Proof of Intent

by William J. Coughlin

  By the time I was done, my twenty-grand budget for experts had roughly doubled. The one thing that was entirely plain to me after I’d finally gotten all my experts corralled: This trial would eat me alive financially.

  Particularly if I lost. State prison, after all, is not much of a place to raise money so you can pay your lawyer.

  Twenty-three

  “Dad? Dad? Hello? Are you there?” As soon as I heard Lisa’s voice on the answering machine, I knew something was wrong. And ten to one I knew what it was. “Dad can you call me? I, um . . . look, just please call. It’s important. Kind of a good news, bad news thing.” She left the name and number of the hotel where she was staying.

  People, places, and things: That’s the slogan of AA. The central tenet of the high church of addiction recovery is that alcoholics run into trouble when they find themselves amongst the people, places, and things where they used to drink. Stay away from the old crowd, you’ve got a chance of staying clean. Hang out with your old running buddies, you fall off the wagon.

  I’d just sent my own daughter back to the place and the people and the things where she’d run into trouble in the first place. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I felt like I’d had a pretty good year. After paying my rent, my mortgage, Mrs. Fenton’s salary, my car payment, alimony payments to my third wife (who has stubbornly refused to remarry and who even more stubbornly believes that she should continue to live on the same grand scale she did when we were married and I made a great deal more money than I do), and the eye-popping sticker price of another year at an Ivy League law school, I had about three grand left in the bank. I hadn’t made arrangements to sell the shotgun yet, so the fifty-grand retainer that I was due from Miles Dane still only existed in virtual reality. A couple more flights to New York and I’d be running on fumes. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, then called my travel agent and told her to book me on a redeye to New York.

  After that I stowed a beautiful wooden box in the trunk of my Chrysler, got in the car, and drove to the airport. I kept hitting redial on my cell, trying Lisa’s room at the hotel, but nobody answered.

  My flight reached La Guardia at a little before two in the morning. I called Lisa at her hotel again, but nobody answered. I took a cab to the same Midtown hotel, checked in, then went to Lisa’s room and knocked on the door. It was past three by then. Still no answer. My heart sank.

  “Lisa! Lisa! Are you there?” I banged on the door with my fist. “Lisa!”

  A door down the hall opened and a sleepy-looking young guy glared at me. He wore a gold ring through his upper lip, and black geometrical tattoos ran from his right shoulder to his wrist.

  “Sorry,” I said. When you start waking up the tattoo-and-lip-ring people, it’s time to pack it in for the night.

  The next morning I called Lisa’s ex-roommate and a variety of her law school acquaintances and professors who I hoped would know where Lisa was. But none of them had seen her.

  Since wandering the streets aimlessly in hopes of bumping into her seemed like a fruitless plan, I decided to get some work done and wait for her to call. First, I called Sotheby’s and asked to speak to whoever was in charge of selling shotguns. Eventually I reached a man named Elliot Fosterthwaite III. He sounded very busy and preoccupied until I explained that I was looking to sell a near-flawless boxlock Purdey double gun with Damascus barrels and extensive engraving. He allowed as how he might be able to spare a moment or two that morning.

  I took a cab down to Sotheby’s, where I was treated to tea on Spode china and a great deal of fussing.

  Elliot Fosterthwaite, a tall man with a fake British accent and a double-vented English suit with the seams pulled just a hair too tight, praised the gun to the heavens. Some unusual details in the lock mechanism, the marvelous condition of the barrels, the intricacy and condition of the gold inlay on the brightwork—well, it was a terribly, terribly exciting gun. Possibly verging on important. Pity there was some unfortunate wear on the brightwork. Elliot shouldered the weapon and pretended he was blasting a brace of pheasants.

  “How soon can you sell it?” I said.

  “Lucky for you, we have our major firearms sale coming up very, very soon.”

  “How soon is very very?”

  “May 11.” Elliot smiled.

  “That’s six months!”

  Elliot Fosterthwaite blinked. “I suppose we could put it in with the antique arms in February.” A sad smile. “But I’m afraid the catalogue’s already been printed. And if you really want the sort of hammer price this gun deserves, you’ll need to wait for the firearms collection anyway.”

  I put the gun back in its walnut case and headed for the door.

  I called Lisa’s hotel room again. No answer. Then I visited the gun maven at Christie’s. The outlook for quick cash turned out to be as dismal there as it had been at Sotheby’s. Finally, I checked the yellow pages. Which led me to take a cab to a store on the Upper East Side—R. Phelan & Son, on Lexington Avenue—which billed itself as “Purveyor of the World’s Finest Arms.”

  I was greeted at the door by a man in his late seventies who introduced himself, not especially warmly, as Seamus Phelan. Like Elliot Fosterthwaite, he was done to the nines in handmade English togs. His accent, however, was pure New York.

  I opened the walnut case, revealing the disassembled shotgun.

  “Hm.” Phelan peered at it apathetically, then sighed loudly. “Well. Let’s have a look in the back.”

  I followed him through a door into a tiny, dark, Dickensian workshop, where he put on a worn leather apron. He fitted the barrel on the stock, hefted the weapon, then screwed a jeweler’s loupe in his eye, using it to scrutinize the engraving, then the barrels. Next he used a very expensive-looking ebony-and-brass-handled screwdriver to disassemble the gun, taking out the lock and examining every scrap of the mechanism in minute detail. During the entire inspection he never spoke a word, only grunting dubiously now and then. When he was done, a litter of parts lay on his workbench.

  “I hope you know how to put it back together,” I said, aiming for a little humor.

  “Well, the good news,” he growled, “it’s not a fake.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. “The provenance is entirely in order.” So as to avoid my seeming like a sucker, Miles had given me detailed instructions about the lingo used by shotgun aficionados.

  “Provenance!” The old man snorted. “Had a fellow come in here the other day with bills of sale going all the way back to Lord Acton for a supposed Cogswell & Harrison hammer gun. Cogswell & Harrison? Hah! It was a second-rate W&C Scott that somebody had tarted up a little, fooled around with the lock, added some cheap Spanish engraving, so on, so forth. It wouldn’t have fooled a four-year-old child. Every one of those bills of sale was a forgery. You’d be amazed.”

  “Be that as it may, we both agree this one’s real. Are you interested?”

  He shrugged, made a face. “Got too much inventory now.”

  “I didn’t see a Purdy with Damascus barrels and gold inlay out there,” I said. Not that I’d have known a Purdy from a water-cooled machine gun.

  Another broad shrug, another face. “Let me see the papers.”

  I showed him what I’d brought. He narrowed his eyes when he saw the bill of sale to Miles Dane. “Miles Dane? He’s that guy. That writer. The one that killed his wife.”

  “Allegedly. I’m his attorney.”

  There was a sudden glimmer of interest. “He’s raising cash to pay the shysters, huh?”

  “Not really,” I said. “He’s just shuffling some assets around. Rich people do that from time to time. Makes them feel frisky.”

  Phelan didn’t crack a smile. He looked down at the disassembled shotgun, then said, in the most skeptical New York tones, “Well. I suppose I could ask the old man, see what he says.” He turned and hobbled up a dark staircase in the corner of the room, moving slowly and quietly, as though he were trying to sneak up on somebody.
The old man? If Phelan pére actually existed, he must have been a hundred and ninety years old.

  I waited for a long time. Eventually Phelan the Younger hobbled back down.

  “He’s not sure,” Seamus Phelan said.

  “Not sure? Look, spare me the good cop, bad cop,” I said. “Just give me a number.”

  Phelan smiled for the first time, very briefly. “There’s no good cop,” he said. “Me and the old man, we’re both the bad cop.”

  “How much?”

  “We could go forty.”

  “Put it back together,” I said. “I’m going back to Sotheby’s.”

  “Time you pay the commission, insurance, catalogue fees, handling, cartage, whatever other nonsense they can nickel-and-dime you with, Sotheby’s ends up a terrible deal.”

  “Put the gun back together.”

  Phelan didn’t move. “Plus you’ve got to wait till the firearms sale comes up in May. You try selling it at the antique arms sale, you won’t get what you want for it.”

  I crossed my arms and gave him a hard stare.

  “Okay,” Phelan said. “The old man says I can go forty-six.”

  I just stood there, didn’t move a muscle.

  After what seemed a very long time, Phelan said, “Hold on.” As he went creeping up the stairs again, I wiped a little sweat off my brow. Eventually he came back down with a check in his hand.

  “Final offer,” he said, and tried to hand me the check.

  I looked at the check and laughed. Despite my bravado, however, I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn’t do a lot better in any sort of reasonable time frame.

  Phelan curled his lip. “We both know the score here, Mr. Sloan,” he said. “Your client has his keister in a crack and needs cash. You’re over a barrel. You can go to any gun dealer in the city, they’ll sniff it out as quickly as me. You don’t stay in this business for long without knowing what’s what. Difference between me and the others—most of them, they can’t raise this kind of money in five minutes.”

  To tell the truth, this was about what I’d expected. But still, cold hard reality puts a knot in your gut. I took the check, folded it in half, put it in my coat. So that was it. Now I was going to have to make this entire case fly, not on eighty thousand, but on fifty-two five. Which would barely cover expenses.

  This whole case was feeling more and more like a train wreck.

  Twenty-four

  To my infinite relief, Lisa answered the door of her hotel room when I knocked. She looked terrible—her skin pale and greenish.

  “Where’s your meeting?” I said.

  “I haven’t been in almost a year.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Where is it?”

  “A YWCA up near Columbia.”

  “Does it meet tonight?”

  She looked at her watch nervously. She was clutching a large leather portfolio under her arm, as though afraid it might run away if she put it down. “This afternoon actually.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  The AA meeting began at four-thirty. Lisa and I sat next to each other in the back row of folding chairs. She was still carrying the leather portfolio.

  “My name is Charley,” I said as the meeting began, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “My name is Lisa,” my daughter said. “I’m an alcoholic.”

  If there were things she needed to say, I didn’t want my presence keeping her from saying them. I leaned over and whispered to her as the other members introduced themselves. “This one is yours, not mine. I’ll be waiting outside.”

  Twenty-five

  After Lisa came back outside, I said, “You slipped. It happens. It was thoughtless of me to send you here. Let’s head on out to the airport and fly back to Michigan.”

  “I can’t,” she said. Her mascara had run and was now all over her cheeks. I took out my handkerchief, wiped her face.

  “Am I wasting my time being here?” I said.

  She looked up and down the street, as though expecting someone to come up and grab the leather portfolio she was still clutching in her arms.

  “Lisa?”

  “I don’t know, Dad!” she said.

  “Let’s at least go back to the hotel.”

  She looked at her watch. “Can’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, on the phone I said I had good news and bad news. The bad news is that I called Shearman & Pound’s trust department. I couldn’t squeeze anything out of the woman I talked to. You know how it is; at first she wouldn’t even confirm that Diana Dane was a client. I said the prosecuting attorney would get the trust documents sooner or later, so she might as well give them to me now. She said, ‘Mr. Olesky has already requested them. We’re currently litigating the matter.’ ”

  “So what’s the good news?”

  “I’m having a drink with Diana Dane’s brother.”

  “Really?”

  “I got him on a pretext,” Lisa said. “We’re getting together at the Oak Bar down at the Plaza Hotel. I’ll see if I can work things around to Diana and Miles, pump him for information.”

  “Drinks?” I said dubiously.

  “I’ll be fine.” She put something resembling a smile on her face and hugged the portfolio to her chest.

  “No you won’t.”

  Lisa looked up and down the street again. Suddenly it was as if something had melted in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m being a jerk. We’ll go together. When we get there, you can get a table next to us and sort of keep an eye on us. If you’re watching me, I know I won’t have a problem sticking to soda water.”

  We began walking.

  “So what’s in the portfolio?” I said after we’d gone three or four blocks.

  She gave me a sidelong mysterious look. “You’ll see.”

  The Oak Room at the Plaza is an old, famous bar where people smoke cigars and show off how rich they are by swilling drinks that cost ten dollars a pop. It has a twenty-foot-high ceiling, marble floors, big chairs, good service, and just about the right amount of noise—enough to make you feel like you’re being fun and witty in the company of other fun and witty people but not loud enough to drown out your conversation. In short, back in my days of drink and megalomania I would have loved the place. Now, however, it made me feel like an aging hick lawyer. My suit wasn’t as nice or as well pressed or as well fitting as most of the men’s in the room; I was alone at my table; and the smell of expensive cigars and single malt whiskey reminded me of the many things gone forever from my life.

  Lisa sat down at a small round table about eight feet away from me, setting the portfolio next to her chair. She had just gotten her coat off when a very tall man wearing a bow tie and a Brooks Brothers suit approached her table. He was probably six-foot-three, broad-shouldered but somewhat stooped, with a head of soft white hair that floated over his face like airborne lint. He looked like a university professor who’d played lacrosse or football in college, then let himself go. His lower lip protruded slightly, and his face was asymmetrical so that one side looked quite pleasant and the other somewhat predatory, as though two different instincts were warring inside him.

  “Lisa?” he said.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. van Blaricum.” Lisa showed her even teeth and suddenly looked very much like a grownup.

  “Please. Call me Roger.” Somehow he didn’t strike me as the call-me-Roger type. His manner was slightly pedantic, and his accent was Old New York: Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island with a little bit of Brooklyn in the vowels. He pulled out her chair ceremoniously, signaled to the waiter. “Two scotches, neat.”

  “Ah . . .”

  “Something wrong?” Van Blaricum blinked, mildly surprised.

  Lisa hesitated. “No. No, scotch is fine.” The knot in my stomach tightened.

  They settled in and exchanged a few pleasantries, then van Blaricum said, “I have to tell you I was terribly intrigued by your note.” He favored her with a smile that seemed to mean something
different on each side of his face. “But of course I’m wondering how you found me.”

  “Oh, people know people in this business. You understand.”

  She had not yet told me the nature of the pretext she had used to entice Diana Dane’s brother to this meeting, so I was intensely curious.

  “The business. Yes.” He smiled musingly. “Oddly, I’ve never even heard your name before.”

  “I’m primarily based out of Milan,” Lisa said breezily. “The bulk of our clients are Italians and Swiss.”

  “You’re quite young to be running your own shop.”

  “Oh, I hope I didn’t give you that impression. I’m an associate of Aldo Pozzoni—though in this case I’m acting on my own account. You’re familiar with him, I’m sure?”

  “We’ve spoken. Twice, I think.” Roger van Blaricum said it as though that were two times too many. “You know, my dear, I’d love to chitchat of course. But you intimated on the phone that you have something of unusual interest to show me.”

  Lisa picked up the worn leather portfolio, set it square in the middle of the table, the buckles toward her chest. “Put your drink on the floor, please, Mr. van Blaricum,” she said, placing her own scotch next to her foot.

  Van Blaricum eyed her briefly, as though not accustomed to being told what to do. But then he did as he was told, placing the drink next to the leg of his chair. Lisa took a large white cloth out of her purse and carefully wiped the tabletop. Van Blaricum’s eyes were fixed on the portfolio.