As Campanella stared at him, trying not to imagine the things this guy had been up to, Underwood seemed to notice. He ran a pink tongue around his lips, pushed his glasses up, and looked around. “Well, here we are, I guess.”
Spade put his hand on Underwood’s shoulder, squeezed it, and left it there while he spoke. “George, I don’t want you to do any talking, okay? Like I told you, you’re in a hell of a mess here. You know it, I know it, and they know it.” Spade pulled a pen from his suit jacket pocket and scribbled something on his yellow pad. “I want you to listen to Mr. Campanella. After he talks, I may have some questions, but we’ll need to work out some formalities—okay?—some paperwork, before you start saying anything. So just listen. Understand?” Spade dropped his hand and turned to Campanella and Patterson.
“I got it.” Underwood rubbed his hands together and peered over his glasses at Patterson, still nervous. “At least I’m alive, right? Which is more than he—”
“Okay, George.” Spade gave his client a sharp look. “Enough.”
“Refuse to lose.” Underwood spoke under his breath, half laughing.
“Excuse me?” Patterson sat up and leaned forward.
“Well, okay.” Underwood sighed. “Refuse to lose any more than I have to.”
“George, just listen, okay?” Spade was getting annoyed.
“Sorry.” Underwood pushed his glasses up again, licked his lips, and drew a finger across his mouth. “I’ll zip it.”
Patterson had gone dead still. His face was blank, but Campanella could sense the surge coming off him, expanding into the room. Even Spade caught the vibration and looked with a puzzled expression at Patterson, who seemed to be getting larger. Only Underwood appeared oblivious, darting his head around anxiously and squirming in his chair.
“Okay, Mr. Underwood. As I was just telling your lawyer, the first thing we’re interested in is the identity of the man, or possibly men, who …”
Patterson spoke in a growl, hardly moving his lips. “Taisha Steptoe.” Underwood’s head twitched over to Patterson. His mouth dropped open and sagged.
Neither the name, nor what Mike might be up to, made much sense to Campanella, and he couldn’t help resenting the intrusion. They could make some progress here if there were no distractions. Was Patterson trying out some hard-ass interview technique they’d taught him at the academy?
Campanella pushed on. “Now we know from this note”—he pulled the document, which was stored in a plastic sleeve, out of his file and slid it into the middle of the table where Underwood and Spade would be able to see it—“that someone was with you, George. We know that, okay?”
Patterson spoke again, raising his voice only slightly and staring intently at Underwood.
“Allison Wozniak.”
Underwood’s mouth quivered. He tilted toward his lawyer, on the point of speaking, but Spade ignored him and spoke to Patterson.
“What’s going on here, Mike?”
Patterson did not turn his head away from Underwood, still speaking in a low tone, but now with a distinct edge of menace.
“Amber Cohen.”
Patterson was leaning halfway across the conference table toward Underwood. He looked as though he were about to reach out and grab the man around the throat.
“Get me out of here,” Underwood said, jamming his chair back against the wall to stay out of Patterson’s reach.
To Campanella’s amazement, Patterson leaned farther toward Underwood, slammed his open hand down on the table, and shouted, “Where are they, you piece of shit?”
Spade stuck a protective arm in front of Underwood and shouted, nearly as loud as Patterson, “Hey, back off!”
The door opened and the escort agent poked his head in, looking worried.
“Did you throw them in the lake?” Patterson said savagely, gesturing at the north wall. “We’ll drag the lake. Where are they? I’ve got six parents who—”
Underwood clutched at his attorney’s arm. “Get me out of here, Alan.”
Spade stood up. “This conference is over.” He turned to Campanella. “I came here in good faith. I didn’t—”
“Look at his face!” Patterson stood, gigantic, jamming his finger down at Underwood, who was struggling up out of his chair. “Look at him sitting there! It’s written right on his goddamn face. Three girls. Three, at least!”
“We’re done.” Spade grabbed his client under the shoulder, pulled him up, and began hauling him toward the door. Underwood raised two hands up to the side of his face, blocking out the sight of Patterson, muttering, “He’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me.”
The escort agent glanced at Patterson and reached around to retrieve the cuffs from his belt.
Campanella now suddenly recalled the phrase “refuse to lose,” and said, “Okay, Mike, I get it. Take it easy!”
But Patterson was scrambling around the table, snatching chairs out of the way, chasing after Spade and Underwood as they retreated toward the door. One chair banged against the wall and fell over. It actually looked as though he was about to lunge at Underwood.
Now it was Campanella’s turn to shout. “Mike! Come on!” He lowered his voice and spoke to where Spade stood in the doorway. “Your pal’s hiding a lot more than the name of some accomplice, Alan.” He pointed to Underwood. “Talk to this guy and tell him to cut the crap, then get back to me if he wants to do anything.” He dropped his hand and looked Underwood up and down with contempt. “He knows what we know.” He pointed his chin at Underwood, almost snarling. “And we know what he did.” The ferocity of his anger was making his hands shake. He kept picturing his son.
Spade didn’t bother to hide his disgust. “I can’t believe this, Paul. I came here …” He turned to his client. “Come on.”
“Just get me out of here.” Underwood twisted away from the escort agent and pressed his hands behind his back to make it easy to apply the cuffs. His eyes were locked on Patterson. “He’s going to kill me. I know it. He’s going to kill me.”
“I won’t have to dirty my hands.” Patterson, subsiding a little, bent over to pick up a chair.
“Is that a threat?” Spade asked.
“No,” Campanella said.
Patterson glared at Underwood. He spoke in a low growl, stepping toward him. “Watch your back, Henry. Every second of every day.”
35
For David, the worst part of having the girls with him was confronting what a crotchety old fussbudget he’d become.
He liked to think of himself as fairly relaxed and easygoing, but now the smallest things bugged him inordinately. Lindsay, for example, always left a dusting of grounds around the coffeemaker. Jordan, although she was dainty in most ways, found it impossible to sprinkle sugar on her cereal without scattering a quarter teaspoon next to her bowl. David found himself muttering each morning after the girls took off for school, when he was left to wipe the counters. It was such a little thing, but he’d asked them three times, and they’d promised, and it still made no difference. Had he always been such a crab?
He reminded himself that they were good about putting their dishes in the dishwasher and their shoes in the mudroom most of the time. Still, it pained him when he came home and found clothes and books dumped on the sofa and Lindsay’s softball equipment and Jordan’s My Little Ponies scattered everywhere. The constant noise of television or discordant pop music left him edgy and off balance.
Both girls made amazingly frequent use of the toilet facilities. On one disastrous occasion, the girls’ bathroom ran out of paper, and David had to promise to close his eyes while he threw a borrowed wad from the roll in his bathroom to Jordan, who was stranded with her bare bottom on the seat, very concerned that he might get a peek at her.
One incident where his lack of equilibrium reached life-threatening proportions was emblematic. Jordan’s
new friend Brianna was teaching Jordan how to play jacks, and Jordan had been practicing on David’s bathroom floor, the bounciest locale for her little red ball. Jordan picked up afterward but overlooked one jack, which David of course stepped on with his full weight the next morning as he emerged from the shower. It hurt like blazes, and as he hopped around on one foot, he lost his balance and crashed over sideways into the bathtub.
By some miracle he didn’t seriously injure himself, but as he was floundering back up—jarred, naked, and soaking wet—Lindsay banged on the door asking if he was okay. He had an idiotic moment of panic that she would open the door and catch him in the altogether. As he snatched at a towel, he drove her off by shouting out that he was okay and everything was all right. She wouldn’t go away at first, trying to interrogate him through the door about what had happened. He told her to never mind. He was fine. Really.
Things like this kept happening. He felt as though he was losing command of his life.
Worse than the physical disruption was the constant sense of being in the dark about what was going on with the girls. David learned from Jordan that Brianna was being raised by a single dad, a carpenter named Hank who encouraged his daughter, and Jordan, to call him by his first name. A quiet word with one of the deputy marshals got him a records check on Hank that turned up a twenty-year-old possession of marijuana conviction as well as an arrest for DUI, later dismissed. This could mean anything. When he briefly met Hank as he was dropping Jordan off, he noticed that the guy had garish tattoos on his arms and the side of his neck. He suggested to Jordan that she might like to invite Brianna over to their house more often. She replied that Brianna’s dad had built an awesome playroom in their basement. Sheila Norcross, he imagined, must have worked out some way to manage these situations, but he was lost.
The problems with Lindsay were even more acute. He wanted to know as much as possible about what was up with her, and she for some reason seemed to want him to know hardly anything. She “needed her space.” One weekend night, she told him she was meeting new friends at a hockey game and going out for pizza afterward, which seemed an unobjectionable, even positive, development. But, after he dropped her off at the rink, it struck him that she was perfectly capable of heading off anywhere once his car was out of sight. They’d agreed, with minimal eye-rolling on her part, that she would be home no later than midnight. When she didn’t make it back until 12:20, he had to restrain his fury while she trolled through an explanation that never would have passed muster in his courtroom.
Then, one day when he came home early from work, he found a pickup truck on its way down the driveway, with some weedy twentysomething behind the wheel. Later, Lindsay told him he was the older brother of one of her friends, giving her a lift home when she’d had to stay late after school for some vaguely described project. It sounded plausible, but he had no idea whether it was true, and it seemed pushy and mistrustful to ask exactly whose brother this fellow was. He never saw the guy again, but whether this meant Weedhead had disappeared or merely that Lindsay had gotten more careful, he had no idea.
In this wilderness, Claire was a godsend. She came over once, sometimes twice, a week to make something special for dinner. At meals, she was so much better at thinking up things to talk about with the girls than he was. Still, these oases were only occasional and left him on his own most of the week.
The most serious crisis occurred one morning when both kids had taken off for school and he was allowing himself a second cup of coffee. He had a so-called Markman hearing facing him that afternoon, a highly technical proceeding in which he would be taking evidence on the proper scope of a patent involving a laser device used to shrink the prostate. Two years earlier, reeling from his first patent trial, he had stuffed a folder up onto a shelf in the closet of what was now Lindsay’s room summarizing how the appellate courts wanted a Markman hearing to be conducted. On the morning of the hearing, he decided to make a quick foray into the room, retrieve the article, and escape with as much of his sanity as possible.
As he crossed to the closet, Marlene, who typically slept with Lindsay, stood guard in the doorway, eyeing him suspiciously. He quickly retrieved the file and then noticed a square Amazon box wedged way back into the corner. Puzzled, David took the box down and opened it. Inside was a flattened Ziploc bag of what the DEA liked to call “green, leafy material.” David sniffed it, and from long experience in the courtroom, recognized it immediately as marijuana, about half an ounce, with a street value of between fifty and a hundred dollars.
Holding the contraband, David felt a surge of disgusted anger combined with despair. This was a stupid, stupid thing for Lindsay to be doing, especially knowing his position, and she was smart enough to realize that. At the same time, he suspected that if Lindsay learned he’d been snooping around in “her” room, his transgression might far outweigh, in her mind, any drug felony she might have committed. What on earth was he supposed to do?
He eventually decided on two things. First, he wouldn’t say anything to Lindsay. Ray was improving, and the tentative plan was that she and Jordan would go home to Washington for Christmas vacation. If the holidays went well, the girls would just stay on after New Year’s, picking up with their old schools for the next semester. In that case, a confrontation with Lindsay would be neither necessary nor helpful. Second, he’d confiscate the marijuana and dispose of it without saying anything. Even Lindsay wouldn’t dare complain, and the evidence would be gone.
David retreated from the bedroom, making sure that the empty Amazon box was tucked back in its corner and that nothing looked disturbed. He felt like a housebreaker.
Leaving the room, he looked down at Marlene. “No snitching, okay?”
A short time later, when he was departing for the courthouse, he popped the baggie in his glove compartment. He’d dispose of it at some handy Dumpster on the way to work. Of course, with the Markman hearing bearing down on him, he immediately forgot all about it.
36
Ryan Jaworski was totally in the dark. He had no idea when, or even whether, the judge was going to reveal that he was the mysterious “confidential informant” who’d told the feds that Sid Cranmer had more porn in his house. Sid’s woman lawyer was pushing for disclosure, arguing to Norcross that she had a right to call what she referred to as the “lying CI” as a witness at Sid’s trial. The black cop, Patterson, had stopped taking Ryan’s calls, probably blaming him for the blown search and the howling load of crap the newspapers had poured onto the government afterward. If Ryan’s name came out, Libby would go crazy. Nine chances out of ten, she’d tell Patterson that Ryan had seen the flyer while they were at Sid’s house, and Patterson would realize he had lied about that.
In half an hour on the Internet, Ryan learned that lying to an FBI agent was a serious crime. He couldn’t believe how—without really doing anything wrong—he’d ended up in such an unfair, fucking horrible mess.
As the days passed, the situation ate away at him. With “The Dog That Didn’t Bark, and the Porn That Wasn’t There” in and out of the front pages, the news that the “CI” was an Amherst undergrad would be banner news locally. Jackie might hear about it way out on Long Island, not to mention Jackie’s mom—who hated him already—and eventually his dad back in Chicago, which made Ryan sick to his stomach. His entire life was wobbling toward the toilet. No one could blame him if he couldn’t just stand by, doing nothing.
The linchpin was Lib. She was the only one who could connect him to the flyer. As Professor Mattoon said, if he could keep Lib’s lip buttoned, they could ride this out. Mattoon was texting him every other day now, asking whether he’d “had his little chat” with Libby. But just having a chat with her wasn’t going to do it; she’d talk rings around him. Wasn’t there a case in New York where some girl died during “rough sex”? And hadn’t the guy gotten off? Ryan wasn’t going to go that far, obviously—though it would be easy to slip up
during one of their games, especially if they were shit-faced. His judo experience made him an expert on choke holds, which he and Libby sometimes played around with to jack things up. The holidays were coming up soon, which would give him a timely escape and the space to think. When the new semester began, his birthday wouldn’t be far off. The celebration was bound to be wild. Accidents happened all the time.
37
The botched plea proceeding was the last straw for Sid Cranmer. During the recess, he’d told Linda that he just couldn’t swallow owning up to the DVD, not in public and not in the way the judge wanted him to. He couldn’t remember ordering the DVD or knowing its contents, and he wasn’t going to lie.
Now he was facing a trial. Jury selection would commence as soon as the judge’s schedule opened up, in a month or two at the most. Assistant U.S. Attorney Campanella was probably sharpening his instruments of torture at that very moment.
Judge Norcross must certainly despise Sid now, and after the inevitable guilty verdict, he was bound to clobber him. Hardly surprising. Linda Ames must think he was an asshole, too, and she was certainly right. What needed to happen was no longer a tough question. He was all out of options, but for the one elegant solution.
Sitting at his kitchen table, Sid wrote out a short note to Claire Lindemann, apologizing and asking her to look after Mick and Keith. Claire was sweet, and she would be upset, but she’d get past 90 percent of her sadness in a week at the most. After that, she’d remember him and maybe feel a twinge now and then, which was nice. No one else would even pretend to miss him. Linda Ames would move on to other clients, relieved to be rid of him. Just another pebble in the pond, a barely noticeable plop.
It was quiet in the kitchen, only the muffled bump of the heat kicking on and the grandfather clock ticking back in the music room. A snowstorm the night before had dropped eight inches. Jonathan had come early, shoveled the walk and driveway, collected his twenty dollars, and departed. The cats were curled up on the guest room bed upstairs, as they always were at this time of day. The tattooed carpenter’s tools lingered in the spare room. He still hadn’t quite finished his work—he was taking forever—but he wouldn’t be coming by today. The snow had dropped a silence over everything.
The One-Eyed Judge Page 28
