Proof of Intent (7 page)

He tried to step backward again, but Denkerberg was too fast for him. I don't think Sister Herman Marie had ever slapped a prayer book upside my head as quickly as she leapt on my client. She grabbed him by his dark mane of hair, yanked him over backward, and slung him to the floor. Then she had a knee in his spine, his arm twisted behind his back.

“Confused? Huh? Who's confused now?” she said, twisting his arm a little tighter with each word.

Chief Bower watched from the other side of the room, a smirk on his broad face.

“Miles Dane,” Detective Denkerberg whispered, “you are under arrest for the murder of Diana Dane.” Then she gave him his Miranda warning while he grunted in pain.

“Is this entirely necessary?” I said to Bower.

“Making little crocodile-tears speeches live on the TV, it cuts both ways.”

“You think?”

“It just don't pay, making cops out to be morons,” Chief Bower said, still smirking. Then he left the room.

I stood there and tried to look cool. But I didn't feel cool. The police knew something that I didn't. Even as angry as she was, Chantall Denkerberg was a pro; she wouldn't have moved this quickly against Miles without evidence.

What did she have that I didn't know about?

The police made it clear to me they wouldn't do me any favors in processing Miles. By the time they got done booking him, it would be too late to get him over to the courthouse for his arraignment.

All of which meant Miles would spend the night in jail. I tried to call in favors hither and yon, hoping to get a special court appearance for him. No dice. The word had gotten around that I'd profaned the High and Holy Church of Law Enforcement on TV—
national
TV, as it turned out, with CNN and CNBC running my entire speech every half hour, right after the China trade agreement story—so I got nothing but irritable stares as I made my rounds in the criminal justice community.

Finally, I gave up and slunk back to my office.

As I walked into my office, my secretary, Mrs. Fenton, looked like she was in a snit. “Don't blame me,” she said. “I tried.”

I wasn't really paying attention to her. “Tried what?” I said vaguely as I walked into my cluttered office.

I had more or less inherited my office from an old lawyer in Pickeral Point who died a few years back. I kept his furniture, the pictures on the walls, everything. Situated at the top of a flight of rusting iron stairs on the second floor of a small brick commercial building just off the town square, it's the sort of place that would put you in mind of an English gentlemen's club fallen on hard times. Heavy wood tables and desks, brass lamps with green shades, red Spanish leather upholstery. The leather is cracked, the wood is chipped, and the prints of pointers and woodcock and pheasants seemed to defy Mrs. Fenton's constant efforts at keeping them plumb and level.

But the place is me. Or at least it's how I like to think of myself. Good solid stuff, a little the worse for wear.

Oh, and there's a view, too. You go past my secretary's desk and into my office, there's a big picture window that takes up one entire wall. It looks over the boardwalk and onto the river. I'd have kept the place just for the view.

It was as I looked out at my view—a big breakbulk freighter was chugging by—that I saw what Mrs. Fenton was in her snit about. Silhouetted against the big window, back turned, was a woman. All I could see of her face was that she had a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, the smoke trailing up around her head. Mrs. Fenton has a thing about cigarette smoke. Out on the river in front of the woman in my office was an echo of that cigarette, trails of toffee-colored mist rising up off the river. A bottle of Ronrico spiced rum was open on the desk.

“Lisa?” I said.

My daughter turned and looked at me stonily. Lisa, luckily, favors her mother in looks. I may not have married stable women, or nice women, or sober women. But they were all fine-looking girls, I'll give them that. Lisa is about five-two, with long rich brown hair that meets her brow in a widow's peak, a pert nose, a square Irish jaw, large brown eyes, and a lovely smile.

Just then, however, she was not smiling. She wore a pair of jeans that could have stood a wash and a shapeless sweater that hid her body. The last time I'd seen her she was verging on plump. Now she looked wan, undernourished, a good fifteen pounds lighter.

“You look terrible,” I said.

“Marvelous to see you, too, Dad.” She gave me a bored smile and sat down heavily in my chair.

“You also look plastered.”

“Oh just taking a little vacation from sobriety. Off to the islands, don't you know?” Her tone was arch, an ironic put-on, as she took a swig of the awful Ronrico. She wasn't stumbling drunk or slurring her words, but it was obvious she'd already had a few.

A distant part of my brain wanted to join her, to match her pull for pull. Off to the islands. Let the problems of Lisa Sloan and Miles Dane float away on the same aromatic tide.

“I just flew all the way to New York to find you,” I said.

Lisa looked at me curiously. “Really.”

I nodded.

“Isn't that quaint. Were you going to save me from myself?”

There are maudlin drunks, there are happy drunks, there are thrill-seeking drunks . . . Apparently, though, Lisa took after her Irish forbears: She was a fighting drunk.

I threw her the keys to my house. “Take a cab back to my place. Sleep it off. When you wake up sober, we'll talk.”

She gave me the sarcastic smile again. “I was kind of looking for work. You got anything around here for a law school dropout with a drinking problem?”

The truth was, my practice was already stretched a little thin. And with the Dane business heating up, I really did need some help. But I wasn't going to broach that subject with a drunk woman.

“We can talk about it later.”

“You know I'd earn my keep. I've worked for you before.”

“When you're sober,” I said sharply.

She sighed theatrically. “Oh well. I suppose there's always prostitution.”

“Dammit, Lisa . . .” I was about to launch into her, but then I clamped my mouth shut. What was the point? I am of the firm opinion—and this is confirmed by my own experience with a wide variety of wives, girlfriends, law partners, and concerned friends who tried to talk sense into me back when I was drinking—that trying to reason with a drunk person about his or her condition is not just a vast waste of time, but is actually counterproductive. It makes people defensive and angry, which only increases their interest in the bottle.

It's agonizing to watch someone you love do self-destructive things and know that trying to intervene or make decisions for them is the worst thing you can do. But sometimes that's just the way it is.

The phone rang.

“Can you get that, Mrs. Fenton?” I called.

The phone continued to ring. I supposed Mrs. Fenton had discreetly gone off to powder her nose so that Lisa and I could talk in privacy.

“For Pete's sake, Lisa, I've got work to do,” I said. I knew I seemed unfeeling, but in her current combative condition, the best thing I could do was get Lisa back to my house in hopes she might go to sleep and wake up in a saner frame of mind. I took the bottle of Ron Rico off the desk, set it on the floor, picked up my ringing phone. “Charley Sloan.”

“You that big lawyer?” It was the voice of a young man. “The one off the TV?” I could hear the noise of jail in the background. When you've practiced law as long as I have, you learn to recognize the sound.

“I'm Charley Sloan. Who am I speaking to?”

“Yeah, my name is Leon. I'm down here at the jail. I was wondering if you could come get me out.” He sounded very young, if not particularly frightened about his predicament.

“Okay, Leon. Full name.”

“Leon James Prouty.”

“What have you been charged with, young man?”

“Uh. They said I was doing some midnight landscaping.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“Like if you was to find a yard where somebody had just did some landscaping, and you was to dig up all the new bushes and throw 'em in a truck, drive off with them? That's what you'd call midnight landscaping.”

“So the charge would be grand theft?”

“I guess. Plus, you know how they do, make up a bunch of shit, try to scare you? Criminal trespass, breaking and entering, receiving—so on, so forth.”

“You at the city jail?”

“Pickeral Point police station.”

“Okay, good. So have you been booked?”

“Yes sir.”

“You got money, Leon? I don't work for free.”

“How much this gonna cost me?”

I picked a number out of the air, just to see if he was serious. “We could probably get you started for five hundred. If you should happen to go to trial, considerably more.”

“Oh. No problem. Can I write you a check?”

“You're making a joke, right?”

“I'll get it from the ATM as soon as you spring me.”

A thief with a bank account. What a pleasant novelty. Most of my clients keep their life savings in a fat wad in their front pocket. “I'll be right down,” I said. “I trust you haven't given a statement to the police?”

“No sir. I don't say jack to them clowns.”

“Keep it that way. I'll be right down.”

I hung up the phone and turned to Lisa. “I've got to run. Go back to my house and just sit tight for a while, okay?”

“How about I come with you?”

“Forget it.”

“I'll leave the rum here. Huh? What do you say?” She smiled coyly.

I didn't feel like negotiating with a drunk, so we walked silently out to my aging Chrysler. Lisa slouched in a small heap next to me, drumming rapidly on her thigh with her fingernails. “Put your seat belt on.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she said in an ironic tone.

“And when did you start smoking?”

“You know what, Dad? The reason I came here is I was hoping to avoid the judgmental bullshit.”

Despite her promise to leave the rum in the office, she'd brought it with her. I reached over, grabbed it, poured it out the window.

“Man!” she said. “You had to do that, didn't you? Mr. Good Parent. Mr. Take Charge.”

When she was sober, Lisa was a terrific kid. But right now I didn't like her much. Had I been this impossible back in my drinking days? Undoubtedly. Probably a good deal worse. I am a grandiose drunk. The more I swig, the bigger a man I am, the greater my accomplishments, the smarter I get, the braver, the taller . . . I sneaked a look at my daughter and felt the creeping itch of shame. My fault. Surely this was all my fault.

It was the hook she would always have in me. As long as I felt like I might be able to reclaim her, make up for my mistakes as a father, she'd always have leverage over me, always have the ability to force me into being softer on her than I probably ought to be.

I kept my mouth closed and drove.

When we reached the police station, I said, “Wait here for me.” Why I bothered saying that, I don't know. Lisa, of course, got out and followed me into the station.

The lobby of the new Pickeral Point police station has all the latest security features. Outside it's a bland sandstone box, designed to fit in with the aging Art Deco knock-offs that comprise the city and county government buildings on the square. But inside it's all modern: cameras, a receptionist behind bulletproof glass, fancy locks that you have to punch secret codes into. The old station had featured an open front counter and doors you could have jimmied with a credit card. So far as I know, nobody had ever invaded the place, nobody had ever come in waving a gun, nobody had ever planted a bomb. Nevertheless: now, Fort Knox.

“Hi, Regina,” I said to the receptionist.

Regina was a chatty type. I make a point to keep on her good side because she knows everything that happens in the law enforcement community and isn't afraid to tell you about it in great detail. “Hi, Charley. Boy, they're hot at you today.”

I laughed.

“They already put Mr. Dane on the bus to the county lockup.”

“No problem. I've got another client. Leon Prouty.”

“That snakehead boy?”

“The who?”

“The snakehead.” When she saw I had no idea what she was talking about, she said, “The midnight landscaper, right?”

I nodded, and Regina buzzed me through the door back into the innards of the building. Lisa slipped in with me. “I'm with Mr. Sloan,” she said cheerily, as Regina looked ready to object. “I'm Charley's new paralegal.”

The duty sergeant eyed me briefly as I came into the booking area, then looked back at the paperwork he was filling out.

“Hi, Fred,” I said brightly. “Coming to pick up a prisoner. Leon James Prouty.”

“After that wiseass performance on the TV today?” the duty sergeant said. “You can call me Sergeant Ross.”

“Aw, come on. They always quote me out of context.”

The sergeant ignored me for a while, started ticking things off on a pink form. Tick. Tick. Tick. Giving each line a great deal of study.

“Take your time,” I said.

Lisa was pacing up and down. Not only a bellicose drunk, it appeared, but a hyper drunk, too.

The desk sergeant kept pretending to work. The way the room is set up, most of the prisoners are held in a corral behind the desk. If they stand in the right place, they can watch us.

“Hey!” It was a tall thin boy with dyed blond hair and lots of tattoos. “Mr. Sloan? You getting me out?”

“Hang on,” I said. “We'll have you out in a jiff.”

The sergeant ignored me. Another lawyer came in, Victor Trembly, probably the most despised criminal lawyer this side of Detroit. “Charley,
mi amigo
!” he said in his usual unctuous tone. “How's the big star of the small screen?”