The Good Lawyer: A Novel (31 page)

“No.”

“Detective Krebs doesn’t get too many defense attorneys coming in to talk to him about pending investigations,” Vinny said.

“Vinny here tells me you’re a straight shooter.” Krebs voice and expression showed none of the tentativeness I suspected he was feeling about this meeting. “So I’ll be straight with you. I’m concerned as to why you’ve come. Vinny told me about your trip to Danbury. I met with the Gillis family.” He blinked long and hard. “If your client Guevara is connected in some way to the death of Donna Gillis, I’m not sure we should be talking at all. You’re his attorney, after all. If some judge down the line figures you breached some rule of lawyer etiquette, the whole investigation could get flushed. And the Gillis family has suffered enough.”

Krebs leaned over the desk—the only piece of furniture in the room other than three short metal chairs. Even seated, he was an intimidating figure.

“First of all,” I said, “I am no longer Peter Guevara’s attorney. I represented him in three cases, all of which have been concluded. Whatever he said to me or anyone working on his defense about those cases or any prior crimes or bad acts is privileged. But what someone else told me most certainly is not.”

“And someone else told you about the Gillis family in Danbury,” Krebs interjected.

“Yes. But I can’t tell you who it was. I made a solemn promise I wouldn’t. So don’t ask.”

Krebs closed his eyes and jerked his head back in resigned frustration.

“So what the hell
can
you tell me, counselor?”

“I can tell you that a lot of people believe Guevara is responsible for the disappearance of the Gillis boy five years ago.”

“I know that.” Krebs was hanging on to what little cop patience he had left.

Vinny was sitting close by but keeping his distance, leaving Krebs and me to find our common ground.

“A lot of people also believe he’s responsible for the murder of his public defender,” I added.

“I know that too, counselor, and I would appreciate it if you would tell me something I do not know.”

“Listen,” I barked. “If I hadn’t gone to Danbury that blonde would be ashes and you’d still not have a clue as to what really happened to her.”

“Fine,” Krebs remarked without inflection. “If you want to give me information now, or in the future, fine.” A big finger pointed down at me. “I’ll keep your confidence, and you damn well better keep mine.” Krebs slapped his hand down on his knee then spoke to the ceiling. “I’m in cahoots with a newspaper reporter and a Legal Aid lawyer. Boy am I fucked.”

When he stuck out his hand to conclude the meeting I shook it dispassionately, but didn’t let go. “Now you tell
me
something Detective, something I don’t know—about the Chavez murder.”

He spoke in a hollow whisper. “The Chavez boy—and we’re fairly certain it was him—was last seen walking with a black man about thirty years old who was wearing a cap and sneakers”.

“I know that too, Krebs,” I said impatiently.

“Yeah, but what you don’t know is, when the Gillis boy disappeared five years ago in Danbury, he was last seen walking with a man who had the same goddamn description. What are the odds on that?”

Before I left the 50th I telephoned Brenda at the office, pretending to be concerned about how my cases were being handled in my absence. I had successfully suppressed the urge to call Eleanor since my Saturday morning banishment—an urge, a need I could suppress no longer, despite the Gillis family tragedies, past and present, and the death of Jose Chavez running interference with my emotions. I was relieved to hear Brenda’s voice had some life to it. Maybe the healing for her had begun.

“Are you all right, Nick? You sound more like you’re on trial than on vacation.”

“I guess I still haven’t unwound yet. By the way, I had a little argument with Eleanor over the weekend and was wondering if she called.”

“Couldn’t be little if she doesn’t know where to find you.”

“It wasn’t.”

“No. She didn’t call.” But you might want to call Charlie Farkas Jr. He got really annoyed when I told him you were out for the week. He demanded I track you down.”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“No. Just that you’ve got to call him right away. He said it’s in your interest. Something like that.”

I wrote down his number. Farkas could wait. I wondered how many more times we would run into each other and not come to blows.

I telephoned Eleanor at work.

I got Jo. “Eleanor’s gone. She made me type a letter of resignation, effective immediately.” Jo’s usual Minnie Mouse voice was gone. “Said she didn’t want to stay in New York another minute.”

With the last twang of Joe’s voice a stinging pain arced across my eyes.

I slammed down the phone.

Chapter 61

I
emptied my pockets on to my night table. Charlie Junior’s name and number was where I’d written it, appropriately, on a twenty-dollar bill. I imagined him hounding and harassing Brenda until I returned his call.

I punched in his number.

“Mr. Mannino, so glad you called.” I could tell he had his carpetbagger’s face on. Tara was on the auction block.

“What the hell do you want?”

“You won’t believe it. A client of yours, whom you no longer represent, is now
my
client.” His voice had a wicked singsong quality, like the neighborhood bully who had cornered a kid half his size by a back lot fence.

“And who might this sorry-ass son-of-a-bitch be?”

“Why none other than Peter Guevara. Or should I say Pedro Guevara out of respect for his Puerto Rican heritage?”

His sarcasm was reaching an unbearable level, and I was a short second from hanging up.

“This Mr. Guevara has one hell of a story. And you know what he told me?” He paused just long enough to turn the knife. “He said I was the perfect lawyer to tell it.”

“Get to the fucking point.”

Junior faked a laugh. “Well it seems that Mr. Guevara is concerned about the ethics of his former attorney. Go figure. Says after he confessed to you and the polygraph examiner, you put him in the grand jury to testify, and told him verbatim what to say. Bright guy this Guevara, concerned about the ramifications of a perjury charge should he face one, wonders if you’d be sharing a cell with him for subordination. He made me get a certified Supreme Court stenographer in here to make an official record of the lies you made him tell the grand jury over his strenuous objection. He sounded pretty convincing too. Said there were witnesses to your giving him a few pointers, like two mothers and a handicapped schoolteacher. Said you told him to cry if he could. Did you really do that?”

“How the hell did Guevara find his way to you?”

“I’ll answer the question you should have asked first, buddy boy. Like, where is Mr. Guevara going with all this? The answer is nowhere, if you behave yourself. Seems he thinks you’ll cooperate with the authorities to pin some bum rap on him. Says you got a DA girlfriend who’s been fucking with your head.”

“How does he—?” I thought of my tussle with Guevara—my call to Eleanor—the Rolodex on my desk open to her name.

“He seems to know an awful lot. Now to answer your own stupid question, I don’t know how he came to me. Maybe he heard about my sterling reputation as defender of the poor and unfortunate.”

“Fuck you, Farkas.”

“No, fuck you, Mannino.” His sarcasm was long gone. Only rage remained. “And fuck you I will if given half the chance, you pompous Legal Aid piece of shit. Some send-off you gave my father just before he died.”

“I had no idea—”

“He was carrying on for three fuckin’ days over the Jackson case you came in here screaming about. My father had been practicing law here over thirty-five fuckin’ years. That client of yours wanted that felony plea. Nine years later that skell regrets it ‘cause he got caught with a loaded gun. Well fuck him, and fuck you!”

There were seconds of silence on the other end as Farkas caught his breath. “Oh, one more thing Mannino. Guevara made me promise I’d tell you something, some quote from a Shakespeare play.
Othello
he said.
Et tu, Brute
is what he told me to tell you. That’s it,
Et tu Brute
.”

“That’s from
Julius Caesar
, you moron.”

That afternoon I called Eleanor’s New York number over a dozen times.

There was no answer.

After a dinner of Coca-Cola and lukewarm pizza, I called Atlanta.

Charles the butler answered, and with a cool edge told me Eleanor’s plane would be landing at Hartsfield Airport in about thirty-five minutes. I left her a message:
Please call me at home right away
.

No call came. That evening I phoned again. Again Charles answered. Eleanor was asleep and did not wish to be disturbed.

At 1 A.M. I went to bed. Fifteen minutes later Mom woke me. I had been screaming in my sleep.

I lay awake for the next hour, then turned over a sweat soaked pillow and felt cool fresh fabric against my face. My head cleared.

I saw Guevara standing over me in my office. He had probably just killed Jose an hour earlier, maybe two—the child brought to him by the same black man in cap and sneakers who had abducted the Gillis boy five years earlier.

Et tu Brute. Othello
? Guevara was taunting me, prodding me. And how did he know about Eleanor?

Donna Gillis, obsessed with her brother’s disappearance and Guevara going free, had been trying to warn me about Guevara. That afternoon she had come to the office looking for me. Eleanor had come by also, and at the same time, according to Legal Aid’s day clerk, Jose Torres.

Could Guevara have come by then too, spotted Donna Gillis then followed her? Was he the one who dragged her up to the roof of the Riverdale Towers only to throw her off kicking and screaming?

Mrs. Hirsch said she had posted P.S. 92’s bail money that afternoon. Court records stated that Guevara had gotten out of jail that same day. The Bronx House of Detention is only a ten-block walk from Legal Aid’s offices on the Grand Concourse and 165
^th
Street.

Mentally exhausted I drifted off into a restless sleep, a sleep made possible by the fact that Eleanor was home and safe, hundreds of miles away.

I only wished I had confirmed it for myself—if only she had taken my call.

Tuesday morning. 9 A.M. sharp. I telephoned the office and spoke to Frances, the receptionist, who was working the afternoon Donna Gillis had come by. She remembered her. Eleanor had stopped by the office so many times Frances couldn’t put a fix on whether or not she’d been there at the same time as Donna Gillis. But Jose Torres had confirmed that for me already.

Frances put me on hold for several minutes while she went to a storage closet to check her message log for that day. Pink copies of all messages remained in their spiral notebooks after the originals were torn out and distributed.

Frances returned to the phone. She told me that at 2:10 P.M. a message was written by her to yours truly, and then crossed out—
Peter Guevara stopped by to see you
. The only reason this or any message would be crossed out, she said, was if the person who left it in the first place, asked her to.

I hung up with Frances, and called Detective Phil Krebs.

Chapter 62

S
tanding in front of a one-way mirror in a darkened room the size of a walk-in closet, Vinny at my side, I watched Krebs question Guevara at the same metal desk we had sat around the day before.

An obese detective named Guy Raptakis stood with us. He had a dark pock-marked complexion and sweat stains the size of footballs in the armpits of his white shirt. Krebs had introduced him as “the Greek partner I never let sit in the back seat,” and had we been out in the open air I would have appreciated Raptakis’ kind and easy manner more, but in this tiny viewing room his body odor accosted me like a smelling salt.

After forty-five minutes of questioning, all Guevara had divulged was that which was already public record. He said he knew who Donna Gillis was and had read about her pledge of revenge, but hadn’t taken it seriously; she was just upset over her brother’s disappearance. It was a time he’d prefer to forget.

Then with coy boyishness he asked: “Was the Gillis boy ever found?”

Krebs didn’t answer.

Guevara looked over at the one-way mirror. For a second his eyes seemed to lock on mine. Then he turned back to Krebs.

The Q and A session touched on the topic of Jose Chavez, but only briefly. When Guevara began to repeat answers, Krebs told him he could go.

As Guevara stood to leave he turned to face the mirror, and smiled slyly. Then, just as he had done in my office, he framed a camera with his fingers and pretended to click a picture.

He left as he arrived, unrattled by Krebs’ questions, never having asked to speak to a lawyer, never even mentioning he had one.

“And why should he ask for a lawyer?” Krebs said after he’d gone. “We’ve got dick on him anyway.”