No Show of Remorse (6 page)

“He was Sal Coletta's partner, for God's sake. He was there the night Arthur Frankel and the Coletta brothers got shot.”

“I know that now.”

“How could you have let Woolford assign my case to you? You must have heard about the shooting, about the cops leaning on me to tell what my client had told me.”

“Except that I didn't. I would have if Richard had been shot, sure. But he wasn't. At that time I had a small child and I was in law school. I didn't have time to read the papers or watch the news. Richard didn't like me being in school and was no help at all. Besides, by then he had a girl— He was away from home a lot and when he was there we hardly even spoke to each other. I didn't pay any attention to what he did—on the job or anywhere else. My marriage was dead.” She looked at me. “Believe me, I didn't know there was any connection. Until yesterday, when I read the police reports.”

“I believe you,” I said. “But you know, a few things didn't get into the reports. Like how, after my client didn't show up to turn himself in, your husband sat and watched a couple of other cops slap me around on and off over the next twelve hours. How they had me in custody and wouldn't let me contact anyone. How one of them told me I was a dead man if I didn't cooperate.”

“Richard's not my husband; he's my my ex-husband. And I'm surprised he only sat and watched. He enjoys hitting people, almost as much as he enjoys the track and the casinos. He sure didn't sit and watch in
my
case. He did the slapping himself. But only twice; that's all. And I'm the one who told him he was a dead man if it ever happened again.”

“Good for you. Me, I was cuffed to a wall ring and not really up to making any death threats. The time wasn't a total loss, though. I did manage to throw up on Richie's shoes.”

CHAPTER

9

B
Y THE TIME WE SPLIT UP
, Stefanie and I had agreed to stay in touch, and disagreed on most everything else. I told her to tell Clark Woolford she'd seen her ex-husband's name in the police reports and get him to take her off my case. She said no, that might make him suspicious, and he could find out from the security desk sign-out book that she hadn't left the office the night before until after he and Flanagan left.

She lived in East Rogers Park, a neighborhood along the lakefront at the north edge of the city. Maura Flanagan's warning that Stefanie would be in danger if she learned of Flanagan's interest in my case had frightened her, made her wonder if someone was watching her. I said I'd take her home. She refused. I suggested a cab, but she said she'd take the el. She didn't want anyone to see her acting unusually.

So she was scared—but tough. On the other hand, I didn't think she was under surveillance. After all, no one knew she'd heard a supreme court justice putting pressure on the head of the disciplinary commission, bribing him with a judgeship in exchange for
not
objecting to my reinstatement to the bar … if I survived long enough to make it matter.

So Stefanie left and I followed her myself for a while. No one else did.

Then, leaving Marshall Field's at street level on Randolph, I walked to Michigan Avenue and headed south. It was dark and the air was turning cool, with a light rain blowing in from the east—off the lake. There weren't many people on the sidewalks and most of them kept their heads down as they hurried along. The streets were slick and shining with reflected automobile lights—distorted streaks of red and white—and tires hissed and spat out tiny sprays of water behind them. I crossed Michigan, went past the Art Institute, then cut diagonally through the grass and trees of Grant Park, toward Columbus Drive and the Cavalier.

And someone followed me. I was sure of it, even though he stayed way back and in the shadows. Not recognizable in the dark and the rain, yet somehow familiar. Thin, like the man in the underground train station.

I left the trees, crossed to the east side of Columbus, and continued south on the sidewalk. More grass and trees along my left; on my right a row of parked cars facing north. Mine was at the end of the line, parked just beyond the last legal space on the block. From thirty yards away I spotted a parking ticket stuck to the windshield.

My shadow stayed with me, apparently satisfied to be just that—only a shadow, not a danger; much too far back to reach me before I got to the car and was out of there. Even so, I picked up the pace a bit. It was raining harder now.

The ticket was stuck with its own adhesive to my windshield, low on the passenger side. I pulled it off. I'd have to squeeze it into the glove compartment with the rest of them and one of these days take them all to traffic court and try to settle up with—

A footstep then—or maybe just a breath—behind me. I turned, but too late. What felt like a sock full of sand slammed hard across my left ear. It lifted me up on my toes and spun my head, and for an instant I saw someone a block away, running toward us on the sidewalk. The shadow, the one who'd drawn my attention away from the man hiding by my car.

But the man sapped me again, and there was nothing then but pounding pain and bright, wild streaks of red, like tail-lights reflecting off wet pavement that heaved and tilted up around me. My knees turned to pudding and my body slumped and I was glad, because I couldn't wait to be on the ground.

The man caught me under the arms, though, and stood me up with my back against the side of the car. I gasped for breath and he stuffed a wadded ball of paper into my gaping mouth. I choked and gagged, and he went to work on my body. Hard punches—painful, professional blows, deep into the gut. I took two of them, shook my head, but still saw only the blurred shape of a man in a ski mask in front of me. With my hands too heavy to lift above my waist, fighting for breath through blocked nasal passages, I could only sag back against the car and wait for more.

But instead, another blurred shape came from my left and threw itself into the man in front of me. The two of them went to the sidewalk, thrashing and kicking. One of them was silent, but the other kept shouting,
“Bam! Bam! Bam!”
over and over. I suddenly realized the noisy one was Yogi. He seemed to be pretending he was hitting my attacker, but he wasn't hitting anyone. He had his arms and legs wrapped around the man, trying to roll him around on the concrete.

I backed off a little and managed to get the wad of paper out of my mouth, breathing hard and trying to figure out how to get them apart without Yogi getting hurt. Then, as though magically, Yogi broke free of the man and was on his feet, and then suddenly up on the roof of the Cavalier.

He kept right on shouting, but it was
“Run! Run! Run!”
now, and it was me he was yelling at.

I stayed put, though, as the man lunged toward the car, reaching up for Yogi. Then he must suddenly have remembered me because he started to turn—and I caught the side of his jaw with my right elbow.

I was still too dazed to make it a direct hit, but it shook him, and he turned and ran. I took three steps after him and knew it was hopeless.

“You okay, big mon?” Yogi called.

“Yeah. I'm fine.” I swung around to find him back on the sidewalk. “I was just about to take the bastard down, though, until you got in the way. Now he's gone.”

His mouth gaped open for just an instant, then he broke into a grin. “You jokin', hey?”

“Right,” I said. “So that was you? Following me all the way from Marshall Field's?”

“Sure.” He smiled a wide happy smile and tapped his temple with his finger. “Good tinkin', huh?”

“Good for me, maybe,” I said. “But for you? Guys like that don't like to be interfered with.”

“I be okay. I run away … quick an' easy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That's how you got busted in the eye yesterday.”

“Shoot, mon. That be a surprise.” He stared down at his feet, then looked up again and grinned. “Like tonight, mon. You forget you should be watchin' out and then …
wham!
 … and you—”

“Anyway, thanks.”

“Tink nothin'. Gotta go now.”

“Hold on. We need to—”

“Gotta go, big mon.” And he was gone … quick an' easy.

It was dark and still raining, but I crawled around on my hands and knees until I found the wadded ball of paper the man had jammed into my mouth. I got into the car and smoothed out the crumpled-up paper. It was one sheet.

It was a copy of page one of my petition for reinstatement.

CHAPTER

10

I
TOOK
L
AKE
S
HORE
D
RIVE HOME
. The rain had slowed up and traffic was light. I drove slowly, staying in the lane closest to the lake, and with too many ideas tumbling through my mind. I finally picked just one to concentrate on: Maura Flanagan's order to Clark Woolford that his office not object to my reinstatement. It made no sense.

To begin with, just about everyone who had any reason to care—and there couldn't be many—was
against
my getting my license back. I myself didn't even want the damn thing that bad, for God's sake, so why should Maura Flanagan take up my cause? And Woolford? According to Barney Green, the guy seemed like a straight arrow. He'd spent twenty-five years as a partner in a successful little downtown law firm, and had run once for judge, unsuccessfully. Six months ago the supreme court tapped him to head the disciplinary commission. It was to be a temporary assignment until a divided court could agree on someone permanent.

Now Flanagan was saying she'd make him a judge, and she probably could. Judges were elected officials, but when one of them died or retired, the supreme court appointed someone to finish up the term. These appointed judges could run for election at the end of the terms they'd served out, and were generally thought to have a head start on their opponents. So being appointed a judge was a good deal.

And if Woolford wanted that, so what? Lots of lawyers did. Of course, lots of lawyers weren't making strange deals to secretly influence legal proceedings in exchange for what they wanted. Not that the deal was a sure thing, but Stefanie had the impression Woolford was giving in to Flanagan, even though she hadn't heard him say yes.

*   *   *

I
TURNED IN AT THE
L
ADY'S DRIVE
about eight-thirty. Happily, no more shit had been smeared on my front door. I circled around and went up the rear stairway. On the landing at the top, I peered through the window in the kitchen door. The door was locked and the light was on and everything looked just as I'd left it. Except I hadn't left the light on.

Gun in hand, I went inside and headed straight for the room where the old Steinway upright rules the space. Nothing unusual there, thank God. Then back into the kitchen, still holding the Beretta—with a .22 LR cartridge in the chamber—but down beside my leg now. It was unlikely I'd find anyone still there. I knew I'd find a message somewhere, though, and not on the answering machine.

What I noticed first was the water. It stood in large, shallow puddles on the hardwood floor in the hallway. Then more water, trapped by the marble threshold and forming a half-inch deep lake on the tile floor in the bathroom, along with thousands of pieces—large and small—of the porcelain that had once been the toilet bowl. And lying flat under the water, stuck to the floor and too soggy to be picked up in one piece, was another copy of page one of my petition.

I grabbed all the towels I owned and mopped up the wood floor in the hallway. The bathroom could wait till morning, when maybe some of the water in there would have dried up.

The coach house had only one bathroom, but there was a working sink and toilet downstairs in the garage, where forty or fifty years ago someone had turned one of the parking bays into a workshop. The inconvenience would be a pain in the ass, but what bothered me more was that the shattered fixture had been an antique, a pre-1920s beauty of a toilet with the manufacturer's trademark and the model name—
Expulso
—embedded in blue Victorian script in the porcelain at the rear of the bowl. I'm not an antiques buff, but hell, that thing was probably irreplaceable.

*   *   *

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER
I was at the Lady's house. I'd been clearing God knows how many years of dirt and debris out of my new bathroom in the garage, and had gone over just to borrow her vacuum cleaner. I ended up telling her what had happened since the night before, right up to how someone had gotten into the coach house.

“They left the kitchen light on,” I said. “Deliberately, I'm sure. Wanted me to be nervous about going in. I checked the piano first, but it was fine.”

“I'm glad of that,” the Lady said.

“I'm glad, too,” I said. “But dammit, I'll never find another Expulso.”

“No, quite probably you won't.” The Lady poured herself another cup of some tea I'd given her. It was a foul-tasting Japanese tea I'd gotten from Dr. Sato, a martial arts
sensei
who took my money every week so he could throw me around his
dojo
and teach me about pain and humility. “Tea?” she asked.

I took a cup, knowing I wouldn't drink it. “I don't like people coming right into my house, trying to intimidate me. I'm gonna find out what's going on.”

“I'm sure you are.” She seemed preoccupied, as though trying to figure something out, but all she said was, “I take it the facilities in the garage are adequate?”

“Fine,” I said, “but that spider guy was right. I replaced the burned-out bulbs and found those things crawling all over the place in there. You have any bug spray?”

She sipped her tea. She seemed actually to like the stuff. “Have you ever read
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,
by Annie Dillard?” When I shook my head she went on. “Dillard used to hang a towel over the side of her bathtub so the spiders could get out, since they can't get a grip on the smooth surface. She said any predator who sits in a corner and waits for food to come along needs all the help it can get.” She sipped more tea. “That struck me as so … compassionate.”