Neon Dragon (12 page)

“You know better than I do, Mr. Munsey, but he seems to be thriving on it. Maybe it's what he needed.”

Munsey looked at me as if he wanted to say something, but he just put on his Russian fur-ball hat and pulled the flaps down over his ears.

He was on his way out, when I thought I heard him mumble something like, “Watch his back, kid.”

WHEN I LEFT MR. DEVLIN
, the plan was that I'd take the train to Harvard to talk to Anthony Bradley's acquaintances, particularly the friend who went to Chinatown with him the day of the murder. After talking to Conrad Munsey, something seemed more pressing.

Since I was practically at the courthouse anyway, I went to the office of the clerk of the superior court. Trial records are public documents, which meant that I had the right to see the record of the Dolson case. Having the right is one thing; having the record of a ten-year-old trial excavated by a civil servant in the clerk's office can be
another. In this case, the paper chase was cut to a minimum by an old tippling friendship with one of the docket clerks. I could always count on Tony Boyle to short-circuit procedures and fly direct. It was totally legal, but the occasional Jameson's on the rocks at the 77 after work hours never stood in the way of progress.

In an hour, I was at a side table, rifling through the familiar forms of indictment, bench warrant, pretrial motions, transcript of evidence, etc., through the dismissal of the hung jury. It read true to Mr. Munsey's telling of the tale.

I noticed in the transcript of testimony that Mr. Devlin had tried everything short of dynamite to get in evidence of the out-of-court statements of whoever it was that contacted Dolson by phone about buying his confession and service of the jail time. Judge Bennett, the trial judge, upheld every objection of the assistant district attorney on the grounds of hearsay. If the trial hadn't ended in a hung jury, I'd have bet my next paycheck that Mr. Devlin could have had the conviction reversed on appeal.

That came as no great shock. The Honorable Judge Bennett's qualifications for the bench had been that he had been a bagman for the right political party. It was no surprise that his track record on evidentiary rulings was as weak ten years ago as I'd experienced it in modern times.

One thing that never came out in the trial, mostly because of the suppression of Dolson's evidence, was who owned the building that was torched. That nagging question hung on after I had returned the file to Tony and hesitated over which direction to take from the clerk's office.

Curiosity won out. I followed the catacomb tunnels to the registry of deeds. I had to lean heavily on what I had learned in first-year real property to decipher the chain of title. Fortunately, it was uncomplicated. Unfortunately, it was a dead end. The building where the fire started was owned by a real-estate corporation that was already in bankruptcy at the time of the fire.

The bankruptcy clerk at federal court did a quick check for me while I held the phone and found that the creditors of the corporation—the only ones who could have profited from an insurance windfall—were many, widespread, and relatively insignificant. In other words, there was no motive for a risky torching there.

I was ready to pack it up, when an obtuse thought occurred. As long as I was in the registry of deeds anyway, could it hurt to check the owners of the two properties on either side of the torched building? Testimony in the Dolson trial indicated that they were “accidentally” burned out, too. Since it seemed irrelevant at the time, nobody questioned the “accidental” nature of the burning of two side buildings.

What I struck could have been gold dust. It could also have been pyrite. At the least, though, it was interesting. The building to the left of the torched building had been owned for a year by a corporation called Adams Leasing, Inc. So what? Well, nothing, until I saw that the building to the right of the said torched building had been purchased one month before the said torching by Adams Leasing, Inc. All three buildings had been totally destroyed. While the insurance payoff to the main torched building would have been held up because of the arson, the insurance company would have no grounds to hold up the payoff on the buildings to either side.

The question then became who owned Adams Leasing, Inc. That was not a matter of public record. That was a matter for private detection. It was now four o'clock and ticking, and I hadn't begun the day's work at Harvard. I decided to gain speed by doing what the bike racers call “drafting”—riding in the wake of a rider who has taken the trail ahead of me.

I went back to the superior court clerk's office to see if there was any pending litigation against Adams Leasing, Inc. The chances were good, since any company that leased apartments, particularly roach farms, was probably a familiar name on the court docket. True to form, Adams Leasing had a string of civil suits against it.

I ran the list until I came across a slip-and-fall case based on the
dangerous condition of an apartment. The key factor was that the plaintiff's attorney was a law-school classmate to whom I had lost enough money over a two-hand poker deck during the third year of law school to claim him as a dependant.

Gene Martino was one of those ferreting kinds of lawyers, who keeps on ferreting long after most lawyers turn off the light. He ferrets for the sake of ferreting. He once told me that he can beat better lawyers because they learn
everything necessary
about a case. He learns
everything
about a case. I decided to “draft” on Gene's particular talent.

I got the number from the court records and made the call on my cell phone in the lower lobby of the courthouse. Gene's secretary buzzed him.

“Mike! How you doing? How about a little two-hand poker? My rent's due.” He cackled.

I laughed at his little funny—not because I found it humorous, but because it was the best lead-in to a favor.

“Hi, Gene, you son of a gun. You're still looking for a fish.”

“No way, Mike. I never thought of you that way. It was just a friendly way of passing the time.”

“What I remember passing was money for lunches, carfare, dates …”

“Hey, we had fun, didn't we, Mikey?”

If I told him the truth, or for that matter told him that the next time he called me “Mikey” I'd feed that phone to him from one or both of two directions, he might have been inclined to deny me the favor. I wimped out.

“Hell of a time, Gene. I'll never forget it.”

“So what've you been up to?”

“I've been up to getting myself into a position where I need to ask a favor, Gene. You've got a case against Adams Leasing, right?”

“That I do. Slip and fall. I'm gonna hammer 'em, Mikey. You're not representing those scum buckets?”

“No. No, no. No connection. Actually, I need some information. And if anybody has information, you're the man, Gene.”

“You got that right, Mikey. Gimme a try. What do you need?”

“Did you ever find out from depositions or interrogatories who owns Adams Leasing?”

“Did I find out? It pains me that you ask. Would Gene Martino walk into a courtroom against a corporation without knowing who manicures the fingernails of every secretary in the place? Come on, Mikey. That's basics.”

It was music to my ears to hear old self-deprecating Gene brag on because I knew he couldn't stop himself from backing up the bravado with his ferreted information. I had but to turn the spigot to open the flow.

“I know you, Gene, but that can be tough information to come by. Those people guard the names of the owners pretty carefully.”

“Mikey. Listen to me. It's wholly owned by a holding company. Which tells you nothing, because it's just a dummy corporation owning the stock of another corporation. What you really want is who owns the stock of the holding company. That took some doing. It's wholly owned by a limited partnership. I can give you the name of the general partner of the limited partnership. It's right here. It's Robert Loring. Want his address? He's at 495 Federal Street.”

I was writing on the back of an old Bruins ticket as fast as I could. “Gene, you're golden. Now for the big one. Who are the limited partners?”

“I'm working on it, Mikey. I got a deposition of Loring on Wednesday. I'll dig till I get it. You still at Bilson?”

“That's where I call home.”

“I'll get you there.”

“Geno, it was worth every dime, every penny I begrudgingly lost to you, every aggravating hour listening to that grinding East Boston accent of yours, to come to this moment.”

Actually, I just thought that. What I said was, “You're a prince, Gene. I hope I can repay the favor.”

I HAD TO TOUCH
a couple of bases at the office. Harvard could wait another hour.

The old offices at Bilson, Dawes actually looked good. For some reason, the nods and smiles of the secretaries and paralegals carried a bit of what I self-indulgently sensed as respect. The usual attitude toward associates, particularly on the part of the fossilized queens of dictation of the more senior partners, is that of a day-care matron toward a child whose nose won't stop running. I silently thanked Judge Bradley for throwing me into a case and an association with Mr. Alexis Devlin that boosted my status three rungs on the food chain.

I was walking proudly by the time I reached Julie's desk. Needless to say, none of the above commentary went for Julie. I always thanked God for granting me a human being for a secretary. This particular blessing came with a concomitant curse.

Just as Julie was raising her eyebrows while she asked, “How are you and ‘Lex' getting along?” I heard my name whined in the adenoidal tones of junior partner Whitney Caster.

“Knight, I want to see you.”

I smiled at Julie and whispered, “Lex wants to adopt me. Would you prepare the forms?”

Julie's giggle was stepped on by a second whining outburst. “Now, Knight!”

I moved slowly backwards toward Caster's office while asking Julie, “Anything critical?”

She said, “Mr. Malone called three times about the Keilly case. He wants to set up a deposition.”

“Tell him to give me a break. That case won't go to trial for two years. What else?”

“Mark Shuman wants a date for pretrial motions on the copyright case.”

“When did he call?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“No sweat. Mark's tuned in. He's heard what's going on. He won't press it. Anything else? I mean critical.”

“Bob Casey just called about the Detroit Red Wings game tomorrow night.”

“That's critical. And painful. Would you tell him it's impossible? Maybe the Black Hawks in two weeks.”

From behind me, at a ten-decibel increase, “KNIGHT!”

Julie stifled a grin. “That man's gonna split a hemorrhoid if you don't get in there.”

I smiled back. “Is that a promise?”

Caster was a nice shade of pink by the time I was looking across his desk at him. I'm sure the fear of losing the power of having me on voice commands had nearly driven him to distraction. My finally-obedient presence before him came just before he started sucking his thumb.

“Did you call me, Whitney?”

Any form of “yes” would have sent Julie into a case of the unstiflable giggles. I think he appreciated that, because he finessed the question.

“Knight, I have an idea. I want you to go back and reargue that motion to suppress discovery before Judge Bradley.”

I could see his weasely little mind working. He was salivating at the thought of Judge Bradley finding it difficult to deny my motion when I was in the midst of representing his son. More to the point, if I won the motion, Whitney could see himself garnering the credit with the seniors for coming up with the ploy.

“Whitney, baby, you don't have enough brains or ethics to realize that a man of Judge Bradley's character would recuse himself from the case before he'd play into your sniggering little plot.”

I liked the sound of that, but it never actually passed these restrained lips. What came out was, “That's an idea, Whitney. I'll get on it.”

“You do that, Knight,” he whined as he busied himself with lofty legal issues in a brief. I was dismissed. I curtsied, and turned for the door.

I let him sink comfortably into the euphoria of self-admiration for his crafty little scheme before turning back.

“One more thing, Whitney. When Judge Bradley sees this motion marked up for rehearing, he'll probably think we're trying to put the squeeze play on him. My bet is that he'll be on the horn to Mr. Devlin in about six seconds to tell Mr. Devlin that he views the ethics of the rest of his law firm as beneath contempt. Mr. Devlin will be climbing up my back in about four seconds to find out whose idea this was in the first place. At that point …”

The pink had run from Whitney's cheeks. He was nothing if not protective of his little pinched posterior.

“Hold off on that, Knight. You've probably got other things more pressing.”

“As a matter of fact, Whitney …” I thought of the Red Wings game I'd be missing.

I NEEDED THE PRIVACY
of my office for what I was about to do. As I closed the door, I tried to think of the last time I had spent serious time there. It predated the Lothrop hearing before Judge Bradley, which seemed like a century ago.

Tom Burns was a private detective whom the firm used on a semi-regular basis. He was not inexpensive, but his rates still beat having a lawyer do certain types of legwork. He was also better than the rest of us when the information required serious private detection. I had worked with him enough to be able to play with the cards up.

“Hi, Mike. How goes?”

“Good, Tom. You alone?”

“Alone enough.”

“I mean
alone
alone. This is really sensitive.”