William Lashner - Past Due

“Joey,” I said.

“It didn’t take much to find him, his nickname is unique enough, or to confirm that Joseph Parma and the jailhouse snitch were incarcerated at the same time in a prison called Graterford. I sent my man Colfax east to rent suitable housing and to hire a staff. When I arrived, Colfax and I paid a visit to Mr. Parma.

“He denied everything. Despite our entreaties, both firm and generous, he denied everything. He never heard of Tommy Greeley. He never was involved in anyone’s disappearance. He never told a thing to the jailhouse snitch. It was all exactly as I expected. But it wasn’t what he would tell me on which I had pinned my hopes, it was on who he would call afterward. My detective in Los Angeles obtained the phone logs. Two calls of interest. And this is where you came in, Victor. One call was to a Derek Manley, and the other was to Joey Parma’s lawyer.”

“So you used me to put pressure on Manley,” I said, “based on information you believed Joey Parma might have disclosed to me.”

“I hired you for that reason, yes. I had hoped my vice president of external affairs would clue you in to what I was after and she didn’t disappoint. I realized from the start that Joseph Parma was at the bottom of a chain. He was nothing more than a tool, and so was the Derek Manley of twenty years ago. My obligation required me to rise up the chain, step by step, to find the person ultimately responsible. Because there was more to Tommy Greeley’s disappearance than a mere accident of crime. The snitch said he had been set up. Someone close to Tommy, for some reason, had wanted to do him harm. Someone close to Tommy was responsible for his disappearance. He is the one I intend to find.”

“And what are you going to do when you find him?” I said. “The same thing you did to Joey?”

He tilted his head at me, the only form of puzzlement his frozen face allowed him to display, and as he did his vertebrae cracked. “We were rougher with Mr. Parma than I would have liked, yes, but it was more for show than anything else. We meant him no real harm, we only wanted him to be afraid enough to take some sort of action.”

“Slicing his throat was just for show?”

“Excuse me? Oh, I see. Victor, no, you have it wrong. I had nothing to do with that. In fact, I had been hoping you would convince Mr. Parma to go to the police with what he knew. What happened to Mr. Parma was a major setback.”

“That still leaves the question of what you are going to do if you find the man responsible,” said Beth.

“Turn over all that I’ve learned to the proper authorities. What else? Victor, do you have the name of a detective who could prove useful?”

“I might indeed,” I said. I glanced down at my hands, and then peered directly at Eddie Dean when I said, “You did know, didn’t you, that Tommy Greeley was one of the leaders of a million-dollar cocaine enterprise?”

Eddie Dean didn’t flinch, his immobile face was unable to perform such gyrations, but he did glance to the side, to where Kimberly was still curled on the chair. My gaze followed his. Kimberly was watching carefully, surprise clear on her face.

“Yes,” he said, finally. “My police detective in Los Angeles informed me of the indictment against him. Never proven in a court of law, of course, so I choose to presume him innocent. Maybe I’m being overly gallant toward my old friend, but my protector from the ravages of Frankie McQuirk deserves at least that from me, don’t you think?”

“Depends on how tough McQuirk really was?”

“Oh he was a beast, believe me,” said Dean. “Four-foot-six, sixty-four pounds, at least. So, that is my story. Have your questions been answered? Are you willing to continue my collection action and learn what you can from Mr. Manley?”

I looked at Beth. She shrugged. It was my case, she was leaving it up to me. I pursed my lips and pretended to be impressed, even though I knew his story to be a total crock.

You might imagine that I was angry at being lied to, that I would storm out of that house in righteous indignation. But, frankly, if I waited for a client I believed one hundred percent I would starve. In no relationship are the lies more blatant, excepting perhaps the marital relationship, than the relationship of a client to his lawyer. Clients lie, it’s what they do, that clients lie to their lawyers is the first of three immutable laws of the legal profession, and so I wasn’t shocked, shocked that Eddie Dean would be lying to me. What surprised me was the forethought of the lie. Eddie Dean had created a marvelous, intricate, Gothic lie, a touching story of childhood friendship and adult remorse and pledges unfulfilled. I was flattered, frankly, that he cared enough to craft such a fine full lie, and puzzled too, that he would think it mattered enough to go to all the trouble, even though something about its ornate nature indicated it wasn’t quite manufactured for me. But a lie still it was. For Edward Dean could not have known that I had seen the missing persons file, but I had, and there was no note from a jailhouse snitch with details of Tommy Greeley’s murder and the name “Cheaps” prominently displayed.

I looked at him for a long moment, his masklike face revealing nothing, and then looked at Kimberly. Eddie Dean’s story was a lie, yes, but it seemed to me just then that it wasn’t told for my benefit, it was told for hers. Why would he care? What did she have to do with anything? I remembered what I had thought when I first saw her in that house, her feet bare, her robe clutched close.

“So, Victor,” said Eddie Dean. “Can I count on you? Are you willing to help me pursue the ends of justice? Are you willing to help me solve the murder of Tommy Greeley?”

“THAT DOCTOR CAMEin again,” said my father, after I had slipped into his room, trying to avoid that very same doctor.

“Which doctor?” I said with sincere disingenuousness.

“The cute one.”

“I thought you said she wasn’t so cute.”

“Cute enough. She came in again. She asked about you.”

“Wonderful,” I said, my smile tight.

“What’s the matter.”

“She’s a vegetarian, Dad.”

“Oh.”

“And she’s got cats. A swarm of them. She takes their pictures.”

“See, I told you.”

“Yes you did.”

“Ohio.”

“How are you feeling?” I said, though the room itself provided my answer. Two new monitors had been installed. One showed the rate of his breaths, now at nineteen per minute, which I knew already was dangerously high. The other monitor showed the beating of his heart, one hundred and nine beats a minute, his heart struggling to keep up his respiratory rate. Things were not going well for my father.

“I feel like crap,” he said, wincing as he shifted on the bed, “which is good.”

“Why is that good?”

“Because as soon as I start feeling better they’re going to open up my chest and cut out my lungs.”

“That’s true.”

“You don’t got to be so damn cheery about it.”

“I just want you to get well.”

“Why?”

Good question, why indeed? What wondrous marvels of life awaited my father as he stepped out of the hospital with his lungs slashed in half? My father had always been able to cut through the noise and ask the telling question, which was one of the things I couldn’t stand about him.

“Where am I?” he said.

“Dad?”

“Where? Where am I?”

I felt tender toward him for a moment, an old ill man who had completely lost his bearings. “You’re not well, Dad,” I said. “You’re in the hospital.”

“I know that, you idiot. In the story.”