Dying Embers

by Robert E. Bailey

  “He was set up and the hair was planted.”

  Pete looked in the mirror. “Bloody carnival parade! We’ve two of those news vans and a string of autos following us.”

  “People hoping that I’ll tell them what the feds won’t.”

  “I read the story this morning. Odd they would say the man was killed in a ‘clash with federal agents.’”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They are usually very particular about calling them Special Agents.”

  “You read like a lawyer,” I said.

  Pete turned his face to me. A wry smile wafted over his lawyer’s mask and dissipated like smoke. Pete’s half century had begun to bulge in his suit, and show up gray in his bristle thicket eyebrows and carefully trimmed beard.

  He didn’t ask the question. He turned back to the business of driving and said, “We need the man who witnessed the murder of Ms. Frampton and soaked Lambert’s hair in her blood so it would stick to her palm.”

  “Not like we can just snap off a subpoena,” I said. “But Hank Dunphy’s available and he is in this up to his armpits.”

  “It was Mr. Dunphy’s passport and ticket Scott Lambert tendered when he was apprehended at the airport. The jury wouldn’t believe Mr. Dunphy if he personally confessed to the murder on the stand.”

  “They never check my passport,” I said.

  “Mr. Lambert used the passport as identification at the boarding counter.”

  “They don’t look even vaguely alike.”

  “Scott charged up to the counter at the last minute and put his thumb over the picture,” said Finney, exhaling the words as if he were confessing his own stupidity.

  “He should have just walked away.”

  “The police were at hand.”

  “Like they knew he was coming?”

  “Probably,” said Finney. “He has had to forfeit his bond.”

  “Guess it wasn’t the bond agent that ratted him out.”

  “Mr. Lambert posted a half-million in cash.”

  I levered the electric window switch of Pete’s brand new silver Lincoln. Nothing happened. “Something wrong with the window?”

  “Sorry, locked out—kids, you know. I can put the air on if you like.”

  “I thought I’d have a smoke before we got to the jail.”

  “Really rather you didn’t,” said Pete. “We can loiter in the parking lot while we put your pistol in the boot.”

  “I left it at the office,” I said and made a pat inventory of my pockets. “Doesn’t matter, I don’t have any smokes. So what’s this about Lambert getting the shit kicked out of him?”

  Finney put the blower on. “Chingos,” he said. “What do you know about them?”

  “What I read in the paper,” I said, “some Hispanic gang, supposed to be linked to the Mexican Mafia. I don’t know as that’s true.”

  “They dusted him up. I don’t know how bad. They want twenty thousand dollars for protection.”

  “Bad idea,” I said. “Any amount of money paid to them would just turn out to be a down payment. Have them put Scott in ‘punk city.’”

  “Fred Timmer is the assistant prosecutor on this. I talked to him about segregation, but he passed the matter off to the sheriff. He said that the operative policy was that Mr. Lambert would have to identify his attackers.”

  • • •

  Fred Timmer—six foot, but narrow at the shoulders and pigeon chested—stalked about the hallway outside the interview room wearing a tan polyester suit and carrying a cardboard index file tucked under his arm. Seeing me, he heated up until the red in his thermometer showed in his face.

  “Listen, Hardin,” he said, “you should be in this jail, not walking around the hallways.”

  “Mr. Hardin is the Security Director for Light and Energy Applications,” said Finney. “He will be working on Mr. Lambert’s behalf.”

  “Please tell me you’ll put him on the stand,” said Timmer.

  “You may ask anything you like, so long as you have foundation.”

  “I have questions about his morals and the reliability of his testimony.”

  “That’s up to the jury,” said Finney. “I may need to confer with you after we have spoken with Mr. Lambert.”

  “I’ll be here,” said Timmer, his face serpentine.

  Lambert, wearing green jail scrubs, sat with his right hand cuffed to a metal ring bolted to the table. Both of his eyes had been blackened, his left open only a slit, revealing a yellow iris awash in a sea of red. His left upper lip bulged, swollen so large that his lips would not come together on the right. A gauze patch covered his right cheek.

  “They beat the shit out of me. I’m passing blood.” said Lambert, adding a pf sound to his esses and revealing a gap in his teeth.

  Pete dropped his satchel on the floor and turned on his heel, his eyes electric. He rapped on the interview room door with his fist. The door came open and he said, “Have you seen Mr. Lambert?”

  “Want to confer already?”

  “My client has been savaged.”

  “This is the jail,” said Timmer. “It’s full of criminals and perverts. It’s where they belong,” he added in a louder voice. In a conversational tone he went on, “We have lodged our displeasure with the sheriff.” And louder again, he said, “But things happen, don’t they?”

  “Is that a threat?” said Finney, his tone even and inquisitive.

  “Not at all,” said Timmer, his mouth full of innocence.

  Finney pulled the door shut and stepped over the bench on our side of the table.

  “He said if I plead guilty,” said Lambert, lisping the t’s around his missing teeth, “that I could be alone in a safe cell.”

  Finney sat, dug a yellow pad out of his satchel, and smacked it on the table like he was killing a bug. “He talked to you?” Finney plumbed a pen out of his pocket. “I can’t believe it! The man has lost his mind!”

  “Not exactly,” said Lambert. “He was in the room when they brought me in. The guard let him out and he said it. You know, from the hallway through the door before it closed. Like he was talking to the guard.”

  Finney scratched notes. Without looking up he said, “I understand that you need only identify your attackers to be placed in segregation.”

  “I told them who did it,” said Lambert, sitting straight and making his eyes as wide as he could. “They put me back in the cell with them and this is what they did.” He peeled the bandage off his cheek and revealed a deep cigarette burn. “Said it meant I was their bitch. If I didn’t pay, they’d pass me around.”

  “You can’t pay them,” said Finney.

  “Then tell that bastard in the hallway he has a deal. These guys are going to kill me.”

  Pete put his pen away. “Big prostate, small bladder,” said Finney, “I should have stopped by the restroom before we came up.” He walked to the door and knocked to get out.

  When the door closed behind him I said, “Well, we’re a matched set.”

  “Not hardly,” said Lambert. “You got to defend yourself. I can’t do anything. There’s too many. They’re all over me. If I could get a bunk I’d be afraid to sleep.”

  “Pete’s right. This isn’t a good idea. It’s just the first of many larger payments.”

  Lambert shook his head.

  “Fine,” I said. I wanted to rub my face but knew better. “Who, how, when, and where?”

  “Hank Dunphy.”

  Hank Dunphy? Are you nuts? I let him finish.

  “You met him at the airport. He’ll bring the money to your office. Twenty thousand in tens and twenties. Then tonight, at ten o’clock, you take it to Milwaukee Street, by the zoo. There’s a pedestrian tunnel under the expressway. Wear a Detroit Red Wing T-shirt and ball cap. Look for a man in a Detroit Lions T-shirt.”

  “I think you need to look long and hard at Mr. Dunphy.”

  Lambert waved his free hand. “I know you had a misunderstanding, but Hank Dunphy is very loya
l. We were at BuzzBee Batteries in the R&D department together.”

  Pointless. “Scott, I’ll do what you ask, but you have to listen to Pete. In the meantime I have a lead on the person who killed Anne Frampton.”

  “Who was it?”

  I shook my head. “I was told that it was a woman.”

  “Anne was a lesbian.”

  “You knew?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Why on earth did you ask me to find her?” I tried to conceal my anger.

  Lambert looked away. “I had to find her. We did a physics project together in college. BuzzBee Batteries is challenging my patents. They said I developed the technology while I worked for them and stole it. Anne knew the truth.”

  “She had a sculpture. Looks like a ship sailing out of a brick wall. When the light hits it, a sea captain appears.”

  Lambert snapped his head toward me and made the happiest smashed face I have ever seen. “The Dutchman? You saw it?”

  “It’s on the mantel at the Frampton estate.”

  “That’s all I need. I asked Anne about it, but the woman she was with got angry and started shoving me.”

  “She use a voice synthesizer?”

  “She didn’t say anything. She just shoved me and threw plates of food. They escorted me out of the restaurant. Christ, I thought I’d been invited.”

  “Hank Dunphy sent you there?”

  “Wasn’t his fault. Somebody called and said they were from your office.”

  “That wasn’t the deal, was it? I was to give her your telephone number. Period.”

  “You can’t understand how important this is. Programmable machines the size of molecules and absolute conductivity at ambient temperatures.”

  “I bought one of your cameras,” I said. “Amazing.”

  “The science is light years in front of the engineering. This year I can print batteries onto greeting cards. In five years I’ll be able to paint a battery onto an automobile like a primer coat. The finish coat will be photoelectric. You can guess the rest.”

  “I just like the idea of changing the color of my car with a switch,” I said. “But somebody with a lot of money has bought some very heavy hitters …”

  The door opened. Finney’s voice came from the hallway. “Mr. Hardin, we need you to come out here.”

  I shuffled out to stand in the open door. My foot had much improved but wearing only one shoe gave me an odd gait. I found Pete in the company of Timmer and two armed deputies. Pete stood with his hands folded, looking at the floor. The deputies looked bored. One of them had his handcuffs out.

  He said, “Are you Arthur Hardin?”

  I looked at Finney. He would not raise his eyes to meet mine. “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” I said. Timmer’s face went stupid, which in his case I believe passed for smug.

  The deputy said, “I have a warrant for your arrest.”

  21

  “FINNEY, YOUR CLIENT SHOULD TAKE THE PLEA OR HE’S FUCKED,” said Assistant Prosecutor Fred Timmer, in a loud voice. The deputy took my arm and tugged. The interview room door fell shut.

  Timmer, a head taller than Pete Finney, never saw it coming. Pete seized him by the lapels and shoved. Timmer thumped onto the wall and slid down onto his fanny, exposing red and green plaid socks above his brown tasseled loafers. Papers exploded from his cardboard index file in a flurry of legal snow.

  The deputies turned from me and seized Finney by the arms.

  “Why don’t you try thumb screws,” said Finney, his face red and eyebrows welded together. “It’s not enough you’ve had the man beaten senseless?”

  Timmer looked up from his seat on the floor, his mouth working on the syllables of non words until he arrived at, “Ass, ass, ass … assault? And battery!”

  “Bloody inquisition!” said Finney. “I’ll have your bar card shellacked to my dust bin!”

  Timmer’s face remained stunned. “I could have you arrested!”

  “What is it for me?” said Finney. “The rack?”

  “We had nothing to do with what happened to Lambert.”

  “You’re using the circumstances to your advantage.”

  “We have no control over how your client is lodged,” said Timmer, gathering the papers from his lap and the floor.

  “You remain an officer of the court,” said Finney. “Turning a blind eye is no less culpable. Mr. Lambert tells me he is passing blood.”

  “He has been examined,” said Timmer, stuffing papers into his cardboard file.

  The deputies let go of Finney and he straightened his suit. “I should like to have him seen again.”

  Timmer climbed to his feet. “That’s up to the sheriff. I’m prepared to overlook this accidental collision. But Hardin is wanted on an open warrant.”

  “Mr. Hardin had no open warrants,” said Finney. “I checked before asking him to work on the case.”

  “He’ll have one shortly,” said Timmer. “I just signed the charges, possession of child pornography.”

  I shook my head. “Talk to Matty Svenson.”

  “The charges are written under state statutes,” said Timmer.

  “Oh, I wasn’t talking to you,” I said.

  • • •

  They spent forty-five minutes wadding my suit into a paper sack and deciding whether the metal brace on my nose was a weapon. They issued me a set of jail scrubs, but refused to return my cane and opted to have a trustee push me about in a wheelchair.

  The guard called him Manny. His dark auburn hair stood out from his head in all directions. A scar raced down his forehead, divided his left eyebrow, and leapt past his eye to his cheek where it skidded to a stop just short of a threadbare moustache. At five feet ten he probably weighed a spare one-thirty. He said I should call him Flaco.

  “What’s the ‘Manny’ stand for?”

  “Manuel, as in Manuel Austin,” he said. “You got any smokes, man?”

  “We got the same tailor,” I said. “No pockets.”

  He pushed me down the hall, past a stairwell, toward a large maple veneer door attended by a uniformed guard and a sign made from a file folder. The sign—hand lettered in black felt tip marker—read, “Arraignments.”

  “Guess it don’t matter,” he said. “They said you was going to the jail ward at county general. You don’t got to buy a bed.”

  “Austin?” I said. “You from Texas? What?”

  “Baja, man. Lots of Anglo names there. Even some blue-eyed-blond chiquitas. You be right at home, eh?”

  “No habla,” I said.

  “No sweat, man. Everybody speaks money.”

  A guard twisted a key into the door and pulled it open.

  “You get in there, don’t be making no noise,” said Flaco. “Piss off the judge and your bail go up.”

  The room, darkly paneled and brightly lit, featured a wooden table, a straight-backed chair, and a video camera on a tripod aimed at the chair. A small microphone had been duct-taped to a soft drink can on the table. Against the wall a television was stationed on a cart.

  Half a dozen men in green jail scrubs, belly chained together in a file, lined the back wall of the eighteen-by-twenty room. One guard briefed us: “When your case is called, sit in the chair, look at the camera, and speak in a normal voice.” The other turned on the television.

  The picture rolled. Judge Mathews, Judge Mathews, Judge Mathews, I knew him from American Society for Industrial Security meetings, where he’d revealed that he wore Bermuda shorts and an Aloha shirt under his robes.

  “It’ll stop when it warms up,” said the guard.

  I sat through a drunk driver, a dropsy case—man dropped drugs on the ground as he was approached by a police officer—and a grand theft auto. The picture was still rolling when they called my case: possession of child pornography for distribution. I could feel a half ton of eyes on my back as Flaco pushed me up to the table.

  “Approach,” said the voice of Pete Finney.

  Unseen, Fred Timmer said, �
��The rights of the people of the State of Michigan cannot be vindicated in the Federal venue.”

  “William Meredith, United States Attorney’s Office,” said a voice.

  “This is highly irregular,” said Judge Mathews, Mathews, Mathews.

  “We can save the Court a good deal of time, Your Honor,” said Finney.

  “I object,” said Timmer.

  “I’m prepared to file a brief,” said Meredith. “But given the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation we would ask the court for some leeway, Your Honor.”

  Mathews lowered his chin, spread his arms like Christ on the cross, and said, “Approach.” Covering the microphone with his hand he closed his eyes and slowly nodded his head to his right, spoke to his left, and then shooed the lawyers from the bench like flies from a picnic lunch.

  “Mr. Timmer,” said Judge Mathews.

  “Based on the evidence at hand,” said Timmer.

  “Starts with a ‘W,” Mr. Timmer,” said Mathews.

  “I see no reason to withdraw the charges,” said Timmer.

  “Adjourned,” said Judge Mathews. He struck his gavel.

  “Your honor, my client is in custody,” said Finney.

  “Release the accused, Mr. Timmer,” said the judge.

  “Your Honor,” said Timmer, “if we can just reconvene and take a plea, I would be glad to discuss bail.”

  Judge Mathews turned his head to the right and said, “Long date.”

  Off screen a lady’s voice said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Timmer said, “Your Honor—”

  Judge Mathews gaveled. “Contempt. Let’s explore the idea, Mr. Timmer. What was it you were going to say?”

  “Mr. Hardin will be released immediately,” said Timmer.

  Judge Mathews struck again. “Fifty dollars. See the clerk. Next case, please.”

  Hoots and stomps filled the room. The question came in a chorus. “Who’s your attorney?”

  “Pete Finney. He’s in the book,” I told them as Flaco wheeled me away from the table. The door opened and the guard from outside the door stepped into the room, his face a question mark as he looked around the room and then at Flaco.

  “This man been released, man—no shit,” said Flaco. “I got to take him to the desk.” The guard nodded and Flaco rolled me out the door.