David Kessler - Mercy

“No, nothing!” Nat called back.

“I heard,” Alex replied before Juanita could say another word. “Okay, I’m on my way back.”

After she had put the phone down, she noticed Nat’s shadow. She looked up.

“Are you all right?”

“Sure,” she replied, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “Why?”

“You sounded like you wanted to say more … like you’re holding something back.”

Lee Kelly had been trying to call Alex for over thirty minutes. At first it had rung a few times. After that it kept going straight to voicemail, almost like the lawyer was brushing him off.

Lee knew that Alex wasn’t like that. Alex was a good man and Lee was a good client. Yes, he was a career criminal but he was never violent. And because he was all too aware of the three strikes and you’re out rule, he now confined himself to burglarizing business premises with no residential premises attached. That meant he could afford to break into a branch of Wal-Mart or Sears, but he wouldn’t touch one of those Korean shops where the owner lived above the premises.

Alex knew this and he knew also that Lee was money in his pocket, at least on those rare occasions when he failed to stay one step ahead of the law. He was a pretty good burglar and he seldom got caught. But when he did, it was Alex who had the honor of getting him out and fixing him up with a bail bondsman. To Lee, the risk of getting caught and sent to jail was an occupational hazard.

But it was good business for Alex. What Lee liked about Alex was that he never prejudged or tried to moralize with him. He did at times try to persuade Lee to consider going straight, but his arguments were always practical, on the lines of “aren’t you getting kinda old for this sort of thing?” The trouble was that at fifty-five, Lee considered himself too old to do anything else. He didn’t have any real social security and he knew that his mind was too stultified to acquire new skills. Changing his ways was not really an option.

“Hell, I’ll be coming up to retirement pretty soon,” he once told Alex. “This is for my pension.”

Indeed, the last time Alex had suggested that Lee reconsider his chosen occupation, Lee had put on his best Fagin accent and launched into a surprisingly convincing rendition of “I’m Reviewing the Situation.”

They had both smiled at the time. But the truth of the matter was that the reference to saving for the future was all too ironic. The reality was that Lee had let most of his ill-gotten gains slip through his fingers.

The phone was ringing again. Finally Lee got through to Alex.

“Hi, Mr. Sedaka. I’ve got a job for you.”

Juanita was sitting tensely at her desk waiting for Alex to get back, when the phone rang. It was Alex.

“Hi, Juanita. Listen, I’m going to be delayed slightly.”

He told her about the calls from Lee Kelly. She told him that she had called the office and that she had tried to get him to use one of the two-bit shysters who hang round the courthouse.

“I figure I owe it to him. He’s one of my oldest clients — in both senses of the word. Anyway, it’s not like we can do anything. We’re still waiting for the full hearing at eight thirty.”

After they hung up, Juanita sat thinking. They were rapidly running out of options — and she still hadn’t told Alex her suspicions about Nat. Now it was going to be even longer before she could tell him.

No! I have to tell him now!

She had an idea. Quietly and surreptitiously, she took her cell phone and slipped it into her pocket. Then she asked Nat to listen out for the phone and went to the bathroom. She lowered the toilet cover and sat there, messaging Alex in text-speak.

Fax journal showed fax frm England wen I out geting sandwiches but wasnt der wen I bak. Fink Nat tuk bt nt sure. Also Nat didnt tel wat David sed re travel booking receipt til sliped out. Fink Nat up 2 sumfing.

After sending it, she flushed the toilet and returned to her desk. Alex called back within a minute on the office line.

“Alex Sedaka’s office.”

“Hi, it’s me. Am I on speaker?”

“No, b — ” She had to force herself not to say boss.

“I got your text.”

“Okay,” she replied in a neutral tone.

“You know, it’s funny, but he said something earlier that made me suspicious.”

“What?”

“Something about me brushing off the reporters outside, but it wasn’t clear how he knew.”

“Uh-huh,” Juanita mumbled, to make it clear that she still couldn’t speak.

“So he knew about the travel receipt to London and didn’t tell us at first?”

“Yes.”

“And then it slipped out.”

“Yes.”

“And you think a fax arrived from England?”

“Yes.”

“Because it was listed in the journal printout?”

“Yes?”

“How many pages?

“One.”

“Okay, listen, I promised Lee I’d rep him at the arraignment and I don’t want to bail out on him. But this is too important to mess round with. So what I want you to do is go outside on some pretext and call the clinic on your cell phone. Tell them to re-fax the papers or whatever it was they sent. Then stand by the fax machine and make sure you’re there when they come through.”

“Okay.”

David Sedaka was feeling the frustration. He was making progress, but it was painfully slow. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a problem. Any sort of data recovery is a painstaking process. Just as debugging a computer program is naturally slow. But normally that doesn’t matter because the time is available. And when the job is done, the achievement is all the more satisfying.

But when time is in short supply, every minute is a minute of torture. And for David, the pain was growing.

If it wasn’t for the fact that a human life was at stake, David would have called it a day and gone home for some rest. Sometimes the best way to make progress on a problem is to put it aside for a while and sleep on it. But right now that was not an option. He had to solve it today. And looking at his watch he knew that meant less than four and a half hours.

But once again, his search macro looking for combinations of the word “you” had come to his aid. He had modified the macro slightly and found another verse of the poem. He was moved by the words he read. It was as if Dorothy had poured her heart out into this poem, talking to her computer and saying to it all the things that she longed to say to a friend — if only she had had one.

But the words also shocked him. Three words in particular.

“I killed you.”

“ More sandwiches?” Nat asked, looking Juanita up and down.

“You don’t have a monopoly on fresh air.”

She hoped she hadn’t sounded too aggressive when she said it. She was feeling the tension, knowing — or at least strongly suspecting — that this man was up to something.

As soon as she left the building she walked up the street and turned a corner. She wanted to make sure she wasn’t visible from Nat’s office, as well as make sure that he wasn’t following her. She didn’t think he was likely to, but she had to be sure. If Nat was up to something, what was his game and what was his motive?

She remembered that Martine Yin had blown the story about Dusenbury’s offer of clemency. They still didn’t know the source of the leak. Could it have been Nat? Certainly he was one of the few people who knew. The governor was sure that it was no one on his tight-knit staff and Juanita knew that it wasn’t her or Alex.

Maybe that was it. Nat was the source of the leak and now he had intercepted the fax from London with the intention of leaking it to the press.