But Remember Their Names

by Hillary Bell Locke

  “Well, if the police are getting anywhere on the murder investigation they’re keeping it to themselves. We know the FBI is now involved in the stolen art investigation that led to the search of your home by state police. They’re not very chatty about what they’re up to either.”

  “Do you think that, maybe, our house might be searched again?”

  I frowned at the phone. Where did that come from?

  “I guess I have no idea. I haven’t heard anything about that. Has someone said something to you about another search?”

  “Not, like, in so many words? But mom, after those calls, was doing the ‘are you sure you don’t have any pot’ thing again.”

  “Lemme make a couple of notes here.”

  This was a stall. What I was really doing was trying to figure out how much I should tell our client. I had to assume that Caitlin would tell Ariane anything I said, and that Ariane would tell Learned. By spilling something to Caitlin that would end up helping Learned conceal evidence, I might only be buying her trouble.

  “I’ll put it this way,” I said. “I can’t rule out another search. Like I said, things are moving on the art investigation.”

  “Okay. Listen, is there any way we could, like, meet later today?”

  “Sure.” I glanced at 10:22 in the lower right-hand corner of my computer screen. “I’m planning on staying here until about noon. Can you get down here by then?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You don’t sound like a trip downtown was what you had in mind.”

  “Actually, I was hoping we could meet somewhere closer to home. Like, Berkshire Town Club, maybe? Where I play tennis? Would that be okay?”

  I managed to keep my sigh inaudible. I mean, downtown Pittsburgh isn’t exactly the South Bronx. This white-bread phobia about any place without manicured lawns and “traffic calmings” gets a little old. But Caitlin was a client, and travel time is billable.

  “If they’ll let someone wearing a sweat suit and Nikes into the club, I can be there by twelve thirty.”

  “Oh, they’ll let you in all right. Thank you sooo much! I’ll see you then.”

  She got the last words out fast and hung up quickly, as if she were afraid I’d back out if she gave me half a chance. I hung my phone up a little brusquely. Berkshire Town Club? Please. She might as well have suggested meeting at a mall. ‘In the food court? Right outside Nordstroms?’ I’ll bet Calder & Bull doesn’t have valley girls on its client list.

  At that point a little whisper of a doubt ruffled the handful of brain cells I wasn’t wasting on condescension. I remembered deciding the first time I met her that Caitlin wasn’t just a spoiled rich girl thinking about cutting class so she could buy some more lip gloss. In this call, though, she’d come off like an airhead who’d have trouble winning a debate with Paris Hilton. Had she somehow lost twenty IQ points since the last time I saw her, or was something else going on?

  I don’t know why, but Caitlin’s call had started a convoluted free association sequence in my head: Search/cops/art/Feds/Learned/strangers-with-candy/Schuyler/Tyrell-Washington. Schuyler had warned me about strangers with candy because I was representing Washington. Then it turned out Learned was the stranger—or one of them.

  So did this mean Washington had caught a shiv because he was offering the Feds information about Learned and the loot heisted from the Gardner Museum? Where would a mean-streets punk like Washington come up with that? I mean, you wouldn’t exactly talk to him about appraising Rembrandts, would you? No, what you’d be more likely to talk about with Washington is killing someone.

  The phone rang. I ignored it, letting it ring through to my clever message prompt.

  Beep! I glanced up sharply as soon the voice started. Less voice than panicked whisper, really, choking as if it were on the verge of tears but also throbbing with urgency.

  “Cindy, this is Paul! Please pick up! Your dad said you were at this number. Oh God, please be there! Something terrible is happening! The FBI came here. I let them in. I had to. Two of them. They’re going through everything. I don’t know what to do! Walt isn’t here and I can’t reach him. What do I do if—”

  I picked up the phone.

  “Paul, shut up.”

  “Cindy! Listen, I—”

  “I said shut up.” I wasn’t being a bitch. This was purely professional. There were about seven incredibly stupid things Paul might do, and if I was very lucky I had thirty seconds to keep him from doing any of them. “Now listen.”

  “Okay.”

  “Number one: keep your mouth shut. Number two: do not, repeat not, call Learned until the Feds have left. Number three: stay out of their way. Number four: do not scurry around with your mobile phone taking pictures of what they’re doing. Number five: if they ask you any question more complicated than your name, say you don’t want to talk to them. Number six: when they offer you a copy of the search warrant—that’s a piece of paper with a magistrate’s signature on it—take the damn thing. Number seven: if they try to give you cash to ‘cover any damages’ or some crap like that, do not, repeat not take the money, because it’s probably seized contraband with cocaine residue on it. Number eight: keep your mouth shut. Now pull yourself together and act like a man.”

  I almost hung up after that last one, but I didn’t quite have it in me.

  “What’s happening?” His voice was higher pitched than normal but not quite a whimper.

  “From the sound of things, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is executing a search warrant on Walter Learned’s suite at the Hilton New York. Now did you understand what I just told you?”

  “I had to let them in, Cindy. They had badges and a guy from the hotel with a pass-key, and—”

  “I know you had to let them in.”

  “God, they’re tearing everything apart!”

  “Listen, Paul—God, I don’t know why I’m doing this—just listen to me. Did-you-understand-what-i-just-told-you?”

  I heard nothing for three seconds but a deep breath and an exhalation. Then Paul said, “Yes.”

  “Good. Now, don’t say anything else. End this call. Turn your phone off. And just stand there like a mannequin at Bloomies until the not-so-nice gentlemen in the navy blue suits have left. Do not, repeat not give them an excuse to haul you down to Foley Square for some quality time in a squeal room.”

  “Okay. Okay.” His breathing sounded like it was returning to normal, and his next words were fervent but calm. “Cindy, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Listen, Cindy, I—”

  I hung up. I immediately called Mendoza on my mobile phone and, after waiting impatiently through his voice mail prompt, I left a message telling him that the FBI was searching Learned’s suite. I added Schwartzchild’s number in case Mendoza didn’t have it handy at home. The Feds had moved at the speed of light after getting my declaration, and I knew he’d want to be the one who got the news to Schwartzchild.

  Then I dove back into the records for Vince’s business that I’d brought down to the office so that I could go through them without him looking over my shoulder. I halfway expected Paul to ring back in thirty seconds, and when he did as far as I was concerned he could sob until he timed out on my voice mail recorder.

  Forty minutes later, the office phone rang. I let it go all the way to BEEP! It was Paul. Some semblance of calm and control had returned to his voice.

  “Okay, Cindy, they’ve left now. I think you’ll want to know what happened, and I’m willing to tell you, but there’s a catch. You have to listen to me for three minutes first. Just let me talk without interrupting and without hanging up for three minutes. Then I’ll—”

  I picked up the phone.

  “Okay, you’re on the clock. One hundred-eighty seconds. Go.”

  “Okay.
Okay. Wow. Okay. All right, first, I’m a total shit. No argument. I have no excuse for what I did or what I said. You’re the greatest thing that ever happened to me and you’ve been totally wonderful to me and then I treated you like shit. I cheated on you and I turned myself into a total whore. I’m worthless scum. I’m sorry. I really am. I wish I could wear a hair shirt for three hundred days or something to show you how sorry I am, but I guess even Catholics don’t do that kind of stuff anymore. But I really am sorry. Anyway, the thing you have to know is this: I really do love you, Cin. I always did love you, all along. I wasn’t just hitching a ride to New York with you. I love you to the depths of my soul. God this is bad prose, but it’s the way I really feel. I panicked when it looked like New York wasn’t going to happen for you. I admit that.

  “I mean, you don’t know what it’s like, Cin. No one knows. I wake up in the morning in this blind panic that I’ll pick up the Times and find a review of a postmodern novel with my premise. Something someone else has written and gotten published, because he’s in New York and I’m not. There’s no real shot for a first novel in Philadelphia, no matter how good it is. There’s no real shot anywhere outside New York. So I panicked and I sold out and I did every goddamn gutless, phony, bullshit thing I despise when other people do them. I told myself it would just be a fling, ’til I got the novel placed or you got to New York. Which was a total bullshit rationalization that makes me sick to my stomach every time I think about it. I hate myself for doing that. And if you want to say you’re through with me forever because of what I did, I don’t blame you and I’ll try to accept it. But don’t walk away thinking I used you. Because I didn’t. I loved you. I still love you. I’ll always love you. Henry Widget and my love for you may be the only real things I’ll ever have in my life, but they are real. So help me, God, they’re real. Please give me one more chance. Please.”

  ‘So help me, God.’ From an atheist. I love that.

  “You have twenty-two seconds left. Anything else?”

  “Cindy, isn’t there something Catholic about forgiving as God forgives or something?”

  “I’m pretty pissed off at God right now, so that may not be your best argument. Anyway, I held up my end. I listened to everything you had to say. I get it. I grasp the I-acted-like-a-shit-and-now-I’m-sorry thing. Now tell me what went down with the Feds.”

  He sighed.

  “Right. The Feds. Well, like I said, they came here. They had a warrant. I had to let them in. I mean they would have come in anyway if I hadn’t let them.”

  “Get to the stuff you haven’t told me already.”

  “Well, they asked where the bumblebee flag was, and I said I didn’t have any idea what they were talking about. And they didn’t like that. So they just started tearing the place apart. They looked everywhere, inside everything. I mean, they were just pigs about it, like a couple of goddamn Ostrogoths sacking Rome.”

  “Did they find the flag and the flagpole?”

  “I don’t know.” Paul sounded sincerely baffled by my question. “I mean, they didn’t take anything like that with them. I didn’t even know what they meant.”

  “They meant the thing that you knocked me halfway across the room with.”

  “Oh, that. No. Walt got that out of the suite the same day we had our blow-up.”

  Well isn’t that interesting?

  “Okay.” I shifted the phone from my left ear to my right. “What else did they take?”

  “Well, a little coke and some pot. And the gun.”

  “‘And the gun.’ What gun is that, Paul?”

  “Great big honking automatic pistol. Taking that was illegal, right? ’Cause I looked at the search warrant, and it didn’t say anything about guns or drugs.”

  “I’m not your lawyer, Paul. Did they ask you about the drugs?”

  “Well, they asked if the stuff was mine, and I said no. I mean, the pot was, but I wasn’t going to tell them that.”

  “What part of ‘keep your mouth shut’ was unclear to you, Paul? You’ve lied to the FBI. That’s the same crime Martha Stewart did time for.”

  “Shit.”

  “Okay, Paul, now think carefully: Did they take anything else?”

  “I don’t think so. Not that I saw, anyway. I mean, I was pretty upset.”

  I did not manage to keep my sigh inaudible.

  “Have you contacted Learned yet?”

  Paul hesitated, which meant the answer was yes. He must have called Learned before he called me back—just in case I was wondering where I stood.

  “Okay, you have contacted him. That means he won’t be coming back to the suite. He may call you and ask you to gather a few things and bring them with you when you meet him someplace else. Do not do this. Do not fucking do it, Paul.”

  “Okay, okay. You don’t have to swear.”

  “Gather up your own things. If your sugar daddy gave you a few bucks go ahead and keep them, but don’t take anything else. Haul your worthless ass back to Philly. On Monday I’ll text you contact information for three decent criminal lawyers in Philadelphia. Call one of them, and call whoever is managing your trust fund and tell him he needs to shake loose with however much you’ll need for a retainer. Then go to that lawyer and tell him or her exactly what happened. Got that?”

  “Listen, Cindy—”

  “Paul, dammit to hell, focus. Did you understand what I just told you?”

  “Yeah, sure. But, Cindy, I just don’t understand what’s going on. I mean, this is crazy.”

  “What’s going on is that you decided to start fucking someone who’s the subject of criminal investigations by cops in three different jurisdictions. You’re a material witness and you’ve handed the FBI a club to use on you if they want to beat compromising information out of you. If Learned is guilty of anything serious he’s probably thinking about whether killing you would be worth the trouble. So you need two things: a good lawyer and lots of daylight between you and Learned. Just do what I said.”

  “Okay, I will.” His voice softened and a pleading tone crept into it, like an eight-year-old begging not to be sent to bed early. “Cindy, will you think about what I said?”

  “Sure, Paul.” I sighed with infinite world-weariness. “I’ll think about what you said.”

  “And Cindy? Just one more thing. Are you really pregnant?”

  While I was gaping at the phone, I thought for a couple of seconds about how to answer that. I could have used the standard obscenity customary in these situations and then hung up, or just hung up and not bothered with the obscenity. But I came up with something even better.

  “Keep guessing.”

  By now it was after 11:30. I tucked Vince’s papers into my briefcase and clicked on Mapquest for directions to the Berkshire Town Club. While they were printing out, I was just about to start logging off when I remembered puzzling about the link between Tyrell Washington and Walter Learned. I googled “Pittsburgh African Methodist Episcopal Church.” It came up right away, and its website said that its “Full Gospel Service” would begin at 9:15 on Sunday morning.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “I found some things while we were cleaning up the mess after the cops left.” Caitlin told me this in a low-key, matter-of-fact voice.

  “Anything important?”

  “Not sure. Maybe.”

  We were in the lounge of the women’s locker room at the Berkshire Town Club, standing at a round table—that’s what I said: standing—that came to just below my diaphragm and just above Caitlin’s belly. The lounge was a brightly painted open area with royal blue, all-weather carpeting that started about ten feet from the lockers themselves. We had red Gatorades in front of us. In sweats and Nikes I was, if anything, slightly overdressed for the venue.

  “Did you go through the stuff you found?”

 
“Mm hmm. Sort of. I’m not sure I understood all of it. I mean, there was a prenup, for example. I always figured they had one of those, but I’d never seen it.”

  I took a long swig of Gatorade, thinking how much nicer my life would be at this moment if it were chardonnay. I had halfway expected her to pretend that she didn’t know what a pre-nup was, and I was glad that she’d played it straight.

  “Caitlin, I’m going to ask you a question. If you want to, you can tell me to go to hell. No hard feelings. Not my favorite answer, but I’d prefer it to a lie.”

  “Ask away.”

  Her voice was steady and her eyes met mine and held them. The mall rat/airhead on the telephone was suddenly nowhere to be found. I took a deep breath and asked my question.

  “That stuff about how your dad had killed your brother—did you mean that he’d made your mom get an abortion?”

  Caitlin bent over and lifted her purse from the floor to the tabletop. She wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest by taking out a cigarette and lighting it. I would’ve bet that the Berkshire Town Club took a laws-are-for-little-people attitude toward the Clean Indoor Air Act. But she didn’t. Instead she pulled out a pacifier. I’m not kidding. She took a baby pacifier out of her purse and stuck the nipple between her lips. After a couple of pulls on the thing she took it out of her mouth, but she but kept it handy.

  “The answer to your question is yes.”

  “Fallout from the cleanup, or had you already known?”

  “I didn’t know before. I found documentation for the abortion while we were cleaning.” Caitlin looked away, and I could see her angrily blinking tears away from her eyes before she turned back to face me. “Mom knew it was going to be a boy, and she already had a name picked out. Geoffrey.”

  With that she popped the pacifier back into her mouth for two more tugs.

  “Does Schwartzchild know?”

  “Not from me. Mom may have told him.”