The Touch of Treason (10 page)

Now, Francine, leaning her head on her hand, said, “Fuller was the only one of my father’s clients I wish he’d taken me to meet. In his—I don’t suppose you’ve read any of his books?”

He was damned if he’d go on the defensive.

“I’m sorry,” Francine said. “No reason for you to have. His great talent is—was.” She stopped a moment only, “Prognosticating Soviet moves with miraculous accuracy.”

“Astrology?” There he went.

“You study judges. He studied Soviet leaders. He knew how each one’s mind works. You do the same thing except…”

“I get punks off. He saved the world.”

“What did my father want?”

“Me.”

“To get some punk off or save the world?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take me with you.”

“You’re crazy. Besides, I turned him down.”

Francine threw his robe around herself and went to the phone to call her father.

“He’s not home,” Thomassy yelled after her. “Please don’t mix in my business.”

“What goes on in the world,” Francine shouted at him,
“is
my business, donkey.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Leona Fuller called from the back bedroom, where Detective Cooper had insisted on interviewing her in private. “Ned Widmer, please come in here.”

Leona said, “He wants to know how much insurance there was on Martin’s life.”

“Is that relevant?” Widmer asked Cooper.

“We’re trying to establish a motive for someone mixing gas in with the kerosene. Who benefits?”

“We’ve been protected for a long time,” Leona Fuller said, “but not now, and not from the police.” She turned to Cooper. “I believe there is about four hundred thousand in two or three policies, does that sound correct, Ned?”

“Approximately.”

“If you have no children,” Cooper said, turning his back to Widmer, “why so much insurance?”

“If we had children, they’d be grown. My husband took the insurance out at least thirty-five years ago. That wouldn’t be much per year if something had happened to him then and I lived till, say, now. After all those years of paying premiums, he refused to discontinue any of it. He wanted me to have a good time, he said. He also wanted there to be enough for me to get help in organizing his leftovers.”

Widmer intervened. “She means his manuscripts, letters, and so forth. It could take several years to get them all in order for turning over to the university. Did you find that any of the individuals you interviewed upstairs had anything resembling a motive?”

Cooper shook his head.

“Then perhaps we can all be left in peace now?”

“Just as soon as I put the cuffs on one of the ones upstairs and take him to the lock-up.”

“Which one? Why?”

Cooper glanced at his notepad. “Edward Porter. Possession of two ounces of marijuana. We found it in his room.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Mrs. Fuller, “I told him to be careful about that tobacco of his.”

“Maybe you better advise your client,” Cooper said, “that if she knew about his use—that stuff ain’t tobacco—in her house and didn’t inform the police, she could be charged. I don’t want to have to charge the bereaved.”

After Cooper left the room, Widmer tried to calm Leona. He patted her good hand. She sat, shaking her head, as if, under this crude barrage, her loss was first coming home.

Cooper stuck his head in the door. “Oh, Mrs. Fuller, did the Porter kid cut the lawn for you?”

“He’s not a kid. Yes, he kindly did the lawn from time to time since our gardener moved away. He’s a sweet and helpful young man.”

“He had access to the five-gallon can of gas in the garage?” Cooper asked.

Leona glanced at Widmer. “Anyone could have access. We didn’t lock the garage door ever.”

Widmer hurried upstairs in time to see Cooper formally charge Edward Porter with possession.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ed said.

Cooper held the handcuffs out. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back or I’ll put them there for you.”

Ed looked at them as if they were some strange object never seen before. “No,” he repeated.

“Yes,” said the detective. He spun Ed around, and with two quick movements slipped the cuffs on and locked them with a click.

Widmer realized that for all of his years practicing the law he had never seen a man arrested before.

“I want a lawyer,” Ed said, trying in the absence of hands to shake his hair away from his eyes. “Somebody who knows how to handle these people.”

Perry and Randall were standing in the open doorway. It was to them that Widmer said, “George Thomassy is expensive and unwilling. We’ll have to think of someone else.”

“I don’t care about the expense, dammit,” Ed said. “This charge is ridiculous. They didn’t have a search warrant. I want someone who can get the charge thrown out at the arraignment.”

Widmer thought
This young man knows how the law works.

They heard the distant phone ringing, once, twice. Randall hurried to get it, returned, said to Widmer, “Ned, it’s your daughter.”

He couldn’t imagine how she knew where he was.

“I made George tell me,” she explained. “He’s willing to listen now.”

“How did you convince him?”

“I’ll go into that some other time. Here he is.”

He told Thomassy about the marijuana charge, then said, “What I’m really concerned about, George, is that this is just a pretext arrest to hold him until they can press another charge.”

“What kind of charge?”

Widmer hesitated. His purpose was to enlist George. Therefore he said, “I think they’re thinking this might possibly involve murder.”

Marijuana didn’t interest Thomassy. He got kids off all the time just to get it across to the cops to stop wasting time on victimless crime. Murder interested him if the dead man was someone whose brain interested Francine.

“Tell me where to go,” Thomassy said.

“I’ll have to find out,” Widmer replied, putting the phone down. On the way upstairs, he passed the bathroom from which the acrid smell of burning still seeped.

*

The village justice was hearing a case in which the owner of a ’79 Ford wagon was claiming under oath that this evening was the first time in his life that he had been within the precincts of the village, that he had never lent his car to a member of his family or anyone else, and he had no idea how an officer had put a ticket on his car if it had never been there.

Thomassy took Widmer into an empty room along the corridor outside the courtroom. “What’s your interest in this defendant?”

Widmer coughed politely into his fist. “I…I—”

“Don’t try to invent something, Ned. You don’t do that well.”

“The truth is I really can’t answer you at the moment. When I can, I will.”

“That’s fine, Ned. I trust you. I’ll be patient. Let’s meet the kid. We haven’t much time.”

*

The first time Thomassy had met people like Archibald Widmer was in college, white-shoe boys who kept their left hands in their laps when they ate and didn’t make jokes about it. His father used to remind him all the time that the Armenians were the first Christians. Well, these Ivy League silver spooners weren’t Christians, they were Episcopalians. Oh how his father had fought against his going to a college like that. Thomassy remembered his father saying, “Why you no go college here, boy? Why you need goddamn fancy college where rich snots make fun of you?”

“I need that kind of college, Pop, to get into a good law school.”

“Then what? You come back here or you stay down there?”

“Pop, here is nothing.”

Haig Thomassian’s eyes blazed from his leathered face. “Here is me, boy.”

“I didn’t mean that, Pop.”

“Here is Mama’s grave. What you want to be, a son who runs away from his mother’s grave, eh?”

“I’m going to school, Pop, not running.”

“Believe me, the Turks will find you down there.”

“I’m going to law school, Pop, to learn how to fight Turks.”

“You end up lawyer for gangsters.”

“No, Pop, you don’t understand.”

“I understand more in my pinky than you ever learn. You going to be lawyer for pimps, crooks, murderers.”

“I’m going to defend the innocent.”

“Innocent people stay out of trouble, don’t need damn lawyer. You going to work with junk people.”

Thomassy couldn’t bear the glimmer of tears in his father’s face. Suddenly the old man’s arms were around him, hugging hard. “You listen, George, the Turks kill the woman I loved before your mother. I didn’t make my life. The Turks made my life. I ran. Like you running now.”

“It’s not the same, Pop. I want to make it in this country. Even the teachers say the best way is to be a lawyer. Why are you so worried, why are you crying?”

“I never cry. My heart cries when God gives me one son and he wants to be defender of Turks who kill other people.”

Getting through to an old-world father held no hope, Thomassy thought. What you learn is everybody comes from a foreign country. Communicating heart to heart, mouth to soul, with anyone is like climbing Mount Ararat.

*

In three or four minutes Widmer returned to the room with Detective Cooper leading Ed Porter, his hands cuffed behind his back. The introductions were cursory, as if names didn’t matter, except that Thomassy recognized Cooper and that meant a lot to Cooper.

Thomassy said, “I don’t talk to clients with their hands behind their backs. Would you mind taking the cuffs off.”

Cooper believed most lawyers that hung around the courthouse were preening pigeons who got in the way of quick results. But Thomassy wasn’t just a mouth. He was the kind of lawyer you’d go to if you got into trouble yourself. Cooper took the cuff key from his pocket too quickly, and it dropped to the floor.

The key lay on the tile floor, the bright object of their attention. Well, Thomassy thought, if I bend and pick that key up, will Cooper think I did it because he’s too fat to bend without looking clumsy in front of a prisoner? Thomassy picked up the key and handed it to Cooper, who mumbled his thanks.

Once the cuffs were off, Thomassy said to Widmer and Cooper, “Please excuse me.”

When the door closed, Porter, rubbing his wrists, said, “Thank you. I like the way you handled that cop.”

Thomassy looked at Ed Porter. The kid, fully grown, was short. Short people were one of Thomassy’s prejudices. They made up for their shortness in too many ways that were trouble for other people. There were exceptions. The kid’s eyes had a brain behind them. The brown hair was a bit too tousled for going before a village judge who could rule on appearance as much as on evidence.

“Got a comb?” he asked Porter.

Porter nodded.

“Use it. We can’t change your clothes. We can at least go in with combed hair.”

Porter said, “We don’t want to disappoint the judge’s bourgeois expectations.”

“Don’t use a word like bourgeois if the judge asks you any questions in there. I want you to understand two things. You may be an academic genius, I know how a courtroom works. What we’re going into is a courtroom. Second, you haven’t hired me yet. I agreed to handle this arraignment as a favor to a friend. If this goes any further than tonight, we have to talk retainer. Where will you get it?”

“I’ll get it. I’ve got a stipend from Columbia.”

“That can’t run to much.”

“Four thousand a year.”

“That won’t get you through the first day of a trial with all the preparatory costs.”

“I told you I can handle the retainer.”

“Let’s not take any more time over that now. You’ll pay for whatever this arraignment costs. Then we’ll talk.”

“I just wanted to assure you,” Porter said, “that I have adequate resources.”

Not many of Thomassy’s clients used expressions like “adequate resources.” He remembered one of the first things that struck him about Francine Widmer when he took her case on was her vocabulary. Her face, her body, and her vocabulary.

Porter said, “They said you were very good at this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Defending the innocent.”

“They told me Cooper saw two ounces of grass lying around on your night table.”

“Detective Cooper lied,” Porter said.

“You didn’t have any grass?”

“It was in the night-table drawer.”

“Who opened the drawer, you or the cop?”

“I’m not crazy. The cop opened everything—the closets, the drawers—he even managed to get his fat ass down on the floor and look under the bed.”

“He find anything under the bed?”

“Dust, presumably.”

Thomassy felt the first small run of adrenaline. He hadn’t anticipated liking anything about this unscheduled evening.