I gave him a second, then said, "Cancer, Jim. You can say it."
He nodded, discomfort on his face. "You up for this?"
I took a sip of beer, put my glass down. "I'd better be. She doesn't have anybody else. She's not long out of college, probably doesn't have two nickels to rub together. Who am I to turn her down?"
"What if you can't take care of it?"
I said nothing, though a muscle in my cheek ticced involuntarily. I watched his face as he figured it out.
"That's why you came to me," he said. "You were afraid if you didn't make it…"
"She needs somebody on her side, Jim. As long as I'm it, I'll do what I can. But if I'm out of the picture, I know there's only one other person who cares enough to take over. You and I don't have to hold hands over this, but it would be good to know you'll be there if she needs you. Like I said, we both owe it to her. You in?"
"I'm in," he said. "I always have been."
iii.
The old man coughed into his fist. His nurse, out of earshot but watching him closely, moved forward. The old man waved him away and spoke into the phone.
"You can't find him?"
"He's in DC, that's all we know," the voice on the other end said. "Used a credit card in Logan Circle. We squeezed the number out of the shitbird that gave it to him."
"Dead end?"
"Single use, then he ditched the card."
"Keep on it. Did you find the girl?"
"She's a professor or something at GW. There's something, though. She made a trip to Arlington."
"And?"
The man paused. "I saw her talking with Marty Singer."
The old man closed his eyes out of disgust instead of pain. "She met with Marty fucking Singer?"
The man said nothing.
"Goddamnit," the old man said, then suddenly his face clenched and rippled in pain. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep from yelling. Without opening them, he put a hand up to stop the nurse he knew had taken a step towards him again. "Put Jackson on Singer and tell him to report back to me. You keep following the girl. Try not to bump into each other if they meet again."
"What should I do if I see our target around the girl?"
"Christ, don't do anything," the old man said. "Just call me. We screwed this up twelve years ago. We can't afford to do it again."
He hung up the phone and stared at nothing for a moment, thinking. Another sharp pain brought him back to reality and, wearily, he nodded for the nurse to approach.
Chapter Eight
Breakfast is the only meal I know how to cook, but I'm pretty good at it. Well, I'm enthusiastic. I throw a lot of stuff in a pan and let it go to work. This morning's version was a diner-style extravaganza of four eggs, two pieces of toast, and a quarter pound of bacon. I hadn't exactly jumped out of bed that morning and was hoping that a thousand calorie pick-me-up would do the trick.
I frowned, though, the second the bacon hit the pan. The smell of pork fat sizzling away should've made my mouth water. Instead, my stomach clenched like I was expecting to take a punch. The feeling was so strong that I took a step back from the stove and glared at the pan like it was poisonous.
"Jesus, what's wrong with you?" I said out loud. Pierre meowed from the corner, wondering the same thing. I took a deep breath and shrugged it off, forcing my mind back to the previous day's conversation with Kransky. And then I made myself think about yet another distasteful task I'd have to do today if I truly wanted to start off on the right foot.
It worked. I stirred the contents of the pan mechanically and was staring off into space when I realized that the smoke I was seeing was coming from the eggs I was supposed to be cooking. I snapped the heat off, forked them onto a plate with the other gourmet items, then sat down to polish it all off.
I'd taken three bites when the bottom of my stomach tried to introduce itself to the back of my tongue. I jack-knifed to my feet, slamming the chair against the wall, and lurched to the sink where I spat out the mouthful with a barking cough. There was a terrible pause and then I vomited down the drain. I fumbled for the cold water tap, opening it up full blast. Long minutes passed as I stood there, dribbling and coughing into the swirling water. Tears formed around my eyes from the pressure of vomiting and I felt light-headed. I splashed my face a dozen times. When the spasms finally stopped, I risked a sip of water.
I leaned against the counter for a long, long time, then turned the water off and stood up. I avoided looking at the plate like it was a corpse at a crime scene. The smell of bacon fat hung in the air and I had to breathe through my shirt to keep my stomach under control. Despite the cold, I opened the windows and left them that way. I warmed a cup of cold coffee--for holding onto, not drinking--and retreated to my office, feeling frail, brittle, and old. If I didn't have breakfast, at least I had work.
. . .
Julie Atwater had been Michael Wheeler's defense attorney. She'd been a surprise choice at the time because Wheeler's case was such a sensational one--murderous cop, unrequited love, and so forth--and she'd tried few cases before his. She'd been a prosecutor for several years before the switch to defense attorney, so she wasn't entirely without experience, but eyebrows had been raised at the time. Only to be raised again ever higher when the verdict rolled in.
I was hoping that as Wheeler's lawyer she would know what he'd done and where he'd gone after the trial. The news would be twelve years old, but it would be more information than I had now. Or, maybe I'd get lucky and find out they'd been pen-pals this whole time and she could hand over his address without breaking a sweat.
Unfortunately, the real question was whether Atwater would even talk to me. We didn't have a personal beef, exactly, but she wouldn't have forgotten I'd been the prosecuting officer in Wheeler's case. Plus minor run-ins involving other cases over the last decade or so. Then add the normal antipathy that exists between cops that nabbed the crooks and the attorneys that did their best to get them off. I'd say that the relationship was like the one between cats and dogs, but that's a conflict created by Nature. And there's nothing natural about defense lawyers.
I found the number for her practice in the phone book and called, waiting through five or six buzzes. No receptionist. I hung up before voice mail kicked in; no sense in giving her advance warning. Ten minutes later I tried again. Same deal. I went downstairs, drank a glass of water straight down while standing at the sink, ignoring the cold plate of bacon and eggs on the table. I gazed out my back window instead, where my neighbor was wrestling about a million oak leaves into a plastic garbage bag. I smirked with a slight twinge of guilt. The oak tree that had dropped all those leaves was in my yard.
I went back upstairs and hit redial. I figured no defense attorney in the world was going to ignore three calls in an hour from an unknown number. Not if they wanted to stay employed. I was right. The phone picked up after two rings.
"Atwater." Her voice was as terse as I remembered it.
"Ms. Atwater, this is Marty Singer. I used to be with the MPDC--"
"I know who you are."
Huh. "I was wondering if you had some time to talk about a past case, one we both worked on in the mid-nineties."
"Are you asking me as a potential client, Mr. Singer?"
Mister, not Detective. She was up to speed on my situation. "No. I just need to ask you a few questions."
"And I need paying clients, Mr. Singer. If you aren't being arraigned in the next few days on a criminal charge, I'm not prepared to sacrifice any of my time for you."
"It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice," I said. "I've got a situation where the daughter of a victim of someone you represented is in danger and you might have information--"
"Do you have a license, Mr. Singer?" she asked, her voice sweet now. "If you're taking on clients whose lives might be in danger, I certainly hope you're qualified--and registered--to do so."
"I don't need a license to ask questions, which is all I'm doing at the moment," I said, trying to stay
calm. It helped if I imagined her head being squeezed beneath the foot of a circus elephant.
"Sorry, can't help you." I heard a rustling, as if she were pulling the phone away from her ear.
"Michael Wheeler," I shouted into the phone, hoping to catch her before I heard the click.
A pause. Then, "What did you say?"
"Michael Wheeler," I said. "I need ten minutes. That's it."
I heard her take a deep, ragged breath. Then, in a guttural voice, she said, "Go to hell, Singer."
A beep signaled the end of the call. The whole exchange had taken less than a minute. I stared at my phone for a while, couldn't come up with anything useful, then called someone who might actually talk to me.
Dods was short for David O. Davidovitch. In Ukrainian, it meant David, son of David. You'd think they could just tack "Jr." on the end. Dods was a short, wide, smart homicide detective that couldn't keep a shirt tucked or a tie knotted to save his life. Most of the time he had the air of a tired cabbie coming off a Friday night shift. He'd been my partner for eleven years, right up until the end.
"Davidovitch," he answered on the fourth ring.
"Hey, Junior," I said.
"Marty," he said, real pleasure in his voice, though you wouldn't know it from the sound. His voice was like a bucket full of rocks being rolled around. "How the hell are you?"
"Hanging in there."
"How's…everything? You need anything? You want to have dinner with Margie and me?"
"I'm good, Dods," I said, trying not to think about breakfast. "I'll swing by soon. Not tonight."
"She's asking about you. Rides my case all the time." His voice became high and nasal. "‘Did you see Marty today? Why doesn't he come over? Why haven't you called him?'"
I smiled. "I can hear her voice now."
"How could you not? She sounds like Edith Bunker. Anyway, what's on your mind?"
"What do you know about Julie Atwater?"
"Atwater?" he asked. "As in, the prosecutor?"
"Yeah."
"What do you mean? You know as much as I do about that--I mean, about her."
"Act like I don't know anything. Talk it out with me."
"She started in the prosecutor's office," he said slowly. "But didn't like the money or the hours, so she sold out and went private. She'll defend anything that drags itself to her door."
"So nothing's changed?"
"Status quo," Dods said. "Why? What's your interest?"
"You remember Mike Wheeler? That whole thing?"
"That piece of shit?" he asked. "Naturally. I mean, I wasn't in Homicide yet, but I followed it like everybody else."
"She was his defense attorney."
"Yeah," he said, drawing the word out like he'd just discovered it. "How could I forget?"
"Age," I said, trying to be helpful. "Substance abuse. Falling down the steps as a kid."
"Right. Thanks."
"Wheeler was one of her first cases after she went private, right?"
"Maybe, I dunno. The timing is right. She was a PD for maybe three or four years before the money called her away."
"Then she got the break of the century when the case on Wheeler went to hell," I said.
"Yeah and fell off the map. I mean, she's in court all the time, but it's always for low-level dealers, repeat cons, busted pimps. Getting Wheeler off should've given her career an atomic boost. She ought to be defending CEO's and Senators, not creeps. Well, same thing, maybe. You know what I mean. Why is it you care, again?"
I hesitated, then gave him a sanitized version, trying to downplay the situation. It wasn't that I didn't trust Dods. I did, and with my life. But I knew he'd overdo it. He would've stood up and walked out of the precinct right then if he thought he could help. I didn't need that. Not yet. I had Kransky on it, sure, but there was something else. Call it pride or maybe discretion--if things got too hot later, I'd holler for him--but I didn't want to call in my ace yet. I wanted to do this myself.
He seemed to understand instinctively, reminding me why we'd been such good partners. "So you want to get to Wheeler through her."
"Yeah."
"Long shot," he said.
"Tell me about it. Something's bugging her, though." I told him about my call with Atwater. "Has she changed since I was there?"
"Marty, you been gone like two, three months. You think she's developed a limp or something? Wears an eye patch, now?"
"Humor me, will you? Start at zero. Like I never saw her before, never knew her."
"Well, she's got this pitchfork, see--"
"Dods."
He sighed. "She's foxy, but mean and kind of, I don't know, bland. Same black suit. At least, it was black in the nineties. Same beat-up briefcase. Wears the same clothes every time I see her. Stomps around like she wants to stick her foot up someone's ass."
I closed my eyes, thought back to the last time I'd seen Julie Atwater in court. It had been, what, two months since I'd retired? Four or five since I'd even passed her in a hall or outside a courtroom. Like Dods said, she probably hadn't changed much. She was a good-looking woman--petite, black hair, late thirties--but worn out, weary, bitter. "How about emotionally? Mentally?"
"Hell, Marty. I don't know. She was always a class-A bitch. Chip on her shoulder. You ask me, hanging up on you is standard operating procedure. If she didn't serve papers on you, I'd say you must've gotten on her good side somehow."
"She's a pissed-off lady with a bad wardrobe? That's it?"
"Yeah. Speaking of pissed-off, that's what I'm gonna be if I have to work late tonight. You want her number or something?"
"I got it. Give me her address."
"Home? Office?"
"Both, if you got them."
I heard the slicking of computer keys. He rattled off the information I needed, then asked, "What are you going to do, you find Wheeler?"
"Why does everybody keep asking me that? Let me find the guy first."
"Okay, okay. But no cowboy shit from you, all right? You learn something, you share. Something happens to the girl, you share. I hear you going Lone Ranger on us and I'm going to have to drag you in."
"Jeez, Dods," I said, impressed. "You sound like you mean it."
I heard a clatter as the phone was dropped and then a small scuffing sound as Dods picked it up again. "That punk Henderson was walking by," he whispered. "I had to give him something. I say, if you find Wheeler--whether he's doing this stuff to the girl or not--you waste him and dump him in the Potomac."
Chapter Nine
After I hung up with Dods, I thought about the call with Atwater.
The excessive hostility was no surprise. It's probably how I would've answered the phone if she'd called me and asked for a freebie. Nothing new there. But the quality of her voice when I'd mentioned Wheeler's case…that I hadn't planned on. In a few, short, breathy words she'd sounded shocked. Angry. Frightened. It was a remarkable reaction for a case twelve years old from a lady who was normally hard as flint. And remarkable reactions in unshakable people trigger the bloodhound in me. I picked up the scrap of paper where I'd scribbled down Atwater's address, thinking. I drew a line through the office address. Then circled her home address.
It took me twenty minutes to get there. It would've taken less than ten if I'd had a siren and a gumball on the roof. Her house was off George Mason Drive in what developers like to describe without irony as a community. No one knows anyone else's name--though the places are close enough to pass the barbeque sauce from one deck to the other--and the sidewalks end at bridge abutments or freeway entrances. The conceit extended to the thin, boxy homes that were meant to invoke the feel of Bostonian brownstones, but the faux wrought-iron railings were rusting and the finely pointed red brick was only on the front. Cheap vinyl siding--once white, now yellowing--covered the backs and the sides of the end units. All of the cookie-cutter dumps looked exactly like the others, so I slowed to a sedate ten miles an hour and crawled up and around the rows, looking for Atwate
r's place.
I found it fronting Pershing Avenue in one of the nicer sections of the development, across the street from a long run of 1950's era single-family homes. The serene pastel houses with their short porches and prim, postage-stamp gardens gave the townhouses facing them a kind of borrowed class. Enough that you could forget that, around the corner, the rest of the development sat cheek-by-jowl with a convenience store, a Laundromat, and a gas station. Route 50 growled a block or two away; I could feel the rumble of traffic sitting in my car.
I did a U-turn in front of the nice houses, where I parked, got out, and stretched. I crossed the street and walked up the row like I was out for a Sunday stroll. One townhouse had a For Sale sign in the front and a plastic dispenser full of flyers. In the unlikely event anyone was watching, I pulled one out and looked like I was interested, which couldn't have been further from the truth when I saw what they were asking for it. I sauntered down the sidewalk as if assessing the neighborhood, holding the flyer like a roadmap.
The front of Atwater's place was as nondescript as the others, with a red brick front, one medium-size window, and a standard door with a corroded brass knocker. In lieu of grass, the lawn had some white stones, some of which had dribbled onto the sidewalk. The only landscaping consisted of two small shrubs, brown and nearly dead.
The one standout detail was a small sign on a post jammed into the soil of the front yard. It tilted at a crazy angle, like it had been a while since it had been put there. Printed on the sign in authoritative capital letters were the words, "THIS HOUSE PROTECTED BY SECURETREX." In a smaller font below the warning message was a phone number to call in case of emergencies or natural disasters.
I stared at it for a second, an idea taking shape. I liked what I came up with and pulled out my phone, punching in the phone number from the sign. A woman with a British accent, firm and cultured, answered. "SecureTrex. How can I help you?"
I made my voice shaky. "Hi, SecureTrex? Yeah, I was walking down the street and saw a guy go into one of the properties you protect." I gave her the address.
A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) Page 6