Indefensible (32 page)

“No,” I say, “I've been kind of incommunicado the past day or two.”

“Yes, we've been trying to reach you. The president hates to release his decision until we've spoken to the others. You know how it is. But we had to go ahead because, you know, we don't want to get
accused of foot dragging. So listen, I'm sorry it didn't work out this time. The president appreciates your willingness to serve, though, and I tell you what, Nick: Next time we're out in your neck of the woods, whatever we have going on, we'll get you involved in it, whatsay?”

“That would be nice,” I say. “I'd love to meet the president.”

“And I know he's eager to meet you, Nick. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Listen, I've got this other call, but it's been great talking with you and—”

“Wait,” I say, “who got the seat?”

“Oh, I thought you heard. The president picked Leslie Herstgood.”

“A fine choice,” I say.

We hang up. For a few preposterous minutes, I allow myself to enjoy the comfort I got from the man's soothing bluster. Maybe the president really will call sometime; maybe it really
was
a tough decision, and after making it, the president and his advisers talked about how regrettable it is to pass up a good prospect like Nick Davis, and they ought to find me a position where my talents would shine.

Good thing they didn't pick me. I can imagine the embarrassment to the president (and to me) if the nominee for a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned out to be the suspect in a murder investigation.

I should call TMU, my champion in this misbegotten quest, but I can't face him right now, so I call the switchboard and ask for his voice mail. I say that I'm out of the office for the day, and I hear in my voice the strain of pretending that all is well. I tell him that Leslie got the seat, and damned if my voice doesn't collapse into a sound like . . . well, the sound a mouse might make as a tabby's needle teeth bisect its spine:
You should know that Leslie (squeak) Herstgood got the seat.

Leslie Herstgood. TMU's predecessor, my erstwhile boss. She's not evil, merely without passion. She is capable of sympathy but not empathy, generosity but not compassion, sadness but not anguish.
She is clever, ruthless, and smart, and I wonder how she could have been picked to sit in judgment.

“So sad,” I whisper at the phone. It is no longer connected to TMU's voice mail, but I'm still gripping it as I steer the Volvo toward Rivertown.
So sad.
The words were out before I knew what I felt sad about. But I do know: It is sad that Leslie got the nod instead of me. Sad, because what I realize is that I'm the right one for the job and she's the wrong one. I didn't know it until this very moment.

•  •  •

Platty's house is a narrow over/under duplex with porches on both levels. It sits eave to eave with houses on either side. I'm sitting at a chipped Formica kitchen table, where I give Platypus the news—or nonnews—of Brittany. He rises from his chair, and with a hand on the table, then on the doorframe, then against the wall, he disappears into the dark living room and returns with a framed photograph. It is Brittany, a school photo of her at about eight years old. She is in a pretty yellow dress, sitting in front of the photographer's backdrop of palms on a tropical beach. She's smiling radiantly. Her eyes, retouched perhaps, glisten with childish exuberance.

“That cross,” Platty says, pointing at her pendant with his trembling finger, “I gave her that.”

“Beautiful girl.”

He sits down. The house stinks of cats, though I'm not sure if it's from droppings or open cans of cat food. I spot two cans on the floor and one right here on the table:
LIVER DINNER IN GRAVY
, it says.

“Sorry I don't have more for you,” I say. “I'm going back this afternoon to see if I can spot her in the database of photos.”
Don't get your hopes up,
I want to add, but I let dangle the desperate notion that we might find another intercepted pic.

Platypus stands up and goes about fixing tea. I put the liver dinner on the floor and nudge it away with my shoe while Platty gets cups and saucers from the cupboard. I can see into the living room, which is dark. Dusty lace curtains hang in front of shades pulled most of the way down. Lampshades have dangles of fringe; end
tables are cluttered with picture frames and doilies. The wallpaper is dark and floral. I wonder what Platty does with himself now that he doesn't drink; goes to A.A. and to the senior center, he told me. Anything else?

He brings tea in gilt-edged cups and settles back in the chair. The stink of the place seems to be getting worse. I nudge the liver dinner farther away with my foot.

“I've had some luck,” Platty says, and he stops to sip his tea. “First about your man Uptown. What I hear, he's definitely known on the street. Not
known
known, but known of. Known by rep. Like Tipper told you: There was a time Uptown Cruthers would go odds on anything. Anything! Got in trouble a time or two. Had to get visited once. I talked to a guy claims he was the visitor but says he didn't actually
do
nothing, just smacked him a time or two and the problem got cleared up. That's what I got on that. But I couldn't get any word if Scud Illman was working him. You know? It's possible, but either nobody knew or nobody's talking.”

He lifts his cup, and those lips vacuum off a couple drops of tea. I lift my cup and then I put it down. No way I'm drinking this.

“Who told you?” I ask.

A soggy blast of air explodes from Platty's livery lips. “Jesus H., Mark Trail,” he says, referencing again my having shown up at the Elfin Grot in a Woolrich shirt, “you really don't understand how this works, do you? Lucky fucking thing you got book smarts, 'cause you sure as shit don't got street smarts. 'Course, you can get away with poking and prodding like that, 'cause nobody's going to mess with you, federal agent. Don't none of us need that kind of grief.”

“Lucky for me,” I say. I'm warming up to the guy. “Is there any hope of finding out whether Scud was working Upton?”

“Always a chance,” Platty says, “but it's pretty slim. See, Scud Illman had moved up. He wasn't a street hood no more, so he didn't brag on the streets; learned to play his cards close. So the only guys who knew for sure if Scud was working Uptown is Scud and Uptown. One of 'em's dead and the other ain't talking.”

“Boy-shucks. What about who killed Scud? Any word on that?”

“Mark Trail,” Platty says, blowing in his tea. He looks up with an amused frown. “How 'bout this, Mark Trail: How 'bout I go downtown and sit at your big fancy desk like Mr. Big-dick while Miss January buffs my toenails? I'll do that, and now you take a cab over to the Grot and warm a barstool for the next three days and get all your answers that way. Okay?”

Understood. I get a roll of cash from my pocket and start peeling off twenties. At fifteen of them, I look up at Platty, but he's staring at the roll in my hand, so I keep going until I reach twenty of them.

He nods and leans sideways until his ass clears the seat, then he stuffs the cash into a back pocket. “Okay,” he says, “this is pretty fucked up. See, most of us, we just figured whoever Scud was working for didn't trust him. Somebody didn't want him going all witness protection. And maybe that's it. 'Cept there's this rumor out there.” He stops. I make a move to go for my roll of bills, but he holds up a hand to stop me. “No,” he says, “it ain't that. It's too fucked up even to talk about, but it's your money, so here it is: There's a guy out there.”

“A guy?”

“A guy some of us used to know. A loose cannon, if you know what I mean. He played by different rules. All these guys he did business with kept ending up dead. Decent guys. I knew some. And everybody figures it was him making 'em dead. At first it was nobody's business, then it
was
people's business, but everyone was afraid to hurt him. Word was, he was connected.”

“Connected how?”

“Yeah, exactly. 'Cause none of the big boys would own him. So who the hell was he connected to? Right?”

A cat jumps up on the table and turns circles, rubbing her haunches against Platty's chest and her tail across Platty's jowls. “Puss puss puss,” he says. He takes the saucer from under his teacup, pours in cream from the pitcher on the table, and sets it on the floor. The cat jumps down. Platty watches her lap the cream. His prodigious lips slacken, and his bent back bends farther, and for a second I think he's going to tumble from the chair. But no. He's just slouching as
he watches the cat. It's a tired slouch; more than tired, it is a slouch of utter exhaustion, and he exhales a long breath from a hundred miles inside of him. What I know at this moment is that the cat was Brittany's.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

He nods. “Anyhow,” he says, “anyhow, we figured someone finally hit him, this guy, 'cause he disappears and nobody hears nothing from him ever again. Except now. Suddenly, rumor is he's back. Settling some old scores, maybe, or doing some new business. Who knows. And maybe I don't believe it, but that's what I hear. And what I hear is that this guy is maybe the one who did Scud Illman, and what I hear is maybe this is the guy who did Seth Coen. It's what I hear.”

“And I suppose,” I say, “if I want to know who this guy is, you're going to call me Mark Trail again?”

Platty laughs, but I'm beyond range of the spray. “Shit, no,” he says, “you're missing the nuances. What the hell good am I if I can't even give you the guy's name? Right?”

I shrug.

“The guy's name,” he says, “is Maxy.”

M
axy? But there is no Maxy. Maxy was the alias of an informant who either got whacked or went into hiding. Platypus is correct that nobody has heard from him in a decade. He's a mythic figure; he's the bogeyman, Sasquatch, or D.B. Cooper. He is smoke. He's a figment.

It's not the first time I've heard his name come up in matters felonious and mysterious, but never from a serious source, which makes me wonder if I've just wasted nine hundred dollars on a kook. (Though considering I'm trying to solve a murder that has baffled the FBI and troopers, and I'm hiding out from the FBI and trying to pin a murder on my friend and colleague, I may not be the best judge of kookiness.)

When I fled Platypus's house, desperate to get out of his fetid kitchen, I scooted back across town, and now here I am at Kendall Vance's office, sunk deep into the umber Naugahyde of his easy chair. It is the perfect place to be. The stink of Platypus's depressing rooms followed me here in the Volvo, but it is replaced by the coffee fragrance wafting up from the mug between my palms. Last time I was here, Kendall gave me a paper cup. This time it's ceramic, and as in Bart Curry's office, I find myself soaking up the comfort of it.

I look at the documents and certificates on his wall of fame, and I feel a surprising fondness for Kendall, for his obvious commitment to charity and good works. I like it here, embraced in the protective wraps of our attorney/client relationship, and I am tempted to allow myself a metaphorical prance in the sunshine of that comfort. Prancing, I suppose, would amount to confessing all my festering secrets. Except that I have nothing to confess. I briefly consider confiding to him about Kenny's illicit interest in Lizzy, but it's just a momentary
urge, and I recognize that it springs from this feeling of reaching a place of safety.

I do have one other thing I'm itching to confess, but it's the one thing I can't tell my lawyer, because it involves him. It is that I snooped in his cell phone log to see who Scud had called.

Beside Kendall's desk is a wall safe, and I wonder what secrets he must keep in there: all the secrets of his criminal clients. “You must hear astonishing things,” I say to Kendall. We're sitting at right angles, with our feet on the same hassock.

He shrugs.

“Confessions, I mean. Criminals unburdening themselves here in the unconditional . . . what? I guess you could actually call it a kind of love: attorney/client confidence. Love of an impersonal and unaffectionate sort. Am I right?”

“You're kind of weird, Nick,” Kendall says, but he's smiling, and he looks comfortable, and he's holding his cup as cozily as I'm holding mine.

“You're like a mini-god,” I say. “We come to you for absolution.”

“I've been called lots of things, but this . . .”

“So do you?” I ask. “Do you hear amazing things? Do you peek into the convoluted darkness of the human soul?”

“No,” Kendall says, “most crooks are just crooks. There isn't a lot of convoluting going on. They're simple. Boring. A guy wants money, he goes and robs a store or mugs somebody or embezzles from his employer. He's angry or inconvenienced by someone; he shoots them or bludgeons them or kicks them in the face. Nothing Shakespearean about it. Truth is, Nick, I
wish
you or Upton had killed Scud Illman. That would at least be interesting. That would have convolutions.”

“How do you know we didn't?”

He sips his coffee slowly and doesn't answer for several seconds, then says, “You get a feel for things, sitting here,” and he looks around his office in self-important reference to the loftiness of being a defense lawyer. (But how can I criticize him for this? I'm the one who called him godlike.)

“Anyhow, you're right about me,” I say, “I didn't kill Scud. You might be wrong about Upton. And I've got a third suspect, but it's my own private theory.”

Kendall takes his feet off the hassock and sits forward, watching me intently.

“I'm the only one who suspects her,” I say.