Running from the Law (17 page)

Despite my link to these players, I felt suspicious of them. Fiske, who’d been framed for murder—maybe. Kate, who drove an identical black Jaguar with an almost identical license plate, and who was furious at Patricia for suing her husband. And my own beloved, who had slept with Patricia and taken with him the only thing that would prove he knew her. Had Paul killed her? Could he? Could any of them?

It was almost impossible to believe. I had known them for years and never would have dreamed any of them capable of such brutality. And Paul, never. Still, I had lots of questions and no answers, and any lawyer would have been thinking the same way. So I set aside my personal feelings, put on a poker face, and watched the cards. In this case, the face cards, all of which were, not coincidentally, two-faced. I started play with a gutsy opening bet:

“I think someone is trying to frame Fiske for murder,” I said. “Any thoughts? Suspicions? Guesses?”

“Not a one. I don’t have an enemy in the world,” Fiske said. He sat at the head of a long table with six wooden chess games in various stages of play. Next to each chessboard was a stack of postcards. Fiske seemed to be looking at the closest chess game, albeit without much concentration.

“A judge without an enemy? Don’t you make an enemy in every case—the loser?”

“Not really. I’ve been on the bench for almost twenty years and I run my courtroom fairly. Civil litigants know that.”

“How about in the criminal cases, in sentencing cases? You sentence in the drug cases, don’t you? They’re federal.”

“The guideline cases, of course. We’re overwhelmed.”

“Has anybody you’ve sentenced gotten especially upset? Screamed at you, threatened you?”

He shook his head. “Not that I can remember. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind. All the possibilities.”

“What about someone from the bar association or your old firm? No old grudges? Nobody on the district court?”

“My colleagues?
Judges?
No, no.” He fingered the White King, then set it back down. “It’s this motorcycle rider that concerns me.” He winced slightly and I knew he wasn’t thinking about Kf8 and Kc7.

“I agree. I’m going to see if I can find him.”

He looked up from the chess game. “How?”

“Investigate. I have some ideas.”

Kate edged forward on the arm of a club chair, a stubby cigarette smoldering between her fingers, a Waterford ashtray in her other hand. She had apparently started smoking again. “Do you really believe Fiske was framed, Rita? That this was an intentional act? It seems the unlikeliest option to me.”

“Why?” Fiske said to her. “How else would a Jag with my license plate appear in her driveway?”

She shrugged. “How indeed? I can think of lots of reasons short of someone actually trying to frame you, dear. Maybe Mrs. Mateer saw the license plate wrong. She simply could have misread it.”

“You don’t know Mrs. Mateer, do you, Kate?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“Besides,” Kate continued, “it was a great distance, and with the thunderstorm, everything was gray and dark. Maybe she read it incorrectly.”

“Mother, you can read a license plate in a thunderstorm,” Paul said. He stood in front of the window, silhouetted against the sun, and it was hard to see his face. “Yellow letters on a blue background, like the Pennsylvania plate? It’s easy to read.”

“Then maybe she remembered it wrong.” Kate blew a jet of smoke at the high ceiling. “How many times have you thought you remembered a number but didn’t? Gotten one letter wrong or two? I always get phone numbers mixed up.”

Fiske shook his head. “A mistake is more likely with a numbered plate, dear. Not a vanity plate.”

“Oh, you just never liked those vanity plates. You put up such a fuss.” She shaved her cigarette ash to a fragile cone on the thick edge of the ashtray.

I took a breath, then stated the obvious as tactfully as possible. “Kate, one letter wrong is your license plate. And of course it wasn’t you.”

Kate laughed abruptly, emitting a hiccup of smoke. “What are you saying, that—”

“Of course it wasn’t Kate’s car,” Fiske snapped.

Paul’s head swiveled in Fiske’s direction. I wished I could see his expression. “Rita wasn’t suggesting that it was Mom’s car, Dad.”

Of course I was. “Of course I wasn’t.”

“I confess I don’t have much in the way of an alibi,” Kate said, seemingly amused. “When I told the policeman I was gardening all afternoon, he looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses.”

Fiske smiled. “He doesn’t know the time you spend on that damn garden. Or the money.” His tone was light, and if he suspected her, it didn’t show.

“That reminds me,” Kate said. “I did go to Waterloo Gardens that day, for a new hose. A soaker. I spent seventy-five dollars, but I didn’t save the receipt, nor can I remember which clerk helped me. Will I get off the hook anyway?”

I met Kate’s cool gaze through the screen of cigarette smoke. “Absolutely not. Anybody who spends that much money on a hose should be locked up. Go directly to jail and most certainly do not collect two hundred dollars.”

The three of them laughed, relieved, and it got us past my bad manners in calling the Queen a killer.

“It had better be a nice hose,” Fiske said. “A very nice hose.”

“The mother of all hoses,” Paul added.

Kate stubbed out her cigarette and set the ashtray on the tall end table. “Don’t blame me, fellas. You know you can’t get out of Waterloo for less than fifty dollars. I have to go back tomorrow to replace the geraniums the reporters trampled. Are they still out there?” she asked Paul.

He looked out the window. “The geraniums or the reporters?”

Kate smiled. “The reporters.”

“Of course.” Paul yanked at the curtain, but it was sewn open like in hotels. “The reporters will never leave and the geraniums will never come back.”

Kate shook her head. “The police traipse through the house, the reporters destroy the gardens. The telephone rings off the hook all the time, and we’re in every newspaper in town. When do we get our life back?”

Fiske glanced at her guiltily. “I’m sorry, dear. About all of this.”

“Oh, phoo,” she said, looking away. “It’s not your doing.”

I got up to go, and Paul stepped out of the sunlight and looked at me directly. His eyes looked slightly sunken behind his glasses; he hadn’t been sleeping well. “You going home?”

Home? So he still hadn’t told his parents. “No. I want to stop by the hospital. Then I’ve got some work to do.”

“Like what? Maybe I can help. I’ve been thinking about it, about different approaches you might take. Logical ways of investigating the crime.”

I picked up my handbag and briefcase, acutely aware that Fiske and Kate were watching this exchange. “I’ve got it under control, Paul.”

“But, Rita, it’s like forensic architecture. I look at the evidence, the clues, and try to find out what caused the problem. The leak, the crack, whatever. It’s all deductive reasoning. Remember the underground garage? I can help you.”

Fuck you. “I appreciate that, but—”

“I think Rita knows what she’s doing, son,” Fiske interrupted. I gathered he was trying to be supportive, but it left me wondering why he wanted me working alone.

“I’m not suggesting she doesn’t,” Paul said. “But I’ve cleared my calendar to help her find out who’s behind this. Aren’t two heads better than one?”

Not when I want to knock yours off. “I don’t think so. If I need help, we have investigators at the firm.”

“Then maybe I can start my own investigation and we can compare notes.”

Did he want to help me so he could control what I found out? Lead me away from the clues? “Paul, I don’t think we need some sort of parallel investigation.”

“I think Paul is on to something, Rita,” Kate said. “It sounds sensible to me. Paul may be able to help you. At the very least, you know he can be trusted.”

Say
what
? “I have to go now.”

“Then it’s settled,” he said. “We’ll talk tonight.”

Tonight? I fingered the note in my blazer pocket, from Tobin. He had pressed it into my hand after the hearing, as I fought the gauntlet of the press:

You were awesome! Dinner at Sonoma at 7?

Yours in saturated fat,
Jake

I flashed on the scene outside the courthouse after the hearing. The media had bar-raged me with questions, many about the mystery motorcycle rider. I’d practiced my “no comment” to the right and to the left, and had almost made it to my car when Stan Julicher had popped out of the crowd, his face tinged with righteous anger, like some avenging angel. “You know and I know the judge did it,” he’d said.

“You’re wrong, Julicher,” I’d answered.

“Shame on you,” he’d shot back, and I’d slipped into my car, feeling uneasy.

“I’ll be home at six, okay?” Paul was saying.

“Actually, make it seven.” By then I should be having dinner with another man and you can sit on the front porch and hold your goddamn breath. I’d already had the locks changed. “And by the way, Paul, maybe you could bring home that sketchbook we were looking at yesterday.”

“Sketchbook?” Fiske said. “Are you sketching again, son?”

Paul shook his head quickly. “I threw it away, Rita. I didn’t know you’d want it. Seven o’clock then?” He smiled.

They all did, except me.

My father was snoozing peacefully in his new hospital room. They’d moved him from intensive care and into a private room at my insistence. I’d thought he’d need the privacy to rest, but I could see now he didn’t, since Sal, Cam, and Herman were playing cards on the table spanning his rounded belly. No money was visible to the naked eye, so I knew Herman would have the tote running in his head.

For a split second I wanted in on the game, but then I remembered I was working. I had to build the case for the defense and I needed the help of the only people in the world I could really trust. I let them finish the hand and explained the steps I wanted to take in my investigation. Then I opened the floor for questions. I should’ve known better.

“Why do I gotta wear this?” Sal whined. He held up a pair of gray wool pants and a navy Burberry blazer. “Why can’t I just wear normal clothes?”

“Uncle Sal, I spent a fortune on those clothes. I’m dressing you better than you ever dressed in your life. You can even keep the outfit when we’re done.”

“I don’t have no place to wear stuff this fancy.”

“Then throw it away. Burn it. Use it to wrap pork chops.”

“I don’t like the shoes. They look funny.”

“Cole-Haans with a tassel? What’s not to like?”

“I like Herman’s outfit better. He got the boots.”

Herman, sitting next to him, shook his head. “You think I wanna wear cowboy boots? Look like those goyim in the Texas hats? I’m doin’ it for Rita. Because she asked me.”

“They’re not cowboy boots, Herman,” I said. “They’re just black boots.”

“So can I trade Herman for the boots?” Sal pleaded. “I got nothin’ against black boots.”

“I’m even wearing the leather jacket, all for Rita,” Herman continued, rivaling any Catholic for martyrdom. “Why can’t you just go along like me, Sal?”

Cam laughed. “Herman, how long you known Sal Morrone? Forty, fifty years?”

“Only thirty.”

“Okay, thirty. So you know Sal has to find something to complain about.”

Uncle Sal ignored them. “Maybe I can switch with Cam?”

“No,” I said firmly.

“But I’ll be hot in the jacket.”

“It’ll be air-conditioned.”

Sal pointed to the brown work boots I bought for Cam. “Maybe I could just wear Cam’s shoes? I like them things.”

No kidding. He was already wearing the same shoes.

“Sal,” Cam said, “what is it with you? It’s like we’re gonna be in a play or somethin’. I need my shoes, I gotta dress my part. I gotta act my part.”

“A star is born,” Herman said.

Sal put the blazer down. “I got an idea. Can’t Herman do Cam’s job and Cam do Herman’s job and we switch all the jobs around?”

Cam shook his head. “He’s confusing me.”

“He’s confusing himself,” Herman corrected. “He’s a confusing person. A confusing person to be around.”

I rubbed my forehead. Halloween wasn’t turning out the way I’d hoped. Remind me never to have a kid. Or an old man. “Look, Uncle Sal. Everybody has to go along with the plan. No trades, no switching!”

“Okay, okay. You don’t have to holler.”

“She wasn’t hollering,” Cam said.

Yes, I was. “Now go get dressed. We have to get going.”

“Get dressed? Where?”

“In the bathroom.”

“In the bathroom? Here?” Sal looked nervously at the door, he always looked nervous. I must have been crazy to think I could count on him. No one had ever relied on Sal for anything. I had no idea what he did all day, except play cards and watch old movies on television. My father had always taken care of everything.

“You can do this, Sal. You and me,” I said, not believing a word of it.

“I don’t know.”

“I do. I know.”

Sal picked up the blazer and disappeared into the bathroom with the clothes. I decided to wait to tell him about the accent he’d have to fake. Growing up is hard enough to do, and best done in stages.

19

T
he only sound in the empty showroom was the discreet hum of the air-conditioning, and the occasional squirt of a spray bottle from a man in a coarse blue jumpsuit, cleaning the windshields. Late-afternoon sun poured through mullioned windows that bordered the room. Reproductions of Chippendale end tables flanked the entrance, which opened on to five spanking-new, factory-delivered Jaguars of various colors. Each car gleamed under its own set of track lights, like babies in a multiracial nursery.

“But nobody told me about this,” said the confused salesman. His navy blazer roughly matched Sal’s and his loafers were almost identically tasseled. Am I good or am I good? “I should have been told.”