William Lashner - Past Due

“But you just did. So, if this isn’t a cause of the heart, then you are a hired gun, isn’t that right, Mr. Carl?”

“That’s what a lawyer is, Mr. Justice.”

“And so who has done the hiring? Which organization has asked you to dig into my past.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, let’s treat it like a game. Let me guess. Is it the ACLU? Or is it perhaps the AFL-CIO? Or maybe the NAACP? What about the ADL? That might be up your alley. Or the AARP? Greenpeace? The Sierra Club? Have you gone to work for the UFW or the Teamsters? Public Citizen? Common Cause? Corporate Watch? The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force? Americans United for Affirmative Action? Or maybe the harridans at NOW? Is that it, Miss Blue, are you an aspiring Gloria Steinem? Which of the instruments of the left have hired you as their Torquemada, Mr. Carl?”

“I think you have a wrong-”

“Isn’t it a little unseemly to wallow in the mire of the distant past in order to scuttle a nomination while the nine Justices in Washington are still hale and hearty?”

“I have no intention of-”

“You should be made aware, Mr. Carl, that I will not sit idly by while you attempt to ruin my reputation. I am not without means. The great right wing conspiracy almost took down a president. Think of what it can do to a milquetoast like you.”

“You are under a misapprehension, Mr. Justice.”

He tilted his head, surprised, I think, at the amusement that I let twist the edges of my mouth. “Then educate me, Mr. Carl.”

“This might shock you, Mr. Justice, but I don’t give a whit about your chances to rise to the U.S. Supreme Court. I’m like the rest of America, more concerned with my own bowel movements than the lofty progress of your career. But I had hoped you’d be able to tell me about Tommy Greeley’s college life, his other friends, his girlfriend. I had hoped you’d be able to help me figure out what happened to him in the end. In fact, being a friend, I expected you’d be anxious to help. But we come here in good faith and suddenly you give us the third degree and start laying on threats. Now is that polite, Mr. Justice?”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know who set up Tommy Greeley’s murder?”

“We don’t know Tommy was murdered,” said the justice. “He only disappeared. He might have run away.”

“He was murdered.”

“Have they found his body?”

“No.”

“Then how are you so sure?”

“One of the killers told me.”

“Jesus, God. Who?”

“He’s dead also, Mr. Justice, his throat slashed and his body dumped beside a shipping container on one of the piers along the riverfront.”

The justice’s face tightened and grew more lopsided. “When was this?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“Why?”

“The police don’t yet know. It could be anything. But twenty years ago he had been hired to beat up Tommy Greeley. He got carried away. That’s why Tommy disappeared. The man with the slit throat was a client of mine; I’m now representing his mother in a wrongful death action. To that end, I’m trying to learn who hired him to beat up your friend Tommy Greeley in the first place.”

The justice stood from his desk, placed his arms behind his back, and strolled around me toward the shelves above the divan. He reached for the fencing trophy, held it with one hand as he tested the tip of the statuette’s foil with his thumb.

“Do you remember a nominee to the court named Douglas Ginsburg,” he said. “A stellar judge, nominated by Reagan. Reports came out that, while a professor at Harvard, he was at parties where marihuana was smoked. Can you imagine parties at Harvard where marihuana wasn’t smoked in those days? Still, it was enough to scuttle his nomination.”

“And that’s the danger for you represented by Tommy Greeley?”

“He was my friend. He was a drug dealer. It won’t take much for the Neanderthals on the left, sitting back stoned on their couches, to make their insinuations.”

Even as he said it I thought of an organization the justice missed in his litany of opponents, TPAC, the Telushkin Political Action Committee, membership one. I could see him now, Jeffrey Telushkin, sitting on his chair, clapping his hands with glee as I sat here asking Jackson Straczynski about his former friend, now dead, who might be used to sully his reputation and sink his chance for the big seat. The image turned my stomach.

“I really am not here to hurt you or your chances, Mr. Justice. I just want to learn what you can tell me about Tommy.”

“I entered college in the seventies,” he said, without the venom his voice had carried before. “Drugs were everywhere, at every party, in every dormitory hallway. It was impossible to avoid, and many had no desire to avoid it. Tommy Greeley was one of those. We both went out for the fencing team. I liked him from the first. He was smart, rebellious, entrepreneurial, an innovative young man and a brilliant fencer. We both started with the sport at Penn, were well behind the rest who had fenced in prep school, but Tommy was a natural. Other than fencing, I was interested in art, literature, culture. I was something of an aesthete. Dorian Gray. An embarrassment now, but the way it was. Tommy, other than fencing, was like the rest of my generation, interested only in getting high and getting laid. I told you we had divergent interests. That was where we diverged.”

“You didn’t use drugs at all?” said Kimberly.

“What’s next, Miss Blue, boxers or briefs? Let’s just say it is an improper question and leave it at that. I won’t answer it here, or in the Senate if I get the opportunity. But I will tell you this. I had a younger brother named Benjamin who lost his way. Speed turned him crazy, truly, and his craziness got him killed. I saw first hand with my brother a drug’s insidious power to destroy.”

“When did Tommy start selling?” I said.

“Early on. At first it was only marihuana, just enough to keep himself supplied. Then he fell into a crowd that was selling more and, with his entrepreneurial bent, he quickly took it over. He teamed up with a man, short and thick with a scarred face – Prod I think his name was, Cooper Prod – and together they began selling far beyond the confines of the university. This was now his junior year or so. I met my wife at about the same time, fell deeply in love, moved off campus to live with her. Eventually, even before I graduated, we married. But Tommy had found something perfectly suited to his talents. And even as he ran his enterprise, he still received excellent grades, enough to get him into law school. Later, during law school, I heard he had moved up to cocaine. Less product, more profit. There were even a few law students who had gone in with him. But by then I had pretty much cut him out of my life, for understandable reasons. Occasionally we would have dinner, the four of us, talk about law school, our futures. But he never mentioned his business and I never let him. He knew what was happening to my brother, knew how I felt about it. That was it, the extent of our relationship.”

“You said the four of us.”

“My wife and I. Tommy and his girlfriend, Sylvia. Sylvia Steinberg.”

“Was Tommy seeing anyone other than this Sylvia?”

“Why?”

“The police report on the missing persons complaint filed by Mrs. Greeley seemed to indicate that he and Ms. Steinberg had broken up.”

“All I knew for certain was Sylvia. But it was a difficult time. There was an FBI investigation, there were indictments. It was a huge scandal at the law school. The people he was working with, they all went to jail. When he disappeared we figured he had run away from everything.”

“Do you have any idea why anyone might have wanted Tommy hurt or killed?”