Parnell Hall - The Anonymous Client

So now, at long last, Steve Winslow was face to face with his elusive client.

He wished he wasn’t.

“You have to see it from my point of view,” Kemper said.

“I can barely see it from mine,” Steve said. “You wanna talk, talk, but you better start now, ’cause my patience is wearing thin.”

“I know, I know,” Kemper said. “Well, look, this thing with Marilyn. It wasn’t my fault. Or hers, either. We never planned anything. It just happened.”

“It always does.”

Kemper’s eyes flashed. “No, it doesn’t. You’re trying to make this sound like something cheap. It wasn’t. This is different. This is special. This is-”

“Bullshit. You can save that for someone who wants to hear it. I don’t give a fuck if you were Romeo and Juliet. The fact is, you woke up and realized you married the wrong stepsister. Big mistake. You could have had the younger, prettier one with all the money.”

Kemper came out of his chair. “You son of a bitch!”

“Right,” Steve said. “I’m very brave with the wire mesh screen between us. That’s your next line, Kemper. Go on. Say it.”

Douglas Kemper glared at him in helpless frustration.

“All right, look, clown,” Steve said. “You happen to be in one hell of a mess. Believe it not, it happens to be entirely of your own making. You want to try to get out of it, fine. You want to sit around trying to justify yourself, protesting to high heaven how wronged you’ve been, I can always come back later. I happen to be in no mood for that shit. So you calm down, get control, and then when you’re good and ready, tell me what the fuck happened.”

Kemper glared at him for some time. Then he seemed to wilt. He sank down in his chair and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Start with Bradshaw,” Steve said.

“Yeah. Bradshaw.”

“You know him?”

“Yeah. I knew him.”

“Been to his apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s perjury for starters. Tell me about it.”

Kemper took a breath, blew it out again. “Well, it’s pretty much as he said.”

“Who?”

“The prosecutor. That smug son of a bitch-”

“Skip that. What about Bradshaw?”

Kemper shrugged. “He was blackmailing Marilyn.”

“Not you?”

“No, just Marilyn.”

“About her father’s death?”

Kemper shook his head. “No. About me.”

“What did he have?”

“Photostat of the motel reservation.”

Steve sighed. “You’ll pardon me,” he said, “I’m just a little too pissed off to have to drag this out of you. Go on and tell me what happened. What was his approach? Did he contact you or Marilyn?”

“That’s just it,” Kemper said. “He hit on Marilyn. By the time I found out about it, it was too late.”

“You need a prompter? Go on. What happened?”

“Well, you understand, this is what Marilyn told me, after the fact. Bradshaw called her up. Cold. Out of the blue. Calls her on the telephone. Calls her by name. Identifies himself as ‘a friend.’ Says he has something he thinks she should have. Marilyn tries to ask questions but the guy’s evasive and mysterious. All he’ll tell her is he has something she forgot. She’s about to hang up on him when he tells her he has something from the Sand and Surf Motor Inn.”

Douglas Kemper grimaced. “And that’s where she made a mistake. That’s where she should have called me right away. But she didn’t. Instead, she agreed to meet the guy. So she goes to his apartment. He told her to go there, and like a damn fool she goes. I mean, in a building like that. It could have been a shakedown, it could have been anything.

“When she gets there Bradshaw whips out a photostat of a registration form from the Sand and Surf Motor Inn. It’s the card I signed, registering us as Mr. and Mrs. Sampson. Then he goes through the usual bullshit spiel about how he’s a really nice guy but he happens to be hard up and really needs the money, and if she’d just give him ten thousand dollars and-well, you know the rest.”

“No, I don’t know the rest. Let’s go through it. She drew out ten thousand dollars from her bank account and paid him off, right?”

“Right.”

“Did you know it?”

“No.”

“You hadn’t seen her in the meantime?”

“No, I hadn’t. We couldn’t meet that often. It’s kind of awkward, you know, and-”

“Yeah, sure. So you hadn’t seen her and she hadn’t told you, and she paid off the guy, and then what?”

“I saw her the next day and she told me about it. I couldn’t believe it. If she’d only come to me. She’d done everything wrong. Taking ten one thousand dollar bills out of her bank account. On a cash withdrawal of that size, they note the serial numbers. I knew it. She didn’t. She didn’t realize what she’d done. A blackmailer never quits. Giving Bradshaw that ten thousand dollars was just giving him a stranglehold over her. The motel reservation was nothing. It wasn’t even solid evidence. Against me, maybe, but not her. But that ten thousand dollars would fry her.

“That’s when I stepped in. I contacted Bradshaw and arranged to buy those bills back.”

Steve stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. I contacted Bradshaw and made a deal. It wasn’t that hard. Bradshaw was always willing to deal. That was part of his game. He was most agreeable. He would be delighted to return me Marilyn Harding’s ten grand in return for small bills. The only catch was, he wanted twelve thousand.”

“So you brought Marilyn’s bills back?”

Kemper grimaced. “I thought I did.”

“And you put them in an envelope and sent them to me. Along with the letter.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Marilyn was in trouble, big trouble. I wasn’t sure I could deal with it alone. I knew she needed help, and a special kind of help. This wasn’t something you could take to the cops. Or to any regular lawyer. Then I thought of you.”

“Why me?’

“I know Sheila Benton. I met her a long time ago through Marilyn. Happened to run into her just before she left for Europe. She told me about her case. What you did for her. Not so much in court. She said you did other things. Discreetly. Confidentially. Things no one would ever know about. She said you were a genius. I figured that’s what Marilyn needed. So I typed the letter and sent you those bills as a retainer. But I had to be very discreet. Very below board. I didn’t want to implicate Marilyn by mentioning her by name. I knew if you were as quick as all that, you’d immediately trace the serial numbers of the bills and find out who’d withdrawn them from the bank. You’d find out it was Marilyn, and you’d start protecting her.

“Only I hadn’t figured on Bradshaw.”

“He switched the bills?”

“Of course. As soon as I offered to buy them back, Bradshaw knew what I was after. So he played me for a sucker. He charged me twelve grand, and instead of Marilyn’s ten grand, he sold me ten bills he’d drawn out of the bank himself.”

“Which you promptly mailed to me,” Steve said. “Making my life a living hell ever since. Tell me something. Did you mention my name?”

“What?”

“To Bradshaw. When you called on Bradshaw. Did you mention me?”

“Yeah. As a matter of fact, I did. I told him you were my lawyer, and if he made any more trouble he’d hear from you.”

Steve shook his head. “Jesus Christ.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Little presumptuous, don’t you think? You hadn’t even consulted me.”

“Yeah. At first I was bluffing. But that’s when I decided to. Hire you, I mean.”

“Great. And when was this?”