William Lashner - Hostile witness

I was found by one of the older divorced women who lived in my building, coming down the stairs, cocked forward at the waist with caution, a broom in her hand held like a baseball bat, investigating the gunshot. It was nice of her to call the ambulance and save my life, but I would have preferred if she hadn't screamed so loudly when she discovered me lying there. I jerked involuntarily at the sound and that hurt as much as the gunshot itself.

Have I mentioned that I don't do well with pain?

The pathetic history of my life didn't pass before my eyes as I lay in that vestibule. That treat waited until I was in Graduate Hospital, out of intensive care, ready to receive a seemingly endless stream of visitors. The shooting was in the paper, front page of the Daily News, "CONCANNON LAWYER BLASTED AGAIN," and so they came, one after the other, old friends from high school, old lovers, my ex-fiancee Julie, who is now unhappily married to a proctologist, yes there is a God, lawyers with whom I had tangled in court, law school classmates who had achieved a success I couldn't match, Rita, Vimhoff, Ellie, Guthrie that bastard, Lauren, Dominic and Jasper and Virgil, trundling in loudly together like the Three Stooges, Saltz, Lefkowitz, Judge Gimbel, Slocum, even the mayor, with television cameras in tow.

Beth came every day after work and sat by my bed during visiting hours. She was there when my test results for HIV came back negative and we each raised a urine-colored apple juice in gratitude to whatever angel had been looking out for me. We talked about the Saltz case, and how much money we'd earn, and then we talked about how, after my debacle in the Concannon case, I'd never get another client. I had a rich dim future ahead of me, which, as I lay in that bed, fighting off an infection in my chest, pus draining like curdled milk from a tube running out of my side, didn't seem so bad. She visited as regularly as a relative, Beth did, which was nice of her since my mother decided not to come in from Arizona, seeing that I survived and all, though she assured me in the letter that she would have dropped everything for my funeral. My father visited only now and then to grumble.

"What's that you got there?" he said, pointing to a large book that lay on my bed table.

"A get-well gift from a friend," I said. "Someone who knew Grandpop. It's the first book of the Talmud."

"Who the hell would give you something like that?"

"He's a private investigator. He thought it would be good for me. The start of my education. I might like it, who knows? It's mostly translated into English, though there's still some Hebrew, and your favorite language, Aramaic."

"My father wasted his time on that crap."

"Really?"

"I remember he read it every Saturday and then, when he was already in his sixties, he finished the last book and threw a party. A lot of smelly old men smoking cigars and farting."

"What did he do on Saturdays after he finished?"

"He started over again, volume one, from the very first words."

So that's what I did in the hospital, I read Morris's Talmud, starting, like my grandfather, at volume one. There was a section in Hebrew in the middle and then a translation with commentaries surrounding it, all in English except for those from some guy Rashi, who wrote in his own alphabet that they didn't bother to translate. It was all about property and contracts and torts, like the first year of law school, except it was different in a strange soulful way. The first section was about a piece of cloth claimed by two men. Cut it in half, the book said. Sounded right to me.

In my first week back at Derringer and Carl I had a visitor, a Michael Tombelli from down on Two Street in South Philly. He was a dark young man with a scary smile and thick belly. He sat down across from me with a sneer, leaned back, and put his feet on my desk.

"I got a little problem, Vic."

"Call me Mr. Carl, Michael," I said. "And take your feet off my desk."

"Sure thing," he said with his smile as his feet dropped loudly. "A couple days ago I get stopped by the cops on Oregon Avenue."

"Were you speeding?"

"Sort of."

"Pay the fine," I advised.

"Yeah, right, well, I would, sure, but then they tell me the car is stolen."

"Imagine that."

"You borrow a car from a friend and look what happens."

"So you're up for grand theft auto, is that the story?"

"And they find a gun in the trunk."

"A pistol?"

"A Chinese MAK-90 assault rifle modified for fully automatic performance."

"You're a deer hunter, I suppose?"

"You'd be surprised how fast those suckers can run."

"And still, with all these problems, you are walking around, eating cheese steaks, grabbing a beer at the corner tavern?"

"The prison cap."

"Such a wonderful thing for nice young men like yourself. You're right, Michael, you do have a problem. So what are you doing here?"

"I need a lawyer."

"Yes, you do, Michael. But I haven't been so successful on the criminal side. I'm sticking to civil law from now on."

"What, you're not going to take my case?"

"That's right. Now, after you get out of jail, if you want to sue the friend who lent you the stolen car with the automatic rifle inside, give me a call and I'll see what I can do."

"But I was sent."

"You were sent?"

"Yeah. I was sent. The man told me to come here and that you should become my lawyer."

"The man sent you. What man?"

"The big guy."

"I'm supposed to guess, is that it, Michael? This man who sent you, he was big as in tall or as in fat?"

"Now I know you're putting me on. Mr. Raffaello sent me, said you would take care of me, said you owed him a favor."

"Oh," I said slowly. "That man."

"He told me to give you this." He reached into his brown leather bomber jacket and pulled out a stack of bills, green and dirty, bound with a rubber band. He tossed the stack onto my desk. I didn't reach for it.

"What's that, Michael?"

"Ten thou. He told me to give it to you, like an up-front fee."

"My retainer?"

"Yeah. That's it. Your retainer."

I knew it would come, I just didn't know when or what. I thought maybe I'd get a call in the middle of the night, a soft voice telling me to show up at some deserted corner in South Philly for my instructions. I had already decided I wouldn't kill anybody for him, but I had also decided that I would do anything short of that. The surreptitious delivery, the stashing of stolen goods, the hiding of a fugitive until the heat died down. I owed Enrico Raffaello, yes I did, and even though it hadn't turned out well for me it was a debt I would have to repay. I was almost disappointed that repaying my debt would be so pedestrian – represent Michael Tombelli and I was off the hook.

"Hey," said Michael. "You're the guy shot by the wacko they stuck in that loony bin up there in Haverford."

"That's right," I said.

He leaned forward. "What did it feel like, getting shot and all?"

"I figure you'll find out for yourself someday, Michael."

"Not me. I'm too smart for any of that. But my buddy Peter Cressi, he plays it so far to the edge you never know. You know Peter?"

"I haven't had the pleasure."

"He's coming in too, today or tomorrow. Nothing serious, just a DUI. But he'll be back. He's the guy what they should put up in the loony bin."

"Tell me something, Michael," I said. "Am I on a list of some sort now? Are your friends going to keep coming in to see me?"

"You bet, Mr. Carl. The word's out that you're the guy when we have our little problems." His smile again. "You're going to be busier'n shit."

"Now I understand," I said, and I did. No more worrying about my future, it was set in Carrara marble. "All right. Michael, here's the word, and you should tell it to your friend Peter and anyone else who is going to come visiting. The law says I can't accept any money that is the fruit of an illegal transaction, so any money you give me has to be clean. You understand what I just said?"