Pleading Guilty

  'Better save this,' he said. 'My colleagues and I should probably hear it together.' He meant the Committee. 'Carl is in town again today.'

  Martin proposed a meeting at four and left me to arrange it. I went back to Lucinda to ask her to make the calls, though I tried to reach Pagnucci, since I wanted a word with him myself. Then I stood over my secretary's desk for a moment, examining the list of my credit card issuers she'd reached. It struck me for the first time that the Kam Roberts card had been in my wallet too. I had no idea what to do about that.

  Brushy came ambling by in her sturdy fashion and did a double-take when she saw me.

  'Jesus, Mack, you look horrible.' No doubt that was true. Jake had stirred my adrenaline but it still felt like my heart was pumping motor sludge. 'You sick?' she asked.

  'Maybe a touch of the flu.' I turned away, but she followed me into my office out of concern. 'Could be I'm depressed.'

  'Depressed?'

  'From our conversation yesterday.'

  'Hey,' she said, 'you know me, spirited Mediterranean type. I say things.'

  'No,' I said, 'I thought you had a point.'

  She looked herself, little chopped-down hairdo, big pearl earrings, honest face, solid and peppy like she could step out of her heels and give you a good block.

  'Maybe I did.' She sort of smiled.

  'Yeah,' I said, ‘I even went out and had a minute last night where I thought I might practice my hokey-pokey.'

  I could have filled in her dental chart.

  'And?' she demanded.

  '"And" what?'

  'And?' she said once more, Ms Mind Your Own Personal Business.

  'And I ended up getting rolled.'

  She actually laughed out loud. She asked if I was okay,

  then sang, far off-key, a few bars of 'Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places'. 'You don't have to gloat.'

  'Why should I gloat?' she asked and laughed again.

  I turned my back on her to look through the mail. More memos from the Committee about the lagging pace of collections; the Blue Sheet. I heard her close the door, and the click of the bolt gave me a weird little amorous thrill, some vagrant inspiration from our conversation and the last twenty-four hours, an idling recall of what happened when men and women were alone. Brushy, however, did not have anything like that on her mind.

  'Did you see the paper?' she asked. Apparently there'd been another small piece this morning about Archie, basically just saying he still hadn't been found. She described it and asked, 'Do you think that's the guy? The one they talked about at the steam bath?' She never missed a detail.

  ‘I think,' I said, and then, not quite understanding myself, added, as I thumbed through the mail, 'he's dead, by the way.'

  'Who's dead?'

  'Him. Archie. Vernon. Dead-dead.'

  'No,' she said. 'How do you know?'

  So I told her. 'Bert has a problem in his refrigerator that baking soda will not help.' She took a seat on my worn-out sofa, threshing her fingers through her short hair as I described the corpse.

  'How could you not tell me this?' she asked.

  'Hey, get real. The better question is why I tell you anything at all. This one's attorney-client, no kidding. The coppers'll sweat me if they find out I was anywhere near that body.'

  'Did Bert kill him?'

  'Maybe so.'

  'Bert?'

  'Your idea,' I said. 'Never.' 'Probably not.' 'So who?'

  'Somebody else. Probably the heavy-cuff-link crowd.' 'Those guys don't do that anymore, do they?' 'Don't ask me,' I said, 'you're Italian.' 'Come on,' she said. 'I mean to regular people.' 'This guy wasn't regular people, Brush. If you make book you've got to be connected.' 'Why?' she asked.

  '"Why?" Because this is their business. Coast-to-coast. And these guys don't believe in competition. You keep a book, fine and dandy, but you give them a share - they call it paying the street tax. Otherwise you suffer physical harm or they snitch you out to their favorite law enforcement type Besides, they provide many valuable services. You got a customer who's slowpay, these guys can hurry em up, believe you me. You can't do business without them.'

  She stared. She still didn't see why.

  'Here,' I said, 'it's like your insurance client. What's the name?'

  She reminded me, a fair-sized outfit that sent her their coverage litigation in the Midwest. A significant piece of business, and even saying the name she had a hard time managing her pride.

  'Let's say they have four billion in property and casualty coverage in California,' I told her. 'How do they make sure that they don't go under when the hills burn?'

  'They reinsure.'

  'Exactly. They find a few large, reliable companies and literally insure their insurance. And bookies do the same thing. A good bookie isn't a gambler. Any more than your insurance client is. Bookie makes 10 percent vig on your bet, if you lose. You bet 100, you owe him 110 when your team comes up short. That's where his money is. On any given game, he wants you to bet the loser and me to bet the winner. He gets $110 from you, keeps $10 vig, and gives ioo to me.' Brushy interrupted.

  'No chance, Malloy. He'd use your money to pay me.'

  'Very amusing.' I faked a little pop to her biceps and went on. 'Anytime his book puts him at risk, when he has a lot more win money than lose money or vice versa, he'll do like the insurance company. Lay off. Reinsure. Call it whatever. And in this business, you want to lay off, you better be part of the network. Otherwise no one's going near you. Besides, if you need Mr Large and Reliable, the outfit who can always handle your action, it's them.'

  'So what did he do wrong? Archie?'

  'Maybe he was screwing around with the street tax.' Guys had gotten fixed for less than that. With his gimmick with the credit cards, Archie might have thought he didn't need them. But even an actuary using the Vegas line was going to have to lay off. What I could use was a little heart-to-heart with somebody connected. At that moment Toots crossed my mind.

  Having run out of answers, I asked Brushy about lunch.

  'I can't,' she said. 'Pagnucci's in town. I said I'd have lunch with him.'

  'Pagnucci?' This was not one of Brushy's known allies or liaisons, but remembering yesterday I bit my tongue. 'What's doing?' I asked. 'Groundhog Day?'

  That was her guess. In our firm, a partner is guaranteed to make 75 percent of what he earned the twelve months before, drawing it out after each of the first three quarters of our fiscal year. Then on January 31 the Committee divvies up the remainder and announces the results on Groundhog Day. Everybody puts on a tuxedo and goes to the Club Belvedere for dinner. We are served in elegance and joke with each other. On the way out, we each receive an envelope listing our share of firm income. Nobody carpools to this event. Each partner returns home alone, full of the elevating light of success or in fitful depression. The carping begins the next day and often goes on most of the remaining year until the next Groundhog Day. Some people campaign with the Committee, listing all their good deeds and achievements, the many new clients, the great rate of collections. To minimize discord, Pagnucci, who does the first draft of the point distribution, makes the rounds of influential partners to be sure they can accept the Committee's view of their worth. At least, that's what I hear. Pagnucci has never made luncheon reservations with me. The only info I get generally is by gossip, before or after the event, since your share, like your private parts, is supposed to be known only to you. When I got my first cut three years ago, I was in enough of a snit that late one evening I took a peek in the drawer in Martin's credenza, where he stashes the point-distribution record. I just about opened a vein after seeing all the layabouts and losers making more money than me.

  'How about if we do lunch tomorrow?' Brushy asked. Til get some place with tablecloths. I want to talk to you.' She touched my knee. Her round face was warm with feeling. Emilia Bruccia is probably the only person I know who feels any concern for my spirit.

  B. Police Secrets

  After
Brush left, I got on the phone and called McGrath Hall, headquarters of the Kindle County Unified Police

  Force. Twenty-two years, but I knew the number by heart. I reached Al Lagodis, who was now up in Records, and told him I was gonna swing by. I didn't give him a chance to say no, and even so, I could hear he was about as enthusiastic as if I'd told him I was selling raffle tickets for some charity.

  The Hall is a big graystone heap the size of a castle on the south rim of Center City, just where the big buildings stop and the neighborhood turns littered and bleak, full of taverns with garish signs sporting mention of dancing girls, places where lushes and perverts, released from the big buildings at lunchtime, drink beside the hustlers. I was at the Hall in ten minutes. I had to check in at the front desk and they called Al to fetch me.

  'How are you?' Al gave me both eyes, a look of dead sincerity, as he was walking me back.

  'You know.'

  'That good?' He laughed. Al and I go back to the time when I was in Financial Crimes and he thought I did the right thing on Pigeyes. Not that Al did anything himself, except, I always suspected, a little confidential muttering to the FBI - deep background stuff, a cup of coffee and some hard information that he'd refer to as 'rumors'. I always figured it was Al who put the Feebies onto me. He was one of the few folks here who would still talk to me afterwards - although he preferred to do it when nobody was around. Two decades and old Al was still going all shifty-eyed, hoping nobody saw him with Mack Malloy, legendary no-good guy. Around here not much changes. There were gals now, stepping through the dim old halls, wearing guns and ties and shirts that to my eye were not really designed for folks with tits, but even they have got that cop-roll, do-me-something stride.

  'Nice digs,' I said. He had a cubicle, steel partitions painted police blue, that rippled plastic stuff for windows, and a door. No ceiling. Life where you keep your voice down and can literally touch each wall when you stretch. Al worked Financial fourteen years. When Pigeyes was transferred in, he transferred out - discretion and valor, you know how that is - and went to the Records Division, which anyway is a better end to the road. He is now one of those coppers whose hard-charging days are behind them, who've found their cul-de-sac on the police life map and can hide here till it's retirement time, pretty soon now for Al, come age fifty-five. The Hall is full of these types, guts like saddlebags and smoked-out voices. He works 8:00 to 4:30. He supervises the clerks and fills out forms. Nobody shoots at him, nobody kicks him in the ass. He has his memories to keep him warm and a wife to set him straight whenever he's had a brewski too many and begins that lamebrained talk about how nice it would be to get back on the street. A good sod, with features blown out by alcohol.

  'Need you to check me out on a couple things,' I told him.

  'Shoot.' I was seated right beside his little desk and he could reach out from there to shut the door, which he did.

  'You worked Financial a lot longer than me. I've gotta get information from Pico Luan - i.d. on who controls a bank account.'

  Al shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'forget it,' then asked, trying to be casual, 'Whatta we got here?'

  I was dodgy. 'I'm not completely sure. I'm real confused. Here, let me try this one on you. Guy tells me he had a conversation with the General Manager of a bank in Pico Luan, long-distance telephone, and the GM sort of gives him between the lines whose account it is. How's that sound to you?'

  'Not like any of them I ever talked to. Not on the telephone. Those guys got a patter. Go over to the Embassy. See your diplomat with the palm oil. Fill out a form. Wait an eon. Then another one. They'll send you a beautiful document back, honest to Christ, you never saw so many seals and ribbons, you'd think it was the fuckin VFW on parade, but it's spit, they won't tell you momma's first name when it comes to whose money's really in the bank. You been down there. You know how it is.'

  I knew, but I hadn't thought twice on day one, when Martin told us about calling the bank, because, after all, it was Martin. Now suddenly I was wondering how I sat still for that. 'Like trying to grab hold of smoke.' Jesus, I thought.

  'Once or twice,' said Lagodis, 'we were desperate, we hired some sickening creep called himself a lawyer who claimed he had inside connections at the banks. What a snake charmer this character was. Ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent stinko, if you ask me. You could give him a try. Me, I believe more in the guys who get up and walk at the tent meetings.' Al shook his head again, but I told him I'd take the name.

  Scraping his chair across the floor, he walked out into the clamor of the central Records area, computer terminals and files, a number of empty desks at the lunch hour. From where I sat, I saw a sole uniformed type eating a burger out of the wrapper and glancing over the Tribune. The Hall, the HQ, units like Records especially, remain a sort of central backwater where it's like everyone took Valium, you'd swear every thirty seconds took a real-world minute, but I felt sort of cheerful to breathe again this gloomy bureaucratic air, this stolid, police thing of being utterly invulnerable.

  The sad truth is that being a copper won't ever quite leave me. I never was in a natter moral landscape. Or happier, as a result. Cops see it all - the Scout leader who scouts out the little boys, the business guy who makes 300K and gets caught stealing more, the mother who's beat her baby black and blue and wails in agony when you come with Child Welfare to take the kid away. You see her reach out, kneel and plead, tears a river, you see the utter knotted-up violence of her own agony, you see that you are taking her whole universe, cockeyed or not, that everything was in this child, not only her wild pain but some squalid hope, if maybe she could just get the suffering out of herself into some realm where it was more tangible, it might be easier to control. You see it and wonder how can you understand if some of that's not in you? It's just that today you're on the right side, you're wearing blue.

  '"Joaquin Pindling."' I was reading the card Al handed me. 'Jesus, what kind of name is that?'

  'He'll cost you a buck or two, I promise that. Course, maybe a guy like you,' offered Lagodis, 'lots of personality, you could go down there yourself and make new friends, get information on your own.'

  'Kind of friends who'll leave me lighter in the pockets?'

  'Anything's possible. Then of course could be somebody don't feel as friendly as you do. Then you become a sort of firsthand big-time expert on Due Process in Pico Luan.'

  'Now that's a subject, I'll bet.'

  'Oh yes indeedy. I talked with a couple visiting scholars once. Prison conditions in Pico Luan, friend, not like the Regency on the Beach. They let you crap in this big hole in the middle of the cell, deep, deep, goes down who-knows-where-the-fuck. Night-time the guards like to play hide-and-seek with the white guys. Watch where you step, mon. You lose, you find out where who-knows-where-the-fuck is.'

  'Got it.'

  Al waited a bit, seeing how it was. He was still on his feet. He was wearing a tie and, here in the dead of winter, a shortsleeve shirt a little snug over the beer gut. I told him I'd run into Pigeyes, but he'd already heard. This was the Force. That was yesterday's news.

  'He let me go too,' I said.

  'Better be no next time. He'll tear off your head and shit down your neck. From what I hear, he skins his knees he still mentions you. I think what it is is his feelings got hurt.'

  'That must be it.' I had some idea to ask if Al knew what Gino was investigating, in hopes of getting a little more info on Kam, but all in all, I'd probably pressed my luck already.

  'Yeah,' said Al, just filling in, hitching up his trousers, which dropped six inches every time he rocked on the balls of his feet. 'You got a lot to watch out for,' he told me.

  That part wasn't news.

  XIII. WHO SAYS LAWYERS AREN'‘I TOUGH?

  A. Toots's Walls

  I was received in Toots's law offices with the air of ceremonial grandeur undoubtedly lavished on every guest. Stumbling along on his cane, his cigar extinguished but comfortably couched inside his jaw
, he introduced me to each secretary and half his partners, the greatly renowned Mack Malloy, who was helping out the Colonel on that ethics thing. Then he showed me into his office and propounded a lengthy commentary on each memento on the walls.

  Toots's office should have been moved intact to a museum somewhere, if not as a monument to twentieth-century political life then to one individual's capacity for self-appreciation. It was a virtual Colonel Toots Nuccio shrine. There were of course signed photos of the Colonel with every Democratic President from FDR forward, and two with Eisenhower, Toots in uniform in both. There were plaques from B'nai B'rith (Man of the Year), Little Sisters of the Poor, and the Kindle County Art Museum. There was a special award from the symphony, a clarinet cast in bronze; religious relics received from grateful clerics; and a lengthy salutatory letter from the Urban League, perhaps the only compliment Toots had received from people of color in the last thirty years, but which nonetheless had been framed. There was a gavel he'd been given from the City Council upon his retirement, his years of service engraved on the brass hand that circled the mallet head, and scores of photos of Toots with sports stars and political luminaries, some so long gone that their names had vanished from memory. At the absolute focus of attention, mounted immediately above his ponderous old desk, were his medals, aligned in a glass-doored case with a separate little high-intensity lamp that trained on Toots's silver star, which was pinned to black velvet. I spent the required instant marveling at it, wondering as I always would if it had been awarded for real bravery or as part of one of Toots's inevitable deals. Within these walls, one tended to realize that self-congratulation, the collection of banners and ribbons, was far more real to Toots, far more important than the events they were intended to commemorate.