Richard Patterson - Conviction

Terri could find no words. In her silence, Chou Sen drew herself up. "I ask you, no come back no more. You bring death to our house."

The door closed between them.

* * *

Driving away, Terri remembered to check her cell phone for messages.

The fifth message, in Johnny Moore's voice, began conversationally. "If you're Eddie Fleet, and a scammer with a prior record, your credit rating's no good. So you change your name to Howard Flood."

Behind the wheel, Terri tensed, reminding herself to watch the traffic light hanging over Third Avenue. From the cell phone, Moore chuckled softly in her ear. "Fucker's right here in Oakland, still up to no good. Want his phone number, or you want to just leave him be . . . ?"

"Quit screwing with me," Terri said aloud, then began laughing at the note of triumph in his message, perhaps out of sheer relief.

"If you really do want his number," Moore's voice continued, "it's 510-555-6777. All those sevens make it lucky, I guess."

Terri pulled over in front of a soul food restaurant, snatched a legal pad from her briefcase, and wrote the number down. For minutes, she idly watched the pedestrian traffic—a few men returning from work outside the neighborhood, a gaggle of girls smoking something and going nowhere fast. Then, at last, she punched out the numerals on her cell phone.

Phone pressed to her ear, she listened intently, as if she could force Fleet to answer by sheer effort of will.

"Go," a man's cool voice answered.

Startled, Terri blurted. "Eddie Fleet?"

There was a long silence. "Eddie Fleet? He be dead. Who wants him?"

"Teresa Paget. I'm a lawyer for Rennell Price." She paused, then added flatly, "Rennell's about to be executed."

"Yeah? Well this be Howard Flood." The voice took on the lilt of quiet laughter. "Rennell who, you say?"

"Rennell Price," Terri answered. "And you used to be Eddie Fleet."

The man hesitated. "What you want, lady?"

"To talk to who you used to be." She amended her tone to be respectful, close to precatory. "We're working on a clemency petition, trying to persuade the Governor that Rennell shouldn't die along with Payton. I was hoping you could help us."

"Yeah?" The smooth voice took on an edge. "And why might that be? Sucker killed a child."

"Maybe so. But we think Rennell might be retarded. They don't execute those folks anymore."

The voice laughed softly. "Retarded? No way. Rennell Price was Alfred fucking Einstein."

Keep him talking, Terri urged herself. "Maybe you can tell me about him."

"Like when he invented the nu-cu-lar bomb, and all?"

"Sure. Unless you'd like to share it with a judge."

Fleet was silent. Beneath this, Terri imagined the calculations of a clever man—would it be better to talk with her, and could he avoid trouble if he did not?

"It's Eddie Fleet you're wantin', right?"

"Right."

Fleet laughed again, more quietly. "Might come with a price tag," he told her. "But maybe I could arrange a séance."

TWENTY-ONE

EDDIE FLEET HAD TOLD TERRI TO MEET HIM AT THE DOUBLE Rock Bar.

It was the scene—according to Payton—of their last meeting before Fleet's betrayal. If that was true, Terri found it an unsettling choice, as though Eddie Fleet were indifferent to the demons of his own past. Pushing open the swinging double door, Terri entered a dim-lit world which must have changed little in fifteen years: laminated tables, a long bar facing three neon beer signs, the whiff of smoke too fresh for attribution—despite the city's smoking ban—to the stale smell of old cigarettes absorbed by older leather.

Two men leaned on the bar—one, turning, gave Terri the cool once-over reserved for a strange woman or, perhaps, anybody not black. Then she spotted a lone man at a corner table, his appraisal seeming more amused and openly sexual. Approaching, she felt his smile as a form of muted aggression.

"Eddie Fleet?" she asked.

Gold teeth flashed. His eyes, unusual in their slightly Asian cast, held the insinuating power of a less than wholesome man from whom an attractive woman needs a favor. "Howard Flood," he amended. "Mr. Ed-ward Fleet's rep-re-sentative. Mr. Fleet's, how they say, re-clusive."

Terri sat across from him. He seemed tall—roughly Rennell's height, though not as bulky—and his face was thinner, its calculation animated by a cleverness wholly lacking in Rennell. But then Fleet had outrun the dire prospects of his youth: in his late thirties he was neither dead nor in prison. What had compelled him to meet her, Terri suspected, was a well-honed instinct for survival.

He nodded toward the beer in front of him. "Have a drink, lady? Make this more of a social occasion."

"Budweiser's fine."

Fleet stood, confirming Terri's estimate of his height. He wore a tight black T-shirt which displayed his muscles and the tattoos on both arms, and moved with what Terri supposed was meant to be a swaying, calypso rhythm. Suddenly she imagined Fleet in a bulky sweatshirt sauntering toward Thuy Sen, and conjured the man Flora Lewis thought was Rennell Price, mistaking Fleet's swagger for the lurching gait of impaired coordination. Startled, Terri imagined Fleet—as Payton had described him—at the moment Thuy Sen died.

She kept her face expressionless. Returning with a chipped glass, Fleet poured beer for her with exaggerated delicacy. Raising his own glass, he offered in satirically pious tones, "To Rennell Price, and our Lord Jesus's promise of e-ternal life."

Terri stared. "I'm not in the eternal life business, Eddie. That's why I'm here."

Fleet emitted a terse chuckle, eyes still bright as he took a long sip of beer, gazing at her over the rim. Slowly placing down his glass, he said, "What you want from me? At least that I want to give you."

"Anything you can tell me about Rennell. Maybe just what he was like."

Fleet grinned. "The boy stood out, that's for sure. Want to know the first thing I remember about him, from when we was kids?"

"Sure."

"Sucker couldn't play hide-and-seek." The memory produced a laugh. "Should have heard him try to count to twenty. If Payton hadn't helped him, he'd still be It, standin' there with his eyes closed, stuck on 'twelve.' " Fleet's full lips formed a sour smile. "You got one thing right. Rennell's dumb as a rock."

Dumb enough to be framed for murder, Terri thought. To her, Fleet's manner betrayed a man lethally Darwinian—taught from childhood to seek out, and exploit, the weakness of whomever he encountered. "Ever say that to the police?" she said.

A corner of Fleet's mouth flickered upward. "They never asked. Guess they figured e-jac-u-lation don't require no college degree."

"No," Terri said agreeably. "All it takes is interest. Did Rennell have any?"

Fleet's eyes glinted. "Maybe in little girls. No way he could handle a woman. You know how it is. Women got more in the way of requirements, and need more in the way of managing."

Like a few blows to the face? Terri wanted to ask. Instead, she inquired mildly, "Do you really think Rennell was sexually interested in children?"

Fleet shrugged. "Liked this one, didn't he?"

"I don't know that. If you've got some reason to believe that it was Rennell who choked Thuy Sen, I'd like to hear it."

The look Fleet gave her was cooler. "When I saw her on the floor," he said coldly, "somebody's come was dribbling out the corner of her mouth. Didn't seem like the occasion to ask whose."

"Did you ever find out?"

Eyes distant, Fleet took another swallow of beer. "Let me paint you a picture, lady. When I come on the scene, that girl was already dead—nothin' I could do to save her. Payton was crashing hard, sweat pourin' off him like he was a sponge and somebody be squeezin' him. And you're expectin' me to be conductin' interviews?"