The waitress brought the gin and tonic. “Ready tah order?” she said.
Gleason looked at her. “No,” he said.
“Wanna couple of minutes?” she said.
He looked at his watch. “Ten,” he said.
The waitress nodded. “ ’Kay,” she said, and went away.
“Does that mean we won’t see her again? Ever?” Christina said.
“No,” Gleason said. “It means that in precisely ten minutes, she’ll be back. To see if we kept our promise to be ready to order then.”
“And if we’re not,” Christina said, “will she punish us?”
He smiled. “Only with a look,” he said. “A look implying we’re not bright enough to choose our own meals from the menu and will need some help from her. Whether we want it or not.”
“Why’d you ask me here, this morning?” Christina said, picking up the menu.
“Because I knew two things this morning,” Gleason said. “One: I knew there were some more things I’d want to know, before I decided what to do. And two: I didn’t know what those things were. So, with a boring day ahead of me, listening to more accountants drone on about more records, knowing I could therefore count on lots of time to think about many other things, I asked you to meet me here at the end of it, so that we could talk.”
“Oh,” she said, studying the menu. “I was hoping there was something else.”
“There is,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “That’s a help, at least. ’S why I left my car in Braintree, right near the motel. Now, is there anything here that I can eat, without regretting it all night?”
“Sure,” he said. “The rule you follow in places like this is: avoid the complex dishes. The less they claim they do to your food before you get it, the better the chances that they won’t do anything bad to it. John Richards taught me that, when we were running around all over the country, chasing your brother and Sam. ‘Occam’s Razor,’ John said. ‘ “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.” ’ In restaurants or anyplace else.”
“I thought that was Thoreau,” she said. “ ‘Simplify your life.’ ”
“It probably was,” Gleason said. “Just because William of Occam said it, and John Richards said it, doesn’t mean Thoreau couldn’t say it. I could say it too.”
“So, how do I do it?” she said. “Here, I mean. Tonight.”
“Well,” he said, “if you want to take a chance, with me, this’s not the week they spawn, you could have raw oysters. Dozen fresh Cotuits with a little lemon juice and a good-sized glass of beer, do wonders for the sore of heart, and heal tormented souls. And the only thing the chef’s called on to do is get the damned things open. Which at least up to this point he’s always been able to do without badly wounding himself with the knife, or mangling the meat.”
“They only spawn one week a year?” she said. “That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“It’s worse’n that,” he said. “They’re protandrous. They all start off as males. Become females when they mature.”
“Definitely no fun,” she said. “I would not like that at all. Sounds like Jill and Kathie to me. Maybe they were oysters, in a former life. Might explain their behavior, I never understood.”
“You have a linear mind,” Gleason said. “That’s what I admire. No bullshit and no fooling: that’s the way to be.”
“Fine,” she said, putting the menu down, “so let’s not. Tell me what you want to know.”
“Let me tell you first,” he said, “what I do know, that I didn’t know this morning. This morning I didn’t know if I had the appetite, for getting a man out that I after all put in.”
“Jimmy,” she said, “he.…”
“No,” he said, “let me finish. You’re asking quite a lot of me here, whether you know it or not. You’re pitting me against my old colleagues. I do what you want, I’ll be at least tacitly telling them I’ve decided to turn coat. John Richards won’t mind. June McNeil won’t mind. They know what lawyers do, and they’re at least resigned to it. But Fred Consolo will mind. He will mind a lot. And he’ll be publicly talkative about it — if Sam is caught, and there’s another trial.”
“I see,” she said. “Well then, does that mean you’re bagging out of this?”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. All it means is that this morning I wasn’t sure, I didn’t know whether I was ready to commit a symbolic act like that. I thought it over, and now tonight I am. I do know. I will help you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Maybe you won’t,” he said, “when you hear the rest of it. When you hear the price.”
She gazed at him. “Try me out,” she said.
“It’s a straight-player deal,” he said. “You for Jimmy. I was thinking about what you said, what a rotten life he’s got. And he has. Often happens to guys that kill people. Not as often as it should, but pretty often, still. And then I thought: ‘Well, Gleason, who you going to brag to? Your own life’s not so hot. The only time you’ve had any fun in about ten years was when you were bedding Christina.’ And I didn’t even kill anybody.”
“You could’ve kept on doing that,” she said. “Wasn’t my idea, having us break up. You’re the one that wouldn’t leave her — I encouraged you.”
“And I told you why I couldn’t,” he said. “I told you at the time. And those reasons, like I said, those reasons’re still good. Will be for five years more.”
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“I’m saying,” he said, “I’m saying what I want from you is five years of being a mistress. Five years of frozen dinners alone at Christmas. Five years of sneaking around. Five years of putting up with me playing out a charade of a marriage that’ll take more time to perform than I’ll have for you. Then, if wretchedness hasn’t gotten you by then, then when it’s either clear that Phil’s out of the woods, and he’s going to be all right, or clear that he’s not coming out, and never’s going to be — in either event, after I’ve given it my best shot with the kid, I’ll leave her and live with you. But it’s going to be awful hard. On you, this is, it will be rough — on me, well, I am drowning. I’m asking for a rope.”
“Will she let you get away with it?” she said. “Won’t she find out, and throw you out?”
“She might,” he said. “I’d bet against it, but she might try that, yeah. She does, though, and the first thing she’ll get in the confrontation is the news that I’m gonna fight her down to the cobblestones. That if she decides to file for divorce, I’ll counterfile. That if she charges adultery, I’ll come back with cruel and abusive treatment, and what amounts to sexual abandonment. And we’ll see who wins that little tussle in the public eye.”
“She hasn’t,” Christina said, “she doesn’t come across?”
“Now and then,” Gleason said. “When the urge hits her, she does. She doesn’t, I don’t think she’s really got a strong sexual drive. She accommodates me when in charitable moods. One or twice a month’s about all she’s inclined to deliver. I think it’s all that golf, all that tennis that she plays. Uses up her energy for everything else. Anything more often’n that, takes dinner, wine and candlelight, at Anthony’s Pier Four. And God help the man who asks her to put something in her mouth beside a Diet Coke — she does it, but for the next six weeks it’s monosyllables and wounded looks, until she grants parole.
“Well,” he said, “I’m paying for all of this. And I don’t mean just financially, either. I’m paying for it in frustration, and annoyance, and short temper. And since I am paying for all her sporty rounds and chatty lunches; since I am the guy who foots the bill for the fun she’d rather have, instead of fun with me, I resent it. And I want something more. Which is you.”
Christina shrugged and smiled. “Fine by me,” she said. “You knew how I felt about you, a long time ago. Hasn’t changed.”
“Beautiful,” he said. “You’re sure you can do this, now.”
“Oh,” she said, “yeah, I
’m sure. How’s the old joke go again? ‘I figured you’d want money’? Talk about three wishes: wow. I think this is great.”
“Okay, then,” he said, “now for the easy stuff. You really don’t know where Sam Tibbetts is?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t. But like I said, I can find out.”
“But you know what country he’s in,” he said. “That much you do know.”
“I know which country he was in,” she said. “Was in a while ago. Whether he’s still in it? That I do not know.”
“But you know how to find out,” Gleason said.
“Yes,” she said, “I do.”
“If you were going to find out,” Gleason said, “if you had decided, for whatever reason, to do that, how would you proceed?”
“I would send him a cable,” she said. “Care of American Express.”
“Yes,” he said. “And what name would you use? What name would you address?”
“Well,” she said, “I’m not sure yet, that I want to tell you that.”
The waitress returned. “Decided?” she said, producing her pad.
“Dozen oysters,” Gleason said. He tapped his mug. “And another one of these.”
The waitress scribbled on her pad. “How ’bout you?” she said to Walker.
“Dozen oysters,” Christina said, “and bring me a beer as well.”
The waitress nodded, chewing her lower lip, and wrote “2” on the pad. She left the table.
“When do you think,” Gleason said, “just so I can plan my day, when would be your best guess when you will have decided?”
“Probably after the oysters,” Christina said. “Probably by then.”
“You know what’s bothering me,” Gleason said.
“I can guess,” she said.
35
Gleason pushed the pewter platter with its twelve empty oyster shells one inch closer to the center of the table, regarded the wreckage with satisfaction and took a drink of beer. He put the heels of his hands on the edge of the table and straightened his back against the booth. “Now,” he said, “what is bothering me, or was, at least, is: I know Fred, and Fred’s a nut, but Fred is not careless. Fred’s a carbuncle on the ass of every life he touches, but he’s thorough. Fred’s so careful that when you’re the lawyer on the case, you wish you weren’t. The bastard hovers. Everything you do, you get the feeling that the next thing he’s going to floss your teeth for you. Some guys, they make mistakes because they don’t ask questions. Not Fred: he asks you questions when he shouldn’t, like by calling in the middle of the night to check some obscure point of search-and-seizure law that’d never come up in a million years. That nobody but a Fred with nothing else on his mind’d ever even think of. He wants his cases made up like barracks beds, hospital corners so tight you can barely get under the sheets. Fred’s going to law school nights now, in the wintertime at least, because after all these years of scouting around for a lawyer he thinks worthy of his trust, he’s at last reached the conclusion that the only person reliable and precise enough to be Fred’s lawyer is, guess who? You got it: Fred.
“This means that if Fred’s got you bugged, and if Fred’s watching you, Fred’s already got enough evidence to’ve satisfied some young assistant that he buffaloed — or some older guy that just wanted to get rid of him — that he can prove a crime. And that prosecutor took Fred’s bale of hay in before a judge, and the magistrate, who also wants to go off to the beach, gave him a search warrant. Betcha nickel whole thing happened on a Friday afternoon, when the only person in the whole world with his mind on his job in the summertime is Cowboy Fred Consolo, scourge of evildoers. Fred loves Friday afternoons. But anyway, he got it, and that was when he put the bugs in — everything shipshape and no suppression worries down the line.
“Now I can guess who his primary source is,” Gleason said. “It’s one of James’s pals in the pen. James’s pal’s your basic ‘reliable informant who in the past has provided information that has proved to be reliable.’ Meaning: ‘The guy’s got a long history of ratting on his buddies in return for privileges.’ So consequently Fred can say that he believes the guy is shooting straight this time, without surfacing the fink.” He grinned. “Which is a trick Fred learned from me,” he said. “John and me and Doctor Frankenstein, ’cept the doc did it on purpose.
“In addition to the fink, though, Fred needs something more. Or he did, at least, before he could tap you. He had to give some reason to think that you know where Sam is. His informant’s told him James is set to hang Sam, but James doesn’t know where Sam is, so neither does informant. Fred in order to bug you must’ve provided something else that made the prosecutor and the judge think Christina does know.”
“Well,” she said, “but after all, he knows I used to be with Sam. Would he need more than that?”
“Your average buckaroo might not,” Gleason said. “Public record’d do it, trial transcripts and newspaper clippings, bang ’em in and bang ’em out. But our Fred’s not an average fellow. Fred’d look at the stuff and say: ‘Yeah, but down the road some crafty bastard in a suit’s gonna come into court and say: “This warrant ain’t no good, pal. That stuff was old hat.” ’ Fred maybe wins that one on appeal, but Fred doesn’t like appeals — they’re another chance to lose, after you have won. So Fred found something newer, left a little fresher taste.
“Which left me with my question: What did our Fred find, and how did he find it? Best rule, from my experience, is take the second question first. Work back to the first one. And the way you go about that is by saying: Has he done this before, and if so, how? And the answer is that he has, and he did by checking records back when we were hunting Sam. He thinks Sam’s not in the country. He thinks you know where Sam is. Therefore: find out where you’ve gone, assuming you saw Sam.
“He did it through Customs and Immigration,” he said.
“How do you know that?” she said.
“Because that’s what we taught him to do,” Gleason said. “He called up Customs and asked them to run your name through the computer to see where you’ve been recently. And if that didn’t work, and it often does not, well, he called in some chits with a credit card outfit. But one way or another, he found out you’d been somewhere he thinks that Sam might be. And that was what he told the judge, and how he got his warrant. And how he got into your hair and lair, and’s now looking up your ass.”
“Okay,” she said, eating the last of her oysters, “to this I say: So what?”
“So this,” Gleason said. “I practice law in this town. It’s how I make my living, which facilitates eating and staying dry nights when it rains. One of the things I have to be able to do is make deals. Almost everybody hires me did what he’s charged with doing. That’s one the facts of this life. It was that way when I did the charging, and it’s that way now, when I defend. It was true when Phil Ianucci’s clients bought the ranch in the back room of The Friary, and I put your brother in jail, and it’s true now, when the USA says Phil Ianucci’s no good either, and he should go to the can.
“I can’t try every case,” he said. “I’d lose most of them. Clients can’t afford it anyway, and it only makes sense when it’s someone like Phil who’s simply got to take a flier, ’cause if he pleads, he’s ruined. So I belt the bastards out. And that means when I say something, to a judge or prosecutor, it’d better be the truth. It’s the only way I can function.
“I get involved with helping your brother,” he said, “what I’m going to be doing is saying to the prosecutor, not so far down the line, that James’ll deliver Sam. Not only that Sam ordered Emmy killed; also that James or someone acting for him won’t tip off Sam what’s coming. So that he can run and hide. Because otherwise, James don’t get out, and that’s a natural fact.
“Basically what you’re asking me to do,” he said, “is trade your brother for Sam. And since I’ve now figured out that you know where Sam is, because Fred’s figured that out, what I have to wonder is whether y
ou’re prepared to follow through. To make the trade, I mean. Because there’s no reverse gear on these things. Well, there is, but you’d better not use it. It’s like the automatic parking lots where the spikes come up after you drive through the gates — no backing up; severe tire damage will result.”
“I realize that,” she said.
“Good,” he said, “I hope you do. My problem is different. I go to see James, and then cut a deal — you then have a change of heart and give old Sam the high sign and the bugger pulls a scoot, I’m out there in the cold wind with no pants on. Understand? James’ll languish in durance vile, and you can go and frolic in whatever mists you choose, but I will get my ass chapped. Permanently chapped. Fatally, in fact.”
“I won’t do that,” she said.
“You say you won’t,” he said. “But you’ve done it before.”
36
“I’ve never done it before,” she said.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he said, “but you’ve had a memory lapse. You’ve not only done it before — you have done it recently. After Judge Reese liberated us from the day’s toil, after I’d spent most of my day thinking, I went back to my office and called John Richards. John knows everything. The habits of the animals, the progress of the seasons — you name it and John knows it. So I told John what I knew, and what I thought I’d figured out, and asked him to critique it. And he said what I’d said to him seemed pretty realistic, and it squared with what he knew.
“Now, John’s retired,” Gleason said. “John doesn’t hack around with criminals and other riffraff anymore. But he still expects the folks who call him, and impose upon his time, to keep their grey matter alert, and use it as called for. So I said: ‘John, what is it? What is it that you know, that I should know about?’ And he said that he would tell me, and that is what he did.
Outlaws (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Page 32