“Then let’s do it,” Vines said.
“When?”
“Today. Right now.”
When Kelly Vines walked into the reception room of the chambers of the chief justice of the state supreme court on the third floor of the state capitol building, the fifty-four-year-old secretary looked up with an apprehensive expression that dissolved into relief when she saw that her visitor was the boss’s son-in-law and not the police.
“He’s been asking for you,” said Eunice Warr, who had been Adair’s secretary for thirteen years.
“How’s he doing?”
She shrugged. “About like you’d expect.”
Vines smiled slightly. “You think he took it, Eunice?”
She shrugged again. “Says he didn’t.”
The chief justice’s large chamber was paneled in pecan and carpeted with woven wool and filled with a huge teak desk, two brown leather couches and at least six brown leather easy chairs. Maroon velvet curtains decorated three wide ceiling-high windows that looked out on the Japanese-designed executive office building across the street where the governor worked.
Adair sat in a high-backed leather swivel chair, his feet up on the massive desk, listening through an earphone to a small gray multiband Sony radio, the ICF-2002 shortwave model.
Adair took the earphone off and said, “Well, at least it didn’t make the BBC yet.”
“What else have you heard?” Vines said as he sat down in one of the leather easy chairs.
“Just what’s on the local all-news station,” Adair said, reaching for his black cane. After removing its handle and cork, he poured two drinks into a pair of glasses that he took from a desk drawer.
“I was holding out till you got here,” he said as he rose and handed Vines one of the glasses. “Didn’t quite seem like the time to be drinking alone.”
Vines tasted his whiskey and said, “Anyone call you?”
“Not a soul.”
“Or drop by to commiserate?”
“Be like commiserating with an ax-murderer.”
“Paul didn’t call-or Dannie?”
“Paul’s off doing the Lord’s work in Cyprus, I think, and as for Dannie, well, your wife and my daughter doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to current events these days, which, I assume, you must’ve noticed.”
“But you did hear about the Fullers and the suicide note?” Vines said.
Adair nodded and sipped some of his whiskey. “They say you found the bodies.”
“I also went to your apartment.”
“Well, you’ve got a key.”
“I looked around.”
“Get to it, Kelly.”
“I looked in that big walk-in closet-the one in your bedroom.”
“You’re saying, for some reason, that you looked there first, right?”
Vines nodded.
“And found what?”
“Two Gucci shoeboxes. The first one contained two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. The second one contained the same fucking thing.”
Vines knew that no one, not even a great actor, could feign the shock that widened Adair’s kitten blue eyes, dropped open his mouth and produced the violent sneeze, a powerful hay fever-type blast that made him fumble for his handkerchief and blow his nose. After he was done with that, he remembered his drink, gulped it down and, in an almost conversational tone, said, “Son of a bitch.”
After that, Adair stared down between his knees at the wool carpet, looked up at Vines and said, “I never bought a pair of Guccis in my life.”
The anger came then-a slow cold rage that narrowed Adair’s eyes, drained his plump cheeks of all color and caused the three chins to quiver angrily when he again spoke. “It still there?” he demanded. “In my closet? In a pair of fucking Gucci shoeboxes?”
Vines looked at his watch and said, “It should be on its way down to the Bahamas right about now.”
Adair’s anger evaporated. Color returned to his cheeks and curiosity to his expression. “I thank you, Kelly,” he said with careful formality. “But I’ve got to say it was a goddamned dumb thing for you to do.”
“It’s also a felony. You were set up, Jack. But without the money, they have no case. At least not one they can win.”
Adair swiveled around in his chair so he could look across the street at the almost new building where the governor worked. “They’ll try, though, won’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And what d’you suppose they’ll poke around in first?”
“The usuaclass="underline" your bank accounts, safety-deposit boxes, assets, investments, tax returns.”
“Tax returns,” Adair said to the building across the street.
The silence began then. It was one of those ominous silences that seldom lasts very long because somebody coughs or clears his throat before somebody else screams. Kelly Vines ended the silence in the chambers of the chief justice with a murmured question. “What’s the problem, Jack?”
Adair swiveled around to face him and spoke in a voice without inflection. It was a tone Vines instantly recognized because he had heard it often from clients who, when all hope was gone, used it to describe their transgressions without emotion or embellishment. It was, Vines had learned, the voice of truth.
“Four years ago,” Adair said, “I told the payroll folks to start taking double state and Federal withholding out of my salary. I figured the additional withholding would make me come out about even with the tax people at the end of the year and take care of whatever tax I might owe on interest, dividends and other outside income.”
“Very prudent,” Vines said.
“The thing is,” Adair said, “I forgot to file my state and Federal returns that first year. When I finally remembered, I just kept putting it off. And when nothing happened, I just kept on putting it off.”
“For how long?”
“As I said, four years now.”
“They’ve got you, Jack.”
“I know.”
“You could’ve gone to H and R Block, for Christsake. You could’ve let Eunice handle it for you. You could’ve-aw, shit-it just doesn’t make sense.”
“Procrastination rarely does.”
There was nothing ominous or threatening about the new silence that developed. Rather it was the sad kind sometimes experienced at graveside services when no one can think of anything to say, good or bad, about the dead. Finally, Kelly Vines said, “Maybe I can make a fancy move or two and rig up some kind of a trust that’ll salvage something, if we’re lucky.”
“Can you keep me out of jail?”
“I can try.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I’m not in the miracle business, Jack.”
“Would it take a miracle to find out who stuck those shoeboxes in my closet?”
“No,” Vines said. “That won’t take a miracle.”
Chapter 21
After Parvis Mansur had listened to what Adair and Vines had to say about disbarment, Lompoc penitentiary life, the death of Blessing Nelson and murder in the Blue Eagle Bar, the Iranian took over the discussion and aimed it right at what obviously disturbed him most.
Making no effort to disguise his skepticism, he said, “In effect, Mr. Adair, you’re saying that nobody really wants to kill you-at least not yet. If they did, they could easily have done when they photographed you from the rear of that pink van. After all, an Uzi’s as simple to operate as a Minolta. Some say simpler.”
“Or they could’ve had me killed in prison.”
“But since they didn’t, you believe you’re still alive because of what you know, correct?”
“Because of what they think I know.”
“Is there a possibility that your memory might improve at some propitious moment?”
“If there really is something to remember, it could come to me one of these days. Or nights.”
“What if someone were to put a gun to your head and say, ‘Reveal or die’?”
“That might jog the memory. Then again, it might not.”