Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “We’d be lucky if one of those little sweethearts we siphon out of Harvard Law knew half the practical law of an Al Bressio,” said Cutler.

  “Sure, Jim. Sure. Can’t judge a book by its cover. There’s good and bad in all people. Michelangelo was Italian, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, but they let him do the Sistine Chapel anyway, Puff.”

  “I see you’re back in your same hostile form, Jim. Going back to Washington for some real work?”

  “No,” said Cutler.

  “Oh, I thought you were working again, by all those Washington phone calls out of your private line.”

  “Go back to your Daily News, Puff.”

  “I don’t read it regularly, just when the firm happens to have some possible interest,” said Mitchell. “Maybe next week we’ll be connected to porno houses.”

  “Then you’ll have an excuse to read Screw, Puff.”

  “How do you know about Screw? Do you read it too?”

  “No,” said Cutler, wounding his partner, who when he returned to his private office phoned his wife to repeat what his great-grandfather had said about the Irish. “You can take the Irish out of Ireland, but you can’t take the Irish out of the Irish.”

  “Jim Cutler push you around again, dear?” said his wife.

  Mary Beth Cutler refused to lie on Dr. Finney’s couch.

  “Nothing personal against you, darling, but I don’t know who’s been lying on it before me, if you know what I mean.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Oh, no. You know what bothers me. Al’s told you, hasn’t he?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, today the strangest thing happened to me, and I’ll get to the real good stuff later. Today I was in Little Italy with Bobbi, shopping, and these people started smiling at me. But not just there. That was where it started. Almost everywhere I go there’s always someone who looks at me and smiles and nods and sometimes these men offer to carry my packages.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “Well, first of all, they’re all men and …”

  For the second time that day, Clarissa Duffy told the funny-sounding man that Al Bressio was out of town.

  “Yes, he got your message. Now leaving him alone. You people leave him alone.”

  When Bressio checked in by long distance from a Phoenix motel room, Clarissa forgot about the messages when she heard that special tone in his voice, that guilty-as-fucking-sin tone. Oh, did she know that one.

  “Everything is all right up here, Al. Fine … No, nothing wrong with me … No, I’m not mad. Why should I be mad? Bored maybe, sick of working for you maybe. Disgusted with you for being so incredibly stupid, but mad—no, Al, I’m not mad.… What makes you think I think you met some stewardess on the plane? If an airline stewardess is your speed, Al Bressio, I hope you’re happy. Enjoy your airline stewardess … I didn’t say you were having another one-nighter. I merely said forget it. When will you be back? … No. No messages.”

  XIII

  It was the grease for the hinge of the scales of justice. A thousand years of Anglo-Saxon common law, enlightened with older Judeo-Christian thought and influenced to a small degree by the legal order of the great Roman Empire—all of this came down to a brief haggle in Arizona and the grist for character assassination in Iowa.

  And while it was not the kind of work Bressio liked, it was the kind he was very good at. When he saw the prosecutor’s office in Phoenix, he knew there was no question of a plea bargain. He could get one. It was he who held the threat of trial, and all the concepts of due process were reduced to the reality of case overload.

  The first indication was the prosecutor saying he had exactly half an hour to see Fleish’s representative. He was on the phone when Bressio entered. The office was a neat air-conditioned cell stacked high with papers on the desk, a long table against the wall, and three of the four chairs. The fourth held a suit jacket. The prosecutor, a gaunt, balding man in his early forties with rolled-up shirt sleeves and loosened tie, nodded to the chair and with a twist of his head indicated the jacket should be thrown on the long table over the manilla folders. His name was James Andress.

  “No,” he said into the phone, waving Bressio to feel free to do what his head had indicated. “No. And don’t phone again. The answer is no … Sure I’d like to discuss it, but I’d like to have time to sleep and breathe, too … No. That’s final. Goodbye. Don’t phone again.” The prosecutor hung up.

  “You’re A. Bressio and you work for Murray Blay Dawson, correct? Sit down. Throw the coat anywhere.”

  Bressio folded the coat over what appeared to be the most balanced pile of folders. Then he sat down. Andress was impatiently drumming his fingers on a bare spot on his desk.

  “I’m here about the Fleish case, as you have been informed. Mr. Fleish has been arrested and charged with—”

  “I know. I know. I know. What do you want?”

  “Possession simple.”

  “He had a trunkload of pot in his car. That’s more than personal use. That’s intent to sell.”

  “But, Mr. Andress, the state trooper didn’t have a search warrant.”

  “He had probable cause.”

  “You say he had probable cause, and we say he didn’t.”

  “A year,” said Andress. “With intent to sell.”

  “He’s a first offender.”

  “We hear he’s got another indictment hanging.”

  “Hanging is not a conviction. It’s all a question of where we’re going to deal and where we’re going to fight.”

  “I hear it’s a federal charge. U.S. Attorney’s office. They don’t deal too easily.”

  “He’s a first offender. Are you telling me we should take his first offense for leniency to the federal courts and fight you here?”

  “Okay. You’re in luck. His co-defendant yesterday made an attempt to break jail. I like that charge better. He’s a real bad-ass, three-time loser, and this Fleish fellow is no pro, from what I gather. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Six months and a year suspended.”

  “Possession, and thirty days,” said Bressio.

  “That was a trunkload of marijuana.”

  “It may be inadmissible.”

  “And it may be admissible. That was a trunkload of marijuana. What do you want from me, Mr. Bressio? I didn’t put it there. You don’t smoke a trunkload. A year suspended is all I can give you.”

  “I don’t want a felony. Can’t use it. No way.”

  “If that trunkload of marijuana holds up, he’s doing five, I promise that, Mr. Bressio.”

  “A year suspended for possession simple or we go to court. Otherwise you’re giving us nothing.”

  “Okay. A year suspended on possession. You’re lucky his accomplice made that attempted break and we can put that bowser away for good. Otherwise I couldn’t give you possession simple.”

  “Consumatum est. Done,” said Bressio, and as they shook hands, the phone rang. Bressio got a cab to the airport and thought about such things as a man being innocent until proven guilty, a man’s right not to be forced to testify against himself, his right to face his accusers, and all the other rights learned painfully through centuries of human mistakes. And it all came down to a busy prosecutor who would lower a charge and let a judge know that the state thought a year suspended was adequate punishment. One did not need a Harlan Fiske Stone or the Supreme Court for that. This kind of law Bennie the fence back in Brooklyn could practice.

  Bressio was in Des Moines by 3:45 P.M. If plea-bargaining was unpleasant for him, this was downright gruesome. And at this, it was said he was an artist.

  It was not exactly character assassination. It was simply the gathering of testimony or other evidence that when introduced into court before judge and jury would make anyone in their eyes seem less reputable and hence diminish the testimony of that person, make it less weighty if not downright inconsequential.

  In all his years, Bressio h
ad not found anyone against whom some convincing person or evidence could not make seem dishonest.

  He who steals my purse steals trash, but he who steals my good name …

  Bressio put that thought out of his mind and got a cab from the airport to Pruscott College. Some investigators would unearth heaps of garbage about a person’s past, some of which might be admissible. They tended to confuse gossip with evidence, morality with law. Bressio was known to produce evidence both effective and admissible from the most fragmentary material. He knew his law.

  Calvin Loring, Fleish’s accomplice in the second arrest, appeared from the thumbnail sketch Dawson had given Bressio to be the perfect all-American boy. He was nineteen years old, of farmer stock, a pre-med student at the college. According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Loring had no previous criminal record.

  Dawson, in a conversation by phone just before Bressio’s plane departed, called Loring “Andy Hardy, the bastard. He’s going to kill us if he shows up with those pink cheeks of his.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bressio had said. “He’s human.”

  “He’s not fucking human, Al. The sonuvabitch was Four-H, Christian Youth, a Freedom Foundation winner for some article I got here on responsibility being the cornerstone of freedom. We can’t let our boy genius go into a conspiracy trial with a guy that clean. They’ll convict on impairing the morals of a saint without ever charging him with it. I’ve seen it happen before, even without a jury, and I want to use a jury on this one because basically our case is a pile of neatly packaged shit. You gotta do a job on Andy Hardy.”

  “It’ll be done, Murray. It’s a nice way to learn how to hate yourself, too.”

  “Hate, shmate. We got nothing else. By the way, I laid the law down to boy genius. No more Mary Beth, Okay?”

  “Okay,” Bressio had said. “Good. In fact, good.”

  Who steals my purse steals trash, but he who steals my good name steals …

  Bressio got a Pruscott catalog and a map from the administration building, a red brick and aluminum structure that was an exact replica of a sewage disposal plant Bressio had once seen on Long Island. He went to the student union, another lifeless brick structure, and phoned back to the administration building. He knew the effect his appearance had on people even when he wasn’t carrying a weapon. His voice didn’t frighten.

  He was looking for an old friend who went to Pruscott, a premed student, Cal Loring. Would the operator be so kind as to help him? After several transfers, a secretary of the dean of students told him that Loring lived at Fayerweather Hall. Bressio said Loring might not be there now, could she give him Loring’s class schedule. As he listened, he opened the catalog and began marking. Loring was taking five courses: Chemistry 301, Biology 417, and World Civilization 2, which included the Laws, History, and Arts of Mankind.

  Bressio phoned the chemistry professor and got a pleasant, efficient-sounding secretary who told him information on a student’s activities would have to be cleared through the dean of students. A good secretary bucking the situation away from her boss. Arts of Mankind was the same. And no one answered at Biology. But at History, Bressio got what he wanted.

  “I’m awfully sorry, but I’m busy. You just can’t call up and expect that sort of information like that. I mean, who do you think you are? There’s enough work here for five girls. Hold on … Yes, are you still there? The answer is no.”

  Bressio located the History building on the campus map and strolled over. If he had more time he might have made a broad vacuum-cleaner-type approach to Loring, one that explored many possibilities. But he did not have the time, so he would have to penetrate, following any opening offered. He didn’t have to make Loring appear like Al Capone. He just needed enough to drag him down to the human race:

  A grieved secretary was always a good beginning. This one was in her early forties with graying hair curled in a style of twenty years before. Her face was tense and puffy, and she moved hectically, like energy in conflict.

  She looked up at Bressio, who saw the trace of fear in her eyes that ordinarily would make him feel bad.

  “Did I frighten you? I’m sorry,” said Bressio.

  “Oh, no. You didn’t frighten me. What do you want?” The voice carried the flattened twang of Iowa.

  “I came to apologize. I … I phoned earlier,” said Bressio softly. “And I guess I was out of place asking all those questions seeing how busy and, well, frankly, overworked you are.”

  “That’s all right. Everything is crazy around here. No apologies needed. I should apologize to you. I guess I was abrupt.”

  “Who wouldn’t be?” said Bressio in a most sympathetic voice. “I can’t seem to find a thing around this campus. The people around here seem to believe that the students and professors are some sort of angels, saints—gods if you will. Not like us ordinary people.”

  “You spotted it right away, didn’t you?”

  “How could I miss? At first I thought it was because I came from New York and I talk funny. But as I looked around, I began to see they look down on everyone who isn’t part of their special clique. Many people think the students are angels, but they’re not. Some of the students are downright dangerous, and no one around here seems to appreciate that fact.”

  “You can say that again,” said the woman, her curled hair bobbing in righteous agreement. “You’re the man who phoned about the student, right?”

  Bressio nodded like a good little boy.

  “I’d like to help you, but it’s probably against one of their rules.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want you to break a rule,” said Bressio. Delighted to hear it was one of “their” rules and not one of “our” rules, Bressio leaned over her desk, glanced around to make sure no one was listening, and in a hushed conspiratorial tone revealed he was on a legal investigation.

  “We suspect some very serious things about one of your students, Calvin Loring.” Bressio gave her one of his cards with the neat lettering, the law degree and the New York City address. It did not call him attorney-at-law, but for this woman it made no difference.

  “What did he do?” asked the secretary.

  Bressio could see the spark of joy in her eyes. He hesitated, appearing to wrestle with the decision of disclosing his mission. “Calvin Loring has been arrested in New York City. I don’t know if I should tell you … Ah, to hell with it. Calvin Loring has been arrested for conspiracy. Drugs.”

  “Conspiracy. That’s awful,” said the secretary, whose day—possibly week—had just been made into something more alive.

  “We just want some background on his grades and professors. Nothing confidential. Nothing that isn’t public record. I guess I’ll be here a week until someone can find a record around here. I guess I shouldn’t say it, but the administration here is rather short on competence.”

  “Short? There isn’t a pointy head in this place that could park a car straight,” said the secretary. And did she show that surprisingly nice man from New York City. She showed what one competent secretary could do in ten minutes. Without any fancy degrees. Just a good simple basic high school education and some plain old common sense. By phoning secretaries who worked in other departments, she learned that Loring had a C+ average across the board, with an A in World Civilization, but a very significant C in biology.

  “Would have taken you two weeks to a month by the system they have here put together by all those pointy heads,” said the secretary proudly. But Bressio only pretended to be listening. He was already hearing Dawson cross-examine Loring. “You say, Mr. Loring, that you intended to go to medical school. But your average is C+. Would you please tell the jury what medical school you intended to be accepted at with a C+ average?”

  “Well, I sort of planned on improving my grades.”

  “You planned on improving your grades … Isn’t it true, Mr. Loring, that no medical school would take you with your current average?”

  “Well, you see—”

  “Yes o
r no, Mr. Loring?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s a lie, isn’t it, Mr. Loring? You have a lot of people believing you’re going to be something you’re not. How many people have you used like that before, deceiving them into thinking you’re just some sweet little innocent … All right, your honor, I withdraw the question. Let me rephrase it.”

  It would not be enough to shatter Loring, but it would do as an opening wedge. Bressio expressed amazement that one secretary with a few phone calls could do more than an entire administration with doctorates. He had to give her something for her troubles. Yes. Don’t say no. He wouldn’t hear of it. It would have cost him a week’s wait and hundreds of dollars in time to get what she had gotten.

  Well, if he insisted. A fifty-dollar bill? She couldn’t take that. Why, that was half a week’s salary right there.

  Bressio listened to how little they paid her and explained his problem further. He insisted also that she put the money in her purse immediately. That’s the least she could do for being so helpful.

  “You sit right down. I’ll really show you something. It’s drugs you’re interested in, right?” said the secretary.

  She phoned a friend in administration, a luncheon companion at World Civilization, a cook at the student union. Did she show Bressio!

  According to the grapevine, Calvin Loring wasn’t one of the big users, but he was one of the fellows who hung around Rebecca Hawkins, who was. Becky Hawkins had contacts all over the country, it was said, and what was worse she lived with a professor, William Winstead, at 47 Clover Lane, although no one could prove anything.

  “The drugs?”

  “No, the sex,” said the secretary.

  Bressio insisted she take another fifty. This time there was no fight.

  If she worked where stocks changed hands or in a trucking terminal where goods were shipped and some of the people back in New York knew her nature, this woman would be owned. They would get her addicted to an extra income, and then she would go looking for them with information. It had happened so many times.

  Bressio remembered hearing an uncle laugh about a young cop. “He comesa arounda now. Heh-heh. You see hisa face. Heh-heh. Now we cut him off ana wait for something good. You see. He finda it. You no thinka that funny, Alphonsey? You funny kid.”