William Lashner - Past Due

“Exactly.”

“Interesting. In-ter-es-ting. But I got to talk to someone first before I can say a thing.”

“Fair enough. You have my number.”

“Yes I does. I’ll be in touch, I’m sure.”

“But time is of the essence if we’re going to keep the money away from his mother.”

“Oh I understand that, Vic, yes I do.”

“Good. And your natural aversion to the telephone might now be most prudent. The police have been here, right?”

“So?”

“I have some sources on the inside and they tell me your phone is tapped.”

“Stinking bluecoats,” she said. “I thought something funny was going on. Someone keeps on calling and leaving no message.”

“I guess that’s it. It was a pleasure meeting you, Bev.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” said Bev as her phone rang. It rang again and then again. Neither Martha nor Bev made a move.

“You ought to answer that.”

“Why?” said Bev.

“It could be something important?”

“Nah,” she said. “It never is.”

Outside the apartment building, Beth and I sat together in my car, down the road from the entrance.

“What a spider,” said Beth.

“Arachnids might take offense,” I said.

“And what was that thing she was doing with her lips?”

“It was like visual pheromones.”

“Did it get you going?”

“No, but every cockroach in the city reared up on their hind legs. The more I learn about Joey’s life, the more I shudder.”

“How long are we going to wait?”

“It won’t be long,” I said, and it wasn’t.

I had thought it would be Martha in the muumuu who would step out of the apartment building, look around nervously, and then head off to some rendezvous. I thought it had to be Martha, what with the wheelchair in the living room, the way Bev was propped up on her pillows, the way Martha served her like Bev was an immobile queen bee, her abdomen swollen with a thousand eggs. But it wasn’t Martha who stepped out of the apartment building in her high heels, her black stockings, her tight blue dress, her hat, her veil, her cigarette holder.

“Quick recovery,” said Beth.

“A miracle,” I said. “I should open a revival tent.”

We followed at a distance in the car as she moved down and around the South Philly streets, as she sashayed here and there. And it wasn’t a surprise, it wasn’t a surprise at all, where she ended. When does a lady stop being a lady? When she turns into a bar.

The Seven Out.

I parked well past the entrance. “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I didn’t want to go in if I could avoid it. I didn’t want her to see me and realize I had been following her and that maybe everything I had said, about the will, about getting her disbursements from the estate, about her phone being tapped, all of it had been a steaming pile of humbug. I didn’t want to go in and I didn’t have to. There was a curtained window at the Seven Out, big enough to hold the neon beer signs that let you know the joint wasn’t a juice bar. Beneath the flashing Budweiser sign and above the Coors Light sign was a small gap between the curtains.

I leaned forward, shielded my eyes from the neon, peered inside. There she was, seated in the back, hat still on, talking urgently with a man whom I had never seen before in the entirety of my life, but whom I could name without a doubt.

Teddy Big Tits.

And yes, yes they were.

I HAD SETup a date with R.T. at Alden Park, so we could lehaul away Manley’s LeBaron, but before that little joyous prank I had something else that needed doing.

Philadelphia College of Art is pressed between the Franklin Institute, with its great silver ball of static electricity that stands hair on end, and the Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History, with its giant skeletal T-Rex, posed to pierce flesh and bone. The art students hanging outside PCA seemed to have cheerily passed through both hazards and decided they liked the look. I liked the look too – on them. They glanced warily my way as I passed by in my navy blue suit, heavy black wingtips, narrow red polyester tie. I suppose the art students in their black clothes, colored spiky hair, piercings, their tattooed necks and shaved eyebrows considered their garb as a wry comment on society’s mores. Funny, about the professional clothes I wore I felt the very same way.

So here I was back at school, feeling out of place among the throng, off to see the dean. Some things never change.

“I don’t believe I can help you, Mr. Carl,” said Dean Sandhurst, a tall rawboned woman with bright eyes and big hands, whose jaw twitched as she spoke. Her crisp white shirt was open at the top and, though her gray hair was so tightly bound it eased the deep lines around her eyes, a few stray wisps were left free to soften the edges of her face. “Our admissions policies here are very strict and our responsibility is to the whole student body. No personal appeals, other than the usual letters of recommendation, are generally allowed.”

“I understand that, Dean.”

“I only agreed to meet with you as a favor to Philip, who helped me through a difficult time a few years ago.” A divorce case, Skink had said, the usual thing, you understand, Skink had said. I did. No one loves a PI more than a woman in trouble. “My return of the favor only goes as far as allowing this meeting. It won’t affect the admissions decision.”

“Of course it won’t. And it shouldn’t. I just hoped I’d be able to ease any concerns you might have about an applicant and maybe request the decision, whether positive or negative, be made sooner rather than later.”

“When would you need to hear? February? March?”

“By early next week.”

“Mr. Carl, that simply won’t be possible. There is a process that must be followed. There are committees. We can’t rush these things. What is so important that the applicant must hear by early next week?”

“That is when he is due to be sentenced in Common Pleas Court by Judge Horace Wellman.”

“Ah, I see. Yes. You’re a lawyer, Mr. Carl.”

“That I am.”

“Philip didn’t tell me.”

“I find he often leaves out the best parts.”

“And the applicant you want to discuss is a client.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Nice try, Mr. Carl, but I can’t help you. This is an institution of higher learning. We are not a tool to be used by sly lawyers for the reduction of criminal sentences. You will have to find some other angle to help your client.”

“This is not an angle, Dean Sandhurst. I have too much respect for PCA and for my client, Rashard Porter, for that. I’ve been a lawyer for almost a decade, but this is the first time I’ve ever spoken up for a client to a college dean. Most of my clients have talents in areas I don’t want to encourage. But Rashard Porter is a good kid, in bad circumstances, who happens to be a stellar artist. Partly I’m here, yes indeed, because I think an acceptance would help at his sentencing. But I’m also here because I believe the sentencing itself could help Rashard in the next crucial phase of his life. The criminal justice system doesn’t only have to be a way to mete out jail time, it can also be the one time a kid in perilous circumstances gets a clear-eyed look at his situation and a meaningful plan to transcend it. For some it’s drug rehab that’s needed, for some it’s psychiatric counseling.”

“But we are not a drug rehabilitation facility, Mr. Carl, nor a psychiatric institution.”

“Of course not. But if Rashard is accepted at PCA, I could have his attendance and performance here made an important condition of his probation. Nothing focuses the mind like a judge looking over your shoulder. Rashard needs a little discipline, most nineteen-year-old kids do, but maybe the criminal justice system, and his lawyer, and PCA might help counteract the other forces in his life and give him what he needs to pursue his destiny.”