The Client (41 page)

She was counting the people in the courtroom during the hearing. “Was it Fink?”

“I doubt it. Fink would have nothing to gain by leaking this, and the risks are too great. It has to be someone who’s not too bright.”

“That’s why I said Fink.”

“Good point, but I doubt it was a lawyer. I plan to issue a subpoena for Mr. Moeller to appear in my court at noon today. I’ll demand he give me his source, or I’ll throw him in jail for contempt.”

“Wonderful idea.”

“It shouldn’t take long. We’ll have Mark’s little hearing afterward. Okay?”

“Sure, Harry. Listen, there’s something you should know. It’s been a long night.”

“I’m listening,” he said. Reggie gave him the quick version of the bugging of her office, with particular emphasis on Bono and Pirini and the fact they had not been found.

“Good Lord,” he said. “These people are crazy.”

“And dangerous.”

“Are you scared?”

“Of course I’m scared. I’ve been violated, Harry, and it’s frightening to know they’ve been watching.”

There was a long pause on the other end. “Reggie, I’m not going to release Mark under any circumstances, not today anyway. Let’s see what happens over the weekend. He’s much safer where he is.”

“I agree.”

“Have you talked to his mother?”

“Yesterday. She was lukewarm on the idea of witness protection. It might take some time. Poor thing is nothing but ragged nerves.”

“Work on her. Can she be present in court today? I’d like to see her.”

“I’ll try.”

“See you at noon.”

She poured another cup of coffee and returned to the balcony. Axle slept under the rocker. The first light of dawn crept through the trees. She held the warm mug with both hands and tucked her bare feet under the heavy bathrobe. She sniffed the aroma and thought about how much she despised the press. So now the world would know about the hearing. So much for confidentiality. Her little client was suddenly more vulnerable. It was obvious now, the fact that he knew
something he shouldn’t know. If not, why wouldn’t he simply have talked when the judge instructed him to?

This game was growing more dangerous by the hour. And she, Reggie Love, Attorney and Counselor-at-Law, was supposed to have all the answers and dispense perfect advice. Mark would look at her with those scared blue eyes, and ask what to do next. How the hell was she supposed to know?

They were after her too.

DOREEN WOKE MARK EARLY. SHE’D FIXED BLUEBERRY MUFFINS for him, and she nibbled on one and watched him with great concern. Mark sat in a chair, holding a muffin but not eating it, just staring blankly at the floor. He slowly raised the muffin to his mouth, took a tiny bite, then lowered it to his lap. Doreen watched every move.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” she asked him.

Mark nodded slowly. “Oh, I’m fine,” he said in a hollow, hoarse voice.

Doreen patted his knee, then his shoulder. Her eyes were narrow and she was very troubled. “Well, I’ll be around all day,” she said as she stood and walked to the door. “And I’ll be checking on you.”

Mark ignored her, and took another small bite of his muffin. The door slammed and clicked, and suddenly he crammed the rest of it in his mouth and reached for another.

He turned on the television, but with no cable he was forced to watch Bryant Gumbel. No cartoons. No old movies. Just Willard in a hat eating corn on the cob and sweet potato sticks.

Doreen returned twenty minutes later. The keys
jangled outside, the lock popped, and the door opened. “Mark, come with me,” she said. “You have a visitor.”

He was suddenly still again, detached, lost in another world. He moved slowly. “Who?” he said in that voice.

“Your lawyer.”

He stood and followed her into the hallway. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, squatting in front of him. He nodded slowly, and they walked to the stairs.

Reggie was waiting in a small conference room one floor below. She and Doreen exchanged pleasantries, old acquaintances, and the door was locked. They sat on opposite sides of a small round table.

“Are we buddies?” she asked with a smile.

“Yeah. I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Mark. Believe me, I understand. Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah. Much better than at the hospital.”

“Doreen says she’s worried about you.”

“I’m fine. I’m much better off than Doreen.”

“Good.” Reggie pulled a newspaper from her briefcase and placed the front page on the table. He read it very slowly.

“You’ve made the front page three days in a row,” she said, trying to coax a smile.

“It’s getting old. I thought the hearing was private.”

“Supposed to be. Judge Roosevelt called me early this morning. He’s very upset about the story. He plans to bring in the reporter and grill him about it.”

“It’s too late for that, Reggie. The story is right here in print. Everybody sees it. It’s pretty obvious I’m the kid who knows too much.”

“Right.” She waited as he read it again and studied the pictures of himself.

“Have you talked to your mother?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am. Yesterday afternoon around five. She sounded tired.”

“She is. I saw her before you called, and she’s hanging in there. Ricky had a bad day.”

“Yeah. Thanks to those stupid cops. Let’s sue them.”

“Maybe later. We need to talk about something. After you left the courtroom yesterday, Judge Roosevelt talked to the lawyers and the FBI. He wants you, your mother, and Ricky placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program. He thinks it’s the best way to protect you, and I tend to agree.”

“What is it?”

“The FBI moves you to a new location, a very secret one, far away from here, and you have new names, new schools, new everything. Your mother has a new job, one that pays a lot more than six dollars an hour. After a few years there, they might move you again, just to be safe. They’ll place Ricky in a much better hospital until he’s better. Government pays for everything, of course.”

“Do I get a new bike?”

“Sure.”

“Just kidding. I saw this once in a movie. A Mafia movie. This informant ratted on the Mafia, and the FBI helped him vanish. He had plastic surgery. They found him a new wife, you know, the works. Sent him off to Brazil or someplace.”

“What happened?”

“It took them about a year to find him. They killed his wife too.”

“It was just a movie, Mark. You really have no choice. It’s the safest thing to do.”

“Of course, I have to tell them everything before they do all these wonderful things for us.”

“That’s part of the deal.”

“The Mafia never forgets, Reggie.”

“You’ve watched too many movies, Mark.”

“Maybe so. But has the FBI ever lost a witness in this program?”

The answer was yes, but she couldn’t cite a specific example. “I don’t know, but we’ll meet with them and you can ask all the questions you want.”

“What if I don’t want to meet with them? What if I want to stay in my little cell here until I’m twenty years old and Judge Roosevelt finally dies? Then can I get out?”

“Fine. What about your mother and Ricky? What happens to them when he’s released from the hospital and they have no place to go?”

“They can move in with me. Doreen’ll take care of us.”

Damn, he was quick for an eleven-year-old. She paused for a moment and smiled at him. He glared at her.

“Listen, Mark, do you trust me?”

“Yes, Reggie. I do trust you. You’re the only person in the world I trust right now. So please help me.”

“There’s no easy way out, okay.”

“I know that.”

“Your safety is my only concern. The safety of you and your family. Judge Roosevelt feels the same way. Now, it’ll take a few days to work out the details of the witness program. The judge instructed the FBI
yesterday to start working on it immediately, and I think it’s the best thing to do.”

“Did you discuss it with my mother?”

“Yes. She wants to talk about it some more. I think she liked the idea.”

“But how do you know it’ll work, Reggie? Is it totally safe?”

“Nothing is totally safe, Mark. There are no guarantees.”

“Wonderful. Maybe they’ll find us, maybe they won’t. That’ll make life exciting, won’t it.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Sure. It’s very simple. We collect the insurance money from the trailer. We find another one, and we move into it. I keep my mouth shut and we live happily ever after. I don’t really care if they ever find this body, Reggie. I just don’t care.”

“I’m sorry, Mark, but that can’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because you happen to be very unlucky. You have some important information, and you’ll be in trouble until you give it up.”

“And then I could be dead.”

“I don’t think so, Mark.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. There was a slight bruise high on his left cheek, and it was turning brown. This was Friday. He’d been slapped by Clifford on Monday, and though it seemed like weeks ago the bruise reminded her that things were happening much too fast. The poor kid still bore the wounds of the attack.

“Where would we go?” he asked softly, his eyes still closed.

“Far away. Mr. Lewis with the FBI mentioned a
children’s psychiatric hospital in Portland that’s supposed to be one of the best. They’ll place Ricky in it with the best of everything.”

“Can’t they follow us?”

“The FBI can handle it.”

He stared at her. “Why do you suddenly trust the FBI?”

“Because there’s no one else to trust.”

“How long will all this take?”

“There are two problems. The first is the paperwork and details. Mr. Lewis said it could be done within a week. The second is Ricky. It might be a few days before Dr. Greenway will allow him to be moved.”

“So I’m in jail for another week?”

“Looks like it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Reggie. I can handle this place. In fact, I could stay here for a long time if they’d leave me alone.”

“They’re not going to leave you alone.”

“I need to talk to my mother.”

“She might be at the hearing today. Judge Roosevelt wants her there. I suspect he’ll have a meeting, off the record, with the FBI people and discuss the witness protection program.”

“If I’m gonna stay in jail, why have the hearing?”

“In contempt matters, the judge is required to bring you back into court periodically to allow you to purge yourself of contempt, in other words, to do what he wants you to do.”

“The law stinks, Reggie. It’s silly, isn’t it?”

“Oftentimes, yes.”

“I had a wild thought last night as I was trying to go to sleep. I thought—what if the body is not where
Clifford said it is? What if Clifford was just crazy and talking out of his head? Have you thought about that, Reggie?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“What if all this is a big joke?”

“We can’t take that chance, Mark.”

He rubbed his eyes and slid his chair back. He began walking around the small room, suddenly very nervous. “So we just pack up and leave our lives behind, right? That’s easy for you to say, Reggie. You’re not the one who’ll have the nightmares. You’ll go on like nothing ever happened. You and Clint. Momma Love. Nice little law office. Lots of clients. But not us. We’ll live in fear for the rest of our lives.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you don’t know, Reggie. It’s easy to sit here and say everything’ll be fine. Your neck’s not on the line.”

“You have no choice, Mark.”

“Yes I do. I could lie.”

IT WAS JUST A MOTION FOR A CONTINUANCE, NORMALLY A rather boring and routine legal skirmish, but nothing was boring when Barry the Blade Muldanno was the defendant and Willis Upchurch was the mouthpiece. Throw in the enormous ego of the Reverend Roy Foltrigg and the press manipulation skills of Wally Boxx, and this innocuous little hearing for a continuance took on the air of an execution. The courtroom of the Honorable James Lamond was crowded with the curious, the press, and a small army of jealous lawyers who had more important things to do but just happened to be in the neighborhood. They milled about and spoke in
grave tones while keeping anxious eyes on the media. Cameras and reporters attract lawyers like blood attracts sharks.

Beyond the railing that separated the players from the spectators, Foltrigg stood in the center of a tight circle of his assistants and whispered, frowning as if they were planning an invasion. He was decked out in his Sunday best—dark three-piece suit, white shirt, red-and-blue silk tie, hair perfect, shoes shined to a glow. He faced the audience, but of course was much too preoccupied to notice anyone. Across the way, Muldanno sat with his back to the gaggle of onlookers and pretended to ignore everyone. He was dressed in black. The ponytail was perfect and arched down to the bottom of his collar. Willis Upchurch sat on the edge of the defense table, also facing the press while engaging himself in a highly animated conversation with a paralegal. If it was humanly possible, Upchurch loved the attention more than Foltrigg.

Muldanno did not yet know of the arrest of Jack Nance eight hours earlier in Memphis. He did not know Cal Sisson had spilled his guts. He had not heard from either Bono or Pirini, and he had sent Gronke back to Memphis that morning in complete ignorance of the night’s events.

Foltrigg, on the other hand, was feeling quite smug. Based on the taped conversation gathered from the salt shaker, he would obtain on Monday indictments against Muldanno and Gronke for obstruction of justice. Convictions would be easy. He had them in the bag. He had Muldanno facing five years.

But Roy didn’t have the body. And trying Barry the Blade on obstruction charges would not generate anywhere near the publicity of a nasty murder trial
complete with color glossies of the decomposed corpse and pathologists’ reports about bullet entries and trajectories and exits. Such a trial would last for weeks, and Roy would shine on the evening news every night. He could just see it.

He’d sent Fink back to Memphis early that morning with the grand jury subpoenas for the kid and his lawyer. That should liven things up a bit. He should have the kid talking by Monday afternoon, and maybe, with just a little luck, he’d have the remains of Boyette by Monday night. This thought had kept him at the office until three in the morning. He strutted to the clerk’s desk for nothing in particular, then strutted back, glaring at Muldanno, who ignored him.