Final Appeal (24 page)

“Hey, last night I had Cocoa Krispies, from the Variety Pak. You know those little boxes?”

“Maddie likes those, too. So come to dinner. You can have Lucky Charms for dessert.”

“You want to make me a good-bye dinner?”

“Good-bye? I didn’t say that.” I feel a pang: too many good-byes lately.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m outta here. Headin’ for the junk blondes in NYC. I picked out a crib this weekend.” He doesn’t look so happy about it. “This is the lease.”

“So when do you go?”

“Next week. Cravath’s taking me early.”

“You’re in the army now.”

“Tell me about it.” He looks at his lease with contempt. “You have to be a lawyer to understand this friggin’ thing.”

“You
are
a lawyer, Artie. Starting next week, people will pay a hundred and fifty bucks an hour for your time.” I think of the basketball on his chest.

“Suckers.” He laughs. “So will you look this over for me?” He holds up the lease, a standard form.

“The landlord always wins. That’s all you have to know.”

“That’s just what Safer said.” He shakes his head. “What a dick. He’s in there, sittin’ by the phone.”

“Why?”

“Waiting for that call from Scalia.”

“They call?”

“Except for Rehnquist. He got turned down once, so he makes his secretary call.”

I think of the letter I saw on Galanter’s desk. “Think he’ll get it?”

“The Eight Ball says yes. Isn’t that so lame?”

“It’s a toy, Artie, remember?”

He looks at me, dead serious all of a sudden. “It’s always right, Grace.”

I almost laugh: $150 an hour. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Later, after work, we drive to my house together. Artie sits in the front seat and Winn sulks in the back, in an apparent psychotic funk because Artie made him take off his rain bonnet. When we reach the expressway, Artie turns to the news station for the basketball scores, but Winn wants the Greaseman, another misogynist with a microphone. He reaches between the seats and presses the black button for the Greaseman’s station.

“On!” he says. “We want the Greaseman.”

Artie punches the KYW button. “No Greaseman. Greaseman sucks.”

“Greaseman. Greaseman!”

“Be good, Shakie,” Artie says.

The news comes on as we sit stalled in the bottleneck going west. The expressway narrows to a single lane at the Art Museum, even though it’s easily the most heavily traveled route west out of Philly. A row of red taillights stretches out in front of me all the way to Harrisburg. “Why would they design a road like this? It makes no sense.”

Artie looks out over the Schuylkill, the wide river that runs alongside the expressway. Its east bank is home to a lineup of freshly painted boathouses; the white lights trimming them glow faintly. Single rowers scull down the river and disappear into the sun, now fading into a dull bronze. Here and there an eight picks up the pace, with a skiff running alongside it and a coach shouting through an old-fashioned tin megaphone. “I’ll miss this shitburg,” Artie says.

“It’s not a shitburg.”

“How do you know? You never lived anywhere else.”

“Why would I want to?”

“KYW…news radio…ten sixty,” Winn sings, in unison with the radio jingle. “All news all the time. All news all the time.”

Artie turns up the volume. “Go Knicks.”

“Go Sixers,” I say, and catch Winn sticking his tongue out at me in the rearview mirror. His face changes as soon as we hear the first news story.

“A Caucasian male,” the announcer says, “found murdered in the early morning hours, has been identified as Sandy Faber, a reporter who worked for several Delaware Valley newspapers. The Mount Laurel, New Jersey, man was beaten to death after he used an automated teller machine in Society Hill. Police have no suspects, though they believe robbery was the motive.”

My God. I find myself gripping the steering wheel to keep my wits. Faber, killed. And McLean in Galanter’s office last night, taking his phone message. I look at Winn in the rearview mirror, but he’s still in character.

“Bye-bye Greaseman,” he says sadly. “All gone.”

27

I
tell Winn the story while I pop chicken with rosemary into the oven and check on Maddie, who’s in the backyard shooting hoops with Artie. Artie’s hogging the ball again, so I knock on the window. He coughs it up with reluctance while I start to scrub some new potatoes, then drop them into hot water and finish the story.

“Back up a minute, Grace. What were you doing in Galanter’s office?” Winn says, pacing in front of the counter. His ratty clothes are clean so he looks merely poverty-stricken, more like a grad student. “It could’ve been you that was murdered last night, not Faber.”

“He was after Faber, not me. He knew just what he was looking for. I bet Faber was getting closer to Armen’s killer. I wonder if McLean was working with Galanter somehow.”

“You shouldn’t have been there.”

“Do you think he was working with Galanter or not?”

“You’re not a professional. You have no training.” He paces back and forth in the cramped kitchen; Bernice watches him, swinging her massive head left, then right.

“But if McLean were working with Galanter, why would he have to steal the phone message? Galanter would just give it to him, wouldn’t he? Unless they thought of it later, after hours.”

“Grace—”

“But Galanter could’ve called Faber at the paper, using a general number.” I look out the window, thinking. Maddie is shooting foul shots, none of which reach halfway to the basket; Artie, retrieving the balls, is learning to take turns. “No. Faber wasn’t a staffer. He was a stringer, he works on his own. So he couldn’t be reached at the paper. But why didn’t they call him at home, look him up in the phone book?”

“Grace, you’re not listening.” Winn stops pacing and folds his arms. Bernice rests her head on her front paws.

“Neither are you.”

“Yes, I am. Faber wouldn’t be in the Philly phone book because he lived in Jersey. They said it on the radio.”

“There you go! So maybe Galanter did have something to do with Armen’s death, he wanted to be chief judge so bad. Or maybe McLean was working alone.”

“Grace, you have to slow down.” He rakes a hand through his hair; it looks a lighter brown now that it’s been washed. “I told you not to go prowling around at night. First Armen’s apartment, now Galanter’s office.”

“I work there now. It’s my office, too.”

“No, it isn’t.”

I open the oven door and check on the chicken. Bernice sniffs the air with interest. “I thought I did pretty good. I even figured out the Mob connection.”

“That was my end of the deal, not yours. You could have called me. I would have explained it to you.”

“I couldn’t have read the
Canavan
record in the daytime. What did you expect me to do?”

“I told you to keep your eyes and ears open at work. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t think you were going to turn into Wyatt Earp.”

“Nancy Drew. My role model, not yours.”

He frowns deeply. “Look, the phone log was okay, the breaking and entering was not. Got it?”

“What are we fighting about? We just caught the bad guy. Let’s call the police.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “Grace, I don’t want you in any deeper. How you gonna explain what you were doing in Galanter’s office? I don’t want you identified.”

“All right, then you report it. Call your boss.”

“My boss, why? We think McLean may have murdered a reporter at a money machine. It doesn’t have anything to do with the DOJ investigation. Murder’s not even a federal crime.”

I sit down on the stool next to Bernice, curled up in her new sixty-dollar dog bed. The aroma of rosemary chicken fills the room, but it doesn’t suffuse me with the homey feeling it usually does. “I have an idea. How about you report it to the Philadelphia police and I’ll be your confidential informant? I tell you what I know, you get an arrest warrant for McLean. Just keep me confidential.”

“You, an informant?”

“Why not?”

“Confidential informants are slime.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of. I knocked over a picture of poodles today—on purpose.”

He smiles. “Life on the edge.”

“It’ll be enough for probable cause for Faber’s death. It’s a start.”

He rubs his beard thoughtfully. “We could take it a step at a time.
I
could take it a step at a time.”

“Do we have enough for a wiretap? It’s the same standard, isn’t it?”

“Down, girl. Wiretap of who? McLean, maybe, but not Galanter. All we have on him is a marshal going into his office, which is what he’s supposed to do.”

“But he took a message.”

“That doesn’t prove anything about Galanter, even assuming McLean fesses up. Trap-and-trace procedures are strict, Grace, you know that. It’s not like on TV, with phone taps installed as soon as you suspect somebody. Remember the Fourth Amendment?”

I pull a pad out of the junk drawer. On the top it says
DENNIS KULL—YOUR REALTOR IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY
. “Let’s start already. Take a letter, Maria.”

“What?”

“Take a statement from me, okay? Let’s get to work before the kids come back in.”

He takes the pad grudgingly and begins to write.

“Wait, I didn’t dictate yet.”

“Oh, you didn’t, huh? Well I’m dictating, not you. Sign this.” He tears off a piece of paper and slides it along the counter to me. At the top it says
CONTRACT
. Underneath that it says
I PROMISE NOT TO GO ON ANY MORE SECRET MISSIONS OR WINN CAN TAKE ME TO THE PARTY OF THE FIRST PART
.

I smile.

“Sign,” he says, handing me the pencil. “I’m not interested in losing my most confidential informant.”

“It’s not a valid contract. There’s no consideration.”

“Ha! You’d take money from a homeless man?”

“It doesn’t have to be money, it could be anything of value. Not that you have anything of value either.”

He reaches into his pocket and offers me his battered photo of Tom Cruise. “My most prized possession. Now sign.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“If I sign your statement, will you sign mine?”

“Yes.”

So I sign. It’s not enforceable anyway.

The kitchen fills up with the homey smell of fresh-baked rosemary chicken.

Winn’s phone call comes at the worst time, when I’m rushing like a madwoman to get Maddie to school. I leave her at the front door holding her Catwoman lunch box, run back to the kitchen, and struggle over the gate penning Bernice in the kitchen.

“They arrested McLean this morning,” he says.

I feel a thrill of excitement. “They got the bad guy! All right!” Even Bernice wags her tail.

“Your identity remains a secret. Even from my boss, the president.”

I’m juiced up, like I just won a jury trial. “So tell me what happened.”

“Mom, we have to go,” Maddie calls from the door. I’ve been pushing her all morning, and now she’s going to push back.

“Tell me fast,” I say to Winn.

“They picked him up at home, no muss no fuss. He denies taking the message. He’s mad as hell.”

“You saw him?”

“Through the two-way mirror. The man has a temper and a history of some pretty rough street fights.”

“I’m not surprised. He doesn’t deny being in the office, does he?”

“Mom,” Maddie says, coming into the dining room, far enough from Bernice to feel safe. “We have to go.”

I hold up my index finger, the universal sign for please-let-Mommy-talk-on-the-phone. Bernice sticks her head over the gate, begging for Maddie’s attention.

“He admits to being in Galanter’s office,” Winn says, “but he claims he was just checking. He was on duty that night. Said he heard a noise.”

“I take offense. I didn’t make any noise.”

“I know, master burglar. He has no good alibi for the time Faber was killed. Says he was off by himself, fishing.”

“In Philadelphia?”

“On the Schuylkill.”

I laugh. “Real believable.”

“Right. The boats fuckin’ dissolve, the fish don’t stand a chance.”

Maddie says, “Mom, I’ll be late. I don’t have a note.”

I check my watch. She’s right. “Wait a minute, Winn. When does he say he was fishing?”

“At dawn, the same time Faber was killed.”

“Also the same time Armen was killed.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“What’s the connection to Armen? Did they find out anything?”

“No.”

My heart sinks. “But then why would McLean kill Faber? I thought it was because he was investigating Armen’s death. Getting closer.”

“Wrong motive, and I’m not sure Galanter had anything to do with it either. We may be back at square one.”

“What?” It comes out like a moan.

“McLean had it in for Faber. Turns out they had a couple of run-ins last week, with all the press coverage of
Hightower
. Faber stepped over the line trying to get a story and it pissed McLean off. He’s an ex-cop, you know. They all are.”

I remember McLean taking off after Faber at the memorial service.

“Last month, McLean caught Faber bothering the U.S. Attorney and roughed him up. Faber reported him for it and they were considering discipline. McLean was about to lose his job.”

“Jesus.” I think of the reporter, beaten to death, and reality sinks in. Catching McLean doesn’t bring Faber back or erase the violent way he died. And Armen is still a question mark.

“Mom, she’s staring,” Maddie says, watching Bernice anxiously. “Is she gonna bite me?”

I scratch Bernice’s head. “No, honey, she loves you.”

“You love me?” Winn says. “I knew it. Tell me what it was that turned you on. Was it my body odor? The tartar on my gums? My tattoo?”

I laugh. “Basketball tattoos don’t do it for me, pal.”

“It’s not a basketball. You don’t know what it is.”

Maddie narrows her eyes. “Is that your boyfriend, Mom?”

I silence her with a glare. “I gotta go, Winn. I have to take Maddie to school.”

“But we love each other!”