by Parnell Hall
“I wouldn’t like it much, either.”
“Yeah, but that’s where we are. What with you refusing to promise, and all. So let’s play what-if. What if Sharon’s mother was afraid she was getting into trouble and hired me to get her out?”
“Are you saying that’s what happened?”
“I’m saying what-if.”
“Say some more.”
“Suppose I knew that Sharon was involved with people who might want to take advantage of her.”
“Suppose that were the case. What then?”
“She’s a young girl. I’m an old fart. How would I get her to come with me?”
“Particularly since she didn’t know who you were.”
My eyes flicked. If I were a woman, one might have thought I’d looked at my breasts.
He caught it, naturally. That’s what cops do. “Oh? She did know you?”
I sighed. “She didn’t know me. I tried to pull a Peter Falk on her. You know, Scared Straight.”
He frowned. “What the hell is that?”
Oh, hell. Shoot me now. My arresting officer was too young for me. “I’m a total stranger. I spoke to her on the street. Tried to put the fear of God in her, scare her into going home.”
“Gee, did that work?”
“No. It was a bad move. They can’t all be winners.”
“No, they can’t. So, when you saw her today, she might not have known you, but she knew you as the man who accosted her in the street.”
I suddenly realized we had taken the conversation out of the realm of the hypothetical.
I smiled. “Nice try. I knew that if I ran into her today, she would not take kindly to me or be inclined to listen to anything I had to say. She would certainly not want to come home with me.”
“I can understand that. Go on.”
I shrugged. “Under the circumstances, it’s possible the only way to extract her from people who might wish to do her harm, without the use of physical force, would be to do something to make her more cooperative.”
“Like slip her chloral hydrate?”
“That would probably do that trick.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Would that be a crime?”
“I’d have to look at the statute books.”
“You do that and get back to me.”
Coleman scowled. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking up his next question or debating whether to jump over the table and rip my head off.
He chose the former. “Okay, you refuse to admit to drugging the girl and dragging her home, despite the fact she was found drugged in the back of your car. On the other hand, you claim you were hired to do so.”
I said nothing.
“Isn’t that right?”
“I was not hired to drug her. I was hired to bring her home.”
“Uh-huh.”
Coleman got up, opened the door, and gestured down the hall.
A plainclothes policewoman ushered in Sharon’s father. I never met the man, but I recognized him at once from his wild-eyed, let-me-at-the-son-of-a-bitch look. It was all the policewoman could do to hold him back. At the risk of sounding sexist, I wish he’d been brought in by a policeman. A large policeman. Possibly two.
“You animal!” he snarled. “You miserable scum!”
“I know how you feel, Mr. Weldon,” Coleman said. “But I need you to calm down, control yourself, answer some questions. Did you hire this man to bring back your daughter?”
“Absolutely not. I never saw him before in my life.”
Coleman turned to me. “Well?”
“That’s right. I never met the man. I was hired by his wife. All my dealings were with her.”
Coleman turned to the woman I presumed was a plainclothes cop. “Is that right, Mrs. Weldon? Did you hire this man?”
19
RICHARD WASN’T HAPPY. FIRST OFF, BECAUSE NO ONE WAS dead. Richard doesn’t like me to call him for legal advice unless it’s a homicide. It’s sort of his litmus test. If it’s a murder, he’s in. If it isn’t, he’s out. He made an exception this time due to the extent of the charges and the very real chance I might be convicted of some of them, which would put a crimp in my working for him. Richard counts on me more than he’d care to admit, largely because he can’t find another investigator who can take the boredom of the job more than a couple of months. He’s had a slew of temporaries, of varying degrees of intelligence and skill, not that the job requires much. Still, the employee must actually do it, a concept some of them are slow to grasp. Anyway, Richard saw my future at the firm in danger and made an exception to the rule.
“And just what has my client allegedly done?”
“Well,” Coleman said, “he’s admitted to—”
“Admitted? What an ugly word. I can’t imagine my client admitting to anything. That would be confoundedly stupid, even for him. I’m going to have to assume that you have misinterpreted something my client said that may have been injudicious, but certainly not criminal.”
“Your client drugged and kidnapped an underage girl and drove her across the state line. We don’t know what advantage he took of her while she was in that condition, but he certainly had the opportunity.”
“My client says he did all this?”
“Actually, he tried to lie his way out of it. Which is another charge. Perjury. Obstruction of justice.”
Richard grimaced. “The problem with you cops is you don’t know the law. Let me straighten you out. In the first place, perjury and obstruction of justice aren’t the same charge, they’re two separate ones. Perjury is lying under oath. Did you put my client under oath? I find that hard to believe. Did he swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, with the avowed intention of lying to you? That would seem a rather poor strategy, don’t you think? No, perjury won’t hold water. And obstruction of justice. What justice is he obstructing? If I understand it correctly, the charge in question involves bringing a girl home to her parents. I was not aware this was a crime. But I am certainly going to spend some time with the law books, just in case my knowledge of the subject is not as extensive as yours.”
Coleman looked at Richard as if the attorney were something he might scrape off his shoe. “Just a minute. I’ll get someone who speaks your language.”
Coleman brought back an ADA who not only spoke Richard’s language but shared his competitive spirit. ADA Fairfield was young and ambitious. Also attractive. ADA Fairfield was a woman. A nicely proportioned woman. Which is all I had to say on the subject. I was already in trouble.
“Now, then,” she said, “let me be sure I’ve got this straight. I’ve got your client dead to rights on kidnapping, transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes, possession of an illegal substance, distribution of an illegal substance, extortion, and unlawful imprisonment. That’s in addition to the obstruction of justice Detective Coleman seems concerned with. In light of which, I find it hard to believe you’re giving us a hard time. Most attorneys in that situation would want to keep their heads down.”
She smiled, and actually batted her eyes at him.
My mouth fell open.
Oh, my God. Didn’t this one know anything? You didn’t flirt with Richard. Richard would tear her a new one.
But he didn’t. He said, “Well, it’s easy to get the wrong impression. Stanley is my employee, as well as my client, and I have to tell you, he doesn’t have the brains or the guts to do any of those things.”
“Why do you employ him?”
“He’s marginally competent, and willing to do the job. Usually, people bright enough to do it don’t want it.”
“Please. You’ll turn my head. Did you come here to defend me, or beat up on me?”
The attractive ADA spoke to Richard as if I weren’t there. “You doing this pro bono?”
“If I don’t keep him out of jail, he can’t do the work.”
She smiled. “Maybe I can help you out. Your client has a bad case o
f the lies and hypotheticals. The things he states as facts are lies. The things that might be true, he presents as hypothetical.”
“That sounds about right,” Richard said. “Perhaps I can interpret. Of course, I only know what my client says, and, as you point out, much of that is suspect. But how about you let me take a whack at it.”
She smiled. “Whack away.”
I think Richard was nearly blushing. “It is my understanding, which may well be wrong, that my client was under the impression that the girl’s mother had hired him to bring her back. It would appear that she has not. Largely due to the fact the woman who hired him was not actually the girl’s mother. In other words, he was duped. Hard to imagine, from looking at him.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, waited to hear anything in my favor.
“Apparently, someone posed as the girl’s mother, convinced my client her daughter was being led into a web of sin, and hired him to bring her back. I say apparently, because, under the circumstances, no one is admitting anything at this juncture. But here’s the point. Regardless of who hired him, it appears that my client has uncovered an improper relationship between the young girl and a married man. A pillar of the community. A congressman, no less. And when that person transported the girl across the state line for immoral purposes, and plied her with drugs and alcohol, my client saved her from her fate, and brought her home to her parents.”
“From whom he demanded money,” ADA Fairfield pointed out.
“Train tickets to Philadelphia. A cover charge at a night club. Plus various bribes and gratuities.”
“Which your client shelled out in order to wrest this girl away from the married man who had abducted her?”
“You don’t think that’s a good enough reason? I’ve seen gratuities approved that are listed simply ‘Research.’”
“No problem with that, if they actually were for research. The problem here is your client is claiming payment for something he hasn’t done.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Rescuing a young girl from the clutches of a married man. Apparently, that never happened.”
“The hell it didn’t! Who says that?”
“Stanley!” Richard said sharply. “My client speaks when he should listen.” He smiled. “I sound like Don Corleone in The Godfather. Remember, in the scene with Sonny and Sollozzo? Or are you too young for that?”
Oh, my God. Was this standard lawyer maneuvering, or was Richard smitten? If he was, I could be in serious trouble. My defense might go right out the window. I’d never seen him show the slightest interest in any woman. Not that he was gay, he was just a confirmed bachelor, who believed that women were distractions to be kept at arm’s length while in pursuit of the greater good, i.e., money. If Richard were under her spell, this woman must be something else. Which I would have noticed if I weren’t in so much trouble. How attractive was she, for Pete’s sake? Oh, my God, I’m staring at her breasts.
I snapped out of it in time to hear ADA Fairfield assuring Richard she was familiar with The Godfather.
“I’d love to discuss movie trivia with you, but we have this matter at hand. Your client claims he was rescuing a girl who had been abducted. Her parents claim he was the one doing the abducting.”
“Due to a simple misunderstanding. They didn’t hire him, and they have no reason to believe anyone else would. Nonetheless, it happened. And it’s a good thing it did, since he did in fact rescue the girl.”
“Rescue her from what?”
“It is not my place to make accusations,” Richard said. “And I certainly don’t want to say anything that would be actionable, but let’s suppose he took her away from a grown-up who let her smoke dope and filled her full of margaritas until she couldn’t be responsible for her actions. I don’t expect the parents to be grateful. They’re confused, they don’t want to think anything bad about their daughter. But that’s no reason to make my client the bad guy. I would think you’d want to take a good hard look at the guy who brought the girl to Philadelphia in the first place.”
“I’d be more inclined to do that if your client were actually claiming to have done the things he’s hypothetically suggesting. It’s a little hard to whip up much interest in a what-if.”
“Would you like to discuss this over dinner?”
Her eyes twinkled. “Are you hitting on me?”
“No. We’re plea bargaining. I open with dinner and we cop to disorderly conduct and a five-hundred-dollar fine, you counter with drinks and endangering the welfare of a minor, six months suspended.”
She smiled. “I hear you’re good in court.”
“Really? I’m a negligence lawyer. How would you hear that?”
“One hears stories. The Brandeis settlement, for instance.”
The Brandeis settlement involved Richard getting his client a bundle of cash from the store he was in the process of robbing, even though he had been found guilty of the burglary, and was actually in jail when the civil suit came to trial.
“I’m flattered,” Richard said. “But I have this client.”
“Yeah. And without these allegeds and hypotheticals and whatifs, he claims he followed the girl down to Philadelphia, where he managed to slip her chloral hydrate, wrest her away from her abductor, and bring her back to her parents. And he claims her mother hired her, only she says she didn’t, and he now claims it was not her mother, but someone posing as her mother. However, he doesn’t claim it was someone posing as Congressman Blake who took her, he claims it was the congressman himself.”
Richard turned to me. “Stanley?”
“Are we talking hypothetically?”
“Absolutely.”
“I hate to jump to conclusions, but according to his license plate number, and his photos on Facebook, that’s the guy.”
Richard turned to the pretty ADA. “There you are.”
She frowned. For the first time since she’d come in she didn’t look happy. “Give me moment. I’d like to check this out.”
The minute she was gone I turned on Richard. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m in trouble, and you’re playing kissy face with the ADA.”
“Stanley. That’s a rather harsh assessment of my services. Here I am, rushing to your rescue, and no one’s even dead. I thought you weren’t going to call me for anything short of a murder.”
“I’m sorry, but the charges were piling up. When you put rape on the table—”
“There’s a nice image.”
“Not what I meant, but I see the way your mind’s going. Who the hell is this ADA, anyway?”
“I don’t know, but she seems to have a firm grasp of the legal issues.”
“She thinks I’m guilty.”
Richard shrugged. “That’s her only flaw. Otherwise, she’s quite nice.”
“Richard.”
“Stanley, are you in court when I get my settlements? More to the point, are you in my settlement conferences on the cases that don’t go to court? That’s where I make most of my money. In simple horse trading. I’m pretty damn good.”
“This isn’t horse trading.”
“Sure it is. No judge involved. No actual laws in play. Just a simple discussion of how best to resolve the situation.”
“Richard. I’ve seen you in action before. You don’t trade horses. You cut the other cowboy in little pieces and take his horse as a trophy. Why are you letting this woman walk all over you?”
Richard sighed. “Oh, Stanley. You have a lot to learn.”
The door opened and the ADA I had a lot to learn about came back, ushering in Congressman Blake.
He leveled a finger at me, said, “Is that him? Is that the son of a bitch?”
Richard, delighted to have someone to bop around rather than the comely ADA, stepped in front of me and said, “If you would like to characterize this man in terms that are actionable, feel free, but I would like to point out unless you can prove he�
��s a son of a bitch, it would be my pleasure to demonstrate for you how much cash it’s worth.”
The congressman was not one to back down. “Oh, yeah? Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Mr. Hastings’s attorney. I don’t want to tell you your business, but if you were hoping for a campaign contribution, I’d moderate your tone.”
“Jokes? You’re making jokes? You client kidnapped a girl, and everyone’s blaming me.”
“Funny about that,” I said.
Richard shot me a warning look.
The attractive ADA stepped in. “Please. I’d like to clear this up, which doesn’t appear to be that easy under the circumstances. It would be nice if we can get through this without recriminations.”
“I’d like that,” Richard said. “But I’m not offering an oral stipulation that people aren’t bound by what they say.”
“Wonderful,” the congressman said. “After your client’s already shot his mouth off.”
“And that’s just the type of remark we’d like to avoid,” ADA Fairfield said. “Let’s see if I can speed this along. Without anyone accusing anyone of anything, let’s suppose Mr. Hastings here thought you’d abducted a girl.”
“Ridiculous,” the congressman said.
“Do you deny you took Sharon to Philadelphia?” I said.
“Stanley,” Richard cautioned.
“Go on. Ask him if he denies it.”
“I’ll ask him,” ADA Fairfield said. “Mr. Blake, did you take Sharon Weldon to Philadelphia?”
“Yes, I did.”
I exhaled in exasperation, spread my hands. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“And while you were there, did you smoke dope with her and buy her alcoholic beverages?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Did you take her backstage at the Show Palace where they were smoking dope?”
“I’m a congressman, not a cop. It’s not my job to police drug use at music events.”
“It is when you take a minor.”
“Stanley! Do I have to tie and gag you?”
“I can assure you she didn’t smoke dope.”
“He bought her margaritas,” I persisted.