Riders on the Storm (6 page)

“I'll keep you posted, Greg.”

“Say hi to Karen for us. A very sweet lady.”

“She sure is that.”

On the walk to the courthouse I didn't think about Will or Karen, I thought about O'Shay. What might have been a political embarrassment for him had been turned into a victory. O'Shay would get to rail again about the “sickness” of the country—and what better example of that sickness than the murder of a brave soldier, a man he'd favored for Congress. Soldiers never “died,” they were always “cut down in
their prime.” Apparently he was unaware that men as old as fifty-five were fighting and dying over there, too.

A press conference was inevitable. He hadn't been scheduled to return to Washington for a few days so he'd likely stage a splashy performance here. If I were one of his aides I would suggest he stage it down in the basement of the funeral parlor where they prepared the corpses for burial. But that would be too much of a reminder about what the good old president Nixon and his de facto vice president Henry Kissinger were really up to, wouldn't it?

Then I started thinking about Will again. I was so tight and angry that I took a pit stop in the john on the second floor of the courthouse. I splashed chilly water on my face and since I was alone—I'd carefully checked—I got down and did twenty push-ups. My max. These gave me a sheen of sweat and for some reason sweating usually relaxed me. I wanted to represent my client as well as I could. I was pretty confident.

I wished I was as confident about Will.

I
N THE LATE 1950S A LARGE NUMBER OF BOYS WANTED TO BE
James Dean or Elvis or maybe Ricky Nelson. My friend Kenny Thibodeau and I had different aspirations. Kenny wanted to be Jack Kerouac and I wanted to be the actor Robert Ryan.

Kenny did something about his aspirations. If he couldn't
be
Kerouac, he could at least meet him. And so in the summer of 1958 Kenny drove to San Francisco to meet Mr. Kerouac. Kenny spent several days hanging in and around City Lights Bookstore where all the important Beat writers hung out. He did meet the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who also happened to own the bookstore, and he did see, among others, such Beat writers and poets as Gregory Corso and even the famous Allen Ginsberg. But no Kerouac.

A few days before he was to leave, Kenny read some of his poems to some tourists. A man who'd been listening came up to him afterward and offered him a job writing what we'd called at Catholic school “right-handers” (some imagination required here), books with brazenly sexy covers and titles but with almost prudishly written “erotic” scenes inside. Kenny was expected to write one book a month for four hundred dollars.

The man gave Kenny a cardboard box full of what he called his “product” and after shaking hands as Kenny was about to depart said, “Kid, think lesbian.”

At the moment Kenny was shoving not one of his monthly paperbacks but a magazine called
Real Man's Adventure
across the table to me.

The mostly naked women with bullwhips had swastikas all over the tatters of their skirts and shirts. A rugged American-hero type was tied to a pole. The lashes had slashed his bare chest mercilessly. “Nazi Gal Killers Made Me Their Sex Slave.” I thumbed my way to the contents page to see what pen name he'd slapped on this one. “Burt Scaggs.” Manly, very manly.

“Ten cents a word. Eight thousand words—the second lead in the magazine—and I did it in two afternoons. And they want more from me.”

I asked what I thought was the logical question. “If he's their sex slave why are they beating him?”

“They're sadists. All Nazis were sadists.”

“Wow, all this and historical accuracy.”

He smiled. Kenny had a good novel in him. He'd shown me the part he'd written. I truly believed—and I hoped he did, too—that he would finish the book in a year or so. He was a hell of a good storyteller and a number of his soft-core novels really had strongly developed characters.

We were sitting in the café where the town's lawyers hung out before and after court. I'd won the case for my client. Kenny had agreed to meet me here.

“You know what time it is.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Melissa Thibodeau was in danger of becoming the most photographed little girl in the state. But she was so damned pretty and sweet, who cared?

The new photographs showed her in her new bonnet and Sunday dress. I did the expected oohing and aahing, but it was
sincere
oohing and aahing. I was Melissa's godfather.

“She's beautiful. Thanks for letting me see them.”

I handed them back and then he spoke the mantra. “No way anybody's going to convince me that Will Cullen ever killed anybody.”

“I know. That's what most people I've talked to say. But when you put it together as it stands right now you see why Foster thinks he's got a case.”

“I hear average citizens call him ‘Paul.'”

“Yeah, I don't know about that. It's like a political gimmick. It creates a false sense of security. He's a cop. You can only trust cops so far.”

“Wow. You sound like some guys I know who drop too much acid. Mr. Paranoid. Maybe he's just a nice guy.” He leaned forward and dragged his billfold out of his right back pocket.

I went through everything again; the kicker was the tire iron.

“Yeah, I see what you mean. But it's not Will. He's just not like that.”

“No, he isn't. But I need to move on this. I don't know enough about Donovan to really get going on checking him out. I need to spend time in the library, for one thing. And Karen told me a couple of things. I guess he and his business partner had a falling-out.”

“Yeah, big time. Donovan forced him out. Or his new partner did, this Lon Anders.”

“That's been proven?”

“Yeah. The old business partner, Al Carmichael, dropped into this depression and finally just said screw it. He let Donovan buy him out for pennies on the dollar. He lives in Pittsburgh now and works for an outfit named ChemLab. I've known Carmichael for a long time. You remember him?”

“Right. Al. He had that cool racing bike when we were in seventh grade. Then he went to public school.”

I told him about the angry husband Karen had alluded to.

“Thad Owens. That happened two, three years ago. He caught Donovan and the wife making out at a party. The wife broke down and told him all about her affair with Donovan. He's remarried and could care less about Donovan now. He's got a newborn with the second wife and enjoys himself. I run into him at the supermarket every once in a while.”

“Well, I can scratch off those two.”

Kenny touched the knot in his tie. Yes, tie. These days instead of looking like the comic beatnik Maynard G. Krebs of the late lamented
Dobie Gillis
show, Kenny affected button-down shirts, chinos, and cordovan penny loafers. His weekly newspaper column gave him some real prominence. There were still people who complained about his books but nonetheless he was asked to talk to groups as respectable as Kiwanis and Rotary. “Don't worry, I've got somebody for you.”

“Who?”

“I've heard Anders is as much of a player as Donovan was. And he's a big pilot. Was a fighter in Nam in the mid-sixties and now has his own big-ass plane. I've also been told that lately Donovan and Anders had been arguing pretty violently behind closed doors. But nobody could figure out why. I guess one day Anders came to work with a black eye and wouldn't come out of his office until just about everybody had left that night.”

“Then they really weren't getting along.”

“I guess Donovan started hanging around his cousin again to the point that some people thought the cousin was a bodyguard. Your old friend Teddy Byrnes.”

“You're kidding me. I thought he was still doing time.”

“Been out for a month.”

Teddy Byrnes had been a member of the Night Devils, a biker gang associated with at least three murders over the years. They'd started after the big war when gangs like them came to prominence. In those days Marlon Brando in
The Wild One
was their patron saint. But there
was a difference between movie violence and real violence. They had escaped punishment for their suspected murders but they had been busted for numerous burglaries, assaults, and armed robberies. Their legend terrified people. Whenever they roared into a park on a sunny Sunday afternoon the picnickers fled.

Teddy Byrnes had been a punk among punks. A pretty-boy psychopath who enjoyed beating people. No guns or knives for him. Just beating them. He'd been in our class for three years but got expelled and went to public school. One beating in particular convinced the county attorney that he had Byrnes nailed, but the victim suddenly declined to testify. Then Byrnes's luck changed. He severely beat a man outside a tavern one rainy night. What he didn't know was that a police officer who'd been checking doors in the downtown area just happened to have turned the near corner and was walking toward Byrnes and his victim. The officer saw everything.

Then Byrnes went looking for a lawyer….

That morning five years ago I'd been prepping for an important case when Jamie said “Oh.” There was a disturbed tone in her voice, a mixture of shock and surprise. When I looked up from my papers I saw what that “Oh” was all about. Standing in my doorway was none other than Teddy Byrnes. Jamie had recognized him. A whole lot of people knew who he was. He reveled in it.

He wore a white shirt, blue slacks, carefully tousled hair, and a big black Irisher smile. “They said I should get the best and so here I am, Counselor.”

I would have been flattered if I hadn't known the truth. He was out on bail and looking for legal representation. None of the other firms in town would touch him. The public defender he'd had said that he feared for his life. Well-known legal expert Teddy Byrnes hadn't liked the public defender they had come up with and had started shoving him around and making threats.

“No thanks, Byrnes.”

But this was a movie moment for him and he played it through. “You know the word I like, Counselor? ‘Sumptuous.' I learned that by
reading a lot of your friend Thibodeau's books. That surprise you, that bad-ass Teddy Byrnes is a reader? Well I am. I even read Hemingway sometimes. I think you could use that in my defense. That I read a lot. That I'm not this terrible hood people need to be afraid of.” Byrnes was telling the truth. High IQ and a big reader.

“But I forgot what I was talking about. ‘Sumptuous.' I see something sumptuous right now.” He shifted his gaze to Jamie. She was breathing nervously and staring straight ahead. His legend could do that to you. “I've been to every law firm in town but none of them has got a little gal like you do, Counselor.”

The “Counselor” reference had triggered a memory I could not bring into focus. And then it was there. Robert Mitchum in
Cape Fear
, based on one of my favorite novels by John D. MacDonald, whom I'd been reading since sixth grade. Throughout the movie Mitchum mockingly refers to attorney Gregory Peck as “Counselor.”

Teddy Byrnes was a movie fan.

Then he did it. Advanced quickly on Jamie. He put his hands on her shoulders and was trying to spin her around in her desk chair so she'd face him fully. She screamed.

I didn't think. I acted.

He was taller, thicker, stronger but I hit him in the side of the face anyway. And in the haze of those few seconds he landed at least six or seven punches on my head and chest and stomach, Jamie screaming all the time.

As he charged out of the office he said: “We'll meet again, you little asshole.”

Now, sitting with Kenny….

“Teddy Byrnes,” I said.

“Guess he's meaner than ever.”

“That's hard to imagine. How he could be meaner.”

“I'd be damned careful of him, Sam. Just stick to Lon Anders.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like a very good idea. Just sticking to Lon Anders.”

My bones still remembered the impact of Byrnes's fists.

T
HE
R
EXALL
D
RUGSTORE WAS NOTABLE IN MY LIFE FOR A NUMBER
of reasons. It was where their metal paperback rack provided a good share of my reading material, which ran to crime fiction of the Gold Medal Books variety. I'd grown up on writers such as Peter Rabe, Charles Williams, Vin Packer and Richard Prather. Not to mention Mickey Spillane. The sandwiches were very good, the coffee was strong and hot, and one of the sweetest, prettiest girls in the entire valley had worked there since we'd graduated from high school. No college for Mary. She had to work to support her father, who was struggling with cancer.

She was always too modest to admit it but people liked to tell her that she looked very much like the actress Jean Simmons, that kind of gentle but riveting beauty. And she did even in the yellow uniform she wore every day.

A man in a suit sitting a couple of stools from me said, “Mary, hon, keep the radio on, will you? I want to hear the senator's press conference.”

Knowing my political tastes, she glanced at me and said, “Don't worry, Mr. Costello. It doesn't start for another ten minutes yet.”

She brought me coffee black and a small glazed donut. What she didn't bring me was her usual smile and I didn't blame her.

“Hi, Sam. How've you been?”

“Pretty good until last night.”

“Poor Will and Karen.”

At that Mr. Costello, who owned the haberdashery, snapped, “How about poor Steve Donovan?”

“You're right, Mr. Costello. Of course, poor Steve Donovan. It's just that I don't believe that Will could kill anybody. Sam and I grew up with him.”

“I know,” Mr. Costello snapped, “in the Hills.”

We were both surprised by his anger. Red tinted Mary's lovely face. I said, “Yeah, everybody who grew up in the Hills is a born killer.”