Hostile Witness Part 38

"What kind of car was it, Mr. Petrocelli?"

"I couldn't help but notice it."

"What kind of car was it, Mr. Petrocelli?"

"It was a black limousine."

Her mouth is silk, her tongue, her soft lips thick with pa.s.sion. I run my hands through the tangles in her hair, the strands are thick, greasy. I am on my back, she is on her knees, crouching over me, her hair spilling down, obscuring her face. She is working, like a squirrel over a nut she is working. Her legs, smooth as felt, rub against my legs. Her head bobs in her work. My hands in her hair, over her ears, I pull her off and up so that she is stretched over me. The smell of game is in the air, quail. As I kiss her I taste my own saltiness. We lay like that, her stretched out on top of me, kissing gently, sweetly, pa.s.sing the saltiness back and forth, suspended as in a hanging prism, but even as our mouths lay upon each other just as gently, even as our tongues dance about each other just as sweetly, like waltzers floating arm in arm across a wooden floor, even as we try to hold on to the moment our bodies are picking up the tempo, her hands pressing into my side, my grip on the thick muscles of her thigh, her foot, toes splayed, pressing down on my own, my knee, her knee, my teeth, her hip. I grab her tight and spin around and she is beneath me now, reaching for me. I pull my hips away, away from her gropes, and drag my tongue down from her neck, between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, down.

"And what did your investigation of the fire find, Inspector Flanagan?" asked Eggert.

"A hot spot in the bas.e.m.e.nt, just underneath the bar area."

"What exactly is a hot spot?"

"It's a place where there is damage beyond that which we would expect to see from a normally spreading fire. The hot spot is where the fire started."

"What kind of damage did you find to indicate this was a hot spot?"

"Well, in this bas.e.m.e.nt, for example, there were pots and pans being stored, metal racks, cans of food, that sort of thing. A normal fire, there maybe would have been some damage, but since a normal fire rises, not as much as we found. There was an area down in the bas.e.m.e.nt where certain metal objects had just melted, not charred at all, just melted, as if they were made of clay and someone had stepped on them. You wouldn't see that as part of a normal fire. And the lower walls of the bas.e.m.e.nt were singed. A regular fire goes up, a fire set with chemicals spreads out and down, which is what this looked like."

"Did you perform a chemical a.n.a.lysis in the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what did you find?"

"There were trace elements consistent with a great deal of kerosene being burned in the bas.e.m.e.nt. We checked with Mr. Ruffing and he stated that there was a small amount of kerosene kept in the bas.e.m.e.nt, but not a sufficient amount to have left the quant.i.ty of trace elements we found."

"Why would a fire in the bas.e.m.e.nt burn the whole building, isn't the bas.e.m.e.nt floor cement?"

"Actually, yes, it was, but the walls were wooden and, more importantly, the joists in the bas.e.m.e.nt were all wood. Once the joists catch the entire foundation is weakened and most likely the building will collapse."

"Is that in fact what happened to Bissonette's?"

"Yes."

"Did you, in the course of your investigation, come to a conclusion as to when the fire started?"

"Based on the evidence, as we could best put it together, it started sometime between three and four-thirty in the morning. It wasn't called in until ten to five."

"Did you come to a conclusion as to how this fire was started, Inspector?"

"Yes, we did."

"And what was that conclusion, sir?"

"Arson."

She tastes of prairie dogs and coyotes, angry, taut and electric, oily, ancient, of something untamed and dangerous. Salt pork. Beneath me she quivers, she howls, soft, ominous, inhuman. I am biting into the flesh of a live snake. She digs her thumbs into my biceps, her heels kick at the small of my back. I fight to maintain control, first with my tongue, spelling out mysterious words in dead languages, then my arms, straining as they grab at her clavicles, her neck. My head leaps forward and like a wrestler I am on her, pinning her arms, my face pressing into hers. We breathe together in the struggle, hot wetness pa.s.sing from her lungs to mine and back again. I slip an arm around her body and flip her over. Her legs tangle about themselves as she spins. With my arm I sweep her knees to her chest and then I am atop her, one arm across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the other hand grabbing tight at her elbow. I spin around her from one side to the other. I am in a cla.s.sic riding position. Two points for the takedown. She tries to lift up with her arms and I break her down. She growls when I enter her. Our rhythms are in opposition. There is thickness there, resistance, despite my ferocity I drop into her slowly and a force in opposition rises as I pull back. She straightens her legs and suddenly I fly into the air, lost for an instant, then we are back to the slow insistent pounding. I fall on top of her and bite her shoulder. She takes my hand and starts to suck at my fingers. It accelerates, the pounding, the breaths. I am igniting atop her. She straightens her legs and I fly once more through the air, ungrounded, untethered, suspended, lost somewhere above the unceasing Colorado.

"And what did Chester Concannon say then, Mr. Grouse?" asked Eggert.

"He said some of the city's finest citizens had already contributed to the committee, this CUP. I asked him who."

"Did he give you names?"

"Yes, sir. He rattled off a whole list of prominent businesspersons. It was a very impressive list."

"Did you agree then to make the contribution?"

"Well, no, not really. I'm a Republican, you see."

"What did the defendant Mr. Concannon say then?"

"He mentioned a few other contributors, including Mr. Ruffing."

"Did you know Mr. Ruffing?"

"Oh, yes. We worked on a development deal in Hatboro-Horsham once. His place had just burned down and I told him that it was a terrible shame what happened."

"What did Mr. Concannon say then?"

"He told me that, yes, it was a great shame. And then he said, and I remember because it gave me chills, he said it was a great shame but that Mr. Ruffing had fallen behind in his contributions to the committee."

"What did you do then, Mr. Grouse?"

"Then and there, Mr. Eggert, then and there I wrote out a five-thousand-dollar check to CUP."

I lay beside her now, my legs stretched, my arms resting on a pillow above my head. The sweet cloak of sleep slips across my brain and my head turns to the side. There is a sharpness to the room, it is hot, moist, it smells like the Carnivora house at the zoo. I want to sleep, I don't have much time, I know, before I will be evicted, but with her leg tossed carelessly over mine, I want to sleep.

"Let's try something," she says.

"Too tired," I mumble. "I'm exhausted."

"But that's the point. To get so exhausted that everything else disappears, until it all fades silently away and nothing matters but the fading away."

"I'm there."

"I'm not."

"Let me sleep."

"I can still hear the traffic, I still know my name."

"Veronica."

"Yes, that's it."

"Let me sleep, please. Just a minute."

"Yes, sweetheart."

"I love you," I say as I slip away into a shifting dreamy thickness. She curls her head on my chest and brings up a knee to rest on my hip and I smell the wilderness in her hair. The slight weight of her body presses me down and I slip beneath her unbridled scent and drift and I know with a searing certainty that the nugget is real and I do love her and I want her with a gnawing pain and she will never be there for me and I love her and there is nothing I can do about it because I am asleep and dreaming.

"Your Honor," said Eggert, standing erect, his voice infused with satisfaction. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. The prosecution rests."

41.

THE LAW OFFICES OF ANTHONY BOLIGNARI, P.C. was printed in gold letters above a rendering of the scales of justice on the plate-gla.s.s window of the storefront at 15th and Pine. The lights were off in the front waiting area, but I could see a glimmer of light traveling from the back part of the office, through a hallway, spreading like an invitation into the waiting room. I switched the heavy plastic bag from my right hand to my left and buzzed the buzzer. When nothing happened I buzzed it again and again. I kept buzzing it until the light widened in the waiting area and Tony Baloney, stuffing his shirt into his pants with one hand and leaning on a cane with the other, came limping along the very same path that the light had traveled. At the window he peered out at me.

"We're closed," he shouted. "What do you want?"

"We have to talk," I shouted back.

He looked at his watch. "It's after eleven. We're closed. Who are you, anyway?"

"Victor Carl."

He c.o.c.ked his head to give me what looked like an evil eye and then twisted open the lock on the door.

Tony Baloney was a tall man with the face of a walrus, the belly of a bear, and the tiny feet of a ferret. His outsized suit pants were cinched to his stomach by a thin belt, his pink shirt open at the collar without a tie.

"That's right," he said. "I recognize you now from the evening news." He glanced at his office and stroked his thick mustache. "My apologies, but we're closed. Whatever it is, we can discuss it at length in the morning."

"We'll talk about it now," I said as I marched past him and started down the hallway to his office.

"Wait, Victor. Stop," he said as he rumbled after me as quickly as his leg would allow. He grabbed an arm and said, "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" but I shrugged it off and kept going.

The hallway was lined with legal books, Pennsylvania Digests, Federal Reporters, fully updated, I was sure, with pocket parts right in place because Tony, I was sure, took in enough cash up front to keep his books current. Past the hallway was a partly open door, through which the light had been streaming. I pushed it open and found myself in Tony Baloney's office.

It was big and rather simple, with a white couch and a huge desk. Bookshelves climbed halfway up the wall, filled with even more legal tomes, digests, hornbooks, compilations of decisions by ancient British courts. Between the books on one wall was a television set. The rest of the walls were painted blue and covered with artwork, good stuff, too, by the looks of it, colorful abstracts and bright impressionistic oils. No doggies playing poker on Tony Baloney's walls. And then, so motionless I almost missed her, sitting on the couch was a startlingly beautiful woman, dark and small, in a tight white dress, her legs crossed and the veins in her dangling foot pulsing out of a white high heel.

Tony finally made his way back into his office. "What in f.u.c.king h.e.l.l is going on, Carl?" he said between gasps.

"I thought your client was going to be a good boy."

"Who? The landlord? Giamoticos?"

"That's right," I said. "Well, Spiros flunked his probation."

"What are we talking about?"

I took the plastic bag over to the desk, littered with stacks of papers and files, and dumped its contents onto the desktop.

"G.o.d, man," shouted Tony. "Jesus Christ. Now what did you have to go and do that for?"

What lay now on Tony Baloney's desk was a dachshund, Oscar I think its name was, owned by a woman in my building, the dog chocolate brown and very dead, its neck snapped, its belly slit open, its intestines oozing out like thick glossy eels. I had found him on my doorstep that night when I had straggled home after an evening with the Bishops and knew immediately from where he had come. Veronica's landlord, Spiros Giamoticos. He must have picked my name off the motion I filed and was trying to scare me off from helping Veronica. I thought old Tony should see firsthand the c.r.a.p his client was pulling. From out of the dog's entrails a dark viscous liquid was puddling over Tony's papers.

I looked over at the woman on the couch, wondering if I had gone too far, but she wasn't screaming, she wasn't even flinching. A smile appeared on her dark pretty face and between her painted lips I could just glimpse an array of twisted brown teeth. Her smile was scarier than the dead dog. I turned away from her as soon as I saw it.

"Giamoticos left this for me on my doorstep," I said.

"On your step?" asked Tony.

"That's right," I said. "You were going to keep him under control, remember? You vouched for him, remember?"

He looked at me closely, like he was looking for something, then he loosed a sharp, quick stream of Spanish and the woman on the couch stood up and walked out the door. On her way out she grabbed hold of the bottom of her dress and yanked it down.

"A client," said Tony Baloney with a shrug. "'So l.u.s.t, though to a radiant angel linked, will sate itself in a celestial bed, and prey on garbage.' Hamlet's ghost."

"Cut with the quotes," I said.

"Look, take a seat." He gestured to the couch.

"I'll stand," I said.

"Well, I'll sit, if that's all right," he said, dropping onto the couch. He carefully leaned his cane beside him. "These late-night conferences consume much of a man. Now, how shall we clean up that mess?" He casually gestured at his desk, as if a carca.s.s lying on its top was not an unusual sight.

I held out the plastic bag still in my hand and dropped it onto the floor. "Use this if you like."

"No, you'll clean my desk, Victor," he said.

"Not in this life," I said. "Do something about Giamoticos and make sure it sticks."

"You know, this whole sorry chain of events, Victor, is putting me in a difficult position. There are attorney-client considerations that are putting me in a very difficult position. Not to mention my obligations to the bar. Come on. Sit down."

I remained standing. "What are you going to do to stop Giamoticos?"

"I shouldn't have taken the case," he said as if to no one in particular. "My daughter calls me and right off I know what the story is. And it's just getting more complicated." He raised his head to me. "You're an esteemed member of the bar, Victor. Let's do a hypothetical."

"I'm not here to play law student."

"Humor me," he said. "A simple hypothetical, like in the ethics exam we all cheated on. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, we are representing a client accused of doing something deeply nefarious."

"Like a Greek accused of killing cats."

He pointed at me like I had guessed a word in charades. "Exactly so. Hypothetically, of course. And we also have another client who has nothing to do with the first. And this other client tells us, with the full protection of the attorneyclient privilege, that he does as a practice what the first client is wrongly accused of doing. See where I'm going here?"

"Not exactly," I said.

"Been feeling a bit sluggish lately, darling? Any troubles concentrating? No sinus clogs?" He sniffed loudly twice. "No sniffles?"