Undue Influence

by Steve Martini

  I would pay for status as a fly on their wall to hear the dressing-down Cassidy will give him for failing to review the courthouse tape to its end. If there is anything to aversion therapy, Lama will never leave a theater again before the credits finish rolling and the screen goes dark.

  The dice cup is being slammed on the bar, a bang and the roar of voices as one of them is stuck with a round of drinks. As I look up I see Clem coming through the door. He swings between some tables, shakes a few hands, a couple of cops off the day shift. I hear the Wolfman, gravel in his throat, then bits and pieces of some off-color joke in a Mexican dialect, followed by a lot of laughter. This is Clem the politician. Next week he may be working Community Relations and telling these same guys that positive racial attitudes all start at home with an open mind and a clear conscience. Clem is the only man I know who could sit through five days of sexual sensitivity training and cop a feel from the female instructor as his graduation prize.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he says. ‘Hope you haven’t been here long.’

  I wave this off, and gesture to the seat on the other side of the table.

  I don’t get the Wolfman routine this afternoon. Instead Clem is looking over his shoulder, worried what his friends might think if they see him consorting with the enemy in the midst of trial. He tells me I am too hot at the moment for the normal social chitchat of this place. Lama, he says, wants a pound of flesh, and while merchants in Venice might settle for my heart, according to Clem, Jimmy wants to start at the soft underside of my genitals.

  ‘What did you do to get him so pissed off?’ he asks. ‘Ranting and raving all over the office,’ he tells me. ‘Jimmy has trouble deciding whose name to take in vain, yours, or as he puts it, “that cunt” they forced him to work with.’

  Clem looks at me. ‘Who’s trying the case?’ he says.

  ‘Morgan Cassidy,’ I tell him.

  ‘Oh.’ Nothing more, like maybe Clem concurs in Lama’s initial assessment.

  Clem wants to go for one of the back booths, where we can talk in private. Not be disturbed, as he says.

  We do it. The waitress comes up. Clem orders a boilermaker. I do grapefruit juice.

  ‘On the wagon?’ he says.

  I have to pick up Sarah from the baby-sitter’s in a few minutes. I tell him this and he nods like he understands. Since Nikki’s death I have a heightened sense of responsibility for my daughter, and a whole new appreciation for single parents. I have often wondered about the things that stick in a kid’s mind as they grow older and realize that there is a darker seam to life, that the smell that always seemed to float about Dad’s head like an ether was not Aqua Velva after all.

  ‘Did you hear about Louis Cousins?’ he says.

  Cousins, the kid on trial across the hall from us, was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder a week ago.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Jury came back an hour ago.’ Clem extends his arm straight out in a fist, then turns it over and does a thumbs-down gesture like Caesar. ‘Death,’ he says.

  I cannot say that I am surprised by this. Psychological defenses rooted in allegations of childhood abuses have been trotted out all too often of late, and overexposed in the press. Like knock-off Colonials in a housing tract, they are losing their impact.

  The implication for us, however, is that the press will now be free. We will be garnering a larger share of the attention, which I could just as well do without.

  Clem’s in no hurry. I think he figures I’m good for a dozen drinks. I will buy him a gift certificate at the bar and let him carouse with his friends.

  ‘What did you find out?’ I ask him.

  ‘Nothing on the picture,’ he says. ‘Struck out on all counts.’ Clem is talking about the photo given to me by Dana of the man known as Lyle Simmons, who if she is right was the triggerman seen with Jack in the bar across the river – the courier who delivered the bomb to the post office – and the guy who took out the Merlows. I would have figured, being that busy, he would have had a record to rival Capone.

  ‘We checked all the aliases,’ he says. ‘Without prints…’ He makes a face like dream on. ‘Which brings us to the other matter.’

  He’s talking about the fingerprint of Kathy Merlow from the tube of paint I palmed off the grass during our encounter in Hawaii.

  ‘Took almost an hour on the computer.’ This doesn’t sound like much, but on the high-speed automated system of scanning an hour is a lifetime. ‘We got a hit,’ he says.

  Clem pulls a slip of paper from his pocket. ‘One Carla Leopold, born Paterson, New Jersey, August twenty-six, nineteen and–’

  ‘Save the background, let’s cut to the chase,’ I tell him.

  ‘This is the good part,’ he says. ‘Honors graduate, Columbia, degree in accountancy.’

  ‘You sure we’re talking about the same woman?’

  He gives me a big grin. ‘Employed by one of the large accounting firms in New York City, five years’ experience. Next employer Regal International Trading Consortium, corporate accountant and bookkeeper. Employed two years.’

  ‘Where is this leading us?’ I ask him.

  ‘Bear with me,’ he says. ‘Regal is one of the new line of trading and investment houses. They make their money the new and improved way.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘They launder it,’ says Clem.

  He sits looking at me, big round eyes across the table, like how’s them apples?

  The waitress arrives with our drinks. Clem starts slurping the foam off his iced mug. I give the woman payment and a tip and she leaves us.

  ‘Word is you got narco-dollars, Regal International will buy you a piece of the rock,’ says Clem. ‘They do Rumpelstiltskin and his straw routine one better. They turn white shit that goes up somebody else’s nose into tax-free-no-load muni bonds. Or at least they did until two years ago.’

  ‘What happened?’

  He takes a drink of draft, knowing he has my attention now.

  ‘IRS and Justice came down around their ears. Full-court press. Indicted all the principals. Tried to get them to roll over on their clients. On the theory that you always follow the money, they called in your girl Carla.’

  I’m giving him funny faces, not exactly tracking on where he’s headed.

  ‘Seems with the heat on, her former employers had funny notions about downsizing. Layoffs were done off a barge, after a cement facial, somewhere up the Hudson. Two of her cohorts, other bean counters, went the way of the disappeared,’ he says. ‘Ms. Leopold suddenly realized her career options were being limited. She agreed to testify in return for some kind of a deal. She copped a plea, mail fraud, conspiracy, and racketeering, multiple counts. That’s how her prints showed up in the computer,’ he says. ‘In return she was supposed to get sanctuary.’

  ‘Supposed to?’ I say.

  ‘She never got the benefit of the bargain.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean she’d be thirty-three if she was still alive.’

  Clem knows about her death. I am wondering how.

  ‘An auto accident on the Jersey Turnpike in the middle of a blizzard,’ says Clem. ‘A year ago last November.’

  With this I am sitting bolt upright. I nearly choke on grapefruit juice as the acid singes my throat.

  ‘Body burned beyond recognition. Car went up like a fucking buzz-bomb. Word is, it may have been an o.c. hit.’ Clem’s jargon for the underbelly of life – organized crime.

  He is asking me where I got the fingerprint on the paint tube. According to Clem, the guy who ran the check on the computer for him at State Justice is now curious.

  I dodge this with a lot of verbal feints and weaves, and finally distract him with a question.

  ‘Are you sure about the print, couldn’t be a mistake?’ I say.

  ‘No way. Positive make,’ he tells me. ‘Matches on more than a dozen points of comparison. Little ridges that don’t lie.’

&
nbsp; Clem’s still waiting for an answer about where I got the print. He may have to wait until hell freezes.

  At this moment I am certain that my face is a mask of glazed expressions as I conjure the enigma that was Kathy Merlow, and a whole new universe of unanswered questions.

  I see apparitions, the chalked and powdery complexion of death, visions of Nikki as I saw her alone on that last day to press the wedding band on her finger for the final time, alone among the tubes and tanks and other instruments of horror in the back rooms of the funeral parlor. Visions of Nikki laid out in white satin. It is an image I relive with regularity, though now it is invaded by other more disturbing pictures. The synapses of the brain trying to sort sense from confusion. Another face, images of fiery death, and Kathy Merlow. Somehow these two, Nikki and Merlow, have become snarled in my mind, as I am restrained, caught up, lathered in sweat. Flames, and a tangle of twisted metal on some unrecognized roadway. Blood on matted bedsheets, the palm trees of Hana, and a pitched ringing, relentless, insistent in my ears. Images give way to sound, Nikki and Kathy Merlow, faces fade as my brain finally sorts fact from phantasm. I roll over, untangle myself from the sheets of my bed, and pull the receiver from the phone. The ringing stops. Nightmares that pass for slumber.

  I swing my legs and sit up in soaked bedsheets.

  ‘Hello – Paul?’ A voice, a million miles away, like something through a tube, familiar. It is Harry.

  ‘What the hell time is it?’ I say.

  ‘Five-thirty,’ he tells me. ‘Sorry to get you out of bed.’

  ‘It’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping well. What is it?’ I’m wiping perspiration from my forehead, sleep from my eyes.

  ‘Have you seen the morning paper?’ he says.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I think you better take a look. And do yourself a favor,’ he says. ‘Sit down before you open it.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Somebody has inserted a blade, at the sixth cervical vertebra, about eight inches in.’

  ‘To who?’ I ask.

  ‘To you, my friend. Second lead, page one, above the fold,’ he tells me. ‘ “Local Defense Attorney Linked to Postal Bombing.” ’

  ‘Oh, shit.’ I sit, still trying to chase visions of dread from my sleep-ravaged brain. My mind at this moment begins to swim, struggling to sort the real fears from the imagined.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I say. ‘The feds already questioned me.’

  ‘It doesn’t say anything about that. Just that your fingerprints were found all over the place after the bombing, and that certain employees saw you talking to the dead postal worker moments before the blast. Somebody’s doing a number,’ he says.

  ‘I think you better get yourself together. I’ll meet you at the office.’ Harry hangs up.

  I start to forage for clothes, my mind racing to assess the damage that this will do to Laurel’s case, a trial in midstream, scandal affecting her lawyer.

  Then I pick up the phone and dial Mrs. Bailey. I will need coverage with Sarah. I am abusing the old lady’s good nature, but as always she is there for my daughter, more than I can say for myself. She will be over in ten minutes.

  I’m in my underwear, buttoning up my pants, when I dial again. This time it is a groggy feline voice at the other end, something sultry from sleep.

  ‘Hello. It’s Paul. I need some help,’ I tell her.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Somebody’s tagged me with the bombing. In this morning’s paper.’

  ‘What. Who would–’

  ‘I don’t have time to talk. I need your help. There’s a judge who’s going to be taking a long hard look at me this morning. An explanation from some authoritative source could go a long way,’ I tell her.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she says.

  ‘Neither do I.’

  Silence on the other end. ‘Sure. Whatever I can do. Where can I meet you?’ asks Dana.

  We set a time, the county courthouse, and I hang up.

  For nearly two hours we assess damage while walking the floor at the office, Harry and I. As the arching light of dawn turns to day, I can see the incandescent lights as they dim on the Capitol dome five blocks away.

  We reread the story, first silently, then out loud to each other, looking for nuances we may have missed. We explore the possible sources. Harry is thinking Jack. By now he would have gotten word that he is the centerpiece of my case. He is well connected with the press. But Harry hasn’t told me how Jack would get the information that my prints were found at the scene, with the wraps thrown around a pending investigation.

  The staff reporter on the byline is not a name I have heard before. It is the stuff of which scandal is made. Attributions to ‘highly placed but unnamed sources close to the investigation.’ It does not say, in so many words, that I am a suspect, but in the interests of a good story buries me in a mud slide of inference and innuendo. If this were the Inquisition, they would be pouring hot lead in my ear by morning as a means of leading me to the Lord and coaxing my confession.

  What makes this most baffling is that I have come clean with the FBI, hours of questioning behind closed doors. They know precisely what I was doing talking with Marcie Reed. All I can figure is some enterprising reporter who got his hands on only half of the story.

  The problem as we see it, and Harry sums it up quickly, is that the jurors in Laurel’s case are not shielded from this news. It would not be covered by the court’s gag order, there being no obvious link between the bombing and Melanie’s murder. Left as it is, the jury, seeing my name coupled with the events at the post office, would not be believing much that I say in Laurel’s defense, the case of one felon pleading the cause of another.

  ‘He can’t mask it, but maybe he can take the tinge off. An instruction to the jury.’ Harry’s talking about Judge Woodruff. We have called four times in the last hour. He’s not yet in chambers, though by now he has no doubt read his morning paper.

  ‘It’s probably just a one-day story,’ I say. ‘By tomorrow it’ll be old news, off the front page, explained and corrected.’

  ‘You sound like the fucking founding fathers,’ says Harry. ‘An innocent’s notion of the First Amendment,’ he tells me.

  This from a man who spends his life reading the newspaper.

  ‘Hang on to your nuts,’ he says. ‘They don’t call it the press for nothing.’

  ‘They got the facts wrong. They’ll fix it,’ I say.

  ‘Like the man said, fifteen minutes of fame,’ says Harry. ‘You get yours by flashlight up the kazoo.’

  I tell him to relax. I try the judge on the phone. Now the clerk’s not answering. We can’t wait any longer, so we decide to walk the few blocks to the courthouse. We can die of anxiety there as well as here. Besides, by now Dana should be on her way over.

  We drop down the elevator in the building. I step out and get my first glimpse of them. A van with a dish on top parked out front. Then two more down the block. I wonder if maybe there’s a fire in one of the high-rises. Then, as I step out onto the street, I get a microphone in the face.

  ‘Mr. Madriani, what can you tell us about the bombing?’

  Another guy with a pen and pad. ‘Are you being charged? Are you talking to authorities?’

  ‘How long have you been under investigation?’

  Harry is looking at me. ‘Holy shit.’

  We grab the doors, step back inside, close them, and turn the lock. We’re getting a lot of glare from the strobes on the cameras bouncing off the glass of the door. A horde is now moving in.

  One of the more enterprising souls is pulling on the handles, rattling the heavy door in its frame.

  Harry’s got my elbow, dragging me toward a door down the hall. The way to the garage. We get in his car, and as we come up the ramp to the street there is another throng.

  ‘I should have put you in the fucking trunk,’ he says. ‘Hang on.’

  He nearly runs some guy down who is so burd
ened with batteries and lights he cannot move.

  ‘So much for a one-day story,’ he says. ‘Any more theories?’

  I look back over my shoulder out the rear window, and a few of them are running for their cars. A woman reporter with her camera crew is hoofing it down the street, figuring I am due in court and it’s only three blocks.

  Harry asks me what I think Dana will do about all this.

  ‘I’m hoping she’ll vouch for me with Woodruff. Tell him what happened, that I was merely interviewing a client. That I’m not a suspect.’

  ‘You’ve been bitten by the love bug,’ he says. ‘She is probably the leaker.’

  When I look over at him I see a lot of wrinkles and furrows, advice to the lovelorn from Harry. He is talking about Dana like he suspects she has lifted her leg, making me the leakee.

  ‘Why would she? She has nothing to gain.’

  ‘Birds of a feather,’ he says.

  ‘You mean Cassidy?’

  ‘I mean estrogen’s thicker than water,’ he says. ‘There are some of them who get off just tubing some poor slob.’ The ‘them’ Harry is talking about is the other half of humanity, the vast fairer sex. ‘Maybe you didn’t scratch the right itch the last time you got it on.’ Harry’s getting personal now. ‘I warned you,’ he says. ‘Two female prosecutors.’

  Harry thinks the enmity in the workplace toward males is something genetic, like the encoding on the X chromosome, that there will be no peace until women are sent home. He’s still blinking, wondering how a gender that makes up more than half of the species acquired all the perks of minority status and got its head under the tent of affirmative action.

  ‘There are rules in this stuff, like the canon of ethics,’ he says. ‘We all know the first one: “Thou shalt not dip thy quill in the company ink.” ’

  I remind him that Dana doesn’t work for us.