$200 and a Cadillac

by Fingers Murphy

  But just as he said it there was movement in the brush and the two of them turned to see Mickey emerge on the dirt bank.

  Mickey held his gun on the two of them. The surveyor, unarmed with a rock up over his head, and Grimaldi, leaning against the opposite bank, holding a revolver. What had happened? Who were these people? Mickey aimed at Grimaldi, the radio static that went unanswered still echoing in his head. What was Jimmy going to tell him? And what did it matter now? Mickey eyed the revolver in Grimaldi’s hand. How many shots had there been? He hadn’t counted. There was no way to know.

  “Drop the weapon,” he shouted.

  Grimaldi smiled and looked at the surveyor. In an instant, the name came back to him. He said, “Well, Paoli, who would have thought it would end like this for the both of us?”

  Mickey listened to the words. Thinking of the name. Feeling the overwhelming sense of recognition come over him. The surveyor’s face. The shape of his smile.

  “Drop the gun,” Mickey repeated. Wondering what it all meant, trying to piece it together, feeling memories yaw up from his past, bringing a chill with them. He watched Grimaldi laying there. Doing nothing. Immobilized from the bullets and the blood loss. He wouldn’t drop the gun. He wouldn’t do anything.

  Mickey heard the static echo in his head again.

  And the name: Paoli.

  He thought about repeating his command, but he no longer cared if Grimaldi dropped the gun. He no longer cared if there were bullets in it, or if Ron had killed the kid with a baseball bat, or who the surveyor was, or why he was there. Mickey no longer cared about anything. And he couldn’t make sense of it even if he tried. The futility of logic in the face of necessity. The situation simply was what it was. It presented itself and he would act, this time without hesitation, guided only by his inner sense of what was right.

  Mickey fired.

  The back of Ron’s head erupted against the dirt wall. Bone and brain matter soaked into the cracks, absorbed by the desert soil like any other moisture. Whatever memory or emotion it once contained now irrelevant. Its value, if it had any value at all, reduced to mere water.

  Mickey carried him out. He draped the surveyor’s left arm over his shoulder, and Mickey carried him out. A lot of blood had been lost. They had to move quick. So they made their way through the brush, back up the hill, and made it to the Suburban where Mickey quickly wrapped a bandage around the leg. He wrapped it tight, trying to hold the blood in and the flesh together. The shoulder wound didn’t worry him as much. It was already coagulating.

  The whole time Mickey studied the surveyor’s face, wondering if he was right. Wondering if it mattered at all now. What was done was done. Wasn’t it? Why ask questions about courses of action that could no longer be undone? The static blasted on the radio again. Mickey heard Jimmy call out to him and reached down and switched it off. There would be time for all of that. What mattered now was speed.

  He drove fast over the dirt road, trying to cover ground, to get back. The surveyor slouched against the passenger door, rubbing his shoulder, trying to hold his leg still to keep it from bouncing.

  As they neared the main road, with the oil truck and the Camaro, and Agent Asshole and his lackey, Mickey turned to the surveyor and asked, “So you had a brother?”

  Hank glanced over at the sheriff. He’d never told him anything about it, but the sheriff asked the question like he already knew the answer. Hank simply nodded and said, “Yeah. I had one. A long time ago.”

  Mickey nodded and drove out to the pavement. He turned and went up to the truck and the Camaro, where everyone was standing around. Janie ran around to the passenger’s side and opened the door, almost fainting at the sight of Hank.

  Mickey got out and waved Victor off as he came toward him. “Your oil thief is down that road, dead.”

  “Sheriff,” Victor pointed at Eddie. “This man is a co-conspirator, I want him arrested. I want him arrested now. Tom Crossly and myself can make a positive ID of this man.”

  Mickey cut him off by throwing his keys at him. “I told you. Your oil thief is down the road, dead. Both of them. Head on out there and get them, if you like.”

  Hank climbed out of the front of the Suburban, whispering to Janie. “Let’s go. Quickly. Just get in the car and drive away.”

  “Where?”

  “Vegas. I know a man there. A doctor.”

  They went around to the car as Mickey and Victor stood facing each other. “Sheriff, this will not stand,” Victor shouted. “I demand justice.”

  Mickey exhaled and shook his head, exasperated and exhausted. “You already have it,” he said to Victor. “More justice doesn’t make it more just. Go on and take what you’ve got and do whatever it is you’re going to do with it. I’m through with this.”

  Mickey turned away from Victor and Tom and saw Janie climbing into the car. She smiled, flustered but knowing what she needed to say and do. “I’ll get him to the doctor, Mickey. You’ve got enough on your hands already. We can’t wait any longer.”

  Mickey looked at the surveyor’s slack face, already weak and white and bloodless. He had seen that face before in a different man—younger, leaner, but the same. He was sure now. There was no reason to keep him. Mickey wanted him to have a chance, however thin it might be. He hesitated for a second, then decided there was no reason to tell him either. No reason to dredge up the past and remind him of the way his brother had met his end and of who had drug his body home. No reason at all, for any of it, then or now.

  Mickey’s eyes met Janie’s and he nodded. Then motioned to Eddie. “You might as well take him too.”

  Eddie climbed into the backseat with nothing but his backpack. Janie got in too, started the car, and pulled away. She drove as fast as she could, accelerating and accelerating, as quick as the car could go over the long desert road, as though the car might sprout wings and lift them off the surface of the Earth.

  Hank resisted the urge to sleep. From the passenger’s seat, he peered past Janie’s profile, out across the desert. He could see the black birds already swirling in the distant sky like a formless, bewildered cloud. They were about to make good on the primal contract between themselves and the Earth. Lugano’s body—mere consideration for the bargain—lay somewhere in the brush beneath them.

  Janie glanced from the road to Hank and back. “We’re going to make it,” she nodded. “We’re going to make it.” The words repeated beneath her breath, neither statement nor question, but rather, a mantra, or shibboleth. Hope in the face of unseen forces compelling a certain, but unknown conclusion.

  Hank smiled at her, at the sunlight, at the bright desert shimmering in the heat and the blur of the roadside. He watched the birds in the distance as each of them in turn swooped downward, tracing a trajectory of doom, ambivalent and automatic.

  Now, turn the page for a taste of the debut Oliver Olson novel:

  FOLLOW THE MONEY

  1

  “There was blood everywhere.” Jim Carver leaned back in his chair, chewing a mussel cooked in saffron. “At least that’s how the papers described it. Apparently he was covered with it when they found him, out in his front yard, stammering like an idiot about someone killing his wife.”

  Each time he moved, the luxurious blue fabric of his shirt shimmered in the soft light. I’d never seen a shirt so well tailored, so textured. It practically screamed the word money. I wanted to come right out and ask him how much it cost, but I’d known him less than an hour.

  We were eating lunch at an overpriced restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. I, of course, had never been there before, but the staff knew Carver by name when we walked in. The cheapest thing on the menu was the soup du jour, at fourteen dollars a cup. Between Carver, Tom Reilly, and me, lunch was well north of a hundred bucks. While he sat there and told me about a gruesome murder and the trial that followed — which I remembered watching on television when I was a kid — all I could think of was the cost of the lunch. Somewhere in the middle of
it I realized I had $87.13 in my checking account. Good thing lunch was on Carver. I would have had to borrow money to pay for it, if my credit was even any good anymore. It made me smile. My life was ridiculous.

  I had been employed by the international law firm of Kohlberg & Crowley for all of four hours. I was one of twenty second-year law students who started my summer job with the firm that morning. “Summer associates,” we were called, as opposed to real associates, like Tom Reilly, and partners, like Carver. It was the beginning of a three month job interview that all began with projects the firm had picked for us on our first day. Mine involved a murder, a former United States senator, and a jumble of procedural nonsense that I couldn’t even begin to understand. So I sat and listened and nodded my head and tried not to do or say anything stupid. I couldn’t believe I would be working on a case that had once been so famous, or infamous, I should say. Jim Carver went on.

  “You remember the story, of course.” Carver was right about that. “James Steele was a United States senator at the time. A U.S. senator claiming someone broke into his house and stabbed his wife in the bathtub. Nothing stolen, no apparent motive. He says he didn’t hear anything until it was too late because he was in another part of the house. When he finally hears a scream, he runs upstairs, down the hall, and, as he’s going into the bathroom where his wife is, someone else is running out. The person running out slashes at him with a knife and pushes him back. Steele falls, hits his head on the baseboard, and by the time he’s out of his daze the intruder is long gone.” Carver pried a mussel open with a tiny fork and glanced at Reilly.

  Reilly continued the story. “So Steele sees his wife in the tub. Apparently she’s still struggling, but the tub’s full of water.” Reilly drank some iced tea. His tone was casual, like he was describing a football game he watched on television. Twenty years Carver’s junior, and not yet the multimillionaire many times over that Carver surely was, Reilly’s shirt did not captivate me in the same way. It was obviously down an order of magnitude. Reilly set his tea down and leaned back in his chair.

  “Then, at 8:52, Steele calls 911. Turns out, Steele is flustered and transposes the numbers in his address so there’s a mix up and the cops aren’t sure exactly where to go. During the 911 call, Steele sets down the phone for a few minutes. He says he’s checking on his wife. He comes back to the phone and the 911 operator suggests to Steele that he pull the body out of the tub so he can administer CPR. Steele says he will and he’s gone off the phone for a few more minutes.”

  I broke in. “So he admits handling the body and moving it?”

  “Right. That’s why he’s covered in blood when the cops get there.”

  “So he completely messed up the crime scene?”

  “Exactly.” Reilly poked the air with his cocktail fork. “Now, it isn’t until Steele comes back on the line the second time that he mentions to the operator that he’s Senator Steele. Once that comes out, the cops know exactly where to go. When they get there, they find Sharon Steele with thirty-nine stab wounds all over her body laying dead in the middle of the bathroom floor.”

  The table went quiet. Carver sorted through the empty mussels, looking for another and not finding it. The clinking of shells in a bowl of broth was an odd counterpoint. The guy at the next table coughed and I glanced over at him. He was bald, with a thick moustache and touristy street clothes. He looked as out of place as I felt. Then the waiter arrived with the food and I took a bite of the best damned ham and cheese sandwich I’ve ever had. A twenty-two dollar ham and cheese sandwich. Both immoral and awesome at the same time.

  Finally, Carver said, “But here’s where it gets messy.” He grinned, “No pun intended. First, the cops never find the murder weapon. The prosecutor argued that the injuries were consistent with a normal kitchen knife, which Steele had, but none of the knives in Steele’s kitchen had any trace of blood on them, and none were missing. And the time of death was such that Steele wouldn’t have had time to go anywhere to dispose of a knife. She was still warm and had blood running out of her when the cops got there. Of course, Steele says the killer took the knife with him. But the prosecution argued that Steele washed off one of his own kitchen knives and just put it away when he was through. They were apparently solid steel knives that would have been easy to clean. That’s problem one.”

  “Second, there were no signs of forced entry. But an EMT looked at Steele’s head and found signs of a minor injury. Steele said it was from being pushed down, but the doctor testified that it was also consistent with a blow from a struggle, much as he presumably would have had with his wife while he stabbed her.”

  “There’s another odd fact,” Reilly added, putting a crust of bread in his mouth and speaking as he chewed. “Steele had a wound on his hand that he claims he got when the intruder slashed at him. But again, there was testimony that the wound would have been consistent with Steele cutting himself when his hand slipped on the bloody knife.”

  Carver interrupted. “So anyway, they interview Steele, he tells this bullshit story, and they arrest him the same night. Now, he offered his story at trial, but he had no evidence to support it, other than his interpretation of these facts. I mean, he just took the stand and told a story that, and this is how the prosecutor referred to it in his closing argument, a story that sounds too much like The Fugitive to be taken seriously.”

  I agreed, the story had always sounded ludicrous to me, even as a kid, only vaguely following the drama on T.V. “What’s the motive?” I asked. “Money?”

  “No, that’s just it,” Reilly responded. “There’s no motive. She had money, her family was wealthy, but he didn’t get anything. The kids are taken care of by a family trust, but he got nothing and never stood to get anything. There was no insurance. The two had split up briefly about eighteen months before, but they reconciled quickly and everyone said they were completely happy.”

  Carver leaned back in his chair and waited for a few seconds after Reilly finished. Then he said, “So anyway, this case has been floating around the courts for years. Direct appeals in state courts, state habeas petitions. It’s finally time for Steele to file a federal habeas petition, and the court asked us to do it. Pro bono, of course.” Carver sneered a little on pro bono and then asked, “Have you studied habeas in school?”

  I said I hadn’t. Carver glanced at Reilly in a way that suggested it was Reilly’s job to fill the new guy in, and then Carver said, “Well, look. It’s like an appeal, but it’s not. It’s a challenge to the process that convicted you.”

  I was lost, and looked it. Carver leaned forward and said, “We’re not going to argue that Steele is innocent — you can never win on that — we’re arguing that he didn’t have a fair trial. Generally you argue ineffective assistance of counsel. That’s probably what we’re going to do here.”

  Then Carver wiped his mouth with the thick cloth napkin, checked his huge, gleaming watch, and pushed his chair back. “I gotta go guys. But look, we need to push this ball forward as fast as we can. The two of you need to go see Steele and flesh this thing out. He’s going to try to convince you he’s innocent, but that doesn’t have a chance in hell. We’ve got to go with ineffective assistance.” Carver stood and looked at me. “Of course, that defense has a little problem too, but Reilly can fill you in on that. I had the file sent to your office. Have a look at it.”

  Carver left us sitting there, staring at his back as he walked out of the restaurant, disappearing through the doorway and into a rectangle of brilliant sunlight. The waiter brought the bill and Reilly paid it. I sat there and waited for him to say something, but there wasn’t much to say. Carver was gone and Reilly and I were strangers.

  On the way back to the office I finally spoke up. “So what’s the problem with the ineffective assistance of counsel claim?”

  Reilly gave me a grim smile and shook his head. “His lawyer was a guy named Garrett Andersen. He’s one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the state. Maybe the country.
”

  “Do you really think a guy like that made a mistake?”

  “Unlikely. That’s why this case was dead on arrival.”

  I was confused. “So why are we doing it if it’s hopeless?”

  Reilly laughed and shook his head. The new guy, he seemed to be thinking. “Well, hey, truth be told, no one thinks this thing can win. I mean, we’re not saying we can win. It sounds trite, but everyone’s entitled to representation, to a defense. Blah, blah, blah … I know it’s a cliché, but it’s the truth. And this is a complicated story Steele tells. There are a lot of places mistakes can be made. The devil’s in the details, y’know, so we might find something if we look hard enough.”

  “But if he killed his wife—” I started to say.

  Reilly cut me off with a grin. “We don’t know that. All we know is that he was convicted of killing his wife.”

  I’d heard it before, and I usually believed it. The system had problems. There were dirty cops out there in the world. People got railroaded. But there were a lot of guilty people too, and this guy sounded guilty. I was about to make a joke about the difference between truth and confiction, but I stopped myself at the last second. Bad puns seemed dangerous. Instead, I shook my head. “Still, it seems pointless. Why bother? Doesn’t he see that?”

  “The guy’s in jail, whether he sees it or not, all he’s got is time, y’know?”

  “Sure, but why are we doing this? I mean, I guess that’s what doesn’t make sense to me.” We were stopped at the light. I could see that Reilly had no satisfying answer and I knew what he was going to say. I could feel it coming.

  “Look,” Reilly began, “this guy was a senator. He was a powerful man and, on the outside chance that the firm can get him off, I mean, what a publicity boon for the firm. Look at it from their perspective. You’ve got this case, it’s a loser, maybe one in a hundred chance of winning — I doubt even that good, but a chance, you know. They’ve got summer associates coming in, tons of them, don’t know what to do with them all there are so many. What are you guys getting paid these days?”