William Lashner - Past Due

“You sure he was shot?” said McDeiss.

“Pretty sure. I didn’t have time for an autopsy.”

“Maybe he just was overcome by the fumes and fell. Dangerous thing cooking up crank.”

“It looked like he was shot.”

“Any idea of the caliber?”

“Look, I’m not Charleton Heston, all right. Only thing I know about guns is that when I see one I cringe and say, ‘No, please, don’t shoot.’ ”

Slocum rubbed his hand with his mouth. “Okay, Carl,” he said. “I’m afraid to ask but I’m going to anyway. Who was he, this Lonnie Chambers?”

“Twenty years ago,” I said, “he was in Tommy Greeley’s drug ring.”

Slocum rubbed his mouth again. McDeiss turned around and kicked the curb and then hopped around in pain.

“Here’s the story,” I said. “Twenty years ago Tommy Greeley was sleeping with Lonnie Chambers’s wife. Lonnie didn’t like that. Lonnie went to Tommy’s girlfriend to tell her about it, but she didn’t react like he had hoped. She had her own issues to deal with. So Lonnie started following Tommy to find who else he might be screwing and he did, yes he did.”

“Who?” said Slocum.

“Who do you think?

“Jesus Christ, Carl. Didn’t we talk about this?”

“She came to me.”

“And what about him? Have you been a good boy?”

“Until today.”

“Carl.”

“A client who should be in art school was stepped back into prison as a way for that bastard to get back at me. The client’s a good kid and he’s going to jail just so that bastard can make his point.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Really? Talk to the ADA, Melissa Carter, see what she has to say. She was as shocked at the sentence as I was. And remember I told you I was beat up and threatened in my vestibule. I’m certain it was his file clerk, a man named Curtis Lobban, who did the beating and the threatening.”

“You said you didn’t see a face.”

“I recognized his voice.”

“That will sure convince a jury. You promised you’d stay away from them.”

“She’s a vampire,” I said, “and he’s a murderer.”

“He’s a Supreme Court justice.”

“And a murderer.”

“You don’t know.”

“It’s pretty clear to me.”

“You sure this Lonnie found out about the two of them?”

“She told me so yesterday.”

“You sure he told the justice about it?”

“Pretty sure. It seems like he was looking for someone to tell. I was going to ask Lonnie about it just to be certain. That’s why I was here. But I mentioned Lonnie to the justice today. I even told him where the shop was.” As it dawned on me, I spun around in frustration. “I led the bastard right to him.”

“So you’re not sure that Lonnie told the justice back then.”

“Not absolutely, no. But that’s exactly why he killed Lonnie and set the place on fire. That’s exactly why he killed Joey, because Joey could have traced back the killing of Tommy Greeley to him. He’s covering his tracks. And that’s how I ended up in jail when you bailed me out, because of him. He’s doing what he can to discredit and discourage me because I am on to him.”

“Or maybe it was simply an entry error.”

“You don’t believe that. You don’t believe that.”

“And maybe this Lonnie was killed by someone not so happy about a competitor cooking up methamphetamine and selling it on his turf. Perhaps one of the local motorcycle gangs who run the business up and down the East Coast.”

“You’re looking to look the other way.”

“It’s a tough business he was in,” said Slocum.

“How does Babbage fit into your theory?” said McDeiss. “Why would the justice care about Babbage?”

“Maybe Babbage knew something to connect Straczynski to the drug ring. Or maybe Babbage’s death was just a heart attack.”

“ Montgomery County coroner, when I asked him, seemed to think it was exactly that,” said McDeiss. “Acute myocardial infarction. Only when I looked at the report something seemed a little off. Some missing hair off the back part of his scalp.”

“Oh?”

“Torn out.”

“It’s him, I’m telling you.”

“It sounds personal,” said Slocum.

“He killed one client. Stepped back another into an unjust sentence. He sent his clerk out to beat me up. He threw me in jail. And now he almost incinerated me. Yeah. It’s personal.”

“How’s your dad?” said Slocum.

“Not good,” I said, “and getting worse,” and as I said it a wave of hopelessness washed over me. It started with my thinking about my father, who was indeed getting worse, every day, every hour, and there was nothing I could do about it, but it wasn’t just my father. I was up against a man whose power was beyond my comprehension, who could throw me in jail, ruin my clients, kill my friends with impunity. I was up against a man who could destroy me absolutely, if he wanted, and he apparently wanted. And the two men in the city’s employ that I admired most, that I had trusted could help me, were turning their backs on what I was sure was the truth. And there was nothing, nothing I could do about it. Nothing.

“He’s going to get away with it,” I said, my voice flat with despondency.

“Why don’t you go clean up and then visit your father in the hospital,” said Slocum.

“It’s past visiting hours.”

“Go on home then, Victor. Get some rest.”

“You aren’t going to do anything. He’s too powerful.”

“Get some rest,” said Slocum.

“You’re terrified of him.”

“By the way,” said Slocum. “You’ll find out tomorrow. The Bar Association has started proceedings against you on the Derek Manley thing. They’re going to try to pull your ticket.”

“It’s him. Don’t you see? Don’t you?”

“Go home and get some rest, Victor. We’ll be in touch. Just go home.”

I went home.

I left Slocum and McDeiss huddled on the sodden, scarred street and went home. My suit stank of smoke and chemicals, was ripped at the knee and the shoulder, a total goner, as were my shirt and socks, all of it smelling as if I had been dancing like a medicine man in the middle of a campfire. Only my tie came through unscathed. But I didn’t undress as soon as I came home, didn’t strip and shower and scrub the stench of the black night off my skin and out of my hair. Instead, I went straight to the photographs pinned to my wall and began, one by one, to rip them down.

They repulsed me, now that I knew how they were taken and whom they were of. One by one I ripped them down and let them drop like dead leaves onto the floor. One by one. But then I stopped.

It was the despair that was driving me, I realized, not the photographs. There was still something clean about them, something of the ideal in them. They had captured not Alura Straczynski, in all her vainglory, but instead the dreams and hopes of Tommy Greeley. I could imagine him, atop his collapsing drug enterprise, the dogged Telushkin sniffing here, sniffing there, getting closer to closing it down and putting him in jail. But there, in that spider’s web of a studio, behind the barrier of a camera, Tommy Greeley maybe thought he spied something true and pure, something that might be able to save his life. And he captured it. Snap snap. And it was still alive, on my wall. And even if it had proved a pathetic illusion, there it was, the thing he prayed would transform his life. On my wall.

My father had felt the same way as Tommy Greeley, I was sure, about the love of his life, his Angel. And though that vision had proven just as illusory, just having it was more than I had ever given him credit for. My father. It was all almost enough to give me some hope.