Past Due

by William Lashner

  “No thank you,” I said, standing. “I appreciate your time. One more question. This Babbage, the informer. What kind of sentence did he get?”

  “Seven years probation.”

  “Sweet.”

  “It was a necessary evil, I assure you. He was offered witness protection but he refused it, said he didn’t need it. And he did quite well after everything passed. Apparently there was some money unaccounted for, which he discovered after the case was over. But pursuant to the terms of his cooperation agreement, there was nothing we could do about that. I still don’t know how we could have missed those moneys,” he said, even as his wink let me know that he certainly did, that the man who had studied Babbage’s books with the care of a Rockefeller knew where every penny had been buried, so the money left to be discovered was all part of Telushkin’s deal for his prize witness’s testimony. “He had a nice plastics business later on, did Babbage, recycling, with a big house and a pool in Gladwyne. Was still political, but had been turned by his experience, I suppose. Became a great supporter of Clinton, if you can believe that?”

  “I’d like to speak to him.”

  “That would be quite difficult, Victor.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He drowned.”

  “My God.”

  “Just a few weeks ago. In his pool. He took a swim every morning, a few dives, a few laps. But I suppose he took one dive too many. They found him floating facedown.”

  “Did the police investigate?”

  “Ruled it an accident. Apparently he had a heart attack, right in the pool. So it goes. You know, Victor, cracking that case was the highlight of my career, the highlight, actually, of my professional life. I worked on many white-collar cases, tax cases, fraud, but that was the biggest win. And all from a careful examination of the books. I guess I’m not so different from Rockefeller after all.”

  “Give or take a billion dollars.”

  “Yes, I suppose,” he said, at a loss for a moment before his unctuous smile returned and he gestured me toward the door. “If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.”

  “Oh I will,” I said, still thinking of Babbage, floating facedown in the water.

  “By the way, Victor, one thing you might want to know.” His eyebrows rose and his face took on the expression of self-delight that seemed to be his trademark. “Our Tommy Greeley. Believe it or not, his best friend in college and in law school was not his business partner, that Cooper Prod. It was someone else. We couldn’t link him with any of the wrongdoing, and he was never indicted, but still it is quite an interesting association.”

  I looked at him. He wanted me to help him out, to pressure it out of him for some reason, as if that would put us further in league together, but I knew if I waited long enough he would spill, he couldn’t help himself. He smile was expectant for a moment before it turned exasperated and then he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  “Straczynski. Jackson Straczynski. They were the best of friends. Isn’t that something?”

  “Yes,” I said, and it was. I swallowed with surprise at the name, but I tried not to show it.

  His hand moved solicitously to my back, like he was pushing me out now that he had told me exactly what he had wanted to tell me, led me exactly where he had wanted me to go. I didn’t mind leaving, but I didn’t like being pushed the way he was pushing me.

  At the doorway I stopped, turned around. “Thank you so much for your help.”

  “It was nothing. Nothing at all. I was glad to be of service.”

  “I suppose he was, wasn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “Tommy. You said he got away, never paid the piper. So I suppose maybe he was too smart for you after all.”

  His puckish expression dropped for just a moment and what was left was all the arrogance and intolerance that I had heard beneath his jovial voice, and then the smile returned. “Good day, Mr. Carl,” he said, closing the door before I had the chance to turn away.

  It was all a swirl for me as I walked back down the hall toward the elevator. The squirrelly FBI special agent who brought down an empire, the money launderer who did a spectacularly bad job of laundering Tommy Greeley’s cash, the grand jury investigation, the sixty-million-dollar-a-year cocaine enterprise, the indictments, the dead informant, the dead informant who died in a strange swimming accident not two weeks before Joey Parma got his throat slashed. All of it swirled around me as I tried to make sense of it, but then a name popped out of the swirl, a name that Telushkin had made sure to tell me for reasons I could guess, oh yes.

  Jackson Straczynski.

  I knew the name, every lawyer in the city, in the country, knew the name. Jackson Straczynski, State Supreme Court Justice Jackson Straczynski, one of the most respected conservative legal scholars in the country and the first name on a very short list to fill the next open seat on the United States Supreme Court.

  Whatever I had thought I had been getting myself into before, I had just fallen into the big leagues.

  Chapter

  20

  “WHAT I HEARD,” said my private investigator Phil Skink, “is this Edward Dean, he made his money out on the Coast in some Internet con job what he sold afore the bubble burst. Or he was involved in some complicated investment scam the coppers are still trying to unravel. Or he invented the thingamajig what goes in the whatchubob what they stick into every computer comes off the line.”

  “In other words,” I said, “you’ve learned nothing.”

  “This is crucial data, it is, culled from the most respected sources nationwide.”

  “Zilch.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  It was approaching midnight in Rittenhouse Square, the residential heart of Philadelphia’s high society. The park was dark, deserted except for the occasional couple strolling home from the bars and clubs on the east side of the square, or the occasional cop strolling from bench to bench to roust the homeless. Beth and I had arrived at the park first. Skink came after, assuring us that we hadn’t been tailed by Dante’s boys. Now we three sat on a bench in the middle of the square, staring at an imposing town house just to the west of the Ethical Society, with a curving stone staircase and granite pediments and wrought-iron grates over its first-floor windows.

  The town house, dark now except for a bright light falling from the third-floor window, was currently home to the various and sundry Jacopo businesses, along with their principal shareholder.

  “You pick up any other useless information about him?” I asked.

  “He’s a charitable sort, so long as his name’s prominent on the donor list. Gives to plastic surgeons what are curing hair lips in China. Gives to groups pushing literacy in the inner city. Gives to an organization committed to saving some old boat on the waterfront.”

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “Some old oceangoing liner.”

  “With the two huge red funnels?”

  “That’s the one. The owner wants to scrap it. This group is trying to save it, turn it into something like a hotel, or a floating museum, anything to keep it intact.”

  “That’s peculiar,” I said, remembering the sight of that same boat, looming not far from the pier where Joey Parma’s lifeless body was tossed. “So, is he inside?”

  “The limo pulled around back at nine, most likely with this Dean inside. The hard-act what keeps watch and runs errands, name of Colfax, he showed up around nine-thirty. And then she showed up a little after ten.”

  “Kimberly Blue.”

  “That’s right, our Kimberly.”

  “So you think…”

  “I ain’t thinking nothing.”

  “Why did we wait until so late?” said Beth.

  “Knocking at a reasonable hour would be expected,” I said. “I’d rather shake him up a bit.”

  “Are we treating him like a client or a suspect?” said Beth.

  I thought on that one for a moment. We had, after all, taken Jaco
po’s money and paid our bills with it and we were, after all, pursuing Jacopo’s claim against Derek Manley. And yet, there was something about that old rotting boat and its proximity to Joey’s corpse that convinced me.

  “Suspect,” I said.

  “Attaboy,” said Skink. “You sure you don’t want me inside with you?”

  “The law firm of Derringer and Carl can handle this for now. No need to show Mr. Dean everything we have. I’m saving you for later. You’re sure about that Eldorado being at the club?”

  “I ain’t seen it with my own eyes, but it’s somewheres there. You just might have to poke around a bit. When you getting it?”

  “The sheriff is scheduled for day after tomorrow,” I said. “All right. You ready, Beth?”

  “Ready,” she said.

  “If we’re not out in half an hour,” I told Skink as I pushed myself off the bench, “send in the dancing girls. Not that I’m worried or anything, but I always like a good show.”

  We walked together, Beth and I, south through the park and then west to the town house and our meeting with the mysterious Eddie Dean. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why had he magically appeared in Philadelphia? And why did an apparent high roller like Edward Dean have any interest in the death of a four-time loser like Joseph Parma? It was those very questions that impelled us up that curving stone staircase toward the ornate wooden door.

  I pressed the buzzer and pressed it again.

  After a long stretch of time, a voice came through the little black squawk box beside the door.

  “Who the ’ell are you two and what are you after?” The voice was harsh, dismissive, and, surprise surprise, British, like a London cabbie on a wet morning with the traffic snarled and a poodle making puddles on the backseat.

  I stepped away, scanned the wall left and right of the door, found the small camera staring at me, smiled and waved like a beauty queen.

  “We’ve come to see Mr. Dean,” I said into the box.

  “Bugger off.”

  “We’re his lawyers. We have something to deliver that I think he’ll be anxious to see.”

  “Do you know what ’our it is?”

  “Late? My bad. Just tell Mr. Dean his lawyers are here and they’ve brought for his perusal the deposition of Derek Manley.”

  We didn’t have to wait long before the door opened and the gate was unlocked. A man in sharp black pants, loafers without socks, and a gray V-neck sweater, all apparently quickly thrown on for our benefit, scowled before leading us into the house. He was medium height, medium build, nothing too threatening there, but his hair was razored close to his skull, his nose had been broken and reset badly, his eyes were cold and gray and frankly scary.

  He led us through a central hallway and then left, into a large sitting room, with urns and red walls and stiff French furnishings. There were paintings of horses. There was a fireplace the size of a Yugo. There was a wall of old leather-bound books in matched sets. A huge grand piano, its cover raised jauntily, sat expectantly in the corner. It smelled of must and ashes and perfume, that room, it smelled of money stashed in boudoir drawers.

  “Wait ’ere,” said the man. He slid a heavy wooden door closed behind him after he left the room.

  A leather-topped table by the window caught my attention. Small, precisely carved pieces of wood were scattered across it, some painted, most not. I picked up a large conical piece, painted red and white and black. It looked like something, yes it did, and then I realized what. It was the stack on that decaying ship in the harbor. He was building a model of the old ocean liner, trying to put it all back together, but he hadn’t gotten far.

  Beth strolled along the bookshelves and ran a finger across a row of spines, leaving a trail in the dust. “I suppose Mr. Dean is not much of a reader,” she said.

  “Why don’t you open one and check if the pages are cut.”

  “The collected works of Victor Hugo. The collected works of Charles Dickens. The collected works of Alexandre Dumas.”

  “Quite a collection. Anything appear like it’s been read recently?”

  “Here’s one a little bit out of place. The collected works of William Shakespeare. Volume Three, the Tragedies. And there is a silk page mark in…Hamlet.”

  “To be or not to be?”

  “No, actually. A different speech of Hamlet’s, with the last line underlined. ‘O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.’ ”

  Just then the door slid open.

  “Helloo? Victor? Have you gone postal or something? What are you doing here?”

  Kimberly Blue was standing in the doorway, a thick white robe clutched tightly closed. Her hair was loose and in disarray, her face clean of makeup, her feet bare. She looked impossibly young and impossibly lost amidst the stuffy moneyed decor of the house. She appeared, just then, despite the anger twisting her features, like someone who needed to be rescued. Behind her, glowering, stood the man who had let us in.

  “We came to visit the CEO of Jacopo Financing,” I said. “We came to see Mr. Dean.”

  “Are you forgetting? External relations? Everything goes through me? I thought you understood that. This is such a poodle. And why didn’t you return my calls? I called, like, five times to find out about the deposition. I wish you had let me sit in. How did it go?”

  “It was very interesting.”

  “Colfax said you had the deposition transcript. Why don’t you just leave it with me and we’ll talk about it tomorrow? When people are, like, awake?”

  “I want to hand the deposition to Mr. Dean personally.”

  “Victor. No. You can’t. This is totally bogus. I am the vice president of external relations—”

  “And now we know how you got that job.”

  “Oh, shut up. That is so uncalled for. You have so little idea of—”

  “You want, Miss Blue,” said Colfax, “I can just take it from ’im. It won’t be so ’ard, ’andling a twig like that.”

  “Like it wasn’t so hard handling Joey Parma?” I said.

  Colfax smiled. “That was a piece of wedding cake, it was, and you’ll be ever more a snap, you septic little fuck.”

  “Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey,” said Kimberly, each exclamation growing louder. “Just cool your tools and get over yourselves. It’s not all about you boys, okay? Victor, what are you really doing here?”

  “Mr. Carl has some questions,” said a voice from behind Kimberly, a bray of a voice with a sharp Boston accent. “And he thinks himself entitled to some answers.”

  Kimberly and Colfax both stepped aside and Edward Dean entered the room.

  He was a tall, overly dramatic man, wearing a silk paisley gown over his silk pajamas, an ascot at his throat. His left hand, held like a claw in front of his stomach, gripped a cigarette between two middle fingers. His long blond hair was combed back, his teeth were big and bright, his eyes were shining. But it wasn’t the teeth or eyes or hair you noticed first about Edward Dean, and it wasn’t even his absurd anglophile lord-of-the-manor getup. What you noticed first was his face, shiny, stiff, smooth, strangely expressionless, somehow unnatural, almost like a mask glued over his features. As if he had suffered a Botox overdose and never recovered.

  “I have wanted to meet you for some time, Mr. Carl,” said Dean, his mouth carefully forming the words, the one live thing among the stillness of his strange dead face. “Kimberly has said some very complimentary things about you.” He stiffly swiveled his neck toward Beth. “And who is this you brought along?”

  “Beth Derringer,” said Beth.

  “The Derringer of Derringer and Carl?”

  “The same.”

  “I’m frankly stunned. I pictured you as an aging lion, mentoring Victor in his bruising legal career, not a lovely young woman. How did your name end up first on the letterhead?”

  “Talent,” said Beth. “I was admiring your books, Mr. Dean.”

  “Call me Eddie. And they’re not mine. They came with the re
ntal of the house, along with the piano and the paintings of horses.”

  “I love paintings of horses,” I said. “Especially when they’re playing poker.”

  “I couldn’t help but notice,” said Beth, “that you were reading Hamlet.”

  “Was I? Maybe yes. I find him inspirational.”

  “Shakespeare?”

  “The Dane. Despite all his inner torment and his dithering, in the end he gets the job done, doesn’t he? Avenges his father’s death, restores his mother’s honor. So yes, I was rereading Hamlet. I love to read. I still remember picking up my first thick novel, feeling its heft, holding it with such fear and wonder, as if it held all the truths of the world.”

  “What was it?” asked Beth.

  He walked over to the shelf, searched for a bit, picked out a book. “Dumas. How many times my best friend and I were sent to the principal for sword fighting with wooden yardsticks I couldn’t tell you. I think back and it’s still the best book I ever read. A great influence to be sure. What was the book of your youth, Ms. Derringer?”

  “To Kill a Mockingbird,” said Beth. “I read that while still in grade school and knew who I wanted to be.”

  “Atticus Finch,” said Eddie Dean.

  “Exactly,” said Beth.

  “And you, Victor?” asked Eddie. “What was your earliest great literary experience?”

  “A beat-up old paperback of The Godfather,” I said. “Page twenty-seven.”

  “Page twenty-seven?” said Beth.

  “Sonny Corleone,” I said, “a bridesmaid, and a door.”

  Dean barked out a laugh at that. “Well, I’m delighted you’ve come too, Miss Derringer. The room needs some brightening, but I thought I was dealing just with Victor.” He swiveled to look at Kimberly. “My staff didn’t inform me you were on the case too.”

  Kimberly’s face turned red.

  “She didn’t know,” said Beth, “but helping each other on our cases is what it means for us to be partners. Although I am puzzled as to exactly what this case is?”

  “Why, it’s a case about a debt.”

  “More than that, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Oh, there is always more. Here, there is betrayal, deceit, murder, the usual, but it’s still about a debt.”