“No,” she said.
“She said no.” I listened and then turned to Tori again. “He wants to know, if I don’t do it for you, does he have a shot?”
Tori laughed.
“She thought that was funny, Lightner. She actually laughed at the notion of sleeping with you. Okay, bye.”
I punched out the phone. “Underneath that rough exterior is a cuddly teddy bear,” I said.
“I know. I like Joel.”
“I meant me.” I pulled up to the curb. Tori lived in a high-rise on the near-north side, about ten blocks southeast of me. Her apartment on the eighteenth floor, which I’d never seen, probably offered a breathtaking view and the approximate space of a shoe closet.
Tori shifted again, so she was facing me. “Oh, I’ve got you all figured out, Kolarich.”
I put the car in park. “Do tell.”
“You’re a do-gooder. A crusader.”
“Perish the thought.”
“Perish the thought? You told me you liked the competition. The challenge. That’s what you said. I’m not buying it.” She wagged her finger at me. “Let me ask you a question. How much are you getting paid for this case?”
“Objection,” I said. “Irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant. You aren’t getting paid a dime, are you?”
This lady was getting way too far into my head. It was a dangerous place to be.
“Aunt Deidre, she has problems of her own,” I said. “Her husband’s an invalid. She can barely scratch together a car payment each month. And Tom doesn’t have squat for money.”
“Hey, I’m not criticizing you. I think it’s very noble. You’re expending all these resources and not getting anything back. You’re tearing yourself up over a client who isn’t paying you. You’re actually losing money and you seem to be losing your mind, too.”
I sighed. “I’ve still got my health.”
Smart-ass comebacks weren’t going to do it for her, not this time. She held her stare on me. With the tortured look on her face, I was beginning to expect her eyes to well up. But tears weren’t really Tori’s thing, not so far as I could tell. She’d built an impenetrable wall between herself and hurt, whatever that hurt might have been.
Still, she was feeling some of the tension I was experiencing. This math major, who spent her days with impersonal numbers and equations and theorems, was buying into this criminal defense case. And I was beginning to think she was buying into me, too.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
I had several clever responses in tow. That was my trademark, right? Everything’s a joke. But I wanted to give her a real answer. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to find out what made her wait until age twenty-seven to start college, what had happened to her. And what had made her restart her life, what kind of hope must be propelling her beneath her defensive facade.
But before I could say a word, she pushed the door open and got out.
Peter Ramini watched the whole thing from his car, parked on the cross street to the high-rise building. He didn’t need to bother tailing Kolarich tonight. He knew where the girl lived-her street address and her apartment number, 1806-and he figured Kolarich would end up here with her.
But Kolarich didn’t go in. She got out of the car alone and walked up the ramp into her building. Kolarich’s SUV drove away into the night.
Ramini coughed and cleared his throat. He wasn’t looking forward to what would come next. But his instructions from Paulie, via Donnie, had been clear enough.
How had this become so complicated?
42
Tom Stoller happily chowed down on turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and split-pea soup. Aunt Deidre spent little time on her food, deriving her own pleasure from Tom’s.
We were in the visitation room. Deidre had charmed the guards over the eleven months Tom had been here, and when she mentioned there would be plenty of her home cooking left over, and she sure didn’t want to haul it all the way back home, they were putty in her hands. Deidre, I thought, was pretty good at getting what she wanted.
It was paper plates and plastic cutlery, but to look at my client’s contentment, you’d think he was sitting around the family kitchen table. I knew very well that Tom had a low opinion of the cuisine at the Boyd Center, as it was about the only thing he was willing to freely discuss.
The levity was severely undercut by the circumstances, naturally. This was in many ways like a last meal for Tom. But for God’s sake, if they could manage to find some enjoyment for an hour or two, let them.
I wished I had my cell phone. I was coordinating with Tori, whom I was going to pick up in an hour. We had a field trip scheduled.
Deidre left Tom to his chomping and pulled me to the far end of the room. “Do you have someplace you have to be, Jason? It’s okay. It’s Thanksgiving, after all.”
“I’ll need to be running in a bit here, yeah.”
“Are you seeing your folks?”
I laughed out loud. “No, ma’am. My mother’s deceased and my father isn’t close by.”
She cocked her head. “You’re all alone on Thanksgiving?”
“Not at all. I’m with you and Tom. That’s enough for me. It’s nice to see Tom enjoying something.”
“It is, it is. You should have seen him when he was a boy. His mother couldn’t keep enough groceries in the house.”
Then Aunt Deidre looked at me. She just stared at me for a long time and didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to say any words. I knew what she wanted.
“Deidre, we have a rough road ahead. You understand that.”
She finally broke eye contact. Her brain knew this. Her heart was hoping against hope for something different.
“I’m throwing a lot of darts at the board and hoping something sticks,” I continued. “I haven’t given up hope. And if we get a bad result, I think we have a pretty good appeal issue already, out of the gate, with the judge striking our insanity defense and not giving me more time. Most judges aren’t nearly so strict with discovery deadlines as Judge Nash. I think a higher court will be sympathetic.”
She nodded, trying to make this less difficult for me. It didn’t. It made it worse.
“The state has a circumstantial case,” I said. “I can drill some holes. Don’t give up.”
She didn’t look at me, but she rested her hand on my arm. “Whatever happens, whatever we get, it will be better with you than anyone else. I’m sure of it, Jason.”
She was putting undue faith in me. She was expecting something I was pretty sure I couldn’t deliver. It was a weight beyond what I normally carried on a case. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle losing this trial.
I left on that note. I said good-bye to Tom, but he only looked up briefly, mashed potatoes and gravy on his chin, before he resumed his feast. I was going to remind him that I’d be back tomorrow, that we’d have to go over some things, but I didn’t want to ruin the small measure of enjoyment he was experiencing.
If things continued as they were, it would be the last home-cooked meal he’d ever eat.
43