The Sign of the Book

by John Dunning

  “What are you callin’ the judge for?” Lennie said. “You wanna piss that old man off, you just call him at home.”

  She ignored him. “Let’s go.”

  We got up and started for the door.

  “I don’t know what you think the judge is gonna do,” Lennie said.

  She stopped at the door and turned. “I’ll tell you what he’d better do. If he doesn’t get you off your dead ass right now, I will delay this trial until next March and have good cause to do it. This is inexcusable. We’ll be back in an hour. Deputy whatever.”

  “That was fun,” I said.

  “As long as it’s my biscuits he’s got on the fire, not yours.”

  “He’s had mine.”

  I told her about my ongoing shitfight with Lennie Walsh.

  “God, where do you find these guys? You run afoul of the worst creeps even in the middle of nowhere. You must run ads in the paper looking for them.”

  “Yeah, but then I find guys like you, and Parley, to pull me out of hot water.”

  “I like old McNamara better all the time,” she said. “Haven’t even met him yet and he reminds me of one or two old lawyers I know.”

  The waitress came. I told her we were waiting for a couple of people and she went away. Todd Williams, the first of our people, arrived a few minutes later. He was a flamboyant, young, blond hot dog but I liked him. He flopped next to Erin and draped his leather cap on her chair.

  “Plane’s all secured and here we are. I’ve been in some dead places with you, Miss Erin, but this one’s unreal. What the hell are we supposed to do here tonight?”

  “Speak for yourself. I’ve got to work.”

  “There’s not even any TV in this place.”

  “There’s a pool hall up the street,” I said.

  “Where do the ladies hang out?”

  “I haven’t found that out yet. The only one I’ve seen is our client, and she’s in jail.”

  “Maybe we should go ahead and order,” Erin said. “McNamara can catch up to us. I don’t want to let too much grass grow under my feet, give that idiot at the jail any more excuses.”

  “You actually intend to call the judge?”

  “If I have to. But I’m betting the deputy lets us in without a squawk when we go back.” She smiled and clutched her purse. “Five’ll get you ten.”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “Todd?”

  “I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

  I told him while Erin was signaling the waitress. “I’d never bet against this woman,” Todd said while Erin was ordering. “You boys would make lousy lawyers,” she said between instructions to the waitress. “You bluff too easy.” She asked for a bottle of wine, paused when the waitress wondered if she wanted the big bottle or small, and said she’d come over and look at what was available in a minute. “I wonder how big the big bottle is,” she said, and the woman told her she could bring half a gallon if we were superthirsty. Erin suppressed a laugh. “You bluff too easily,” she said again, looking at me. “I can always bluff Williams out, but I expected more of you, Janeway.” To the waitress she said, “Thank you, I’ll come look. Put all this on one bill, please.”

  The waitress went away. “I’ll bet it’s Gallo,” Erin said softly. “Any takers?”

  She went away to look.

  “She sure is hyper tonight,” Todd said. “She tries to seem easy but I could tell the minute I picked her up, she’s really uptight about something. This must be a tough case.”

  Erin came back and flopped. “I took the Gallo,” she said. “Don’t ask what the other choice was.”

  “I ate in here last night,” I said. “They run a truck up to the window and pump the stuff into fifty-gallon drums.”

  Parley arrived as the waitress brought our wine: a nice bottle of French merlot, five years old. She uncorked it and poured a thimbleful for Erin to taste. “Lovely, thank you,” Erin said, and she smiled at me brilliantly. “You never know, Janeway, you never know. That’s five dollars you could’ve won from me tonight and we haven’t even seen the deputy again.”

  Four glasses killed the bottle. I made the introductions and offered a toast to friendship.

  Erin and Parley talked; Todd and I listened. The old man gave her his assessment of the case based on what he knew. “Some new things have come to light,” she told him. “I can’t go into them until we talk to the client, which I hope will be within the hour. I’ll see her again tomorrow morning, and we’ll decide at that time if I’m going to represent her. If I’m not, she needs to get someone right away. Cliff tells me he likes what you’ve done to this point.”

  “I’ll take it if there’s nobody else. I’m no criminal lawyer and I’ve told her that. I’d probably do as well as the public defender, but I’m not way up on her list of favorite people just now.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “I think Jerry did it and had the temerity to say so. She flew off the handle when I said that.”

  “That was then, this is now. But we can’t talk about that yet, Janeway’s tied our hands till we get her okay. Listen, if I do take this case, would you be willing to help?”

  “Yeah, sure. I guess so.”

  “There’s going to be lots of stuff that I can’t be here for. It’d be great to have somebody here in town who knows the people and the turf.”

  “Kind of a second chair, you might say, huh?”

  “Yeah, but you’d actually be doing most of the real work till I can get clear. We’ll talk every day on the phone. Bill your time at your regular rate and send the bills to me. Once we get the client to understand what our defense is going to be, whatever that is, I think she’ll be easier to get along with.”

  Supper came and we ate it. The wine was the high spot.

  “We’ll have to get us a place to stay,” Erin said.

  “You can all stay with me,” Parley said.

  “Best hotel in town,” I said.

  “That’s good,” Erin said nervously. “That’s good.”

  She paid the bill. “Guess we’d better get on over to the jailhouse and see if anything’s changed. In case it hasn’t, do you have a number where I can reach the judge?”

  “Oh, yeah. Wish I could be there when you call him.”

  Lennie was sitting at the same table, reading an old copy of Startling Detective.

  “Didn’t get any call from the judge,” he said.

  “I haven’t talked to him yet. Do I have to?”

  He grinned maliciously. “Naw, go on up. I was yanking your chain. If you hadn’t flown off the handle and got all pissy on me, you’d be up there talking to her now.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You know the way, don’t you, cowboy?”

  “Come on,” I said to Erin.

  “Might take a while for me to get her up there,” Lennie said. “Prisoners are eatin’ supper now.”

  Upstairs, we sat in the conference room and waited. An hour passed.

  “He’s really rubbing it in, isn’t he?” Erin said.

  “Goddamn little tinhorn asshole.”

  She laughed. “Why don’t you tell me what you really think of him?”

  “Little tinhorn turkey-jerk South-Succotash pisswater asshole.”

  “That’s very good. Don’t hold back your best stuff on my account.”

  I filled the air with invective, one long impossible sentence, and we both laughed.

  “Prisoners,” I said derisively. “If he’s got more than one prisoner, I’ll be amazed.”

  “Keep a record of all this,” she said. “Write down everything that’s happened since you first laid eyes on him. Did he actually point a gun at you?”

  “You think I made that up? But I was the only one who saw him. Even Parley found it hard to believe.”

  “Write it all down anyway, dates and times, everything. He sounds really unstable, but maybe we’ll want to give him some grief down the road.”

  Foot
steps came along the corridor. Erin took a deep, shivery breath, her last concession to nerves, and put on her steel face. Lennie held the door open and let Laura come into the room.

  She stopped in shock and put her hands over her cheeks. Tears began at once.

  Lennie spoke but his voice seemed far away. “So how long’s this gonna take?”

  “Go away, Deputy,” Erin said.

  “Hey, I got my own supper to eat sometime tonight.”

  “Then go away and eat it. I’ll try to be brief right now, but I’ll want to see her again tomorrow morning.”

  He grunted and closed the door. Erin waited, listening to his footsteps as he went down the hall. She and Laura looked at each other.

  “Don’t do that, please,” Erin said. “Don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “We don’t have time for old tears.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sit down here.”

  Laura sat trembling near her, fighting the tears. “I knew you’d come. I knew it. I’ve dreamed of this.” She broke down and sobbed into her hands.

  Erin looked at me and her eyes were a thousand years old. She reached out and touched Laura’s back, not an easy thing for her to do, and I winked at her.

  “We can’t waste time,” she said. “You heard what Barney Fife said.”

  “I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. I am so sorry for everything.”

  “Listen to me. Whatever we do here, that old stuff has nothing to do with it.”

  Of course this was not true: she knew and I knew and probably Laura Marshall knew that the old stuff was the cause of everything, but she went on as if none of us knew, staking out her turf. “I don’t want to get into any of that. I’m here to talk about your case, not rake over old times. Can we please be clear on that?”

  Laura sniffed and dabbed at her eyes but the flow wouldn’t stop.

  “I just don’t want to talk about it,” Erin said.

  “Do you hate me?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Erin looked at me and said quietly, “Is this place secure? Can we talk?”

  “It should be. It would be stupid and very rare for them to bug a witness room.” I shrugged. “With a cop like that idiot, who knows?”

  “Let’s just chat a bit tonight,” Erin said.

  On a legal pad she jotted a note.

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Not so hot,” Laura said.

  “Are they treating you okay in here?”

  “I guess so. I’m going nuts. I’ve never been in jail before.”

  Erin wrote something on her pad. Laura said, “Are you going to help me?”

  “I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. But you’ve got to be straight with us.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  “No more evasive stuff.”

  “I swear.”

  “That means everything is fair game. You hear what I’m saying? Everything.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.”

  Erin started to write something, then changed her mind.

  “How long were you out on the meadow before you heard the shot?”

  “I don’t know, maybe fifteen minutes. I wasn’t thinking about it.”

  “Think about it now.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Laura said. “Twenty at the outside.”

  “Then you heard the shot.”

  “And I ran back to the house.”

  “And you’ve said that wouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes.”

  She nodded.

  “And from then until the deputy arrived, you heard no sounds of anyone or any vehicle coming or leaving.”

  “I don’t know.” Laura closed her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “If you do remember anything like that, tell us at once.”

  Another half minute passed. Again Erin asked, “Did you see or hear anything that might lead us to believe someone else might have been there?”

  Laura looked to be in deep thought.

  “This could be important,” Erin said. “If you heard anything, either before or after you went into the house, I need to know exactly what you remember.”

  Laura nodded, her face intense.

  “Let’s go over a few things again,” Erin said. “Why did you tell Mr. Janeway you killed Bobby?”

  “I wanted to protect Jerry.”

  “You thought your son had done it.”

  “Yes. But now…”

  “Are you willing to accept it if Jerry did shoot Bobby?”

  Laura shook her head and looked away.

  “Look at me.”

  Laura looked up.

  “The fact is, we don’t know who did it,” Erin said.

  “That’s right. Janeway showed me it might’ve been someone else.”

  “But right now we have no other suspects.”

  “No.”

  “You see what I’m getting at?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “We have one version of what happened. Yours. Unless Jerry comes to life and begins talking up a blue streak, yours is the one we’re going with.”

  “But what if that means…?”

  “If I take this case, my job is to get you off. That means everything else is up for grabs, everything. If Jerry did it, we’ll have to deal with that later.”

  “Oh, God, Erin… oh, Jesus…”

  “We’ve got to be clear on this. I will not have my hands tied.”

  A long moment unrolled. Erin wrote something on her paper.

  “Make up your mind,” she said.

  Laura nodded.

  “Be sure.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. McNamara will be talking to you again in the coming days. I want you to be as straight with him as you will with me. He’s to be told everything you remember, as soon as you remember it. If you think of something you’d forgotten about, I want you to call him. Are we clear on that?”

  They stared at each other.

  “Okay?” Erin said.

  Laura looked unhappily at the wall.

  “Okay?” Erin said again.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, then. Don’t talk to anybody else. No reporters, no lawyers, especially not that cretin who minds the jail. Talk to nobody but one of us. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Refer anything you’re asked to me or McNamara. Try to get some sleep, I’ll be back early in the morning.”

  “So what do you think?” Erin said.

  “I like her.”

  “Yes, she’s always been very likable.”

  “There’s a guarded statement if I ever heard one.”

  I pulled up at Parley’s house and we sat there a moment letting the car run and the heater warm us. Erin took a deep breath. “Yeah, it is,” she said at last. “I’m trying to figure out what I feel about her after all these years. I may never know.”

  “There’s something about you two,” I said. “In some ways you’re very much alike; in others—”

  “—we could be from different species.”

  “Yeah. Somehow I can’t picture her being you.”

  “I think when we were kids she was suspicious of my motives. She never seemed to believe I liked her as much as I did; she always had something to prove. She was dirt-poor, her people had nothing: her father literally worked himself to death. When she was a teenager, she took on a full-time job to help them out, going to school the whole time. Man, I admired her spunk. In time I think she knew that and we became good friends, then best friends. If she had any shallowness, it was a certain preoccupation with the rich and famous. Easy for me to say, I was one of the privileged, but I always thought she was too enchanted with stories of wealthy, fabled people. She seems different now. Different and yet I still see flashes of her old ways. In her face. In her eyes.”

  “Do you still hate her for what happened?”


  “I never hated her. I just can’t do that. I sure tried to, when the hurt was new and raw: I cursed them both a hundred times a week but I couldn’t ever come to hate her. I’m afraid in my youth I bought into the old stereotypes. It was the man’s fault. He was much easier to hate. What can you expect from a man, you’re all a bunch of randy old goats. But it was different with her. She took my man, but women have lost men forever and lived through it. What he took from me was just as priceless.”

  “Did he ever try to make it up?”

  “Oh, yeah. He called a lot, at first half a dozen times a week. And I did talk to him about it, at least in the beginning. I guess I should say I heard him out. I didn’t have much to say, but I thought I owed it to him to hear what he had to say. We had been together for years, we were high school sweethearts, and even before that we were so close. So I felt I should at least listen.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, he tried to blame her. But it takes two to tango, doesn’t it? At least she never tried to duck the blame, I’ve got to give her that. She cried and said how sorry she was, but never once did she say it was his fault.”

  “Well, I think she’s suffered for it.”

  “Good.”

  A long moment later, Erin said, “If I did hate her, this would be the perfect opportunity for me to get back at her. Wouldn’t it?”

  “If you were that mean-hearted. And a good enough lawyer to be just bad enough to lose her case.”

  “What’s your guess about that?”

  “You’re one of those two things. But only one.”

  “Thank you, I think.”

  “I’m not worried about you. You wouldn’t do that. I think you already know what you’re going to do.”

  Another moment passed, lost in thought.

  “I couldn’t even say her name in there. I’ll have to get over that.”

  Suddenly she said, “I’ve got to get her off, Cliff. I’ve got to get her off.”

  12

  We sat up past midnight in a three-headed council of war. Erin sent Todd to bed early—“Go read a book,” she said, “we have some lawyer stuff to hash out”—and he departed cheerfully for the third bedroom down the hall. Most of our talk until then had been about tomorrow’s agenda. “I want to go to the jail as soon as deputy whatever will let me in,” Erin said. “I don’t think I can count on getting in there much before eight o’clock. And I’ve got to see that kid before I leave. I know he doesn’t speak but I need to spend a few minutes with him anyway.”