Joel Goldman - No way out

“How’s a blue-collar guy like Jimmy Martin afford a lawyer like Ethan Bonner?”

“Beats me.”

The Classic Cup is on the Country Club Plaza, Kansas City’s Spanish-inspired signature shopping district, located in midtown. There’s enough power at its breakfast tables to light the shops at Christmas.

Bonner was waiting for us, his scuffed shoes propped on an empty chair, glasses halfway down his nose, long hair pushed behind his ears, reading the New York Times. He was wearing jeans and a corduroy blazer over a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a three-day growth of beard. He was a solo practitioner, mixing criminal defense with plaintiff’s personal injury work; winning more cases than most with strategy and tactics few had the balls to use when someone’s life was on the line.

He had the perfect Kansas City pedigree. He grew up in Mission Hills, home to old money and older mansions. He graduated from Pembroke Hill, the city’s premier private school, before going to Yale and then Harvard for law school. He worked for the law firm his grandfather had founded and his father ran for an entire week before he quit and opened his own shop, his father saying that his son didn’t just march to the beat of a different drummer; he was playing an instrument no one had ever heard before.

Bonner dropped his feet to the floor, shoving the chair away from the table, folded his newspaper in half, and waved us to our seats.

“Jack,” he said, extending his hand, “I haven’t seen you since the Janice Graham case. You remember her?”

“Sure. She and her husband were in the residential mortgage business. She was charged with stealing Social Security numbers belonging to dead people and selling them to illegal immigrants so they could get fraudulent home loans.”

“I thought I was going to lose that one, sure as hell.”

“So did I until you blew our star witness out of the stand. Been so long I can’t remember her name.”

“Kendra Wood. Wasn’t hard once I figured out she was in love with Janice’s husband. She wanted to get rid of Janice so she could run away with him. Turned out she was the one running the scam and had set Janice up.”

“We checked her out six ways to Sunday and didn’t come up with that. Janice’s husband had no idea Kendra felt that way about him. How did you tumble to it?”

“You looked in the wrong places.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You looked at Kendra from the outside, at all the stuff you could see. She worked for Janice and her husband. Always showed up on time. Always got good performance reviews. She was married with kids, went to church on Sunday, and didn’t stay out late.”

I nodded. “The kind of upright citizen with enough guts to blow the whistle.”

“That’s who you saw. I saw a woman who betrayed the people she was closest to outside of her own family. We weren’t talking about a drug addict that needed a fix or a gangbanger looking to get right with the cops before it was his turn to take the needle. Shit, upright is easy compared to betrayal. Upright takes guts, but betrayal takes loathing and guts. I wanted to know where the loathing came from, so I looked at her from the inside out.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I’m like a magician. I never give up my secrets. Kendra Wood was living a fantasy, and no one knew it because she came across so normal she’d bore you to death. Crazy how people can hide shit like that.”

“Not as crazy as Jimmy Martin killing his kids.”

Bonner leaned back in his chair. “Point taken. Except for one thing. He may not have done it.”

“May not have done it? I thought defense lawyers stuck with innocent until proven guilty.”

“Jimmy Martin is charged with two things: stealing and contempt of court. He stole to support his family, and the judge held him in contempt because he’s pissed at his wife. He hasn’t been charged with killing his kids.”

“Yet,” I said. “There’s a reason the cops are looking at him so hard.”

“You and I both know that doesn’t mean they’re right.”

A server took our orders. Three men in suits, carrying briefcases, filed past our table, one of them telling Bonner he’d see him in court after lunch. Bonner got up, followed the man to his table, wrapped his arm around him, whispered, patted him on the back, and came back to his seat.

“Just settled a case. Now I can pay for breakfast. What if Jimmy Martin didn’t kill his kids?”

“Then he should tell his wife where they are,” Lucy said.

“If it were that easy, we’d all have to find another line of work. Look, I don’t know what happened to his kids. Jimmy won’t talk about them. Not one fucking word.”

“At least he treats you the same way he treated us,” I said.

“I don’t mind. Sometimes it’s better not to know. Lets me sleep at night. This time, I’m not so sure. Best chance I’ve got to get Jimmy a deal on the theft charge is find those kids and hope they’re still alive when I do.”

“Then tell him to talk to us,” Lucy said.

“Won’t do any good. He won’t talk to me about the kids. He’s not going to talk to you. But you guys can still help me.”

“How?”

“His wife Peggy hired you. Tell her to let you work with me. We want the same thing, to get the kids back, and I need investigators Jimmy can’t afford.”

“Can he afford you?”

“Nope. Public defender is refusing to take any new cases. Their workload is so heavy they’re probably committing malpractice every time they answer the phone. The judge asked me if I’d take the case. Looked like a simple deal-work out a plea on the theft charge-and then this thing with the kids came up. Be a big help if we work together.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Lucy asked. “Peggy hates Jimmy. Why should she help him? You’re just trying to find out what we’ve got on Jimmy so you can get him off.”

“That’s what I’d think if I were sitting where you’re sitting,” Bonner said. “So, here’s my offer. I’ve hired someone to help me with this case. Anything she comes up with, you can have. The three of you can work together.”

“You can’t afford to pay investigators. How are you going to pay someone else?” I asked.

“She owes me a favor. Here she comes,” Bonner said, pointing over my shoulder.

I turned around, stood up, and started to shake.

“Hello, Jack,” Kate Scranton said. “How are you?”

My body can be like a teenage girl living on the margins where everything is either the best or worst that ever happened. The ordinary ups and downs of daily existence may pass me by, water off a duck’s back, or unleash the demons. There’s little predictability to what will flip my switch except that, when it happens, it happens without warning or opportunity to steel myself. Mine is an erratic vulnerability that drives me crazy, leaving me weak when I have to be strong and causing me to lose control when I have to be in control.

I might have shaken just as much had I known Kate was going to be at breakfast. Wound tight with anticipation, I still may have spun out like a top when I saw her. But her unexpected appearance was a gut punch that never gave me a chance. We had too much unfinished business, neither knowing what came after hello.

Traces of silver had found their way into her dark hair along with creases above her brow and a softening of her cheeks, concessions to her mid-forties that gave her a settled beauty. Standing two feet away, her head cocked at a slight angle, she carried herself with the same certainty that had first drawn me to her, observing and absorbing everyone and everything, intense blue eyes instinctively probing for secrets hidden in our facial expressions, body language, and the way we didn’t say what we really meant. Then and now, that was also one of our problems, the way she made me feel exposed, laying bare things I didn’t want to admit or share, no matter how open and obvious they were to her.