“What about this, Peter? How does Tuesday look?”
“You have a light schedule, Judge. Remember you were going to leave next Tuesday for the Colorado conference. That takes out the rest of the week. You just have a pretrial conference on Tuesday morning.”
The judge chewed a bit on his glasses before he looked up at his clerk.
“Set this down for Tuesday, Peter. Ten o’clock. Call Mary and have her move the pretrial back to four thirty Monday afternoon. And have her cancel my reservations for the conference. This is more important.”
Judge Posner looked back at the two combatants.
“You have what apparently you both wanted, counsel. Let’s go back out. I want this done publicly and on the record.”
I caught a cab back to my apartment by way of a brief stop at Mass. General. Lanny was sitting up in bed, as bright and pretty as if she had not just been bombed out of a car. It was clearly the bright spot of my day to see her, and the feelings we had three nights before seemed to carry over in spite of the circumstances.
It was a briefer visit than I’d have liked, but I needed a shower, a change of clothes, and a few hours’ sleep before a long night. It gave me the chance to think through the plan of attack Mr. Devlin outlined to me before we left the courtroom. I had to give the man credit for guts. Thank God he was lead counsel.
I had left him outside the courthouse, facing what looked like a porcupine of microphones in front of three rows of newspeople. The questions were coming six at a time, and I could see a bit of the old glory coming back in his eyes.
The phone brought me out of a sound sleep at six o’clock that evening. It had been dark for over an hour. Harry’s voice lifted me somewhat out of the after-fog of a daytime nap.
“Mike, what time are you leaving?”
I checked my watch. “I’d better get rolling now, Harry.”
“Good. You want to pick me up, or shall I meet you someplace?”
“You’re not coming on this one, Harry. I can’t repay you for what you’ve done already.”
“I want to see it through to the finish, Mike. Can you pick me up?”
How could I refuse? Besides, the company would keep me awake.
“Half an hour. We’ll eat on the road. Bring some coffee. And the dress code is definitely a business suit. Conservative tie.”
The ride to Canada was long, broken only by intermittent stops for food and changes of driver to keep alert. We crossed the Canadian border at six o’clock the next morning and drove the rest of the way to the motel where we’d left Mei-Li.
We picked her up and hit the road immediately. It was too close to Toronto to make it comfortable to spend excess time. Before we reached the U.S. border, we spread some blankets and made Mei-Li as comfortable as possible in the trunk of the car.
Whether it was the continual assault of the coffee on my nervous system, or the prospect of spending more years than I cared to think about in a federal penitentiary for alien smuggling, I couldn’t tell. I only knew that my stomach was being eaten alive by hordes of rabid little cankerworms. Harry looked like he had the rest of the world’s cankerworms in his stomach.
We passed the Canadian officials, who showed no great interest in our leaving their country. As we approached the U.S. customs officers, I gave thanks that Mei-Li was a light, petite size three. I remembered that back in the days when whiskey runs to Canada were practiced by Americans who otherwise wouldn’t run a yellow light, customs troops always checked the trunks of cars that were riding too low on the rear springs.
As we approached the officer, I noticed that he was a walking mountain of starch. I could feel Harry tense up.
“This time I’ll do the talking, Harry. Let me have your identification.”
He gave a quick nod and handed it over. I drove up alongside the officer. He took the picture ids and gave Harry a good look. He checked them against our faces, but didn’t hand them back right away. I could feel Harry’s left leg begin to quiver.
“Do you have anything to declare?”
“No, nothing.”
He took another look at Harry without handing back the passports.
Harry looked straight ahead.
He looked back at me.
“What was your business in Canada?”
I gave him my best take-it-seriously look. “For the most part the usual, raping and pillaging the villagers.”
Harry’s leg shot straight out. I thought it was going to go through the fire wall. Fortunately the officer didn’t notice. Everything in the sight line of the officer appeared calm as a duck on water.
The officer looked at me as if he might squash this impertinent bug. I said a devout prayer in the seconds that followed. When I looked back up at the officer, my entire body heaved a silent sigh. Inside all that starch, there lay a sense of humor. He was actually grinning when he handed back the id’s and waved us on.
When we were driving safely on U.S. soil and at least ten miles out of sight of the starched guardian of the border, we let Mei-Li out of the trunk. We stopped at the next minor city to buy clothes for her-some jeans, shirts and sweaters, and a warm jacket-and food and coffee for us all. It took us another ten hours to hit the outskirts of Boston.
I pulled into a gas station. While Harry filled up the car, I got the number from information and called my secretary, Julie, at home. I knew she had an apartment with one other girl in Belmont.
Mei-Li, even considering her past life, had been through hell in the previous two days. I thought she needed some comforting female company in a safe environment.
“Julie, Michael Knight. I’m really sorry to bother you at home. I need a beaut of a favor. This is so far above and beyond the call.”
She was the angel I’d anticipated. If it was an imposition, and I knew it was, she never let on. I knew Mei-Li would find some peace there.
I dropped Mei-Li at Julie’s, Harry at Harry’s, and I just plain dropped. When I hit the bed in my apartment, it was early Sunday morning, about the time I usually leave for church. I figured the Lord would rather have me alive in bed than stone dead of exhaustion in a pew at St. Basil’s.
I woke up sometime Sunday evening, staggered to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and fell back on the bed in the deepest sleep of my life until early Monday morning.
27
My first stop Monday morning was to pick up Mei-Li at Julie’s. Julie had left for work. Her roommate, Liz, answered the door. Julie had apparently indoctrinated her, because she demanded identification before she’d produce Mei-Li.
The China doll looked even more radiant in American clothing. In jeans, sweater, and loafers, she looked like an American grad student.
Apparently Julie and Liz had fallen in love with her. They were sharing everything that Harry and I hadn’t bought for her.
I was sorry to have to tell her about the morning’s business.
“This is no way to begin your first week as a free American, Mei-Li.”
Somewhere between Toronto and Belmont, I had made up my mind that she was never going back to the Chinese rat pack, if I had to adopt her.
“I need to have you come with me to the morgue.”
I found the same attendant, who took us directly to the vault. Mei-Li was a soldier, until the attendant undid the covering and she saw the face of her friend, my little Red Shoes. I took her outside until she was able to face it.
“Which hand has the cut, Mei-Li?”
She indicated the left one.
I went back in and covered up the rest of the body, leaving only the left hand exposed. I brought her back into the room. She began weeping when she looked at the hand. That was all I needed to know.
The attendant asked if she could make an identification. I told him I couldn’t be sure. I made a sympathetic gesture toward her obviously undone state and said that I’d be in touch with him.