Even the Wicked - Page 7/47

"Me?"

"You. My guess is you stayed around."

"And went after him," I said. "But that was different. I knew who he was. I had a fair shot at getting him before he got me." I frowned at the memory. "Even so, I came awfully close to getting myself killed. Elaine came even closer. She got stabbed, she had her spleen removed. She almost died."

"Didn't you say she left the country?"

"That was another woman, a former girlfriend. Elaine's my wife."

"I thought you didn't have any women in your life at the time."

"We weren't married then. We'd known each other years previously. Motley brought us together again."

"Motley was the guy who wanted to kill you."

"Right."

"And after she recovered-Elaine?"

"Elaine."

"After she recovered you resumed seeing each other, and now you're married. A good marriage?"

"A very good marriage."

"My God," he said. "Maybe if I stick around and see this thing through I'll wind up back in Connecticut with Barbara. But it's hard to imagine her without her spleen. It's the key element of her character." He took a drink. "In the meantime, my friend, I've got a law practice to run and a case to try. Tempting as it may be to fly off for a couple of weeks in Oslo or Brussels, I think I'll stick around and face the music. But that doesn't mean I want to get killed, nor do I think it makes much sense to leave the task of protecting me to the NYPD. I'm safe here-"

"Here?"

"In this apartment. The building has good security."

"I don't think Will would have much trouble getting in here."

"Didn't the guy on the desk make you show ID? I told him to."

"I flashed a card at him," I said. "I didn't give him time to look at it, and he didn't insist."

"I'll have to speak to him about that."

"Don't bother. You can't expect very much from the building personnel. The elevator's self-service. All anybody has to do is take out the doorman and he's in."

"Take him out? You mean kill him?"

"Or just slip past him, which wouldn't be on the same level with getting into Fort Knox. If you want a good shot at getting through this alive, and if you won't leave town, you need bodyguards around the clock. That means three shifts a day, and I'd recommend you employ two men per shift."

"Would you be one of those men?"

I shook my head. "I don't like the work and I don't have the reflexes for it."

"Can you supply bodyguards?"

"Not directly. I'm a one-man operation. There are people I can call for backup, but not as many as you'd need. What I can do is recommend a couple of agencies who can be counted on to furnish reliable operatives."

I took out my notebook, wrote down the names of two firms, along with a phone number for each and a person to ask for. I tore out the page and handed it to Whitfield. He read it, folded it, and tucked it in his breast pocket.

"No point in calling now," he said. "I'll call first thing in the morning. If Will lets me live that long."

"You've probably got a few days. He'll wait until the story runs, and until you've had time to worry about it."

"He's a real prick, isn't he?"

"Well, I don't suppose he's on the short list for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award."

"Not this year, but then he's got a lot of competition. Ah, Jesus, you think your life's in order and then something like this comes at you from out of nowhere. Do you worry a lot?"

"Do I worry a lot? I don't know. I don't think so."

"It seems to me that I do. I worry about a stroke or a heart attack, I worry about prostate cancer. Sometimes I worry about having some bad gene that'll have me coming down with one of those rare diseases. I can't think of the word I want and I start to worry about early-onset Alzheimer's. You know something? It's a big fucking waste of time."

"Worrying?"

"You said it. You never worry about the right thing. I never worried about this son of a bitch, I'll tell you that, and now he's got me on his list. Tell me what else I can do. Besides hiring guards. You must have a few ideas on the kind of routine I should follow, the precautions I ought to take."

* * *

By the time I was done suggesting ways he could increase the odds of his staying alive, he'd made a pot of coffee and we were each working on our second cup. He talked about a current case of his, and I talked about a piece of work I'd wrapped up a month previously.

"I want you to know I appreciate all this," he said. "I'd tell you to send me a bill, but a man on Will's list ought to keep his accounts current. What do I owe you? I'll write you a check."

"There's no charge."

"Don't be silly," he said. "I dragged you out of your house in the middle of the night and got two solid hours' worth of your professional expertise. Go ahead and put a price on it."

"I have a vested interest in your survival," I told him. "If you stay alive, there's a chance you'll throw some work my way."

"I'd say you can count on it, but you still ought to get paid for tonight." He patted the pocket where he'd put the slip I gave him. "Will you get a referral fee from these guys?"

"It depends which one you call."

"Only one of them'll pay you for a referral?"

"I do a certain amount of per diem work for Reliable," I said, "and Wally Donn pays me a commission on anything else I happen to steer their way."

"Then why'd you put down the other agency as well?"

"Because they're good."

"Well, I'll use Reliable," he said. "That goes without saying. And I'd still like to pay you for your time tonight."

"There's no need."

"In that case, I've got a better idea. I'd like to hire you."

"To do what?"

"To go after Will."

I told him all the reasons why it didn't make sense. Half the police force was already assigned to the case, and the cops had access to the available data and evidence along with the scientific apparatus to learn something from it. On top of that, they had the manpower to knock on every door and run down every lead and phone tip that came their way. All I could do was get in their way.

"I know all that," he said.

"So?"

"So I still want to hire you."

"Why? As a way of paying me for this evening?"

He shook his head. "I want you on the case."

"What for?"

"Because I think there's a chance you'll make a difference. The first time I hired you, you know, was on Ray Gruliow's recommendation."

"Yes, I know."

"He said you had a good mind and caught on fast. 'Give him the first sentence and he's got the whole page,' that's what he said."

"He was being generous," I said. "Sometimes I move my lips."

"I don't think so. He also said good things about your character and personal integrity. And he said something else, too. He said you were dogged."

"It's a nicer word than pigheaded."

He rolled his eyes. "You're a hard man to compliment, aren't you? Matt, offense is the best defense. That's true in the courtroom and it's true on the street. I don't know what the hell you can do that the cops can't, but the one thing I don't have to worry about these days is money, and if I can throw a little of it your way I can tell myself I'm doing something to see that Will gets nailed before he nails me. Now why don't you just say you'll take the case so I can write you out a check?"

"I'll take the case."

"See? You're stubborn, which may be part of the job description for what you do. But I'm persuasive, which is very definitely part of my job description." He went over to the desk, got out his checkbook and wrote me a check, tore it out and handed it to me.

"A retainer," he said. "Good enough?"

The amount was two thousand dollars. "That's fine," I said.

"You have anything else you're working?"

"Not at the moment," I said. "I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'll start doing it in the morning."

"And I'll call Donn at Reliable and see about getting my body guarded. What a thing to have to do. Can I tell you something? Don't repeat this, but until this afternoon I sort of liked Will."

"You did?"

"Let's say I had a grudging admiration for him. He was a kind of urban folk hero, wasn't he? Almost like Batman."

"Batman never killed anybody."

"Not in the comic books. He does in the movies, but Hollywood'll fuck up anything, won't they? No, the real Batman never killed anybody. Listen to me, will you? 'The real Batman.' But when you grew up on the comic book that's how it seems."

"I know."

"For Christ's sake," he said, "I'm Adrian Whitfield, I'm a fucking lawyer. That's all I am. I'm not the Joker, I'm not the Penguin, I'm not the Riddler. What's Batman got against me?"

4

Elaine was still up when I got home, watching a wildlife documentary on the Discovery channel. I joined her for the last ten minutes of it. During the credit crawl she made a face and switched off the set.

"I should have done that when you came in," she said.

"Why? I didn't mind watching."

"What I have to learn," she said, "is always to skip the last five minutes of those things, because it's always the same. You spend fifty-five minutes watching some really nice animal, and then they ruin the whole thing by telling you it's endangered and won't last out the century. They're so determined to leave you depressed you'd think they had Prozac for a sponsor. How was Adrian Whitfield?"

I gave her a summary of the evening. "Well, he's not depressed," she said. "Bemused, it sounds like. 'Why me?' "

"Natural question."

"Yeah, I'd say. How much did you say the retainer was? Two thousand dollars? I'm surprised you took it."

"Cop training, I guess."

"When somebody hands you money, you take it."

"Something like that. He wanted to pay me for my time, and when I turned him down he decided he wanted to hire me. We can use the money."

"And you can use the work."

"I can, and maybe I'll be able to figure out something to do. I just hope it won't involve buying a computer."

"Huh?"

"TJ. He was on my case earlier. When did he leave?"

"Half an hour after you did. I offered him the couch, but he didn't want to stay over."

"He never does."

" 'What you think, I's got no place to sleep?' I wonder where he does sleep."

"It's a mystery."

"He must live somewhere."

"Not everybody does."

"I don't think he's homeless, do you? He changes his clothes regularly and he's clean about his person. I'm sure he doesn't bed down in the park."

"There are a lot of ways to be homeless," I said, "and they don't all involve sleeping on the subway and eating out of Dumpsters. I know a woman who drank her way out of a rent-controlled apartment. She moved her things to a storage locker in Chelsea. She pays something like eighty dollars a month for a cubicle eight feet square. That's where she keeps her stuff, and that's where she sleeps."