Joel Goldman - No way out

“Never better, Kate. Good to see you.”

She took half a step closer, palms out to catch me. I gripped the table with one hand, held her off with the other, not wanting to fall into her arms. Lucy quietly angled my chair away from the table, giving me a safe place to land.

I corkscrewed into my chair, ignoring my spasms as if everyone’s chin was supposed to be pinned to their shoulder, and pointed her toward the empty seat next to Ethan Bonner. He was sitting upright, eyes pinched with detached clinical concentration, like a scientist watching lab rats, making me wonder if he knew about my disorder and whether he had orchestrated this moment and why he would want to make me shake.

I glanced at Lucy, her red-faced glare at Bonner pinning it on him. I wasn’t so certain. Some things are just going to happen no matter what you do. And, I had to admit that I wasn’t shaking only because I was taken off guard. Uncomfortable or not, I was glad to see Kate.

“So, down to business,” Bonner said, signaling our server. “The omelets are terrific, and the coffee is passable. What’s everyone going to have?”

Bonner’s effort at forced normalcy worked for me. I didn’t have answers to the questions rattling around in my head and wasn’t certain I’d trust the ones he would give me.

“Veggie,” I told the server. “And toss in some bacon.”

I looked at Lucy, her face finding its normal hue even as her eyes widened at me. I nodded, telling her that she was on deck and to let it go. Everyone ordered, and everyone breathed. I led us in idle chit-chat about Kate’s son and my dogs, her neuromarketing firm, and my gig with Simon and Lucy until our food came, keeping it up while we ate, using the time to restore my equilibrium and get used to being with her again.

I thought back to the Janice Graham case, trying to remember whether she’d been in the courtroom at the defense table, deciding she hadn’t, guessing that she’d nonetheless been the unseen source of Bonner’s magic, wondering what debt she owed him that she was paying off at breakfast and whether she could pick Jimmy Martin’s lock and find out what happened to his kids.

Bonner looked at me and brought the conversation back to his client. “Kate’s going from here to the Farm to talk to Jimmy. I’d appreciate it if you’d go with her.”

“I assume you mean both of us,” Lucy said.

“No,” he said, taking a sip of coffee and smiling an apology to Lucy. “I mean Jack.”

“Bullshit!” she said, coming halfway out of her chair. “This is my case!”

Bonner was smooth, treating the question of whether we had agreed to work together as settled. Lucy’s reaction to his suggestion was as predictable as mine was to Kate’s presence, their argument irrelevant unless we were all partners.

“Three people are too many,” he said. “Jimmy will think you’re ganging up on him, and he’ll clam up even more.”

Lucy had interrogated enough witnesses to know that Bonner was right. She glanced at Kate. They had been close before Kate moved to San Diego. They’d kept in touch, Lucy telling me that Kate was doing fine and had stopped asking about me. Kate nodded at her, and Lucy sat back in her chair, arms folded over her chest, narrowing her eyes at me, not surrendering and demanding I do something.

“We can’t agree to anything until we talk to our client,” I said. “Peggy gives us the okay, we can decide who does what.”

“Kate is only here for a couple of days. You take too long and your client will be the big loser.”

“What’s your schedule?” I asked Kate.

She sighed. “It’s up in the air. There are some things happening at home. I may have to go back sooner than I’d like. Maybe tomorrow.”

I studied her, looking for a downturn in her mouth, a break in eye contact, or a lift in her lip that would tell me what she was thinking and feeling. She called these involuntary twitches micro facial expressions because they lasted a fraction of a second, too short-lived to be recognized and translated by someone not trained in her dark art. I didn’t see any of that. Instead I saw a wistful look in her eyes and a hopeful smile, maybe because that’s what I wanted to see.

“Then, I’ll tell you what,” I said to Bonner. “Kate joins our team for now. She and I go see Jimmy. Whatever we get stays with us until we have a chance to talk with Peggy. If she signs on, we’ll share and share alike. If she says no, Kate can stick with us or go home.”

Bonner put me back under the microscope. We both knew that Kate didn’t need me or anyone else with her when she talked with Jimmy Martin. He wanted something else, something he needed us for, and it wasn’t chasing down leads.

“One condition,” he said. “After you’re done at the farm, Kate interviews Peggy Martin and tells you and me what she thinks. If we don’t have a deal, Kate keeps working for me and you guys are on your own.”

There it was. Bonner didn’t think Kate or anyone else could get anything out of Jimmy Martin, so he didn’t care who talked to him. Peggy Martin was a different story. She wore her emotions on both sleeves. Kate would have no trouble reading her. If Peggy wasn’t being straight with us, I needed to know. I knew one other thing with equal certainty. Never underestimate Kate Scranton. Bonner had done that, his deal now worth more to me than it was to him.

“You know,” Kate said, “this isn’t the third grade. We aren’t on the playground, and Lucy and I aren’t waiting with bated breath to see which team we get to be on. It sounds like Peggy hired Lucy, not you, Jack. And I’m here because Ethan called in a favor, but the favor didn’t include being used as a bargaining chip.”

She said it with a steel smile, the knife going in deep enough to make her point without injuring any nerves. Bonner looked at me and shrugged, conceding the moment.

“Kate,” I said, “are you okay with Bonner’s deal?”

“Only if Lucy is okay with it.”

“Lucy,” I said, “let me go with Kate. This could be our best crack at Jimmy Martin.”

“What am I supposed to do? Stay here and order another cup of coffee?”

“You’ve got the closest relationship with Peggy, and you know that Kate can help us find Evan and Cara. Talk to her and convince her that this is the right thing to do. Besides, we both know Bonner is right. Jimmy will feel like we’re ganging up on him if all three of us show up for the interview.”

She thought for a minute, turning her glare back to Bonner. “Okay, but it’s not Kate I’m worried about.”

Bonner took her shot with a smile. “I wouldn’t be worried about Kate either if I were you.”

“Why do they call it the Farm?” Kate asked.

We were eastbound on Blue Parkway in her rented Chevy Malibu approaching LC’s Bar-B-Q.

“Turn here,” I told her, pointing to a street called Sni-A-Bar that fed onto Blue Parkway, one side of the triangle framing LC’s. “Before it was the municipal jail it was a farm, a two thousand-acre hog farm. The city bought it, sold the hogs, and built the jail. It opened in 1972. There are two hundred acres inside the fence. Now the city is talking about shutting it down to save money and moving the inmates to the county jail.”

“Ethan told me that Jimmy should be in the county jail but they didn’t have room for him.”

“That’s today. Long term, the city says it’ll be cheaper to pay the county to house their inmates than to keep the jail open. The county wants the money and is talking about building a new jail.”

“Which is less lousy, the Farm or the county jail?”

“Security isn’t as tight on the Farm. There are two dormitories, one for women and one for men. Unless they put you in an isolation cell for protection or discipline, you do your time on an open floor, like an old hospital ward with rows of beds, only the beds are made of steel and the mattresses are thin enough you can use them to floss your teeth.”