Death Penalty (3 page)

“If you know about it, Mickey, you can bet other people do, and then it's no secret. That's the danger in those kinds of arrangements.”

“Hey, it's not common knowledge, I just happened to stumble onto the thing. I had a burglar in front of Newark for B & E nighttime. A lawyer, one of the regulars over in Recorder's, tipped me. I paid Sid the fee, just like he said, and my man got found guilty of daytime. Got three months. Jesus, he had a record that would stretch from here to Florida. I never seen anybody so happy as him when he got sentenced.”

“That's something I wouldn't talk about, Mickey, or do, for that matter.”

“Get real. It's all part of life. Anyway, like it or not, I had to do what was best for my client. Hey, things like that happen.”

“And you think something similar might be going on over in the court of appeals?”

“I hear talk. Nothing concrete, like I said, but it's possible.”

“I'm not a Sid Williams, if that's what you're getting at.”

He looked hurt. “Jesus, Charley, I know that. But you got friends on that court. I just thought you might have heard something. Anyway, that's not the reason I wanted to talk to you.”

“What is?”

“I would like you to handle this big appeal I got over there.”

“What's it about?”

“It's a product liability case. The defendant is Ford, although it's really about a recreational vehicle made by another company. Ford bought that company and with it all the claims pending against it. Anyway, my man is driving this big hog of a self-propelled mobile home when the damn thing accelerates suddenly, like a fucking rocket, and he slams into a tree. Fractured just about every bone in his body, including his neck. He's paralyzed. About the only thing that works is his mouth.”

“Did Ford make a settlement offer?”

“They just laughed at me.”

“Product liability cases are tough to win.”

He nodded. “You're telling me. Nobody else would even touch the damn thing. Christ, the damages are terrific. The guy's a plumber and made good money. He's thirty-five, so he had a lot of work years left in him.”

“Damages don't count if you can't show the company was liable. It sounds like the old story, Mickey, good damages, bad liability.”

“I dug up some other incidents involving the same make and model of recreational vehicle. Sudden acceleration, exactly the same, injuries too, but none as bad as my man's. The company had notice the product was dangerous but did nothing about it. I really put some work into the damn case. Cash, too.”

“It sounds like you got a little carried away?”

He sighed. “More than that. I went out and borrowed heavy money to pay for expert witnesses. You know, engineers who could testify about the vehicle and why it did what it did. They made tests and that sort of thing. Counting everything, I'm out forty grand. All money that I don't have.”

“Does the client have it?”

“He's in worse financial shape than I am. He and his family are living on Social Security disability. They live
with his wife's folks.”

I shook my head in sympathy. All lawyers gamble now and then, but what Mickey had done was equal to trying to fill an inside straight. No matter how you looked at it, that kind of gamble just wasn't smart.

“And you want me to handle the appeal?”

He grinned. “Yeah.”

“And just maybe you'd like to tag me with part of those expenses you ran up?”

He pretended mock surprise. “God, what a good thought, Charley. Would you do that?”

“Of course not.”

Mickey signaled for another drink. It was now starting to bother me. The scotch had begun to look inviting.

“Here's the deal, Charley. You take over the appeal. I did all the trial work and invested all that dough. I even did the appellate brief. It won't cost you a penny. Whatever I get, you get twenty percent of that. I figure that's fair.”

“Twenty percent of nothing isn't very much.”

“It could be. In this case, it could really turn out to be a lot.”

“Still dreaming, Mickey? What makes you think you'll win in the court of appeals if you lost the trial?”

“I didn't lose,” he said, and this time there was no smile.

“What do you mean?”

“The jury came back with a verdict for just under five million.”

“Jesus!”

“Ford is the one appealing the case.”

“Settle with them.”

He shook his head. “They still think they'll win. They offered peanuts. The outfit they took over doesn't make recreational vehicles anymore, so they aren't afraid of adverse publicity. They are what you might call smug and
extremely confident.”

He smiled, almost wistfully. “I got the case on a third. So, if the appeals court upholds the verdict, I get a fee of a little more than a million and a half. Twenty percent of that, Charley, ain't what you'd call chicken feed. Will you take the case?”

“Why don't you do it? You've been there before.”

“I'm too nervous. I got too much riding on this. If it's lost, I'm ruined, honest-to-god ruined. Christ, I think I'd burst into tears right there in the appeals court, or faint. I need someone who can be cool about the whole thing. How about it?”

I could see the fear in his eyes. He had bet everything he had, money, honor, future. The case didn't sound like a winner. Appellate courts look with hard eyes on such cases. Still, to say no to him would be like running over a puppy.

“Okay, Mickey. I'll do it.”

“This calls for a drink, Charley.”

“Not for me. I have to go.” I gave him my card. “Send me the file.”

I patted his shoulder and started for the door.

“Thanks.” The word was practically whispered. But I didn't know if he was talking to me or to God.

SOME MEN HURRY
home to loving wives, some to not-so-loving wives, and some, with wary care, to other men's wives. I was fresh out of wives, at least at the moment, so I drove back to my office in Pickeral Point. I didn't even hurry.

I seemed to have gone through a platoon of secretaries since I occupied the office over the marine insurance company. I even drafted my daughter, Lisa, as secretary, before she went off to college.

It's an easy job, really, working for me. I'm a trial
lawyer, mostly criminal cases, so paperwork is at a minimum, at least in comparison to some lawyers. I like to think I'm easy to get along with. Of course, some of my clients, I admit, would scare Dracula, but they are generally on their best behavior when visiting my office. Murderers, robbers, and muggers, when not engaged in their employment, as Gilbert and Sullivan observed, can be as courteous and civilized as other people.

Mildred Fenton, the woman presently occupying the secretary position, had much to recommend her. She's efficient, organized, and intelligent, although completely lacking a sense of humor. She's never late and always leaves precisely at five o'clock. She doesn't approve of small talk. Her telephone manner is polite, albeit cool. She's been married to her husband for twenty years. Like many married people who have lived together for a long time, they have come to resemble each other. Like her husband, she's tall, straight up and down, and plain. She wears no makeup and her mousy brown hair is pulled back in a tight knot behind her head. Even a sailor who had been at sea for a very long time wouldn't consider Mrs. Mildred Fenton an attractive love object.

Which is a plus, since her presence doesn't provoke in me distracting carnal thoughts. She doesn't smoke, or drink, another plus for me, obviously, and she has no children. I suspect she doesn't approve of some other things as well.

To her friends she is Milly. To me she is Mrs. Fenton. We both feel comfortable with that formal arrangement.

I arrived back at my office just a few minutes after five, so Mrs. Fenton had already gone.

As usual, she left a carefully typed note, almost a diary of what had happened during the day, plus telephone messages received.

The mail, stacked in a compulsively neat pile, awaited me on my uncluttered desk. I like the desk cluttered but
Mrs. Fenton does not.

My office may not look like much, filled with ancient furniture that had been in place and inherited when I took over from a long-dead lawyer. But it has one stunning attribute that many modern, classy law offices lack.

You can't beat the view.

I sat in my lopsided chair and swiveled around so I could look out the big picture window.

The wide St. Clair River was calm. Canada, on the other side of the river, seemed a world away, although the distance was just over a half mile. The river is one of the main connectors between the Great Lakes. Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, even Toronto are easy ports of call for ships of many nations.

I watched as a huge oceangoing boat approached and then glided past my window, so close it seemed as if I could open the window and touch its enormous gray hull. It was like watching a metal mountain majestically sliding by.

From its markings, the ship was Swedish, and since it was heading north, I presumed it was on its way around Lake Huron, toward Lake Michigan and Chicago.

There was something so final and invincible about its sure swift passage. Like fate, there didn't seem any way it could possibly be stopped.

I watched until it was out of sight, enjoying the sense of tranquillity passing ships seem to evoke in me, then I turned in the chair and attacked the mail.

Mrs. Fenton had opened each letter, separating those that held checks, just a few, from those that contained bills, many more. The checks weren't for large amounts, nor were the bills.

I had a letter from a client who was in Jackson Prison, Michigan's largest penal institution. It was a chatty letter. Things had been going well, it seemed. It apparently didn't bother him that he would still have six or seven
more years to spend behind the walls. His letters had become quite regular. I presumed he had no one else to write to except the lawyer who had gotten his murder charge knocked down to second degree with the prospect, at least, of eventual freedom. He was grateful, which is often unusual in those circumstances. He didn't write to his wife because she was the reason he was in. He had killed her, chopped her up and buried her in various places around his farm. As always, it was a cheerful letter.

My telephone rang. Mrs. Fenton had set the answering machine, so I didn't pick it up. Most of the telephone messages she had left me were from media people looking for a new angle to write about Doctor Death. I thought it was another newsperson and I didn't feel like rehashing the case again.

After three rings, the machine buzzed, transmitted its recorded message. Then the caller responded, his words metallic in amplification, into the turning tape.

I recognized the voice immediately. I had been listening to that voice for a week.

“This is Miles Stewart.” Even speaking into an answering machine, he sounded frostily arrogant. “I'm at my apartment but don't call me here, since I'm not answering the phone. It's been nothing but one damned reporter after another. I shall call you again in an hour. It is now—”

I grabbed the phone at my desk.

“I'm here,” I said. “What's up?”

“So, you're not answering the phone either.” He made it sound as if he had discovered me in something shameful, something on a par with dope dealing or sex with animals.

“I just came in the door.”

I was answered by a disbelieving chuckle. “Of course.”

“What is it you want?” I snapped, regretting it
instantly. He liked getting that kind of response.

The chuckle turned a trifle triumphant. “A bit touchy, are we? Well, I suppose that's natural, seeing how you lost the case.”

I wasn't going to go for the bait a second time. “What is it you want, Doctor?” I tried to sound pleasantly cool.

I could sense his disappointment. “Two things,” he said. “First, I'm on bond. Do I have to stay here? In my apartment?”

“I arranged that you could travel to other states, but you can't go overseas. That's the only restriction. If you do leave the state, you must notify the court of where you can be reached. Why?”

“I have an invitation to spend a week up north.”

“It might do you some good to get away for a while. Do a little fishing, something like that.”

“Fishing is for idiots,” he replied. “This is just social. Mrs. Cynthia Wilcox has invited me. She has a place up on Lake Huron. Rustic, but quite elegant inside, I'm told. She will send a car for me.”

“Wilcox, as in the widow of Poindexter Wilcox?”

He paused, then spoke. “A family friend.”

“A rich friend,” I said. “A very rich friend.”

“Yes, she is that, isn't she?”

I thought of why he was called Doctor Death.

“Have you ever been up there before?”

“No.”

“Is Mrs. Wilcox sick, by any chance?”

I was answered by a soft chuckle. “Not that I know of.”

“Look, I'm going to be frank. If she happens to have a terminal condition and passes away in her sleep while you're up there, no appeal on earth is going to help you. You will have effectively proven everything the prosecutor alleged. Understand?”

That chuckle was becoming like fingernails on a blackboard. “You told the jury I was innocent.”

“I told the jury the prosecutor hadn't proved his case. There's a big difference. If there is a repeat of the other times, Doctor, no one is going to be able to help you.”

The chuckle faded and his voice became more businesslike. “This appeals process, what again are we talking about, in terms of time?”

“Depends on a lot of variables. Weeks, sometimes. Mostly several months.”

“So, we're talking what? A year? Two years?”