Chapter 25
WHATEVER WATERS I had expected to roil by my visit to a State Supreme Court justice, they didn’t take long to splash back into my face.
“That judge’s wife was so hitting on you, V,” said Kimberly, as we walked back to my office after our meeting with the justice.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh, please. The way she was going, ‘Victor, Victor, darling,’ the way she insisted you stay for champagne, the way she laughed uproariously at all your jokes.”
“They were good jokes,” I said.
“Lame, V. They were tripping over their crutches. But she was laughing and fawning all over you like you were some Chippendale. And you were all, ‘Oh, Mrs. Straczynski’ this and ‘Oh, Mrs. Straczynski’ that and she was all, ‘Call me Alura, darling.’ It was a brutal display, V. Really. I was embarrassed for you.”
Kimberly was right that Alura Straczynski had been inappropriately flirtatious with me, but she was wrong that I had liked it. It more than made me wildly uncomfortable, it gave me the skives. The judge’s clerk, Curtis Lobban, had been invited to join the little party and he had stood in the corner the whole time, staring at me with his piercing gaze of flat contempt. And worse, as the justice’s wife leaned toward me and touched her throat, the justice himself was watching, carefully, with utter control, his face again a mask without an ounce of emotion.
“But did you believe what he told us?” she said.
“Yes, about not being part of the drug business, at least. His ambitions, even then, were too large to risk on something as stupid as dealing cocaine, no matter how lucrative, and the FBI was never able to link him to the organization. But I sensed that his connection to Tommy had been stronger than he let on and that there was some unfinished business.”
“About what?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Well, he was lying about one thing,” said Kimberly.
“Really?”
“He said he didn’t watch television.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,”
“Oh yes, he does,” she said. “He went all Evita on us when he said it, like he was better than the rest of the world because he didn’t vegetate in front of the tube. But he watches, when the wife’s away playing her games, he watches, yes he does. And the bad stuff too.”
Just then we turned the corner and saw the suit. He was standing at the front door to my building, just under the big sign of the shoe. The man had a name, but the name wasn’t important, just the suit and the haircut and the way he pushed himself off the wall when he saw me, the way he flashed his credentials with a flip of the wrist.
“I’m supposed to walk you to the District Attorney’s office, Mr. Carl,” he said.
“What if I’m busy?”
“I was told you’re not that busy.”
“What if I refused, sat right down on the sidewalk, and sang ‘Freebird’ at the top of my lungs?”
“Then I’d have to have you arrested, Mr. Carl.”
“On what charge?”
“Singing Lynyrd Skynyrd without a shred of talent.”
“Fair enough. Should I bring a toothbrush?”
“Prudence might suggest so,” he said.
“Let’s leave her the hell out of it, shall we?”
“Are you finished trying to be clever, Mr. Carl?”
“Trying, huh? They hire you right out of law school?”
“Yes, they did.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Harvard.”
“Three years of Harvard and this is what they have you doing?”
“I’m so proud I could burst.”
“Okay, I’m yours. Lead on Macduff.”
“The name’s Berenson.”
“And don’t you forget it,” I said, even as I gave Kimberly a shrug and then let Berenson lead me back the way I had come, back to a dressing down at the DA’s office, where I’d be lucky if I was left, by the end of it, with even my boxers.
Chapter 26
THE NINE BLOCKS between my shabby office and the District Attorney’s shabby offices were familiar ones. I had made that walk hundreds of times, knew every storefront deli between here and there, so the suit hadn’t been sent to make sure I didn’t get lost. And he hadn’t been sent to make sure I showed, a polite phone call would have done as much. I’m a polite guy, you’re polite with me, I’m polite with you, everything can be oh so polite. And that was the point, I understood perfectly, of the suit.
The DA’s offices were in an old YMCA, and I could still smell the sweat oozing out of the finely carved wood in the lobby. The suit used his magnetic card to open the glass door, signed me in, slapped a visitor sticker on my lapel, took me into the elevator, led me down the hallway of the seventh floor. He walked past the secretary, sitting at her station, and opened the door for me. I stopped at the secretary’s desk.
“Hello, Debbie,” I said.
“Hello, Mr. Carl.”
“Have you done something different with your hair?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“It is very becoming,” I said.
“Thank you for noticing. That is so nice.”
“See,” I said to the suit still standing at the door. “I can be polite. I really can.”
Funny, he didn’t seem to care.
“Is that Carl I hear out there, Berenson?” came a weary voice from the other side of the door.
“Yes, sir,” said the suit.
“Then will you politely ask that bastard to step inside and close the door behind him.”
K. Lawrence Slocum, chief of the DA’s homicide unit, was sitting at his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up to his forearms, his glasses off, his fingers rubbing at his eyes so insistently it was like he was rubbing at an instant play lottery card in search of a jackpot. No luck there, for when he stopped his rubbing, put his thick glasses back on, peered through the lenses and across his desktop, he was peering at me. K. Lawrence Slocum had broad shoulders, thick forearms, and a grizzled jaw. He was a sweetheart, really, so long as you didn’t cross him. But just now, he stared at me like I was something odor-iferous he had just scraped off his shoe.
“Do you know why I asked you here this evening, Carl?” said Slocum.
It wasn’t so hard to figure out, actually, what with the timing of the summons. And it wasn’t so hard to figure out, what with Detective McDeiss standing in the corner of the office, leaning against a bookcase, his arms crossed, trying mightily to suppress a grin. Still, I saw no reason to make it easy on him.
“Dinner and a show?” I said.
Slocum sighed. “Oh man,” he said, and then rubbed his hand across his mouth.
“Is it cold out there?” said McDeiss from the corner.
“Where?”
“Out there, where you’re standing, in the middle of the lake, with the wind howling and you precariously perched on that razor-thin sheet of ice. Is it cold? Because if it isn’t cold yet, it is going to be.”
“I just asked a few questions.”
“He is a Supreme Court justice,” said Slocum, his voice slow and soft and yet stiff as steel. “He is no friend of criminals, which means he is our friend indeed, and he has a power that extends beyond his docket. So when he calls the DA and drops a load on her, she needs to know it is being take care of. Which means she drops the load on me. And now I am covered with it and frankly, Carl, it stinks.”
“Lysol,” I said. “It works wonders.”
“He is a Supreme Court justice.”
“I made an appointment. He agreed to see me. I didn’t stalk him, though, to be honest, I am not above stalking.”
“Whatever the basis of your relationship with the justice, it is now at an end. You are not to bother him again – or his wife. I asked you here this evening to make sure you understand what I have just said. Do you understand?”