Falls the Shadow (5 page)

I don’t usually care much about the package in which money comes. Give it to me in a fancy embossed envelope, a brown paper bag, a check that doesn’t bounce, give it to me any way you want, so long as you give it. But I have to admit that when I returned from family court and found a package of money waiting for me in my office, it was the package itself, rather than the cash, that really caught my interest, being it was five foot eight and blond.

She was waiting in the little waiting area in front of my secretary’s desk, sitting like a mannequin from Nordstrom. Her back was straight, her ankles crossed, her handbag matched her pumps matched her pearls, oh, my. In her beige linen suit and freakishly unfurrowed brow, she looked cool as cash, even in our overly warm offices, even on the rickety plastic chairs we left out for those waiting to meet with us. Her hair was done the way they do it in only the best cutting joints, as if each strand had been individually washed and colored and trimmed. In all my life, I’d never been as pampered as one lock of her hair. And her lips were plummy.

“Mr. Carl,” she said in a soft, breathy voice, standing up when I entered the offices.

“That’s right.”

“Do you have a minute?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Could I meet with you,” she said, glancing toward my secretary, Ellie, “in private?”

“Yes, you can,” I said, and then I gave Ellie a raise of the eyebrows, a look-what-the-cat-dragged-in look.

The woman’s big blue eyes took in the whole of my office as she sat in one of my client chairs. There wasn’t much to see. The walls were scuffed, the large brown filing cabinet was dented, piles of files teetered in the corner. Behind where I sat, the small framed photograph of Ulysses S. Grant was askew. In front of me, my desktop was its usual haphazard heap of paper. My first impulse was to apologize for the state of my office, but I stifled it. A woman like this would have been welcome in any lawyer’s office in the city, no matter how ritzy the digs or high the hourly fee. She had chosen mine to step into, and it wasn’t because of the décor.

“Mr. Carl, you had a meeting two days ago.”

“I had a number of meetings two days ago,” I said.

“This was one in which a sum of money was discussed.”

“You’ll have to be more precise, Miss…”

“Mrs.,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.” The ring was the size of a small dog. “But I didn’t catch your name.”

“No, you did not,” she said, and as she said it, she crossed her legs and smoothed flat her linen skirt. That’s when I noticed the tattooed vine of thorns that wound around her ankle.

I liked it, yes I did. I should say that I was more than impressed by the whole package, even if it was obviously out of my league, but it was the tattooed vine of thorns that really got me going, and not just because it was quite the nice slim canvas on which the artist had worked. That it was still there, for me to see, amidst the rest of her high-priced look, was a statement in itself. The tattoo was from an earlier, wilder time, but she hadn’t had it removed. It was her way of saying to the world that her voice might not be naturally breathy, her hair might not be naturally blond, her lips might not be naturally puffy, her eyes might not be naturally blue, there might not be an inch of her body that wasn’t varnished and buffed to perfection, but there was still some part of her untamed by money.

“You had a meeting two days ago,” she said, “in which you agreed to represent a certain party on condition of the payment of a retainer.”

“You’re talking about François Dubé.”

She pulled the handbag onto her lap, opened it, lifted out a rather thick envelope, and plopped it onto my desk. “I hope this is sufficient.”

While restraining myself from grabbing the envelope and dancing a jig as I threw the money up in the air so that it fell gaily all about me like confetti, I said, “Is that the ten thousand?”

“Nine thousand nine hundred.”

“My price was ten.”

“I didn’t think a hundred mattered.”

“Oh, it matters,” I said.

She let a trace of amusement curve her lips and then reached into her handbag for her wallet. From the wallet she pulled out five new twenties as if she were pulling out lint and gently tucked them inside the envelope.

“Although, to be honest,” I said, “I’d prefer a check.”

“Really? I thought you’d be a cash-and-carry type of fellow.”

Suddenly I wasn’t so entranced. Some people act like they’re doing you the favor of your life when they pay you what you’re owed.

“You thought wrong,” I said. “Cash creates all kinds of accounting problems, cash deposits and withdrawals make the bank uncomfortable, as you surely know, since you withdrew only as much as you could without triggering the bank’s reporting requirements. But whatever you might have thought, we run an honest business here. We like our funds accounted for. I’ll need a check.”

“Will a cashier’s check do?”

“Personal check.”

“That won’t be possible.”

I sat back, lifted a foot onto the edge of my desk, looked at her very carefully. She had been rude to me, and I didn’t like that, but she wasn’t enjoying herself. There was something wrong. “Who are you to François Dubé?”

“It’s not important.”

“For me to accept the funds, I need to know why you are paying his retainer.”

“I have my reasons.”

“You’re going to have to tell them to me.”

She lifted the envelope off the desk. “I’m not here to talk. Here’s the money, Mr. Carl. Take it or leave it.”

“I think I’ll leave it.”

She threw her head back as if she had smelled something repugnant. Me, I supposed.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Whatever,” I said, dropping my foot down, turning my attention to the mess on my desktop. I pulled out a piece of paper, some meaningless letter, and took a pen to it. “My secretary will see you out.”

“But what about your client?”

“He’s not my client until I get paid.”

“And I’m trying to pay you.”

I looked up. “But you’re not trying hard enough. Why don’t we start with names? Welcome to the firm of Derringer and Carl. I’m Victor Carl, and you are…”

“Velma Takahashi,” she said.

I leaned back. “Very good. Takahashi, huh? How do I know that name?”

“My husband’s deals are often in the papers.”

“Samuel Takahashi, the real estate mogul?”

“Not quite a mogul.”

“Quite enough. And you don’t want to pay with a check, which means you don’t want a record of the payment that might get back to your husband.”

“Did someone beat you in the face with a clever stick, Mr. Carl? Is that why your cheek is swollen?”

“This is fun, isn’t it, communicating like human beings? I ask pertinent questions, you give me reasonable facsimiles of answers along with your insults. Next thing you know, we’ll be square-dancing together.”

“I don’t do-si-do.”

“People do all sorts of things they never expected. Your being in my office, for one. Now, Mrs. Takahashi, what is your relationship with François Dubé?”

“I have no relationship with François Dubé. He’s the worst type of scoundrel.”

“But you’re paying ten thousand dollars to get him out of jail.”

“My feelings for him, however bitter they may be, are beside the point. I was a friend of Leesa’s since well before her marriage.”

“And you think it a friendly gesture to pay for the defense of the man convicted of her murder.”

“I think it’s what she would have wanted.”

“Now, that’s a lie. I don’t half believe a word you’ve said from the moment I laid eyes on you, Mrs. Takahashi, including the Mrs. and the Takahashi, but
this
I know is a lie. Leesa Dubé was in a bitter custody fight; she was making brutal accusations against her husband. The one thing that would have cheered her about her own murder was that because of it her husband was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.”

“You didn’t know her, Mr. Carl. She wasn’t like that. In the end it was bitter, true, but he was the father of her daughter. She was too sweet to have wanted him in prison forever for something he didn’t do.”

She was right about one thing, at least, I didn’t know Leesa Dubé, didn’t know the first thing about her, and was wrong to imply a viciousness that might not have been there.

“So if this is what Leesa would have wanted,” I said, “then for some reason you must believe he’s not guilty?”

“I’m running late.”

I leaned forward, examined her closely. “You really do, don’t you?”

She snapped her bag closed, stood. “I have an appointment. Take the money, Mr. Carl. Do what you can for François.”

“You know something.”

“I need to go.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“I can’t, please, believe me. I simply can’t.”

And it was there, just for a single precious moment, there, behind the mask, the swollen lips and frownless forehead, the perfect hair, the perfect skin, the blue contact lenses. There, behind the finest facade that money could buy, I saw something striking. It was the woman she had been, the woman who had gotten the tattoo and palled around with Leesa Dubé before falling into a morass of money that seemed to have swallowed her whole. This woman was wild, wildly ambitious, this woman was too smart by half for what she had become. And there, yes there, I could spy some terrible burden in her eyes. Was it sadness? Was it regret? Was it, perhaps, a crushing guilt that was tearing her apart?

It would be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it?

I reached over, took the envelope, riffled through the bills. “You understand, Mrs. Takahashi,” I said as I performed my quick count, “that this retainer covers only our motion. If we are successful, we’ll need another retainer to handle the trial.”

“Then let’s hope we meet again.”

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s hope.” Let’s hope indeedy. “My secretary will give you a receipt for the cash.”

“I don’t need a receipt.”

“Maybe you don’t, but I still need to give you one. We have a rule here, anyone who drops off a load of cash and isn’t given a receipt gets a free frozen yogurt his next visit.”

I walked her out of my office, waited behind her while Ellie typed up a receipt, smelled her rich, sweet scent, felt myself swoon. See, even with all the lies she had told, even with all the enhancements to her beauty, I couldn’t help but breathe in her fragrance and feel my stomach flutter. Let me tell you true, the only thing more enticing than raw natural beauty is rampant, raging artificiality.

Back in my office, I pulled the wad out of the envelope, fanned the bills just for the feel of it, and then performed a more careful count. I wasn’t beyond running down the street, calling out
Oh, Mrs. Takahashi, Mrs. Takahashi
if she was so much as a twenty short. But she wasn’t short. Ten thousand dollars. Not a bad way to start the day.

I pulled a card out of my shirt pocket. My share would be enough to pay for a visit to the dentist, I figured, even without insurance. I could now afford to have Dr. Pfeffer, miracle worker, perform a miracle on my tooth. But wouldn’t you know it? My tooth was suddenly feeling so much better. Money has that way, doesn’t it, of easing your worldly pains? So maybe the ache was more existential than dental, maybe it had less to do with the condition of my tooth and more with the sad condition of my life. And the answer might be to dig into the past of the very wealthy Velma Takahashi instead of digging into my gums. I put the card away and put in a call to my detective, Phil Skink.

It was getting interesting, this case I didn’t want, this futile motion on behalf of a defendant I disliked. First Whitney Robinson had grabbed hold of me at the end of our meeting and, whispering as if every word he said were being overheard, had begged me to leave this case be.
For your own sake,
he had said, whatever that meant.
You can’t imagine the price
, he had said, though he didn’t say the price for whom. And then Velma Takahashi, as pretty and as false as the Vargas pinups I had drooled over as an adolescent, Velma Takahashi had dropped a wad of bills on my desk and begged me to help François Dubé, even as she held back, for reasons of her own, a secret about the murder. It was getting oh, so interesting. All I needed now was a way to convince the judge to overturn a guilty verdict three years old, the appeals of which had all been denied, and where no new evidence or new suspects had emerged. It would be a hell of a trick.

And damn if I didn’t know where to start.

“His name was Seamus Dent,” I said to Beth as we drove north through the city. “He was the witness who put François Dubé at the scene of the crime.”

We were heading into an insular, working-class part of town. North of Kensington, south of Center City, hard by the river, a piece of Philadelphia but a place all its own. The name pretty much said it all: union town, scrapple town, tavern town, Fishtown.

“I thought you told me he was dead,” said Beth. “It sounds like whatever use he could have been to us in getting a new trial died with him.”

“You would think. Except Whit told me something that grabbed my attention. Apparently Seamus was killed during a drug deal not too long after he testified. But drug use wasn’t brought up in his cross-examination.”

“You think your friend Whit might have missed something at trial?”

“I don’t know. The kid had no record, but you’re not clean one day and mixed up in some drug deal gone bad the next. Why was he on the street that night? What was he looking for? Was he using at the time? All that stuff could have destroyed his credibility on cross. And because he was admittedly in the neighborhood, and maybe desperate for a fix, he might have become a suspect himself.”

“But even if true, that won’t be enough to get François a new trial, will it?”

“That’s the thing. The case law is pretty clear. You can’t use new evidence that might have affected the credibility of a witness to get a new trial.”

“So what’s the point?”

“Something just doesn’t seem right here, does it? Why didn’t Whit know? Who was hiding what? I have a feeling, that’s all. Do you have a better place to start?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But it’s not much of a start.”

“Well, Beth, to tell you the truth, it’s not much of a case.”

We pulled into a narrow residential street with mismatched houses jammed cheek by jowl into an eclectic row. I checked the notes I’d made, searched the addresses on the buildings, found the house I was looking for. I parked right in front.

As I was ringing the bell of a small gray row house, a woman sitting on a stoop three doors down called out, “Who you here for?”

I stepped back, eyed the gray house up and down as I said, “We’re looking for a Mrs. Dent.”

“What you want with her?”

“We’ve got some questions.”

“What about?”

I turned to the woman who spoke to me, annoyed at her prying. She was young, heavy, wearing a blue smock. Beside her sat another woman, rail thin, with short red hair, her elbows on her knees, staring at me with unblinking eyes as she smoked a cigarette. A third woman sat on the step above them. Three nosy neighbors, spending their days talking about laundry soaps and passing recipes, neighborhood gossip, the occasional bottle. I squinted and considered them carefully. A regular coffee klatch, sometimes just the thing when you’re looking for information.

“We want to ask her about her son,” I said, glancing once more at the nonresponsive house before walking over to them, Beth at my side.

“Good Lord,” said the heavy woman. “What kind of trouble is Henry in now?”

“Not Henry,” I said. “Seamus.”

“Seamus is dead,” croaked out the woman with the cigarette and the short red hair, and there was something in the way she said it, something bitter and sad and not matter-of-fact at all.

Beth heard it, too, because she said, “Are you Mrs. Dent?”

“What are you, cops?” said the woman sitting behind the other two. She was small, with nervous hands and bright eyes. It was still morning, but it didn’t look as if that had stopped her.

“Do we look like cops?” I said.

“She does,” said the third woman, pointing at Beth.

I stepped back, turned toward Beth, crossed my arms, and examined her as if I were examining a sculpture of Beth as created by Duane Hanson. “Really, now? And what makes her look like a cop?”

“That station-house pallor,” said the nervous woman.

“Excuse me,” said Beth.

“And those eyes.”

“What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“You might be right,” I said. “She is rather pale, and her eyes are shifty.”

“My eyes are not shifty, they’re attractively cautious. What about him?” said Beth, sticking her thumb at me.

“He’s too soft,” said the woman. “He looks like he sells insurance.”

“Or maybe a high-school guidance counselor,” said Beth. “Does that fit?”

“Could be. Is that what he is?”

“No,” said Beth.

“You aren’t Mrs. Dent, are you?” I said to the woman with the cigarette.

She looked at me a long moment, took a last drag, dropped the cigarette, and crushed it beneath her sneaker. “No,” she said. “Betty’s away on vacation.”

“Any idea where?”

“She has a sister in California.”

“How long is she supposed to be gone?”

“She didn’t say, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, if I was you.”

“Henry’s looking after the house,” said the heavy woman, “which is like letting a fat swine run free in your garden.”

“Henry’s a big guy?”

“Oh, he’s hurly-burly, he is.”

“And he’s trouble, is that it?”

“Double trouble. All them Dent boys were.”

“Including Seamus?” I said.

The woman with the red hair lit another cigarette. “The worst of the three, you ask me,” she said.

I looked at Beth, raised an eyebrow.

“Him and his friends,” said the third woman. “They were like a pack of wolves.”

“Who, the Dent boys?” said Beth.

“No, Seamus and his two friends, the second Harbaugh boy, Wayne, and then Kylie.”

“Seamus, Wayne, and Kylie,” I said. “The terrible trio. What kind of things did they do? Pranks and stuff? Light bags of dog poop on fire and then ring the doorbells?”

“That the kind of stuff you did as a boy?” asked the red-haired woman.

“I just did that yesterday in Chestnut Hill.”

“Aren’t you something wicked.”

“They were just bad, those kids,” said the nervous woman sitting above the other two. “Sneaking places, stealing, sex and drugs. Even when they were young, they were trouble. But the drugs, well, you know, that just ruins you.” She spoke like she remembered what she was talking about, like she wouldn’t mind a drink to forget.

“The police had them in their sights, I suppose,” I said. “Always coming around.”

“Not till the end. Them kids was too smart to get caught, even when everyone knew it was them.”

“And Seamus was the ringleader,” I said.

“No,” said the red-haired woman with the cigarette. “It was Kylie.”

“Any idea where we could find her, this Kylie?”

“None,” said the woman. “She’s gone.”

Again there was that thing in her voice, like a bitter lozenge that had been stuck in her throat for a decade. I looked closely at the woman, she looked away. “You’re Kylie’s mother, aren’t you?” I said. “I can tell just by the way you speak about her with so much affection.”

“We have history.”

“And you have no idea where she is?”

“Don’t care neither. But I can tell you this, mister, wherever she is, she’s on her back.”

“Sweet. Member of the PTA, were you?”

“Who’d you say you was?”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Why are you so interested in Seamus?” said the heavy woman.

“It’s my profession to be interested. I’m a lawyer, that means I’m greedy and I’m nosy.”

“Then you’d fit right in around here,” she said, and the three of them laughed.

“How about that Wayne you mentioned? Is he still around?”

“He works at the church,” said the third woman.

“What is he, the priest?”

“The janitor.”

“I suppose you have to start somewhere. You mentioned that the police didn’t come around until the end. What did you mean, the end?”

“After Seamus was killed,” said Kylie’s mom. “A detective come around to talk to Betty. I think his name was same as the fat guy on that old TV show.”

“Detective Gleason?”

“Right. He told Betty they had found the guy who did it.”

“Was there a trial?”

“Wouldn’t have been much use, seeing as the one who did it ended up with a bullet through the head.”

“About time the cops did something for this neighborhood,” said the heavy woman, laughing, and the other two joined in.

That was enough for me. Good, sweet neighborhood ladies laughing about a bullet in the head. If I ever spent my life sitting on a stoop, spilling gossip to the passersby, you might as well save the bullet for me.

I thought about what they had said, turned to look at the empty Dent house once again. “She go away much, this Betty Dent? Always traveling?”

“Nope,” said the heavy one. “Barely left this street the whole of her life.”

“So how’d she get to California? She drive?”

“Flew. I drove her to the airport myself.”

“When?”

“Just a day or two ago.”

“She say how she got a ticket?”

“Said she just got it.”

“Nice for her.” I took out three cards from my wallet, passed them out. “My name is Victor Carl. Anything you can remember about Seamus, about the things he did or any troubles he had with the police, especially that, I’d appreciate hearing from you.”

“Don’t hold your breath on that one neither,” said Kylie’s mom.

We could hear their cackling as we walked away.

“Why do I feel,” I said, “like I just walked out of a scene from
Macbeth
?”