Lawrence Block - A Walk Among the Tombstones

“So you said. Also Gotteskind. I read the file and I think you’re right, but where did you get piano wire with Gottes-kind?”

“There’s another victim,” I said. “Raped, tortured, a breast severed. The difference is she’s alive. I figured you’d want to talk to her.”

DREW Kaplan said, “ Pro bono , huh? You like to tell me why those are the two Latin words everybody knows? By the time I got through Brooklyn Law I’d learned enough Latin to start my own church. Res gestae, corpus juris, lex talionis . Nobody ever says these words to me. Just pro bono . You know what it means, pro bono ?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“The full phrase is pro bono publico . For the public good. Which is why big corporate law firms use the phrase to refer to the minuscule amount of legal work which they deign to undertake for causes they believe in as a sop to their consciences, which are understandably troubled by virtue of the fact that they spend upwards of ninety percent of their time grinding the faces of the poor and billing upwards of two hundred dollars an hour for it. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“That’s the longest sentence I’ve ever heard you speak.”

“Is that right? Miss Cassidy, as your attorney it’s my duty to caution you against associating with men like this gentleman. Matt, seriously, Miss Cassidy’s a Manhattan resident, the victim of a crime which took place nine months ago in the borough of Queens. I’m a struggling lawyer with modest offices on Court Street in the borough of Brooklyn. So how, if you don’t mind my asking, do I come into it?”

We were in his modest offices, and the banter was just his way of breaking the ice, because he already knew why Pam Cassidy needed a Brooklyn lawyer to see her through interrogation by a Brooklyn homicide detective. I had gone over the situation with him at some length on the phone.

“I’m going to call you Pam,” he said now. “Is that all right with you?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Or do you prefer Pammy?”

“No, Pam’s fine. Just so it’s not Pammy.”

The special significance of that would have been lost on Kaplan. He said, “It’ll be Pam, then. Pam, before you and I go down to see Officer Kelly — it’s Officer, Matt? Or Detective?”

“Detective John Kelly.”

“Before we meet with the good detective, let’s get our signals straight. You’re my client. That means I don’t want you questioned by anyone unless I’m at your side. Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

“That means from anyone, cops, press, TV reporters sticking microphones in your face. ‘You’ll have to speak with my attorney.’ Let me hear you say that.”

“You’ll have to speak with my attorney.”

“Perfect. Somebody calls you on the phone, asks you what the weather’s like outside, what do you say?”

“You’ll have to speak with my attorney.”

“I think she’s got it. One more. Guy calls you on the phone, says you’ve just won a free trip to Paradise Island in the Bahamas in connection with a special promotion they’re running. What do you say?”

“You’ll have to speak with my attorney.”

“No, him you can tell to fuck off. Everybody else on the planet, however, they have to speak to your attorney. Now we’ll go over some specifics, but generally speaking I only want you answering questions when I’m present, and only if they relate directly to the outrageous crime which was committed upon your person. Your background, your life before the incident, your life since the incident, none of that is anybody’s business. If a line of questioning is introduced that I object to, I’ll cut in and stop you from answering. If I don’t say anything, but if for any reason whatsoever the question bothers you, you don’t answer it. You say that you want to confer privately with your attorney. ‘I want to confer privately with my attorney.’ Let’s hear you say that.”

“I want to confer privately with my attorney.”

“Excellent. The point is you’re not charged with anything and you’re not going to be charged with anything, so you’re doing them a favor in the first place, which puts us in a very good position. Now let’s just go over the background one time while we’ve got Matt here, and then you and I can go see Detective Kelly, Pam. Tell me how you happened to ask Matthew Scudder to try to track down the men who abducted and assaulted you?”

We had worked out the details before I’d called either John Kelly or Drew Kaplan. Pam needed a story that would make her the initiator of the investigation and leave Kenan Khoury out of it. She and Elaine and I batted it around, and this is what we came up with:

Pam, nine months after the incident, was trying to get on with her life. This was rendered more difficult by the dread she had that she would be victimized again by the same men. She had even thought of leaving New York to get away from them but felt the fear would remain with her no matter how far she fled.

Recently she had been with a man to whom she had told the story of the loss of her breast. This fellow, who was a respectable married man and whose name she would not under any circumstances divulge, was shocked and sympathetic. He told her she would not rest easy until the men were caught, and that even if it was impossible to find them it would almost certainly be helpful to her emotional recovery if she herself took some action toward their discovery and apprehension. Since the police had had ample time to investigate and had evidently accomplished nothing, it was his recommendation that she engage a private investigator who could concentrate wholeheartedly upon the case instead of practicing the sort of criminological triage required of policemen.

There was in fact a private operative he knew and trusted, because this nameless fellow had been a client of mine in the past. He had sent her to me, and in addition had agreed to cover my fee and expenses, with the understanding that his role in all of this would not be divulged to anyone under any circumstances.

A couple of interviews with Pam had suggested to me that the most effective way to approach the case was by assuming that she had not been their only victim. Indeed, the way they had discussed killing her seemed to indicate that they had in fact committed murder. I had accordingly tried multiple approaches designed to turn up evidence of crimes committed by the same two men either before or after the maiming of my client.

Library research had turned up two cases which I considered likely, Marie Gotteskind and Leila Alvarez. The Gotteskind case involved abduction by means of a truck, and by securing the Gotteskind file through unconventional channels I had confirmed that it had also involved an amputation. The Alvarez case looked like probable abduction, and was similar, too, in that the victim was abandoned in a cemetery. (Pam had been dropped in Mount Zion Cemetery, in Queens.) When I learned on Thursday that Alvarez’s mutilation, unspecified in the newspaper account, had been identical to Pam’s, it seemed self-evident to me that the same criminals were involved.

So why didn’t I say anything to Kelly at the time? Most important, I couldn’t ethically do so without my client’s permission, and I had spent the weekend talking her into it and preparing her for what she would have to face. In addition, I wanted to see if any of the other hooks I had in the water would bring in a bite.

One of these was the movie-of-the-week pitch, which I’d had Elaine try on various sex-crime units around town in the hope of turning up a living victim. Several women had called, although none had proved even remote possibilities, but I’d wanted to wait until the weekend was over before giving up on the line of inquiry.