Death Penalty (12 page)

She still fingered the roll as she talked, but she was looking out the window at the river.

“It was like out of the movies, as far as I was concerned. We had candlelight suppers, the whole romantic ball game. We did all the silly things people do before their lives shake down into dull routine.”

She was looking at the river but she wasn't seeing anything. “Then one morning he came out of the shower. He told me he had a small lump under the arm.”

She paused for a moment, then continued. “I thought it was nothing. And that was good enough for him, since I was after all a nurse. But to be safe, I told him, we should have it checked.”

“And?”

“It wasn't nothing. It was cancer. We were hurled into the center of a nightmare, with surgeries, pain, medication, the whole ugly thing. He went fast, at least that was a blessing of sorts. Six months from lump to end.”

Her iced tea had been delivered, and she took a long sip. “After that I couldn't bring myself to work in another hospital. I got a job as a cop and ended up here.”

“Jesus, I'm sorry.”

“About me ending up here?” She laughed.

“No. You know what I mean.”

“Life is funny. Not hilarious, maybe, but funny. Being a cop helps you cope. You realize you're just along for the ride. It can be smooth or it can get choppy, but you basically have no real control, the ride takes you where it wants to go.”

“Fatalist?”

“More or less, I suppose I am. Most cops are.”

The waitress took our orders. Sue had the perch and I ordered the special, brook trout. Fish was always a big
item at the inn, since the river itself suggests the menu.

“Okay,” she said, “you've sat through my life story. It seems only fair that you get your turn.”

“You probably know much of it, since a lot of it is public record.”

She smiled. “Let's hear your version.”

I finished the iced tea. “I worked my way through St. Benedict's law school in Detroit. Then, I got a job clerking for an appellate judge, and then, later, I got hired as an assistant prosecutor in Wayne County. Mosdy, I did City of Detroit felony trials.”

“Were you any good?” Her eyes danced with merriment.

I pretended annoyance. “Madam, I was so damn good felons stood up in open court and confessed.”

“Maybe you were just boring and they wanted to get it over with. Ever think of that?”

“It never entered my mind. I left the prosecutor and opened my own office. I hope this will impress you. I ended up with an entire floor on the Buhl Building, a dozen partners, and a platoon of associates. I was, to put it mildly, making a fortune.”

“Married?”

“Several times. Three, if you like precise figures. One child, a girl, now a student at the University of Pennsylvania.”

“So? What happened? How did you get to our restful shores?”

I took a roll, pulled it apart but also didn't eat. “I began drinking when I was, I think, fourteen. There was always plenty of the stuff around the house. Mom and Dad, God bless them, were full-fledged alcoholics. I had an enormous capacity, at least then. But at some time, down the road, my tolerance level dropped. I became the classic drunken bum, money or no money. And I drove my
automobile into lots of things and places, including one hospital.”

She listened, but said nothing.

“I ended up in a number of tanks, so-called, and finally I got with the program. In the process, the wives, the fortune, even the kid, until lately, were all gone. They suspended me from practice for a year. I sold real estate and other things. I wasn't very good at it. When I got my license back I moved up here and did nickel-and-dime stuff to survive.”

“Until the Harwell case,” she prompted.

“Yes. After that, things have brightened somewhat.”

“Girlfriends, Charley?”

“A few. The last one just jumped ship and moved to Tampa.”

“So, and this is important to all women like me, you're free?”

“I suppose so.”

The waitress brought our meals.

I picked at mine, my mind full of thoughts and perhaps a speculation or two.

I noticed that she pushed around her perch as well.

“Do you like country and western music?”

I nodded.

“Merle Haggard is giving a concert a week from Saturday at Pine Knob. I have a couple of tickets. Would you like to go?”

“Sure. I'd like that very much.”

“Do you know where I live?”

“No.”

She took out a notepad, wrote down her address, and handed it to me.

“Pick me up about seven, okay? It's about an hour's drive to Pine Knob from here.”

“I know.”

The waitress came back and looked at our plates and then at us. “Not hungry today?”

We both nodded.

“How about coffee, or dessert?”

“Just coffee for me,” she said.

I nodded my agreement, and the waitress left.

It was one of those awkward silences. Both of us found places on the river to look at. Finally I spoke.

“What was your husband's name?”

She paused for a very long time, then she spoke.

“Charley.” She said it softly.

The McHugh case was coming up and so was my anxiety. I kept remembering Will McHugh, tied eternally to his wheelchair, and the memory of his pleading eyes haunted me.

All lawyers know it's imperative that an attorney not become emotionally involved in any case, at least not so much that it interferes with judgment. I tried to put out of my mind the fate of Will McHugh if I lost.

It was becoming tougher by the day as the court date came closer.

I was back at St. Benedict with enough law books in front of me to build a pretty good fort. They all were opened to product liability cases of various kinds. My notepad was almost filled and I had lost track of time.

“I wondered who was hiding behind all these books.”

I looked up and saw Caitlin Palmer smiling down at
me. “Want to take a break?” she asked. “It looks as if you could use one.”

I nodded and followed her out to the hall.

“Coffee, Charley?”

“Sounds good.”

We made the usual small talk on our way to the student lounge. I poured two cups and then joined her at a table.

She seemed a little more feminine this time. The business suit had been replaced by a good silk blouse and a skirt, fashionably tight, that demurely clutched each seductive curve.

I sipped the coffee. Some things never change. The law school coffee was a constant. It was terrible.

Caitlin didn't taste the coffee. She smiled again. “I'm having an informal get-together Saturday night, Charley. Mostly faculty people from here. I was wondering if you'd like to come?”

“Sure.”

“I've borrowed my father's boat. We can't take it out. He only trusts me so far. But it's moored at the yacht club, and it's sort of a pretty place to hold a party.”

“Cat,” I said, “your father's on the panel that's scheduled to hear the product liability case I told you about. I don't think it'd be such a good idea for him and me to meet socially, not at this point.”

She smiled even wider. “That's no problem, Charley. Dad's going to be in Reno at a judicial conference. He's the main speaker. So, if he's your excuse to say no, you just lost it.”

“Still, it might not look so good. He might feel . . .”

She held up her hand. “Charley, I'm an adult woman. I'm throwing a party on my father's boat. I doubt even the longest-nosed prude in the bar association would think there was any impropriety. Please say you'll come.”

“Shall I bring a date?”

The smile flickered. “I rather hoped you'd be my date.”

“Oh?”

“Is that a problem? Is there someone, Charley?”

“Not at the moment, no.” I thought of Sue Gillis, but one casual lunch didn't seem like much of a binding commitment.

She stood up. “Then it's settled. It's at the Fountain Yacht Club. I'll leave your name at the gate so you'll have no trouble. The boat's named the
Sirocco II
, not very original, but Father never did have a wild imagination. Seven o'clock, Saturday?”

“You got it. I look forward to it.”

She left me there.

Thinking about her.

And her father.

Suddenly, I wished I hadn't agreed quite so fast.

I GOT TO THE QFFICC CARLY
for a change, an event that seemed to surprise my secretary. It was Friday, motion day in our circuit, and I had a few motions to argue. I gathered up the files I'd need and was preparing to leave when Miles Stewart, M.D., made a personal appearance, unannounced and with his usual air of supreme arrogance.

“It's customary to make an appointment,” I said as Mrs. Fenton ushered him in.

“I was in the neighborhood.” He said it as if no other explanation was necessary.

“I have to go to court now,” I said calmly, remembering how much it pleased him to rile me. “What is it you want?”

“What's the situation as far as my appeal?”

“Nothing's changed. It is progressing, and almost all the briefs are in. I'm waiting for a reply from the prosecutor.
When I answer that, the case will be ready for hearing. Then, depending on the docket, the court will give us a date.”

He frowned. “I've been talking to some people. Informed people. They say it should all happen much more quickly than this.”

“Knowledgeable people, I take it?”

He smiled, all teeth and superiority. “Very.”

“Good. Have them take over the case. Now I have to go.”

“You should try to develop more patience.” His eyes glittered. “I didn't say I was dissatisfied, did I?”

“It sounds that way.”

“It isn't. Despite the trial's outcome, I still have confidence in you.”

“How nice. Now I do have to go.”

“Nobody died, by the way.”

“Pardon me?”

“You seemed worried that someone might pass away while I was being entertained up north. No one did.”

“Good. Now you'll have to excuse me.” I shoved the files into my briefcase.

“I have another invitation.”

“Where?”

“I West.”

“A sick industrialist, by any chance?”

“An old friend. Since you seem to be in a hurry, I'll leave the number where I can be reached with your harridan out there.”

“Good-bye, Doctor.”

As I raced down the steps, I wondered what the real purpose had been of his unexpected visit. He was always working some angle.

But I had other things to think about.

Doctor Death would have to move to the back burner for a while.

SPRING HAD COME TO BELLE ISLE. Cars were moving slowly over the bridge, the only connection between the city and its two-mile-long island park. The procession was bumper to bumper, a line of vehicles, some with families, some with hot-eyed kids, all moving toward the island, that sylvan escape from the grim realities of the City of Detroit.

A police car had positioned itself at the foot of the bridge, a silent reminder that some of those grim realities came over the bridge with the traffic.

Belle Isle had once been the jewel in the crown of Detroit. The island, a half mile wide, sat in the Detroit River like a green boat. On one side was Detroit, on the other Canada. The city had bought it as a park and hired Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who had designed New York's Central Park, to do the same with the island.

He had done an outstanding job, creating a place with pools, streams, forests, ball parks, all a quarter mile away by a free bridge.

But the park had become like a woman who sits in the shadows at the end of a dim bar. At first she looks spectacular, like she did once, but as you approach, you see the flaws. She hasn't aged well, and she hasn't kept herself up the way she used to. She's still pretty, with help, but no longer truly beautiful. The island was like that. Benches needed painting, the roadways needed new pavement, the grass needed cutting. The old riding stable was closed and boarded up. The poverty on the city side had stolen quietly over the bridge and squatted down in what had once been splendor. Even the small herd of tame deer, begging for handouts at the roadside, looked moth-eaten.

But poverty had been stopped at the small bridge to the Fountain Yacht Club. Money still lived there in a
guarded enclave, and everything was just as wonderful and glistening as it had been in the roaring twenties, when the place had been built on a landfill just off the main island.

There are three yacht clubs on Belle Isle. The oldest, nearest the big bridge, is city owned now, and it is crumbling just like the island. The one in the middle, the Detroit Yacht Club, is well kept, but even there the future seems uncertain, a bit like an elegant British cricket club in Kenya just before Her Majesty abandoned the place. The music at the yacht club is still pleasant and the gin is cold, but rumblings are heard and the servants are no longer quite so civil.