Dangerous Women

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  “In my line of work we call them defense attorneys and judges,” Joey said.

  “Is that what you do in L.A. when you’re not at the beach or hanging around the house with the cats?” Frank asked. “Practice law?”

  “I don’t need to practice it all that much,” Joey said. “I pretty much have cornered all I need to know.”

  “Which means you’re good,” he said.

  “Which means I’m very good,” Joey said.

  “Which is bad news for the bad guys, I guess,” Frank said, downing the last row of suds from his beer.

  “Not if they cover their tracks,” Joey said, her voice calm and matter-of-fact. “But most of them don’t, which is how I get to meet them in the first place. Unless they commit the perfect crime, the absolute perfect crime, they’ll get to stare at me talking about them in a courtroom.”

  “You ever see one?” Frank asked. “A perfect crime?”

  “I’ve heard about a few,” Joey said. She took a long drink of her bourbon, brushing the last drop off her lower lip with her tongue, and took a slow and quiet deep breath. “But I’ve seen only one.”

  “Was it one of yours?”

  Joey shook her head. “I was still in law school,” she said.

  “My first year in. A young girl was found dead in her bedroom. Her apartment was on the second floor of a five-story walk-up. No breakin, not from the front door or from any of the windows. Nothing stolen, nothing missing, no prints, no DNA, no bullet casings. Just a dead girl and three bullets.”

  “And you think that’s what made it perfect?” Frank asked, sitting up and leaning closer toward Joey. “You don’t need to be a genius to know not to leave behind any prints, DNA or casings. Anybody who watches too many cop shows or reads too many legal thrillers can pick that up.”

  “You’re right,” Joey said. “What made it perfect was that he was never caught.”

  “Cops give a case as little or as much time as they think a case deserves,” Frank said. “They’re like car salesmen. They’re not looking to sell every car on the lot, just as many as allows them to keep their job.”

  “Sounds like you’ve given this a lot of thought,” Joey said.

  “Not really,” Frank said. “I’m just one of those people who watches too many cop shows and reads too many legal thrillers.”

  “I managed to get ahold of her case file,” Joey said. “The cops did a pretty thorough job but they didn’t have much to work with. The murder happened in the middle of the day, when most of the other tenants were out, either at work, at school, in a gym or shopping. She hadn’t been living in the apartment very long, so didn’t have many friends in the building.”

  “How’d he get in?” Frank asked. “Or I should ask, how do they think he got in?”

  “You don’t have to break in to get in,” Joey said. “She might have known him, which I doubt. She might have let him in because he forced her to, but I don’t think that’s the case, either.”

  “And what does the Sherlock Holmes of Los Angeles think happened?” Frank asked, his smile colder now, his eyes locked onto Joey’s face.

  “I think he knew her routine,” Joey said. “What time she woke up. What time she went for her run and how long she ran. What her class schedule was and which buildings they were in. He studied her. He made it a point to get to know her, without ever having to meet her.”

  “If he did all that, he must have had a reason,” Frank said. “Or been given one by somebody else.”

  “Reasons are always simple enough to find,” Joey said. “Once you figure out the best place to look.”

  “And what did you get?” Frank asked. “Once you figured out where to look?”

  “That somebody paid money to have her killed,” Joey said, her fingers stroking at the sides of her water glass.

  “If you dug deep enough to know that, then you know why he did it,” Frank said. “What’d you find, personal or business?”

  Joey finished her water and slid the empty glass toward Frank. “I’m always thirsty to begin with,” she said. “Talking makes me even more so. You want another go-around? It’s my treat.”

  “You’re the one telling the story,” he said, standing and turning toward the bar. “I’ll supply the refreshments.”

  She watched him lean on the wood bar and wait while the bartender reached down for a fresh beer and then filled two empty glasses, one with bourbon and the other with ice and water. “She likes lemon in her water,” she heard Frank say.

  “And I’d like to get the hell home,” the bartender said, dropping three lemon twists into the water glass. “This is last call. You want more than what I just gave you, order it now. I close up in twenty minutes.”

  “What’s your rush?” Frank asked. “No plane is gonna pull outta here until the morning, if then.”

  “But my car is,” the bartender said. “In twenty minutes.”

  Frank rested the glasses on the table. “Used to be a bartender was better than a shrink,” he said. “Cared more or at least listened as if he did. I guess we found one that missed that part of bartending class.”

  “Maybe he’s one of the lucky ones,” Joey said. “Maybe he’s got somebody somewhere waiting and worried.”

  Frank turned to look at the bartender, cradling the beer in both hands. “I don’t think so,” he said. “My guess is you and me are as close to company as he’s gonna have tonight.”

  “Some people learn to live without company,” Joey said. “Or family. Like you.”

  “It does help keep it all simple,” Frank said, looking back at her, resting the beer on the edge of the table. “Things can get complicated real fast, pretty much for no reason, the second you let other people cross your radar.”

  “It doesn’t bother you living the way you do?” Joey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “How is it you think I live?”

  “You travel from city to city and from job to job,” Joey said with an air of confidence. “The work pays pretty well, judging by the clothes you’re wearing and the first-class ticket in your shirt pocket.”

  “If you’re going to bother to put in the time on anything,” Frank said, “make sure it at least pays you for the trouble.”

  “But yours is not a job for anyone,” Joey said. “At least that’s my guess.”

  “Few are,” Frank said.

  “But it must have its rewards,” Joey said. “All good jobs do.”

  “What are yours?” Frank asked. “What is it about being a lawyer that makes you want to leave your bed in the morning?”

  “That I can make it stop,” Joey said. “If only just for a lucky lew.

  “Make what stop?”

  “The evil at the other end of the table,” Joey said. “And the pain felt by the innocent ones who sit behind me in the courtroom every day on every case. Their faces change with every trial, but they all look the same to me. I don’t even need to see them to know what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, all their regrets, all their wasted tears.”

  “Putting a guy in a cell makes them feel all better?” Frank asked.

  “Not really,” Joey said. “But I think it doesn’t make the hurt they feel at losing someone they love get any worse to live with. A crime committed against one is always a memory shared by many.”

  “Spoken more like a victim than a lawyer,” Frank said.

  “Sometimes you can be both,” Joey said.

  “Do you ever think about the guy at that other end of the table?” Frank asked. “The one you seem so eager to put away?”

  “Every day,” Joey said. “The ones I helped convict and the ones that I couldn’t and the one I never had a chance to bring to trial.”

  “What do you see when you look over there?” he asked. “Do you ever take the time to look beyond the hard eyes, the prison gym body and the hands resting flat on the wood table?”

  “And if I did?” Joey said. “What is it I’d see?”

  “Dep
ends on who it is and what you’re looking for,” Frank said. “If you go in looking for pity, you’ll get that soon enough. Every guy in an orange jumpsuit has a sad story he’s eager to tell or sell. But if you go in search of the reasons a guy ends up sitting next to a lawyer he can’t afford, then you might find something more than a sad story at the other end.”

  “Will it be enough to make me forget the victim?” Joey asked. “Or forgive what was done?”

  “Not if you don’t want to,” Frank said.

  “Aren’t all those stories pretty much the same?” Joey asked. “Abusive childhood, parents not around, or on drugs if they are, crime the only door left open to them. Have I left anything out?”

  “That’s true nine out of ten times,” Frank said.

  “What is it that one other time?”

  “It’s a good cover for a guy who came from a solid home and a family that cared,” Frank said. “He went to the best school in his area, played Little League baseball and flag football and sat next to his mother every Sunday at church service. He had good grades and a part-time job after school that kept him in comic books and trading cards.”

  “Sounds ideal,” Joey said, holding her drink close to her face, elbow on the side of the table.

  “It’s the American way of life,” Frank said. “But only if you judge it by what you see on the surface. You don’t want to take it any lower than that.”

  “And if you do?” Joey asked. “What happens then?”

  “Then you might see a set of pictures you won’t like,” Frank said. “You see a mother wearing too much makeup to a PTA meeting to cover the heavy drinking from the night before. You see a father who keeps odd hours and travels long distances on business trips that no one talks about. You see three loaded handguns kept in the middle drawer of his bedroom bureau and bags filled with neatly folded bills hidden in the attic under a small mountain of winter quilts.”

  “And how does any of that lead you to where you take someone else’s life and not care about it?” Joey asked.

  “That kind of living makes you hard,” Frank said. “Teaches you to keep buried anything that would even come close to where you’d care about anybody. Before your skin has a chance lo clear up, you’ve already learned that people are never who they say they are and that even the most innocent person walking around is hiding some level of guilt underneath. In plain English, it makes it very easy not to care. About anything or about anybody.”

  “That include the victims that are left behind?” Joey asked.

  “Especially them,” Frank said. “They have to stay the way they were always meant to stay. Invisible. In fact, if you’re really on your game, they disappear the second the job’s done and they’re outta your line of sight. And their name becomes as easy for you to forget as yesterday’s weather. They become, out there on those streets, what the defendant becomes to somebody like you inside a courtroom. A face you try to put away and forget.”

  Joey drank down half the bourbon in one hard gulp, her right hand twitching slightly, unnerved for the first time since she sat down. It was so much easier for her to keep her emotions in check inside the courtroom. There, she was the one who held the controls, or at least she felt enough like she did. She asked the questions and expected to get the answers she wanted and needed to hear. But it was so much different inside the confines of a warm and stuffy bar, miles removed from any halls of justice. The hard-edged man across the table from her was a better-equipped foe than any that she had come across in all her years as a trial lawyer. He was quick to sense her raw points and even quicker to pounce on them. And more than anything else, he took pleasure from their give and take, fearless in the face of the questions and the answers they required.

  Joey took another sip from her drink, rested the glass back on the table and rubbed the strain at the base of her neck. She looked up at Frank and caught him staring at her. “I guess this is what happens when you get snowed in,” she said, looking to bring the mood up a notch, eager to once again wrest control of the conversation.

  “Bad weather and cold beer,” Frank said, holding up his close-to-empty bottle. “A lethal combination.”

  “You would have made a good lawyer,” Joey told him.

  “You couldn’t have figured that from the way I dress,” he said. “I must have done something foolish to give you that idea.”

  “You argue your case well,” she said. “Make your points, but steer clear of any emotion. You keep it all in check. It’s often the only way to walk away with a win.”

  “That’s not true just of lawyers,” Frank said. “It pretty much fits about any profession I can think of, good ones and bad. There are some lines of work where showing your emotions, letting your heart beat your brain to your mouth, can kill you faster than a stray bullet.”

  “But only the best can function at that high a level,” Joey said, feeling like she was back on her offensive game, one leg crossed casually over the other. “And even the best lose that edge, even for just a minute. And that’s when the price that’s paid is always a steep one.”

  “If you’re the best, I mean really are the best, not just think it or say it, then no matter what else you do you can’t ever afford to lose,” Frank said. “Not ever. In some lines of work, one loss is all you get.”

  “But it happens,” Joey said. “No matter how much we plan, how much we prepare, no matter how ready we think we are, no matter how good we may be. It happens.”

  “Maybe in a courtroom or a boxing ring,” Frank said. “Luck can sneak its way up on you inside those places. But in most of her lines, you can’t ever make room for either mistakes or luck.”

  “Unless the luck is good,” Joey said, giving off a warm smile, once again at ease, working within her self-imposed comfort zone.

  “I never count on luck,” Frank said, index finger stabbing the edge of the table for emphasis. “It’s not a risk worth the taking.”

  “What about this?” Joey asked. “You and me, sitting here, talking to each other. You take away the storm and two canceled flights and none of that ever happens. That sounds like luck. At least to me.”

  “Not luck,” Frank said, shaking his head, managing a weak smile. “Destiny.”

  “That we would meet?” she asked.

  “That you would find me,” Frank said, his eyes telling her that he knew who she was even before she sat down.

  Joey sat back in her chair, looked away from Frank and out toward the storm, its anger running now at full vent. “I always knew I would,” she whispered, but in words loud enough for him to hear. “I never figured on not finding you.”

  “So did I,” Frank said, staring at her, looking past the low glare of the table lamp. “I always knew you were out there, looking, asking questions, never more than one, two steps behind me.”

  Joey looked back at Frank and pushed aside her water glass. “You didn’t make it easy,” she said. “Every time I thought I was close, you would vanish, pop up again a few months later in some other city, leaving behind another trail to be followed.”

  “Part of what I do involves not getting caught,” Frank said with a slight shrug. “Another part is knowing who it is that’s out there looking for me.”

  “How long have you known?” she asked. “About me?”

  Frank downed the remainder of his beer and laughed, low and quiet, his face barely creased. “Probably long before you knew about me,” he said. “Number one in your class, both high school and college. Went through law school like flames through an old barn. Passed up the big firms and the bigger dollars, wanted no part of that world. It wasn’t what you were about and wouldn’t lead you to where you needed to go. Making partner didn’t matter to you. Getting convictions was what you were chasing and you did get plenty of those.”

  “You could have brought it all to an end,” she said. “Could have eased me out of your picture. Wouldn’t have taken you much.”

  “There was no profit in it,” Frank said. “
And that made it not worth doing.”

  “And what was the profit in killing my sister?” Joey asked. She was surprised at how calm she felt, how relaxed her body and mannerisms were. She had always believed this moment would one day arrive, but had never allowed her thinking to take her beyond that point, to what she would do once it did present itself, what she would say.

  “Someone thought she was a threat and paid to have that threat removed,” Frank said. “It was nothing but a payout for me.”

  “How much?” Joey asked. “How much money did my sister put inside your pockets?”

  “Fifteen thousand,” Frank said. “Plus expenses. All in cash and all up front. That’s about what you average in take home to nail a twenty-five-to-life sentence.”

  Joey took a deep breath, fighting off the visions of her sister’s face, closing out the sounds of her happy laughter, erasing the sight of her paintings lining the entryway of her parents’ home. She swallowed back the angry rumble in her stomach and the acid burn building in her throat. She had to keep herself emotionally detached from any and all feelings, ease her mind from the shadowed darkness of an empty bar and into the glaring light of an open courtroom. She had her prey in her sights, had him on the witness stand, had him where he could not ever run again. All she had left to do now, as she had done so many times before, across so many years, was to go in for the close. Nail the conviction and have the verdict rendered.

  “They thought she was a witness to a hit and run,” Joey said. “That she had seen enough to get a good look at a make and model, maybe even an outside chance at a partial plate number. But they were wrong. She was walking away from the accident, not toward it. By the time she heard the crash and turned around, the victim was down and dead and the car was one full block away.”

  “She was on that block,” Frank said. “And the only person near the scene that the cops even bothered to talk to. That was all they needed to put a call in to me.”

  “It was a call that never needed to be made,” Joey said. “All they had to do was get their hands on the police report. My sister was what the cops call a DE. A dead end. She gave them nothing because she had nothing to give. But that nothing was more than enough to have her stamped for death. Some innocent girl was fingered and killed all because some New York gangster wanted his drug-addicted son to get away with a murder.”