“No.”
“How will you get there if you don’t know what it is?”
“What is it?”
“The world to come.”
“Heaven?”
“Of a sort, but better. No angels with wings, no annoying harp music, and the food, Victor, all the food is kosher.”
“I assume they have pastrami there.”
“What, you think you go all that way for egg salad?”
“So what you are telling me, Morris, is that you can’t find Stocker.”
“I’m calling tonight because you gave me three weeks and tomorrow is exactly three weeks to a day from when you hired me and so mine time is up. I would spend the extra day and call you tomorrow but it’s Friday and preparing for the Shabbos I wanted not to forget.”
“Don’t worry about it, Morris, you got farther than I ever expected, you even got farther than the FBI in finding the guy.”
“So that’s such a challenge? Being as mine investigation has come to a close, I will be sending along a tzatel with my charges, sending it tomorrow, in fact. Now, just as a point of curiosity, to who should I send mine tzatel, to you or to mine friend Benny Lefkowitz who told me to see you?”
“You should send it to Mr. Lefkowitz, Morris. He’ll ship it over to me, but he and the other clients are paying it.”
“Perfect, I just thought I should know. So, Victor, that is that. Do you have anything else you need investigating? Anything you want Morris Kapustin to look into?”
“Nothing right now, Morris.”
“You keep me in mind, Victor, and I would be very appreciative. I feel very bad about this, Victor. Anything you need, any help at all, you give Morris a call.”
“Sure.”
“A gezunt ahf dein kopf, mein freint. And don’t be a shmendrick, call me sometime. We’ll do lunch.”
“We’ll do lunch?”
“A guy like me, I could have been in Hollywood, why not? John Garfield, Jewish. Goldwyn and Mayer and Fox, all Jewish. So why not Morris Kapustin?”
“No reason, Morris. No reason at all.”
I wasn’t feeling the same pain as Morris over his news. What it meant was that the deadline for finding Stocker had passed without a positive result and I could now settle the Saltz case for the $120,000 offered by Prescott, from which I would immediately deduct my one-third share, forty thousand dollars, forty thousand sweet smelling, crisply crinkling, beautifully off-green, satisfyingly stiff new dollar bills. I could feel the rough texture between my fingers already. In anticipation of Morris’s failure I had sent out release forms to the clients with self-addressed, stamped return envelopes. One by one the envelopes had come back and I opened them gleefully, like a child receiving birthday cards. Eight releases, each of them duly executed and ready for turning over to Prescott in exchange for a sweet little check made out for one hundred and twenty thou. With Morris throwing in the tallis, I was ready to settle.
And the man with whom I had to settle was ready for me.
“Good morning, Victor,” said Prescott as he strolled into court the morning after Morris’s final call. As always, he was followed by his legion of natty and intense Talbott, Kittredge lawyers. “This morning I’ll carry the cross-examination of the crime scene search officer. I’ve gone over the reports with my own experts and I think I’m best qualified to minimize his effectiveness.”
“That’s fine, sir.” I said.
“Splendid,” he said as he looked through a sheaf of documents handed him by Brett with two t’s.
“By the way, sir,” I said. “I have those releases for the Saltz settlement. I’m sorry it was so late but I had a hard time getting them back from all my clients, vacations and such.”
“The Saltz settlement?”
“Madeline sent us over the final settlement agreement and we’ve signed that too.”
“Did my clients sign?” he said, still looking through his documents.
“Not yet.”
“Hmmm. Well, Victor, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that deal is still operative.”
A sickening fear rose from my groin and grabbed my throat. “What are you talking about?” I said. “We had a deal.”
“We reached an agreement, yes, but that was with the expectation of an immediate settlement. When you hadn’t gotten back to us we thought the deal was off and proceeded accordingly.”
“Accordingly?”
He lifted his head out of his papers and stared straight at me. “We’ve been preparing for trial, Victor. Haven’t you?”
“I’ll enforce the settlement,” I said. “Judge Tifaro likes his calender clean, he won’t let you yank the offer back.”
“Oh, he’ll holler and shake,” he said, his gaze again upon his papers, as if I were no more consequential then a buzzing fly. “But it’s been over three weeks, Victor. You can’t expect my clients to wait forever. That offer has expired, it is gone, disappeared. It is as dead as Bissonette.” Then he looked at me again and one of his sly, diplomatic smiles spread onto his face. “However, Victor, I’m sure my clients would be willing to rethink the settlement and to pay what had been previously agreed under certain conditions.”
Here it was, I thought. Whatever the conditions, Prescott had been waiting to lower them upon me for a while, waiting as patiently as a spider having already woven his web.
“It seems,” said Prescott, putting his arm around my shoulder and leaning in close so that he could speak in his lowest voice above a whisper, “that my clients happen to be very interested in this case. They have made certain deals with Councilman Moore concerning certain of their real estate ventures and it would be very inconvenient for them if Councilman Moore was convicted here and stripped of his council post.”
“I’m not quite sure I understand.”
“Don’t be a cowboy, Victor. What they want is for you to keep staying out of my way. You do and, win or lose, you’ll get your settlement.”
“But I’ve been cooperative,” I stammered.
“Yes, you have, Victor. We’ve all been extremely pleased with you. And if you remain cooperative we won’t have any problems, will we?”
“This sounds something like blackmail,” I said.
“Don’t,” said Prescott quickly, his voice dipping to a ferocious whisper, his hand now squeezing my shoulder harder, so hard it hurt. “Don’t even think of using such language with me. For the rest of this trial you’re just going to sit back and let me do whatever I have to do. I want you out of it. The Saltz offer was generous beyond belief, we both know it, you sit back and it is yours. But you act up in any way and it is dead and you’ll get your balls handed to you at the trial. I want you silent and docile for the rest of this trial, that’s what we’re paying you for. You step out of line and I’ll absolutely destroy you.”
With his grip still tight around my shoulder he pushed me down and I fell hard into my seat. I looked at the empty jury box, the dark maroon chairs swimming in the tears that had sprung to my eyes. In a pleasant voice Prescott said, “I think we understand each other now, Victor.”
I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. We understood each other perfectly. Prescott believed he could read me like a comic book. He believed he could buy me for a mere forty thousand dollars, our cut of the Saltz settlement. He believed that for a minor monetary gain, and the hope of future deals, I would sit back and take a dive in the biggest trial of my life. He believed he understood all that burned inside me, all the hidden dreams and pent desires, and from that knowledge he thought he knew my price.
And so what if he might have been right, dammit, I didn’t have to like it. I thought I was becoming a member of the caste by going along, but Prescott had just dressed me down like I was a cabana boy. I had a half a mind to spit it all back in his face, but only half a mind. After all, what could I do, realistically? Disregard my client’s orders, defy the judge, try to slip in more references to Enrico Raffaello and his daughter’s sad and deadly affair with Bissonette? That would leave me with nothing but a citation for contempt.