A Very Simple Crime (18 page)

“You’re crazy. I work for the other side, remember?”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you put me here.”

“No, you put yourself here.”

“Because I’m saying, I’m saying that maybe you missed something. Maybe you were manipulated. Maybe I was manipulated. Isn’t it worth your time just to check it out? Isn’t it worth your time to make sure you’re not going to put away an innocent man?”

Leo looked at Adam and shook his head.

“Goddamn it! All I’m asking is that you double-check a couple of facts! If I’m guilty, then you’ll just be doubly sure of it, before you—you—put someone away for life.”

The two men stared at each other. Everything had been said. Now it was wholly up to Leo. Slowly, he nodded his head.

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

Leo couldn’t get over how pretty she was. He had interviewed her several months ago, but he’d forgotten Rosalyn Wahlberg was such a knockout.

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Lee is out of town on business this whole month.”

“He’s in jail. I know. I’m Leo Hewitt. I interviewed you briefly in October.”

“I remember you. I thought I was finished with all of that.”

“You are. Adam sent me. He needs your help.”

“But don’t you work for the other side?”

“It’s a long story.”

She used her key to open Adam’s office door. Once inside, Rosalyn switched on the desk lamp and pulled the dust cover off the computer keyboard.

“What do you know about computers?”

“I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me.”

“Well, come here. I’ll give you your first lesson.”

Leo looked suspiciously at the machine, then at Rosalyn.

“Sit down. Okay, now turn it on. Right back there. That’s it. There. See, you’re a natural.” Leo smiled gratefully at her. “Okay, hit enter. The big one, to the right. Uh-oh, I don’t have the password.”

Leo fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a slip of paper. “I’ve got it.” He typed in the password, and a list of functions popped up on the screen. Rosalyn leaned over Leo’s shoulder. Her smell was earthy and sweet.

“How long have you worked for Adam?”

“Oh, God, it’s been years and years now. I started as a temp. His secretary quit on him after her car was vandalized in the parking garage. I guess it spooked her.”

“And he’s seemed to be a pretty straight guy all this time?”

“Up until now, yes.” The computer belched out a short electronic warble to indicate that it was ready to go.

“Well, tell it what you want it to do,” Rosalyn said. Leo selected the search function. Another menu appeared on the screen. It read:

Leo selected
BY NAME
. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.” The screen read:
ENTER NAME
. Leo typed in his own name and social security number. After about ten seconds every financial account Leo had ever opened was listed on the screen. From his first savings account as a teenager to various CDs and IRAs opened and long since cashed out. He clicked on his current checking account and saw the dutiful deposits of his paycheck along with various withdrawals.

“This can’t be legal.”

“I would tend to doubt that myself.”

“How is it even possible?”

“This is Lawson Systems Financial Risk Management. We sell peace of mind to other, larger firms who don’t want to take on the liability of doing it in-house. Adam’s job is to find people’s assets. Sometimes to find out if they’re hiding those assets. And if so, where. You think when real money is on the line they just pull your credit report? No, they let someone like Adam look at everything. No, I doubt it’s legal, but it happens every day.”

Leo entered
CONSTANCE PERKINS
and fed in her Social Security number. A bank statement filled the screen. Leo could feel Rosalyn brushing up against him to point to a key. “Use this key to page through it.”

Leo paged through Violet’s bank records, scanning each transaction. Mostly, there were deposits and withdrawals of a few hundred dollars each. Then he saw a deposit of twenty thousand dollars on the thirty-first of October.

“I’ll be damned.”

“Is that what you were looking for?”

“Oh yeah. Is there any way to find out what account the twenty thousand came out of?”

“Adam could probably do it, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. Maybe if we knew where to start looking. If you had an account number or a name.”

Leo typed in
MONTGOMERY LEE
.

“Monty?”

“Yeah, you ever met him?”

“I went out with him once.”

“You dated him?”

“Once. We went out once.”

Monty’s financial history—loans, mortgage, credit report, investments—popped onto the screen. He had three separate bank accounts. Over the course of three months, there were more cash withdrawals, on average, than there were, say, the three months prior to that. Nothing big, nothing that stood out. Seven hundred dollars here, twelve hundred there—pocket money for a man-about-town like Monty Lee. Only problem was, these excess cash withdrawals added up to roughly twenty thousand dollars more cash than Monty had ever used in any other three-month period. Maybe he was a recovering gambler; maybe he had had a relapse, gone on a three-month gambling binge at the dog tracks. Maybe he had developed a taste for designer drugs, then given them up. It didn’t really matter, though, did it? They were relatively small withdrawals—unusual, perhaps, in the long run, but easily explainable in any number of ways.

“Why only once?”

“He seemed more interested in Adam than me.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he would ask me things. Like had Adam ever come on to me.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“The truth. That Adam would never do something like that. At least that’s what I used to think before all of this. Anyway, Monty never called me again after that one night. And I was glad. I mean, he may be the city’s most eligible bachelor, but he just seemed like a creep to me.”

Leo watched financial statements shuffle across the computer screen. He considered what Rosalyn had said about Monty Lee. He decided she was a smart girl.

“So, are you dating anybody now?”

Violet answered the door dressed only in a ratty bathrobe. “Mr. Hewitt. Is everything okay?” She opened the door wider to let Leo inside. The five aluminum steps that led up to the trailer groaned in protest under Leo’s weight. For a moment, he seriously wondered if the steps would simply collapse. He could see places at the joints where rust had completely eaten through them. But they held, and he gratefully entered Violet’s squalid trailer.

Packing boxes were set out on every available surface. Some were sealed shut; others overflowed with clothing and dirty kitchen wares.

“You’ll have to excuse the mess. I’m moving next week.” She retrieved a beer bottle stuck between two couch cushions and took a long swig from it. With her head upturned, the bathrobe fell open, revealing the swell of her breasts and the beginnings of her pubic hair. She made no effort to cover herself.

“Moving up in the world, Violet?”

“Sure, why not?”

“With a little help from Monty?”

Violet closed the robe, belting it tightly. “Monty? Who’s that?”

“C’mon, Violet. I’ve had a really hard week.”

“Oh! Monty! He’s that guy from
Let’s Make a Deal
, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he is. And you made a deal with him, didn’t you, Violet? About twenty thousand deals.”

Paula fine-tuned her makeup in the mirror that hung on the back of her office door. Leo opened the door without knocking, and Paula frowned as her reflection slid away from her.

“Leo. Come on in, it’s good to see you,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster, which wasn’t much. It would be bad karma, not to mention hell on the frown lines. She wanted to stay in good spirits today. She was due in court in twenty minutes, and every bit of equilibrium she could hold on to would be an asset.

“We need to talk,” Leo said.

Paula closed the office door and resumed studying her reflection. She outlined her thin lips with a tube of pale lipstick. “Court’s in twenty minutes. Today’s the big day. Adam Lee is gonna testify. You gonna be there to give me moral support?”

“Not today. I gotta talk to you about something.”

Paula struggled with a pair of opal earrings, small enough to be overlooked, but there nonetheless to accent her femininity.

“Adam Lee might be innocent.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, great.”

“I’m serious. I’ve uncovered evidence that tends to indicate Mr. Lee’s—”

“Stop.” Paula got the last earring in and turned on Leo. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It’s a little late in the game for that sort of thing, don’t you think? Isn’t this dangerously close to the kind of thinking that messed up your life in the first place?”

“But I found out that—”

“I don’t care if you just found out he’s Jesus Christ come down from the cross. Because I’m nailing his ass back up there. I’m gonna crucify the fucker again.” She checked herself in the mirror and saw Leo’s bowed head behind her. “That’s my job, Leo. That’s what I do. It’s what you used to do. I have no choice.”

“He may be innocent.”

“So?”

“So how can you prosecute an innocent man?”

“You can’t be serious with this. I don’t know that he’s innocent. And neither do you. That’s for the jury to decide.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, if you’d just listen to me.”

“Look, Leo, wise up, okay? You’re a good lawyer, but you can’t hang with the men. You’re pathetic. Now why don’t you be a good little robot and go back to your cubicle.”

She checked her look one last time and gathered her papers for court.

“And get used to that cubicle, Leo. You’ll be working there for a very, very long time.”

Today the courtroom is packed with spectators. An artist scribbles furiously to capture my face. I remain expressionless, but I know that the artist will sketch in faint lines around my mouth to connote sadness or guilt. We watch as the jury files in. None of them look at me. They never do. Monty sits beside me at the defense table. He leans and whispers into my ear, “Today I am my brother’s keeper.” His breath is warm, humid, and pleasant so close to me. Even now, I take comfort and delight in his closeness. He is golden.

Have I mentioned that I love him? I do, oh, I do.

Monty stands and addresses Judge Cray. “Your Honor, the defense would like to call as its last witness the defendant, Mr. Adam Lee.”

As the bailiff swears me in, my hand trembles. I concentrate to make it stop, lest one of the jurors interpret it as a sign of guilt and make a premature decision. Once I am seated, Monty stands before me. He gives me a wan smile and a slight nod of his head. This, of course, is for the benefit of the jury.

“Mr. Lee, after everything that’s gone on before this moment, there’s really only one question that matters. I’ll ask it point-blank. Adam Lee, did you murder your wife?”

“No,” I say, “No, I loved my wife.”

The office cubicles were busy now. Like insects building a colony, the office workers busied themselves with their daily rituals. The sounds of printers humming, copy machines laboring, and the quiet murmur of conversations surrounded Leo. He heard none of it. The sounds of Paula’s last words to him reverberated in his head. The downward sneer of her sterile mouth. The hard glint in her unforgiving eyes. And her words echoed. He stared into space, seeing only her, and in his hands he held a pencil. He bent the pencil slightly with his fists. The pressure on the pencil was building slowly and the wood was beginning to crack minutely; small yellow splinters danced to the surface at the pressure mark. It had reached its breaking point. The pencil snapped. So did Leo.

A rage consumed him. A rage that could not be held in. A sound escaped his throat, and a secretary passing by on her way to the water cooler stopped and stared at him. Her expression was akin to that of a little girl who has just found a razor blade in her Halloween apple. Leo stared at her and growled. She ducked her head and hurried away. Leo sprang to his feet and looked around wildly, looked for some way to vent this anger before it swallowed him whole. He stared down at his desk, the laminate peeling away from the cheap mass-produced surface, and it seemed to suddenly symbolize everything that had ever gone wrong in his life. Another growl escaped his throat and he overturned the desk. He did not simply push it over, but flipped it, sent it spinning into the air. As it crashed down, the cheap pressboard splintered and cracked apart. Not satisfied, Leo kicked out at the walls of his cubicle, and the cheap material buckled. The office grew dead quiet except for the sounds of Leo’s rage. The workers interrupted their tasks and stared at him. One young man cowered under his desk, sure that Leo would soon pull out an automatic weapon and begin gunning people down.

“What are ya? Buncha good little robots?” he shouted at them. He shook the cubicle walls violently, sending them heaving back and forth. The metal strips that held the cubicle walls together began to twist and come apart. The walls began to wobble and shake and then started to tumble down, and soon, like dominoes, all the cubicles fell over and came apart.

“So, you were only joking?”

“Yes. I never dreamed ...”

“Would you describe yourself as a good husband?”

“As good a husband as I could be. I tried to be, I really did try to be a good husband.”