Neon Dragon

by John Dobbyn

  I smiled back. “Is that a promise?”

  Caster was a nice shade of pink by the time I was looking across his desk at him. I’m sure the fear of losing the power of having me on voice commands had nearly driven him to distraction. My finally-obedient presence before him came just before he started sucking his thumb.

  “Did you call me, Whitney?”

  Any form of “yes” would have sent Julie into a case of the unstiflable giggles. I think he appreciated that, because he finessed the question.

  “Knight, I have an idea. I want you to go back and reargue that motion to suppress discovery before Judge Bradley.”

  I could see his weasely little mind working. He was salivating at the thought of Judge Bradley finding it difficult to deny my motion when I was in the midst of representing his son. More to the point, if I won the motion, Whitney could see himself garnering the credit with the seniors for coming up with the ploy.

  “Whitney, baby, you don’t have enough brains or ethics to realize that a man of Judge Bradley’s character would recuse himself from the case before he’d play into your sniggering little plot.”

  I liked the sound of that, but it never actually passed these restrained lips. What came out was, “That’s an idea, Whitney. I’ll get on it.”

  “You do that, Knight,” he whined as he busied himself with lofty legal issues in a brief. I was dismissed. I curtsied, and turned for the door.

  I let him sink comfortably into the euphoria of self-admiration for his crafty little scheme before turning back.

  “One more thing, Whitney. When Judge Bradley sees this motion marked up for rehearing, he’ll probably think we’re trying to put the squeeze play on him. My bet is that he’ll be on the horn to Mr. Devlin in about six seconds to tell Mr. Devlin that he views the ethics of the rest of his law firm as beneath contempt. Mr. Devlin will be climbing up my back in about four seconds to find out whose idea this was in the first place. At that point …”

  The pink had run from Whitney’s cheeks. He was nothing if not protective of his little pinched posterior.

  “Hold off on that, Knight. You’ve probably got other things more pressing.”

  “As a matter of fact, Whitney …” I thought of the Red Wings game I’d be missing.

  14

  I NEEDED THE PRIVACY of my office for what I was about to do. As I closed the door, I tried to think of the last time I had spent serious time there. It predated the Lothrop hearing before Judge Bradley, which seemed like a century ago.

  Tom Burns was a private detective whom the firm used on a semi-regular basis. He was not inexpensive, but his rates still beat having a lawyer do certain types of legwork. He was also better than the rest of us when the information required serious private detection. I had worked with him enough to be able to play with the cards up.

  “Hi, Mike. How goes?”

  “Good, Tom. You alone?”

  “Alone enough.”

  “I mean alone alone. This is really sensitive.”

  I heard him ask his secretary to type up what he had given her. I listened for the door to close in the background.

  “What do you need, Mike?”

  “I’ve got something for you, Tom, if you’ll do it. I’m going to level with you. This is not authorized by anyone in the firm. A certain big guy down the hall would put me into a submarine sandwich if he knew I was doing this.”

  “I heard you were working with A.D. And you can still sit up and take nourishment. You’re a survivor, Mike.”

  “You know what they say—that which doesn’t kill us makes us strong. It could still go either way. Have you got some time free in the next day or so?”

  “No. What do you need, Mike?”

  “There was a case ten years ago this March, Commonwealth v. Dolson, Suffolk Superior Court. It was a hung jury. The names and addresses of the jurors on that case are in the record. I need to know if there were any radical changes in the lifestyle of any of the jurors, say in the next year after the case ended. You know what I’m looking for.”

  “I know what you want. Any cash windfalls that could be a payoff.”

  “You got it. I have a hunch it could be connected to this Bradley case. But it’s just a hunch. I can’t get you authorization from any of the partners. Lex Devlin’s the only one involved in this case, and he’d split a gut if he knew what we were opening up.”

  “You’re playing with dynamite here, Mike. That was the case where they said Lex Devlin …”

  “I know. I don’t believe it, Tom. It was never proven or disproven. It’s been sucking the blood out of a great man for ten years. It’s time it was cut open. Good or bad.”

  “You think that’s your call to make, Mike?”

  I felt the weight of it all of a sudden.

  “Not if I weren’t sure of the man. Can you spare some time, Tom?”

  “No. But I will. When do you want it?”

  “Ten years ago. Whenever you can. Listen, about payment, Tom. If there is a connection with this Bradley case, you can bill it to the Bradley file. I can’t promise it, though. The best I can do is pick it up myself, but it could take me a while to pay it off.”

  “He really got to you, didn’t he, Mike?”

  “He’s the class of this shop, Tom. The rest of them don’t come up to his socks. It kills me to see him dying a slow death.”

  “I know, Mike. Don’t worry about the bill. You’ll never see it.”

  “That wasn’t the idea, Tom.”

  “Hey, Mike, you’re not the only one owes the old man.”

  IF I HAD THE OPTION of skipping any quarter hour of that particular day, the next fifteen minutes would have been goners. I knew I was skating on thin to no ice at all.

  Mr. Devlin’s secretary was at least not surprised to see me. She nodded to the open door. I started to knock, but he saw me and waved me in.

  “What did you get from his Harvard buddies?”

  Great start. For openers I got to tell him that I hadn’t been there yet.

  Let’s face it. The only way through a difficult situation is to plough through the front door.

  “I’m going over to Harvard after we finish here. I’ve got to talk to you about a couple of things.”

  I warmed up by telling about Red Shoes and Harry Wong. I could see the distress carved in the lines of his face. It needed more time to sink in, but there was no time. I had to get at the main event.

  “I’ve got something very personal, Mr. Devlin. We’ve got to get it off the table.” He pushed back in the heavy desk chair. Without doubt, I had his full attention. The thought of sitting down would have relieved a couple of shaking legs, but I had to do this one standing up.

  “I went to the court clerk’s office this afternoon. I dug out the Dolson file.”

  Those two beacons of eyes registered some mix of anger, pain, betrayal. I couldn’t tell.

  “I had to. I think there may be a connection. I need to ask you a question.”

  His expression was granite. But he didn’t tell me not to.

  “The assistant DA was going after Dolson for a felony-murder conviction. A life term. There was a hung jury. All of a sudden the charge was reduced to simple arson, and there was a deal for a sentence that may have let him out on parole in two years. I know that’s not unusual, but there’s always a quid pro quo. One possibility is that Dolson got off lightly for information on the people who hired him. I’ve got to ask it, Mr. Devlin. Is that what happened?”

  I wasn’t sure whether he was going to speak or not. I think he first had to decide whether he was going to dignify the question and the questioner with an answer or just squash me like an ant.

  His expression never changed. When he spoke, it was quieter than I expected.

  “No. There was no information. Dolson claimed he didn’t know anything.” He took a breath as if he were going to say more, but nothing followed.

  “Then the other possibility was that the prosecutor was afraid of a weak
case. I know that sometimes happens after a hung jury. But …” Now I was grasping for words. I finally decided no more grasping. Say it, and put us both out of our misery.

  “… I know there was rumor of a fixed jury on the first trial.”

  Our eyes were locked. If he flinched, I didn’t see it. I didn’t flinch either.

  “They’ll never fault you for guts, sonny. There isn’t a lawyer or judge in this city that would brace me with that question. What the hell makes you think …”

  “Because maybe I care more than they do, Mr. Devlin.”

  I didn’t know what to follow that with, but it stopped the train. Those eyes were still riveted into mine, and I didn’t have a clue what was going on behind them.

  Six years went by in the next few seconds. Then his weight went back into the chair, and his head went back against the cushioned rest. I had the feeling that he was coming to a decision, and I gave him time to carry it out.

  When he spoke, he was looking at the ceiling.

  “You’ve just come about as close to the center of my sanity as anyone since my wife passed away. God rest her. I never said this before to anyone. I never had the chance. It was taken out of my hands, and then it just … festered away.”

  He rocked forward out of the chair and walked over to the window. “Dolson had some kind of a deal going. He confessed once to arson. Then he pulled it back when they found bodies. I defended him. That was the case that ended in a hung jury.

  “Two things happened after that. The assistant DA offered a plea with a light sentence. I never bargained for it. It was just dropped on the plate. Dolson was never required to ante up any information. It smelled. I didn’t like it, but Dolson grabbed it. I think he was paid to take the fall—at least that much of a fall. He told me as much, but wouldn’t or couldn’t say who paid him. Then when I raised hell with him about fraud on the court, he said he was just joking about the payoff. I had nothing concrete to take to the court, so the plea was up to him.”

  He took a breath. I don’t know what he was looking at out the window. I don’t think he did. I didn’t move.

  “The other part …”

  After a second, he walked back to the desk. He was looking me right in the eye. But that look couldn’t have been meant just for me. I think he was looking at every bar-rail, gossip-mongering lawyer at the trial bar. The voice was strong, and it carried the weight of ten years’ suffering.

  “Get it out, sonny. You’re the only one in ten years had the guts to ask me to my face if I fixed that jury. Give me the real question.”

  He was in court. He was on the stand, and he wanted the question to come from every one of his peers. The office door was open, but we both ignored it. I put the question.

  “Mr. Devlin, did you have anything to do with fixing the jury in the Dolson case?”

  He was at full height now, and it came from the bottom of his soul.

  “I had nothing to do with it. Whether that hold-out juror was fixed or not, I never knew. Before Dolson pleaded guilty, there was supposed to be an investigation by the disciplinary committee of the bar, or the DA, or both. After the plea, they were both squelched. I went to both offices and demanded a full investigation to clear the rumors. I couldn’t get to first base. The case was closed. Nobody wanted to hear about it, except in the bars and the chambers when I wasn’t there to speak in my own defense. I’ll say it now, for the first time in ten years, in the hearing of another lawyer. I had nothing to do with it.”

  When he sat down, he didn’t fall into the chair. He sat down. The dignity and the immensity of the man’s aura poured over me until I felt a knot the size of an orange in my throat.

  There were no more words to say, if, in fact, I could have gotten them out. I could see in his face, as he could see in mine, there was no question of belief.

  My voice croaked when I reached the door and said, “Thank you, Mr. Devlin. I’ll do that Harvard run.”

  There was a ten-ton silence in the corridor as I walked to the elevator, but it wasn’t tension. They had just heard the sound of justice, and it overwhelmed them.

  15

  IT WAS PUSHING FIVE by the time the train pulled into Harvard Square. The afternoon chill had dipped into an early-evening freeze. Crossing Mass. Avenue at rush hour from the island that houses the “T” station took skill, cunning, and the pretense of not looking. The trick, of course, was not to face a driver who was also pretending not to look.

  There was always the alternate course of waiting for the light at the crosswalk, but then, why stand out from the crowd? It would only confuse the drivers.

  I walked down Dunster Street, which led to the student houses on the Charles River. I found the door of a relatively modern building that housed the offices of tutors and PhD candidates. Barry Salmon fit the latter category.

  I had heard from classmates over the years that after we graduated, Barry had practiced his acquired art of classical philosophy for some years at a private high school. Inevitably he came back to John Harvard for a PhD He was well into his second year at this point.

  The plug-in letters on the directory board told me that they had filed Barry in room 412B.

  I remembered the first time I met Barry. He was a well-shined, skinny, bow-tied, tweed-sport-coated (still bearing the frays of his older brother’s wearing) freshman at Chambers Academy. He was smiling then, and he was smiling the last time I saw him, which was the day we graduated from Harvard College. As a freshman at Chambers, he smiled out of a deep-rooted good nature. His smiles at Harvard emanated from chemical substances that the chief chemist at Dupont couldn’t have identified.

  When Barry came to Harvard, he fell in love with three institutions: classical philosophy, some dredged-up cult of the old sixties’ hippie culture, and Cynthia Wallingford. The only one of the three that ever did him any good was classical philosophy. For all of his daffiness, Barry was probably the brightest individual, strictly in terms of raw intellect, that I have ever known. I would probably score Barry: Intelligence—ten; Common Sense—point three.

  The funny thing was that Barry never lived in the sixties. He was born in ‘77. On the other hand, he never outlived the sixties.

  Barry was a hippie in the nineties, when our classmates didn’t understand the meaning of the word, and they certainly didn’t understand Barry. We traveled in different circles, I’m happy to say, but there was always something warm in our acquaintanceship that harkened back to Chambers days.

  I found room 412B with its door open. I peered inside. The room was about the size of Anthony Bradley’s cell, but it seemed a great deal smaller. There was a tiny footpath that led through mounds of books, papers, lecture notes, fruit, and sneakers. At the end was a wooden desk chair with no one in it. Then there was a desk with Barry on it, semireclined and reading. At least I suspected that what was behind the salt-and-pepper beard and under the Don King hairdo was Barry. I caught the aroma of the sneakers, and I knew it was Barry.

  I knocked, but it took a yell to get his attention.

  “Barry! Michael Knight. You remember?”

  He squinted for a second, then sprang like a cat over the chair to the floor. I was amazed that whatever was cooking his brain cells at that point in his life had done nothing to his athletic prowess.

  “Mike! I don’t believe it.”

  He just laughed, and I did too. It seemed to cover all the trite, conventional questions and answers that would otherwise have been necessary to bring us up to date. There we were, and the last ten or so years were blown away.

  “Barry, I want to ask you a question.”

  “Shoot, Mike. Hey, would you like some coffee or something?”

  I smiled and declined. Much as I still liked Barry, I wouldn’t drink coffee out of any receptacle in the room, and what “or something” meant I’d have needed a degree in pharmacology to figure out.

  “I’m a lawyer, Barry. I have a client who’s on trial for murder. He’s a Harvard student. Antho
ny Bradley. Sophomore. African American.”

  I don’t know why I was looking for recognition. If Plato didn’t report on the event, it was unlikely that it would have taken Barry’s attention. Nonetheless, I pressed on.

  “He was a football player his freshman year. He lives in Dunster. His father’s a judge.”

  Suddenly the beard parted as if to speak. I wondered which of the facts I had ticked off struck the chord.

  “He’s a black kid. Runs that group. What do they call them? ‘The Point,’ right?”

  “You lost me, Barry. I never heard of the group. What are they?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a group of students. They do some good volunteer things. Mostly they help freshmen get up to speed with their study habits. They help them make the crossover to college.” He grinned. “They help the kids that never went to Chambers.”

  “I didn’t realize he was into that, Barry. How long?”

  He ruffled the beard. I looked to see what would fly out, but nothing did.

  “I don’t know. I heard it eighth-hand. I don’t know Bradley personally. I think he got heavily involved in the spring term last year. This year I think I heard he was running it.”

  “Do they have an office?”

  “Are you kidding? They’re showcase. The president moved them into the Yard so they could be close to the freshman. I think they’re in Dunlevy.”

  I thanked Barry with a wave instead of a shake and promised to keep in touch.

  DUNLEVY IS A NEOMODERN, neo-utilitarian, neogrotesque building in the northeast corner of Harvard Yard. Architecturally, Harvard is much like its faculty. By the time an individual has reached the level of scholarship necessary to be invited to join the faculty, there is usually an independence and self-assurance that has evolved in the mix that makes the individual defiantly unique. To say that a Harvard professor doesn’t fit into a pattern falls somewhere between an irrelevancy and a compliment. The same is true of the architecture.

  Unlike Barry’s sign at the front door, the permanently lettered sign at Dunlevy proclaimed that The Point was in suite 203. In this case, “suite” meant two adjoining rooms with identical neo-Ikea desks and chairs in each.