William Lashner - Marked Man

“Just papers.”

She stared at me for a moment to figure out if it was worth pursuing, decided that it wasn’t, which was a relief, and dropped down into one of the chairs in front of my desk.

Beth Derringer was my best friend and my partner and, as my partner, was rightfully entitled to one half of the retainer given me by Zanita Kalakos. I wasn’t pulling a Fred C. Dobbs here, I had not been driven mad by the sight of gold and was intending to stiff Beth of her fair share. But Beth’s ethics were less flexible than mine. If she knew what Mrs. Kalakos had given me, and the likelihood of from where it had come, she would have felt obligated to turn it all over to the rightful authorities. She was that kind of woman. I, on the other hand, figured the jewelry had been stolen long ago from the rich, who had already been reimbursed by their insurance companies, and so saw no reason to fight against my Robin Hood tendencies. Isn’t that how he did it, take from the insurance companies and give to the lawyers? So the jewels and chains would stay safely and secretly in my desk drawer until I found a way to turn them into cash, and I already had an idea of just how to do that.

“I have a client coming in this afternoon that I’d like you to meet,” she said.

“A paying client?”

“She paid what she could.”

“Why don’t I like the sound of that?”

“Should we maybe discuss the retainer we didn’t get from your old lady?”

“No. Okay, go ahead. What’s her story?”

“Her name is Theresa Wellman. She hit a bad patch and lost her daughter.”

“Misplaced her, like under the bed or something?”

“Lost custody to the father.”

“And this little bad patch that caused such an overreaction?”

“Alcohol, neglect.”

“Ah, the daily double.”

“But she’s changed. She cleaned herself up and got a new job, a new house. I find her inspiring, actually. And now she wants at least partial custody of her daughter.”

“What does the daughter want?”

“I don’t know. The father won’t let anyone talk to her.”

“And we’re involved why?”

“Because she is a woman who has changed her life and is now fighting for her daughter against a man with power and money. She needs someone on her side.”

“And that someone has to be us?”

“Isn’t this why we went to law school?”

I glanced down at my desk drawer. “No, actually.”

“Victor, I told her I would do what I could to get her daughter back. I’d like your help.”

I thought about it for a moment. I didn’t like this case, didn’t like it one bit. I mean, who the hell can tell which is the best parent for a kid? Let someone else take the responsibility. But Beth hadn’t been happy in our practice for a while. She hadn’t said anything directly to me, but I could see the discontent in her. I was increasingly worried that she would end the partnership, find something more fulfilling, leave me in the lurch. I didn’t think I could keep the firm going all on my own, and, truthfully, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. The only thing that would keep me trying was the utter lack of anyplace else to go. So if helping out in one of her pity cases was a way to keep my partner on board, then I didn’t have much choice.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet her.”

“Thank you, Victor. You’ll like her. I know it.” She paused for a moment. “There’s something else.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It is.” She looked away with embarrassment. “I’m being evicted.”

“That is ominous. Playing your rock and roll too loud?”

“Yes, but that’s not it.”

“I’m sure we can scrape up a partnership distribution to get any back rent paid.”

“It’s nothing like that. I’m actually up-to-date in my rent, believe it or not. It’s just that the real-estate market has picked up. The landlord wants to gut the building, redo each floor into luxury lofts, and sell them off at obscene prices. I’m in the way.”

“What about your lease?”

“It’s up in a month. He mailed me an eviction notice.”

“When?”

“I got it a month or so ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it then?”

“I don’t know, I guess I hoped if I ignored the letter the whole thing would go away. Except it didn’t go away, and the date’s getting close.”

“What about the other tenants?”

“They’re all getting ready to leave. But I don’t want to leave. I like my apartment, and I couldn’t bear to move. Is there something I can do?”

“We can fight it. There are all kinds of screwy landlord-tenant laws on the books. We’ll tie them up for months, bollix the whole condo deal, make their lives an utter misery. Making the lives of corporate types an utter misery is half the fun of being a lawyer.”

“What’s the other half?”

“I haven’t found it yet. Give me the eviction letter and I’ll file something.”

“Thank you, Victor,” she said as she stood. “I feel better already.”

“Don’t worry, Beth. It will be fine.”

At the doorway she turned and gave me a wan smile. “I knew I could count on you.”

Poor thing, I thought as she stood there with a hopeful expression on her face. She was going to have to find herself a new place.

When she closed the door behind her, I opened my desk drawer again, just to get another peek. Then I screwed up my courage and called Slocum.

“You have stepped in it now, Carl,” said K. Lawrence Slocum, the chief of the Homicide Division at the district attorney’s office.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

“The FBI called our office in a panic, trying to find out who you are. According to the FBI, you apparently visited a Mrs. Kalakos this morning.”

“Did I?”

“Don’t be cute, it’s unbecoming.”

“How are they so certain it was me?”

“How are they certain? Let me count the ways. First, they took a picture of you from the surveillance van. Then, while you were inside, they found your car and ran your license plate. Then they traced a cell-phone call that had sent a team of uniforms to check on their stakeout.”

“Oh.”

“What are you up to, Carl?”

“Nothing, really. I’m as innocent as a lamb.”

“Why do I suspect that you are lying?”

“You had a difficult childhood, you never learned to trust.”

“What did you and the old lady talk about?”

“Attorney-client privilege prohibits me from disclosing the details of my conversation with Mrs. Kalakos.”

Pause. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“But I would be interested in hearing what you know about her son.”

“Charlie the Greek?”

“No need to start throwing around derogatory ethnic labels, Larry.”

“That’s his name in the gang. Charlie the Greek.”

“Gang?”

“The Warrick Brothers Gang. You ever hear of it?”

“No.”

“A local crew, named for its leaders, two psychopathic icemen.”

“Icemen?”

“Jewel thieves. They were quite sophisticated, responsible for a plague of robberies and burglaries, including a series of spectacular jewelry heists from upscale mansions running from Newport, Rhode Island, to Miami Beach. They were stationed here and in Camden, which is why they were on our radar.”

“They still around?”

“The brothers are out of commission, one is dead, the other in prison in Camden. But there are still some members floating around that are active in all kinds of criminal activities in the Northeast part of the city. We can’t seem to put them away.”

“But why is the file on homicide’s desk?”

“It seems every time a witness shows up who might have something to say, the witness ends up floating in the river or dead in his car. One guy opened his trunk and got a faceful of steel from a rigged shotgun.”