Past Due

by William Lashner

  “I don’t believe I can help you, Mr. Carl,” said Dean Sandhurst, a tall rawboned woman with bright eyes and big hands, whose jaw twitched as she spoke. Her crisp white shirt was open at the top and, though her gray hair was so tightly bound it eased the deep lines around her eyes, a few stray wisps were left free to soften the edges of her face. “Our admissions policies here are very strict and our responsibility is to the whole student body. No personal appeals, other than the usual letters of recommendation, are generally allowed.”

  “I understand that, Dean.”

  “I only agreed to meet with you as a favor to Philip, who helped me through a difficult time a few years ago.” A divorce case, Skink had said, the usual thing, you understand, Skink had said. I did. No one loves a PI more than a woman in trouble. “My return of the favor only goes as far as allowing this meeting. It won’t affect the admissions decision.”

  “Of course it won’t. And it shouldn’t. I just hoped I’d be able to ease any concerns you might have about an applicant and maybe request the decision, whether positive or negative, be made sooner rather than later.”

  “When would you need to hear? February? March?”

  “By early next week.”

  “Mr. Carl, that simply won’t be possible. There is a process that must be followed. There are committees. We can’t rush these things. What is so important that the applicant must hear by early next week?”

  “That is when he is due to be sentenced in Common Pleas Court by Judge Horace Wellman.”

  “Ah, I see. Yes. You’re a lawyer, Mr. Carl.”

  “That I am.”

  “Philip didn’t tell me.”

  “I find he often leaves out the best parts.”

  “And the applicant you want to discuss is a client.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Nice try, Mr. Carl, but I can’t help you. This is an institution of higher learning. We are not a tool to be used by sly lawyers for the reduction of criminal sentences. You will have to find some other angle to help your client.”

  “This is not an angle, Dean Sandhurst. I have too much respect for PCA and for my client, Rashard Porter, for that. I’ve been a lawyer for almost a decade, but this is the first time I’ve ever spoken up for a client to a college dean. Most of my clients have talents in areas I don’t want to encourage. But Rashard Porter is a good kid, in bad circumstances, who happens to be a stellar artist. Partly I’m here, yes indeed, because I think an acceptance would help at his sentencing. But I’m also here because I believe the sentencing itself could help Rashard in the next crucial phase of his life. The criminal justice system doesn’t only have to be a way to mete out jail time, it can also be the one time a kid in perilous circumstances gets a clear-eyed look at his situation and a meaningful plan to transcend it. For some it’s drug rehab that’s needed, for some it’s psychiatric counseling.”

  “But we are not a drug rehabilitation facility, Mr. Carl, nor a psychiatric institution.”

  “Of course not. But if Rashard is accepted at PCA, I could have his attendance and performance here made an important condition of his probation. Nothing focuses the mind like a judge looking over your shoulder. Rashard needs a little discipline, most nineteen-year-old kids do, but maybe the criminal justice system, and his lawyer, and PCA might help counteract the other forces in his life and give him what he needs to pursue his destiny.”

  “So, it is up to us to save him, is that it?”

  “Like I said, Rashard’s a good kid. The trouble he is in is minor. There’s a lot in his life pushing him in the wrong direction, but in the end, I have no doubt that Rashard will save himself, on his own, like each of us in the end is forced to do. But you, Mrs. Sandhurst, you might be able to save the artist. Give him the training he needs, the validation he craves, show him the opportunities he doesn’t know are out there. He doesn’t believe you can make a living at art. Prove to him he can.”

  “And what if he’s not good enough?”

  “Then don’t waste his time.”

  Mrs. Sandhurst pursed her lips, leaned back in her chair, put a hand to her throat, spun back and forth. Her jaw twitched as if in memory of something. “How is Philip doing?” she said.

  “Fine.”

  “Still worried about his cholesterol?”

  “Always.”

  “He was a big help to me in a difficult time. And not just with his professional services.” With a finger she slowly curled a stray wisp of hair. “He listened to me, he heard me, and he helped. He’s a strange man, and not one to follow all the niceties, but his heart is gold. Very tender. Very empathic.”

  “A model for us all.”

  She startled for a moment, as if awaking from a reverie. “God, I hope not. But he does have a fine set of teeth. Rashard Porter, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “His application is complete?”

  “So the registrar has told me.”

  “I’ll need to speak to him personally.”

  “I can have him here at an hour’s notice.”

  “You understand, I can promise nothing. Everything must be decided in committee, and any decision will, of course, depend almost entirely on his portfolio.”

  “So I always assumed.”

  “We need to see more than just routine adolescent scribbles. You said he was an artist. Do you know much about art, Mr. Carl?”

  “Some. Who’s that guy? Say what? Say what?”

  “Cézanne?”

  “That’s the one. I like him, and I’m also a sucker for pictures of dogs playing poker.”

  She laughed. “I’ve always liked them too. We have a committee meeting tomorrow night. I will consider discussing your situation with the committee. That’s all I can promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Give my regards to Philip, please.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  “You slept with her, didn’t you?” I said.

  Skink, sitting beside me in the car at the Alden Park parking lot, across from a blue LeBaron convertible, crossed his arms and said, “Get your mind out of the gutter, why don’t you?”

  “You’re the one always talking about his ethical responsibilities and then you go and pull something like that.”

  Skink merely looked away.

  “Have you no shame?” I said. I was enjoying this.

  “It ain’t shame what I got. It’s called discretion, mate. I don’t talk about my personal life one way or the ’nother. When’s your cowboy coming?”

  “He’s coming.”

  “You know, the car, it hasn’t been moved since first time I spotted it.”

  “Really,” I said, starting to wonder. “Has he visited the girlfriend during that time?”

  “Not that I’ve seen. Our boy, he’s disappeared.”

  I thought about the insurance and the kid in New Jersey and Manley’s sad slump of resignation. I didn’t want to tell Skink, but I suspected we’d never see Manley again. “We were talking,” I said, to change the subject, “about the dean.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “I just want to get it straight.”

  “All right, this is the straight of it. She was sinking fast, her marriage on the rocks, the very idea of herself plummeting. It was a dangerous time, but she made the right move and gave me a call. She was shaking when she told me her situation. But I sensed the story right off and it didn’t take long. Her husband was an artist too, an instructor at that very same joint. A remote-controlled camera set in a bust of some naked twist got me all I needed. Snap snap. Caught the arse-hole cavorting, yes I did, with a model atop a table set with two apples, a book, an overturned jug. A real work of art, it was. I entitled it: Still Life with Two Cocks. A good patch of work if I say so myself. She was a nice lady and she got herself out of a bad situation, and she gained a new understanding of her own needs in the process.”

  “You sound like Dr. Phil.”

  “Yeah, well, in a way we’s in
the same business, ain’t we? Helping our clients confront the truth. Only difference is I do it with pictures. So I was glad to be able to help. And the penthouse apartment on Rittenhouse Square she got in the settlement after showing my work of art at the deposition, well that didn’t hurt any neither.”

  “Such a sweet story.”

  “I do my best.”

  “So you slept with her, didn’t you?”

  Before he could respond, my phone rang. It was Ellie, my secretary, informing me that one R.T. Pritchett from the sheriff’s office was on the phone. I asked her to put him through to my cell.

  “Where the hell are you?” I said.

  “Something came up,” said R.T., his voice strangely empty of its western twang. “I’m gonna be late.”

  “How late?”

  “You got a calendar?”

  “Come on, R.T. What’s going on up there?”

  “We’re busy.”

  “Not that busy.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand? That your boss needs to unload a few more bushels of crab fries and he’s putting another hand in my pocket? There’s only so many crab fries a man can eat.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with that.”

  “Really? Then why don’t you tell me the hell what it has got to do with.”

  “We’re just busy, is all. The word’s come down. We’re simply too busy at the moment to help out when it comes to you.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You tell me, Victor. You must have pissed off someone, someone the size of a gorilla. The squeeze has been put on my boss and so the squeeze has been put on me and so I got no choice but to squeeze you out.”

  “No choice?”

  “None.”

  “After all we been through together?”

  “Don’t get weepy-eyed on me, Victor, it’s the way it is.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Not a thing, buckaroo.”

  “You’re screwing me here, R.T.”

  “Someone’s screwing you, Victor, that’s for sure. I just hope you’re enjoying it.”

  I hung up the phone, thought about it for a moment. “Let’s go,” I said finally.

  “He ain’t coming?” said Skink.

  “Nope.”

  “He give a reason?”

  “Someone is mad at me.”

  “Who?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “Someone heavy?”

  “Morbidly obese, and mad enough that I’m not getting that car today. Or tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Which I figure is just as well.”

  “You want me to disable it so it don’t go nowhere?”

  “No. But I would like to know if he moves it.”

  “I could mark them tires, check on them every so often.”

  “Good.”

  “So who is it, Vic, the heavy out to shut you off? He high up politically?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Councilman?”

  “Higher.”

  “Mayor?”

  “Higher.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Higher.”

  Skink laughed, a rough, sarcastic laugh, the laughter you loose at a clown in a barrel when he pratfalls.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Chapter

  35

  SHE WAS WAITING for me in my office when I returned from my unsuccessful seizure of Manley’s LeBaron. She had made herself at home, sitting in my chair, leaning over my desk, scribbling so intently in some notebook that she didn’t notice me standing in my own door frame. I figured she’d show up, I just didn’t figure it would be so soon.

  Alura Straczynski.

  I watched her for a moment. She was engrossed, totally, in her work, slim eyeglasses perched on her nose, bracelets jangling as her wrist moved swiftly across the page. She was dressed stylishly, if a little bit too, in a red silk shirt, a green bandanna around her neck, long golden earrings. There was in her manner and her seeming indifference to her surroundings the intensity of an artist at the easel and she nodded, yes, yes, yes, as if each word was a dab of paint on a brilliant canvas. The tension in the edges of her mouth as her pen flew and the bangles jangled was surprisingly sexy. A woman at work, Rosie the Riveter.

  She glanced up, over the top of her glasses, and spied me spying. “So,” she said as she put down her pen, closed the notebook, took off her glasses. “You’ve returned. From some great legal victory, I hope.”

  “Nothing so dashing,” I said. “Something about a car.”

  “But still it went well, I am sure.”

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t mind my using your desk, do you? Your secretary said you would only be a moment.”

  “And she brought you in here?”

  “She asked me to wait in the waiting room, but really. What’s the point in that? The seats are uncomfortable and your magazines are months old. Just sitting there made my teeth ache. When she stepped out for a moment I stepped in here.”

  “You weren’t snooping around, were you?”

  “What do you take me for? Of course I was. But too bad for me, I found nothing of a compromising nature. I suppose you don’t compromise, do you, Victor?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “I couldn’t help but admire your decor.”

  “I did it myself.”

  “Obviously. The folders on the floor, the mismatched chairs, the lovely scuff marks on the thrillingly beige walls. It must be reassuring for your clients to know you don’t waste their money on interior design. You can tell a lot about a man from his office. I read yours as a little rundown, a little shady, a lot desperate, but with a tinge of strained heroism. I especially like the picture of the soldier on the wall.”

  “Ulysses S. Grant.”

  “Marvelous touch, that. Standing before his tent with that pose of calm ferocity. Why him?”

  “Because he was pretty much a total failure well into middle age until the war came and he found his place and became the greatest military leader in the country’s history.”

  “So there’s still hope for you, is that it? Tell me about the dented file cabinet.”

  “A couple of new-age enforcers tried to enlighten my soul and scare me off a case at the same time.”

  “Did your soul enlighten?”

  “No.”

  “Did you scare?”

  “Absolutely. I scare quite easily.”

  “Do I scare you?”

  “You husband does.”

  “Jackson? I didn’t know he was such a brute. But what about me? Don’t I scare you even a little?”

  “Sure, if you want.”

  “Oh, I want. It’s late, I’m thirsty. Let’s go get a drink.”

  “Do you think it appropriate for a married woman to have a drink with a man she hardly knows?”

  “God, I hope not. Where would the fun be in that?” She stood, put her notebook into her purse. “Let’s go, yes? I know just the place. And we have so much to talk about, don’t we?”

  I thought about my promise to Slocum, but I had promised not to bother her and here she was, obviously bothering me. So this situation could surely be distinguished from my promise and I could go and have that drink with her and still be keeping my word, couldn’t I? Believe it or not, we actually do learn to think like this in law school.

  Chapter

  36

  ALURA STRACZYNSKI’S ARM clasped firmly in mine, she led me along the city streets, chatting gaily all the while. She was, I had to admit, engaging company. She pointed out passersby she found to be amusing, she window-shopped, asking my advice about that outfit, that painting, that vase, she responded to my occasional quip with a gratifying trill of soft laughter. There was an excitement about her, an electric current that seemed to transfer from her arm to mine. She exuded a sort of joy, as if this walk with me through the city streets,
this day of hers, this very life was all she could ever have wanted.

  “I have a secret to tell you,” she said, leaning her head close to mine as we walked.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I think I’m being followed.”

  I jerked around to see what I could see and spied nothing.

  “Don’t look, you silly. You’ll tip him off. But I’ve noticed him. A greasy little man in a hat.”

  “Maybe your husband is worried about your going off to have drinks with strange men.”

  “Why would he be worried about that?”

  “That’s the way men are.”

  “Some men, I suppose.”

  We ended up at the bar of a little steak house I had never noticed before. It was one of those places that seemed to have slipped through time unscathed and walking into it was like walking into a different decade. Dark walls, leather booths, thick slabs of beef, ashtrays on every table. The man behind the bar in a red plaid vest had the open, sad face of an old-time baseball player.

  “Mrs. S.,” he said in a thick nasally voice when we sat on the red-leather stools. “Terrific as always to see you.”

  “Rocco, this is Victor,” she said. “Victor and I are in desperate need of a drink. I’ll have the usual. What will it be for you, Victor?”

  “Do you make a sea breeze?” I said.

  Rocco looked at me like I had spit on the bar.

  I got the message. This was a serious place for serious drinking, a leftover from an era when the cocktail hour was a sacred thing, when a man was defined by his drink and no man wanted to be defined by something as sweet and inconsequential as a sea breeze. Kids in short pants with ball gloves sticking out of their pockets drank soda pop, men drank like men.

  “What’s she having?” I said, nodding at my companion.

  “A manhattan.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whiskey, bitters, sweet vermouth.”

  “And a cherry,” said Alura Straczynski. “Mustn’t forget the cherry.”

  “No, Mrs. S.,” said Rocco. “I wouldn’t forget your cherry.”

  I tried to think of a blue-blooded drinking drink that would satisfy Rocco’s demanding standards. Martini? Too unoriginal. A Brazilian sidecar? Nah. Grasshopper? Rocco would throw me out of the place.