No Time To Run (Legal Thriller Featuring Michael Collins, Book 1) (17 page)

The meeting was over.

Michael looked down at his empty notepad, unsure of how it had happened to him. Within sixty seconds and a flick of the hand Michael was dismissed with an enormous amount of work and his dinner with Father Stiles was summarily canceled.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

It was dark by the time they made it to Lowell’s front door. Kermit hadn’t been invited to dinner, but Michael thought his partner deserved a home-cooked meal after a day of bribing security guards and breaking into apartment buildings. Bringing Kermit also had the added benefit of minimizing the likelihood that Lowell would ever invite him to dinner in the future.

Michael knocked, and Lowell opened the front door. He held a glass of red wine, and wore a black Williams-Sonoma apron over his expensive tan pants and light blue cashmere sweater.

“
I’m so glad you're here.” Lowell smiled. “And if you don’t want to go back to the hotel tonight, I really don’t mind you staying in the guest house.” Again with the guest house, Michael thought. The guy was obsessed with the guest house. “The beautiful Mrs. Moore decided that she would remodel and decorate it with only the finest accoutrements that the Northeast has to offer, and now that it’s done …” Lowell noticed Kermit for the first time. “And you are?” He held out his hand, skeptical of the tall, dreadlocked man standing before him.

“
Kermit Guillardo, Michael’s personal assistant.” Kermit winked at Michael, as if his introduction had been incredibly smooth.

“
I hope you don’t mind. He’s a friend.”

Lowell paused, and then offered Kermit a gritted smile.

“
Of course not, more the merrier.” He gestured for Michael and Kermit to come inside. “As I was saying about the guest house, I figure you need to stay there for about fifteen years and pay me a couple thousand dollars a month in order to for me to get a decent return on the investment.”

Kermit looked at Michael and rolled his eyes, silently mouthing something about being trapped in the law factory. They followed Lowell through the living room. Then they entered the kitchen. It was all granite and stainless steel, the rich man’s garage.

“
Dinner is almost done.” Lowell pointed at the pots simmering on the stove.

“
Smells good,” Michael said, as Val Moore got up from a leather chair in the entertainment room to see who had just arrived. She wore a red mini-skirt constructed of patches of recycled rubber tires and a tight red shirt, also rubber.

“
Who do we have here?” she asked.

“
Michael Collins.” He extended his hand toward her. “We’ve met before.”

Val shook her head.

“
Don’t remember.” Then she looked at Kermit, her eyes brightened. “And who is this handsome man?”

“
I am Mr. Kermit Guillardo, connoisseur of all things beautiful.” He took Val Moore’s hand and kissed it softly.

“
Oh my.” Val giggled. “I didn’t know Lowell kept such interesting company. Shall I show you around? I give a fantastic tour.”

“
Bet you do.” Kermit’s eyebrows raised and his head bobbled with excitement.

“
I’ll stay.” Michael looked at Lowell. “We can talk lawyer.”

“
Good.” Val turned and began to walk away. “I don’t want any of that during dinner.” She and Kermit disappeared into the entertainment room. A few seconds later, Michael heard giggling, and then the sliding glass doors to the pool area opened and closed.

He pulled up a bar stool, and sat at the counter while Lowell continued playing with his toys.

“
Wife #2 got me a culinary trip to Italy towards the end of our marriage.” Lowell lifted the lid of a large stock pot. “We both knew that one of us was going to file for divorce in the near future, and in my better moments I think of it as our farewell tour of sorts, a very expensive farewell tour.” He put the lid back down, and then picked up the open bottle of red wine at the edge of the counter.

Lowell poured a quarter cup over the golden chicken breasts. Steam rose up from the skillet as the onion and basil marinara sauce continued to simmer.

“
My divorce attorney thought it was a set-up,” Lowell said. “I hadn’t exactly been Mr. Vacation. In fact, I can’t really recall ever taking a vacation with her, not even a honeymoon. So he said I should take the trip because it might make me more sympathetic to the judge when we split, and her divorce attorney was probably advising her to just plan the trip and cry about me not going. An indication of all those years of neglect, you know the routine.”

Lowell turned toward Michael, still holding the bottle.

“
You want some?” Michael nodded, and Lowell located a second wine glass. He filled Michael’s glass, handed it to him, and then refilled his own.

“
So the trip was generally a
disaster, which is a whole other story. But much to my surprise, I liked cooking. Lawyers, just think, talk, and listen all day. What do we have to show for it? Maybe some paper, if we’re lucky.” Lowell shook his head. “Cooking is tangible―beginning, middle, end―but I don’t get to do it as much as I’d like.”

Lowell set his glass of wine down, picked up a sharp butcher’s knife and crushed six large cloves of garlic.

“
You get that letter done?”

“
I e-mailed a copy to you.” Michael took a sip of wine. “Figure
d that you could log on to the firm’s system here and make whatever edits you need.”

“
Good. We’ll do it after dinner.” Lowell pushed some of the simmering chicken to the side and scraped a small mound of minced garlic off of the cutting board and into the empty space.

“
That’s a hotspot.” Lowell pointed at the space in the pan now simmering with garlic. “You need to get the garlic just warm enough to release the flavors, watching for the caramel color. Most people just dump it into the sauce, but that leaves you with chunks of raw garlic, or they put it in too early and the garlic turns bitter.”

He waited a few more seconds, and then Lowell dispersed the garlic in the rest of sauce and returned the chicken to its place.

“
Ready in about ten minutes.” He turned the burner off and put the skillet into the oven. “Bread just needs to get warm.”

Lowell removed his apron and hung it on a nearby hook.

Michael noticed, for the first time, that Lowell was slower than in the past. His hands were unsteady.

“
Everything all right?”

Lowell turned, looked at Michael, and started to speak, but the words initially caught in his throat. He straightened up, trying to regain the authority expected of him, regain control.

“
I need to apologize.”

“
For what?”

Lowell picked up his glass of wine and took a long draw.

“
The first is Tammy Duckstein. Patty told me you got a message from her. Should’ve warned you, but I didn’t want to pile a bunch of my problems on you in the first few days.”

“
What’s the story?”

“
Disciplinary committee,” Lowell said, “The
Maltow
case. Remember that?”

Michael thought of Rhonda Kirchner. This was what she wanted to talk about.

“
The patent case?”

“
That’s right.” Lowell nodded. “Duckstein’s investigating that.”

“
What for?”

“
That’s what I say.” Lowell picked up the bottle of wine, refilled his glass, and then motioned for Michael’s glass. “Somebody complained.” He shook his head, while topping Michael’s glass with wine and then setting the bottle back on the counter. “So anyway, I’m handling it. I can’t tell you not to talk to her, because she could trump that up into some sort of obstruction charge, but if nothing happens, I think it’ll go away. You understand?”

“
I understand.” Michael made a mental note to talk to Kirchner for the real story. “What was the second thing?”

Lowell took another sip of wine, and, Michael watched him. Despite the fake tan, hair plugs, and whitened teeth, the great Lowell Moore now looked rather old and tired.

Lowell turned off the oven, and then walked out of the kitchen.

“
Follow me,” he said.

As Lowell led Michael back through the formal dining and living rooms and up the stairs to the second level, neither said a word. Walking past a half-dozen doors on the second level, Lowell turned into a large home office that was connected by an internal sliding door to the master bedroom suite.

Two of the walls had floor to ceiling bookshelves, holding legal texts and treatises. The third wall, directly behind the massive oak desk, was Lowell’s ego wall. It was mostly a mosaic of photographs, featuring him. Some of the photographs were of him with the present and former Presidents of the United States, senators, governors; others were with third-tier celebrities; and then there were the photographs combined with awards and certificates from non-profit groups that had gladly accepted a portion of Lowell’s wealth over the years.

Off to the side, there was Lowell’s favorite.

Lowell loved bringing young associates before his ego wall and asking them which item they thought he would be most proud of. Inevitably, the associates would pick the picture of him with the president or one of his many “Man of the Year” or “Super Lawyer” awards. After enough time passed and the anticipation had been built to the appropriate level, Lowell pointed to a nondescript frame. It contained a yellowed photocopy of a check for $1,203.29 as well as a bill for legal services in that amount.

Lowell noticed Michael looking at the check.

“
My most prized possession.” Lowell walked around to the other side of his desk. “Proof of the first time I ever got paid for being a lawyer.” Lowell shook away the memory. “But you’ve heard that story a million times.”

“
Yes,” Michael said. “I think I have.”

“
Sit.” Lowell pointed at a battered leather chair in front of his desk, and Michael bit his tongue and sat in the chair as instructed.

Lowell opened one of the desk’s lower file drawers. He removed a green folder, set the folder on the desk in front of him, and pushed it toward Michael.

“
I held some information back, because I was afraid you’d leave me again.” Lowell shrugged his shoulders. He sat down. “Wasn’t sure what I would do on my own.” He looked at the green folder. “Open it.”

Michael picked up the folder, opened it, and saw a half-dozen Polaroids and two greeting card envelopes.

“
The first pictures are of my dog.” Lowell leaned forward, providing narration as Michael worked through the file. “Never really cared for the mutt all that much. It was the wife’s idea to have a pet, as usual, but freaked the hell out of me when I came home and found it like that.”

Michael quickly flipped through the bloody pictures of the dog.

“
The others are of my guest house.”

Michael looked at the pictures. Curtains were torn down, furniture overturned, and the bathroom splattered with dark red paint.

“
That’s what really prompted the remodeling project,” Lowell added. “Not just the wife’s interest in spending money.” He smiled at his own joke, but the room closed in on them, just a little.

Michael set the photographs to the side and picked up one of the envelopes. They were greeting cards, and Michael recognized the familiar large block writing on the front of the envelopes. There wasn’t a need to look inside. Michael knew what they were and who they were from.

“
Why you?”

Lowell shook his head. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

###

With a pair of stainless steel tongs, Lowell removed two pieces of chicken and laid them on a bed of angel hair pasta; he then ladled the marinara sauce on top of it and added a handful of freshly grated parmesan.

“
Here you are.” Lowell passed the plate to Michael. Then he filled a plate for himself, and they both walked to the dining room.

“
Should I get Kermit and Val?”

“
No.” Lowell shook his head. “They seem to be having a good time without us.”

Michael and Lowell sat down next to each other at the table. Lowell sat at the head, Michael on his right.

“
I suspected that you had been found by one of Mario Deti’s men when you called about your friend, but I wasn’t sure.” Lowell picked up a knife and cut off a piece of chicken. “The dog was killed about six months ago. I got an unsigned sympathy card from them. That was nice. Then, the guest house was trashed. I got another nice card for that, and then about four weeks ago I got taken for a ride in upstate New York by some huge guy that sounded like he had a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford.”