Grant McCrea - Dead Money

We sat in silence for a while. We sipped our drinks.

I’m not sure I liked the way you were talking about my client, I said.

He’s not your client anymore.

Yes he is. He hasn’t fired me yet. He just hates me.

Dorita rolled her eyes, went into another funk.

Okay, she said finally. What does it mean?

Let’s start with what’s absolutely clear. Veronica’s at the center of this.

Yes.

Ramon. Lisa.

Yes.

I think it’s safe to say that the best working hypothesis is that Jules killed Larry Silver after all. But not over poker winnings. Because Larry Silver showed up to blackmail him.

Because Larry Silver, somehow, knew something about Veronica.

Exactly.

And where to go from here is the question. Tell the cops?

I don’t think I’m quite ready to do that. Like I said, Jules is still my, our, client. Until he officially fires us. Or we fire him. We’re not doing this for the cops. We’re doing this as part of our obligation to our client. Sure, we suspect he’s guilty, now. But we don’t know that for sure. And even if we did, unless we knew that someone else was in imminent danger, we couldn’t tell them. Even if we wanted to.

So let’s keep going. I mean, the preliminary hearing’s in two days.

It is?

It is.

Goddamn. I was even more right than I thought.

Must be a novel feeling for you.

We slept on it.

I slept on it at my place.

Dorita at hers.

It seemed like the right thing to do.

In the morning we met at Starbucks. Being at the office helped me think.

We reviewed the bidding. We chewed over the alternatives.

We listed the candidates. We weighed the options.

We chewed the fat. We crunched the bones.

We picked the lint off the jacket.

We ditched the metaphors.

We sat in silence for a while.

Butch called with some news. The preliminary autopsy result on FitzGibbon. Death caused by the fall. No doubt about that. No signs of pre-fall trauma. Though after a fall from that height, it was hard to tell.

No surprises there, I said.

No.

Doesn’t rule out being pushed.

No, it doesn’t, he said. And also…

Yes?

The blood work was awfully weird.

Out with it. You’re killing me here.

All kinds of shit. Mescaline. LSD. Meth. Whatever.

What the fuck?

Yeah. That’s what we all said.

This was the big cheese on the mayor’s antidrug task force, for Christ’s sake.

Exactly. And anyway, just not the type in general.

Man. Another fucking curveball. Wait a minute.

I pulled out a blank index card. Filled it with scribbles.

Okay, I said, listen, we need you now. We need you on the team. I know you’ve got your job to do. I’m not asking you to compromise your job. But we need you. Come over and talk to us, anyway. We’ve got to make sense of all this shit. We’re just about there. I know it. But the last step, this is going to be heavy. We need your brain. We might need your muscle, too.

He hesitated. I argued. He wavered. I persuaded.

He came to Starbucks. It started all over again. He had a duty to the force. He couldn’t just become a cowboy vigilante. He wasn’t Clint Eastwood. He had a job. A mortgage. Why couldn’t we just go to his boss with the stuff we got from Sarah? They’d follow it up. Hell, it was dynamite.

Besides the problem of our obligations to our client, which he understood, it wasn’t dynamite, yet, I explained. It was the scent of dynamite. We still didn’t have a shred of real evidence. We had suppositions. Educated guesses. Okay, highly educated guesses, veritable Ph. D. s of guesses. But still guesses. Odd behavior. Conflicting statements.

We wore Butch down.

He shook his head in resignation.

Okay, he said. But on one condition.

Shoot, I said.

When I say the word, we call it in.

I looked Butch in the eye. There were not many people I could trust. Trust not only to not betray me when the chips were down. But to have the judgment to know when they were. But Butch was one of them. We needed him. He was a man of action. Action was coming. I could feel it in my bones.

The choice was elementary.

Okay, I said. You’re the man.

All right, he said.

Plan time, said Dorita.

The weakest link, I said. It’s worked so far.

I’ll give you that, she said. But are there any left?

By definition, I said. However strong the weakest link, it’s still weaker than the rest.

I knew that philosophy degree would come in handy one day.

What makes you think this was the first time?

Just a wild guess.

Okay, kiddies, said Butch. Let’s get to the point.

I had a thought. A very good thought. I was proud of my thought. I decided to string it out. For maximum effect.

Why, I asked, did Lisa run?

Because she knew something, said Dorita.

That she didn’t want to tell you, added Butch.

And?

They looked at me.

That’s not a sufficient explanation, I said. She could have just said nothing. Denied. By running, she told us we were on to something. Why did she run?

Ooh, said Dorita, you’re so sexy when you’re being mysterious.

Just the Socratic method. You brought me back to undergraduate days, with that philosophy remark.

All right, Monsieur Descartes, can we get to the goddamn point?

Lisa knows something, I said.

Right.

She didn’t want to tell us.

Correct.

And.

And.

And she knew that if she stayed with us, she would tell us.

Exactly.

Ah.

So.

So, she’s still the weakest link.

Bingo, said Butch.

Oho, Monsieur Descartes, said Dorita. If you keep this up, I might even start respecting your intellect.

You keep threatening.

All right, children, said Butch, let’s go grab the little bitch.

I prefer to think of her as misguided, said Dorita.

Whatever, I said. Let’s grab her.

By force? asked Dorita.

Why do you think Butch is on the team? I asked.

Wait a minute… said Butch.

Just kidding, I said.

But we do have to get her away from Jules again, said Dorita. And persuasion isn’t going to work this time.

Let’s figure that out when we get there, said Butch.

I couldn’t agree more, I said. But first, I think I’ll finish this tall skinny latte.

Butch and Dorita got up.

Okay, I said. Just kidding. Let’s go.

The cab smelled heavily of spilled beer and ashes.

I had another thought.

Butch, I said. The note. Did you find out anything about the note?

Jesus, he said. I totally forgot.

You’re kidding.

No, I’m not. Christ, man, you were badgering me so bad I couldn’t think straight. I’m turning into you.

Okay, I’ll take that as a compliment. What did you find out?

I couldn’t get a look at it. I’m not officially on the case. It’s locked up. They’re guarding it like Bush’s IQ scores.

Sure, I said. I get that. But what did you find out?

I talked to some guys.

And?

It wasn’t a handwritten note. It was an e-mail.

We knew that. To who?

To whom, said Dorita.

To whom?

To his wife.

Veronica? Dorita and I said in unison.

Jesus, said Dorita. Get out an index card.

I already had one in my hand.

Whoa, I said. This is a blockbuster.

Might just blow us out of the water, said Dorita.

All right, said Butch. It’s time to let old Butch in on the fun.

I had forgotten, in all of the excitement, that we hadn’t shared with Butch everything we knew. We explained the Veronica angle.

Butch whistled. Perhaps in admiration. Perhaps not.

Listen, I said, this is definitely weird. But let’s put it in context. All it really adds to what we know is that FitzGibbon thought that Veronica was still alive.