“Makes sense. One thing bothers me, though,” I tell him. “We’re assuming that the minute we tell the cops that we have a witness who can put him at the party and that she was paid to do it, they’ll drop the charges on Ives.”
“It’s what we’re hoping,” says Herman. “Makes sense to me.”
“Yeah, but you’re not a prosecutor. If they find out we paid the girl for the information, and they will find out, they’re going to say we paid her to lie. To give Alex an out. If they force us to trial on a reckless charge, vehicular manslaughter, I put her on the stand, the first thing the D.A.’s gonna ask is whether we gave her anything in return for her testimony. They’ll impeach the hell out of her. That and the fact we found her working in a strip club and I offered to hire her for sex to get her to the hotel. They’ll impeach both of us. Her testimony won’t be worth a damn and I’ll be wearing a scarlet letter branded across my forehead during closing argument.”
“You’re the lawyer,” says Herman. “But what other alternative do we have?”
Herman has me there. The cops have no evidence of drugs in Ives’s system, yet he can’t remember anything and he was clearly unconscious at the scene and for some time after. If we put our own medical expert on the stand to tell the jury what we already know, there is only one set of drugs we know of that causes memory loss like this and disappears from the bloodstream that fast-the date rape drugs. How are these normally used in criminal cases? Dropped into one drink, what Ives said he had, without the drinker’s knowledge. The police have no way to explain an accident that killed a prominent lawyer. We hand them the answer. It wasn’t a DUI. Our client was drugged against his will. Used as cover for a murder. That bumps it all up. A much bigger case for them. “Her testimony works. I just don’t like the idea that we’re paying her.”
“You can ask her to testify out of the goodness of her heart,” he says, “but I doubt it’s gonna work.”
He’s right. I look at my watch. “Let’s do it.”
TEN
OK, what do we have?”
“Are you on a secure line?”
“No. So let’s keep it cryptic.”
“We have overlapping objects on the matrix. One of them in a vehicle outside. He was joined by someone else about six minutes ago. Right now the two of them are just sitting there. The girl is in the building.”
“How close?”
“Less than eighty meters.”
The man gripped the tarnished eagle and moved his hand slowly over the smooth oxidized surface of the cane’s handle as he thought. “It could just be a coincidence,” he said.
“Possible, but not likely.”
The loose ends were multiplying. “Any idea who the other man is in the vehicle?”
“We’re working on it. Nothing yet.”
“How much time do we have?”
“We’re not sure. Depends when she leaves and where she goes. Assuming her usual ride, her boyfriend, we are four by four. Positive nav system is breachable.” In a word they were ready to go. “What do you want to do?”
The Tarnished Eagle thought for a moment. “We sit tight and wait. Don’t do anything until you clear it here. If she exits the building, I want to know it. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“If either of them make any effort at contact, call me at this number. Do we have a cage over the twitter, hers and his?”
“Affirmative.”
This meant that if either of them tried to contact the other by cell phone, the call would be picked up and recorded. There was no reason to believe that either of them had the other’s cell phone number, or that they had ever communicated or met. Still, how did they find her? It hit him like a bolt out of the blue. “If you have a cage up, you have his number?”
“Correct.”
“Is he on the grid now?”
“Negative.”
“Can you turn him on?”
“Just a moment.” Several seconds passed. “Yes. We have him.”
“Copy it. Everything. Even if it’s not clear, copy it all!”
“Copying now.”
“When you’re done, stream it through. You know the drill. And give me a transcript.”
The ability to turn on a cell phone without the owner’s knowledge or consent was old technology. It had been used by the FBI to bring down members of the Genovese crime family more than a decade earlier. It was the reason heads of state do not carry cell phones and why they are often stripped from members of their entourage as well. It was a modern-day fact of life. If you carried a cell phone with a live battery, you were wired for sound, and anybody with the right hardware could listen in, not just to phone calls but to any face-to-face conversations as well. Anything within earshot of the phone could be recorded. Carrying a live cell phone was the electronic equivalent of wearing a bug.
The place is everything Herman described and more. I am seated at a table in the middle of the room up nearly to my waist in purple smoke. This comes from a machine that heats glycol mixed with water, producing a thick vapor. It is blown like a ground-hugging fog over the stage until it spills down and piles up on the floor like bilious clouds of melted purple marshmallow. This is occasionally pierced by laser lights that scatter in the fog like bullets, every color of the rainbow.
It is crowded. The pounding music vibrates off the walls, rattling the ice in my drink as I finger the tumbler on the table.
Men are piled up against the bar at the other side of the room trying to get more libation, many of them rowdy, half gassed and working toward a full tank.
So far I see no sign of the woman we know as Ben, Crystal to her friends here. Though with this mob it’s hard to tell. Every once in a while I glance at Herman, who is seated at one of the booths higher up against the back wall where he can get a more panoramic view while he keeps one eye on my table. He scans the room and shakes his head. He doesn’t see her either.
Across the room a bunch of young guys in an overly festive mood seem to be vying for top honors, most obnoxious group in the house. I am guessing it’s an office party.
One of them pulls his tie up around his head and wears it like a sweatband. Suddenly this becomes the craze. It is cloned among his followers until everyone has their tie draped down over their right ear like some new fraternal order. Who says people aren’t sheep?
They compete with each other, ordering drinks, making lewd gestures, shouting until it reaches a crescendo in the contest to see who can become Emperor Odious. You could float a boat on the drinks they spill. The place seems to have a flexible definition of the term gentlemen. They are shouting and screaming at the top of their lungs just to be heard over the sound system. By morning, if they keep it up, one of them will be naked and the others will be missing their voice boxes. It is what passes for a good time among the young and stupid.
I glance back at Herman. Still no sign.
A few of the more sober types wait in ambush as the young women filter out from behind a curtain at the other side of the room.
The sign above the curtain reads EMPLOYEES ONLY-out of bounds, sanctuary for the women if they fall into clutches and are able to make it that far.
New customers keep coming through the door. I am surprised by the number of people already here, and it’s still early. A quarter to five and the place is two-thirds full. If things continue like this, by ten o’clock it will be a human press.
A few of the men sitting at tables by themselves appear to be wallflowers. Though I suspect they might say the same thing about me. Herman clearly has more confidence in me than I do. In this scene, I exhibit the same shy reluctance I did in high school. It’s not my kind of place and I begin to wonder if I can pull it off, catch her interest long enough to get outside.