Death Penalty (38 page)

She was not a morning person. Her usual peppy personality didn't appear until she was halfway through her second cup of coffee. Then, as a good hostess, she made us both a huge breakfast of eggs and bacon and a ton of toast.

Since we hadn't eaten dinner, we both fell on the food like wolves.

“My sister's coming over today,” she said. “I'm taking her out to lunch. You're welcome to come, Charley, if you like.”

It was one of those polite invitations, made with a certain lack of sincerity. I suspect she didn't want to have to explain me to her sister.

“I'll take a pass,” I said. “I have a million things to do at the office today, but thanks for inviting me.”

She nodded.

What I'd said wasn't true, it was just a nice politic explanation that satisfied both of us.

After breakfast, we read the Sunday paper like an old married couple, exchanging sections and comments on what we read.

It had an old-shoe feeling about it.

When I'd finished the paper, I kissed her on the cheek. “I had better be going. Your sister will be here soon.”

“If I can help, Charley, in any way, just say the word,” she said, squeezing my hand.

“A ticket to Brazil, maybe, if I don't think of something else.”

“You will,” she said, but she didn't sound all that confident.

I went back to my own place, showered, shaved, and changed clothes. The light on my answering machine was blinking. I avoided it for a while, then decided I couldn't put it off any longer.

I hit the message button and they came marching forward like little recorded soldiers. None of them had to do with The Bishop, Palmer, or anything connected with my present situation. None of them were urgent. All of them would keep.

The messages had just finished, the button had gone back to an unblinking red light when the phone rang.

I debated letting it ring, but then decided to pick it up.

“Mr. Sloan?” a man's voice asked.

“Yeah.”

“Mr. Sloan, you may not remember me. My name is Ray Panar. You were our lawyer when we bought our house last year.”

At first I didn't remember, and then it clicked. He was a young guy with a pudgy wife and two howling little kids.

“I remember you, Mr. Panar. What's up?”

“I need your help.”

“In what way?”

“I've been arrested.”

“Are you in jail now?”

“Oh, no. They let me out on a hundred-dollar cash bond last night. My trial comes up tomorrow morning. I'm calling from a gas station near my house.”

“What's the charge?”

“I'm ashamed to say.”

“I have to know.”

He paused, then spoke in a whisper. “Accosting and soliciting.”

“Where were you arrested? A men's room?”

“Hey! I'm not that kind of person. The police say I asked a woman for sex in a bar.”

“If that's a crime, the jails will soon be full.”

“They said I offered her money. She turned out to be a policewoman.”

“If true, that's a misdemeanor, Mr. Panar. Have you ever been arrested or convicted before?”

“Never. Not even a traffic ticket.”

“A first offense is usually just a fine. You don't have too much to worry about.”

“But I do! They confiscated my car! I told my wife I had been in a minor accident but if they take my car . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Okay. Can you come to my office this afternoon?”

“I can come now. I told my wife I was just going out for cigarettes. I'm using her car. I can't be away too long. She's mad as it is about me coming in so late last night.”

“I'll meet you at my office in five minutes. You remember where it is?”

“Yeah, right by the river.”

“Five minutes,” I said.

HE WAS WAITING FOR ME
when I got there. The wife's car was an ancient rusting station wagon. He was as I remembered him, a small compact man, beginning to bald, which made him look older than his thirty or so years. He was, I recalled, a tool and the maker, and although he made good money, his single income didn't stretch very far. He had watched every penny when he had gone over the accounting at the real estate closing.

Ray Panar was dressed in wrinkled slacks and an old pullover.

We shook hands, and I led him up the outside stairs to my office.

He sat opposite me across the desk, his jaw tense with worry.

“Can I smoke?” he asked.

“Sure.” I shoved an ashtray over to him.

His hands shook as he lit a cigarette.

“What's the usual fee for this sort of thing?” he asked, nervously expelling smoke.

“Depends. If it's just a judge, trial is usually five hundred
dollars. If it's a jury, it runs more. Usually, this kind of thing isn't a jury matter.”

His eyes widened at the amount. “I don't have five hundred on me.”

“Well, it's customary for a fee in a criminal case to be paid before the case is heard. Can you have it in the morning?”

He nodded. “Do you take checks?”

“Sure.”

He seemed relieved. “I can just cover that then.”

“Suppose we start from the beginning, Mr. Panar. Tell me what happened last night. Don't leave anything out, it might be important legally.”

He nodded and inhaled deeply.

I was glad to have my mind occupied by something besides my own brand of troubles. As a diversion, Panar's would do nicely.

“Well, none of this should have happened,” he said. “I mean, I didn't intend for anything like this. I got off work and had a few beers with some of the people I work with. I usually do of a Saturday night when I've put in a day of overtime.”

“Go on.”

“If I had just stopped there, it would have been all right, but I decided to have a few more beers on my own. You know, kind of get away from things for a while.”

“Where did you go?”

“A couple of places. You know the Glisten Inn?”

It was a run-down old restaurant that employed rundown old go-go dancers on weekends. I had represented the run-down old owner several times in brushes with the law.

“I know the place,” I said.

He nodded, coloring slightly. “I don't usually go to places like that, but, like I say, I just wanted to get away from things for a while.”

He tried to smile. “Do you have children, Mr. Sloan? Young children?”

“I have a grown daughter.”

“Well then, you probably remember how hectic things can get around a house with little kids running around. The wife most times is angry about this or that. It's always something. Anyway, I was going home, but I just didn't want to go home just then. You know what I mean?”

I nodded. My daughter had been raised by her mother after the divorce. I remember only the good things about a little girl, but then memory can be handily selective.

“Was this policewoman at the Glisten Inn?”

He shook his head. “No. I had a couple of more beers there. They have dancers there, you know.”

“I know.”

“I left there and decided to have just one more beer before going home. Do you know that little bar up by Morad Road, the Sand's Point?”

“I've driven past it. It looks like a dump from the outside.”

“It is. I was never there before. There were only a couple of people in the place even though it was a Saturday night.”

“One of them was the policewoman?”

He nodded. “You couldn't help but notice her. She was very pretty, sitting up there at one end of the bar, sort of sexy like. Well, very sexy like, actually. I sat at the other end of the bar and had another beer.”

“Go on.”

As he talked, he became more embarrassed, his cheeks pinking up like underdone pork chops.

“Anyway, she kept smiling at me and I had the bartender buy her a drink. I had a couple of hundred in cash on me. Where I work Friday's payday. She motioned for me to come and sit by her, and I did.”

“Who spoke first?”

He frowned. “I don't remember. Maybe she did, or I did. I don't have much experience in that sort of thing.” The pink got pinker. “This was, well, the first time, if you get my drift.”

“I do. Go on.”

“She said I was a good-looking fellow and that I was probably more of a man than my wife could handle.”

“And that led to just how much of a man you were, I presume?”

“Yeah, it went like that. I was a little tipsy to be frank about it and I was sort of having a good time. Anyway, she says she can help me out, you know, with my sexual problems.”

“Who mentioned money?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, as if I were Sherlock Holmes himself. “Well, I guess I did. She was sort of hinting around, you know. Finally, I asked if it was going to be free.”

“And?”

“She just laughed and shook her head.”

“But she didn't say anything?”

“No. I asked what I'd get for twenty dollars, and she said nothing.”

The pink was becoming red. “So I asked what I'd get for fifty and she said a certain sex act.”

“A certain sex act?”

By now he was as red as a sunset. “You know, oral sex.”

“Is that how she said it, oral sex?”

He shook his head. “She said a blow job. My wife doesn't do that kind of thing . . .” His voice trailed off.

“So you agreed?”

He nodded.

“Then what happened?”

“She said she would do it in my car. We went out to the parking lot. I was just getting into my side when she
flashed this badge out of her purse and said I was under arrest.”

He looked away. “Two big cops, in plainclothes, came out of another car and put handcuffs on me. Pretty soon a scout car came and they took me to jail.”

“Did the lady cop go with you to the jail?”

“No. She went back in the bar.”

“What about the plainclothes men?”

“They went back to their car. They sort of were kidding around with her.”

“About what?”

“About having a good night, something like that. Setting a record, or something. They seemed to think it was very funny.”

“I take it you made bail out of the money you had on you?”

“Yes. But they kept my car. Can they do that?”

I nodded. “If it's used in connection with prostitution, they can.”

“Permanently!”

I nodded again. “That's right.”

“Oh my God! It's an almost new Chrysler. If my wife finds out . . . I don't even have it near paid for.”

The red had receded to pink and then to chalky white. “Can you help me?”

“I'll give it my best shot. Meet me at the courthouse at eight tomorrow morning.”

“Will any of this be in the papers? My boss is a strict Christian. I might lose my job if he gets wind of any of this. And, if my wife . . .” He stopped, as if the thought was just too painful to express.

“Probably none of this will make any newspaper. This isn't exactly an axe murder. I wouldn't worry about publicity. Just meet me at Judge Mulhern's court tomorrow. He's the judge who hears this kind of case.”

“Can you get my car back?”

“I'll do my best.”

He got up and we shook hands. “I don't know what you must think of me, but I've never done anything like this before.”

“I believe you,” I said.

He walked to the door. “My wife wouldn't, if she ever finds out. . .”

And then he was gone.

I took a minute and looked up entrapment in my law books, jotting down a few cases.

It was great not having to think of bribes, corruption, and self-destruction.

I should be the one paying the fee, I thought. My anxiety about myself was markedly lessened, at least for the moment. Worrying about somebody else was a lot better than seeing a therapist.

MONDAY MORNING CAME
and I was ready. Ray Panar met me, this time dressed in a plain suit and tie. He looked uncomfortable. Obviously, ties and suits were something he seldom wore. His face had the haunted look you sometimes see at funerals.

He reluctantly handed me the five-hundred-dollar check. His eyes followed it as I tucked it away in my wallet.

Then we headed to the courtroom of the Honorable Thomas Mulhern. Mulhern, as the local district judge, had jurisdiction over criminal misdemeanors.

It was early, but the courtroom was already filled nearly to capacity.

“Do you see the policewoman?” I asked Panar.

He nodded. “She's over there, the woman in the tan suit. She sure looks different.”

She was a pretty woman with dark hair tied back. She
wore no makeup, she really didn't need to. The suit was cut well, but you could tell there was one hell of a body underneath. She looked like one of those television pitch-women who ask you to switch banks, all business but with a suggestion of subtle sex.

“What's different about her?”

“The clothes for one. Lord, on Saturday night she damn near didn't have anything on. She had a teeny little skirt hiked way up, a see-through blouse, and a little black bra. Also, she wore her hair different, you know, combed full out.”

“Makeup?”

“Hell, she was painted up like a fire engine.”

Tommy Mulhern came out and court started. Tommy, a drinker, looked like he had had a particularly tough weekend. I remember when I looked like that on Mondays. His eyes viewed the world through a sea of pain.

It was not a good time to make the Honorable Thomas Mulhern angry.

The drunks came first, lined up one after another. Each had disturbed someone's peace or had passed out in an inconvenient place. They had the same kind of eyes as the judge, but he found no common bond. He worked through them quickly.

The young prosecutor, a new boy, midtwenties, made the mistake of objecting to something Mulhern said. It was a foolish objection, completely unnecessary, and it worked on Mulhern the same way a red cape works on a bull.