Kindle County: Pleading Guilty Part 17

At the other end, they wouldn't know if the fax had come from around the corner or from west Bombay.

After watching the letter buzz through the machine, I felt like a drink. I wandered out through the garden. I laid my jacket over my lap as I took a seat by the pool. The waitress came by in sort of a safari outfit, pith helmet and khaki shorts, and I ordered a rum punch, no rum. I wondered if I could stand this for the rest of my life, this nation of rock hounds, archaeologists, inland tribes, and sunning exiles.

Around the pool at this time of day there was pretty much n.o.body, a few scuba widows and a number of the babes who various big buckeroos stash down here and shtup whenever they pay a visit to their secret, hidden dough. These young ladies, each one generally better-looking than the next, naturally attracted my attention, but in a somewhat abstract way. They spend their days working on their tan, oiling down their perfect flesh, reading or plugged into headphones, and then when the heat is too great, they strut to the shower and cool down so that the nipples peak up in the tops of their skimpy little string suits. They excite the few guys around - the towel boys, the old goats like me - and, having made sure that they're still full of magic, lie down again for another couple of hours. I've never been in another place like C. Luan, where the cookies on the side all gather and are laid out together as if on a baking sheet, and it makes you wonder, What do these gals think, twenty-five or twenty-six years old, who are they and where do they come from? How does a person settle for life as a trinket? What do you tell yourself? This is great, this old guy's only here to paw me every other week, I'm living rich and free. Do they all need daddies? Or do they wish they'd had the luck and stuff to get through law school? Do they puzzle about where they'll be when they turn forty-three? Do they hope the guy is going to sack the wife, like he's always saying, that someday soon they'll have babies and a house in New Jersey? Do they figure they're just the same as an athlete, in great shape till the body goes? Or do they think, as I think, that life is neither sensible nor fair, that this, however objectively miserable it may be as an outcome, is the best that luck will allow and they'll enjoy the moment, since there will be time to suffer down the road?

I sat there about half an hour, as long as I could stand it, and then went back to the Executive Center to call the Fortune Trust office where I'd been today.

'Tim's Boy, checking a deposit by wire transfer to account 896-908.' I thought the voice on the other end belonged to my girlfriend, the glamorous young Aussie. The image of her, longhaired and lean, deeply tanned with eyes so light they verged on yellow, lingered - but there was a coy absence of recognition and I was simply shifted to hold, that electrical nowhere, as empty as whatever is between the stars. Up until then I'd been in control. A day in the life. But at that point, where I was, hoping and having no real connection, my bloodstream froze over and I was sure I'd lost my mind. I knew this was never going to work. Please, please, please, I thought and the only thing I wanted was not to get caught. I realized, with the exactness of clairvoyance, that I'd done all this simply to give myself an instant of pure fright. The man awake at midnight offers solace to his tormentors: Don't bother torturing me, I'll do it myself.

Now I could see it had to unravel. Jake in all likelihood had adopted a different code word, or had long ago transferred the money somewhere else. Maybe I'd miscalculated and the money was not even Jake's. It was Bert's after all. Or Martin's. In any case, Mr George, the General Manager at the International Bank, was probably out on the street, frantically waving to attract the police. This was not a casual infraction. They would ransack the nation. Bank secrecy was a national treasure, the key to an entire people's way of life. I remembered LaG.o.dis's words with a painful clarity that felt like somebody was putting a brand to my heart: Watch where you step, mon.

I had escape plans, naturally. Sitting up late on Sat.u.r.day night I'd thought of several and I comforted myself by remembering them now. I'd say I was investigating, trying to pierce bank secrecy only to confirm the commission of a crime and restore the funds to their rightful owner. I'd have Brushy phone the Emba.s.sy and her buddy, Tad the K. He'd think I was a hero when he heard how I was saving TN's money; he'd call his Governmental Relations folks and his lobbyists who knew half the pols in this country; they'd get me out in an hour. And who, anyway, was going to catch me? There was bank secrecy here, designed even to protect thieves, and no one knew my name. I didn't care what anyone said to lure me back on the premises at any of these banks. That there were problems with the wire. That the Aussie la.s.s wanted to meet me for a drink. They'd never see me again. I'd thought it all through. It was a lark, a chance, a lottery ticket.

But standing here, I knew I was done joshing. The scheming, the fantasies - I'd had my fun. Now it turned out, I had never been kidding at all. It no longer seemed that Martin or Wash or anyone else had driven me to this. Instead, I was back with Leotis: So much of life is will. I'd made my choice. And I had no idea where it was leading. It was like some scary sci-fi story about a skywalking astronaut who gets cut loose and can't be retrieved and just drifts off forever into endless s.p.a.ce. At that instant, if Raimondo'd walked by, I'd have given him another of those funny-looking Luanite fifties just to touch his hand.

'We confirm a deposit, Tim's Boy. Five million, six hundred sixteen thousand, ninety-two dollars, US' Just like that. Boom. She didn't even say h.e.l.lo when she got back on the line. From where I stood in the phone booth, I looked out a mullioned window to a stout palm and a bed of flowering shrubs with fronds like spears. A gal in a bathing suit was scolding her child. The doorman lugged somebody's case, and a little native bird, maybe against every improbable chance the one I'd seen in George's office, hopped down the walk, skittering a few steps, as if it was hoping no one was catching up from behind. All of this - these things, these people, this little dumb creature -appeared to me as if they'd been etched on time, distinct as the facets of a diamond. My life, whatever it was, was different.

I started to speak, then started again.

'Can I give you a further transfer of funds, confirmed by fax?'

That, she said, was fine. I read from my pa.s.sbook. To Ziiricher Kreditbank, Filiale Pico Luan. I repeated the account number.

'How much?' she asked.

'Five million, US' I thought I was safer, leaving something in this account, enough that Fortune Trust would continue to feel I was a customer worth protecting from inevitable inquiries. Not that they would think twice about the whole thing. This happened all the time down here, money hopscotching across, the planet. n.o.body asked why. They already knew. It was being hidden from someone. Tax collectors, creditors, a weaseling spouse. But I wanted a second transfer to cut off the trail. Jake would raise h.e.l.l at the International Bank. They'd show him they'd sent the money to Fortune Trust at his instruction. But secret is secret and Fortune wouldn't be saying where the money went from there, or whose account it landed in in the first place.

I waited more than an hour to call Zuricher Kreditbank to confirm the second transfer. All was well. My money was safe in Swiss care. I was ready to go back to Brushy. I wished I could drink wine with her. I wanted to be in the grasp of her strong skillful hands. Checking my watch, I rea.s.sured myself there was time to make love again before our plane. She would ask where I'd been, what I'd done. She'd want to know every secret. But I wouldn't tell. She'd inquire about Pindling; her brain would be full of intrigue. She'd envision a character like Long John Silver, with a macaw on his shoulder and a hook for a hand. Let her imagine. Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. I felt dangerous and elusive. Light-headed, light-fingered, amused. On the way out of the hotel I poked my head in the John again, just a quick little look-see, a peek in the mirror to find out who was there.

Tuesday, January 31 XXIII.

BAD RESULTS.

A. Toots Plays for Us At two on Tuesday, when Toots's disciplinary hearing was scheduled to resume, only Brushy and I were present for the defense. The members of the inquiry panel looked on dispa.s.sionately but I surmised from their weary disciplined air that they'd already heard more than enough. After they recommended disbarment, we had a right of appeal to the Courts Commission. Still, in less than a year, Toots's law license would be a relic, one more memento he could tack to his walls.

The old school housing BAD is the kind of structure whose starkness you don't notice until you remove the color and randomness of children. We were in a grim old cla.s.sroom, with wood floors and walls of that shiny functional tile that resisted abrasion and ink pens. There was a distinct resonance when anyone sc.r.a.ped a chair or cleared his throat.

By ten after, I knew there was a serious problem. Across the long conference table where we were arrayed, Tom Woodhull questioned us about our absent client. The distinguished governmental functionary, enforcer of rules, man with cool white skin, no dark spots or bug bites, Tom had never cared much for me - my drinking, my moods, my occasional a.s.sertions that commingling client funds was not a crime on the level of treason. I had long suspected that he had held on to this file for the sheer personal pleasure of kicking my a.s.s.

Brushy rooted in her purse and handed me a quarter.

'Better find him.'

Jesus Christ, I thought. Another one.

As I was on my way to the door, my client poked his head in. Toots was heaving for breath and he motioned me into the hallway.

'Got,' he said and repeated it many times. 'Got someone for you to meet.'

By the dusty stairway, hanging on to the square steel newel post was a rotund little fellow in the same condition as Toots, red as Christmas from exertion, breathing hard and spotted with sweat. Brushy had followed.

'You won't believe this,' Toots said. 'Tell them.' Toots motioned with the cane and again asked the man to tell us.

Taking a seat on a plain wooden bench in the hall, the man removed his topcoat. At that point I saw the Roman collar. He was a little guy, bald but for a white fringe and some fried-up strands growing straight out of his scalp.

He held out his hand. 'Father Michael Shea.'

Father Michael was Judge Dan Shea's younger brother, retired from a parish in Cleveland and attached to a friary there. He had come to town last week to visit relatives - Dan Shea's son, Brian, as a matter of fact, Father's nephew - and in conversation he had heard that Mr Nuccio here was still having trouble over that old business.

'I give Mr Nuccio a ring at once. I talked many a time to Daniel about this and he always told me he never knew a 'ting about any generosity from Mr Nuccio. The dues over there by the country club had just completely slipped his mind. I was skeptical, I am the first to say. Daniel was no angel and he confessed some terrible things to me, as a priest and as a brother. But he swore on Bridget's memory that there'd never been any kind of funny business between him and the Colonel. Never.' Father Shea absently touched the crucifix that he wore.

My partner and the love of my life, Ms Bruccia, absorbed this intently. Our fine tropical romance was now past. There was sand in our shoes and sweet feelings between us which we had nurtured at her apartment all night. But we were again in the cold Middle West, in the land where the subdued winter light, dull as pewter, makes some people crazy and where troubles abounded. She had a million concerns. Us. And all the stuff I wouldn't tell her. Groundhog Day approaching at the firm. But Brushy was now a trial lawyer ready for trial. In her own theater all the seats were sold to Toots, even the standing room. Her powers of concentration were phenomenal; great performers of all kinds, athletes, entertainers, share this single-mindedness. And when I a.s.sessed her now, I saw nothing subdued. Rather, there was glee, the flame of celebration. She was looking from Toots to Father Shea to me, about to win the case that everyone told her she'd lose, ready to prove to the world at large what every trial lawyer secretly yearns to establish, that she was not merely an advocate or a mouthpiece but a palpable magician.

Toots had finally recovered his breath and, if possible, looked happier than she did. His old stoved-in face danced around the fire.

Hitching my shoulder, I strolled them both down the old school hall. There were still those little half-height metal lockers on either side on which various enterprising youngsters had sc.r.a.ped their initials, hearts, and an obscenity or two, all of these symbols now enlarging in rust.

'Can you believe this?' Brushy asked. 'It's phenomenal.'

'It certainly is,' I answered. 'Just phenomenal. Right at the last minute. After the last minute. So late n.o.body could even ask this guy boo.'

Brushy looked at me strangely.

'Tell her, Toots,' I said.

The old guy stared up at me dumbly. He wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand.

'It must have been a tough decision, Toots, to hire someone who looked more like Barry Fitzgerald or Bing Crosby.'

'Mack,' said Brushy.

Toots wouldn't even feign injury.

'Forget me. Forget you,' I said to him. 'She could get disbarred for a stunt like this. And she has a career.'

He displayed the rumpled-up sour face that appeared whenever I corrected him. He'd sunk onto another bench and was staring vacantly down the hall, rattling his cane and doing his best not to look at me. Somewhere a radiator spit a bit. I had not quite shaken the chill of winter since getting off the plane.

Brushy, now that it had come through, had lost color.

'Is he a priest at least?'

'A priest? I'll bet you a bundle this guy's name is Markowitz. He's straight from central casting.'

'I believed it,' Brushy said. She touched her head with her short hands and bright fingernails and sat down next to Toots whom she fixed with a brief, baleful look. 'I believed it.'

'Sure you did,' I said. 'So would that dope Woodhull, probably. But somebody would figure it out eventually. Here or on the Court's Commission. If anybody ever asked for this guy's fingerprints, I'd book a seat on the next stagecoach.'

The old guy still wasn't saying anything. He'd learned from the best. If you get caught, dummy up. No good ever came from confessing. I thought about his luminous expression when he had Brushy going. It must have been music to him every time he fixed something. The unraveling of society was his secret symphony. He was the hidden conductor, the only guy who knew the real score. In a way you had to hand it to him. This was the coup de grace. Imagine corrupting your own ethics hearing. Now that would make a story. After all, they forced him. He'd just wanted a continuance.

Woodhull appeared down the hall, outside the door to the hearing room.

'What's going on?' he demanded. His straight thick hair, dirty blond, had fallen down over one eye. Hitler youth. 'What are you up to now, Malloy? Who's that guy?' he asked as he came closer. He meant Father Markowitz, who was still on the bench down the way.

'Who's the guy?' Tom repeated. 'Is he a witness?'

Brushy and I looked at each other, neither of us answering.

'You have a new witness? Now?' It didn't take much from me to set Tom off. He'd brought a yellow pad with him and he began worrying it in the air, while he let his temper mount. 'Eleventh hour, we're going to get a surprise witness? Who we haven't heard word one about? Now? Who we haven't even had a chance to interview?'

'Talk to him,' Brushy said abruptly. I reached for her arm, and that gesture of restraint was all the encouragement Tom needed.

I will,' he said and advanced past the three of us.

I whisked Brushy around a corner and asked, concisely, if she'd lost her mind.

'It's unethical to put him on to testify,' she said. I know that.'

'"Unethical" isn't the word, Brush. You do straight time for that stuff.'

'Okay,' she said. 'But you said Woodhull would believe him.'

'So what? You don't think he'll drop the case. Woodhull doesn't know how to change his mind. The testimony's hearsay, and even if it comes in, he'll argue that it's worth nothing, that the judge was just too ashamed to level with his brother. You know the pitch.'

'But he'll believe him, right? That's what you said.'

'Probably. He's probably having a s.h.i.tfit right now.'

'So he'll be afraid he's going to lose. Suddenly. A case everybody thought he was going to win.' She was giving me the reverse of her own logic, which is what I mean about her being quick-witted and devious. 'He'll be willing to settle. For something short of disbarment. That's what we want. Am I right?'

I finally saw her point. But there were still problems.

'Brush, think about this. You just introduced the Deputy Administrator of Bar Admissions and Discipline to a supposed witness who your client told you is an impostor.'

'My client didn't tell me anything. I didn't take any fingerprints. I'm an advocate. And I made no representations. Or introductions. Tom was free-a.s.sociating. Am I supposed to protect him from himself?' She stared at me.'I believed this guy. If somebody else doesn't, fine. The witness won't testify either way. I mean, Mack,' she said quietly, 'there's no downside.'

Toots was gimping our way. He was having a great time. Father obviously was selling well. There was no point in warning the Colonel about consequences. He'd lived his life jumping chasms, scaling perilous heights. I heard Woodhull's voice rising around the corner.

The deal we cut was unique. Under the state law attorneys could be disbarred for five years. After that they were free to reapply, and the Court's Commission, with a frequency exasperating to BAD, tended to readmit them on the theory that for most of these men and women it was the only profession they knew, like shoemakers who could only make shoes. What we offered on Toots's behalf was something better: Toots would promise never to practice law again. Not much of a concession, since he didn't practice anyway, but he would take his name off the door of his firm, give up his office there, and not receive another penny from firm income. If he ever violated the agreement, he would consent to an order of disbarment. In exchange, the proceedings against him ended. No findings. No censure. No record. His name stayed on the rolls. He would never be publicly disgraced.

Toots, in the grand tradition of clients everywhere, refused to be grateful, becoming reticent as soon as the agreement was announced to the panel.

'How'm I gonna support myself?' he asked out in the hallway after we had put on our topcoats.

We both gave him the fisheye. Toots couldn't spend what was in his mattress if he lived to one hundred.

'Toots, it's what you want,' I told him.

I like the office,' he said, and no doubt he did. The secretaries who called him Colonel, the phone calls, the pols coming to visit.

'So take an office down the hall. You've retired. That's all. You're eighty-three, Colonel. It's logical.'

'All right.' But he was downcast. He looked elderly and glum. His color was bad and his skin seemed ripply like the rind on an orange. It's always sad to see the high brought low.

'Toots,' I said, 'they have never done this for anybody else. It's a one-of-a-kind. We have to swear to G.o.d and the Governor that we'll never leak one word of this deal to anyone. They can't admit they backed off on a disbarment.'

'Yeah?' He liked that better, being a category of one. 'So what's so special about me?'

'You hired the right lawyers,' I told him. That, finally, made him laugh.

B. Final Accounting Back in the office, Brushy and I went for what is called a victory lap, moseying by the offices of various litigators and casually describing the result. The acclaim was universal, and by the time we reached the desk of our secretary, Lucinda, we were feeling roundly admired, a sensation I experienced with a surprising rush of sentiment, since it had been some time.

Brush and I stood there checking out our message slips and mail. The firm's fiscal year ended today, and all partners had received a solemn memo from Martin stating that even with good collections before midnight, income was likely to be down 10 percent. That meant the distribution of points two days hence on Groundhog Day was going to be a slaughterhouse for the lower-level partners like me, since Pagnucci would not allow the top tier to be stinted. As we'd moved cheerfully between offices, the air was already growing fraught. Brushy ran off with her phone messages - one triumph behind her, a world of possible triumphs ahead. I lingered by Lucinda's work station. There was, as usual, not much doing for me.

'Same guy's been calling,' she told me. 'Keeps asking when you'll be back in town.' She had described these calls to me this morning, saying they had started yesterday.

'Any name?'

'Just hangs up.'

Brushy and Lena and Carl were the only people who'd known I was leaving. I hadn't even told Lyle much more than the fact that I might not be home for a night or two.

As near as she could recall, Lucinda said, it sounded like the same man who'd phoned the office on Friday morning before Pigeyes nabbed me out on the street. That fit. Gino or someone from his crew had probably been keeping an eye on the house, maybe even tailed me to the airport, and was trying to figure out where I was now. If Gino was good to his word, he was toting a subpoena for me.

Or, I thought, it could be Bert. If he'd spoken to Lyle first, he might have figured I was gone. But Lucinda surely would have recognized the voice. Maybe he had Orleans calling for him?

Lucinda watched me with her usual br.i.m.m.i.n.g expression. A stout, handsome, dark-skinned woman, Lucinda keeps her own counsel, but it bruises her heart to work up close to such a living mess. She is a great pro - my salvation, as loyal to me as to Brushy, even though everybody in the place understands that I am the underbill and Brush the big star. Lucinda keeps plugging. A picture of her husband, Lester, and their three kids was at the corner of her desk. They were all posed around the youngest, Reggie, at his high-school graduation.

'Oh my G.o.d!' I said then, when it hit me. 'Oh my G.o.d, Orleans.' I actually ran the first few steps before I looked back to tell Lucinda I was on my way to Accounting.

Down there, it was chaos. The place was like a campaign headquarters on election night, with computer terminals clicking and adding machines spilling tape and a lot of people running around full of purpose or desperation. Because of the IRS, everything collected had to be booked today. A number of secretaries and messengers were in line to process the booty of fees finally bludgeoned out of clients. Money - collecting it, counting it, making it -thickened the atmosphere the same way gunpowder and blood embitter the air of battle.

Behind her clear white desk, Glyndora started out of her chair the instant she saw me, her intent manifest to avoid any further intimate tete-a-tetes.

'Glyn,' I said, blocking her way. 'Whatever happened to the photo of your son? Didn't you keep it right here?' The picture had been on her desk for years, and on the credenza in her home, a fine-looking lad in his mortarboard and graduation gown. 'Remind me,' I told her. 'What's his name? Orleans, right? Not Gaines, though. Carries his dad's last name, doesn't he?' I'd remembered now where I'd seen Kam Roberts.

Junoesque, Glyndora confronted me in silence, a beautiful totem, her dark face tight in anger. But it was like a closet where you couldn't quite squeeze the door shut because of everything packed inside. There was an edge of something unwanted, beseeching, that undermined her expression and riled her, no doubt worse than anything which I'd said.

'I don't want to hurt anybody,' I said to her quietly, and she allowed me to lead her out to the hall. It seemed a bit of a haven, away from the urgent clamor.

'Have Orleans get a message to Bert,' I told her. 'I need to see him. Face-to-face. In Kindle. ASAP. All Bert has to do is name the time and place. Tell him I have to sort things out with him. Ask him to call me here tomorrow.'

She didn't answer. Man, those were eyes she had, black and infernal, sizing me up, her mind flopping about furiously behind them. It didn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what caused all the legendary squabbling in the hallways between Bert and Glyndora, throwing things and calling names. Stay away from my boy. This wasn't a scene that pleased her, her boss and her lad in the mode of the ancient Greeks. She was probably glad Bert was on the run.

'Glyndora, I know a lot now. About your son. And I've got that memo you bootlegged to Martin, which, you notice, I'm not even asking about. I'm going to try not to hurt anyone. But you've got to get that message to Bert. You're gonna have to trust me.'

I might as well have asked her for a pot of gold. She despised the position she was in - the weakling, the wanter, the one to say please. Worst of all, she felt something I knew like the back of my hand, as familiar to me as darkness and light, which Glyndora as an act of will had simply abolished from her existence: she was scared. She gummed her lips into her mouth to control herself, then turned to look down the hall where there was nothing to see.

'Please.' I said it. It was the least I could do. She shook her head, the ma.s.s of dark hair, not so much in answer as dismay, and, still without speaking a word, went back to counting our money.