Absolute rage kac-14

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "Get that animal away from me!" he demanded weakly. "If it touches me, I'll sue."

  "If he touches you, you won't be in any condition to sue." Wiggling the bottle before his eyes, she said, "I know you need a drink, but you can't have one now. You need to do some work first. I'm going to make you a pot of strong black coffee, which you will consume until you are as sober as you ever get. Then we will have a professional conversation about our client and decide what to do next."

  He gaped at her and wiped at his reddened eyes. "Who the hell are you?"

  "I told you. I'm Marlene Ciampi, I'm Moses Welch's-"

  "Yeah, I got that. What're you doing in McCullensburg?"

  "I was a friend of Rose Heeney." Marlene put the coffee on. "Her sons engaged me to get Moses Welch out of this stupid situation and get the police back onto looking for the real killers."

  "That's your plan, is it?" he asked, his voice tired and hollow. He rubbed his face vigorously with both hands. "You don't know much about Robbens County, that's for sure."

  "No, I don't. That's another reason I need your help."

  He snorted a sort of laugh. "Well, if you need my help, lady, you're in a sorry state. I tell you what I will do though. If you put a shot in my coffee, I will enlighten you as to how things are done around here. After which, you will kindly get the hell out of my office."

  Marlene had nothing to say to this. She poured out a mug of coffee, added a splash of the bourbon. His eyes were fixed on the bottle's lip. With body English he urged a more generous pour, but was passive when he saw it would be minimal. He drank and talked. She sat on the edge of his desk and listened.

  "Well, let's start with Moses Welch. Moses Welch is an idiot. He should have been put away a long time ago, but the Welches, of course, wouldn't hear of it. It's only a matter of time before he walks in front of a train or a coal truck or decides to grab some little girl and play doctor. He came to town in shoes soaked in the Heeneys' blood. He was duly arrested. At the arraignment, I pleaded him non compos, which he is. That plea was rejected by Judge Murdoch, and Mose was deemed fit to aid in his own defense."

  "That's nonsense."

  "I know. Don't interrupt. I have petitioned the court for a psychiatric examination, which will demonstrate that Moses Welch is, in fact, incapable of telling right from wrong. After he's convicted, he'll be remanded to the state institution at Morgantown indefinitely, which is probably the best place for him, all told. I want some aspirin."

  This was found, a bottle of two hundred in a desk drawer. He downed four with the coffee. "There. That's the sad story of Moses Welch. Case closed. Now, please go away and leave me alone."

  "But he didn't do it."

  "He confessed to it."

  "Yes, and you were probably right there with the ice cream. Oh, hell, just look at the poor sap! He wouldn't hurt a fly. Besides, the Heeneys were killed by at least two men."

  "How do you know that?" Poole's hands shook when he said it, slopping the coffee.

  "Because the Heeney boys figured it out. Lizzie was killed with a pistol shot to the head. Do you actually believe that our retard walked into the Heeney home, outshot an armed man, killed him and his wife, and then calmly pranced into a little girl's bedroom and shot her while she was still sleeping peacefully? Have you ever heard a twelve-gauge go off in a confined space?"

  "He could've shot her first."

  "Oh, please! And then put away his pistol, grabbed his shotgun, and dispatched the Heeneys? With Red Heeney alerted and a.38 in his fist? Who're we talking about here, John Wesley Hardin? Whose side are you on anyway?"

  "You don't understand."

  "Okay, enlighten me. Explain why you're selling out your client."

  "I'm not selling out my client. I'm doing what I have to do to keep more people from being hurt. Look, miss, whatever your…"

  "Marlene."

  "Marlene. Let me ask you this-what do you think is going to happen when you mount your spirited defense of Moses Welch's innocence? You think everyone in town's going to say, oh, jeez, we made a mistake, thank you so much? Do you think the sheriff is actually going to look for someone else? They will not, and he will not. What they will do is look for the source of the upsetting reversal of a very nice arrangement. They will find it in you, and in me, and in the Heeney boys, who called in a fancy out-of-town lady lawyer. And they will expunge the persons responsible."

  "Who is this they? "

  "The they who run our little town. They didn't like Red Heeney unsettling things, with the results you know. It will be the same with you and me and the Heeney boys. What I'm trying to say is, you can't bring Rose back. Do you really want to be responsible for wiping out the rest of her family? Can I have a little more?" He held out his cup like a beggar, eyeing the bottle.

  "No. Are you talking about Weames and the union?"

  "Oh, he's part of it."

  "And what's the whole thing look like?"

  He laughed, a short pair of dry syllables, like a curse. "Have you got a year? A decade? I don't. I'm tired, lady. Why don't you go off and do good in some other nice county? Oh, my head!"

  He lay back on the couch and groaned.

  "Where's your file on Welch?"

  He gestured vaguely at an oak filing cabinet. She rummaged. The file was thin, consisting only of the indictment, the arrest record, the three autopsy reports, a copy of the letter requesting a psych consult, and some technical data from the state lab regarding the blood on the defendant's boots. Or alleged boots. She noted where the report said they were a size nine, a small man's size. Mose was a moose; he'd said they were too tight.

  "Didn't you file any motions to dismiss or to suppress?"

  Poole groaned. "Dear lady, you're thinking like a lawyer. There's no law in Robbens County."

  "We'll see about that." Marlene searched Poole's law library, found a form book and a criminal procedure volume. She had not typed mechanically for some years, and it was tedious doing it with two fingers truncated, but she soon had the standard motions completed. She brought these over to Poole; included were her "Notice of Appearance" form, which let the court and all interested parties know that she was now representing Welch, and the substitution of lead attorney declaration.

  "Sign these," she ordered.

  "You're crazy."

  "I've been told. Sign!"

  He signed. She took the papers and said, "Get cleaned up. I expect you to be respectable and sober in court first thing tomorrow. They do have court here, don't they? Or do they just meet in a cellar and decide who lives and who dies?"

  "Both."

  She left Poole's office and walked across the square, attracting some attention. People came out of shops to look and traffic slowed. She noticed this and remarked to the dog, "They probably don't see many Manolo Blahniks in this town. Maybe I should have gone with something less stylish." The dog said, they tremble at my size and ferocious aspect. "I was joking," she said. "Stay, and don't bite anyone." The courthouse proved to contain, as in many small-county towns, the entire county government and was busy without seeming hectic. Finding the court clerk's office, she handed her documents in to an angular, middleaged woman with thick, harlequin-framed glasses on a chain and a head of peculiar, tiny champagne curls. This person looked at the documents, studied them in fact, while also studying Marlene out of the corner of her eye. Marlene took her receipt and left, but noted without surprise that the clerk was on the phone before the glass door had swung shut.

  Emmett was sitting in the Jimmy in the same place. "How'd it go?" he asked.

  "Like clockwork. Let's go home. I need to make some calls."

  The first one was to her husband. She described her day, to which he replied, "He actually said, 'There's no law in Robbens County'?"

  "Words to that effect."

  "So I reckon you're gonna have to tame that town with your blazing six-gun, clean up the bad guys, and save the farmers."

  "Oh, stuff it! And it's miners in any case
, and I'm not going to clean up anything. I just want to get this poor schmuck out of jail and get the cops to do their job. That might be a problem, if Poole is right about the state of local justice. He seemed like he still has enough brain cells left to convey actual facts. We shall see. What's happening in the real world?"

  "You didn't hear? Probably the stagecoach with the paper didn't get there yet."

  "Hey, half the people around here are watching CNN on satellite as we speak. What happened?"

  "Oh, some hyped Latino kid tried to stick up a grocery over in Alphabet City with a cheap.22. The guy who ran it was one of our fine recent immigrants from East Asia. When he understood what the kid was doing, he hauls out this native blade and goes for him. The kid shoots him, the guy takes the bullet and keeps chopping. End of story? Our storekeeper cuts the kid's head off and places it in his window. The body gets tossed in the Dumpster. Apparently that's what they do in the colorful markets of his native land. It discourages thievery, he says."

  "I bet it does. He speaks English?"

  "He barely speaks Chinese. No, we had to get a guy down from Columbia to translate. Where is my daughter when I need her? Anyway, he's a Karen, apparently, from Burma or Myanmar or whatever the hell they're calling it today. Totally illegal, of course, and we don't have relations with his country of origin. I love this town."

  "Is self-defensive decapitation an offense?"

  "Not as such. Probably get him on failure to properly dispose of a corpse, a D-class misdemeanor, and failure to report a crime. I'd love to bring that one into the criminal courts with the litterers and fare jumpers. Meanwhile the Latino community is up in arms and the Asians want to give him a medal. The poor little shit!"

  "Who, the kid or the Karen?"

  "Both. Once again we are reminded that the law is a cultural construct."

  "Which also reminds me: Do you know anyone at the Department of Labor?"

  "Not really. Why?"

  "Because if this place is as corrupt as Poole says it is, we may need some federal muscle. Isn't killing a union leader a federal case?"

  "It might be," said Karp after a moment's consideration. "I know someone who would know for sure, though."

  "Who? Oh, right, your guy Sterner."

  "Uh-huh. Saul would be the one to call. Strangely enough, I have a message slip from him right here. I was just about to call him when you called."

  "Well, see what he has to say and let me know. If I can pass this stinker off to someone real, I'll be a happy Girl Scout."

  7

  Karp dialed the number on the message slip, area code 202, a Washington number. Saul Sterner was a macher in that town, or had been. Karp tried to figure out how old he was. He'd been general counsel at Labor in the Johnson administration and then done labor law for a while at the highest levels, chief counsel for the mine workers and then for the AFL-CIO. Somewhere in between all that, he had taught for a half dozen years at Boalt Hall, the University of California Law School, which was where Karp had met him. They had kept in touch on and off over the years. He must be eighty, at least, Karp thought.

  But the voice over the phone was vigorous, the old New York accent softened neither by the years nor by dwelling among the mighty.

  "Butch, you momzer, how the hell are you?"

  "Can't complain. How about you?"

  "I can complain, and I do, but no one listens. How's Keegan treating you?"

  "Oh, you know Jack. He has his little ways."

  Sterner chuckled. "That's what I hear. Listen, let's get together. I need your counsel on an issue."

  Karp doubted this; Sterner famously had as much use for counsel as a guided missile. "I'm flattered. What kind of counsel?"

  "Ehhh… a little something out in the country, a union thing."

  "You don't want to talk about it on the phone."

  "Not particularly. Let's have lunch tomorrow. I haven't seen you in a million years."

  "You want me to come down there?"

  "Nah, I'll come up. I got some things at the federal courthouse in the morning. We'll sit, we'll eat pastrami, we'll talk."

  "Sam's on Canal?"

  "Perfect!"

  "I'll be there. Listen, Saul… it's funny, because I was just about to call you. It's something you'd probably know about. Marlene's down in West Virginia working for some friends, a couple of young men. Their dad was killed, actually the whole family, father, mother, and sister, all shot in their home. Marlene thinks it could be related to a labor problem. There's a possibility that the murders came out of a disputed union election. What'd be the federal interest there, if any?" There was silence on the line for so long that Karp thought they might have been cut off. "Saul? Hello?"

  "Yeah. What's she doing there, Marlene? I thought she was out of the PI business."

  "Well, yeah, she is. This was a favor. The woman who was killed was a friend of hers, from the Island, and her kids think there's something fishy going on with the investigation. From her first pass at it, so does she. They picked up a retarded guy and tried to stick him with it, but she says it's a frame, and clumsy, too."

  "Well, that's very interesting, Butch. I should say, small world. That was just what I wanted to talk to you about as a matter of fact."

  "The Heeney murders?"

  "Them. Let's say twelve-thirty at Sam's on Canal." Click.

  Karp recalled that Saul Sterner had a thing about punctuality. Teaching, he would ceremoniously lock the doors of his classroom at the stroke of the hour. After a couple of weeks, everyone was on time or had dropped the course, and at that point he gave a little lecture on the subject: Ladies and gentlemen, the legal profession begins with the ability to show up at a certain place, a courtroom, at a time certain. If you can't do that, I don't care to waste my time talking to you.

  Karp was, accordingly, there at the minute and found Sterner waiting for him in the bright and noisy dining room, dressed, as always, in a brown suit off the rack and 100 percent made by union labor in the United States. No pinstripes for him, the uniform of the enemy, no foreign-sweated stitchery. In the old days, it would have been covered with cigarette ash, but no more. As Karp approached the table, Sterner was reading the menu through bifocals, reading it suspiciously, as if it were a defective opinion, his chin down on his chest, his pugnacious jaw and the thick lower lip thrust out in concentration. His head was large for his stocky body, his nose was large, too, the forehead over it wide, freckled, and fringed by white, curly hair. His hand delivered a crushing grip still. Karp thought he looked good for a man as old as he was and said, as he sat down, "You're looking good, Saul."

  "Ahhh, you don't know. It's no fun getting old. Every time I forget my keys nowadays, it's oy vay, Alzheimer's."

  "Never."

  "Hey, everything passes. I'm happy, I had a good life, I knocked some heads, I kicked some heinie. What more can you ask?"

  "That's the secret of life? Knocking heads?"

  "You mean it's not?" said Sterner, miming wonder, and laughed. "Meanwhile, I'm having the corned beef. The waiter says the pastrami is dry. This I take as a symbol of the end of the world as I knew it. That there should be dry pastrami at Sam's on Canal Street. A shandah! Also, the waiter was a Lebanese kid instead of an old Yid who would tell me I was lucky to get pastrami at all." Sterner laughed again. "Tell me, do I sound enough like an old fart yet, or should I mention my bladder?"

  The waiter arrived and took their order without insult or badinage. The two men exchanged small talk for a while, until Sterner leaned closer and peered at Karp over the tops of his lenses. "So. Tell me what you know about Red Heeney."

  "Next to nothing. His wife's family happened to own the place next to the one Marlene bought out by Southold. They became friendly on the beach. Their youngest is… was, I mean, the same age as our twins. I met Heeney once at a cookout."

  "What did you think?"

  Karp hesitated. "Frankly? Not to speak ill, but he wasn't my type. He jumped me as a matter of fact
. Wanted to punch my face."

  "You probably deserved it."

  "I usually do. But I take it you were a fan of his."

  "Well, he wasn't a friend, if that's what you mean, but, yeah, I guess you could say a fan. What I liked about him, he was a fighter. My God, twenty-five years of organizing, and in that hellhole, too, first with the chemical workers and the operating engineers, and then with this cockamamy union they got, the Mining Equipment Operators."

  "What's wrong with it?"

  "Oh, it's a company union," Sterner answered with a sneer. "A piece of shit. It belongs to the Majestic Coal Company, has since the year one. Red thought he could get in there and turn it around from the inside. And they killed him for it. Something like this hasn't happened since Jock Yablonski back in '69. You remember that, don't you?"

  "Vaguely. They killed the whole family there, too, didn't they?"

  "Yeah, in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. Jock was fighting for the presidency of the UMW. Tony Boyle was president, a corrupt dirtbag, and they had an election and Tony stole it. Tough Tony Boyle. He had some local hillbillies do it, and we were able to trace it back to him, through the payoffs. He died in jail."

  "And you're assuming it's the same deal here?"

  "Absolutely. They never learn anything, these bastards. I'll tell you one thing about Red Heeney. He was the real stuff. You know, the goddamn pathetic labor movement we got in this great land of ours, they're all waiting for the one, like the Jews waited for Moses. They don't expect the revolution anymore, they're not that stupid. They just want a labor leader who won't make them sick, who won't be found with his hand in the pensions or in bed with the Mob. A mensch-a Gene Debs, a Walter Reuther. A working-class leader, with arms on him." Here he made a fist and pushed back his sleeve to demonstrate what an arm was. His was still impressive; he had acquired it humping sides of beef at a meatpacker's while working his way through college and law school. "Not one of these shifty-eyed bozos in sharp suits they got in there now. And not one of you middle-class well-meaning types either."