Pleading Guilty (19 page)

"Yes?"

He took a step so that he was no more than a foot from me
,
his finger still anchored on the door-close button as the car slowed.

"No one up here has to hear any more." He looked at me solemnly before the doors peeled back slowly and he stepped again into the brighter light.

Chapter
XII. TELLING SECRETS

A. Boys and Girls Together

"SOS," I said as I poked my head into Martin's office. His secretary was gone and I'd given a quick knock and leaned in from the hall. Glyndora was standing there with him.

"Oh shit," I said. It just sort of popped out and they both stared. It was an odd little moment. Glyndora shot me a look that might have contemplated my death, and my first thought was that she was here complaining about my investigative technique. That was one of Martin's many roles, Mr. Fix-It, in charge of the disgruntled, the waylaid, the weak. Our first year can't cut in practice, a partner flips out or has a problem with substance abuse, Martin takes care of you. You'd say compassion, but there's no there-but-for-the-grace; it's more his Olympian thing. I'm here, the mountain.

But Martin seemed unconcerned when he saw me. He actually smiled and casually waved me into his office with all its funny overstated objects. He said something about Glyndora showing him yesterday's numbers on cash received, the Managing Partner and the head of Accounting measuring our progress at year end. Somehow, though, I remained struck by the pose in which

I'd initially found them. Nothing untoward: she was at a distance from him, a few feet from his chair. But she was on his side of the desk, and Martin was facing her and the milky light coming from the broad windows behind her, sitting with his legs outstretched, hands on his tummy, relaxed, open to her in an uncharacteristic way, less our Martin, ever on alert. Maybe, though, it was just the shock of seeing Glyndora, who was still charged up for me like a magnet.

Martin, at any rate, said they were about done, and with that hint she arranged herself and strode past me in the door without so much as turning my way. I admit I was disappointed.

"I just had a conversation with Jake," I told Martin when she was gone.

"Troubling?"

He could see it in my face, I imagined. My heart was still skittering around like a squirrel. Jake in his own way had given off quite a sinister air. I began to describe my encounter with Jake, and Martin listened, absorbed. When you actually study him, Martin has distinct ethnic looks; he's one of those hairy darklings you'd expect to see loading a truck, with a dense beard that lends his face a bluish cast. His father was a tailor who cut the clothes of various gangsters and Martin refers now and then to his upbringing when it is availing to charm a client of humble roots or to worry an opponent; he has a number of racy stories about delivering tuxedos to the famous Dover Street brothel in the South End. But unlike me, Martin takes no refuge in the past and allows it to make no claim upon him. He evinces the airy noblesse of a fellow who grew up summering in Newport. He is married to a graceful, tall British woman by the name of Nila, whom you sort of picture in a garden with a Pimm's Cup the minute you see her. Large hats and shirtwaist dresses, with petticoats. He is thoroughly the man he decided on being, and that fellow showed little reaction to what I related, except that something abruptly caused him to interrupt.

"Better save this," he said. "My colleagues and I should probably hear it together." He meant the Committee. "Carl is in town again today."

Martin proposed a meeting at four and left me to arrange it. I went back to Lucinda to ask her to make the calls, though I tried to reach Pagnucci, since I wanted a word with him myself. Then I stood over my secretary's desk for a moment, examining the list of my credit card issuers she'd reached. It struck me for the first time that the Kam Roberts card had been in my wallet too. I had no idea what to do about that.

Brushy came ambling by in her sturdy fashion and did a double-take when she saw me.

"Jesus, Mack, you look horrible." No doubt that was true. Jake had stirred my adrenaline but it still felt like my heart was pumping motor sludge. "You sick?" she asked.

"Maybe a touch of the flu." I turned away, but she followed me into my office out of concern. "Could be I'm depressed." "Depressed?"

"From our conversation yesterday."

"Hey," she said, "you know me, spirited Mediterranean type. I say things."

"No," I said, "I thought you had a point."

She looked herself, little chopped-down hairdo, big pearl earrings, honest face, solid and peppy like she could step out of her heels and give you a good block.

"Maybe I did." She sort of smiled.

"Yeah," I said, "I even went out and had a minute last night where I thought I might practice my hokey-pokey."

I could have filled in her dental chart.

"And?" she demanded.

" 'And' what?"

"And?" she said once more, Ms. Mind Your Own Personal Business.

"And I ended up getting rolled."

She actually laughed out loud. She asked if I was okay, then sang, far off-key, a few bars of "Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places."

"You don't have to gloat."

"Why should I gloat?" she asked and laughed again.

I turned my back on her to look through the mail. More memos from the Committee about the lagging pace of collections; the Blue Sheet. I heard her close the door, and the click of the bolt gave me a weird little amorous thrill, some vagrant inspiration from our conversation and the last twenty-four hours, an idling recall of what happened when men and women were alone. Brushy, however, did not have anything like that on her mind.

"Did you see the paper?" she asked. Apparently there'd been another small piece this morning about Archie, basically just saying he still hadn't been found. She described it and asked, "Do you think that's the guy? The one they talked about at the steam bath?" She never missed a detail.

"I think," I said, and then, not quite understanding myself, added, as I thumbed through the mail, "he's dead, by the way." "Who's dead?"

"Him. Archie. Vernon. Dead-dead."

"No," she said. "How do you know?"

So I told her. "Bert has a problem in his refrigerator that baking soda will not help." She took a seat on my worn-out sofa, threshing her fingers through her short hair as I described the corpse.

"How could you not tell me this?" she asked.

"Hey, get real. The better question is why I tell you anything at all. This one's attorney-client, no kidding. The coppers'll sweat me if they find out I was anywhere near that body."

"Did Bert kill him?"

"Maybe so."

"Bert?"

"Your idea," I said.

"Never."

"Probably not."

"So who?"

"Somebody else. Probably the heavy-cuff-link crowd." "Those guys don't do that anymore, do they?"

"Don't ask me," I said, "you're Italian."

"Come on," she said. "I mean to regular people."

"This guy wasn't regular people, Brush. If you make book you've got to be connected."

"Why?" she asked.

" 'Why'? Because this is their business. Coast-to-coast. And these guys don't believe in competition. You keep a book, fine and dandy, but you give them a share--they call it paying the street tax. Otherwise you suffer physical harm or they snitch you out to their favorite law enforcement type. Besides, they provide many valuable services. You got a customer who's slow-pay, these guys can hurry em up, believe you me. You can't do business without them."

She stared. She still didn't see why.

"Here," I said, "it's like your insurance client. What's the name?"

She reminded me, a fair-sized outfit that sent her their coverage litigation in the Midwest. A significant piece of business, and even saying the name she had a hard time managing her pride.

"Let's say they have four billion in property and casualty coverage in California," I told her. "How do they make sure that they don't go under when the hills burn?"

"They reinsure."

"Exactly. They find a few large, reliable companies and literally insure their insurance. And bookies do the same thing. A good bookie isn't a gambler. Any more than your insurance client is. Bookie makes so percent vig on your bet, win or lose. You bet ioo, you owe him i so. That's where his money is. On an
y g
iven game, he wants you to bet the loser and me to bet the winner. He gets $no from you, keeps $20 vig, and gives go to me."

Brushy interrupted.

"No chance, Malloy. He'd use your money to pay me." "Very amusing." I faked a little pop to her biceps and went on. "Anytime his book puts him at risk, when he has a lot more win money than lose money or vice versa, he'll do like the insurance company. Lay off. Reinsure. Call it whatever. And in this business, you want to lay off, you better be part of the network. Otherwise no one's going near you. Besides, if you need Mr. Large and Reliable, the outfit who can always handle your action, it's them."

"So what did he do wrong? Archie?"

"Maybe he was screwing around with the street tax." Guys had gotten fixed for less than that. With his gimmick with the credit cards, Archie might have thought he didn't need them. But even an actuary using the Vegas line was going to have to lay off. What I could use was a little heart-to-heart with somebody connected. At that moment Toots crossed my mind.

Having run out of answers, I asked Brushy about lunch.

"I can't," she said. "Pagnucci's in town. I said I'd have lunch with him."

"Pagnucci?" This was not one of Brushy's known allies or liaisons, but remembering yesterday I bit my tongue. "What's doing?" I asked. "Groundhog Day?"

That was her guess. In our firm, a partner is guaranteed to make 75 percent of what he earned the twelve months before, drawing it out after each of the first three quarters of our fiscal year. Then on January 31 the Committee divvies up the remainder and announces the results on Groundhog Day. Everybody puts on a tuxedo and goes to the Club Belvedere for dinner. We are served in elegance and joke with each other. On the way out, we each receive an envelope listing our share of firm income. Nobody carpools to this event. Each partner return
s h
ome alone, full of the elevating light of success or in fitful depression. The carping begins the next day and often goes on most of the remaining year until the next Groundhog Day. Some people campaign with the Committee, listing all their good deeds and achievements, the many new clients, the great rate of collections. To minimize discord, Pagnucci, who does the first draft of the point distribution, makes the rounds of influential partners to be sure they can accept the Committee's view of their worth. At least, that's what I hear. Pagnucci has never made luncheon reservations with me. The only info I get generally is by gossip, before or after the event, since your share, like your private parts, is supposed to be known only to you. When I got my first cut three years ago, I was in enough of a snit that late one evening I took a peek in the drawer in Martin's credenza, where he stashes the point-distribution record. I just about opened a vein after seeing all the layabouts and losers making more money than me.

"How about if we do lunch tomorrow?" Brushy asked. "I'll get some place with tablecloths. I want to talk to you." She touched my knee. Her round face was warm with feeling. Emilia Bruccia is probably the only person I know who feels any concern for my spirit.

B. Police Secrets

After Brush left, I got on the phone and called McGrath Hall, headquarters of the Kindle County Unified Police Force. Twenty-two years, but I knew the number by heart. I reached Al Lagodis, who was now up in Records, and told him I was gonna swing by. I didn't give him a chance to say no, and even so, I could hear he was about as enthusiastic as if I'd told him I was selling raffle tickets for some charity.

The Hall is a big graystone heap the size of a castle on the south rim of Center City, just where the big buildings stop an
d t
he neighborhood turns littered and bleak, full of taverns with garish signs sporting mention of dancing girls, places where lushes and perverts, released from the big buildings at lunchtime, drink beside the hustlers. I was at the Hall in ten minutes. I had to check in at the front desk and they called Al to fetch me.

"How are you?" Al gave me both eyes, a look of dead sincerity, as he was walking me back.

"You know."

"That good?" He laughed. Al and I go back to the time when I was in Financial Crimes and he thought I did the right thing on Pigeyes. Not that Al did anything himself, except, I always suspected, a little confidential muttering to the FBI--deep background stuff, a cup of coffee and some hard information that he'd refer to as "rumors." I always figured it was Al who put the Feebies onto me. He was one of the few folks here who would still talk to me afterwards--although he preferred to do it when nobody was around. Two decades and old Al was still going all shifty-eyed, hoping nobody saw him with Mack Malloy, legendary no-good guy. Around here not much changes. There were gals now, stepping through the dim old halls, wearing guns and ties and shirts that to my eye were not really designed for folks with tits, but even they have got that cop-roll, do-me-something stride.