Undue Influence

by Steve Martini

  I pull off her socks, cover her, a peck on the cheek, then flip on her night-light.

  Down the hall in my room I can hear her breathing in the child monitor on my nightstand. I rummaged through a dozen boxes in the garage to find this. Nikki had packed it away when Sarah turned three, when the worries of SIDS and other parental paranoia had passed. But in the weeks after Nikki’s death, Sarah suffered bouts of crying that tore at my soul. I would go to her in her room and hold her, cradled in my arms, while she asked questions I could not answer. Why her father, who could do all things, could not bring Mommy back? Where had she gone? Would we ever see her again? Staring down in her round baleful olive eyes, I soothed her with a litany of faith – that her mother was with God, that she was happy, that from the clouds in heaven she watched over her little girl – and that one day we would all be together again, for ever. And in my soul of souls I hoped beyond all that I knew that this was true. Then Sarah would sleep, secure in the promise of a father’s wishes.

  In a daze I step into the shower tub. Cold water laps my legs to midcalf. I’d forgotten drawing Sarah a bath, hours ago now. As I pull the plug I hear the phone ringing on the bedside table. I run, wrapping a towel around my waist for fear the phone may wake Sarah. Who the hell can be calling at this hour? It cannot be good news.

  ‘Mr. Madriani.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gail Hemple here.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m at Jack Vega’s house,’ she says. ‘You’d better get over here as fast as you can.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘The police are here,’ she says. ‘I got a call an hour ago from Vega’s lawyer.’

  It hits me like an iced dagger – in the cynical center of my lawyer’s brain – Laurel and her temper. She has done some foolish act of harassment, broken a window, smashed a windshield, inscribed her initials with a key in the satin finish of Jack’s state-leased $80,000 Lexus. After the allegations of drugs in court, I knew I should have had her here in the house, overnight. I spent two hours before dinner grilling Julie and her mother on the charges. Each in her turn denied them roundly.

  ‘What did she do?’ I say.

  There’s a stutter on the phone as Hemple regroups. She knows who I’m talking about. Clearly her client has done something.

  ‘I can’t talk now,’ she says. ‘Don’t say anything more. I’m in my car, on the cellular. Just answer one question. Is she with you now?’

  ‘Laurel?’ I ask.

  ‘Just yes or no,’ she says.

  ‘No. She’s probably home.’

  ‘She’s not,’ says Hemple.

  ‘Where are the kids?’ I ask. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘Can’t talk. Get over here,’ she says, ‘now.’

  ‘Sarah’s sleeping,’ I say. ‘I’ll have to get someone to watch her.’

  ‘Do it,’ she says, and hangs up.

  Mrs. Bailey, the next-door neighbor, may never forgive me – a phone call in the middle of the night, another urgent request for help. She is every family’s grandmother, sixty-two, straitlaced, and alone. A churchgoing lady of conservative habits, she lives for the welfare of little children and her weekly Bible classes, in that order. I’m afraid I’ve taken advantage of her weakness for kids. She’s been my perpetual crutch, baby-sitting in every pinch since Nikki died. She will not take money for this, so I wait for her back fence to blow down in a windstorm, or her car to conk out some morning, any way to reciprocate for her kindness by the performance of some manly duty. To date, everything she owns is upright and working, more than I can say for myself at this moment.

  I’m wiping sleep from my eyes, gripping the steering wheel with both hands as I drive.

  Jack and Melanie Vega live on a cul-de-sac off of Forty-second Avenue, in a large colonial gambrel, white pillars on a setback of manicured lawn larger than some city parks.

  Two blocks from their house and there is an ethereal glow to the night sky, fogged by the vapors of early autumn, the ghostly colors flashing blue, amber, and red. Two patrol cars have the intersection leading to Jack’s house blocked off, the only way in or out.

  I lie to one of the cops at the intersection, tell him I am a relative, present tense. He passes me through, directs me to park on the other side of the street.

  A fire truck is at the curb directly in front of Jack’s house, its diesel engine droning a dull monotone.

  I wonder for a moment. I have never thought of Laurel as any kind of firebug, then dismiss the thought. These days if your kid samples snail bait they dispatch a hook-and-ladder, the vehicle of choice in any emergency.

  There’s a growing crowd at the curb, a few drive-by rubberneckers and neighbors on my side of the street. Some bold souls are across on the other side, closer to the house, pressing one of the cops and the firemen for information. I look for Gail Hemple, but see no sign.

  I park the car and walk, milling with the neighbors, most of whom are in bathrobes and slippers, a guy in pants, his jacket zipped to the throat, and sockless loafers. His collar is muffled up against the cold. He’s plying an older woman for the latest rumors wafting through the crowd, what she saw or heard. A lot of shrugging shoulders from the old lady.

  ‘One of the policemen said something about a victim inside,’ she says.

  Suddenly there’s a knot in my stomach, cold sweat on my forehead. Hemple’s voice on the phone, her tone, was not the siren of concern over some mild monkeyshine cast as vendetta.

  The driveway, the only break in a six-foot wrought-iron fence that seals off the front of the house, is barred with yellow police tape. Guys in plain clothes are wandering back and forth between the house and parked cars, the little satchels of forensics in their hands.

  The portico of Jack’s house is a miniature of the executive mansion, everything but an honor guard and the Secret Service. Impressing the world is what Jack lives for. I have a clear view of the entry, wide open, lit like a Christmas tree, Corinthian columns all around.

  There is a message conveyed by all of this – a victim without the urgent care of racing ambulances. The thought, the limited possibilities, leave me with a chill.

  I tried four times to call Laurel at her apartment on the cellular on my way over here. There was no answer. I figure the kids must be with her.

  ‘Mr. Madriani.’ I hear a soft voice behind me and turn. It’s Gail Hemple. She’s standing with a small group twenty feet away, another woman and a couple arm-in-arm, near some bushes in the driveway of a house. The woman with Hemple looks vaguely familiar, a face I recognize to which I cannot put a name, someone from a past life. The couple, man and woman, young and shivering in the cold, stir no embers of recognition.

  I move toward them and Hemple meets me halfway, a little huddle out of earshot.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I say.

  Long sigh from her. ‘Bad news,’ she whispers. ‘There’s been a shooting.’

  She can tell from my look that this does not surprise me, having wallowed in the sea of rumors getting here. I wait for the bottom line.

  She reads my mind. ‘Melanie Vega’s dead,’ she says.

  This takes my breath. My mind racing.

  ‘Where’s Laurel?’

  ‘You tell me,’ she says.

  ‘What about Jack?’

  She makes a face, a question mark.

  This takes a while for me to absorb, all the implications. ‘Maybe a burglary?’ I say this hopefully. Hemple shakes her head. She has no idea. ‘The cops aren’t talking,’ she tells me. But from the look on her face I can tell she is considering another scenario.

  ‘I called Laurel’s house as soon as Vega’s lawyer called me,’ she says, with the same result as I.

  ‘The kids?’

  Palms up, shrugging shoulders. She has no idea.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  While we are talking the woman with the familiar face, the one Gail had been talking to, comes up behind her. Good-looking, aub
urn hair, dressed in a jogging suit, the look of something grabbed from the closet at the sound of sirens.

  I think maybe she wants to talk to Hemple. Then she looks straight at me, smiles, and says, ‘Paul. It’s good to see you again. Sorry it’s under such circumstances.’

  She is now feasting on my blank stare, poorly masked by a witness smile. I give her a nod, something that conveys I haven’t got a clue.

  She laughs. ‘Dana Colby,’ she says. ‘Law School.’ A little lilting uplift in her voice. ‘It’s been a long time. I was a year behind you,’ she says.

  ‘Ah, yes. I remember,’ I say. But my voice is filled with the distrust of my own memory. The game of names and faces has never been my strong suit.

  As we stand and talk, recall sets in like the chills before a flu, vague recollections of this woman kicking my ass somewhere in a courtroom. It’s been some years since I’ve seen her. One of a dozen at the university back before the female rush. If I remember right, she was the one whose bones we all dreamed of jumping. Five-foot-ten, auburn hair, eyes like shimmering amethyst, a face like an angel, with a body that only God could have made. She has not changed. In the genes department she is what every woman thinks of when told that life is unfair.

  Right now all I want is to get Hemple alone where we can talk. The couple that seems to be with Colby have moved up a notch, a young man and woman, mid-thirties. They seem to be attached to Colby like the stitched-on shadow of the great Pan.

  Dana Colby looks at me, hesitates for a moment as if in doubt. ‘I’d introduce you,’ she says to them, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t know your names.’

  ‘George Merlow wife, Kathy.’ The guy nods at Colby and smiles. I shake his hand. ‘We live on the block,’ he says. ‘This is very disturbing. Just moved in,’ he tells us.

  Kathy Merlow has a long and sallow face, dirty-blonde hair, and a bedded look like maybe she’s been sick. She is a small woman, her hand is twined around her husband’s arm and lost within the deep pocket of his wool overcoat, a tweed affair, its collar turned up around a five o’clock shadow and dark stringy hair. As he turns and stoops to whisper in his wife’s ear, I can see George Merlow’s thinning locks, arranged in a short ponytail. He has the grungy look of celebrity on vacation. There is a slight accent to his voice, something east of Omaha, maybe Massachusetts or New York, but not hard or fixed, like maybe the guy is rootless, that he’s moved around a lot.

  As I look at him there’s a lot of agitation in the eyes, nervous posturing. Standing in the street, waiting for the coroner’s wagon, I attribute this anxiety to the events of the evening.

  Our little group is of a mind. ‘It’s just awful.’ Kathy Merlow’s first words. ‘Shootings on the news every night since we arrived. A violent town,’ she says.

  It sounds like Capital City has not made a good impression. I think maybe these people are from Mayberry, visions of whistling kids with fishing poles.

  ‘You walk on the street, you become bullet bait,’ says the guy.

  ‘Like any other big city.’ Colby’s chorus to the couple. ‘Still, we could have hoped for a better welcome wagon.’ Colby’s looking at the coroner’s van, which has just pulled in to the driveway of Jack’s house. Two cops ease the tape barricade back in place.

  Hemple gives me a look, like let’s hope the cops are having the same thoughts about random violence.

  I’m praying that maybe Laurel has an alibi – off doin’ Midnight Mass with the Sisters of Mercy. With Laurel, since the divorce, you never know. One night she showed up at our house with a Catholic priest. Nikki was commode-hugging sick, the aftermath from a session of chemo. I was left to entertain Laurel and his eminence in my pajamas at two in the morning. Seems Laurel was feeling particularly sinful that night. She ended up last in line for confession, and afterward with a friend invited their young confessor out to dinner. After doing penance over cocktails, Laurel managed to ditch her female friend and convince her companion in black to loose his collar while they did a few sashays on the dance floor. By the time they reached my house, shit-faced as they were, Laurel was busy putting the bans of celibacy to the ultimate test. There are times when my sister-in-law can be the devil in drag.

  Still, I don’t think she could kill.

  ‘Understand you’re related?’ says Colby. She’s looking at me, nodding toward the house behind tape, in bright lights.

  I look at Hemple. She gives me an expression, like ‘me and my big mouth.’

  ‘One-time brother-in-law,’ I tell her. ‘Past tense.’

  ‘Oh.’ Silence like she’s stumbled over some aging uncle’s peccadillo.

  ‘You live in the neighborhood?’ I ask her.

  ‘A few blocks away.’ She nods in a direction over her shoulder somewhere. The years have been kind to her.

  ‘You?’ she says.

  ‘Just passing by.’ As this escapes my lips I think, at two in the morning Colby must wonder what tavern I’m coming from. Still, I’m not anxious to advertise that I am here on business, in pursuit of the wayward Laurel, or to feed suspicions that she might be involved in the activities across the street.

  It seems the two women – Hemple and Colby – have done their thing together on the Queen’s Bench, a local club of women lawyers, where they’ve followed each other through the chairs of high office, part of the network for advancement among the fairer set.

  ‘Dana’s with the U.S. Attorney’s office,’ says Hemple. ‘White-collar unit.’ She says this with emphasis, like hanging a sign – ‘prosecutor present.’

  ‘Ah.’ It hits me. Where we did battle, Colby and I. A sentencing matter in the federal courts, back when I was with the firm. Dana Colby cleaned my clock. A federal district judge, another woman, probably one of their clan, put my client away for an ice age. There is not enough good behavior this side of heaven to have seen his release.

  ‘You look cold.’ Colby’s talking to Kathy Merlow.

  ‘She’s just getting over the flu,’ says her husband.

  ‘You should take her home,’ says Colby.

  All of this is going right past Kathy Merlow. Her gaze is fixed on Jack’s house.

  ‘Do you think they’ll bring her out soon?’

  For a moment I’m not sure who Kathy Merlow is talking about. Then it strikes me. She’s been bit by morbid curiosity. She wants to see Melanie Vega’s body cloaked in its shroud.

  ‘Did you know her?’ I ask.

  She looks at me for the first time, wide-eyed.

  ‘Oh, no. No. We never met.’ She seems emphatic on the point. ‘We didn’t know either of them. We just haven’t been here that long. We don’t know anybody, really,’ she says, big round eyes looking at me. She seems relieved by the thought that the Merlows and Vegas were strangers, as if perhaps violence is something contagious, and that with distance comes immunity like a vaccine.

  ‘I think we should be getting home.’ George is looking at his wife like maybe all of this has been too much for her. He looks at Colby, then whispers something in her ear. She nods, but no smile. I suspect he’s making amends to get his wife out of here.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he says. He tugs Kathy Merlow toward the street. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he tells me. ‘Wish it coulda been under better circumstances,’ he says. They wander off toward the street.

  ‘Nice couple,’ says Colby.

  ‘Yeah.’ I watch them as they go, across the cul-de-sac and up the driveway to their house.

  ‘But they must be recluses,’ I say.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘They don’t know the Vegas but they live next door.’

  She looks at me, a puzzled expression. ‘You’re right,’ she says.

  Suddenly my attention is drawn to the ‘south lawn,’ to the portico that is Jack’s fantasy of helicopters and grand trips of state. There’s action on the front porch. I see Vega and another man come out. Jack’s scanning the crowd in front of the house. Even from this distance his image is one of death warme
d. His face haggard, there are bags the size of blimps under his eyes. But my focus is riveted on the guy behind him. My blood runs cold at the sight of Jimmy Lama, the cop from hell.

  Lama and I go back a ways, to a time years ago when I had him drawn and quartered on charges of excessive force in the arrest of one of my clients. More recently we tangled in the trial of Talia Potter, when Lama, in violation of a court-issued gag order, leaked damaging information to the press, seeming to link me to the murder of Talia’s husband, Ben Potter, the senior partner of my old law firm. Talia and I had been an item. To my discredit we’d had a brief affair during a period when I was separated from Nikki. But Lama’s efforts to draw me into Ben’s murder came to naught when Talia was acquitted of her husband’s murder, and the riddle of who did it and why was solved. On Lama’s score card I am still ahead. Jimmy was disciplined for violating the court’s order, a suspension without pay, and a demotion.

  Vega’s searching the crowd, looking, shading his eyes against the glare of the lights, police vehicles in his driveway, some with their light bars gyrating with synchronous color. Then suddenly Vega points with an outstretched arm, finger like a cocked pistol, Jimmy Lama at his shoulder taking a bead – dead center on me.

  ‘Counselor. Fancy seeing you,’ he says. ‘And I thought life was too short.’

  The smile on Jimmy Lama’s face is nothing less than sinister. Lama’s most dominant feature is his blockhouse build. Lama is square, from the angle of his jaw to what is left of the hair on his head, leveled by shears to a flattop. The haircut is a holdover from his days in the military. I am told he once did M.P. duty in an embassy behind the iron curtain. I have often wondered for which side.

  Lama and I have a long and untoward history, a level of enmity that rivals things between Arabs and Israelis. Our respective bunkers have been the courthouse and the cop shops of this town. Lama stands about five-nine, though his moral stature is somewhat more dwarfed. He is ambitious to a fault, and corrupted in the way many aspiring people are, not by money so much as by the pursuit of upward mobility. His career has been stunted to a degree by our last outing. He has spent the last three years getting back to level ground following the disciplinary action for which he blames me. Tonight I wear this like a badge of honor.