The Attorney (12 page)

When they get too messy, when lawyers start climbing through the window and coming up the stairs, she chloroforms the corporation and moves on."

"So the plaintiffs get a bag of bones."

"Bleached and baked," says Murphy. "Even the filing cabinet is rented.

She only has one. She advertises the fact that she doesn't keep many business records on paper. Sort of a disclaimer to anybody who might be looking."

"I've seen her office," I tell him. "I can vouch for the single filing cabinet."

"If you're planning on suing the lady, you'd get more satisfaction falling out of bed during a wet dream. Money is not what makes Suade run. And the threat of losing it doesn't even register on her list of a hundred worst fears."

"Do you think there's any benefit in talking to Davidson?" I ask him.

"He might give you a lot of sympathy," says Murphy.

"But no help?" He shakes his head. "If you find the key to Zolanda, there's gonna be a long line forming to use it. According to everything I've read, she hasn't made a lot of friends in this town." There's a tap on the wooden house up by the open hatch: the waitress with our sandwiches. We take a break, talk while we're eating.

Murphy takes a deep swig from the bottle of Corona, like he's sucking air from a vacuum, swallows slowly, and looks at me. With the last bob of his Adam's apple he finally pops the question: "So who is it you want that Suade's holding?"

"A child. Little girl."

"Kid's with her mother?"

"We think so."

"I could set up on her. Suade," he says. "Do some surveillance.

There's an outside chance she might lead us ..."

"No. Not yet. From everything I've heard she's been surveilled by the best."

"The FBI?" I look at him. "You've heard the same thing?"

"According to her, anyway. She takes delight in advertising the tact.

Like a badge of honor. She's talked about it to the press. Claims they camp outside her door morning, noon, and night. Public enemy number one.

But she's too smart. She's snookered 'em."

"You don't believe it?"

"I don't know. All I know is they've never hauled her in for questioning. Never even interviewed her."

"Sounds like you have sources?"

"Some people talk," he says.

"FBI?" He's not saying.

"If you have contacts like that, it could be helpful."

"How's that?"

"There's another facet to the case." I tell him about Jessica, and the fact that she apparently cut some deal with the feds for a reduced sentence on state time. "She's the mother in hiding," I tell him. "I'm retained by the child's grandfather. Jessica's dad. He had legal custody at the time the kid disappeared."

"What's the child's name?"

"Amanda Hale."

"Mother go by the same surname?" I nod.

He makes a note.

"Maybe your sources could enlighten us as to the specifics of the deal the feds cut with Jessica?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"It could provide some leads. Her arrest was drug related. She may be running in those circles again, going places, seeing people." Murphy smiles. A widening of the commercial horizon. The old revolving retainer. He makes a few more notes, the fact that it was probably heroin or cocaine she was carrying across the Mexican border.

"Left to her own devices, she shouldn't be too hard to find," says Murphy.

"That's what I'm afraid of." He lifts a questioning eyebrow.

"That she may not have been left to her own devices."

"Suade?"

"Her connections will no doubt make Jessica and the child a lot harder to find. If her group's providing cover, moving them around.

Possibly down in Mexico. They may have helped in the abduction, but we don't have any hard evidence. Anything you could turn up in that connection would be helpful."

"What's Suade's interest in all of this?"

"Self-proclaimed do-gooder with a warped sense of justice," I tell him.

"No, I mean why did she take this particular kid? Mother's a loser. Done time. What's in it for her?"

"Publicity. Jessica's father gets her press."

"How?"

"Read the papers. Next few days. Suade's adding to her scrapbook," I tell him.

"Is he a politician? Some celebrity?"

"In his own way. Whatever you do, don't go near Suade. I've already met with her. It's a waste of time and may cause more problems.

It may be difficult for me to move freely for a while. If the press bites, I may be emitting a tail of reporters like a comet." He laughs.

"I understand. How old is the drug case involving the daughter?"

"Two, two and a half years," I tell him.

"Pretty cold trail."

"It's why we should just take it in little pieces." Rather than waste his time and Jonah's money drilling holes that are likely to come up dry, I want to use Murphy where he might do some good; with his federal sources.

"I'm told the feds pitched her to the state for prosecution on the Mexican drug thing. Made a deal for a lighter sentence and easier time.

But it was never clear why." He looks up from his notepad. "And you wanna know what she had that they wanted?" Murphy's looks are misleading. He's a quick study.

"That. And whether she gave it to them. If you can find out.

Without attracting too much attention. Or giving anything up."

"Like what?"

"Like my identity. The last thing I need are FBI agents visiting my office. It tends to make clients nervous. Like the IRS doing house calls with your accountant."

"Your name will not pass my lips," he says. "What if I stumble over her?

This Jessica. It could happen. They might have a lead on her"

"Listen, as far as I'm concerned, they can arrest her. I'd give 'em a big kiss. It would solve all my problems." If Jessica were taken we could enforce the custody order, get the child back, and deal with Suade after the fact.

"And if I do find her, this Jessica?"

"Don't approach her. Keep her under surveillance and call me immediately."

"You make it sound like she's dangerous." He has a look as if this could be a surcharge.

"No, I don't think so. Just very skittish. She wouldn't be easy to find a second time."

"I see."

"If you find her, call me." I give him my card. "If I'm not there, leave an urgent message on voice mail and they'll page me immediately, night or day."

it was after six by the Time i Finished at the office, some paperwork that had stacked up, and phone calls to return.

The sun had dipped behind the giant palms surrounding the Del Coronado so that it looked like a blinding orange beach ball tethered on the horizon.

Traffic heading home had thickened in both directions on Orange Avenue.

I took some back streets home, a five-minute drive.

The sitter had picked up Sarah, and her car was still parked out front as I swung into the driveway. My daughter is eleven, but I am not yet ready to turn her into a latchkey kid. I half expected to see Susan's blue Ford parked there too, but it wasn't. I wondered if she'd finished up with Jonah.

Before I could get the car door open, Sarah was bounding down the front steps and toward the car, the sitter behind her, purse in hand.

"You're home early." She greets me with a big smile and a hug, soft cheek against the stubble of my afternoon beard.

"Thought maybe we could take in a show tonight."

"Really?" Her eyes light up.

"It is Friday." She's jumping up and down, crying yippees.

"What would you like to see?" I ask.

"Oh, I don't know. There's supposed to be a very funny movie at the mall." Sarah is still heavily into slapstick. I am left to wonder when this phase passes, and at times shudder to think what may follow. I relish the dreams of childhood that in these moments seem to reside in the sparkle other eyes. It seems that each age is a new adventure, one in which I have often thought I would like to freeze her, only to be enchanted by the next as she grows up. I have friends who tell me they would not trade places, the terrors of a teenage daughter still ahead of me. I suppose ignorance is bliss. Take each day at a time.

"Why don't you look at the paper while I change?" I tell her.

"Are you going to ask Susan?"

"I don't know. Do you want me to?"

"It's up to you."

"I thought tonight maybe just you and me." Sarah smiles, dimples in the cheeks and spaces between the teeth. A date with Dad.

I grab the newspaper, an afternoon throwaway, and the mail from the box in front of the house, and thumb through the stack of mostly bills.

Peggie Connelly is on the front step waiting for me. Twenty-seven going on fifty, Peggie is a graduate student in early-childhood development at the university, someone Susan put me onto. She sits for a couple of families during the week and picks Sarah up after school for pocket change while she works on her studies. Peggie is the closest thing Sarah has to a surrogate mother. They spend the afternoons together, sharing quality time, something that I don't often give her.

"See you on Monday, same time?"

"You bet. You'll pick her up." She nods, smiles, and heads to her car.

It takes me less than a minute to check the messages on the phone. The first is a guy trying to sell aluminum siding; the second is a message from Harry telling me to call him as soon as I get home. It sounds as if there is traffic in the background, as if Harry had to call me from a pay phone. I have told him many times to get a cellular, but Harry resists technology.

I dial his number. There's no answer.

A few minutes later I try him again. This time I leave a message on his answering machine.

"It's Paul. I got your message. Sorry I missed you. Should be home about ten o'clock tonight. Taking Sarah to see a flick at the mall. Wish you could join us." I laugh. "I'll call you when I get home." Then I hang up.

Ten minutes later I'm changed, polo shirt, slacks, and loafers.

Sarah comes into my room with the newspaper in her hand. "I thought we could do the mall, have dinner there. Catch the movie at the cineplex."

"You did, did you?" "You said we could get dinner out."

"Cheese pizza and Coke, my favorites." Sarah smiles and gives me one of those looks. Well, you promised.

"How was school?"

"Good."

"What did you do today?" I run a comb through my hair as I stand in front of the vanity mirror and look at Sarah in the reflection. She's lying on the bed, chin propped on elbowed hands.

"Oh, nothing." Like pulling teeth. "You spent six hours there. You must have done something."

"Had a math test."

"How did you do?"

"Got an A." She says this matter-of-factly, no big deal. A year ago she was drawing down B's until I started taking some time with her, teaching her not so much the elements of mathematics, but that she had a brain and that if she applied it she could succeed.

"Well, that's good." Sarah has finally reached that plateau where she has discovered the correlation between studying and grades, that there is a reward for work. Some kids never do. Others just assume that they don't have it, can't compete. They sell themselves short, give up before they have a chance.

I curl the comb so that my hair does a teardrop over my forehead, throwback to the fifties. I turn and model it for her. She laughs. Sarah is always an easy touch when it comes to comics.

"It's you," she says.

I comb it back into shape.

"Let's get out of here before the phone rings," she says.

"You got it." We're out the door. the food Fair is not my idea of Fine Dining. my Father would never have done this. He was of an age before fast food.

But tonight Sarah and I sit at a table under the sprawling mall roof, next to a hundred other parents and kids, cutting cheese pizza with plastic knives. Sarah likes hers with nothing on it, just string cheese that looks like white rubber and doesn't taste much better. No green stuff. Not even parsley. The green stuff is poison.

Dinner takes all of ten minutes. We spend the next twenty negotiating the line for tickets, forking over our savings to gain admittance and going into deep debt for popcorn. We sit through an hour of trailers, enough close-up action to give you motion sickness, with sound effects delivered at a level to raise the dead. For the price, they should hand out EARPLUGS and eyepatches.

Finally, we settle into fantasy. Sarah's chomping on popcorn. I slump down, head against the back of the seat, my knees against the seat in front of me. I'm as engrossed as Sarah by the time I feel a hand on my shoulder. I straighten up in my seat, and suddenly there's the hot breath of a whisper next to my ear. "Paul." I turn. It's Harry.

"Please, mister. I'm trying to watch the movie." The woman behind me is giving Harry irritated looks.

He's standing in front of her, probably on her toes, pressed between the row of seats.

"Excuse me, madam. This is an emergency."

"Why don't you take it outside?"

"I'm trying." Harry appears breathless. "We've gotta talk." He motions me outside.

Sarah gives me a look, rolls her eyes, as if she knew it was too good to be true.

I pat her knee. "Relax, sweetie. I'll be right back."

"Sure." I step over people, making my way to the aisle, and follow Harry toward the exit. Outside the door, he doesn't stop but continues walking, heading toward the lobby.

"Why can't we talk here?"

"Cause I'm not alone. We've got a problem. The cops found Suade. A few hours ago," says Harry.

"What are you talking about?"

"She's dead," says Harry.

"What? How?"

"Don't know the details. But I'd be willing to bet it wasn't a heart attack," says Harry.

"When did it happen?"

"I don't know. Late this afternoon. Early this evening. They're not sure. They found the body a few hours ago. But it gets worse."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know where Jonah is."

"He was with you. At Susan's office."

"I'm afraid not. It's why I tried to call you at the house. Jonah stormed out of McKav's office a few minutes after we got there.