Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘Let’s see.’ I hear her pawing through slips at the other end.

‘Your one o’clock canceled. He wants to reschedule next week. Department twelve called, motions in Vega are due the fourteenth.’

‘Who’s the judge?’ These are the pretrial motions in Laurel’s case. Whoever hears these is likely to be our trial judge.

‘Don’t know,’ she says.

‘Check the court roster.’

‘A new one’s due out. Reassignments,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to call over there and find out who it is?’

‘Yeah. And put a note on my desk.’

‘Will do. And one more message. Marcie Reed called.’

‘Who?’

‘She says her name is Reed.’

‘I don’t know any Reed. Did she say what it’s about?’

‘No.’

I’m racking my brain. Then it hits me. Marcie — the woman from the post office. Kathy Merlow’s friend.

‘Did she leave a phone number?’

She gives it to me and I write in on the back of a business card.

I thank her, hang up, and dial.

‘Postal Service. Can I help you?’ A man’s voice.

‘Marcie Reed, please.’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘Paul Madriani, returning her call.’

‘Just a minute.’

I hear him hollering Marcie’s name. He calls out several times. Several minutes go by, a lot of shuffling and noise on the other end. Then suddenly a voice, in the female timbre and very tentative.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello. Ms. Reed? This is Paul Madriani.’

‘Oh, yeah. You’re returning my call.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I uh… I saw your name and your picture in the paper,’ she says. Dead silence on the other end.

I wonder for a moment if the line’s gone dead.

‘Hello? Are you there?’ I ask.

‘Yeah. I’m still here,’ she says. ‘The woman you’re defending, is she the one you told me about, the one you want Kathy Merlow to help?’

‘She is. Do you know where I can find Mrs. Merlow?’

‘Maybe. I might be able to help you.’

‘How?’

‘I can’t talk on the phone. They monitor our calls,’ she says. ‘They keep track of the time we’re on the phone. If they catch us making personal calls — ’

She leaves the thought hanging, but I can hear the swift glide of the guillotine blade in its runners. The sweatshop school of management. They spend two million designing a chic logo for better image, an eagle’s head with a beak like the Sunset Limited, but still they can’t resist shoveling metric tons of psychic guano on the help.

‘Can we get together? I can meet you wherever you say,’ I tell her. ‘My office?’

‘No. No — I don’t want to do that. Besides, I can’t leave here during the day.’

‘After work?’ I say.

‘I have to pick up my kids from the sitter. How about over here?’

‘The post office?’ I say.

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you sure you won’t get in trouble?’

‘Mr. Haslid is off today.’ For Marcie Reed trouble starts with an H.

‘He was the shouter on the loading dock?’ I say.

‘Yeah. But he’s gone today.’

And the mice will play, I think.

‘Why not.’

‘I take my lunch at one. I have forty minutes,’ she says. ‘We can talk in Kathy’s old office. There’s nobody in there right now.’

I look at my watch. It’s nearly twelve-forty.

‘Do I come to the front counter?’

‘No. Don’t do that. I’ll meet you on the loading dock. One o’clock. Gotta go now,’ and she hangs up.

Sarah’s run out of tokens and is grounded playing with the stick, a little blond boy eyeing the craft jealously. I pluck her out of the helicopter and make his day. I will have to cut short the date with my daughter, drop her at day care a little early.

On the loading dock two mail carriers are putting letter crates into the back of little jeeplike vans. There’s no sign of Marcie Reed, so I hang back at the end of the alley. I’m about five minutes late, and I begin to wonder if she has already come and gone, or had second thoughts about talking to me.

I lean against the wall of a building, one eye on my watch, the other on the loading dock. Several minutes pass and finally the door opens. It’s Marcie. I move down the alley until she sees me. She says something to one of the guys working on the dock.

He stops long enough to look at her, hands on his hips. He shakes his head.

As I get closer I can hear part of their conversation. ‘You get caught, it’s your ass,’ he says.

She appears undaunted and waves me on.

‘You’re late. I thought you weren’t comin’,’ she says.

‘I had to drop my daughter at day care.’

‘I don’t have much time.’ She’s carrying a sack in her hand. I assume her lunch.

The two men on the dock are sizing me up, the look in their eyes, like get caught inside and you’re dead meat.

‘Are you sure this is all right?’

‘Yeah. It’s okay, but let’s not stand out here,’ she says. To Marcie okay means not getting caught. There’s the gleam of excitement in her eye. The boss is gone, time to play.

I climb the dock. The looks I get from the two mail handlers tell me I am probably violating several sections of postal regulations, thoughts of the inspector upstairs with his badge and gun.

‘Are you sure it’s okay? There’s a coffee shop down the street. My treat,’ I tell her. Last gambit to do it off-site.

‘It’s all right.’ She looks at me, like grow some balls. Marcie strikes me as one of those impish characters, hammered all her life, always in trouble, capable of feigning great fright but never truly afraid, something from never-never land.

I’m on her heels and we’re through the swinging door, the one with the big red sign on it:

AUTHORIZED POSTAL PERSONNEL ONLY

Inside is a maze of tables, canvas mail bags tied open to metal hooks, rolling dollies and carts. Maybe a dozen people, dressed in various versions of the uniform, blue-gray shirts with the postal emblem on the shoulders, jeans, and sneakers.

‘How old’s your kid?’ she says. Small talk as we walk, under her breath.

‘Seven,’ I whisper. I feel like some teenager sneaking onto the driving range after hours to steal balls.

‘Same as my boy,’ she says. We are doing a circuitous course at a quick-step that seems to take us the long way, around mail carts and stacks of sorting trays, skirting any contact with other employees. I can see hands flipping letters, and midriffs as they work at tables one aisle over, the upper bodies concealed by cabinets that I assume on their side contain pigeonholes for mail or parcels being sorted.

Near the front of the building Marcie stops. She’s fumbling with several keys in the lock of a door — dark, mottled glass in the upper part of the frame. Stenciled on the glass the words

CUSTOMER SERVICES

She finds the right key, flips on the light, and we are inside, with the door closed. She finally takes a deep breath.

‘There, that wasn’t so bad,’ she says. She turns to look at me. The excitement of a mission accomplished written in her eyes. The frizzled ends of her pigtails look like she’s stuck her finger in a light socket. Freckles on her face. If she were a little shorter, she could pass for one of Sarah’s friends.

She sits in the chair on the other side of a clean desk, just a little dust on the surface of green metal, and catches her breath.

I drop my attaché case on a chair in the corner and slide the other chair over, in front of the door, and sit. Inside my briefcase I have a little tape recorder in case Marcie knows something and is willing to talk on tape. If not, there is a note pad.

‘I take it if they catch you here with me, you could lose your job?’ I say.