William Lashner - Past Due

“That you can tell me?”

“It’s not privileged information. When you talk to the waiter at La Vigna, a guy named Louis, he’ll tell you the same thing.”

“But you won’t tell me anything else?”

“Sorry.”

“Because right now, Carl, we don’t have a clue as to what actually happened here tonight. His wallet was missing so it could have been a robbery, but his Timex is still on his wrist and word is this Joey Parma never had anything worth stealing. So was this a mob execution? Was this drug-related? Was he stepping out with someone else’s wife? Did he owe someone money? Anything you can tell us would be mighty handy.”

“Joey was never part of the mob. A wannabe maybe, but that’s it. And the drug conviction was well in his past. Best I could figure, he was trying to go clean. But his street name was Joey Cheaps, which means he owed everybody money.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Me.”

“Oh, I bet he did. Anyone else? Anyone mad enough to extract it in blood.”

“Not that I know of. But as to what we talked about, there is nothing more I can tell you.”

“He’s your client, Carl. Doesn’t that matter?”

“Clients die, Detective. It happens all the time. Rich old ladies with wills to probate. Cancer-ridden smokers waiting on their suits against the tobacco companies. For criminal lawyers there are good ways to lose a client and bad ways to lose a client. A good way is for a client to die in his bed, surrounded by his family, receiving last rites from a priest. A bad way is for a client to be strapped on a gurney with a line in his arm, as the victim’s mother stares stone-faced through the viewing window. I don’t know why Joey was killed, but it wasn’t the state that killed him, or a fellow con with a prison shiv, and so I figure this falls on the right side of my line.”

“All righty then,” said McDeiss without rising from his crouch. “I suppose then there’s nothing more to be done.”

“I suppose so.”

“Thanks for all your assistance.”

“It was nothing,” I said. “You need any help getting up?”

“I’ll manage.”

We should have been through, I should have stood, kicked the curb, left, gone on with my life. I should have, yes, but that thing I had said about clients dying all the time, that whole cynically hardboiled little speech, was an utter lie. They didn’t die all the time, and when they did, I couldn’t just shrug it off. So I didn’t stand, kick the curb, and go on with my life. Instead, I said, “Before you go, Detective, I wonder if you could do me a favor.”

“A favor. Is this related or unrelated to what happened to Mr. Parma?”

“Unrelated. I wonder if you could check your files to see if any unidentified floaters turned up about twenty years ago in the Delaware River. And maybe you could also see if you have a file on a missing man named Tommy, who disappeared twenty years ago and was never found.”

“An unidentified floater and a missing person, name of Tommy.”

“Or Thomas. Or Tom.”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Approximately.”

“And this is unrelated to your friend Parma.”

“Unrelated.”

“But you just happen to ask me this favor after your friend Parma meets with his criminal defense attorney for no apparent reason and then gets dumped between two rusting shipping containers with his throat slit and his blood flowing into the Delaware.”

“Just happenstance.”

“And I should do this why?”

“Because I’m a sweet guy.”

“You make it hard to want to help you, Carl.”

“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.”

We stayed at the curb, me sitting, my head still in my hands, the nausea turning the edges of my vision pale, McDeiss still in his squat. We stayed there for a while until McDeiss said, “Know what I got a strange hankering for right now? Ossobuco. You ever had a great ossobuco?”

“Do you mind? I can still smell the blood.”

“Veal shank braised in a wine sauce till it melts at the touch. And then, at the last moment, the secret ingredient is added, the gremolata, minced garlic, chopped parsley, and a dash of lemon zest. There’s a place on Seventh that makes a killer ossobuco.”

“Perfect for a homicide detective, I suppose.”

“I’ll consider if the information you sought is worth pursuing.”

“That’s all I can ask.” I paused for a moment, thought about what he had just said. “And maybe,” I continued, as if struck with a plan out of the thin of the air, “if you find something, we can discuss it over dinner.”

“What a wonderful idea.”

“There’s a place on Seventh Street I’ve been told about.”

“Sounds intriguing.”

“A little expensive, I’m sure.”

“Yes it is,” he said, letting out a soft groan as his knees popped once again and he stood. “But worth every penny.”

“You’ll keep me informed of what you find about Joey?”

“Why?”

“Professional interest.”

“Don’t worry, Carl, one thing you can be sure of is that you’ll be hearing from me.”

By the time I left the scene the coroner’s van had shown up, the body had been scraped off the tarmac, the arc lights taken down. The immediate scene had slipped back into the innocent darkness, but there was still the stain on the ground, still the remnants of what had been lying there not thirty minutes before. There wasn’t anything more I could do about Joey Parma’s legal problem – it’s amazing how quickly death cleanses the docket – but that didn’t mean he and I were through.

WHEN I CAMEhome from the crime scene I sat on the couch in my living room, too weary and sick at heart to even take off my jacket or loosen my tie. I sat in the dark, and listened to my breathing, and felt a bleak hopelessness fall about my shoulders like an old familiar cloak.

My legal practice was failing for want of paying clients and my partner was thinking of bolting to greener pastures. My last love affair had ended badly, to say the least. I had been summoned to Traffic Court for a myriad of moving violations that were really, really not my fault. My mother, to whom I hadn’t spoken in a number of years, was drinking her life away in Arizona. My father was deathly ill, awaiting the operation that would prolong, but not save, his life. And worst of all, my cable had been cut off because I had fallen behind on my bill.

And now Joey Parma had come to me for legal advice and had ended up dead. We had met at La Vigna, at a table in the back. His eye had been swollen, his hands had been sweaty. And at that back table, just hours before his death, Joey Cheaps had given me something. It was something I didn’t want, something I had no use for, but he had given it to me all the same. He had given me a murder.

“This was twenty years ago,” said Joey Parma. He leaned forward, his voice was soft, he spoke out of the side of his mouth to ensure privacy. “An old buddy brought me in, told me to bring a bat, sos I did. Nothing was supposed to happen. Just a little rough-up, is all. Three hundred for a rough-up. Some guy. Tommy something. I never knowed beyond that. He was coming to a pier on the river with a suitcase. There was supposed to be a boat or something waiting. But before he got to the boat we was supposed to take the suitcase. We was supposed to take the suitcase and teach the guy a lesson at the same time.

“It was dark, deserted, cold as shit. The lights on the pier was out, but the moon was this bright thing in the sky. We was standing in the shadows, smoking, we was waiting, see? And the bat cold as it was in my fist, and the chill seeping through our jackets. Little leather jackets, like Travolta in that movie, that’s what we all was wearing then. And so we was waiting and then we was waiting and then the guy I’m with, he stamps out his cig and says, ‘There’s the bastard, right on time.’ And I look up, and there he is all right.