by A. W. Gray
Finally the deputy looked up and said, “I’ve got to make a call.”
To which Bino replied, “Why? The record shows I’m Mr. Benson’s lawyer, and I’m supposed to be able to see him anytime I want.”
“I know who you are,” the deputy said, “and I know the rules. And I’ve got to make a call.” He left Bino drumming his fingers, retreated from the counter and picked up a phone. He was on the line a couple of minutes, then returned to the counter to say, “You’re out of luck.”
Bino frowned. “If I don’t get to see my client in a hurry,” he said, “you may be out of luck.”
One corner of the deputy’s mouth tugged sarcastically to one side. “I’m here to serve you, Mr. Phillips,” he said, meaning, Fuck you. “Really I am. But I’ve got a real problem with letting you visit Mr. Russell Benson.”
“Sounds to me,” Bino said, “like you’re wanting more problems than you’ve already got.”
The deputy grinned. “Maybe I am. But I can’t let you visit anybody which isn’t in this jail.”
Bino’s chest deflated like a ruptured tire. “Huh?”
“As of this morning, we’ve got no Russell Benson as a prisoner. Couple of other Bensons. One hot-check guy, another in for rape. You want to see one of them?”
Bino looked down, then back up. “What’s happened to my client, then?”
The deputy folded burly arms. “You know better than that, Mr. Phillips. The only thing we’re authorized to say about Mr. Benson is that he’s not currently a prisoner.” He looked toward the lobby exit. “I’ll give you more than I’m supposed to, though. If I wanted some answers, I’d talk to those guys.” He gestured with his head.
Bino turned. Standing near the lobby entrance in animated conversation were Roger Tiddle, Marvin Goldman, and the same FBI agent who’d been Goldman’s shadow in court at Rusty’s bond hearing. The Harris County prosecutor was wearing a charcoal gray suit while Goldman was in slacks and a formfitting green knit shirt. Bino said over his shoulder to the deputy, “Thanks,” then crossed the thirty steps over to the three men with his hands balled into fists.
Goldman was in the process of handing a business card over to Tiddle. As Bino approached, the Assistant U.S.D.A. was saying, “Any questions you get, you just refer ’em to me.”
Bino stepped in between Goldman and the FBI agent and looked down on Goldman. “Okay,” Bino said, “I’ll be the first questioner. Where in hell is my client?”
“You’re looking better this morning, buddy. Your eye’s not as swollen, and you’re moving around better.” Goldman scratched his head through his too-black hair.
Bino’s gaze hardened. “Looks like you’re moving around pretty good yourself, Marv. Where’s my client?”
Goldman now exchanged looks with Roger Tiddle. “You mean Rusty Benson?” Goldman said.
“No, Marv,” Bino said. “I mean Jeffrey fucking Dahmer. Who the hell do you think I mean? I’m talking about the guy jailed in the phony bond hearing, which hearing I’m about to appeal the shit out of.”
Roger Tiddle now cleared his throat. “I’ll help you on that one. We’ve withdrawn our request to hold Mr. Benson without bond. He’s no longer in our custody.”
Bino got it. He alternated his gaze between Tiddle and Goldman. “What about the murder beef?” Bino finally said. “You dropping that one, too?”
Tiddle studied the floor.
Bino held a stiffened finger underneath Goldman’s nose. “Well, I got a message for you to deliver, Marv old buddy.”
Goldman shrugged. “A message to who?”
“To Rusty Benson,” Bino said, “at whatever fucking safe house you’re hiding him in. You tell old Rusty that I just resigned as his lawyer, and that he owes me another thousand
bucks. That’s the charge for the hassle I’ve been through. Plus, there’s a policy of mine. Anytime my client decides to become a federal snitch, my fee doubles. You tell old Rusty that for me, will you, Marv?”
During the pell-mell taxi ride to Hobby Airport, Bino was too busy with his own thoughts to have much to say to Carla. He wasn’t sure, in fact, exactly why she was coming along. When he’d charged into the room and begun tossing his luggage together, she’d been sitting up in bed naked as a jaybird, but by the time he was ready to go she was dressed in loose-fitting jeans, a pullover cotton jumper, and brown Cole-Haan loafers. She’d hustled along with him to the elevator and through the lobby, and had hopped into the cab in front of him before he could raise an objection.
At Hobby he left the taxi at a dead run, used his credit card in the machine for a one-way ticket, and, with Carla dogging his tracks, arrived at the gate five minutes before the Southwest Airlines flight was ready for boarding. He checked in at the counter, received a boarding pass, then stepped with Carla out into the corridor with his carry-on suitbag slung over his shoulder.
She leaned against a pillar, crossed her ankles, and looked up at him. “Now would you mind telling me what’s the big emergency?” she said. “Or is it just that you’re tired of me?”
“I tried to explain at the hotel,” Bino said, “that things were blowing up right and left. I’ve got some huge fires back at the office. My deal with Rusty Benson is over with, so there’s nothing to keep me here.”
She compressed her mouth into a pout. “There isn’t?”
He suddenly felt two inches tall. “That’s not … ” he said, and gently touched her hair. “Hey, I didn’t mean you. It’s business, okay? You’ve only got, what, one more night to perform in this town?”
“That’s not the point,” she said.
“Hey, I know that,” he said. “Believe me, I do. You’ll be coming home tomorrow. Look, I’ve got these two guys, Barney and Half, doing some things for me. What I found out this morning over at the jail tells me I’ve got to get a move on.”
“Which is what?” Carla said, interested.
“Which is that your friend and mine Rusty Benson has suddenly decided he’d rather have Goldman for his lawyer than me. He’s decided that Goldman has a better chance of keeping him out of jail, and he’s probably right.” Bino checked his watch. “Look, I don’t have time to explain all of this. Just trust me that it’s not you I’m running from. I’m running to someplace.”
“What is it that you’ve got them doing?” Carla said.
A little warning bell tingled inside Bino’s head. “Got who doing?”
“Those guys you said. Barney and … Half?”
“Half, yeah. Half-a-Point,” Bino said thoughtfully. Then, as gently as possible, “Tell me something. Why is it you’re suddenly so interested in all that?”
Her gaze shifted so that she wasn’t looking directly at him. She took on the same expression that Bino had seen on one of his burglar clients, Wimpy Madrick, whenever anyone asked Wimpy if he was the guy who’d stolen the stereo and TV.
“I mean, hey, Carla,” he said. “Don’t take this wrong, but good times are good times and business is business. So, why the sudden curiosity?”
“Curiosity?” she said, licking her lips, then firming her mouth to say, “I was just making small talk.”
The gate attendant was now calling the flight for boarding.
“Look, Carla, we can talk later,” Bino said. The warning tingle had grown to a full-fledged anvil chorus, another not-quite feeling that he couldn’t put his finger on. “I’ll see you back in Dallas, okay?” He kissed her on the forehead. “I’ve got to get on this airplane, babe.”
“Sure,” she said. She took three or four small steps in the direction of the airport lobby, then turned and raised her voice. “Bino.”
He had started toward the boarding line, but now turned. “Yes?”
She looked at him for a full fifteen seconds, then dropped her gaze. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing that can’t wait.” She smiled. “We’ve had fun together,
hoss. Let’s don’t forget that, okay?”
18
BINO LANDED AT DALLAS’S LOVE FlELD, RETRIEVED THE LlNC, and drove directly downtown to his office. Dodie did a double take as he came in, then closed the file she’d been studying and laid it aside. “You still owe me the seven-fifty,” she said. She wore a plain cotton tan minidress, and her hair was tied back into a pony tail.
Bino sat in her visitor’s chair. “That’s all you’ve got to say? Not, Gee, we’ve missed you, or anything?”
“Well I could say something tacky like, ‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ ” Dodie said. “But I won’t.” She held out her hand, palm up.
He reached in his pocket and went through his bankroll, located a five and two singles, and dropped them on her desk. “You’ll have to trust me for the fifty cents,” he said.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Look, Dode,” he said.
“You’ve had several calls,” Dodie said, thumbing through a stack of pink slips in businesslike fashion.
He scratched his chin. If that was the way she wanted it... “For now,” he said, “hold all calls that don’t have anything to do with Tommy Clinger. And get in touch with Tommy and tell him I need to see him, pronto. Tomorrow morning, if he can get down here. Most of the other calls, you know how to handle. The ones that require a personal touch from me, well, they’ll just have to wait.”
Her nose wrinkled. “A personal touch from you?” She looked once again through the call slips. “I don’t think any hookers have been calling. If they do I’ll tell them you’ll personally touch them.” She smiled daggers.
He pointed a finger. “Pretty good, Dode. Hey, that’s a good one.”
“You think so?”
He stood, doing his damnedest not to show his irritation but failing miserably in the attempt, and gestured toward Half-a-Point Harrison’s door. “He in?” Bino said.
“Last time I checked,” Dodie said, not looking up.
“Well, don’t forget to call Tommy,” he said huffily.
“I’m not the one around here who forgets things.”
He opened his mouth to make a crack, then thought the better of it. He nodded at the top of Dodie’s head, then went into Half-a-Point Harrison’s cubbyhole.
There were two phones in Half’s office, a red one and a black one. He was on the red, saying, “The number on Texas can move. We got no word on Juan Gonzalez’s sore back. If Gonzalez plays the odds’ll change. Home run power.” He glanced up, held a hand out toward his visitor’s chair, and listened to the party on the line.
Bino sat, scooted his rump forward, and crossed his legs.
“What do you mean, call you?” Half said. “You want the changes, you call me. This ain’t no Sports Central here.” He hung up. “Bino. I been trying to call you at the Houston Hyatt.”
“It’s good I wasn’t there,” Bino said. “Talking to me might’ve interfered with the bookmaking calls.”
Half wore a tight-fitting vest with his tie yanked down and his collar undone. His coat hung on a hall tree in the corner.
He inserted a toothpick between his lips and grinned. “I take care of all business,” he said. He reached inside his middle desk drawer and tossed two stacks of paper over in front of Bino. One pile was handwritten yellow legal sheets, the other computer printouts in alternating shades of green.
“What’re those?” said Bino.
Half propped a knee against his desk and moved the toothpick to the corner of his mouth, there to dangle. “What you asked for. The yellow pages are lists of Rusty Benson’s cases in state court, the printout’s from the federal district clerk. I got Rusty’s federal cases underlined. The ones in Edgar Bryson’s court have the case number circled. What else?”
Bino picked up the yellow legal pages. “You got dispositions on these state cases?”
“Third column,” Half said. “On the federal printout the case status is on the far right, whether it’s still pending or if the guy’s already pled or gone to trial.”
Bino relaxed. Half-a-Point Harrison’s income as an investigator was about ten percent of what he made brokering bets—from lawyers, county employees, and even a few prosecutors—and he looked on his investigative chores as part of helping out a buddy. Half and Bino went all the way back to small-town Mesquite, when Pop Harrison used to haul the two kids around in the back of his pickup, and buy them Grapette soda in a bottle and licorice sticks from ajar inside a drive-in grocery that smelled of fresh cold cuts and cheese. Bino’s parents were both dead and gone—his mom in a pileup with an eighteen-wheeler, his dad from a heart attack a few years after that—and most of his Christmases and Thanksgivings were spent at the Harrisons’ Mesquite home, munching on drumsticks and watching the pro ball games on television. Bino said, “Looks like you’ve done a pretty good job.”
“What’d you expect?” Half said.
Bino picked up both stacks and rattled the pages. “You see any pattern here?”
“Depends on what you’re looking for,” Half said. “His murder and rape clients get hammered just like anybody else’s. I got to say, though, that if some of your guys find out
what Rusty’s people are getting on the bullshit charges, the drunk driving and shoplifting, you’re going to be minus a few clients.”
“He’s making good deals for them,” Bino said.
“Yeah, you might say that. He’s got a guy, I know this guy. Runs a poker game and football store out in East Dallas by the golf course. Murphy Litton.”
Bino nodded. “Fat Murphy.”
“Sure,” Half said. “You know him, too. Not a particularly brilliant guy. The numbers are going to make a bookmaker rich in the long run, and that poker game is the real berries. He’s knocking down the pot, fifty cents, a buck or two when the pot gets bigger. In a ten and twenty game he’s going to cut five or six hundred a night, depending on how long the game lasts.
“But Fat Murphy’s not satisfied with waiting,” Half said. “He knows his football customers, so he shades the numbers. Say the guy’s a Texas fan. Murphy knows that, knows the guy’s going to bet Texas, so he knocks points off the spread. Doesn’t realize the guy’s probably betting two or three other bookmakers, and is a cinch to find out the real number and that Murphy’s screwing him.”
“I’ve heard,” Bino said, “that his poker game’s not the straightest spot in the world, either.”
“You’ve heard right,” Half said. “He runs professionals in and charges them a fee to sit in with the square Johns. Murph gets it coming and going. Not only is he cutting the game, the sharpies are buying a seat from the guy. Trouble with that is, once the mooches take a few baths, they tend to get pissed off, you know?”
“Which translates,” Bino said, “into complaints.”
“Not a football season goes by,” Half said, “that two or three of Murphy’s customers don’t make anonymous phone calls, not to mention the poker players’ old ladies that are already bitching downtown because their old man doesn’t bring enough home to feed the babies. Keeps Fat Murphy’s tit in a wringer.”
“Six times”—Half held up all five fingers on one hand, the index finger on the other—”old Murph’s been busted. The first three, they’re misdemeanors where he pays a fine. Numbers four and five, Rusty Benson gets dismissed. Number six, that was this spring the case come up, that’s enhanced into a felony because of the three prior misdemeanors, right? The standard D.A.’s deal on the felony is reduction to a misdemeanor and sixty days in jail, right?”
“Plain vanilla,” Bino said. “That’s the standard proposition.”
“Yeah, only not with Fat Murphy Litton. He gets probation on the beef, can you believe it?” Half reached across the desk to rattle the stack of yellow paper. “There’s a bunch of ’em in there. Hookers run in eight and ten times, winding up with maybe a loitering ticket referred
back to city court. Nothing that’s going to get the newspapers on anybody’s ass, like early parole for rapos and whatnot. But they’re deals no other lawyer in town could swing.”
“They’re all vice squad busts, right?” Bino said.
“Every one I found.” Half leaned back and folded his arms.
“Which would require,” Bino said, “some prosecutor’s cooperation in addition to the vice squad’s. It takes an Assistant D.A. to reduce the charges, but if the vice squad cops aren’t cut in they’re going to bitch to somebody over the A.D.A.’s head.”
“Way it looks to me,” Half said.
“Jesus Christ,” Bino said. “Goldman is going to make one earth-shattering street sweep out of this one. I can see his list now, it’ll make the cop indictments on Tommy Clinger and those guys look like a Little League batting lineup. Judges, D.A.’s, you name it. With Rusty to name names, old Marv’s probably already got calls in to 60 Minutes and The New York Times.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I wonder how Rusty’s been handling the payoffs on all this crap.”
“I thought you might wonder,” Half said. “So I went out and had a talk last night with Fat Murphy Litton.”
“Oh? I didn’t know you and Murphy were tight.”
“We ain’t,” Half said. “But you have to know how to talk to the guy. I just dropped in on Murphy’s poker game and mentioned to him on the sly that I’d seen a couple of his players before, playing in the professional tournaments at Binion’s Horseshoe. First thing you know, Murphy takes me out in the kitchen to visit/’
“Wants to make sure you won’t blow his cover,” Bino said.
“You got it. Now, Murphy don’t know exactly how Rusty Benson makes these deals. All he knows is, if you want the right consideration it’s going to cost you extra. He gives the money to Rusty, and where it goes from there Murphy’s got no idea. Murph had one pretty hot item for me, though.”