Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘Supposed to?’ I say.

‘She never got the benefit of the bargain.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean she’d be thirty-three if she was still alive.’

Clem knows about her death. I am wondering how.

‘An auto accident on the Jersey Turnpike in the middle of a blizzard,’ says Clem. ‘A year ago last November.’

With this I am sitting bolt upright. I nearly choke on grapefruit juice as the acid singes my throat.

‘Body burned beyond recognition. Car went up like a fucking buzz-bomb. Word is, it may have been an o.c. hit.’ Clem’s jargon for the underbelly of life — organized crime.

He is asking me where I got the fingerprint on the paint tube. According to Clem, the guy who ran the check on the computer for him at State Justice is now curious.

I dodge this with a lot of verbal feints and weaves, and finally distract him with a question.

‘Are you sure about the print, couldn’t be a mistake?’ I say.

‘No way. Positive make,’ he tells me. ‘Matches on more than a dozen points of comparison. Little ridges that don’t lie.’

Clem’s still waiting for an answer about where I got the print. He may have to wait until hell freezes.

At this moment I am certain that my face is a mask of glazed expressions as I conjure the enigma that was Kathy Merlow, and a whole new universe of unanswered questions.

I see apparitions, the chalked and powdery complexion of death, visions of Nikki as I saw her alone on that last day to press the wedding band on her finger for the final time, alone among the tubes and tanks and other instruments of horror in the back rooms of the funeral parlor. Visions of Nikki laid out in white satin. It is an image I relive with regularity, though now it is invaded by other more disturbing pictures. The synapses of the brain trying to sort sense from confusion. Another face, images of fiery death, and Kathy Merlow. Somehow these two, Nikki and Merlow, have become snarled in my mind, as I am restrained, caught up, lathered in sweat. Flames, and a tangle of twisted metal on some unrecognized roadway. Blood on matted bedsheets, the palm trees of Hana, and a pitched ringing, relentless, insistent in my ears. Images give way to sound, Nikki and Kathy Merlow, faces fade as my brain finally sorts fact from phantasm. I roll over, untangle myself from the sheets of my bed, and pull the receiver from the phone. The ringing stops. Nightmares that pass for slumber.

I swing my legs and sit up in soaked bedsheets.

‘Hello — Paul?’ A voice, a million miles away, like something through a tube, familiar. It is Harry.

‘What the hell time is it?’ I say.

‘Five-thirty,’ he tells me. ‘Sorry to get you out of bed.’

‘It’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping well. What is it?’ I’m wiping perspiration from my forehead, sleep from my eyes.

‘Have you seen the morning paper?’ he says.

‘No. Why?’

‘I think you better take a look. And do yourself a favor,’ he says. ‘Sit down before you open it.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Somebody has inserted a blade, at the sixth cervical vertebra, about eight inches in.’

‘To who?’ I ask.

‘To you, my friend. Second lead, page one, above the fold,’ he tells me. ‘ “Local Defense Attorney Linked to Postal Bombing.” ’

‘Oh, shit.’ I sit, still trying to chase visions of dread from my sleep-ravaged brain. My mind at this moment begins to swim, struggling to sort the real fears from the imagined.

‘I don’t get it,’ I say. ‘The feds already questioned me.’

‘It doesn’t say anything about that. Just that your fingerprints were found all over the place after the bombing, and that certain employees saw you talking to the dead postal worker moments before the blast. Somebody’s doing a number,’ he says.

‘I think you better get yourself together. I’ll meet you at the office.’ Harry hangs up.

I start to forage for clothes, my mind racing to assess the damage that this will do to Laurel’s case, a trial in midstream, scandal affecting her lawyer.

Then I pick up the phone and dial Mrs. Bailey. I will need coverage with Sarah. I am abusing the old lady’s good nature, but as always she is there for my daughter, more than I can say for myself. She will be over in ten minutes.

I’m in my underwear, buttoning up my pants, when I dial again. This time it is a groggy feline voice at the other end, something sultry from sleep.

‘Hello. It’s Paul. I need some help,’ I tell her.

‘What is it?’

‘Somebody’s tagged me with the bombing. In this morning’s paper.’

‘What. Who would-’

‘I don’t have time to talk. I need your help. There’s a judge who’s going to be taking a long hard look at me this morning. An explanation from some authoritative source could go a long way,’ I tell her.

‘I don’t understand,’ she says.

‘Neither do I.’

Silence on the other end. ‘Sure. Whatever I can do. Where can I meet you?’ asks Dana.

We set a time, the county courthouse, and I hang up.

For nearly two hours we assess damage while walking the floor at the office, Harry and I. As the arching light of dawn turns to day, I can see the incandescent lights as they dim on the Capitol dome five blocks away.

We reread the story, first silently, then out loud to each other, looking for nuances we may have missed. We explore the possible sources. Harry is thinking Jack. By now he would have gotten word that he is the centerpiece of my case. He is well connected with the press. But Harry hasn’t told me how Jack would get the information that my prints were found at the scene, with the wraps thrown around a pending investigation.

The staff reporter on the byline is not a name I have heard before. It is the stuff of which scandal is made. Attributions to ‘highly placed but unnamed sources close to the investigation.’ It does not say, in so many words, that I am a suspect, but in the interests of a good story buries me in a mud slide of inference and innuendo. If this were the Inquisition, they would be pouring hot lead in my ear by morning as a means of leading me to the Lord and coaxing my confession.

What makes this most baffling is that I have come clean with the FBI, hours of questioning behind closed doors. They know precisely what I was doing talking with Marcie Reed. All I can figure is some enterprising reporter who got his hands on only half of the story.

The problem as we see it, and Harry sums it up quickly, is that the jurors in Laurel’s case are not shielded from this news. It would not be covered by the court’s gag order, there being no obvious link between the bombing and Melanie’s murder. Left as it is, the jury, seeing my name coupled with the events at the post office, would not be believing much that I say in Laurel’s defense, the case of one felon pleading the cause of another.

‘He can’t mask it, but maybe he can take the tinge off. An instruction to the jury.’ Harry’s talking about Judge Woodruff. We have called four times in the last hour. He’s not yet in chambers, though by now he has no doubt read his morning paper.

‘It’s probably just a one-day story,’ I say. ‘By tomorrow it’ll be old news, off the front page, explained and corrected.’

‘You sound like the fucking founding fathers,’ says Harry. ‘An innocent’s notion of the First Amendment,’ he tells me.

This from a man who spends his life reading the newspaper.

‘Hang on to your nuts,’ he says. ‘They don’t call it the press for nothing.’

‘They got the facts wrong. They’ll fix it,’ I say.

‘Like the man said, fifteen minutes of fame,’ says Harry. ‘You get yours by flashlight up the kazoo.’

I tell him to relax. I try the judge on the phone. Now the clerk’s not answering. We can’t wait any longer, so we decide to walk the few blocks to the courthouse. We can die of anxiety there as well as here. Besides, by now Dana should be on her way over.