John Dobbyn - Neon Dragon

He knew me well enough to freeze in midtemper. I gave him a rough sketch of what I thought I could deliver and got the commitment from him of a major weapon to carry into battle.

IT WAS A GOOD HOUR’S DRIVE out to the state maximum security prison in Walpole. From past cases, I was a familiar sight to the guards who handled lawyers’ visits.

Within ten minutes I was sitting in the visiting room across from the infamous Frank Dolson. According to the guard, he was doing ten years on another arson. There was no denying that the man had carved out a specialty.

He was a gray-to-white-haired, late-fortyish type, with the kind of prison pallor that suggested that he didn’t spend a lot of time in the yard. He had that slack ease with his surroundings that comes from a collection of years in an institution and a number of years yet to go.

He didn’t know me from Mahatma Ghandi, but a chance for a trip to the visitors’ room broke up a long afternoon for him. He was in no hurry.

“Mr. Dolson, my name’s Michael Knight. I’m a lawyer. I work with Lex Devlin.”

That brought a slow smile. “How’s the old fox?”

“He could be better. That’s what I want to talk to you about. I need some information.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“I suppose. I need to know about the jury on your first arson trial. I want to know about the fix, if there was one.”

His eyebrows went up in controlled interest.

“Let me tell you how I see it, Mr. Dolson. I think someone bought a few years of your time. You agreed to plead guilty to an arson charge to prevent someone else from getting caught. The idea was to plea-bargain for a sentence of a few years, do the time, and come out to a bank account. When they found the bodies in the fire, it turned into a murder charge, which was more than you agreed to. The only way they could get you out of that before you started naming names was to fix the jury. My guess is that you had nothing to do with the actual fix. But you probably knew about it.”

He leaned back in the chair. He was clearly on his home turf. The grin told me I was on target. The silence told me I was not even in sight of first base.

“I’ve got a proposition, Mr. Dolson. It could change your life from this minute on.”

Nothing. Not a flicker. But he was listening.

“They hung that jury fix around Lex Devlin’s neck. They never proved anything. The rumor was enough. He’s worn it like a noose for ten years. It took the better part of his life. I think you’re going to do the decent thing. You’re going to give it back to him.”

The self-amused grin broadened.

“What makes you think so?”

“Your own self-interest. I can make a phone call to the United States Attorney. He can have you out of here and into the federal witness protection program by tomorrow. It all depends on you.”

Dolson kept the grin for show, but his eyes got curious.

“No free lunch, Knight. Never has been, never will be. What’s the price?”

“Information. Later, testimony. You give the U.S. Attorney the names of the big shots who pulled the strings to fix the jury. It could start the dominoes falling. That’s what the U.S. Attorney wants. Mine’s more personal. I want it made clear that Lex Devlin had nothing to do with it.”

The grin turned from time-killing amusement to contempt. He leaned across the table with a typical prison whisper.

“You said I’m going to do the right thing. Let me tell you what I’m gonna do, Mr. Lawyer. I’m gonna do another three years in this joint and go for parole. Then I’m clean. I walk out of here. I got no worries about my back from some big shot I ratted on. Nobody ever touched me with that jury fix. Devlin wants me to rat on someone? Tell him to go to hell.”

I pushed back from the screen between us and stood up. I took my time buttoning up my topcoat to emphasize the fact that I was leaving and he wasn’t.

“I don’t think I’ll give Mr. Devlin that message. I hope you’re getting a big kick out of your smug little act, because in a couple of days you may find yourself indicted as an accessory to murder. That jury fix that you agreed to is all part of the arson that turned into homicide. By then I won’t need your testimony. Don’t count on being out of here in three years. I was willing to help you. Let’s see how you make out with the U.S. Attorney when the fan gets a hit.”

It felt like a good exit speech, but I knew I had hit a brick wall. Dolson was still not in a frame of mind to move. He knew a bluff when he heard one.

When you hit a wall, you’ve got three choices. You can back up and ram the wall, go around the wall, or quit. The last was not an option, so I decided on a combination of the other two.

I realized that I had tried to move Dolson with a carrot but no stick. It was a new league for me, but the lessons were coming fast. It finally dawned that I needed some serious leverage to get anyone involved in the jury-fix conspiracy to tumble.

My next stop was the court clerk’s office for another look at the transcript of Dolson’s first trial. I remembered the day we had lunch with Mr. Munsey. He said that Dolson had an alibi witness by the name of Gallagher. I ran through the transcript until I found Gallagher’s home address. He lived in a row-house section of Revere. Given the fact that Mr. Munsey pegged him as a low-grade boozer, the chances were good that he was still there.

I found the house in a neighborhood seven blocks back from the shoreline. From the looks of the peeling paint and overgrown patch of dandelion lawn, he was not on any twelve-step recovery.

The frazzled, life-worn woman who answered the bell confirmed the fact that it was the residence of her son, Frank Gallagher. She didn’t say it as if she was bragging. It took only two questions to learn that my best bet for finding him would be the Clamshell Bar two blocks toward the ocean. It being somewhat after noon, he was probably there drinking his lunch.

I hustled the two blocks to get there before he got so deeply into the bottle that he’d deprive me of the pleasure and honor of treating him to his first or fifth drink of the day.

The bar was dark and long from front to back. The stench of ages of spilled beer and rotgut whiskey stung the nostrils. The ambience was also colored by the fact that it was unaffected by any regard for a smoke-free ordinance.

Frank Gallagher was easy to spot among the five or six bodies clustered at the bar. He was alone at the far end, perched over two elbows on the bar, contemplating the froth of a half-downed glass of beer. The cutoff T-shirt displayed two arms’ lengths of cheap, mostly faded tattoos.

I took the stool next to him and tried to judge the degree of glaze in the eyes he turned in my direction. He seemed still to have enough brain cells in focus to have made the trip worthwhile.

“Hi, Frank. How’s it going?”

He leaned away from me to get his eyes to focus on this unfamiliar face.

“Do I know you?”

“Well, maybe not. We’ve got a mutual friend. Same first name. Frank Dolson.”

“Hey, you know Frank?”

He said the name with such admiration that I instantly became an old pal of Dolson’s.

“That’s right. I just saw him a little while ago. He said to come by and say hello. Told me to buy you a drink on him.”

The first statement brought a smile, but the part about the drink opened his mouth in a full grin of anticipation.

“Yeah? Good old Frank.”

“Yep. But not this stuff.” I pushed back the beer in disgust. “I mean a real drink. Let’s take a bottle over to the table.”

The grin turned to absolute ecstasy. Life was truly good. It got even better when I said, “Frank, you like good Scotch?”