“So what do we do?”
“Well, of course, I figure our friend the thief he likes boats too much not to have one, and he has the money, so I figure he bought himself something else, and this time something bigger. A chazer bliebt a chazer, right? So we check the marina records again for a Mr. Radbourn. Gornisht. We check the records for the sale of a boat larger than thirty feet at around the same place and time and you know what we found?”
“What?”
“Hundreds. Too many to check. To check them all would take us six months.”
“So we’re done.”
“Not yet, Victor. We talk again to our friend Mr. Cane, a nice man, really. He promised to set me up with a condo deal if I decide to move south for mine retirement. When it gets colder like it is now I start thinking that maybe shvitzing is not the worst thing in the world. So he seems to remember Mr. Radbourn mentioning something about going across the state and buying something on the west coast of Florida, where he heard prices they might be cheaper.”
“So what does that tell us, Morris?”
“It narrows it down. Our friend Mr. Stocker, I tell you with much confidence, our friend Mr. Stocker is right now, right this instant, in a boat larger than a thirty-foot sloop, living under some other name, docked in a marina somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico.”
When I returned to the table, the Bishops were laughing loudly at something. The laughter died slowly when they saw me. “Who died, Victor?” asked Simon. “You look like the plague.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
My veal was on the table now, three delicate medallions in a light lemon sauce. I finished the wine in my glass and Jack quickly filled it again. For a moment I felt a slight sense of disappointment. I had almost believed that the strange and mystical Morris Kapustin could do anything he put his mind to, and his finding Stocker would have opened a different door for me, more difficult yes, confrontational yes, but also less reliant on the them that had always disappointed me before. It had been a nice belief, Morris as savior, warming in its way, like a Jimmy Stewart movie, but Stocker was lost somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico and that door was closed and I was here at this prime table in this exclusive restaurant with two of the richest men in the city buying me dinner. The future was shaping up with great clarity. I would settle out Saltz and follow along sheepishly in United States v. Moore and Concannon. I would avoid all bullets aimed at rear windows of imported cars. I would placate the paranoid Norvel Goodwin and the suspicious Chuckie Lamb with my inactivity. I would keep screwing Veronica in secret and write my opinion letters for Valley Hunt Estates and collect my fat fees and step into my future and all would be right with the world.
But still.
“What say we do the town tonight?” said Simon.
“Find us a high-class knocking shop,” said Jack.
“Just a pleasant night out with the boys,” said Simon.
“I noticed something curious in the partnership list,” I said. That got their attention fast. “That’s what was troubling me before. There were two partnership shares held in trust by W.P. on behalf of W.O. Any idea what that is all about?”
“A old friend of Prescott’s,” said Simon. “A prep school mate, being hounded by some cackhanded fool for a million dollars or so. Something to do with his divorce, I think. Seemed to be a sad story, actually, when Bill told it to me. It’s always sad to see a sot being chased for his money. Prescott owed him something so he bought two shares to be held in trust, until the legal problems settle.”
So that’s the way it was, I thought. William Prescott and Winston Osbourne, friends from the start, prep school mates, one helping the other hide his money from me. Well, now I knew where to find a little bit more for my twenty-five percent share. But all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry for the last of Winston Osbourne’s dollars. I was tied up with William Prescott in a very real way, which meant I was tied up with Winston Osbourne too. And I guess that was the price for joining the club, that we all help each other out, even the destitute. I could be munificent, sure, if that was what was required of me, I could be munificent as hell. Simon was right, it was so sad to see a sot being chased for his money. I had taken enough from him, I figured. Whatever he offered in final settlement after the car would be enough. Good. My first case as a lawyer would finally be over. It was time to move on.
“Well, what do you say, Victor?” asked Jack. “Boys night out? A few cigars, a few cheap thrills?”
“Or maybe not so cheap thrills,” said Simon.
“Sure,” I said with a shrug, shucking off all concern that Beth had raised about the Ruffing cross-examination, ignoring the worries about the connection between W.P. and W.O. that should have been hammering at my consciousness but were instead only tap, tap, tapping there, tapping so lightly they couldn’t break through the spell of the alcohol and fine food and rich company. “Why not,” I said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“More wine, Victor?”
“Yes, please.”
I drank the wine, a crisp Chablis, and ate the veal and laughed along with Simon’s jokes. The waiter brought another bottle and my glass was filled again, the two Bishops so attentive to my goblet they might almost have been trying to get me drunk, and as the wine danced on the back of my tongue my spirits rose. This wasn’t so bad, this veal, this wine, this ambience of money. I could get used to this.
30
PRESCOTT WAS IMPRESSIVE on cross-examination. Even without saying a word he could be unnerving. He leaned slightly forward, his hands gripping tightly to the sides of the wooden podium, his eyes fixed like laser sights on the witness. As he stood there, tall, in a solid navy blue, pitched forward, his posture angry, the polite smile on his stern face tight and angry, as he stood before the court a tension grew and then out of that tension came questions, soft at first, full of incredulity or certainty, rising and falling in pitch and volume, questions that compelled answers.
“Now, Mr. Bissonette was a ladies’ man, wasn’t he, Mr. Ruffing?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“He went out with lots of different ladies, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Older ladies and younger ladies and single ladies and married ladies.”
“He did all right, he was a ballplayer, after all.”
“And the married ladies had husbands?”
“By definition, right?”
“And the single ladies had fathers?”
“I would guess so.”
“And Mr. Bissonette with all his lady friends was sure to have made some enemies, isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Are you married, Mr. Ruffing?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have daughters?”
“Two.”
“Would you have let your two precious daughters go out with Mr. Bissonette?”
“Not on your life,” said Ruffing with a broad smile at the jury.
“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t, Mr. Ruffing. But plenty of men, without giving permission, had their precious daughters go out with Mr. Bissonette, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And Mr. Bissonette used to talk about these girls, didn’t he?”
“Occasionally.”
“He’d tell stories.”
“Sometimes.”
“He’d entertain his friends at the bar with his stories of all these ladies.”
“Now and then.”
“Stories about these ladies he took to bed, these wives and daughters he took to bed and fucked.”
The jury leaned back as if they had been slapped. The word was all the more shocking coming from the upright and austere personage that was William Prescott III.
Eggert said, “Objection to the language and the relevance.”