Richard Patterson - The Lasko Tangent

I couldn’t let Lasko see my chill. I spoke quietly. “You’re a taxpayer. Write your Congressman. You and I are through-for now.”

Catlow touched Lasko’s sleeve. “Wait for me downstairs, Bill. Mr. Paget and I are going to talk.” Lasko didn’t answer. Catlow went on in the same calm tone. “This”-he nodded at me as if I were the potted plant-“is why I’m your lawyer.” Lasko was still staring at me. I wasn’t sure he had heard. The atmosphere was as murderous as fallout. Then Lasko wrenched out of his chair, raked me with a last hot glance, and stalked from the room. The man’s strange force lingered; the room seemed suddenly empty.

Catlow remained where he sat, eyeing us coolly across the table. He turned to Robinson. “Would you excuse us? Mr. Paget and I need some discussion time.”

Robinson glanced at me. I nodded. He left, looking dubious.

Catlow and I were alone. “You’ll have to excuse my client,” he said.

“Pretty broken up about Lehman, isn’t he?”

Catlow lit a cigarette, an appropriately cautious low-tar brand, and reached for an ashtray. His movements were spare and abstemious. He looked up. “I imagine that you’re feeling quite heroic. Every young government lawyer probably dreams of his moment in the sun. ‘Young Mr. Paget, valiant for truth.’” He exhaled smoke, and appraised me through the haze.

He was quietly patronizing, but his words were close enough to be uncomfortable. “Something like that.”

He gave a thin, satisfied smile. “It’s very foolish, Christopher. This case will come and go and in a year will be nothing more than a footnote in a budget request, gathering dust. Even if there is a case, it will settle for a consent decree, and nothing will have happened. Except to you.” He looked at me with level grey eyes, choosing his words with care. “Putting aside what was said here this afternoon, the consequences to you could be considerable. You will make enemies needlessly. You will be an undesirable, not because you’ve made people angry, but because you’ve made people angry in a way that reflects on your judgment-over nothing.”

His calm was oddly deflating. “Go on. I’m all ears.”

“There was also careless talk this afternoon-your careless talk-about matters which are not the province of your agency. The police have made no accusations. You have no one who, in the final analysis, will support you in this game.” His voice was mournful now, the dirge for my dead career. “You are alone. So there is nothing to be gained. Think on it.”

He was watching me expectantly. I noticed that a blood vein showed in his pale forehead. I watched him inhale. It made him look gaunt, like a death’s head. He was Mr. Outside to Lasko’s Mr. Inside. Catlow would take care of my career and handle the agency while Lasko commissioned the heavy stuff-traffic fatalities and death threats-at a safe distance. It was all very effective. And I was sick of it.

“It’s a good analysis, Mr. Catlow. But you’ve made one invalid assumption. You assume that I want to be like you. The truth is, I’d sooner flunk my Wassermann test. That’s not heroics. It’s just a fact.” My voice picked up tenor. “Now I’ll give you some advice. Your client’s performance today was one of the uglier things I’ve seen. But not as ugly as Alec Lehman, bleeding all over Arlington Avenue.” The vein in Catlow’s forehead was throbbing now; it made him seem as pale as ivory. I finished. “Lasko is a tar baby. You’re going to get tar all over you.”

Catlow stared for a moment; I wasn’t behaving right, not at all. Then he stood briskly, primed to leave. No final threats. Catlow was not a man to waste words; he would use them elsewhere. “Good-bye, Mr. Paget.” The good-bye carried echoes, as if I were going somewhere.

My voice stopped him. I spoke in a conversational tone. “You know, when I got to Lehman, his face was smashed in and his skull was crushed. One eye was closed and there was a sticky pool of stuff on the outside of his head that used to be on the inside.”

The vein pulsed; his eyes were knife-points of anger. I had spoken crudely, not like a lawyer, of forbidden things. Things that formal language made less real. He left quickly.

I slumped down in my chair. The party was over, and I was left to clean up the mess. I felt more tired than I could remember.

Robinson was fidgeting with the contents of his “in” box when I walked into his office. It was something he did when he was excited and wanted distraction.

“What happened?” he asked. His eyes were bright with curiosity.

I slid tiredly into the chair in front of his desk. “You guess, Jim.” I said it in a casual tone, to assure him that he hadn’t missed anything.

Robinson smiled faintly. “I think I can give you a synopsis. Big Daddy told you that you had been bad, and would be punished. Exiled to the Bureau of Fisheries and Hatcheries, to think about proper spawning conditions for salmon.” His tone said that he half-expected it to happen.

“That’s fairly close.” I was coming down fast; my voice seemed to arrive at my ears from some great distance.

“And you told him to stick it.”

I nodded.

Robinson’s face sobered. “That was a pretty amazing performance. The first time I’ve actually seen you do something stupid.”

“You just haven’t been looking. How do you read Lasko?”

“I think Lasko wanted you to know that he killed Lehman. He wanted you to get the sweats at night, thinking about it. And Catlow will be trying to put the fix in.”

“I don’t think I’m the next pedestrian fatality. Too messy, and unnecessary. I don’t know anything.” I spoke with more conviction than I felt.

“Lasko can’t be sure of that. Let me tell you what I think.” His voice turned firm and authoritative. “Even granting your assumption, you don’t have long on this case. About once every five years, we get into something that stands to hurt someone really powerful. It usually works out about the same. There are ways of pressuring this place through the people who run it, the ones who want to get what politicians or maybe someone with money can give. This is that kind of case, and you’re in the middle. But this one is worse-somebody’s gotten killed.”

“So what would you do?”

Robinson looked down at his desk. “I’d leave it alone.” He spoke quickly, as if anticipating an argument. “Look, I’m not defending any of this. But I think this place does some good, and it’s not a perfect world. Realistically, your chances of getting anywhere with this-except hurt-are about zero. Let the police do it.”

I shook my head. “It’s too late for that.”

“Damn it, Chris, it’s too late for this. It’s too late for Lehman.”

“Lehman’s death wasn’t where it ended. It was where it began.”

He paused, as if weighing the finality in my voice. “All right,” he said at length, “if Lehman makes this one worth the risk, OK, although I can’t see why. But you need another friend to help-Woods, McGuire, I don’t care who. Otherwise, you won’t have authority to spit. Catlow will cut your nuts off. If Lasko doesn’t do worse.”

I shifted in my chair. “I guess it has to be Woods.”

“Whoever, Chris, you’d better get on it. And no more going off on a tangent, investigating your own agency.”

I stood. Robinson’s round worried face belied his sharp tone. “Good luck,” he added mildly. “You’ve always shown a genius for making friends in high places.”

I left and went looking for Woods.

The tranquility of the Chairman’s suite was unnerving. Up here, my meeting with Lasko seemed unreal. I asked the receptionist for Woods, and sank to a soft chair. Woods was out. But Mary was in. She peered around her office door.