Now They Call Me Gunner

by Thom Whalen

  * * *

  “You got an appointment?” the lawyer asked.

  I looked around. It didn’t look like an office where appointments were taken too seriously. There were hundreds of papers lying in disorderly stacks. Some of those corners sticking out from the bottom looked like they hadn’t been touched since the Eisenhower administration.

  The walls were in desperate need of paint and the linoleum tiles near the walls – the ones which had not been stomped into submission – were turning up in the corners.

  Wade Adaire looked as unkempt as his office. Dumpy body, a fringe of brown-grey hair around a pate that was shiny bald, patchwork shaving on his chin that left tufts of whiskers untouched. He was probably only fifty but he looked a good ten years older than that.

  I wondered if I would smell alcohol on his breath if I stepped closer.

  “No,” I said. “I’m on my lunch break. I got to get back to work soon.”

  “Me, too.” He gestured to a ham sandwich that was lying on a rumpled sheet of waxed paper. “So why are you disturbing my lunch?” He held up a hand with a smear of mustard across the fingers. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. I’m good at this. A regular Sherlock Holmes.” He furled his brow and examined me from head to toe, then said, “You got a girl pregnant. You need to fight the paternity claim. No problem. I’ll show the court that the girl had other men coming out her ying-yang. Or coming into it, would be more to the point.”

  “No. I’m here–”

  He held up his hand again. “Wait, I said. Let me guess.” He examined me again. “Drunk driving. You don’t party much so you don’t know how much liquor you can hold. We can challenge the evidence. You weren’t tested quickly enough so it’s invalid. You weren’t drunk behind the wheel, only later when more alcohol got absorbed into your bloodstream.”

  “No. I–”

  “Shush. I get at least three strikes before I’m out.” He closed his eyes and frowned in concentration. Finally, he said, “Shoplifting. You didn’t need the stuff, but you’re a klepto and you couldn’t help it. I can get you off on mental impairment.”

  “No. I didn’t do anything.”

  He jerked upright. “Of course you didn’t do anything. You’re innocent. All my little lost lambs are innocent. But what are they charging you with? That’s the question.”

  “Nothing. I’m not here for myself. I’m here for Randal. You know. The guy that got charged with Billy Paul’s murder.”

  “I know who he is but he’s not here. He’s in jail.”

  “I know that. I’m not here to see him. I’m here to see the evidence that the cops have against him.”

  “You?”

  “Yes.”

  The lawyer put his head in his hands, smearing a bit of mustard into his fringe of graying hair. That did nothing to help his dignity. “Don’t tell me that you’re the so-called investigator that Randal keeps saying is going to create reasonable doubt for us.”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head in sorrow. “Good God, Randal’s going to get convicted. He’s going to prison. He’s going to be the first murderer to be executed in New York in a decade.”

  “No, he’s not. I’m going to find out who killed Billy Paul.”

  “Sure, you are, kid. Sure you are. Just as soon as you’re old enough to drive the Batmobile, you’re going to slip into your cape and turn Gotham City upside down to prove that The Joker did it.”

  That didn’t dignify an answer. I stared quietly at Mr. Adaire and waited for him to apologize.

  It looked like I was going to have to wait for a long time.

  He picked up his sandwich and began chewing on it with a satisfied expression on his face.

  Finally I had to speak. “Where is it?”

  “Wha’?” he asked around a mouthful of half-chewed bread and ham.

  “The evidence against Randal.”

  He shoved a folder toward me with one hand, adding a mustard smear to other, less easily identified substances that formed a patina on the manila.

  I gingerly opened the folder with two fingers, hoping to avoid contaminating myself too badly.

  Inside, there was a single sheet of paper: a laboratory report that described Randal’s knife with a bamboo handle and sheath. Dried blood had been found in the cracks where the blade was affixed to the handle. Type AB positive. The report noted that it was impossible to determine the age of the blood or whether the antigens and Rh factor had come from a single individual with that blood type or multiple individuals, any number of whom could have had blood type O negative.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  Adaire swallowed his last bite of sandwich and crumpled the wax paper into a ball, scattering breadcrumbs over his desk. “That’s what they gave me. Great, isn’t it?”

  “What’s so great about it? Randal’s knife might have killed Billy Paul.”

  Adaire lobbed his wax paper ball toward a distant trashcan. He missed. The crumpled ball joined the ring of detritus that was scattered around the can. “Reasonable doubt, my lad. Reasonable doubt. It doesn’t say that Randal’s knife killed Billy Paul. It says that it might not have killed him. Might not. Golden words, my lad. Golden. They need proof positive and this is not it. We can hire blood experts who’ll make hash of this so-called evidence. We can argue that knife may have been used in so many murders that it’s impossible to know if Billy Paul was one of them or not.”

  “That’s going to be your defense? That Randal is such an industrious murderer that we can’t tell which one is which?”

  “We’re not going to say it like that.” Adaire folded up his well-creased lunch bag and slid it into the inner pocket of a suit jacket that was hanging over the back of his chair. Undoubtedly he kept using the same bag over and over until it was worn out. It was cheaper than buying a lunch box. “The prosecution doesn’t know the provenance of the knife. Randal may have obtained it last week, for all they know. Who knows where all that blood came from?”

  “He got it from a Viet Cong guerilla. It’s probably the blood of American prisoners of war.”

  “See? Terrific. It’s a veritable fountain, spraying reasonable doubt in all directions. They got no real evidence that Randal did anything to Billy Paul.”

  I found it hard to share the lawyer’s optimism. “What about the motorcycle?” I asked.

  “What motorcycle?”

  “Billy Paul’s motorcycle. That’s why the police first suspected Randal. Because he started riding Billy Paul’s motorcycle about the time that Billy was murdered.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Adaire said. “What does Randal say about it?”

  “He says that Billy sold it to him.”

  “He have a receipt or bill of sale? Cancelled check? Any proof of payment?”

  “Not a scrap.”

  “That’s not proof positive either,” Adaire said with a wave of his hand. But he didn’t sound quite so optimistic.

  “And what about Gwen?”

  “Who’s Gwen?”

  “A waitress at Elsa’s Grill.”

  “Oh, yeah. I know her. I eat there sometimes. Pretty young thing.”

  I didn’t think that thirty was so young, but I figured that when I was Adaire’s age, I’d see women differently. Or maybe he was talking about Katie.

  “What about her?” he asked.

  “She was Billy Paul’s wife. He beat her.”

  “Too bad. What’s that got to do with Randal?”

  “He was her boyfriend.”

  “Randal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They serious?”

  “They lived together for a few months.”

  Adaire shook his head. “I guess the prosecution could make a lot out of that. You think they know about her?”

  “The cops, Chief Albertson, interviewed her. Randal told her to tell the truth so they know all about her and Randal and Billy Paul.”

  “Well, that’s still not proof positive. Just ci
rcumstantial.” But now Adaire sounded worried.

  “What do you think a jury would say about all that?”

  “You know,” he said. “I’ve never tried a murder case. Before this goes to trial, Randal will have to find a lawyer who has experience with capital cases. I’ll ask around and get some recommendations for him.”

  That was how this rat was going to desert this sinking ship.

  I left, fearing more than ever that Randal would go to jail. Or maybe even to the electric chair.

  I was the only hope that he had.