was quite solid. I spoke to the boss about you. We have an opening in the law department if you’re interested.”

  “And leave Victor? I couldn’t do that.”

  “Silly me, I thought leaving Victor here was the main inducement of the offer.”

  “Speaking of Dent,” I said. “What’s happening with Detective Gleason?”

  “Nothing sweet,” said Torricelli. “You lit him up but good, Carl. They took away his gun, put him on the front desk at the auto squad until Internal Affairs finishes its investigation of the shooting. Don’t know if he’ll weather it. The dead guy’s mother just filed a civil suit against the city. Wrongful death.”

  “Of course she did.”

  “I was shocked when I saw the pleading,” said Mia Dalton, a smile slipping onto her face. “Shocked that your name wasn’t on it, Victor. You’re slipping. Time was, you would have been the first one knocking at her door, contingency fee agreement at the ready.”

  “I’m getting old,” I said. “Or maybe I believed the detective when he said he had no choice. He tried to do something good for that kid, Dent. It didn’t work out, but still.”

  “Without the eyewitness,” said Mia, “we’re going to concentrate more on the motive evidence. The prickly divorce. The fight over custody and assets. The girlfriends.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Detective Torricelli has been busy. Your client had a number of affair
s. It will be detailed in our trial memo.”

  “You care to give us the names now?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Darcy DeAngelo?” said Beth. “The girl from the restaurant?”

  Dalton’s eyes widened.

  “He told us about her,” said Beth. “He told us everything, including that he didn’t kill his wife.”

  “Well, it won’t be the first time,” said Torricelli.

  “The first time for what?” I said.

  “The first time a client pulled your chain,” he said.

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “Anything else?” said Mia Dalton.

  I took a document out of my briefcase, gave it a quick scan, and then tossed it across her desk. “I have a question about this.”

  She looked it over. “An inventory of what was seized during the initial search of Mr. Dubé’s apartment. The search was done with the defendant’s consent and incident to a valid arrest. What of it?”

  “What happened to my client’s stuff?”

  Torricelli stepped forward and took hold of the document. “Everything we wanted, we took and inventoried,” he said. “Besides the gun, the bloodied shirt, the bloodied boot, there wasn’t much else of interest. We just left it there. I assume your sleazeball client took care of it.”

  “Apparently the landlord sold it off,” I said. “But some stuff appears to be missing, even in your initial notation of what you found in the apartment. There’s computer cables but no computer. There’s a full-size video camera, with a tripod and lights, but no videotapes. And there are no toys.”

  “Toys?”

  “Yes, toys.” Mrs. Cullen had mentioned toys outside the courtroom, but none had been found in Dubé’s apartment. Not even kid toys for the daughter.

  “I don’t know about no toys,” said Torricelli. “Maybe he wasn’t a toy kind of guy. Maybe he pawned off what he had to raise biscuit for his legal beagles.”

  “Maybe, maybe, maybe,” I said, grinning. “That’s no way to prosecute a murder case.”

  “What we saw, we noted,” said Torricelli, tossing the paper back onto Dalton’s desk. “What we took, we inventoried.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. We did it by the book. End of story. Don’t be making a mountain out of a dung heap, you gap-toothed worm.”

  “But that’s my job.”

  “Let me straighten you out on something, my friends,” said Mia Dalton. “The district attorney herself won this case before her election to be my boss. She expects me to win it again. You have never seen her when she is disappointed. Her nickname, ‘The Dragon Lady,’ is well earned. When disappointed, she eats the furniture, she flies around terrifying small dogs and grown prosecutors, she breathes a blue-hot flame. I do not intend to get a faceful of fire.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning don’t expect any favors from me on this one. You had better come into that courtroom with more than a heartfelt plea of reasonable doubt, because I have every intention of serving that murderer’s ass up to the jury on a silver platter. If you’re going to have any chance in that courtroom, you better bring your A game.”

  “I don’t think I have an A game,” I said.

  “That’s what cheers me in the late hours of the night,” said Mia Dalton. “I don’t think you do either.”

  28

  Dawn shambled up the dark city street like an arthritic old man, arms pumping, gums working, a lot of action but not much forward movement. Yeah, sure, the metaphor is strained, but just then so was my bladder.

  I was sitting in my car waiting for the day to break, and I was in pain. I had asked Phil Skink, my private investigator, if he had any tips on staking out an apartment. “Other than paying someone with half a clue to do it for you, mate?” he said. “Yes, Phil,” I said, “other than that.” Pro bono, Latin for “on the cheap.” So this is what he told me. Make sure there is no way out the back door of the building. Check. Use a car that fits in socioeconomically with the neighborhood. Check. Reconnoiter the neighborhood to find the best place to set up. Check. Park in front of a store or a bar. Check. Sit in the front passenger seat so it looks like you’re waiting for someone. Check. Sit low. Check. Have a cover story in case a cop or neighbor gets curious. Check. Buy your coffee small. Well, there was maybe where I might have messed up.

  I started early, well before old man dawn even put on his surgical socks, and so a small cup of coffee was simply not going to do it for me. Grande or venti? What about big? Whatever happened to just plain big? Give me something big, I said to the barista, who was not young, pierced, and rude but was fat, Greek, and rude, who worked the counter of my diner, and who would have punched me in the face if I called him a barista. Something big, I had said, and now I was paying for it.

  I jiggled my leg, thought about dry things, kept my eye on the door beside Tommy’s High Ball on Daniel Rose’s West Philly street. I was parked across from his building and down a bit, in front of a still-closed bodega. Nothing had yet gone in or out that door, but I knew, I just knew, that the instant I left that street to empty the soggy, storm-tossed sea that was my bladder, the door would open, the mark would exit, the morning would be lost. So I waited and watched and jiggled my leg and thought of desert sands, of camels and Bedouins, of all manner of desiccated things. Which was when I started comparing the dawn to Horace T. Grant.

  I wasn’t good at this, I was not the patient type, I wanted to go home and pee, but Julia Rose had said her boyfriend had moved out. I didn’t believe her, and I didn’t believe that she was lying because she wanted to. She was lying because someone else wanted her to lie. Daniel had said his name was Randy. Julia had said Randy didn’t want to be involved. But he was already, wasn’t he? If I was going to get a grip on Daniel’s situation, I needed to learn what I could about Randy. His workplace was a start. Hence my stakeout.

  It was a little after seven-thirty when the door beside Tommy’s High Ball finally opened. The man who came out was medium height, thick-shouldered, with glasses and short blond hair. He wore a blue work shirt with a name stitched over the pocket and matching blue pants.

  Outside, standing now in front of the door, legs spread, he shook a cigarette from a crushed pack, lit it, inhaled, picked a piece of tobacco from his teeth.

  I slumped low in the car. The man exhaled through his nose. There was something dangerous about the way he held himself, in his big hands, in the two violent streams of smoke. He looked left, looked right, looked at me. And then he headed my way.

  I slumped lower. My knees hit the dashboard. He kept coming.

  I was trying to slink all the way beneath the seat when he knocked on the roof of my car.

  I looked up through the window.

  He smiled. “Hi,” he said.

  I waved back, sat up straight, opened the door so we could talk.

  “Is there a problem?” he said.

  “No, no problem. Just sitting here, in front of the store, waiting for a friend.”

  “The store’s closed,” he said.

  “Then it might be a while.”

  “I’ve been watching out my window,” he said, still smiling. “You been here for over an hour.”

  “Has it been that long?”

  He pulled the door farther open. “Why don’t you step on out for a moment.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “There are kids in this neighborhood, mister,” he said. “We don’t need perverts hanging around.”

  “I’m not a pervert.”

  “Then why’s your leg shaking like that?”

  “I have to pee.”

  He looked in the car, saw the blue paper coffee cup sitting in the cup holder. “You should have gotten the small.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Just get on out,” he said, and I did. I gave him a close look as I stood before him, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. He was still smiling, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. H
e had big teeth. The name stitched on his shirt was RANDY, the store name on the other breast was WILSON PLUMB-ING SUPPLY.

  “We got a quiet neighborhood here,” he said. “Lots of families, children. We look out for one another. We don’t like strangers with shaky legs hanging around. Give me your license so I can tell the police your name if I see you around here again.”

  “My name’s Victor Carl,” I said.

  His smile faltered for just a second, just long enough for me to know he recognized it.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’m Daniel’s attorney. And who I was waiting for, actually, Randy, was you. Do you have a moment?”

  He leaned forward and then smiled again. “No,” he said. “I have to get to work.”

  “You want a lift?”

  “I’ll take the bus.”

  “No, really. It won’t be a problem. I’m very impressed with you acting to protect the neighborhood. It gives me more confidence about Daniel’s situation.”

  He turned his head, looked at me sideways. “I’m just doing my part.”

  “You sound like you know how to handle yourself. Do you have a law-enforcement background?”

  “I’ve had some experience.” Pause. “I was in the army.”

  “It shows. Let me give you a lift.”

  He thought about it for a moment, glanced up at the window of his apartment, made his calculations. “Sure.”

  I stepped away from the open door and gestured him inside. “We’ll stop for coffee. You know a place near here?”

  “A couple.”

  “Good, but let’s find one with a pot.”

  29

  “You don’t need to be worrying about Daniel,” said Randy Fleer—that was his full name, I learned—as I drove him to the warehouse in Northeast Philadelphia where he worked. “I’ll take care of him. Julia, sure, she’s a bit, well, yeah, right. I understand why the judge might have had concerns with just her around. But I’ll take care of Daniel now on in. He’s a good little guy, just needed a man in his life. And here I am, so he don’t really need you no more.”