Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy Page 16

  "You’re probably overestimating me."

  “Whereas, if you say no, you’ll begin regretting it immediately."

  “Sounds like I get depressed either way."

  The eyebrow came down, the smile slid into a disgusted frown, and she said, "I’m not sure I will have time to see you today after all."

  "What if it’s talk to me or talk to the cops?"

  She laughed, regaining ground. "Please, don’t threaten me about the killings. I’m a lawyer, remember? We invented threats."

  "Actually, I wasn’t thinking so much about the killings as about the hookers and the drugs."

  She finished the laugh, but smoothly, as if it hadn’t died in her throat. She leaned back with a "Boy, I’ve got you now" look. The best trial lawyer from my days at Empire used to say that was the look he’d put on when the opposition had just harpooned him in front of the jury.

  "The hookers, you say?"

  “Yeah, like Teri Angel in Boston."

  "The poor girl killed with Marsh?"

  "That’s her."

  "Are you suggesting I knew her?"

  "Uh, yes, I’m afraid, uh, I am."

  Felicia’s face indicated she didn’t like my imitation. Not even a little.

  I said, "Marsh met Teri through Stansfield, and Stansfield met Teri through you."

  "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

  "The vagaries of memory. I’m sure the probate court appearance docket and Teri’s phone bills will refresh yours when the time comes. We could probably even find some folks at the Barry who could prove you knew her socially, too, but for now, let’s try the drugs. Remember them?"

  Her eyes were glittering, but the voice was still steady. “I thought the police hadn’t found the drugs Marsh was supposed to have had with him."

  "Let’s say they haven’t. Let’s also say that the stuff hasn’t shown up on the street."

  "It would be hard to tell if it had, you know. One package of it is pretty much the same as another."

  "According to my sources, this package is distinctive and it isn’t being pushed."

  "And therefore?"

  "And therefore, we find ourselves in something of an illogical situation."

  "How so?"

  "Somebody mugs me, uses my gun to rip off Marsh and kill Teri Angel, yet the drugs aren’t being marketed."

  She looked at me. I said, "Any ideas?"

  "No."

  "Oh, Ms. Arnold. Not very lawyerly of you. One thought certainly comes to my mind."

  She just kept looking. I said, "How about a little home consumption?"

  "l don’t know what you’re talking about."

  "Well, let me spin it out a bit. Marsh is a distributor for Braxley Cocaine Incorporated, okay? Old Roy has the perfect cover for visiting a lot of people each week. So to make him look plausible, his customers buy bushels of insurance, coverage they don’t need and never claim on. That means they pay a premium to the insurance company over and above the cost of the junk, but hell, that’s a small price to avoid the inconvenience of driving into the seedier areas of our metropolitan area to score a few lines. Marsh makes out on both ends of the deal, the drug margin and his insurance commissions. But Roy is a greedy kind of guy, angry at a nickel because it isn’t a dime, you know?"

  "Picturesque, but a trifle tedious."

  "We’ll cut to the punch line, then. You turn out to be one of his insurance customers. You don’t strike me as a heavy user, but Paulie-boy’s so stoked he’s got to wear shades to brush his teeth. Maybe the drug connection is your way of keeping pocket stallions like him in the stable."

  "You contemptible—"

  "Then something goes wrong, and maybe Marsh starts thinking what I’m thinking."

  "Do you realize the potential liability you’re incurring?"

  "I’m judgment-proof. Prove what you want, there’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Anyway, Marsh starts thinking that a blue-chip lawyer like you might pay to protect her license from embarrassing probes about drugs and hookers."

  "And so Marsh starts blackmailing me?"

  "It would explain how a schmuck like Roy could get a lawyer like you for his divorce case. It would also explain how you might know when Marsh saw Teri Angel at the Barry."

  "l’m really disappointed in you, Cuddy. Even though I’m an established attorney, you just subconsciously assume that since I’m a woman, too, I’d either have to accept whatever Marsh tried to pull or set up the clumsy frame you claim you’re in with the police. Well, look around you. I’ve worked a lot of years to build up what I’ve got here, and I’m not about to give it away." She hit a button on her phone and barked "Paul!" into it.

  The door to the adjoining office flew open and Troller burst into the room. He was wearing suit pants, a long-sleeved oxford shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a handsome regimental tie. He grinned at me and started bouncing on the balls of his feet and shaking out his shoulders.

  "I think Paul’s been looking forward to this, Cuddy."

  American-trained boxers have two major strengths. They are used to dishing out punishment until the other guy falls, so you have a tough time coming back against them once they get in the first licks. They’re used to taking punishment, too. In Saigon, I remember seeing a good MP stunned to find that a nightstick to the collarbone wouldn’t stop a welterweight with a few drinks in him.

  Boxers have a weakness, too, however. They tend to think they’re invincible in close. Even wearing a tie. I gambled Paulie’s first punch would be a feint. He jabbed with his left at my eye, then pulled it short, instead driving a good right up and into my body. I caved, keeping my elbows and hands tight to protect the ribs and face. He followed with a left to the body, stepping forward to really bury it. I folded so that most of his force was spent in the air, leaving him near enough for me to grab his tie. I yanked the shorter end down with my right hand, my left forcing the knot high and hard into his throat. His face bulged, both his hands scrabbling to the front of his collar. I let go of the knot, clamping both my hands on the insides of his wrists and pulling his hands apart to benediction width. I had a feeling my grip would outlast his air. Arnold probably couldn’t tell what I’d done, but as Paul and I danced around, she could see that he wasn’t getting the best of it. She let it go on for a while, Paul’s face and motions growing more grotesque by the moment. He started to buckle at the knees, and she said sharply. "Enough, Cuddy, enough!"

  I let him go, and he wobbled down, enough consciousness left to allow him to loosen his own tie. He wrenched in fitful breaths, an asthmatic at a flower show.

  She said, "That wasn’t pretty."

  "Neither is what Braxley’ll do to Hanna and Vickie if he doesn’t get his drugs back. I don’t want them hurt anymore from all this, but I can’t guard their house twenty-four hours a day. That leaves me with Braxley’s drugs as the lesser of two evils, Ms. Arnold, and if you can help out with that, you’d best do it soon."

  Troller wheezed out some words. "Chris . . . tides . . . is her lawyer . . . Go talk to the . . . bastard."

  "I wouldn’t be bad-mouthing your alibi, Paulie-boy."

  Arnold said, "What do you mean?"

  "Christides told me he saw the Great White Hope there at some lawyer dinner up here while I was being slugged down in Boston."

  Troller pulled himself into a chair. “He’s lying."

  I turned to look at him. "What?"

  Troller worked his head around on his neck and swallowed like a kid taking castor oil. "The dinner . . . got wrecked. Fire alarm . . . Barely had drinks before. . . everybody had to get out . . . Christides didn’t come back in for dinner."

  "What time was this?"

  "What?"

  "When the fire alarm went off?"

  "Don’t know. . . The president. . . started some long-winded welcome . . . maybe six-fifteen, six-thirty."

  Arnold said, "What difference does that make, Cuddy? You told me you were hit a little after five."
>
  I looked from one to the other. "I don’t know."

  TWENTY-0NE

  -♦-

  By the time I walked to my car, the adrenaline from dealing with Troller was fading, hunger rapidly replacing it. I settled for a touristy place on the harbor and had a mediocre burger with great french fries and two frosty drafts.

  I pulled up at the curb in front of Chris’s house at 1:45. His old Pontiac was parked at an angle in the double driveway, almost a warning to potential clients not to bother knocking on the office door. I pushed into the reception area.

  Cousin Fotis nearly drew down on me, reluctantly bringing an empty hand out from under his jacket and newspaper. He said, “Office closed today."

  "Chris is expecting me."

  He was trying to decide what to make of that when Nikos appeared in the connecting doorway to the house proper. The new arrival muttered something in Greek.

  Fotis said to me, "Eleni say to wait here. He come."

  I sat down, and Nikos disappeared into the house. I watched my friend read his paper for about five minutes before Chris nervously bustled through the doorway and headed straight for his inner office.

  "Jeez, I’m sorry about not getting back to you, John, but I been swamped here."

  I swung my head slowly, taking in the empty office.

  "I can see it."

  Chris didn’t react to the sarcasm. "So, what’s up?"

  "You heard from Hanna recently?"

  "Hanna?"

  "Yeah, Hanna Marsh. Remember, the widow of the guy I’m supposed to have killed?"

  "C’mon, John, don’t start foaming at the mouth, huh? I told you, I been up to my—"

  “Look, Chris, cut the shit, okay? I’ve been kind of up to my ears in this, too. We’ve got a major problem."

  He moved his lips around a little, then said, “This guy Braxley?"

  "This guy Braxley."

  "Christ, John, he caught up with me yesterday."

  "He did?"

  "Yeah, coming out of court. I park in the lot around the corner, two bucks cheaper, you know? Anyway, this guy Braxley and some other one smells like a rendering plant grab me, nobody else around, nobody’s ever around when you need them. They say Marsh had these drugs on him and now they’re gone and what did I think was going to happen to the guy who’s got them. They scared the shit out of me."

  "Chris, they beat the shit out of me. And now they’re threatening Hanna and Vickie. And you know what? I can’t even get Hanna’s lawyer to return my phone calls."

  "John, I said I was sorry about that. Eleni . . ."

  I lowered my voice. "Eleni?"

  "It’s the MS, the sclerosis, you know? She has the good days and the bad. Lately, it’s been mostly bad."

  I thought she’d sounded fine on the telephone each time, but I said, "All right. We’ve all been under a lot of pressure here. But it’s up to you and me to cover Hanna."

  "You and me? What about the police?"

  "The Boston cops are after bigger fish than Braxley. They’ve got reason to want him on the street for a while, not away in a cell somewhere. They’re playing down the killings until they make the bigger score."

  "Jeez, I never . . . what about Swampscott?"

  "You know anybody there?"

  "On the force, you mean?"

  "On the force, in the politics, in the PTA, for God’s sake. Anybody who might care what Braxley would do to Hanna and Vickie."

  Chris flinched. "Nobody, John. I don’t really deal in those kinda circles much, you know?"

  "Terrific."

  "How . . . how long before this Braxley stops talking and starts doing other things?"

  "I don’t know. He’s thrown scares into a lot of people, but as far as I know, I’m the only one he’s roughed up. My guess is that he’s going to give me a little more time to try to solve things for him, but I’d hate to bet on it."

  "I don’t know what to tell you, John. The system, it don’t deal too well with crud like this Braxley."

  "Or Marsh."

  "Right, right. Or him too. It works pretty good ninety, ninety-five percent of the time. But something like this.

  "What about the courts?"

  "Aw, John, what courts? The probate court, the family court, there’s no more husband so there’s no more divorce. Sure as hell no jurisdiction over some drug dealer from the city. Plus, like you say, he hasn’t really done anything criminal yet."

  "He broke into Marsh’s house, ransacked it."

  "Which probably wasn’t reported over there by anybody, right? Not the nurse, not Hanna, nobody."

  "So where does that leave us?"

  "I don’t know. We can’t get him locked up for what he’s thinking, you know."

  "He said he was going to force Hanna to sell the house to cover the drugs if he didn’t get them back."

  "Look, John. He tells her that, she decides to sell, she sells, she gives him the money, what am I supposed to do, huh?"

  "Oh, Chris, for chrissake, that’s duress. There’s got to be something you can do."

  "John, John. I gotta admit, it sounds bad to a layman like you, but she’d have to resist the sale, and then she risks Vickie getting hurt. Or she goes through with the sale and won’t give him the money. Guys like this Braxley, they got long memories, John. And even longer arms, get me?"

  "Meaning he waits till the heat’s off, then settles things."

  “Right. Even if she sells and skips, guy like Braxley’s got contacts lotsa places. One of them sooner or later gets to her."

  "Unless the cops make their big move first."

  "Which you say they ain’t about to do. Think about it, John. The cops are willing to let two killings go by for a while, must be something big enough to carry another couple for the ride."

  Which was what I’d told Holt and Dawkins myself. I wriggled in the uncomfortable old wooden chair.

  "John, I don’t wanna seem rude or nothin’, but I really gotta-"

  "Chris, you said you saw Paul Troller at the lawyer’s dinner the night I got hit."

  He frowned at me. "That’s right, I did. What’s that got to do with this here?"

  "Troller says there was a fire. Or at least an alarm pulled. The dinner got screwed up."

  "So?"

  "So why didn’t you tell me that?"

  Chris shook his head, then dipped his face once into his hands, like a bucket into a well. "Jeez, John, I don’t know what’s the matter with you. You brought up this Troller like he coulda been the one to sap you, right?"

  "That’s right."

  "Okay, so I saw him before we sat down for the dinner when it couldn’t have been him that hit you. Five, five-fifteen, something, right?"

  "Right."

  "Okay, so I don’t see what the hell difference it makes whether he stayed for the dinner or not. I just didn’t think to mention it to you."

  "He says he did stay. He says you didn’t."

  "I can’t tell you whether he stayed or not, because personally I couldn’t give a shit. But he’s right as fucken rain about me not staying. Jeez, the only thing goes on longer than the speeches at that kinda thing is the Arctic winter, you know?"

  "So where did you go?"

  "Here. Home. I was worried about Eleni, remember?"

  "Why?"

  Chris started to turn bright red and rose out of his chair. "Why? Why, you stupid shit, because you were playing Charles fucken Bronson with Marsh in his shower, that’s why! Remember that? Remember why I fucken asked you as a favor, as a friend, to bodyguard at a simple little divorce conference that turns into fucken Armageddon? The guy scared me, John, you happy you got me to say that again? He scared me, and now this Braxley fucken terrifies me, and I’m getting . . ." He suddenly seemed to just run out of steam, dumping his body back into the seat. "John, why don’t you get the fuck out of here, okay? Leave me alone, just leave me with my problems for a . . .while."

  I got up and walked past Fotis, who was grinning behind his paper
just about enough to set me off.

  * * *

  I headed the car back toward 128 South. I had some questions for Hanna that I couldn’t ask over the telephone, but I wanted to think things through first. I got onto Route l and sat for nearly an hour with four hundred other cars before the state police permitted us, one at a time, to crawl around a jack-knifed double-trailered tank truck that was oozing God knows what into a ditch on the side of the road. I stopped at the office, paid some bills, and perfunctorily worked on two other matters I’d been pursuing. I reconsidered a call I’d been mulling in the traffic jam, then dialed it anyway.

  "Nancy Meagher."

  “Nancy, it’s John. John Cuddy."

  She laughed. "You think I know so many Johns I can’t place your voice?"

  I thought back to how similarly Felicia Arnold responded in our telephone conversation. Maybe it’s the law school training.

  "John, are you still there?"

  "Yes, sorry. Nance, I need the answers to a few questions about attorney licensing."

  “John, if it’s about the Marsh case, you know I can’t talk."

  "I know. It’s more general than that. Say a lawyer was caught doing drugs, cocaine. What would happen?"

  "Caught? You mean by the police?"

  "Or an informer. Somebody who goes to the cops or the bar authorities with ironclad evidence that the lawyer was buying substantial amounts."

  "Well, putting aside the criminal proceedings, the Board of Bar Overseers would probably start an investigation through its lawyer staff, with a hearing and all before the board."

  "What then?"

  "Then, if the evidence is persuasive, the board seeks sanctions, with a single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court eventually ruling on what was to happen as a penalty. Of course, sometimes I think the board just lets the criminal side run its course, and then nails the lawyer involved pretty quickly if a guilty verdict comes down. It saves double effort that way."

  "Would the substantial buying of cocaine be grounds for disbarment?"

  "Oh, I would think so. Usually it’s more white-collar stuff, like tax evasion or real estate fraud, but I’ve never researched it. Why?"

  "Last question. Would they also boot a lawyer who referred divorce clients to prostitutes for ‘sex therapy'?"