Client Privilege

by William G. Tapply

  I shook my head. “You can ask over at the desk. Look, do you need a ride?”

  “I can call a taxi.”

  “I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

  “Thank you anyway. I can get a cab.”

  “Really,” I said. “It’d be no problem.”

  She cocked her head to the side, hesitated, then nodded. “If it wouldn’t be out of your way.”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  We walked out of the hospital and headed for the parking lot. “This is very nice of you,” she said.

  “I’m a nice guy.” I smiled.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I think you probably are.”

  We found my car. I unlocked the passenger door and opened it for her. After she got in, I went around and got behind the wheel. I pulled onto Mt. Auburn Street and turned right, heading for the Square. Mrs. Lavoie sat rigidly erect beside me, gazing fixedly straight ahead.

  “Mrs. Lavoie,” I said after a minute, “I want you to know that I know about Karen.”

  She continued to stare out the windshield. “It’s really not any of your business,” she said softly.

  “Well, perhaps. Except a man was killed, and I thought—I think—it’s related to what happened to Karen. Karen and Judge Popowski.”

  I watched her as I said this. She didn’t flinch.

  “You know about her and the judge, don’t you?” I persisted.

  “We know,” she whispered.

  “I felt I had to find out,” I went on gently. “And I believe that this is related to what happened to Karen the other night.”

  I glanced at her when she didn’t reply. She was nodding.

  “Do you believe that also?”

  The handkerchief materialized in her hand. She dabbed at her eyes with it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you’re upset.”

  We drove in silence for a while. I negotiated the complexity of traffic lights, loops, and one-way streets in Harvard Square and headed west on Mass. Ave.

  “Mrs. Lavoie,” I said, “did Karen tell you who beat her?”

  She said nothing. From the corner of my eye I saw the handkerchief flutter at her face.

  “Was it the judge? Was it Chester Popowski?”

  “No.” Her voice was a whisper, but at the same time emphatic.

  “Then—?”

  “Mr. Coyne,” she said quietly, “please.”

  I shrugged.

  There are at least a dozen stoplights on Massachusetts Avenue between Harvard Square and Route 16. Every one of them was red when I got to it. I cracked my window and lit a cigarette. Mrs. Lavoie continued to stare straight ahead. Her fingers alternately stroked and strangled the handkerchief she was holding in her lap.

  I turned onto Route 16 heading for Medford. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

  “There’s a vicious criminal out there.”

  “I know that.”

  “He’s killed a man. He almost killed your daughter.”

  “You don’t think I know that, too?”

  “Then why—”

  “Do you think it’s been easy all these years? Trying to keep a family together, seeing my little girl…

  Her voice trailed away. The handkerchief dabbed at her eyes again.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to get it off your chest?” I said carefully. “Wouldn’t you feel better?”

  “It’s not that simple, Mr. Coyne. I wish it was, but it isn’t.”

  “But for Karen’s sake…”

  “It’s not that simple,” she repeated. “I told you. You just couldn’t understand.”

  “You know, don’t you? Karen told you just now, when you went in to say good-bye to her after I was in there, didn’t she?”

  “She told me.” Her tone had changed. Her voice was flat, devoid of affect.

  “You must tell me,” I said.

  “I already knew,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to know, but I knew.”

  “My God,” I said.

  Because then I knew too.

  TWENTY-ONE

  IN THE MIDDLE OF the morning on Friday, Julie cracked open my office door and stuck her head in. “That policeman is here.”

  “Just one?”

  “Yes. Lieutenant Sylvestro.”

  “Send him in, please.”

  Her head disappeared for a moment. Then she pushed the door open all the way. She held it while Sylvestro shambled in. I stood up and went around my desk. We shook hands in the middle of the room.

  “You made an appointment this time,” I said.

  He smiled. “This one’s a little different from the others.”

  I returned his smile and gestured toward the sofa. “Have a seat,” I said to him. “You look beat.”

  “Tough couple days,” he said with a sigh.

  “Coffee?”

  “Yeah. Good.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Julie from the doorway.

  Sylvestro sat on the sofa. I took the chair across from him. He looked at me out of his hound dog eyes. “Wanted to thank you,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Also to apologize.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “It wasn’t just Finnigan, you know. It was me, too. We both thought we had a live one. That’s just the way we played it.”

  “Good cop, bad cop,” I said. “It’s okay. I know how it works.”

  “Not that business of luring you to the hospital. That was just me. Finnigan was against it.”

  I smiled. “It turned out to be a good trick.”

  “Anyhow…” He waved his hand in the air.

  “All’s well that ends well, huh?”

  “If you call this ending well. We solved the crimes. That doesn’t always mean a happy ending.”

  Julie came in with our coffee. She placed the two mugs on the table between Sylvestro and me. He looked up at her and smiled mournfully, which was the only way he knew how. “Thanks,” he said to her.

  “Anything else?” she said.

  “This is great, thanks,” I said.

  After she left, latching the door behind her, Sylvestro said, “How did you figure it out?”

  “Mrs. Lavoie told me.”

  “Come on. She’d never do that.”

  “Oh, not in so many words. She couldn’t have done that. But she made it pretty clear. I think she wanted me to know. Did you get evidence?”

  “He confessed everything. Gave us the weapon. He seemed greatly relieved.”

  “What about Karen?”

  “She won’t have to testify, I don’t think. I doubt it goes to trial.”

  “He was the one who shot at the judge in the parking garage, too?”

  Sylvestro sipped his coffee and nodded. “He was on a mission. Had been all his life, I guess. When you called me the other night, after you drove Mrs. Lavoie home, I knew you were right. It all fit. You gotta feel for her.”

  I smiled. “Poor woman. Here I was, feeling sorry for myself, with my own hypothetical version of a moral dilemma, and she’d been living with a real one for all of her married life. How can you be both a good mother and a loyal wife in that circumstance?” I shook my head.

  “You go to church, you practice denial, and you suffer horribly,” said Sylvestro. “All that Catholic guilt shit. One way or another, none of us escapes it.”

  “He’d been beating Karen all her life, huh?”

  “Both of them. His daughter and his wife.” Sylvestro stuck his forefinger under his collar at the back of his neck and carved it around to his throat. “You should’ve heard him. He felt no guilt whatsoever. The poor benighted bastard’s absolutely convinced he’s God’s messenger on earth. No guilt for him. He still thinks he’s the perfect father and husband.”

  “He must’ve been out of his tree when Karen told him she was knocked up by the judge.”

  “He beat the crap out of her then, of course. Then he made her strike the deal with the judge. The main thing for him was to keep it qu
iet. Of course, she had to have the baby. Fortunately, or at least that’s how he saw it, this Gorwacz was waiting in the wings. He married her. And everything was fine, until Karen finally told her husband where Paul really came from. Gorwacz left her. Poor bastard couldn’t handle that. And Karen told Paul, too, though evidently the boy took it all right. Nothing would’ve happened, probably, if Wayne Churchill hadn’t latched onto the story and tracked down the Lavoies.”

  “He had to protect the family’s secret.”

  Sylvestro nodded. “At whatever cost. So he followed Churchill to Skeeter’s that night. And when he came out, he followed him home. Went to the door. Churchill let him in, naturally. Figured he was gonna get his story. But John killed him. Figured that was it. End of the story.”

  “Until I showed up,” I said.

  “Yeah. Then he figured he had to eliminate you, too. Protecting his daughter, his family’s good name and all.”

  “He drives a blue sedan, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes. He admitted he was following you around, waiting for the right time to get you. He’s crazy, of course. But cautious. He saw you go to Karen’s that night. When you left he went in and beat her up, like he’d done so many times before. After all, she had disobeyed him, letting you in. When he told us this, he looked at us with these innocent eyes, as if anybody would’ve done the same thing. Anyway, he kept following you. When you parked in the garage over there by the courthouse, he figured it was a good opportunity. But when you came out with the judge, he decided the judge was the target of choice. After all, he was the one who had caused everything.”

  “So he shot at Pops.”

  “And, fortunately, missed.”

  I drained my mug. “So what’s going to happen to John Lavoie?”

  Sylvestro made an inverted smile. “The D.A. wants to go for second-degree murder. Lavoie’s got a public defender. They entered a plea of not guilty. They’re holding him in lieu of bond. I figure he’ll go for insanity, they’ll bargain it down to manslaughter or something.” He shrugged.

  “He’ll never survive prison.”

  “I don’t know,” said Sylvestro. “This is the kind of guy who survives it pretty well.”

  The following Tuesday I met Pops at the College Club on Commonwealth Avenue, one of the several private clubs of which he was a member. I descended the few steps, hung my coat, and entered the dining room. It was early. Pops was seated in the corner. All the other tables were empty. I joined him. He was sipping from a glass.

  “What’re you drinking?” I said.

  He grimaced. “Poland Spring. I gotta be back on the bench at two.”

  A waitress came over. I ordered a Bloody Mary. Figured I’d get some vitamins.

  Pops leaned across the table to me. “I talked to Teddy yesterday.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded. “Asked him to withdraw my name.”

  “I don’t—”

  Pops waved his hand at me. “I’m not asking for your advice, now, Counselor. I’ve thought it through. It’s not just the publicity. That’ll probably happen anyway. All of this’ll get out, one way or the other. Channel Eight’s still poking and probing at the whole Churchill thing. And it’s not that the Senate’s likely to vote me down. Push comes to shove, they’d probably approve me. That’s what Teddy told me. He said he had the votes.”

  “Then…?”

  “Several things. All this, Karen and all, it puts the Senator on the spot. He didn’t say so. Didn’t have to. I’m supposed to know that. It’s how it works. You want to play the game, you play by the rules.” He paused to sip from his glass of spring water. He cleared his throat. “Then, of course, there’s Marilee and the girls.”

  “You haven’t told them?”

  He smiled. “Of course I told them. Everything that’s happened, it’s made me realize I’ve been waiting to tell them all the time. See, it isn’t just that I’d rather they heard it from me, the way it really was, without distortion, than read about it in the tabloids. It’s the—the damn guilt, the pretense. The honorable judge. Shit. Talking to you at Locke-Ober’s, it felt damn good, Brady. A catharsis. After I talked to you that night, I knew I had to tell Marilee.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  He shook his head slowly. “That’s another thing. I didn’t give her credit. I figured she’d go bananas. See, all this time I was thinking that she thought I was Mr. Perfection, that the slightest chink in my shiny armor would devastate her. Oh, she was upset. She cried. Said she always trusted me. But, bottom line, she forgave me. Said I was just a man. Everybody’s entitled to mistakes. Said she loved me, and that’s what counted, and she didn’t intend to stop loving me, even if she could. Which she said she couldn’t.” He smiled. “The girls didn’t even blink an eye. I don’t know, Brady. Kids nowadays, they see so much, nothing fazes them. We better order.”

  We wrote our luncheon orders on a slip of paper with pencils provided expressly for the purpose. Our waitress immediately came over and took them from the corner of the table. She paused and said to me, “The pencil, sir?”

  I had stuck it into my jacket pocket. I retrieved it and handed it to her. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t intend to steal it.”

  “It’s not a felony,” she said, her tone suggesting that it was at least a misdemeanor.

  When she left, I said, “I’ve been feeling bad, Pops.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. Me too.”

  “I really thought you did it. I believed you killed Churchill.”

  “I knew that all the time. It was logical. My own damn fault for not telling you everything.”

  “Even if you had, I think I still would’ve thought you did it.”

  “Hey, look—”

  “No, listen,” I said. “You’ve always been a kind of hero to me.”

  “Ah, shit, Coyne.”

  “No, really. Even back at Yale. You were this guy, older, been through the war, so damn upright. I mean, none of the rest of us had the same handle on things as you did. Right and wrong. You not only knew the difference but you lived it. And when you became an assistant D.A., and then a judge, and, Jesus, asking me to be your lawyer—well, it was flattering as hell for me. You’ve got to understand.”

  “Forget it, Brady, for crissake. This is embarrassing.”

  “Tough. Hear me out. What happened was, when you told me about your affair with Karen, I was able to rationalize it. It didn’t matter to me, because, well, I guess I don’t have a very clear morality on such things. But when it began to look like you’d killed Churchill it just knocked the props out from under me. It skewed everything.”

  “Well,” he said, “I didn’t kill him.”

  I nodded. “I know. The point is, I believed you did. I saw you differently, and I don’t know if I can go back to seeing you the old way. Something changed. I mean, I thought I knew you. Then I learned I didn’t.”

  He stared at me for a minute. “Same thing happened to me,” he said finally, his voice soft and sad. “You mistrusting me, I mean. It’s kind of like what Marilee must be feeling about me. You can forgive. But still, nothing’s ever the same.”

  “I want to be your friend.”

  He nodded. “Sure. We’re friends.”

  “I’ll be happy to continue to represent you. But if—”

  He held up both hands and grinned. “Christ, Coyne. Nothing ever stays the same. Don’t even think about it.”

  Gloria was seated sideways on a barstool sipping what looked like a gin and tonic. It was her favorite summer drink, and she was rushing the season by a couple months. Skeeter was down the other end pouring draft beer from a spigot. Wheel of Fortune played on the oversize television. The boys down the end were exchanging obscene suggestions on the subject of the blond woman who turned over the letters.

  I thought of initiating our little charade with her. “Excuse me, miss. I know we’ve never met. But I can’t help thinking. Would you come to bed with me?” And Gloria would fling her arms aro
und my neck and kiss me wetly on the mouth.

  But I detected a rigidity in her back and a subtle tension along the curve of her cheek and neck that warned me off. Gloria wasn’t always in the mood for games.

  I straddled the empty stool beside her. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.” She touched the side of my head and leaned over to kiss me. She brushed my cheek quickly in a way that prevented me from kissing her. Then she straightened away from me. “How’ve you been?”

  “Good. Fine. Has Skeeter offered you his special?”

  “He calls it a Don Buddin. Says it’ll make you keep dropping things. The active ingredients are vodka and port wine.”

  “Think I’ll stick to Jack Daniel’s.”

  “What happened to that Rebel Yell you were drinking?”

  “That was just a phase. I’m back to the tried-and-true. Good old Blackjack.”

  She sipped her drink. I lit a cigarette. After a minute or so Skeeter came over. “Hey, Mr. Coyne,” he said. “How do you like the Sox this year?”

  “With that big horse in the bullpen, I think we’ve got a shot.”

  “I agree, I agree. Listen. Try a Don Buddin. You remember him.”

  “A poor shortstop. No, let me have my usual.”

  He brought me my drink. I raised it to Gloria and we touched glasses. “To your career,” I said.

  “And yours.”

  We sipped. “Anything new on the photography front?”

  “Even getting shot down by Life turns out to be a good thing. Nothing really exciting. But I’m getting a few calls. Word seems to be getting around.”

  “You’re off and running, then,” I said. “That’s great.”

  “What about you, Brady? What’ve you been up to?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing much. Been fishing a couple times. Doc Adams and I are going to Connecticut on Sunday.”

  “You and your trout.”

  “You eaten?” I said.

  She nodded.

  We fell silent. I stared down at the top of the bar. From the corner of my eye I watched Gloria’s hands on her glass. She was rubbing the condensation on the side with the pad of her forefinger, stroking it in little soft circles. It reminded me…