Compelling Evidence m-1

by Steve Martini

  What had begun with a simple one-page petition a year ago is now a morass to inspire Dickens’s most Draconian tale of lawyers and judges, of a court system constipated by endless and unintelligible forms. Probate reform, it seems, has gone the way of tax simplification.

  I am beaten. Defeated. I concede. I am ready to consult, and if necessary to take a ride, to pay the freight on the Feinberg express to the la-la land of the surrogate courts. I stare at the file and the announcement in Harry’s hands. The ultimate cop-out-I will hire another lawyer to service my client.

  “How’d it go last night?” he asks.

  Tight as a choirboy’s bum. That was Harry last night after my meeting with Ben. With him in his snockered condition, I didn’t waste my time giving him the details. Now he’s catching up on dirt.

  “Good. Friendly. It was,” I say, “cordial.”

  “Which was it?” he says. “Friendly or cordial? With the one it merely means he isn’t gonna kill ya. The other means you may get to go back for more nooky.”

  I ignore him.

  “I’m surprised,” he says. Harry talks about fire and dragons. The fact that I was porkin’ another man’s wife and Ben didn’t even give me a lecture on alienation of affections. “The man’s very civilized,” he says. “Times have changed since my day.”

  “I’m surprised you can remember back that far.”

  He looks at me from the corner of his eye.

  “Going back, are you?” he asks.

  “No,” I say sarcastically. “Ben and I discussed the matter, but we decided it wouldn’t be a good idea-for me to go back for seconds.”

  “No, asshole.” There’s irritation in his tone. “Are you goin’ back to the firm?”

  “It wasn’t that friendly,” I say.

  “Ah. The wife’s one thing; a partnership’s somethin’ else.” He laughs.

  I ignore him, though with Ben I know there’s some truth to what Harry says.

  “Why would I want to go back?”

  “Money, prestige,” he hesitates for a second. “A good secretary.”

  Dee has become an item of conversation between us marked by a good deal of profanity and laughter-my profanity and Harry’s laughter.

  “I’m not going back.”

  “Good,” he says. “I’m proud of you.” Harry appears relieved, like he’s been considering this scenario, my return to the firm, for some time. “You know I’d miss you,” he says. There’s just a hint of sentiment to his tone.

  “You make it sound like going to Potter, Skarpellos is the same as dying,” I say.

  He raises a hand, rotating it back and forth at the wrist, as if it’s one of those pendulous points in life that could go either way.

  “Tell me, Harry, why do you do it? Why do you do criminal law?”

  He makes a face. Like he’s never considered this before.

  “The money’s good,” he says.

  I laugh. “Sure. I’ve seen the palatial digs you call home. No, really, why do you do it?”

  “It’s in the blood, I guess. Besides, I like the people.”

  What Harry means is, he has a taste for “felonious voyeurism.” It happens. Lawyers, judges, cops, and jurors all find themselves titillated from time to time by the stories of violence, drugs, and sex. The criminal side of the law provides a window on the dark side of life that exists nowhere else.

  But there is, in my mind, something more than this to Harry’s quest. Harry Hinds, I think, is a closet guardian of the underdog. There’s a compelling psychic identification with the losers of society here, gratification in squaring off against the state to save some poor fool from a long stretch in the joint. To Harry, this is sweet music. Whether or not one agrees with his work, Harry’s motives have social redemption. He’s a man moved by the view that prisons are filled with those who are the victims of their environment, child abusers who were themselves abused, druggies weened on the stuff by parents caught in their own chemical cycle.

  As Harry rises to leave, to rejoin his clients, I realize that even with all of his foibles I am a little envious of this man. Harry Hinds has a clear vision of purpose to his life, a focus that at this moment, in the vortex of forces pulling upon me, I do not possess.

  CHAPTER 4

  I am early for my meeting with Ben. The Broiler is more subdued than Wong’s. The decor is Early Naugahyde, but it is quiet, a good place for talking, to discuss Sharon’s trust and Ben’s future. I belly to the bar and order a drink.

  “Paul-Paul Madriani.” My only recognition of this voice is that it is someone unpleasant. Someone I would rather not be seen with, not here, not now.

  I turn from the bar just in time to receive a back-slapping hand on my shoulder. Eli Walker is dean of the outcast press. Bellicose, usually three sheets to the wind, in his late sixties, Walker regularly traverses that nether-land between what he calls journalism, and political flackery for paying clients.

  “Haven’t seen ya in here in a while.” He licks his lips as if he’s just stepped from the parched sands of the Sahara.

  “Haven’t been around,” I say. The bartender returns with my drink and I swallow a quick shot. I offer nothing that Walker can latch onto, turn into conversation. He’s one of those clinging souls who as a result of some fleeting commercial contact fancy themselves your friends. In my case I had the misfortune of writing a single letter to unravel a title problem on his house, a favor I did at the request of one of the partners while I was with the firm.

  He’s not moving on. Seconds pass in light banter, Eli doing most of the talking, the two of us weaving in the light traffic around the bar. Walker’s eyeing me like a thirsty dog. In between assignments and clients, he’s drooling for a drink. His hand is still on my shoulder, tugging on it like a ship trying to berth.

  “How’s the solo practice goin’?” An odoriferous blast of alcohol is emitted with each spoken word. In the lore of the courthouse it has been said of Eli Walker that any cremation after death will result in the ultimate perpetual flame.

  “Fine, keeps me busy.”

  I begin to turn back toward the bar, a not so subtle signal that this conversation is at an end. I finally break his grip.

  Walker doesn’t take the hint. He muscles his way in alongside me. The woman on the stool beside me gives Walker a dirty look, then scoots her stool a few inches away, giving him room to square his body to the bar.

  Standing next to Walker I feel like a man in the company of a leper. I sense that I have suddenly declined in the esteem of a dozen drunks surrounding the bar.

  “I’ll have what he’s having.” Walker looks at the bartender, who in turn looks at me. Reluctantly I nod. In his own inimitable way Eli Walker has found his way onto my bar tab. It is in moments like this that I regret lacking the sand to muster overt rudeness.

  “Why’d ya leave Potter’s firm?” The question is asked with breathtaking subtlety.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Guess it was time to strike out on my own.”

  “Sorta like Custer against all them fuckin’ Indians, huh?” He chuckles to himself.

  The least he could do if he’s going to hustle drinks from me, I think, is quietly accept my bullshit. He drops the subject of my career and launches into a lecture on his latest journalistic coup, a scandal featuring pork-barrel politics and the state water project. I tune him out.

  I check my watch. Ben’s running late. I consider ways to dump Walker. I think about the restroom, but somehow I know he’ll just follow me-stand at the urinal and check my bladder. The bar is mostly empty and Walker is desperate, in search of a drinking companion.

  The bartender has spied my empty glass. “Another?” he asks. I nod and notice that I’m now one drink up on Walker. I’ve got to slow my pace. I’ll smell like Eli by the time Ben arrives.

  There’s the sound of sirens outside on the street, a fast-moving patrol car followed seconds later by the lumbering echo and diesel drone-a fire pumper. An emergency medical team headed to
the scene of some fire or accident.

  Eli tilts his glass toward the sound in the street, a salute, then downs the last gulp.

  ‘Too bad,” he says. “A tragedy,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?” I wait for the latest bit of unconfirmed gossip. The stuff of which most of Walker’s columns are composed.

  “Ben Potter,” he says.

  Walker, I suspect, is brokering information on the high court nomination. Probably third-hand hearsay, which he’s spreading faster than typhoid from a cesspool.

  “He passed on,” says Walker.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean he’s dead-muerto-mort-fish food,” he says.

  The words push me perceptibly back from the bar. I turn my head and stare at this old man in stony silence.

  “Heard it on the police scanner in my car. They were callin’ in the EMTs, the paramedics.” He looks at his watch. “Can you believe it? Over ten minutes ago now. Get a coronary in this town, you’d better call a taxi,” he says.

  Suddenly I catch his meaning, the sirens in the street. Walker thinks they’re responding to some tragedy involving Potter.

  This conversation is surreal. I want to tell him that Ben’s going to come walking through the door behind us any second. I look again at my watch. He’s just late.

  I compose myself. Walker’s pulling some scam, trying to flesh out information on why I left the firm. Feed me some crap about Potter’s death to see if I’ll defame the dead. It’s the kind of dirt that Walker would slip into a column.

  “What did you hear, exactly?”

  “Dead at the scene,” he says.

  Try as I do, there’s some psychic staggering here. There’s no hesitation in his responses. Even Eli Walker would have a hard time confusing the manifest line between life and death.

  “An accident?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “Heart attack?”

  Walker slaps his glass on the bar, a satisfied grin on his face. He finally has my undivided attention.

  It’s clear, Walker’s not talking until he has another drink. I call the bartender. Having humored me with scotch, Walker now orders a double bourbon. I ask for the tab and pass the bartender two twenties.

  “Gunshot,” he says. “His office.”

  Shock and disbelief are registered by the fire I feel all the way to the tips of my ears. He reads disbelief in my eyes.

  “It’s true,” he says. “I swear.” He holds up a loose victory sign, like a confused Boy Scout.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  He shrugs his shoulders. “They don’t give out news bulletins over the police bands.”

  This is Eli’s idea of dogged journalism. Hustling drinks at a bar with tidbits of information. I wonder what part of the police transmission he didn’t hear or failed to interpret.

  “Do you have a press pass?” I ask.

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where we goin’? Our drinks haven’t come yet.”

  My hand grips his elbow like a vise, pushing him along ahead of me.

  “Haven’t you heard, Eli? Alcohol keeps.”

  All the way mere, Walker’s making like an echo in the seat next to me as I drive. He’s babbling some nonsense about having to meet a source back at the bar.

  “Sure, Eli, what’s the guy’s name? Johnnie Walker?”

  “No, really, I’ve got a meeting back there.”

  “I’m sure he’ll wait for you. I’ll take you back later. Just relax. All you have to do is get me past the police lines.” Assuming there are any.

  Hope finds refuge in the improbable crackling transmissions of a police-band radio as interpreted by Eli Walker. But my expectations sag as I pull to the curb on the mall in front of the Emerald Tower.

  Minicam crews from channel five and eight are already assembled outside the entrance, jockeying for film advantage. The vans, sprouting microwave dishes and me small spiraled antennae of cellular telephones, are parked at the curb like prodigious wheeled insects in search of carrion on which to feast. Two patrol cars have driven to the fountain on the cobblestone plaza in front of the building. The driver’s door on one is still open, and the light-bars of the units flash amber, red, and blue, the reflections glinting off the emerald glass of the structure in a surreal symphonic light show. The cops are stringing yellow tape across the building’s entrance.

  There’s a third vehicle-navy blue in color and lower than the minicam vans-nesded between the two bigger vans. Its flashing emergency lights flicker against the dark azure of a Spielberg sky. On the side the words COUNTY CORONER are printed in bold white letters. I begin to have a new respect for Eli Walker.

  We scurry up the broad cement concourse toward the towering green glass edifice. I’m pushing Walker all the way. This is a reporter who’s never been to a fire. The only heat he’s ever felt is booze in the belly.

  “Give me your pass, Eli.”

  He fumbles with his wallet and drops it on the concrete. I pick it up and riffle through it and quickly find the pass. I look at the laminated plastic card. There’s no picture. I’m in luck.

  “I’ll do the talking. Just keep quiet.”

  We reach the door and a uniformed cop, young, part of the traffic division I’m sure, challenges us. I lay on a flurry of the working press in a hurry, flashing the press card under his nose. He waves us through. Television crews are assembled here in the building’s lobby. Another cop is stationed at the entrance to the elevators. I’ve run out my string with Walker’s press pass.

  Walker and I huddle.

  “Know any of these guys?” I nod toward the media moguls wandering about the lobby.

  He takes a quick glance around, then shakes his head. Walker’s well connected.

  “Stay here.”

  I walk over and cozy up to one of the cameramen, who’s checking out the jungle of tropical plants near the indoor fountain.

  “What happened?”

  The guy’s chewing gum, a huge wad. He looks at me.

  “Ugh du no.” This erudite response is accompanied by a shrug of his shoulders as the gum snaps in his mouth. He nods toward a better-dressed colleague standing a few feet away.

  “What’s up?”

  “Some guy bought it,” he says.

  “Who?”

  “Beats me. Cops won’t give us anything.”

  “How did you find out?”

  He looks at me like I’m crazy, then touches the pager strapped to his belt. “How do I find out about anything?”

  I’m back to Walker. He’s getting bored. Wants to leave. I’m hearing more about his meeting back at The Broiler.

  There’s the single tone of a bell, one of the elevator cars reaching the lobby. Klieg lights zero in on the elevator door like antiaircraft in me London blitz. The doors slide open. A solitary figure stands in the center of the elevator car blinded by the lights and inundated by a stream of concurrent, incoherent questions.

  Elbows go up to shade the light. “You’ll have to get mat from me police. I’ve got nothing to say.” The cop at me elevator eases several of the cameras back away from the door. “Get mat damn light out of my eyes.” In a grudging sequence, the lights go dim and me crowd at the elevator begins to dissipate, wandering back to the corners of the lobby.

  He’s halfway across me lobby headed for me door when he sees me. George Cooper’s eyes are still adjusting from me media bombardment. He carries a small black satchel containing the instruments of his dark calling.

  “Coop.” My voice echoes just a little in me cavernous lobby.

  There are rings of unrequited sleep under his eyes, and an almost bemused smile under a salt-and-pepper mustache.

  “Paul.” There’s a momentary hesitation, men me apocalyptic question. “How did you find out?”

  Coop’s words beat like a drum in my brain. It is the confirmatio
n that I dreaded. Ben Potter is dead. I struggle to absorb me finality of it-my first real attempt to assess the personal dimensions of this loss.

  Cooper is standing next to me now, waiting for an answer.

  “Eli told me,” I say.

  There’s a clumsy introduction. Walker educates Coop on me benefits of scanning the police bands.

  “Ahh,” says Coop.

  “What happened?” I say.

  The guy with me pager is eyeing me with renewed interest. He’s grabbed the gumhead, and me two of them are moving toward us.

  “Let’s walk and talk?” says Coop. “They’ll be comin’ down with me body in a minute. Got to get the van ready.”

  We head toward the door. Coop and I are arm to arm, Walker trailing along behind.

  “Too early to know much. If I had to guess,” he says, his voice dropping an octave and several decibels in volume as he eyes an approaching camera crew wearily, “maybe suicide.”

  I’m silent but shake my head. Coop knows what I’m saying. I don’t believe it.

  “Single blast, twelve-gauge shotgun in the mouth.” No sugar coating from George Cooper. “Janitor found him about an hour ago. Can’t be sure of anything “til forensics is done goin’ over the place.” As we walk outside, Coop’s Southern accent is thick on the night air.

  For the first time since Walker broke this nightmare to me, there is confidence in my voice, for there is one thing of which I am certain. “Potter wouldn’t commit suicide.”

  “Nobody’s immune to depression.”

  Coming from Coop, this is a truism.

  “I knew him,” I say. “Trust me. He wouldn’t kill himself. He had too much to live for.”

  “Maybe you didn’t know him as well as you think,” says Coop. “People like that project an image bigger than life itself. Sometimes they have a hard time living up to their own advance billing.” He’s picking up the pace. The guy with the pager and his cameraman are behind us, matching us stride for stride.

  Coop’s voice softens a bit. “I know, right now you can’t accept it. Believe me. It’s possible. I’ve seen it too many times.” We’ve reached the coroner’s wagon at the curb. Coop opens the back, dumps his medical case inside, and clears an area for the gurney.