The Good Lawyer: A Novel (32 page)

“But what do you think?” Vinny asked.

“What do I think about what?” Krebs responded.

“Is he guilty? Did he kill Donna Gillis, the Chavez boy, little Jamie Gillis, his Danbury lawyer? You’ve got to have some gut feeling on this.”

Krebs sighed, looked at Raptakis, then at me, then back at Vinny. “I think he’s guilty as hell. I think he killed every one of them.”

Chapter 63

I
left the 50th as I came, wearing an oversized ski jacket and a cap pulled down to my eyebrows. I had driven Mom’s ‘79 Corolla to ensure I would travel unnoticed. After crossing over Sedgwick Avenue I drove alongside the Jerome Park Reservoir until I turned and headed toward P.S. 92.

Shula Hirsch sat alone in her classroom in one of the undersized desks. She was bent over a pile of papers. Her forehead was cupped in her right hand, her left arm dangled down the side of the chair. She looked up as I entered.

“Hello, Nick.” She spoke as if we were meeting at a funeral or wake.

“I was very sorry to hear about Jose,” I said.

“Poor boy,” Hirsch said. “He never had a chance.” She gave me a pleading look. “Did I do something bad by testifying the other day?” This expert teacher of the most troubled and difficult children was asking a criminal defense lawyer in the South Bronx the grand moral question.

And as she asked it of me, I asked it of me too.

“No you didn’t, Mrs. Hirsch. Don’t ever think that, ever. You told the truth. That’s all.”

“But I really don’t know what the truth is. Do I, Nick?”

“No you don’t, and at the time neither did I.”

She clutched my right hand in both of hers, brought it to her eyes, and wept quietly.

I knelt down beside her.

“I could tell right after the dismissal,” she said in a voice straining to speak, “that Peter was different.” She took a few deep breaths and gained some composure. “After Jose’s death Carlos came to see me. He was petrified. He said Peter had approached him many times to change his story; said Carlos could go to jail too for being a homosexual, only he used the word faggot. When Carlos still turned him away, Peter told him some sick parable about a little boy who ratted on a grown-up and refused to take it back, only to wake up the next morning with his penis cut off.”

“A Mr. Farkas called me also,” she said. “He told me he was Peter’s lawyer and was making a claim for all of the back pay Peter lost since his suspension. He asked if I’d sign a letter of character reference. I told him to submit it to the school principal and I’d see what I could do.”

“Did he accept that answer?”

“Actually, he became quite belligerent. So I hung up.”

“You did the right thing.”

She looked like a child sitting in the tiny school desk. “Could he really have killed Jose? Could he really have done it?”

I squeezed her aged hands and followed her eyes to the upper right hand corner of the desktop, where amid a blend of haphazardly etched graffiti, lay the brash childish carvings of one little boy no more—
JOSE CHAVEZ.

Chapter 64

T
he phone rang as I walked in the door. It was Eleanor’s friend, Carolyn. “Nick, where the hell are you? I’ve driven up and down Central Parkway five times. There is no number 104, and I haven’t seen any ‘66 Malibu either.”

“Mom’s out with it. I’ve been driving
her
car lately.”

“I’m at McDonald’s on Merrick Road. I’m lost and frustrated as hell. Come get me? I’m sitting in a blue MG convertible.”

The tiny two-seater, a dark sparking blue, was parked at the foot of an elliptical yellow arch that sailed up, over and down the side of the McDonald’s restaurant. The smell of French fries and car exhaust permeated the air. Carolyn was leaning against the passenger door of her car.

Dressed in a tan suit with a white shirt and brown college knotted tie, all she needed was a wide brim hat to be the complete Annie Hall. Her resemblance to Eleanor, especially at a distance, was uncanny. I fantasized for a brief moment that it was really her, that she’d flown in on a whim to take me in her arms—all forgiven, all forgotten, I missed you.

“I’m hungry, slick,” Carolyn said. “Let’s get a burger.”

We took our orders outdoors and ate at a white table under an open umbrella. Afterward, at Carolyn’s insistence, we took a walk. I asked how Eleanor was.

“Resilient,” Carolyn said tersely. “That’s why you’d better get your ass on a plane and fast.”

“Is there an ‘or else’ in this?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll tell you this much, though. You’re immersing yourself in your work at Legal Aid, your cockamamie marriage conditions—it’s enough to give a girl a question or two, I’ll tell you that.” She turned toward me. “And why? Why are you still here while she’s down there?” Her lips tightened, her eyes piercing slits. “Maybe you don’t really love her. Ever think about that?”

“I love her. She has to know that.” We were almost at the corner. I turned away. Beyond a grassy knoll on the other side of Merrick Road was Cammons Pond. Lakeside Elementary School was behind it. A young woman with two toddlers in tow was feeding a small army of ducks. “I just can’t leave right now. I’ve got to see something through. It’s important. I don’t have a choice in the matter.”

“More important than her, I guess.” She began walking back toward McDonald’s with a heartbreaking finality in every step.

I ran to catch up. “Why I have to stay is more important than Eleanor and me put together. Lives are at stake here, Carolyn. And I’m not talking about my clients’. I mean children’s lives.”

She gave me long hard look, then walked off muttering, “You’re either nuts, or the biggest ass I’ve ever met.” She stopped and turned back around. Then with obvious reluctance she said, “If you want to talk, I suppose you can call me. I’ll be staying at Eleanor’s. I have some meetings this week in the city.”

She turned and walked away then turned back. “I asked Eleanor to fly back up and keep me company. Maybe you’ll get lucky and she will.”

I was in over my head.

I set up a dinner meeting with Rocco and Sallie for 7 P.M.

At 5:10 Sheila Schoenfeld called.

She wanted to know why, after dumping all my cases for the week on my fellow Complex C attorneys, I had the time to represent real estate brokers. Evidently, Vincent Tedeschi had called the office.

“He’s a former employer of Guevara who posted bail in Guevara’s name,” I said.

“I don’t remember anything about Guevara working in a real estate office.”

“He never mentioned it to me either. Seems he was working there without a license.” This explanation seemed stranger each time I thought about it.

“You’d think with the guy facing twenty-five years in jail he’d tell you anything that might make him look good,” she said, “especially when he’s got a boss who has enough faith in him to post bail.”

I thought about telling Sheila the truth, but didn’t know where to begin, or where to end. I could never admit to her I was working with the police to try and nail one of my own clients. She obviously hadn’t heard about the murder of Jose Chavez or she would have mentioned it. Sheila lived in Manhattan and only read the
Times
, and never read the crime stories. The
Times
hadn’t even reported the murder.

“Who can explain why people say and do things,” I said.

Sheila recited the broker’s telephone number, and then repeated, “I still don’t understand why Guevara didn’t tell you about his job there.”

“It was off the books?” My excuses were getting flimsier.

“This isn’t Indiana,” Sheila shot back. “It’s the Bronx. Everything here is, more or less, off the books.”

Sheila also said Charlie Farkas Jr. had contacted her for a copy of Guevara’s file. He sent over a notice of appearance as counsel on a suit for back pay plus interest, costs and expenses against the Board of Education.

“I couldn’t find the file,” Sheila said.

“That’s because I have it.”

“I told him that you probably did and then he goes nuts over the phone. Says you’d better not pull any fast ones. I reminded him that you were the one who got his client off, and told him to put all requests in writing. I said you’d get to it when you return next week.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. He also said Guevara wants to speak to you immediately. He demanded I give him your home number. That’s when I hung up.”

My relief was almost palpable.

Chapter 65

T
he Merrick Marlin, a family seafood restaurant, was a short walk from home. Last time I was in the place it was a bar called Roaring Hams, where teenagers with phony IDs drank beer and hung out over tabletop candles on worn, second-hand couches and torn vinyl chairs.

The change inside struck me hard—another reminder of the youth I’d left behind.

The bar had been moved closer to the corner entrance. Off to the left, against the wall, was a large flat tank filled with lobsters. While I waited to be seated a middle aged couple passed the death sentence on the largest one in the tank. The woman called it “the cute one”, and in my mind’s eye I likened the helpless lobsters to little children.

Rocco and Sallie were seated at a table in a rear corner of the restaurant, away from a long picture window that faced Merrick Road. Rocco was wearing his usual white silk shirt and dark blazer. Sallie wore a brown pullover with an emblem of a golfer in swing on the left breast. It fit him well despite his huge belly.

I gave Uncle Rocco and Sallie a kiss on the cheek then sat down next to Rocco with my back to the wall and a view of the entire restaurant.

Between the waiter’s interruptions I told them everything I knew about Peter Guevara. This was a clear breach of attorney-client privilege, but I didn’t care.

The poker faces of the two men changed only in appreciation of the food they ate. When I finished I poked with a tiny fork at my baked clams gone cold.

“This
desgraciato
,” Rocco whispered, “you sure he’s going to stay in New York?”

“Probably not. But what’s the difference? New York, Connecticut, Atlanta.” I shuddered when I included Eleanor’s home state, and couldn’t imagine why I had. “He’s going to savage children wherever he goes,” I added.

“Why’d you represent this mole anyway?” Sallie asked harshly.

“I thought—” I caught myself. “I hoped he was innocent. I didn’t know what a monster he really was until it was too late.”

Sallie pushed aside his dish of calamari as if he’d suddenly lost his appetite.

“Nickie,” Rocco whispered. “Are you asking me to kill this guy?”

I answered without hesitation: “Yes.”

Sallie muttered in discontent then let out a “damn” as he noticed a small stain on the belly of his shirt.

“Nick, we don’t just do that,” Rocco said softy. “You want money, a job, a house, fine. But this, we have to have a reason, a good reason even to consider it.”

“You never had a better one,” I said emphatically.

Rocco patted his mouth with a napkin.

Sallie looked wearily at his lifelong friend and boss then at me. “What about the cops? Isn’t this their job?”

“He could sodomize and kill a dozen more times before getting caught. Five years ago in Connecticut everyone knew he was responsible for two murders, but the police couldn’t prove a thing. Then he moved to the Bronx. The police here are fairly certain he’s involved in two more killings, but again can’t prove it. Soon he’ll leave the Bronx and go someplace else, then someplace else, then someplace else after that. He may have a partner also—a bald black guy.”

When Sallie said he was going to the men’s room, he had the look of someone making a quick exit and pleased as hell to be doing so.

Rocco didn’t utter another word inside the restaurant, even when he crumpled the bill in his hand and paid it. When we left, Sallie was still in the men’s room. I followed Rocco across the street and into the parking lot.

Rocco leaned against his Cadillac. “You got this crumb’s address?” His voice was so moribund it was frightening.

I handed him an arrest photo and a copy of an arrest report with Peter Guevara’s vital information on it.

Rocco slipped the papers inside his jacket pocket. “I thought you asked me out here to talk about that Spiderman guy’s murder.”

“So much has happened since,” I answered.

“I’m still glad you came to me,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t do something stupid on your own.”

“Stupid seems to be a character trait I have plenty of.”

“You ain’t stupid, Nickie. You never were.” His tone was considerate and caring. “But something else is bothering you.”

“I may have lost the one woman, the only woman other than Mom who’s ever loved me.”

Rocco looked truly pained. “Sorry to hear that.”