Put a Lid on It

by Donald E. Westlake

  No. Goldfarb had brought paperwork with her, in a manila folder that she now extended toward the judge, saying, “Here you are, Your Honor, the documents.”

  Taking them, frowning, the judge said, “Francis Xavier Meehan?”

  “Me, Your Honor,” Meehan said, and actually did raise his hand partway.

  Before the judge could react, Goldfarb said, “Your Honor, I'm Elaine Goldfarb, the attorney in the case.”

  The judge hefted the manila folder in her hand, while she gave Meehan the skeptical look he deserved. “With the explanation, I presume.”

  “It's all in the documents, Your Honor,” Goldfarb told her, with a little hospitable gesture inviting the judge to open the folder and wade right on in.

  “Well, sit down,” the judge said, welcoming and dubious at the same time, and sat down herself as they did. “Let's see if we can sort this out,” she said, and opened the folder.

  The next little period of time in that room was very quiet. It was so quiet that after a while Meehan realized he was listening to a clock tick in some other room.

  In this room, the only sound was the occasional shrush when Judge Foote turned over one of the documents to give an equal fish-eye to the next. She was giving a lot of fish-eye. From time to time, she would look up and give Meehan the fish-eye, and he would blink slowly at her, trying for no expression at all, trying in Stanislavski style to recall how he'd done it, at the age of ten, when he was Kneeling Shepherd in that Adoration of the Magi tableau in parochial school. Then Judge Foote would look down again, turn another page, and this time give Goldfarb the fish-eye. Meehan didn't dare turn his head to see how Goldfarb was dealing with it, but he assumed attorneys got the fish-eye all the time and had worked out coping mechanisms.

  At last, the final document had been studied and digested—or maybe not digested—and Judge Foote gave them both the fish-eye at once, leaving the folder open on her desk. “Interesting,” she said.

  Neither of them said anything, while Judge Foote nodded, agreeing with herself. “A lot of signatures here,” she commented.

  “Everybody's signed off, Your Honor,” Goldfarb said, as though she were merely agreeing, but Meehan understood (and so would Your Honor) that a little pressure had just been brought to bear.

  Which Judge Foote didn't like; Meehan could see her nose wrinkle, as she smelled something less pleasant than a cooling pie here in her tree-trunk parlor in the woods. “Not quite everybody,” she said.

  “Well, not you, no, Your Honor,” Goldfarb said, and Meehan decided this was why she wasn't off with some big firm, with her brains, making the big bucks; she didn't know how to tread lightly.

  “Oh, more than that,” Judge Foote said, with a little disdainful wave at the folder. “For instance, I don't have the psychiatric evaluation.”

  “Oh, I think you do, Your Honor,” Goldfarb said, half rising, as though to help the judge paw through the papers, then settling again. “From Dr. Steingutt at the MCC.”

  “That's the psychiatric evaluation?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “I saw that,” Judge Foote said. “Dr. Steingutt writes that he never actually saw the prisoner Meehan.”

  “No, Your Honor,” Goldfarb said, “Dr. Steingutt explains he's based his judgment on the record of Mr. Meehan's behavior while in detention.”

  “In eleven days of detention,” Judge Foote said. “We're giving new meaning to the term ‘rush to judgment’ here.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Goldfarb said, apparently having finally realized her job at the moment was to back off.

  The judge's look toward Meehan this time was almost kindly, as though he actually were the wayward twelve-year-old she'd been anticipating. “What is your psychiatric evaluation, Mr. Meehan?” she asked him.

  He blinked. “I'm sorry? Evaluation, of what?”

  “Of you,” she told him. “Tell me your psychiatric evaluation of yourself.”

  Meehan was just on the verge of describing a self based largely on Tom Sawyer when he suddenly recalled one of the most important of the ten thousand rules, which is: Always Tell the Truth. (The codicils to that one are (1) If you can't think of anything else, (2) If it's unexpected, and (3) If it can't hurt you, all of which is because (4) It's easier to remember.)

  So he said, “I get along with other people pretty good, but basically I'm the type that's a loner. I'm not a crazy or a child molester. I'm not political or violent. I do whatever I gotta do to keep myself in nuts and berries, but I don't think I'm greedy.”

  She nodded through this, and kept on nodding when he was finished, then stopped nodding to say, “But you're a criminal.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Wouldn't you describe yourself as antisocial?”

  “Anti?” He was surprised, but not offended; she just didn't understand yet. “I'm not against society,” he said. “I need it. Just like you do, or anybody else. I got no objection to society at all. I do try to keep out of its way.”

  “And what,” she asked him, “do you see as your position in society?”

  He couldn't resist. Hoping to achieve a boyish grin and a shrug, he said, “Usually, on a fire escape.”

  She laughed, so it had been a good gamble to take. But then she cocked an eye at him and said, “But not to peek.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “There wouldn't be time. Besides, leave other people alone, that's my idea.”

  Goldfarb said, “Your Honor, that's very close to Dr. Steingutt's findings.”

  “Mmm,” the judge said, and said to Meehan, “Francis, did you read Dr. Steingutt's report?”

  “Your Honor,” he said, “I haven't read or looked at one piece of paper in there. Ms. Goldfarb here, she just takes me from place to place, and I do what she says.”

  “I see.” She leafed through documents briefly, clearly thinking it over, then gave Goldfarb a brand-new fish-eye and said, “There's no home visit here.”

  Goldfarb began, “Your Honor—”

  Judge Foote overrode her: “I cannot complete this hearing without the results of the home visit. A qualified social worker must visit the home and submit a report on the child's—Well. On the child's home environment. Without that, I don't see how I can proceed.”

  “Your Honor,” Goldfarb said, beginning to sound a little desperate, “in the time frame of this situation, Mr. Mee—Francis's home environment was the Manhattan Correctional Center. None of us would want a qualified social worker's assessment of that environment. Since he was removed from that inappropriate environment, at the request of the district attorney, he has been in my custody. I am a member of the bar and an officer of the court. If you insist on a home visit to my apart—”

  Sounding a bit shocked, Judge Foote said, “Is he living with you?”

  “No, he is not,” Goldfarb said, also sounding shocked.

  “I'm in the Crowne Royale, it's a hotel in Manhattan,” Meehan hastily told her, and pulled the key from his pocket. “Three-eighteen. See?”

  “It's a hotel room,” Goldfarb said. “There's really not much there for a social worker to evaluate.”

  “I don't have a river view,” Meehan volunteered (though one should never volunteer). “I think if I was on a higher floor, maybe I would.”

  Judge Foote frowned at the documents. “The people who have already passed this along,” she said, looking down at her desk rather than at them, “are supposed to impress me and they do. There's really nothing for me at this point but to add my little bit to the farrago.”

  Neither Meehan nor Goldfarb said a word. In fact, neither of them breathed.

  “I suppose my objecting to minor irregularities in the midst of this monster irregularity,” she said, lifting her eyes to him, not looking happy, “merely shows an inability on my part to see the big picture. Do you see the big picture, Francis?”

  “Never have, Your Honor,” Meehan told her. “I'm lucky if I make sense of the inset.”

  She smiled; wintry, but
a smile. “I'd love to know what this is all about,” she said, “but I know better than to ask. All right, Ms. Goldfarb, I will remand Francis Xavier Meehan into your custody.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Goldfarb said.

  Judge Foote actually laughed; a hearty laugh, like a contralto. She said, “I think I'm getting into the swing of it. Yes, Ms. Goldfarb, I remand Francis Xavier Meehan into your custody…until his eighteenth birthday.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” said Goldfarb and Meehan.

  34

  THE LIMO WAS supposed to wait for them, and there it was, in the No Standing Zone in front of the building, the chauffeur at the wheel, reading the Amsterdam News, while hundreds of cops, along with lawyers and felons and witnesses and family members and people in bandages, moved in and out of and all around the building. There were no other vehicles stopped anywhere along there, so apparently some cars were more equal than others.

  Meehan had been afraid to speak during their journey through the halls and elevator and across the sidewalk, but once they were safely in the limo he said, “Didn't she know anything about the story at all?”

  “Wait,” Goldfarb said. “Let me call Jeffords.” And she pulled a little cellphone out of her shoulderbag.

  So Meehan waited, and listened to Goldfarb greet Jeffords and tell him everything had worked out okay. Then she moved forward to the rear-facing seats and extended the phone to the chauffeur, saying, “He's going to give you directions to the restaurant.”

  The chauffeur took the phone, listened, nodded, made some notes on a pad suction-cupped to the dashboard, and gave the phone back. Then he waited for Goldfarb to come sit beside Meehan again before he started up.

  “A little,” Goldfarb said.

  Meehan looked at her. “A little what?”

  “She had been told a little,” Goldfarb explained.

  “Oh, the judge.”

  “That's the question you asked me.”

  “Yeah, I did, I remember that.”

  “I don't know who talked to her,” Goldfarb said, “but she would have been told it was a special case with some oddities in it.”

  “I guess.”

  “Before she saw the documents in the case,” Goldfarb went on, “and the people who'd already signed off, it would not have been a good idea to tell her the oddity was that the juvenile was forty-two years old.”

  Meehan grinned. The limo, he noticed, was just passing Atomic Lanes. He said, “She dealt with it pretty good, then.”

  “I'm sure she's worked in the system a long while,” Goldfarb said. “You may be the oddest oddity she's ever come across, but you're not the only oddity she's ever been expected to blink at.”

  Meehan nodded, thinking about that. “Life in the square world,” he said, “is more complicated than I thought.”

  The restaurant was out on Long Island, on the north shore, a spread-out pale room with large north-facing windows that offered a hilltop view of Long Island Sound, with the southern coast of Connecticut far away. The middle of October, and a little too cool for it, but the powerboats still bobbed and batted around out there, undistracted by any serious shipping.

  Jeffords was there first and had not only snagged a window-side table but had grabbed for himself the best seat for looking out at the view. He stood from it to greet them, shook Goldfarb's hand, hesitated, then pretended he hadn't hesitated as he enthusiastically shook Meehan's hand, saying, “So you're a free man.”

  “With a leash,” Meehan said. “Goldfarb tells me I have a leash.”

  “Oh, I wouldn't worry about it,” Jeffords said. “Sit down, sit down.”

  Meehan gave Goldfarb the second-best seat and took for himself the chair at right angles to the view. He could have a conversation, or he could look out at the water, as it winked sunlight here and there off its little wavelets.

  Jeffords and Goldfarb wanted to have their own conversation, about the law and what had been done and how it had worked out, so Meehan watched the boats and the waves until after they'd ordered various kinds of seafood and one kind of white wine. Then Jeffords turned to him and said, “That leash is gonna come off you by Thursday, I know it is, so there's nothing to worry about.”

  “Tomorrow,” Meehan said. “Expect a phone call.”

  “No details!” Goldfarb said.

  “That's wonderful,” Jeffords told him. “I knew, Francis, the minute I saw you in the MCC, I knew you were our man.”

  “I haven't heard from Yehudi and Mostafa any more,” Meehan said, “but I do keep wondering about them. I don't want them to suddenly show up, making heavy noises while I'm trying to work.”

  “Something else not to worry about,” Jeffords assured him. “That's the other thing I wanted to tell you. That has been totally resolved, forever.”

  “Good,” Meehan said.

  “The president himself got involved,” Jeffords said. “We didn't want him to have to, and he certainly didn't want to have to, but our friend Arthur, when he talked to those foreign intelligence people, he opened a real Pandora's box.”

  “I'm sure he did,” Meehan said.

  “So that's why the president himself had to intervene.”

  Meehan said, “With Israel and Egypt?”

  “No no no, with Arthur. The president can't acknowledge any of this to our allies.”

  Meehan wasn't so sure of this. He said, “But you think he's got Arthur to shut Pandora down again.”

  “Absolutely.” Jeffords paused to taste and approve the wine, then said, “The president gave Arthur the ultimate threat, from his own lips.”

  Meehan thought, Wow. From a president, that might be scary. He said, “The ultimate threat?”

  “That's right.” Jeffords leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “The president told Arthur, one more appearance by those people, of any kind, and Arthur is delisted from the White House inaugural ball.”

  Meehan looked at him. Jeffords lifted his glass, beaming at them both. “To crime,” the smug jerk said.

  35

  ONE THOUGHT LEADS to another, or there's an association of ideas, or this leads to that. Whatever; in the limo, headed back toward Manhattan, Meehan found himself thinking about the limo they were going to need tomorrow. Obviously they'd have to boost one, but from where? By the time it got to Burn-stone it would have to carry Massachusetts plates, but that could happen anywhere along the line. The main point was, where to pick up a limo. It's not like an ordinary car, you don't often see one parked by itself just somewhere along the curb.

  He thought, should I ask the driver where this one's stored? What reason would I have? Nothing good, and everybody would know it.

  Goldfarb broke into his reflections, then, saying, “In a funny way, I'm gonna miss you, Meehan.”

  He looked at her, not getting it. “What?”

  She gazed out her window at the borough going by. “Though I suppose, really,” she told the view, “what I'll miss is not going to the MCC.”

  He said, “Goldfarb? What are you talking about?”

  Now she did look at him, seeming a bit surprised. “You're out of the MCC, Meehan,” she said, “but I'm not. I'm serving a life sentence in that place.”

  “Oh,” he said, “you're talking about the MCC.”

  “What else did you think I was talking about? I still have to make a living.”

  “I thought you were talking about us,” he said.

  She lowered her head, the better to eyeball him through her big glasses. “What us?”

  So he thought about it, looking first at the back of the chauffeur's head, way up there, and then at his own knees, and finally at the face of Goldfarb, which gave him nothing back. “You are talking about us,” he said. “You're saying goodbye.”

  “I'm your lawyer, Meehan,” she pointed out. “The case is over. We went before the judge, and you're a free man.”

  “In your custody.”

  “That's a technicality,” she said.

  “In my exp
erience,” he told her, “it's the technicalities that clothesline you.”

  She frowned at him. “Do what?”

  “Clothesline,” he repeated. “It's from football, if you're running and a guy sticks his arm out straight to the side so your neck runs into his arm, that's clothesline. You don't see it coming, and it can do damage. In football, it's illegal.”

  “Why do they call it clothesline?”

  “I dunno.”

  She sat back, and he could see she was thinking on it. She said, “If you don't use a clothes dryer, you hang your stuff out on the line.”

  “Not in the city.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Upstate. But let's say you were upstate, and you were committing a burglary.”

  “I'm rehabilitated,” he said.

  “Almost,” she told him. “And let's say the homeowner came home, and chased you.”

  Similar things had indeed occurred. “Uh-huh,” Meehan said.

  “So you're running down the backyards,” she went on, “looking over your shoulder to see if he's catching up, and you don't see that clothesline in front of you.”

  “Ow,” he said, putting a protective hand to his throat. “That could take your head off.”

  “I bet that's where it comes from,” she said. “Clothesline.”

  “Yeah, maybe so,” he said, caressing his throat.

  She nodded. “I love phrases from before technology,” she said. “That we still use.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Listen, I don't want to say goodbye.”

  She looked at him. “Why not?”

  “I dunno,” he said. “I got used to talking with you. Clothesline and all that. You know, I think when I saw you that time in your apartment with the gun in your hand, stalking those guys, I decided I liked you. You're kinda goofy and fun.”

  “Thanks a lot,” she said.

  “But if you don't see any point in being around me any more,” he said, “then obviously forget it.”