William Lashner - Falls The Shadow

“How do you know this?” I said.

“He told me the whole damn story and laughed about it. Right here, while we were doing lines together. Clem, that crazy son of a bitch. He loved it. Clem, Jesus. But by then, as with all guys like him, his charm was starting to be less charming. And you started noticing things. Like his breath and his temper.”

“So what happened?”

“Leesa wanted it to stop. She wanted out. But Clem wouldn’t let her go. ‘I leave,’ he said one night, spilling a bottle of beer with the slap of his hand on the bar. ‘No one leaves me.’ On another night there was a blowup at the club, an argument while Clem and Leesa and Velma were all together. Clem pushed Leesa away. She fell over a table and banged up her shoulder. She ran out. Velma ran after her. Clem stayed at the bar, getting drunk, muttering darkly to himself. That was the last time I saw Leesa. She was murdered only a few weeks later.”

“And this Clem creep?”

“Gone.”

“You tell the police this?” I said.

“Nah. No one ever came asking. And Velma came back to the club one night and begged me, begged me not to say anything. She couldn’t let her husband know, she said. So I agreed. What with the eyewitness I heard about and the picture in Leesa’s grip, I figured like everyone else it was François who killed her anyway. No reason to ruin the reputation of a dead girl.”

“And the investment?”

“That came later.”

“When?”

“Just before you got François that new trial. Velma came to me, said someone might come around asking questions. She asked, she begged me to keep my mouth shut. I told her I was having financial troubles. She said she would get me some cash flow for the club if I would just keep quiet. So I agreed.”

“And you’ll testify to all of this?”

“I’m not going to lie on the stand, Victor. How do you think I’d do in jail?”

“A rat like you, Sonenshein. I think you’d do fine.”

Outside, in the alleyway behind Marrakech, Beth hugged me hard, kissed me on the neck, and then spun away and did a little pirouette.

“What are you so happy about?” I said.

“Sunshine. What he said. We know who killed Leesa.”

“Do we?”

“Sure we do. It was that guy. Clem. He did it.”

“I don’t know that he did anything. I don’t even know who the hell he is.”

“Do we need all the details in order to make him a suspect?”

“An actual name would help, but no. The story is enough.”

“And isn’t this Clem the one thing we’ve been missing, another suspect?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then we have him, Victor. We have him.” She did another spin, a little pirouette like I had never seen from her.

“Where did you learn that?”

“Five years of ballet as a little girl. We have a real chance now. We’re going to win.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Oh, Victor. You always slight yourself. You’re a genius. I knew we could count on you. That stuff about the Japanese gangsters.”

“The Yakuza.”

“Is it true? Is Takahashi a Japanese gangster who will demand a finger for Sunshine’s mistakes?”

“I would doubt it,” I said. “He went to Stanford.”

She laughed, spun back to me, and hugged me again. “I have to go. I have to tell François. François will love the Yakuza story. It was brilliant, Victor. Purely brilliant.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was, wasn’t it?” And I guessed right then that it must have been, because slipping under Sunshine’s oily sheen of composure and getting him to spill had seemed so easy, so damn easy it was scary.

The far-too-bright beige waiting room, the magazines laid out in perfect rows, the overhead fluorescent lights, the incessant Muzak, the hall of fame of perfect smiles, the perky young woman behind the desk, with her daunting cheerfulness, her gleaming teeth. Just being there gave me the skives, and I wasn’t even scheduled to be in the chair that day.

“Hello, Mr. Carl,” said Deirdre, the receptionist. “It’s so good to see you this afternoon, but I wasn’t aware you had an appointment.”

“I came to check on Daniel Rose. I’m a friend of the family.”

“Daniel is in with the doctor right now.”

“No screams of agony yet?”

“We never hear anything out here,” she said without a hint of irony. “The door is soundproof.”

“Why do I find that weirdly upsetting?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Carl. Daniel’s mother is sitting over there if you want to speak to her.”

“Thank you,” I said

Julia Rose, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, was sitting motionless in the corner, legs crossed, arms crossed, head tilted as if deep in thought. It showed just how little I understood about her that I had no idea what she might be thinking, or whether she was thinking anything at all. Heretofore I had seen her as someone whom we needed to get to do this for her son or that for her son, an obstacle to the proper care and feeding of my young client. I had thought of her as the problem without much considering that she might have problems of her own.

I sat down beside her. “How are you doing, Julia?”

Without looking up at me, she said, “I’m trying not to cry.”

“He’s a brave kid. He’ll come through it fine.”

“I know. I’m not worried about him in there.”

“Then what is it?”

She turned her pretty face to me, the skin beneath her eyes dark with worry. “Do you care? Really?”

Before I blurted out the yes, I thought about it for a moment. Did I care about her, or did I just want her to get on with it, to do the right thing so that Daniel could wind up with half a chance in this world and I could get back to the petty concerns of my own petty life? She wasn’t my client, my responsibility, so did I care? Really?

“Yes,” I said finally, surprising myself. “Strangely enough, I do.”

“I know I’m not the best mother in the world. I try, I do, Mr. Carl, but I’ve never had enough to do all I wanted to do for my boy. And I’ve never known enough neither. But I love him. I do.”

“That might be true, Julia. But sometimes love alone isn’t enough.”

“I know that, but I’m trying. Except sometimes there are things too big to handle. They’re just there and they grow worse and there’s nothing you can do. My life has been like that since I was in grade school. I just knew it wasn’t right, but there was nothing I could do about it except go along and take it. And everything happened for the worst, just like I was sure it all would.”

“It’s okay, Julia,” I said, putting an arm around her shoulder. She was crying now, crying softly, I could feel her sobs in my arm and chest, and I sensed it wouldn’t be okay. But what the hell was I supposed to do about that? “We’ll get through all of this.”

“No, it’s not like that, Mr. Carl.” She pushed herself away from me, wiped her nose with the front and back of her hand. “Daniel’s teeth. I knew they was a problem. First they was perfect and white, and then they started turning black. But what was I going to do about it? When was there anything bad I could do something about? So I didn’t want to tell anyone or show anyone. But every time I looked at his teeth, it broke me up. And embarrassed me, too. Which was why I wouldn’t take Daniel to the doctor. I knew the looks I’d get, the lectures. I been lectured all my life about everything I ever done wrong. But never about the wrong that was done to me. And them teeth turning black, it wasn’t my fault, it was just the way his teeth was. Like the way the world is. And because of that, I figured there was nothing I could do about it. But now…”

“They’re going to be fine. Dr. Pfeffer is going to fix them.”