Nameless Night (19 page)

“What’s that?”

“Fucked if I know.”

24

The ambient light flickered. Kirsten looked up from the deposition she was reading. The estimable Bruce Gill didn’t wait to be invited in. He elbowed the door closed, crossed to the green leather chair, and plopped himself down. In general, if the D.A. wanted to see you, you were summoned to his office. Precedent for arriving elsewhere unannounced, while not unknown, was sufficiently unusual as to command Kirsten’s undivided attention.

“What’s up?” she asked.

He pulled a sheaf of legal papers from the pocket of his suit jacket and dropped them into his lap. “You remember the Robbins case?” he asked.

She silently repeated the name to herself several times. When nothing came into focus, she said, “Not really?”

“Me neither.”

“So?”

“So we . . . you and I . . . are being hauled before the state ethics board.”

“For what?”

“Jury tampering. Suborning perjury and hindering prosecution.”

“On this Robbins case?”

“Yup.”

“What’s the Robbins case?”

“Remember . . .” He unfolded the document and peeked inside.

“Nineteen ninety-nine. The guy named Neil Robbins owned a pawnshop. Guy who was using street people and junkies to commit burglaries for him.”

“Okay . . .” she said, nodding. “I’ve got a glimmer. Guy was a real scumbag, as I recall. Identity theft. Lots of mailbox burglaries.” She slapped the desk. “Feds tried to hijack the case from us.”

“Guy got out on appeal.”

“I hadn’t heard.” She leaned forward and held out her hand. He made no move to hand the document over.

“Let me save you the trouble,” he said. “The gist of the charge is that you and I took money . . .” She started to protest, but the D.A. held up a forestalling hand. “Me in the form of illegal political contributions and you in the form of a direct injection into an offshore account.”

“In return for what?”

“In return for creating enough doubt and confusion to virtually ensure the case would be reversed on appeal.”

“Didn’t we get him fifteen, sixteen years, something like that.”

“He did four months.”

“Wasn’t Irving Reist his attorney?”

“Yup.”

“Irving’s good.” She spread her hands. “We don’t win ’em all.”

His brow was knit and his face beginning to color. “Where in hell did this come from?” He leaned closer. “I don’t need this crap in an election year.”

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I was second chair. You made the case.”

“It was a good case.”

“That’s the way I remember it, too.”

“It was also a damn good choice.”

“What was a good choice?”

“The Robbins case,” he said. “Whoever’s trying to bust our col-lective chops here chose a hell of a good case. Our witnesses were a bunch of winos and junkies. All of them with sheets; all of them willing to say whatever as long as the price was right.”

“And most of whom we pressured into testifying against Robbins.”

“Kind of people it’s easy to pressure.”

“The case was solid.”

He looked at her with an unspoken question in his eyes.

“Not only all of that, but we resisted when the feds wanted to take over,” he said. “Like we had some agenda other than just the law.”

“Wouldn’t take a leap of faith to see it that way,” she admitted. Not the answer he wanted to hear. “Where in hell did this come from?”

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I was just along for the ride.” She held up her right hand. “Not to mention the fact that I don’t have an offshore bank account. Hell, I’ve barely got an onshore bank account.”

The D.A. waved her off as if to say she was preaching to the choir.

A knock rattled the door. “Yeah,” Kirsten said. One of the pool secretaries entered. “For you,” she said, handing over an oft-used manila envelope to Kirsten. On other days Kirsten might have been amused by the look on the girl’s face when she realized who the other party in the room was, but not today. Kirsten thanked her. They watched her disappear.

“If this is Morgan’s doing . . .” Gill muttered. Brent Morgan was a local personal-injury attorney who’d par-layed a series of earnest TV commercials and a complete absence of ethics into a multimillion-dollar practice and was the best bet to be running against Gill in the upcoming election. The courthouse rumor mill held that Morgan had a team of researchers electronically combing the incumbent’s past cases looking for anything they could parade before the public in the next election.

“That would be a new low . . . even for Morgan,” Kirsten threw in. She unwound the little red string holding the envelope closed and pulled out a sheet of computer paper.

“If that son of a bitch—” the D.A. began.

“Whoa, Nellie,” Kirsten said.

“Nellie who?”

“Talk about timing.”

He reached across the desk and snatched the paper from her hand. Under other circumstances, with other people, she could have taken offense. Bruce Gill, however, was used to being the big dog and generally expected a certain degree of forbearance regardless of the situation. Kirsten calmly sat back and watched as he read his way down to the bottom of the page.

“Timing indeed,” he said when he’d finished.

“You really think . . . ?”

He rattled the paper. “Tell me about this,” he said. Took about a minute to tell the tale of Helen Willis and Ken Suzuki visiting her office, of checking to see if any Wesley Allen Howard had been reported missing during the years in question.

“First the carrot, then the stick,” Bruce Gill said.

“Excuse?”

“They tried to bribe both of us . . . exciting new job for you . . . expanded national exposure for me . . .” He paused to be sure she was with him and then continued. “. . . aaaaaand when we didn’t immediately jump on board . . .”

“This thing shows up,” she finished.

He got to his feet.

“As you know . . . I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“As you know . . . that makes two of us.”

“End of carrot,” he said. “We had our chance to nibble and we didn’t. Now they’re gonna kick our ass.”

“All they’re accomplishing is they’re getting my attention,” Kirsten said.

His teeth were showing, but it wasn’t a smile. “You send the glass to IAFIS?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t tell me you threw it away?”

She hesitated just long enough to make him sweat. “Yeah, sure,” she said, levering herself to her feet and retrieving the paper bag from the file cabinet.

“Gimme that thing,” he said. “It’s about time we started getting a little more proactive around here.”

“YES . . . I UNDER STAND. Thank you.” Helen set the phone back on the desk.

Across the room, Ken Suzuki read the news on her face. “Well?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“I’da thought . . . with all those names . . .” he began.

“Me, too.”

“What now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Any word on the fingerprints?”

“No.”

“I guess that takes longer.”

She flicked a glance his way and then got to her feet and walked over to the sink, where she turned on the water as if to wash dishes. She hoped to hide her frustration, lest he misinterpret and think she was unhappy with him, which couldn’t be further from the truth. He was a dear man. Always trying to put a good face on things whether he believed it or not. She turned her head and smiled at him.

“She didn’t make any promises anyway,” he reminded her. Helen turned back and fixed her attention on the sink, allowing the warm water to cascade over her hands, warming both her fingers and her soul, as if the rushing water could somehow wash the whole mess away. To Helen, the situation with Paul Hardy seemed like a fall from grace, as if everything that transpired prior to Paul’s accident had been the golden days of innocence and everything that had happened since had become the slate-gray days of experience. Despite her efforts to find a silver lining, it seemed as if something valuable had been lost without anything having been gained in return. A single tear escaped from her right eye and rolled slowly down the side of her face.

Ken was at her side now. “You okay?” he wanted to know. She hugged herself and nodded the kind of nod designed to convey the opposite message, something more like wounded pluck or grit in the face of horror. He stepped in close and put both hands on her shoulders. She leaned into him, resting the side of her face on his chest. She could feel the rhythm of his breathing as she began to sob.

He put a hand around her head and pulled her to him. She went willingly, turning herself away from the sink and allowing her tears to fall onto his blue work shirt.

“I’m just so frustrated,” she said between sobs.

“I know.”

“I feel like I need to do something.”

“Maybe something will come from the fingerprints.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

She threw her arms around his neck and began to bawl. Wasn’t until she’d cried out her anger that she noticed how close to each other they were. How their usual chaste hip-to-hip embraces had today evolved into a full-frontal hug. She held on tighter and wondered something she had wondered before. About Ken and whether he was experienced in these matters . . . because she certainly wasn’t. She wondered whether he would be able to guide a neophyte like herself. Whether her lack of experience would sour the experience or whether . . . She hugged him tighter, pushing her substantial breasts against his chest. Her sobbing subsided.

“It’s okay,” he said in a strangled voice.

25

Coupla minor problems. One . . . they came in from the opposite end of the street, so it looked way different. Two . . . it was daytime and the streetlights weren’t doing their thing. Didn’t matter, though . . . half an hour in, Randy snapped to it. This was his street of dreams. The same opulent suburban neighborhood he saw every night when he closed his eyes. The realization weakened his knees. They sat on top of a weathered picnic table at the back of a little neighborhood park, diagonally across the street from 432 Water Street. The houses sat on double or maybe even triple lots. Four thirty-two was, like the others on the street, an enormous two-story, white with black trim. The roof line suggested a vaulted ceiling on the ground floor, with a bunch of bedrooms upstairs. A quick trip around the block had revealed the obligatory lanai out back. The maturity of the landscaping and the size of the houses screamed of the late fifties. Cocoa Beach, Florida. Your Tropical Dreams Come True! Acey sucked on a cherry Popsicle. His lips and mouth were harlequin red.

“You scared?” he asked between slurps.

“Why would I be scared?”

“Scared don’t need no ‘why,’ dog. You either scared or you ain’t.”

“Maybe a little.”

“’Bout what?”

“I don’t know,” Randy said.

“Maybe you scareda dat blond bitch.” Acey referred to the leggy woman they’d seen collecting the afternoon newspaper a half hour back. “Maybe you one of those guys like my ol’ man . . . go out one time fo’ cigarettes and doan nobody see your ass again.”

“I don’t smoke.”

Acey wasn’t going for diversions. “You figure dat ho see you again after all this time, she gonna put an ice pick in you’ fuckin’ ear.”

“I thought we had an agreement about that word.”

“I’m workin on it, dog. Ol’ habits die hard.” With that, he went back to scowling and slurping his Popsicle.

The air was hot and thick and wet. Without enough breeze to stir their fronds, the trees hung limp. Randy dropped his head into his hands. He still harbored a dull ache deep behind his forehead. The images of things past were coming thicker than ever now, sounds and faces and places blazing past the inside of his eyes, like shop windows seen from a fast-moving train.

An elbow to the ribs lifted his gaze. In the street, a blue-andwhite police cruiser rolled slowly by the Mercedes. “Nosy motherfuckers,” Acey muttered. “Wanna make sure dere ain’t no niggers hanging round.” He giggled to himself. “’Cept dey know for sure some nigger woulda pimped that ride first thing.”

An hour ago they’d disagreed about how and where to wait. Acey’d wanted to stay in the air-conditioned car, but Randy knew better. The Mercedes was the only car parked in the street. Neighborhoods like this didn’t park cars in the street. Probably against community covenants and that kind of shit. Way Randy saw it, sit-ting in the car was an invitation to meet the local cops. To show ID. To answer questions regarding his relationship with Acey. None of which appealed to his sense of well-being. Instead they’d repaired to their present position, deep in the shade, three quarters of a block down from the car, on the opposite side of the street.

“Smart, dog. Hella smart,” the boy said as they watched the cruiser roll away. The whine and growl of a school bus brushed the words aside. They sat on the table and watched as half a dozen children disgorged themselves from the bright yellow bus. The kids stayed in a chattering knot for a moment and then, in ones and twos, splintered off in the direction of home, leaving only a pair of blond girls standing on the sidewalk. Took a minute for Randy to realize they were twins. They didn’t dress the same anymore. Matter of fact, they looked so different from each other Randy wondered whether they hadn’t gotten together and coordinated the difference.

“About your age,” Randy said.

“Punks,” Acey retorted.

“Hey now.”

“SpongeBob backpacks.” The boy sneered. “That’s fuckin’ gay.”

Randy resisted the urge to disagree. Instead he watched in silence as the girls walked the half a block to 432, where the blond woman met them at the door. In the surrounding stillness, Randy heard the door click behind them. A minute passed.

“Well, dog, you gonna do it or not?”

“Don’t rush me.”

“This what you come all this way for, ain’t it?”

Randy dropped his head into his hands again, massaging his temples with his thumbs as arcs of images lit up the inside of his head like signal flares.

“You okay?”