Put a Lid on It (16 page)

He shrugged, though she wouldn't be able to see him do it. “Yeah, sure, okay,” he said. “But not the place Jeffords took us.”

“I realize that. You pick it, some crappy greasy spoon somewhere. I'll bring the Tums.”

“I know a great Caribbean place downtown,” he said, “got goat elbow.”

“Goat—You're putting me on.”

“No, I'm not. It's the part of the goat leg that bends, I don't know what you call it, I call it the elbow. With the spices and everything, it's terrific.”

“Everything I hear about downtown,” she said, “reminds me why I live uptown.”

“So slum a little,” he said.

“What time you want to meet?”

The restaurant, on a side street in the West Village, with its happy crowd of multilingual uninhibited diners shouting over the reggae that blared from speakers in every corner of the ceiling, was only slightly louder than a subway car taking a curve, but the goat elbow was as Meehan had described it, and the margaritas weren't bad either. For slumming, Goldfarb wore black ankle boots, black wool slacks, and a bulky plum-colored sweater. The monster eyeglasses were the same. Meehan was in his usual zippered jacket and stuff.

“We can't discuss in here!” she yelled, after they'd yelled their order to the tall skinny Jamaican waiter.

“What?” he yelled.

“We can't discuss in here!”

“Later!”

“What?”

He used his fingers to show two people walking, and pointed out to the street. She nodded, and they had dinner, and he paid with cash, because that was what he had. Then they went out to the cool night, the quiet Village streets, and Goldfarb said, “Okay, goat elbow is very good, but we were supposed to have a discussion.”

“We can walk a ways,” he said.

They walked, and she said, “There's already been a lot done on the case, but that was just paperwork. For this last step, you have to be physically present in front of the judge and that's the tricky part, because she's a juvenile court judge.”

Meehan said, “But she's in on the scam, isn't she?”

“Not exactly,” Goldfarb said.

The night was cool, but not bad. Trees dimmed much of the illumination from the streetlights, traffic was light, and other people, in couples or groups, also strolled through the calm darkness. The West Village is an oddly peaceful corner of Manhattan, without the normal traffic and crowds and neon, its narrow maze of streets too much of a challenge for tourists and cabbies alike. The Caribbean restaurant they'd just left was probably the loudest spot within a mile.

Given the shadowed streetlights and muffled traffic and strolling people and crisp air, Meehan knew this was a situation to be considered generically romantic, but he also knew it was a moment wasted. In any other circumstance, strolling with an okay woman after dinner, he'd probably put the moves on, but this was none of those circumstances. To begin with, Goldfarb was a lawyer, and between the felon and the attorney there were lines not to be crossed. In the second place, his first relationship with her had been in the MCC, and there was still something of the MCC lawyer-client conference in all of their meetings, which would put a chill on any kind of warm inclination. Also, there were those monster glasses. And, over and above all the rest, she was Goldfarb.

And talking. “This judge,” she was saying, “T. Joyce Foote, only knows what the paperwork says as it comes across her desk. And what it's going to say is, on Friday, while we were flying up from Norfolk and my apartment was filling up with spies, for God's sake, Bruce Benjamin's people went to the district attorney upstate in New York, and got her to move to have your case put under her jurisdiction, meaning state instead of federal, using your own argument that there was no external evidence of government involvement with the truck and its contents on the truck itself.”

“Like I said.”

“Like you said,” she agreed. “Now, normally the federal prosecutor would fight such an encroachment, but this time the word had gone out.”

“The fix was in,” Meehan suggested.

“Whatever,” she said. “The point is, he didn't object, and the change went through. That done, the upstate DA graciously consented to pass you on to an outer borough New York City DA, since you were already physically incarcerated within the city limits.”

“I bet,” Meehan said, “normally that would have been a turf fight, too.”

“You know it. Anyway, this morning I applied for your release into my custody, since you were being improperly held in a federal facility with no federal charges pending against you, and in
that
paperwork you became a minor.”

“Huh,” he said.

She shrugged, as though to say she wasn't making a big deal out of it but it was a big deal, and said, “That's how I got custody.
Out
of the MCC because you're not a federal prisoner,
into
my custody because you were being improperly held, and all at once the reason it was improper to hold you in the MCC is because you're a minor.”

“Three-card monte,” Meehan suggested.

“Very similar. Now,” she said, “a lot of people at both the federal and state level had to squint real hard when they passed that paperwork along, but everybody had been given to understand there were good reasons known only on high, and that absolutely no backlash would ever occur. So now the last step is Juvenile Court Justice T. Joyce Foote, who will take one look at you and know you're not in the normal way of PINS under her jurisdiction.”

“I'm not a PINS,” Meehan said, feeling blank.

“Person In Need of Supervision. It's the custodial phrase when dealing with minors.”

Meehan nodded. “Okay. So all she knows is the paperwork, she looks at me and says, ‘You're no Pin,’ and boots paperwork right back out of her court.”

“Chambers,” Goldfarb said. “I wouldn't parade you in juvenile court, believe me. And no, she won't boot it back, because she will see that everybody else, including people with more sway and import than her or anybody else in juvenile court has already signed off on it. And that's when
I
explain there are other humanitarian reasons for this special treatment, or perhaps you're just a major turncoat about to testify against everybody in the world. We'll shade between superfink and a wasting disease, without getting specific about anything, because we don't
have
to get specific. Are you following me?”

“No,” Meehan said.

“All right, fine,” she said. “Your job, in front of Judge Foote, is to look hangdog but shifty, which I think you can do, and maybe toss in a little physical weakness as well. Answer questions briefly, volunteer nothing.”

“I have volunteered nothing,” Meehan told her, “every day of my life.”

“Hold the course,” she advised. “Tomorrow morning gets rid of your legal troubles.”

“Hallelujah,” he said.

“However,” she told him, “do remember that you are, or will be, on probation, and in my custody. There's still a leash on you. If you try to pull a fast one, run away, fail to deliver to Jeffords and Benjamin,
everything
that was done gets undone, and you're on your way back to the MCC.”

“Gotcha.”

Light bounced off her spectacles as she studied him. “You are going through with this, aren't you?” she asked. “All the way.”

“All the way,” he agreed.

“Good.” She peered ahead, where much brighter light gleamed at the next intersection. “That looks like Seventh Avenue.”

He looked around to orient himself. “Yeah, I think it is.”

“We can find a cab there,” she said, picking up the pace. “Come on, I'll drop you.”

As they walked, Meehan looked back at the leafy darkness from which they were emerging. Too bad, really.

32

E
VERY TIME, EVERY
single time. Every time Meehan walked into room 318, there was that red light on the telephone, blinking like a reflex. Well, this time it couldn't be Goldfarb, whom he'd just left in the cab out front, so he went over to see what was what, and the nonvoice informed him he had two messages. Great to be popular.

The first was from Bernie: “We could meet Bob at eleven in the morning, out here. Okay?” Bob would be the driver, Bob Clarence.

And the second message was from Jeffords: “I understand you're getting your day in court tomorrow. Congratulations. I'll be coming up in the afternoon to get a progress report. Call me on my, uh, private line when you get out of court.”

Progress report. Tomorrow was filling up, which Meehan could have done without.

The clock radio bolted to the bedside table read 9:43. Bernie would be up, but would he be in or out? Meehan found the number in his memory bank, dialed it, and the missus answered. He said, “It's me, Meehan, again. Is Bernie around?”

“He's watching one of his favorite shows.”

“Oh. Does he want to call me back?”

“Hold on, I'll ask,” she said, and clomp-clomped away, and the next voice he heard was Bernie: “You got my message.”

“I don't want to take you away from your favorite show.”

“It stinks, actually,” Bernie said. “We on for tomorrow?”

“I can't,” Meehan told him. “I gotta go to juvenile court.” When Bernie responded with nothing but silence, Meehan added, “It's okay, it's part of the process.”

Bernie said, “Do I wanna know what process?”

“The process we discussed, that has me here instead of downtown.”

“Okay, fine, skip it. Afterward?”

“Well, no, I got another thing then.”

“Meehan, we're talking about doing this thing day after tomorrow.”

“I know that.”

“Bob needs a meet, he needs the story from you.”

“But he's free, he can do it.”

“Maybe. He'll decide after he hears the story from you.”

Meehan frowned at the clock radio. “How about tonight?”

“Tonight? He's in the city, he won't want to come out here tonight.”

“Bernie,” Meehan said gently, “I'm in the city, too.”

There was another little silence from Bernie, but this time Meehan waited him out, and finally Bernie said, “You mean, I should drive into the city tonight.”

“After your favorite program.”

“No, screw that, I hate that show, it's just habit. Let me see can I reach Bob, and I'll call you back.”

“Fine,” Meehan said, and spent the interval with the television set, trying to figure out which of these dogs on view was Bernie's favorite program.

All the dogs were ending, to be replaced by the ten o'clock dogs, when the phone rang and it was Bernie, sounding very troubled: “He could meet at midnight.”

“Good,” Meehan said.

“Jeez, Meehan,” Bernie said. “To tell you the truth, I don't
wanna
drive into the city at midnight.”

“You've become suburban, Bernie,” Meehan told him.

“It's the real me, coming to the surface,” Bernie said. “Whyn't you meet him without me?”

“How would I recognize him?”

“I'll describe him to you, and you to him.”

Meehan wasn't sure about this. The way it worked, since you were in the process of something illegal, the way the ten thousand rules laid it out, you do not meet with a stranger. You meet with somebody you know who
knows
the stranger and can introduce you.

But Bernie had, as Meehan had pointed out, turned suburban in his middle years. There was no getting him into Manhattan at midnight, not even on a Monday. So Meehan sighed and said, “Okay, describe him.”

“He's black.”

Meehan waited. Then he said, “I knew that part. So where are we meeting, a Klan convention, he's the only black guy there?”

“No, he wants to meet at a garage on a Hundred Twenty-fifth Street and Amsterdam Avenue.”

“That's Harlem,” Meehan said.

“Yeah, sure,” Bernie said. “It's an all-night gas station garage, I guess he hangs out there or something.”

“He's not gonna be the only black guy at a Hundred Twenty-fifth Street and Amsterdam Avenue,” Meehan said. “Give me more description.”

“He's maybe forty, wiry, not too tall, always wears a hat, maybe a cap. I think he's bald under there.”

“Well, I'll try it,” Meehan said.

“A Hundred Twenty-fifth and Amsterdam,” Meehan said.

The cabby, a recent immigrant from Latvia, turned to look at Meehan through the bullet-proof Plexiglas. “You sure?”

“Positive,” Meehan said. “There's a garage there that—”

“Oh,” the Latvian said, “you're gonna drive a hack. Sure. I still gotta charge you.”

“That's okay,” Meehan said, and sat back. If he said he
wasn't
gonna drive a hack, what would that do? Prolong the conversation.

The Latvian's conclusion, it turned out, had not been that improbable a jump. Just off the intersection was an oasis of bright light amid the surrounding semidarkness, and this bright light gleamed all around a gas station and parking building that called itself, according to the big metal sign out by the street, UPTOWN 24/7. Meehan got out of the cab and looked at the taxis parked all around the place, the gas station cashier behind his Plexiglas window in the face of the brick building, the parking entrance next to the cashier, and the sign on the wall saying you could also rent a car here, if you wanted. Everything automotive, under one roof.

Meehan walked over to the parking entrance, and inside was an open concrete-floored space with DRIVE UP and STOP HERE signs, and more taxis parked in the area in the back, and a concrete ramp leading upward, and off to the side a set of little offices behind big windows. Half a dozen black guys in white shirts, black pants and black bow ties stood around in clumps, talking; the staff. One of them wore a New York Yankees cap, frontward. He was about forty, wiry, not too tall.

It was a different one who came toward Meehan, hand out for a claim check, saying, “Evening.”

“Hi,” Meehan said. “I'm here to see Bob Clarence.”

The air very subtly shifted all around him. People kept talking, but they weren't listening to each other any more, they were listening to Meehan. People kept facing one another, but out of the sides of their heads they were looking at Meehan. The guy who'd wanted his claim check dropped that hand to his side, frowned, looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “I don't think I know him,” he said. “Bob what?”