First degree (3 page)

Actually, Sam and I have exchanged professional services. Sam is nothing short of brilliant in two areas. On the one hand, he is as close as anyone I've met to being a financial genius. He knows everything there is to know about money and the rules that govern it. He also has an amazing and complementary expertise in computers, at least as it relates to financial matters. Sit him at a keyboard, and he is a true maestro.

Just a month or so after we met, Sam was accused of illegal hacking, a crime of which he was guilty. The mitigating circumstance, at least in my mind, was that he was retaliating on behalf of a client who was wronged by a large corporation. I got him off on a technicality, and we've been friends ever since.

The thing I find confusing about Sam is that, even though it must have taken a very significant amount of work and drive to learn all that he knows, he has never seen fit or been able to channel that drive into his own financial success. He should be financial guru to fee corporate stars, but instead his client list reads like a who's who of schleppers. As a former low-income nobody, I had fit right in. When I came into all this money, Sam got so excited I thought he was going to have a stroke.

Sam is in his office with Barry Leiter, a twenty-three-year-old whom Sam hired out of high school. Barry has been putting himself through night school at Rutgers in Newark by working for Sam, who claims that Barry is even better than he is on a computer. Sam clearly likes the idea of having a protege.

Sam and I have this ongoing contest that we call song-talking. The trick is to work song lyrics into a conversation. Just doing it is a plus; doing it without the other person realizing it is a total victory.

"Hey, Sam," I say, "what good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play."

I expect him to ridicule my "Cabaret" opening as the feeble attempt that it is, but he doesn't seem to pay it any attention at all. The look on his face is of a man in real distress. "Hello, Andy," he says with no enthusiasm whatsoever. He then shoots a quick glance at Barry, who takes it as a sign he should leave, which he does.

"What's the matter?" I ask.

Sam sighs. "Everything."

"What does that mean?"

He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. "You ever meet my younger brother, Billy? When he came to visit?"

I nod. Billy lives in Pittsburgh, but he came to visit Sam last year and I met him then.

"He's been sick, you know?" I didn't know, but I nod, and Sam continues. "At first nobody noticed, not even him, but he started feeling a little weak, and it seemed like no matter how much he ate, he was losing weight."

"How much weight?" I ask.

"I thought just a few pounds, like five or ten. I've been talking to him on the phone, a few times a week, and he doesn't sound good, but he tells me he's just a little under the weather. That's how he puts it: a little under the weather." Sam shakes his head sadly. I think I see tears in his eyes. This can't be good.

He continues. "So I'm out there this weekend, for my mother's birthday, and I ask where's Billy, and Mom says, 'Up in his room. He's feeling under the weather.' All of a sudden I got a family full of meteorologists, you know? So I go up to his room ... man, I'll never forget it as long as I live."

"What?" I prompt, although I dread hearing it.

He composes himself before continuing. "Billy ... he ... he's like wasting away, Andy. Right in front of me. He was this big guy, remember? Maybe a hundred and ninety pounds. You know what he weighs now? One fifteen. One fifteen! He's like skin and bones, just waiting to die."

I shake my head; there's not much to say.

"So I take one look at him, and I get mad, you know? All these months, he's been lying to me, not telling me how sick he really was. I was so pissed, I just wanted to walk out of there and never come back."

"So what did you do?"

He shrugs. "What could I do? I mean, Billy, all skin and bones like that ... I figured, 'he ain't heavy, he's my brother.'"

Sam starts to cackle, recognizing full well that he has taken song-talking to a new level. The fact that he was willing to fake an agonizing, fatal disease for his own brother in the process does nothing to temper his glee.

I hang around for a little while, but nothing I say can take the satisfied smirk off his face, and it starts to get on my nerves. I head back to my office, preferring the company of the oblivious Edna.

Edna is not alone when I get back. Waiting with her is a tall man, maybe six foot two, with short black hair slicked back. He is wearing a leather jacket that without question cost more than it takes to adopt a family of Guatemalan otters. He is probably in his mid-forties and seems to work hard to make himself look more sophisticated than he naturally is. Fonzie joins the country club.

There's no doubt Edna thinks he's got something going for him. She has put down her crossword puzzle and has already gotten him a cup of coffee. For Edna that qualifies as undying devotion.

"Andrew, this is Geoffrey Stynes. Mr. Stynes, Andrew Carpenter." This brings to a total of one the number of occasions on which Edna has referred to me as "Andrew." Clearly, she is trying to match Stynes's sophistication.

Stynes smiles and holds out his hand. "Nice to meet you."

I take his hand and shake it. "Same here. What can I do for you?"

"You can be my lawyer," he says, the smile remaining intact.

"Come on in," I say, and move him toward my office. As he enters, I look back and see Edna giving me the thumbs-up, signifying her approval of him as a client. I close the door behind us, no doubt pissing Edna off, but that's "Andrew" for you.

Most people that come to see me take the chair across from my desk, but Stynes sits on the couch. I bring my chair over to be closer to him as we speak. He seems totally relaxed and at ease, not the demeanor that prospective clients usually display. People in need of a criminal attorney are by definition under pressure, but if Stynes is experiencing any stress at all, he is hiding it extraordinarily well.

"How did you get my name?" I ask.

"Come on, you're famous since the Miller case. Anyway, I've been watching your career for a long time," he says.

I'm puzzled and vaguely disconcerted. "Why have you been following my career?"

The confident smile returns. "For exactly the kind of situation I'm in today."

Before we discuss what situation he might be talking about, I explain some of the basics of hiring an attorney. Included in that is a standard retainer agreement, which Edna prepares and Stynes signs. Though it by no means guarantees that I will accept him as a client, the retainer establishes attorney-client privilege and allows Stynes to speak openly about his reasons for hiring me.

All of this takes about ten minutes, at the end of which Stynes is technically my client, though only for the purposes of this conversation. I will decide whether to take on his case when I hear what that case is.

"Now," I say, "tell me why you need my services."

"There's a slim but real chance I'll be charged with a crime," he says with absolutely no trace of concern.

"A specific crime?"

His smile comes back, now more condescending than before. "Yeah. Real specific."

"And what crime is that?"

"The murder of Alex Dorsey."

Since I am far from the most inscrutable person in this room, I'm sure my face reflects my surprise.

"Have the police contacted you?" I ask.

"No."

"DO you have information which leads you to believe they are going to?"

"No."

"Then why do you think you are currently a suspect?"

Another smile, smaller this time. "Right now I don't think I am. But when I killed him, I got some of his blood on my clothes. I threw them and the knife I used into some brush behind Hinchcliffe Stadium. I should have thrown them over the falls, but I was in a hurry, you understand."

Hinchcliffe Stadium is a large baseball field, a former minor league park, and it is right next to the Passaic Falls, one of the larger waterfalls in the country. Had Stynes thrown the material into the falls, that would have been the end of it.

"Dorsey wasn't killed behind Hinchcliffe Stadium," I point out.

He smiles. "Don't confuse where he was found with where he was killed. He was
found
in a warehouse on McLean Boulevard."

I've already pretty much decided I'm not going to take this case, but for some reason, maybe morbid curiosity, I keep probing. "Why don't you just go there and pick the stuff up?"

"Because if for some reason the police are watching me, they'd nail me to the wall. This way, even if they find it, there's a chance they won't tie me to it."

He's just confessed to a brutal murder with all the emotion that I show when I'm ordering a pizza. I am suddenly struck by a desire to pick up the intercom and say, "Edna, this is Andrew. Could you bring in a machete, a can of gasoline, and some matches? Mr. Thumbs-Up wants to show us how he decapitated and charcoal-broiled a cop last week."

"Why did you kill him?" I ask.

He laughs, permanently removing any chance I would reconsider and take the case. "If you knew Dorsey, the more logical question would be, Why didn't somebody kill him sooner?"

"What did you do with his head?"

He smiles, seems to consider answering, then makes his decision. "That's something I don't think I'll share with you. Nor is it relevant to your taking or not taking my case."

He seems to think I might be doubting his truthfulness, so without prodding, he goes on to tell me the mixture of gasoline and propane that he used on Dorsey's body. It is the same as Pete had mentioned to Laurie, but not reported in the newspapers.

I'd like to know more, but that desire soon gives way to another, even more intense one. I want to get this guy out of my office. Now.

I stand up. "Make sure you keep a copy of the retainer agreement. It is your protection against my revealing anything you've said today. I won't be representing you."

He stands. If he's disappointed, he's an outstanding actor. "You think just because I'm guilty I don't deserve a good defense?" he says with apparent amusement.

I shake my head. "I think everyone is entitled to the best defense possible. The guilty generally need it the most."

"Then why are you turning me down? I can afford whatever you charge."

I decide to be straightforward. "Mr. Stynes, when I represent a client, I do everything possible within the system to win. I don't want to be sorry if I succeed."

"You want me to go to jail?" he asks.

"Not as much as I want you to leave my office. I assure you, there are plenty of competent attorneys who will take your case, if it becomes a case."

"Okay," he says. "Whatever you say."

With that he walks out of my office, and I hear him saying a polite goodbye to Edna as he leaves. The meeting has left me a little shaken, which I can attribute to the casual, matter-of-fact manner in which he described committing such a horrible murder.

What I can't figure out is why I'm worried.

MONDAY NIGHT IS
TIED FOR THE BEST NIGHT OF
my week with Wednesday and Friday. Those are the nights that Laurie and I spend together. We don't often go out; in fact, more often than not we stay at one of our homes and either cook dinner or order in. We each have spare clothes in the other's house, though since Tara is at my house, that's almost always where we sleep.

I admit there is nothing spontaneous about this arrangement, but it works quite well for us. We are in a committed relationship, with all that entails, but we are not ready to live together. This way everything is out in the open, and there are no unmet expectations. We've chosen not to include Saturday night on our list because for some reason we both cherish Sunday morning solitude.

Tonight we're at my house, but it's Laurie's turn to provide dinner. While I can barely manage to order in, Laurie is an absolute master in the kitchen. Anything she finds in the refrigerator, anything at all, can become part of a terrific pasta dish.

Laurie has planted a vegetable garden in the rear corner of my backyard, a testimony to the differences between us. She finds it rewarding to spend her time growing things that the supermarket is already filled with. She seems to believe that if she can't make lettuce rise from the ground, then we'll have to go lettuce-deprived. She's even growing basil, and in a pathetic attempt to curry favor with her, I've forever sworn off store-bought basil.

We're having pasta tonight, some kind of red sauce with things in it. I don't ask what those things are for fear that they'll sound so healthful I won't want to eat them. It's delicious, and with the music and candles and Laurie as company, it should be perfect. It isn't, because I'm still thinking about Geoffrey Stynes and his chilling confession this afternoon.

I move it partially out of my mind, until Laurie mentions that she stopped into the office after I had left. "Edna told me somebody tried to hire you today, but you fought him off."

I try to smile and shrug it off. "You know Edna."

She does know Edna, but somehow that isn't enough to get her to drop it. "She said you seemed upset."

I decide to try honesty. Who knows? Maybe it'll work. "I didn't like him. I didn't like the case."

"Why?"

I shake my head. "It's privileged."

She nods, fully understanding and respecting the meaning of that. It bothers me, not being able to tell her something she would so desperately want to know, but I have no ethical choice.

There are few, if any, things more vital to a defendant's protection in our justice system than the attorney-client privilege. If an accused individual were unable to be honest with his attorney out of fear that his words would be revealed, it would cripple his chances of being adequately defended. I have never breached attorney-client privilege in my life, and I never will.

Ironically, had I accepted Stynes as a client, I could have assigned Laurie to the case as my investigator and told her everything Stynes said. Once I turned him down, I clearly lost the ethical justification to assign an investigator.

Besides, there really is no absolute guarantee that Stynes killed Dorsey. False confessions are amazingly commonplace. Of course, they're usually made to the police, not to lawyers. And the confessors are most often losers and/or lunatics. On the surface at least, Stynes doesn't fit the bill. Even more significant, the fact that he knew the composition of the flammable solution pretty much says it all.

The guy did it.

Laurie drops the issue, though she can tell that something is bothering me. Wild and crazy couple that we are, we decide to do what we often do after dinner: play Scrabble.

Playing Scrabble against Laurie is very difficult for me. We take our glasses of wine and sit on the floor, and I almost instantly find that I can't take my eyes off of her. She is beautiful in a casual, unassuming way, as if it takes no effort. And in her case it doesn't. I have seen her after an exhausting run, after a shower, after making love, after a night's sleep, after a tearful conversation, after a long day in the office, and even after a physical confrontation with a violent suspect. These observations have convinced me that they haven't invented the "after" that could make Laurie look anything but wonderful.

But if I'm looking at Laurie, then I can't be looking at my tiles. This is an effective part of her plan, but it's not nearly the most daunting part of her game. She is a woman with no Scrabble morals whatsoever; she'll do anything it takes to win, and the rules are for her opponents to worry about.

I usually lose by about fifty points, but tonight I'm actually ahead by seventeen. We're about three-quarters of the way into the game, which means she simply will not take her turn unless and until she comes up with a great word. She will ponder and agonize over her decision until August if necessary, but will under no circumstances make anything other than the perfect move.

About ten minutes have gone by, and I'm about to doze off, when she finally puts down her word. It lands on a triple word score, totals forty-eight points, and, if left unchallenged, will put her well into the lead.

The word is ... "klept."

Now, there is no reason I should let her get away with this. Well, there's one. She gets really aggressive when I put up any resistance at all.

"Klept?" I say very gently. "I'm not sure that's a word, Laurie dear."

"Of course it's a word. Klept. It's what kleptomaniacs do."

"A kleptomaniac
steals
, sweetheart," I say.

Laurie sits up a little straighter, poised and ready to pounce. "No, the run-of-the-mill losers that you represent
steal
. The real sickos
klept
."

I look around for the dictionary that we keep in the box with the game. It's nowhere to be found.

"Do you know where the dictionary is, my little honeybunch?" I ask.

"I looked for it before, but it's gone," she says, a razor-sharp edge in her voice. "I guess somebody must have klepted it."

The game rapidly heads downhill after that. I start to make moves too quickly, she slows down even more, and she beats me by sixty-seven points.

That's the bad news. The good news is it means we can go to bed, and bed with Laurie is much better than Scrabble with Laurie. Bed with Laurie is better than Scrabble with anybody. Though I'm speaking from a rather limited database, I think it's very likely that bed with Laurie is better than bed with anybody.

I wake up at six-thirty in the morning and turn on the television to the local news. Laurie is still sleeping, but the sound doesn't wake her. The sound of an enormous asteroid hitting Hackensack wouldn't wake her.

There is almost nothing of consequence on the local news. It's traffic, weather, boring banter, light features, and then back to the traffic and weather. Today is no exception. It's raining, so they have the poor weather-man out on a street corner, giving his report from under an umbrella. He's predicting that it's going to rain. All that money spent on meteorology school obviously paid off.

Laurie wakes up at seven and says something that sends a bolt of agony through me. "Weren't you going to the gym this morning?"

I've gained a few pounds lately and noticed a slight gut. Even worse, Laurie has noticed it. I announced that I was going to start going to a gym, and she made no effort to talk me out of it. Today was to be the first day. I had genuinely forgotten about it, though I would certainly have faked forgetting about it if I thought I could get away with it.

I get up, walk Tara, then throw some things in a bag, and go. I'm not yet a member of a gym myself, so for this initial foray into future fitness, I've chosen to be a guest of Vince Sanders. If I can't keep up with Vince, I'm going to stop off at the embalmer on the way home and turn myself in.

Vince is the city desk editor of the
Bergen Record
; it was a young reporter working for him that Willie Miller was accused of murdering. He helped me on that case, and we've become pretty friendly since. Vince is the single largest consumer of jelly donuts in New Jersey, with the gut to prove it.

I'm ten minutes late getting to the gym; it would have been longer if not for the fact that there's valet parking. Vince is a little grouchy about my late arrival.

"You here to work out or you here to be late?" he snarls.

It's not the most coherent of questions, so I just shrug my apology, and he flashes his guest pass and gets me in. The place is a spectacular modern facility, with state-of-the-art exercise machines, a fashionable workout clothing boutique, a fancy hair salon, and a restaurant/snack bar area that could host a debutante ball.

It's the restaurant that's our first stop. Vince orders a large fruit smoothie, banana nut muffin, and fruit salad. I get an orange juice, and by the time I'm finished drinking it, he's already eaten his tray clean. He orders a raisin scone and another smoothie and takes it with him as we head for our workout.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"The treadmills. Best workout you can have."

"How come?"

He sighs, as if he can't believe he's been saddled with this fitness novice. "Because it's the closest to everyday life. I walk in life, so I walk on the treadmill."

I nod. "If the trick is to imitate life, how come you don't go to the jelly-donut-eating machine?"

He begins a snarl, but it turns into a laugh. "Believe me, if they had one, I would."

We get to the treadmill, where I soon find that preparation is the key. Vince prepares by attaching his stereo headphones to outlets allowing him to hear sound from the large-screen TVs. Then he adjusts those headphones so they won't fall off his head should he ever decide to actually exercise. Then he adjusts the treadmill to the proper speed and elevation, which can best be described as slow and none. Then he hangs his towel neatly on the side bar, in case he should happen to sweat, which I don't think is a serious possibility.

I start my machine at a quicker pace with higher elevation, not too strenuous but enough to be of some possible value. Five minutes later Vince gets off, explaining that "this aerobic shit is good, but you don't want to overdo it." Ever the accommodating guest, I follow him into the locker room, where we take a whirlpool bath, in order to soothe our exhausted muscles.

While Vince may not qualify as a gym rat, he's as good a newspaperman as there is. His most valuable asset is his amazing knowledge about what is going on in the communities he covers. When it comes to northern New Jersey, he knows what is happening, who is causing it to happen, and whom it's happening to.

"Do you know a guy named Geoffrey Stynes?" I ask.

Nothing registers on his face. "Nope," he says. "Who is he?"

I shrug. "Just a guy."

"Oh, just a guy? You sure? I figured he was just a fish, or just a tennis racket. You asked about him, now who the hell is he?"

I'm sorry I brought it up; but my curiosity got the better of me. "It's privileged," I say.

Vince is incredulous. "He's your client? He's your client and you're asking me who he is?"

"Forget I asked."

He nods and goes back to enjoying the water churning around his blubbery body. After a few minutes of silence, he asks, "You want me to check him out?"

"I do."

"What's in it for me?" he asks.

"I promise not to tell anyone that I get more exercise using the TV remote control than you get in your entire workout."

He thinks for a moment. "Deal," he says.

We head back to the locker room to shower and change. According to the mirrors, I haven't lost any weight as a result of the workout, even though I'm sure I burned off at least eight or nine calories.

The locker room is as fancy as the rest of the place, and there are three or four televisions positioned so they can be viewed from anywhere. They are tuned to a local news show, and as I walk by one, I hear Alex Dorsey's name mentioned.

I look up and see a newscaster sitting at a desk and speaking. Behind him is a photograph of a man, and the type legend below his face is, "Arrested in Dorsey Murder."

I don't know who the man is, but he sure as hell is not Geoffrey Stynes.