The Lasko Tangent (12 page)

His calm was oddly deflating. “Go on. I’m all ears.”

“There was also careless talk this afternoon—your careless talk—about matters which are not the province of your agency. The police have made no accusations. You have no one who, in the final analysis, will support you in this game.” His voice was mournful now, the dirge for my dead career. “You are alone. So there is nothing to be gained. Think on it.”

He was watching me expectantly. I noticed that a blood vein showed in his pale forehead. I watched him inhale. It made him look gaunt, like a death’s head. He was Mr. Outside to Lasko’s Mr. Inside. Catlow would take care of my career and handle the agency while Lasko commissioned the heavy stuff—traffic fatalities and death threats—at a safe distance. It was all very effective. And I was sick of it.

“It’s a good analysis, Mr. Catlow. But you’ve made one invalid assumption. You assume that I want to be like you. The truth is, I’d sooner flunk my Wassermann test. That’s not heroics. It’s just a fact.” My voice picked up tenor. “Now I’ll give you some advice. Your client’s performance today was one of the uglier things I’ve seen. But not as ugly as Alec Lehman, bleeding all over Arlington Avenue.” The vein in Catlow’s forehead was throbbing now; it made him seem as pale as ivory. I finished. “Lasko is a tar baby. You’re going to get tar all over you.”

Catlow stared for a moment; I wasn’t behaving right, not at all. Then he stood briskly, primed to leave. No final threats. Catlow was not a man to waste words; he would use them elsewhere. “Good-bye, Mr. Paget.” The good-bye carried echoes, as if I were going somewhere.

My voice stopped him. I spoke in a conversational tone. “You know, when I got to Lehman, his face was smashed in and his skull was crushed. One eye was closed and there was a sticky pool of stuff on the outside of his head that used to be on the inside.”

The vein pulsed; his eyes were knife-points of anger. I had spoken crudely, not like a lawyer, of forbidden things. Things that formal language made less real. He left quickly.

I slumped down in my chair. The party was over, and I was left to clean up the mess. I felt more tired than I could remember.

Fifteen

Robinson was fidgeting with the contents of his “in” box when I walked into his office. It was something he did when he was excited and wanted distraction.

“What happened?” he asked. His eyes were bright with curiosity.

I slid tiredly into the chair in front of his desk. “You guess, Jim.” I said it in a casual tone, to assure him that he hadn’t missed anything.

Robinson smiled faintly. “I think I can give you a synopsis. Big Daddy told you that you had been bad, and would be punished. Exiled to the Bureau of Fisheries and Hatcheries, to think about proper spawning conditions for salmon.” His tone said that he half-expected it to happen.

“That’s fairly close.” I was coming down fast; my voice seemed to arrive at my ears from some great distance.

“And you told him to stick it.”

I nodded.

Robinson’s face sobered. “That was a pretty amazing performance. The first time I’ve actually seen you do something stupid.”

“You just haven’t been looking. How do you read Lasko?”

“I think Lasko wanted you to know that he killed Lehman. He wanted you to get the sweats at night, thinking about it. And Catlow will be trying to put the fix in.”

“I don’t think I’m the next pedestrian fatality. Too messy, and unnecessary. I don’t know anything.” I spoke with more conviction than I felt.

“Lasko can’t be sure of that. Let me tell you what I think.” His voice turned firm and authoritative. “Even granting your assumption, you don’t have long on this case. About once every five years, we get into something that stands to hurt someone really powerful. It usually works out about the same. There are ways of pressuring this place through the people who run it, the ones who want to get what politicians or maybe someone with money can give. This is that kind of case, and you’re in the middle. But this one is worse—somebody’s gotten killed.”

“So what would you do?”

Robinson looked down at his desk. “I’d leave it alone.” He spoke quickly, as if anticipating an argument. “Look, I’m not defending any of this. But I think this place does some good, and it’s not a perfect world. Realistically, your chances of getting anywhere with this—except hurt—are about zero. Let the police do it.”

I shook my head. “It’s too late for that.”

“Damn it, Chris, it’s too late for this. It’s too late for Lehman.”

“Lehman’s death wasn’t where it ended. It was where it began.”

He paused, as if weighing the finality in my voice. “All right,” he said at length, “if Lehman makes this one worth the risk, OK, although I can’t see why. But you need another friend to help—Woods, McGuire, I don’t care who. Otherwise, you won’t have authority to spit. Catlow will cut your nuts off. If Lasko doesn’t do worse.”

I shifted in my chair. “I guess it has to be Woods.”

“Whoever, Chris, you’d better get on it. And no more going off on a tangent, investigating your own agency.”

I stood. Robinson’s round worried face belied his sharp tone. “Good luck,” he added mildly. “You’ve always shown a genius for making friends in high places.”

I left and went looking for Woods.

The tranquility of the Chairman’s suite was unnerving. Up here, my meeting with Lasko seemed unreal. I asked the receptionist for Woods, and sank to a soft chair. Woods was out. But Mary was in. She peered around her office door.

“Good afternoon, Chris.” She didn’t smile, but the words carried a faint, wry allusion to the morning. The receptionist sensed it somehow, and squinted, as if she were picking up distant signals on a crystal set. It would have all been very funny, some other day.

“Are you free?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said crisply. “Come in.”

I sat across from her. Her navy silk blouse made her tan rich brown. Her hair was pulled back.

She saw my eyes and smiled pointedly. “I didn’t have time to wash my hair this morning.

I grinned. “It looks fine.” But I had to get to it. “I’ve got a problem for Chairman Woods.”

“What is it?” Her wispy smile vanished.

“McGuire set up a meeting this afternoon between me, Lasko, and his lawyer, a man named Robert Catlow. No stenographer. Lasko wanted to pick my brains. I wouldn’t play. It’s fair to say that I did not leave them laughing.”

Her face went glacial; right then, we could have fooled the receptionist, or anyone else. “Why didn’t you tell us before the meeting?”

Because I’d rather do it myself, I thought. “I don’t know.”

“And now you want Jack Woods to clean up after you.”

“I want his help.” I hesitated. “And yours.”

Her voice was cool and distant. “Just how much help do you expect, Chris? You’re not a day ahead of me anymore. I’ve caught up.” Not quite. I remembered the dead man’s memo, hidden in my desk drawer. “You used me to backdoor McGuire on the Lasko subpoena. You didn’t tell us that you were going to meet a witness. You tried not to tell me that you were going to Boston at all.” Her recitation was dispassionate, as if she were introducing exhibits. “You’ve been acting as if you were an independent contractor.”

“I do better on my own,” I said.

She looked at me as if to learn where my words began and ended. “So far, you’ve done brilliantly. You’ve got no facts and a dead witness. All that you’ve managed is to make trouble for your own commission.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

A thin line of annoyance furrowed her forehead. “You had better decide who you work for, Chris.”

I told myself that I had done as well as I could. I had taken five days’ free ride: sneaked out the second subpoena, gotten to Lehman’s memo, and sent Lasko away with nothing. “When can I talk to Woods?”

“He’ll be in Monday morning.”

“OK, I’d like to see him at nine.”

She inspected me evenly. “Don’t expect applause.”

I stood, suddenly angry. “Look, the last three days I’ve seen someone killed, been threatened by a pig and his tight-assed lawyer, and been screwed by my own boss. So I don’t give a shit what you think.”

Her eyes widened. I looked back, knowing how little of that had been meant for her, and realizing that I could still feel her. I felt schizoid. Some other day, I’d have taken her home. Instead, I turned and left.

It was five o’clock. From my window I could see the street in front of the building. It suddenly teemed with cars and bodies. As if on cue, an army of civil servants scrambled out the doors and into the streets. I turned away and glanced at my desk. Someone had thoughtfully clipped an article on Lehman from the Boston Globe. The cops were still calling it a hit-skip. I picked up the phone and called Greenfeld.

Sixteen

Greenfeld was already at the Madison when I arrived, sitting at a table near the bar. He saw me and grinned. “You look like hell, Chris,” he said in greeting.

I sat down. “That’s funny, I feel terrific. After I leave here I’m planning to practice my kung fu, make love to the wife of the Brazilian ambassador, and write the first two chapters of the Great American Novel.” His grin broadened. “What are you so cheerful about?” I asked.

We ordered two martinis. “You too would be cheerful,” he explained, “if you’d just gotten rid of one of the great American boors.”

“Who’s that?”

“My brother-in-law. Living proof of the remarkable survival powers of the upper-middle class. Took five years to get through prep school. Basic intellectual deficiencies, stemming from a weak gene pool. So his father hunts up an eastern school which needs a library. Takes him another five years to get a C average in history. He’s still unemployable, so then his father finds a suitably mediocre law school. It’s a three-year program, but it takes him four, mostly because he spends his time drinking beer and playing the bowling machine at the student union. So Dad gets him a job with a friend. Now he lounges at the country club, drinking gin coolers and bitching that ‘the blacks’ don’t work hard enough.”

I smiled. “You must like him a lot.”

Greenfeld contemplated that. “‘Loathe’ isn’t a bad word. ‘Despise’ is OK, too.” He dismissed his brother-in-law. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. I’ve had a shitty day. I wanted a good stiff drink and the pleasure of your company. I’m expecting you to emulate the bright chatter of the Algonquin round table, playing all six members, while I listen and get drunk.”

He looked curious. “Were there six members of the Algonquin round table?”

“Christ, Lane, I don’t know.”

His grin reappeared. “Why not?”

Our drinks arrived, brought by a waiter so quiet and efficient he blended into the bar. The bar itself was small and pleasantly dark, with small squares of silver glass on the wall, picking up fragments of light. A few patrons drifted in, looking for the first drink. I picked up my martini. I like the first martini of the evening. It tastes clean and new, especially if you get it before the bar crowds up and the air gets noisy and stale with smoke. I sipped. The martini almost felt like a fresh start.

Greenfeld put his drink down. “What’s happening with your Lasko case?”

“Nothing much. I met Lasko today, though. He and Catlow were over at the commission.”

His eyebrows raised. “Did you learn anything?”

I shook my head. “Nothing, except that I don’t like them worth a damn.”

“What did they do?”

“Mainly tried to walk all over me.”

He smiled. “That’s not unusual.” The smile faded. “You know, I saw that one of Lasko’s executives was killed by a car the other day. In Boston.”

I nodded. “I read the article.” I spoke as casually as possible. I couldn’t prove murder. And to suggest it to Greenfeld might wind up losing me the case. But my little game felt pretty bizarre, like denying that Lehman had ever existed.

I couldn’t tell whether Greenfeld was looking dubious, or just thoughtful. I sipped my drink, picking around for a change of subject. “What do you hear about Justice’s antitrust case against Lasko? Is it going ahead, is the White House dropping it, or what?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Does the White House know about your Lasko thing?”

I could give him that much. “I’m sure they do.”

His thin smile appeared fleetingly, then vanished in thought. “That puts your agency in a touchy position, doesn’t it?”

“So it would seem. Have you anything that can help me?”

He stared at me questioningly. “You sound like you need help.”

I grinned, trying to sound careless. “I always need help.”

He thought. “I’ve heard one thing, thirdhand, from my fabulous selection of sources. Lasko is supposed to be busy in the Caribbean, buying secretly into banks, dummy corporations, things like that. Someplace like the Netherlands Antilles, with no regulation, where your boys can’t get them.”

“Does your friend know what for?”

He shook his head. “Getting information out of the Lasko organization is not the easiest thing in the world. But hell, Chris, that’s your line of work. Have you ever heard of a Netherlands Antilles corporation that was straight?”

I smiled. “Maybe two or three.”

“So what does that suggest?”

“I don’t know. Lots of people have used them. Bernie Cornfeld and the boys from Investors Overseas Services, for instance. But I’d have to know more, like how that relates to stock manipulation, if at all.”

“So you think Lasko did this stock manipulation?”

“I don’t know that either. Honestly.”

He accepted that, and ordered another drink. I did the same. The subject of Lasko was dropped by tacit consent. “I’m taking a nice-looking girl to dinner,” he announced cheerfully. “Why don’t you get a date and join us? We’re going to Nathan’s. Then there’s an old flick on the box tonight. The Big Sleep. Bogart doing Philip Marlowe.”

Greenfeld was a film nut. “How many times have you seen that one, Lane?”

He stared at the ceiling. “At least five,” he concluded.

I grinned. “Thanks anyhow. I think I’m going to sack out.”

Greenfeld wagged his head in a burlesque of disappointment. “You’re missing a great film. Probably not a bad dinner, either.” His voice turned wry. “Are you between meaningful relationships?” The ironic phrase seemed somehow directed at himself. It reminded me of Lynette.