Death Penalty (18 page)

I think the man was more surprised than offended. He shrugged, said something under his breath, and shuffled off.

Mallow didn't even notice. “A foreign country, right on our doorstep,” he said, gesturing across the river as if he had just discovered Canada. “A peaceful border. No cannons, no soldiers, just friends.”

I said nothing. I realized he was waiting for a young couple who had been standing at the river railing to move away. Finally they did.

“As I promised,” he said very quietly, “I looked into your McHugh case.”

“You didn't have to.”

“I know.” He turned so that his back was against the river railing. He looked directly at me. “Frankly, it doesn't look too good for your side of things, Charley.”

“Oh?”

He paused. “You're not stupid, Charley. You realize that as a former chief judge of that court I still have a lot of power there.”

Actually, the opposite was true. Mallow had been in trouble, and trouble was something other politicians moved away from like baskets of snakes. He was almost without friends now, but apparently reluctant to admit, or perhaps even acknowledge, this brutal truth to himself.

“I can still make things happen over there,” he said, sounding like he really thought he could.

“Judge, what are you trying to tell me?”

He studied me for a moment, then looked around. We were alone.

“You were a clerk over there once, Charley. You know about the hearing memo, right?”

I nodded.

“Secret, right?”

I nodded again.

“Only the judges on the hearing panel, their chief clerks, and the clerk who prepared the memo have access, am I right?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “If that document was given out to someone who wasn't entitled to see it, such an indiscretion would result not only in discharge but probable disbarment, correct?”

He didn't wait for me to answer. “If the attorneys could get their hands on the memo they would know when to settle and when not to settle. It would destroy the purpose of the appeal, would it not?”

“Okay, Judge, you've made your point. I know all this as well as you do.”

This time there was no smile. He reached into his inside coat pocket and extracted a folded piece of paper and handed it to me.

“Read it,” he said, “but quickly.”

The wind off the river had picked up; the paper danced in my hands as I unfolded it. It was a photocopy of the hearing memo in the McHugh case.

“Interesting, eh?” he said.

The memo was standard. I had written enough of them myself to know it was genuine. The facts were brief, but accurate. The law was set forth in an evenhanded way, citing the strongest cases for both sides.

The recommendation was to overrule the jury verdict and decide the case on the law and against Will McHugh.

I read it twice and then looked up at Mallow.

He snatched the paper from my hands and carefully began to tear it up into small pieces, letting the wind pick up each piece and wing it into the choppy river water where it floated for a moment and then sank.

He said nothing, merely looked at me without blinking.

“So, I presume this means I lost,” I said.

“As I said. It doesn't look good.”

I thought about Will McHugh. I could almost see his haunted eyes looking at me. And I thought about poor Mickey Monk.

“Why did you show this to me?”

For a moment he didn't reply. Then his face grew stern. “I may be able to help you, Charley.”

“What do you mean?”

“Would you like to win, Charley? Despite that memo?”

“The court doesn't always follow those memos.”

“True.”

“Judge, what are you trying to say?”

He looked around, and then across the river at Canada. “Beautiful,” he said. “So peaceful.”

He smiled; it was a soft, secret expression, as if he knew something but wasn't ready yet to say what it was.

“I may be able to help,” he said quietly. “There's a lot of money involved here, and that always means there's elbow room. I'm glad you agree to my help. Stay here, Charley, and enjoy the view. I'll be in touch later.”

He ambled away quickly before I could reply. I watched him go.

It seemed to me that the Honorable Jeffrey Mallow was starting to put together some kind of shakedown.

Maybe the case had already been won and decided. Perhaps Mallow was looking to take credit for something that had already happened. He would want to cut himself in for a big slice of the fee. It would be raw theft. For whatever reasons, he was a desperate man.

I wondered what the next step might be.

I looked down at the roiling river water. It was twenty-five feet deep there, murky with swirling currents. It was dangerous.

From my point of view, it wasn't the only thing that was dangerous.

I WALKED BACK SLOWLY
to where my car was parked. And I took my time, for a change, driving back to Pickeral Point.

I needed to think. I wasn't even sure that the conversation had been the opening gambit to solicit a bribe. Jeffrey Mallow was a peculiar man in a number of ways. Perhaps stealing that secret memo was some kind of demonstration that he still had clout at the court where once he reigned. For all his bluster, I began to sense the pathetic man beneath the noise. A failed man. A man who once had power and a degree of fame, and now no
longer had it. Maybe this was no more than a demeaning act to solicit someone to look upon him with respect one more time.

He had mentioned money but only in an oblique way.

Perhaps he was like the old ragged man he had so roughly rebuffed. Maybe this was his way of asking for a handout.

I thought of Mickey Monk telling me that rumor had it some of the judges were for sale.

I again wished I had never heard of the damn McHugh case.

My small ship was sailing into very dangerous waters.

A lawyer, who did nothing wrong, except perhaps to fail to report a bribe, could lose his license, or even go to jail.

Especially a lawyer with a past like mine.

When I got back to the office I decided to skip lunch. It wasn't any attempt at a diet, or even the press of business. I just didn't feel like eating. Mrs. Fenton, who apparently didn't wish to join in my unofficial fast, went off to lunch at her regular hour.

There was nothing particularly interesting in the mail, not even a catalogue of note, nothing to take my mind off Mallow's strange conversation.

I was watching a big freighter coming up the river when I heard the office door open. Even the sound was tentative.

I got up to take a look.

He was young, early twenties, dressed in working clothes with the Harwell logo, which meant he was
employed in the local boat building plant. The Harwell name always gave me a jolt, even though that case was well behind me now.

He was short, stocky, and had the thick hands of a workman. His sandy hair was worn long to hide jug ears that stuck out like side porches. It only made things worse. I recalled the ears but nothing else.

“Do you remember me, Mr. Sloan?”

I nodded and smiled as if I did.

“You handled the deal when we bought our house a couple of years back. My name's Ed Ravell. My wife is Mary.” I remembered them.

Ed Ravell's face was the bland, innocent kind that they use to sell soap. A nice face, nothing much behind it maybe, but honest. And well scrubbed.

“I'm sorry I didn't call for an appointment. I'm on my break, and I was hoping you could fit me in for a few minutes.”

“Sure, Ed. Come in.”

I sat behind the desk and he took a seat opposite me. I remembered the wife, too. They had one small child who ran all over the bank's closing office and Mary Ravell had been very pregnant with another close on the way. I remember thinking that she was probably a very pretty woman when not frazzled and had time to attend to herself. She was the obvious boss of the family and handled all the details at the real estate closing.

“How are the children, Ed?” I made it sound as if I had been the family lawyer since the arrival of the first Ravell in Kerry County.

“They're fine,” he said quickly, obviously anxious to get on to the business that brought him in.

“What can I do for you, Ed?”

He had a complexion that colored easily. Suddenly he looked like a ripening cherry.

“My wife is seeing someone.” He blurted out the words quickly, as if just the physical act of saying them was painful.

“How do you know?”

“She told me.”

“She did?”

“Well, more or less.”

I sat back in my rickety chair and studied him for a minute. “More or less?”

“I want a divorce,” he said. “How much will one cost?”

“Depends. Michigan is a no-fault divorce state. If you want one, you get one, that's the simple part. What isn't so simple is things like alimony, custody, and child support. People tend to fight about those things and that runs up the legal bills. Does your wife want a divorce too?”

He looked surprised. “I don't know. We didn't talk about it.”

I took out a legal pad so it would look like I had some purpose and then looked back at him.

“How did all this come about, Ed? Just tell me the story as you know it.”

In a way it was difficult to keep from laughing, the story was so mundane. But it would have been like laughing at a dying man who lay writhing in pain.

The Ravells had joined a card club in the neighborhood after moving in. It wasn't much, just four couples who played cards every other Saturday night. Pickeral Point is not a hub of show biz activity on weekends.

Without Ed noticing, his wife became attracted to one of the male players, a man much different than Ed, outgoing, exuberant, fun loving. And, I guessed, his ears were probably not as prominent as Ed's.

I got the impression that Ed was the type who wouldn't notice much unless it was brought forcefully to his attention.

The other couple moved away, and it was then that Mary told Ed that she had engaged in what she described as heavy petting with the other card player. She said it had never gone beyond
that
, although the affair had gone on to last several months. She said she was filled with guilt and remorse and desperately needed forgiveness from her husband.

Ed figured she had screwed the daylights out of the guy each and every day of those several months.

So did I, although I didn't say it.

“So,” he said, his lips tightly compressed, “that's why I want a divorce.”

I tossed the pencil across the desk in a show of disbelief.

“It never happened,” I said.

“What do you mean? She said it did.”

“Ed, women are funny sometimes. Different from you and me, you know?”

“Hormones?”

I nodded, as if that was the true meaning of life.

“They have different needs than we do. I think Mary invented this whole thing just to get your attention. I see a lot of this kind of thing, Ed. All lawyers do. Women get desperate. They'll say the goddamnest things, even if they aren't true.”

“But . . .”

“You said you noticed nothing, right? If she hadn't ‘confessed' this great sin, you saw nothing to even make you suspicious. Right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“No buts. You have some marital problems, Ed, but not the kind you think you have. You and Mary had better start seeing a marriage counselor, so she won't have to cook up crap like this to get your attention.”

“They cost money.”

I nodded. “They do. Depends on who you see. I'll give you some names. They might see you a half-dozen times at say fifty to seventy-five bucks a visit.”

“Jesus!”

“Well, it's well worth it. If you should get a divorce, even if the legal fees didn't get too high, you'd still be paying support for almost eighteen years for two children. We're talking maybe sixty thousand dollars, maybe more.”

His mouth flopped open but nothing came out.

“So you see, a small investment now in keeping a happy marriage will add up over the years.”

His cherry complexion had gone dead white.

“Anyway, Ed, she invented all that crap just to see if you're still really interested.” I wrote out two names of counselors, although I knew he probably wouldn't see either one.

I handed him the paper. “These are good people,” I said.

He was still in shock. With some people, money really talks. Ed Ravell was one of those.

“What do I owe you?” he asked, obviously afraid of the answer.

I glanced at my watch. “I charge a hundred an hour,” I said. “We've been here about half of that. Fifty bucks should cover it.”

“You didn't used to be-so expensive,” he said.

I smiled. “You know how it is, Ed. The price of everything is always going up.”

“I don't have that much on me.”

I escorted him to the door. “Send it to me.”

Mrs. Fenton came back as Ed Ravell was going down the stairs.

“Who was that?” she asked. “A client?”

“That was a man who came seeking justice and instead found faith.”

“Pardon me?”

“Think nothing of it,” I said as I walked back into my office. I could almost hear her fume.

MICKEY MONK CALLED ME just after I got home. Mickey was drunk, but I had come to expect that. He had two kinds of drunk—one, the best, was happy and cheerful. The other, the worst, was morose and whining.

Tonight it was number two. I let him ramble on about a number of subjects, his wife, his children, a small-time case that had found its way into his office, all kinds of cheerless patter. I thought he was about to wrap up the nightly report, and then he asked if I had heard anything about the McHugh case.

I told him no. If I had even suggested that Jeffrey Mallow had showed me the secret court memo, Monk would explode the case, himself, and me.