Falls the Shadow

by William Lashner

  Beth made the usual motions to dismiss, raised the usual arguments, accepted stoically the usual denials.

  “Anything else I can reject?” said the judge.

  “My credit card was refused last week,” said Beth, “so I suppose that’s about it.”

  “Fine,” said the judge. “Twenty minutes, folks,” and we rose once again when he made his way off the bench.

  “That went well,” said Beth.

  “About as well as could be expected,” I said as I stood at the table. “Dalton’s case was pretty thorough.”

  “Are we ready for our defense?”

  “I think so,” I said, but just as I said it, Beth’s eyes grew large and I felt a lurking presence behind me. I winced even before I turned around.

  Torricelli.

  “His name’s Pfeffer,” said Torricelli. “Robert Pfeffer.”

  “How’d you find him?”

  “One of the victim’s friends told us. A Mrs. Winterhurst. Turns out she was the one who recommended him to Leesa in the first place. So after we got the name, we swung by his office. Nice little guy. And he seems to know what he’s doing. I had a dental question that he answered quite thoroughly.”

  “You make an appointment?”

  “As a matter of fact. He seems quite competent, and I heard he has gentle hands. Of course, it turns out he also has an alibi for the night of the murder.”

  “Of course he does,” I said. “You check it out?”

  “It holds,” he said. “He was with someone the entire night.”

  “Dr. Bob, that dog,” I said, shaking my head. “Who would have figured? You mind telling me whom he was with?”

  “Confidentiality prohibits it, but let’s just say he had his hands full.”

  “Got you.” Tilda. Oof.

  “So that’s that, right?” said Torricelli.

  “I suppose.”

  “And we can forgo all the dental crap in this trial?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Carl, you know what you are? Vexing. You are one vexing son of a bitch.”

  “Thank you, Detective. Can I make one suggestion?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Before you sit in Dr. Pfeffer’s chair, you might want to check out his diploma. There’s a little smudge where his name is. Turns out he wasn’t born a Pfeffer. Before you let him reach into your mouth, I suggest you find out why he changed his name.”

  I might beweep a bit too much my outcast state, but there are admitted joys in this job. Chief among them is cashing a retainer check. I also like cross-examining fools, reading deposition transcripts—that’s a little sick, I know, but there it is—and instructing my secretary to hold all calls. I especially like the way people recoil when I tell them I’m a lawyer. Try it sometime at a party or on the street, tell someone you’re a lawyer and watch as they dance away. It almost makes me want to sign up to work for the IRS. And it was a joy just then, let me tell you, when I told Detective Torricelli that his new dentist, Dr. Pfeffer, had doctored his diploma and changed his name for some unknown reason, and then watched as Torricelli’s eyes boggled and he nervously rubbed his tongue across his teeth.

  “Call your first witness, Mr. Carl,” said the judge.

  “Your Honor, the defense calls Arthur Gullicksen.”

  Arthur Gullicksen approached the stand wearing an expensive gray suit, black loafers with tassels, and a fine head of gray hair sleeked neatly back. In fact, sleek was exactly the word for him, his trim figure, his polished nails and sharp teeth, the way his face came to a razor’s edge at the front. You might remember the name Gullicksen, he was Leesa Dubé’s divorce attorney, whom we had tried to keep off the stand during the prosecution’s case. Now he was our first witness. Funny how things change. To see Gullicksen in the flesh was to open once again the eternal debate of nature versus nurture. Are lawyers that look like Gullicksen attracted to matrimonial law, or is it the job itself that turns them into such repulsive specimens?

  As Gullicksen sat on the witness stand, he pulled out his cuffs, smoothed his jacket sleeves, adjusted his tie so it sat neatly between the points of his collar. His yellow tie. The very same tie I now was wearing. Would the humiliation over my neckwear never cease?

  “Thank you for coming back, Mr. Gullicksen. I have only a few questions. You testified before that you were Mrs. Dubé’s divorce attorney, is that right?”

  “That’s correct,” he said while examining his manicure.

  “How was it going?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The case. From the pleadings you put into evidence in your prior testimony, it is apparent that you and Mrs. Dubé were fighting for custody of the daughter, you were fighting for a lion’s share of the matrimonial assets, including a piece of François Dubé’s restaurant, and you were fighting for a substantial amount in child support and alimony.”

  “We were only seeking what she was entitled to.”

  “Fine, we’re not going to dispute any of that here. But what I want to know, Mr. Gullicksen, is how was your case proceeding? Did it look like you were going to be successful on all those requests?”

  “It is hard to say.”

  “Try, Mr. Gullicksen. Let’s take the child-custody issue. You alleged physical abuse of Mrs. Dubé and Amber Dubé at the hands of the defendant. What kind of evidence did you have for that?”

  “Leesa Dubé was prepared to testify.”

  “But you had no other witness, did you?”

  “Leesa had told her friends of the abuse.”

  “That was hearsay, and so not admissible. And the pediatrician, as we’ve heard already from Detective Torricelli, saw no indications of abuse. Did you have any other witnesses or admissible evidence on the abuse issue?”

  “Not at that point, but I was looking for others.”

  “Now, in his responsive pleadings, Mr. Dubé alleged that his wife was addicted to painkillers, often dumped her daughter at her mother’s house while she went on unexplained trips out of town, and was in many ways an unfit mother, isn’t that right?”

  “Those were his allegations.”

  “Did he have witnesses to back up those allegations?”

  “He claimed he did.”

  “You depose them?”

  “Some of them, yes.”

  “How’d the depositions go?”

  “There were avenues to discredit the testimony.”

  “I’ve been a lawyer long enough to interpret that. The testimony was pretty strong, wasn’t it?”

  “It had some strength to it, yes.”

  “Mr. Gullicksen, in your opinion was there a chance that Leesa would lose custody?”

  “Objection as to relevance of the witness’s opinion,” said Mia Dalton.

  “Mr. Carl? Is this whole line of questioning relevant?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. I ask for some leeway here. I am not attempting to try the divorce case in this courtroom. But I do think it extremely relevant what Leesa Dubé’s lawyer thought of the case and what Mrs. Dubé thought of her chances in turn. Her fear of losing her child is at the heart of our defense.”

  “Go ahead, then, but be careful.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Gullicksen, was there a chance that Leesa would lose custody?”

  “Yes.”

  “A pretty good chance?”

  “A more-than-negligible chance.”

  “And as per the ethical requirements of the Bar Association, you relayed that to your client?”

  “I did.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “I can’t disclose anything she told me.”

  “Of course not, but you can tell us her state of mind. How did she take the very real possibility of losing custody of her daughter, Amber, to the defendant?”

  “Not well.”

  “How about the money stuff? How was that looking?”

  “There was going to be some alimony, absolutely. I was convinced we could get a significant amount of
Mr. Dubé’s income, but, unfortunately, that income was limited. Child support depended on the custody issue, so that, too, was in doubt. And our investigation showed that there was really no equity in the restaurant, due to the financial structure of the business. So there was a chance that Leesa might have ended up with very little.”

  “And you told her that, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “How’d she take that?”

  Gullicksen smoothed back his hair. “Divorce is a very difficult time for all the parties.”

  “She was upset?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Distraught at the possibilities?”

  “If you choose to be dramatic about it, yes.”

  “What would have helped, Mr. Gullicksen? How could she have improved the outlook of her case?”

  “A divorce case is like every other type of trial. The quality of the lawyers is important, that’s why I get paid, but by and large it depends on the evidence.”

  “So what she needed was more and better evidence, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you told that to Mrs. Dubé?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did you tell her what kind of evidence might be most helpful?”

  “I told her evidence that cast doubt on her husband’s ability to care for the child would be most valuable.”

  “Evidence of drug use?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Evidence of multiple sex partners?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Evidence of bizarre sexual perversions?”

  He smiled and bared his teeth as if he were being offered a plump swimmer’s leg. “Such evidence is always helpful in these cases.”

  “Did you suggest to Mrs. Dubé that she hire an investigator to see if such evidence existed?”

  “I did, but she claimed she didn’t have sufficient funds after paying my retainer.”

  “How much did you get up front, by the way?”

  “Objection,” said Dalton.

  “What’s the purpose of that question, Mr. Carl?” said the judge.

  “Professional curiosity. I might be in the wrong branch of the business.”

  “Objection sustained.”

  “Thank you, Judge,” I said. “And thank you, Mr. Gullicksen. I have no further questions.”

  65

  I don’t know why I awoke when I did. There was a stillness in the air, and maybe that was it. I lived in the city, and in the early summer I kept my bedroom window open to the breeze, so I was serenaded to sleep each evening by the rise and fall of traffic, the distant horns, the laughter of passersby on my street having a better life than was I. But when I awoke that night, there was only the quiet. Maybe I was like the London man who was startled out of his slumber when Big Ben failed to chime.

  Or maybe I was waiting for him. If so, he didn’t disappoint.

  I was lying with my eyes open, letting the pieces of my consciousness fall together and adhere to one another, when the phone rang. My nerves reflexively jangled at the sound.

  “Hello,” I said quickly.

  No answer, and suddenly I knew who it was.

  “It’s you, I suppose,” I said, without any desperation this time. In fact, if anything, my voice was downright hearty.

  I heard nothing but the slight rasp of a breath.

  “I figured you’d call again,” I said. “You don’t have anything to say? That’s okay. But please, don’t hang up. I have a special message especially for you.”

  I waited a moment. The line stayed open.

  “But before I relay the message”—was that a sigh I heard from the other end of the line?—“I wanted to tell you that there’s nothing personal in what I am doing. I like you, actually, against my better judgment maybe, but I do. And I sort of admire you, too. Those false classified ads were pretty funny. Annoying, yes, and you ruined my secretary’s day, what with all the people showing up for the paralegal job, but still, it was a pretty good gag. And the worst of it was those damn Labradoodles. My cell phone never stopped ringing. I turned it off to escape the desperate yapping of the callers, and whenever I turned it back on, there were, like, twenty new messages, all asking about Labradoodles. I still don’t know what the hell a Labradoodle is, it sounds like a kind of processed breakfast meat, but the demand, I can tell you, is insatiable.

  “And I liked how you arranged to have those porno magazines scattered around my office with my name on the fake subscription labels. Cute. My secretary was not happy about that, first realizing what you had done and then searching high and low to see if she got them all. I’ll have you know I’ve taken them home with me, and I have spent hours scouring the evidence and I am still puzzled. Bottoms Up, I can understand, Jugs, sure, but Lesbian Grannies? Really? No wonder I’m having trouble sleeping. I can barely wait to see what you have in store for me next.

  “But it isn’t the cleverness I most admire about you, or the wherewithal to inconvenience my life so. It’s the sense of obligation you have, the sense of mission. You like to help, you always say, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? More like an obsession. And I think I understand where it came from. But you have to understand, I have my own obligations. And my main obligation, right now, is to my client. Frankly, I don’t like François any more than I suppose you do, but still, he’s my client. That means something, at least to me. I have to do what I can to help him, and from where I’m sitting, to do that I have bring you into it all.

  “You still there?”

  I listened. Just the raspy breath, but it was enough.

  “It’s sort of nice to be the one talking for a change, almost as if I have my hands in your mouth.”

  I laughed a little, but he didn’t, not at all.

  “I don’t understand everything that happened the night Leesa Dubé died. Who did what to whom and where? It’s all a muddle. But I know for sure that you were somehow involved. And I believe that I might be able to convince the jury of that, too. And if I do, there’s a chance François could be acquitted. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is not for me to say. I tried once to play judge and jury, and it didn’t work out too well. What I learned is that I don’t know enough. To be frank, I barely know enough to get myself dressed in the morning, and Carol Kingsly will tell you I don’t do a very good job at that. But all I can be certain about in this world is that I have this job to do and I’m going to do it, and no amount of harassing phone calls or false subscriptions to porno magazines can change that.

  “I just wanted you to know. Nothing personal.

  “Okay, I guess it’s time for the message. I was in Chicago a few days ago, right by the ballpark. A little house about three blocks west of third base. That’s right. Your house, your boyhood home. You’re not the only one who can dig into the past. I had a nice little talk with Jim and Franny. Your brother and sister were so happy to hear about you. They hadn’t heard from you in so long they thought you had died. There were almost tears when I told them how well you were doing. Almost. And believe it or not, your father was with them. Good news. He’s out of jail. But I think he had a stroke, and frankly, I don’t think he’s being treated so well, not that he deserves much better. I thought you should know. But the message I have is from your brother and sister. They said your dad would like to see you, and they would like to see you, too. They want you to visit. They want you to come home.”

  I waited awhile for some sort of reaction, but there was nothing, just the rasp of breath. And then a click.

  Good.

  I hung up, laid my head on the cool of my pillow, felt my lids grow heavy. That worked out pretty well, I thought. Tonight it would be his turn to lose his sleep.

  66

  Tommy’s High Ball, early afternoon on a day court was in recess. I stepped into the cool of the bar, waved at the barkeep with his shock of white hair. He nodded and gestured me over to the booth next to the door, where Horace T. Grant sat with another ol
d man, a chessboard between them, the pieces scattered like weary soldiers across the black and white squares.

  Horace looked up when I stepped on over, grimaced as if experiencing a shooting pain in his hip.

  “You here for another whipping?” he said.

  “No, sir,” I said. “The scars of our last meeting haven’t yet healed.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.” He turned his attention back to the board. “You going to move that knight, Simpson, or you going to stare at that miserable position of yours for the rest of this beautiful afternoon?”

  “I got possibilities,” said the man across from Horace.

  “Maybe,” said Horace, “but they’re all bad.”

  “I got possibilities, I say,” said Simpson, “all kinds of possibilities. And I don’t need you sitting across from me and being so high and mighty. I’ve taken you down before.”

  “You did what?” said Horace, the tone of his voice rising with incredulity. “When?”

  “That time, remember, with the pawn and the queen. A brilliant combination, if I do say so myself.”

  “I must have been too drunk to remember,” said Horace, “and I haven’t been that drunk since Wilson Goode dropped a bomb on my neighborhood and scared me sober.”

  “I didn’t say it was recent.”

  “No, you didn’t,” said Horace. “Now, move before my bones turn to dust.”

  “Too late,” I said.

  Simpson laughed at that, covering his mouth with long, bony fingers. Horace just shook his head.

  “What you want?” he said finally.

  “I can’t stay, I have a meeting upstairs.” Horace raised his eyebrows with interest. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m working on setting up the match I told you about. I haven’t heard yet.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “But I’m hopeful it will come soon.”

  “You know where I’ll be.”

  “Yes, I do.”