Pleading Guilty

  'So,' he said, finally seated, 'I didn't figure you made house calls.'

  'Occasionally. There's something I want to talk to you about.' 'This here hearing?'

  I told him it was something else and hiked my chair a little closer.

  'Toots. Can a fella ask a question? Between friends?'

  He gave me the usual fulsome stuff, for me anything. I replied in kind, saying he was the only person in the tri-counties I knew who might be able to answer this. He smiled, deeply pleased by any compliment, without regard to its sincerity.

  'I wondered if you might have heard something around town. There's an insurance guy, an actuary, who the papers say is missing. Vernon Koechell. They call him Archie. What I have to find out is if you know any reason for somebody to pop him.'

  Toots laughed quite merrily, as if I had made a saucy remark just within the borders of good taste. The shrunken old face showed not a sign of even vague offense, but I noticed that he had drawn back on his walking stick and within the milky elderly eyes was perhaps lodged a trace of something lethal.

  'Mack, my friend, can I make a little suggestion?'

  'Sure.'

  'Ask another question.' I stopped on that.

  'See, Mack, I got a rule for life. Always followed it since I didn't even have hair on my chin. I known you a long time now. You're a smart fella. But let me share my thinking with you: Don't talk about other people's business. It's their business and it's for them to worry about.'

  I received this advice solemnly. Looking at me, Toots winked.

  'I hear you, Colonel, but I've got a real problem.'

  'Whatsa matter? He rate you on your policy or what?'

  'Here's how it is, Colonel. I have a partner missing, a guy named Kamin. Bert Kamin. Where he's gone, I haven't the foggiest. But this guy Archie, he's got a white shirt on and a nice tie, but he's keeping a book. And my guy Kamin's laying bets with him. At least that's the way it looks.' I peeked up at Toots. I had his attention.

  'Anyway, Archie, he's quite dead. That's a fact. Something I know. And pretty soon, any minute now, the coppers are going to show up to talk to me about that. And I'm frankly not interested in getting myself in Dutch with the wrong folks. So that's why I ask. I gotta know what's doing here, because I may have to do some fancy steppin'.' I tried to look hangdog and sincere, reverencing one of the many powers that dominated Toots's life. He wasn't really buying it.

  'You a straight shooter, Mack?'

  'As much as the next guy.'

  Toots laughed. He liked that. He removed the cigar and in the gloomy light of the room considered the mangled end. It looked like a hunk of seaweed pulled up on a line.

  'You understand with bookies,' he said.

  'Not everything.'

  'See this here - Guy makes a book, you know, he's got to lay off, right?'

  'Like insurance companies. He doesn't absorb all the risk. I understand that much.'

  'This guy, he had some very good luck. Somehow he always had laid off his losing action.'

  I waited.

  'How could he lay off only losing bets? Doesn't he lay off beforehand? I mean, before the event. The race, the game, whatever?'

  'That he does,' said Toots.

  I was on very delicate ground. Toots worked lovingly on his cigar.

  'You mean he knew how these events were going to come out? Is that what you're saying? He knew these games were fixed?'

  'You see,' said Toots, 'you share risks, you share no-risks. Capisc'? A fella's gotta look out for his friends. Otherwise he don't got friends, he got enemies. Right? That's how life is, right?'

  'That's how it seems to be, Toots. There are no victims.'

  Toots liked that one. No need to explain it to him.

  'So you see,' he said, 'you asked a question, you asked another question, you told me some things, I told you some things, we had a talk. Okay? Somebody asks, some things you know, some things you don't know. Right?'

  'Right.'

  'Sure,' said Toots. He gave a quick, smug, frightening little laugh. 'So. We gonna win this hearing?'

  'I wish I could tell you yes, Colonel. The hill's pretty steep.'

  He shrugged, here in his element capable of seeming worldlywise, ripened by life.

  'Give it your best. I ain't gonna get the death penalty, right?'

  We agreed on that.

  'And who's there, you or the skirt?'

  'The skirt's good,' I told him.

  'They say,' said Toots. 'So they say. Bit of a punchboard, I hear.' I'd known he would check her out. 'Woman of the world,' I answered. 'A big world,' he said.

  'I'll try to be there, Colonel. I have to worry about this too. Archie. Bert.'

  He understood. Sometimes a fella got himself into a spot. He walked me to the door.

  'Remember my rule.' He pointed with the cigar. Don't talk about other people's business. I had it firmly in mind.

  B. Accounting Secrets

  On the way back into the Needle, the elevator stopped at 32. No one got on, but I felt destiny beckoning and I jumped off and trod the hall to Accounting. When I came through the door, the unit manager, Ms Glyndora Gaines, was sitting right there.

  I took a seat beside her. Her desk was completely clean, windswept but for one file she was examining, a state of order which added to the usual impression of a dominant, unremitting soul. Glyndora continued to look over the file, determined not even to acknowledge me. Maybe there was a trace, a vapor, of a smile being willed to oblivion.

  'Glyndora,' I said quietly, 'just as a matter of curiosity, not saying I'm gonna do it, but you know, what if. What if I go tell the Committee the way you've been screwing me around? What if I act like I'm one of your bosses, instead of a chump?'

  I was trying to sound sort of reasonable, maybe not pleasant, but calm. In the big room out the door, a dozen people were whizzing around, overwhelmed by the year-end rush, adding machines chugging out tape and phones giving their little electronic chirp. Checks were at a number of desks in colorful stacks.

  'You gone talk to the Committee? Then tell them this.' She rose up in her chair as she took a surveying glance toward the doorway. 'Tell them you come to my apartment, you pounded on the buzzer causing all kind of commotion, talking all kinds of jive about Bert, and when I let you in, man, there wasn't barely one little word about Bert. The next thing, dude's got one hand on my titty and the other on my ass, and the only way I got rid of his rasty old self is cause this boy talkin all that A A shit went out to buy something to drink. Tell that to the Committee.'

  She smiled in her way, tight like she was fastening down a bolt or a screw, and sized up the effect all this had. With Glyndora everything is a contest and she knew she had me beat. My side of the story was going to sound weak. Worse than that, ridiculous. Nobody would believe I was just posing with my hand on her breast. And if they knew I had been drinking again, my time as Deadeye Dick, Private Detective, would probably be over, not to mention my employment.

  'Glyndora, you know exactly what's going on here.'

  She leaned forward against her arms, making her frontal equipment prominent in a blouse of orange flourishes. A layer of purple shadow lay thickly on her lids like pollen.

  'Here's what I know, Mack. You are weak, sucker.' She was leering again, amused by the thought that she knew my secrets. But I'd been there too and learned some of hers. I pointed.

  'And you like white guys.' I let that out and nodded myself, maybe imitating her. Even so, I regretted it. She stiffened; she reared back. We were headed where we always headed - me beats you, hah hah. One more contest. The Dozens, some kind of phony signifying. It was nothing I wanted, and I did what seemed under the circumstances somewhat daring and reached out to grab one of her hands. The touch, my big pink hand on her brown one, was shocking to us both. And that was the point.

  'Hey,' I said, 'you know, I'm like you, I work here. I'm not trying to be your lord and master. Have I ever done that? Call me callous, I'm crude, e
t cetera, et cetera. But have I ever gone out of my way to do some kind of job on you? These guys tell me "Find Bert" and I wanna find him. I'll tell you the truth - it's something I need to do. So just give me a break, okay? Be a person.' In the bleakness of the tone I'd assumed, I suddenly heard a confession to myself. All along, I'd talked about this whole escapade, tracking down Bert, as a boondoggling effort at life reform. But that was kidding around, teasing myself with fantasies of running away with the money or earning my partners' esteem. Yet somehow I'd staked a lot more on this venture than I had admitted. Maybe my life was on its last legs. Maybe my chances were few. But I saw now that I'd promised myself that I was not coming out of this funhouse the way I'd gone in. Somebody within me believed that and was connected to what even in this meager, glimmering form you'd have to call hope.

  And in admitting that, I was doing to Glyndora the one thing she tried to warn everyone against - being vulnerable, hanging it out for her to tromp on. She stared, disbelieving, insulted, and not altogether happy with the physical approach. She withdrew her hand from mine and slid her chair back so she could view me from a more distant perspective as we continued sizing each other up. Glyndora has her routine, the Hey-I'm-a-tough-black-bitch number, and she does it on autopilot, a piece of racial rhetoric that's as much mask and cipher as Steppin Fetchit onstage. Oh, I know she means it. I know she's tough. Like Grou-cho, who would not want to be a member of any club he could join, Glyndora wants to be the first one to reject you. Mission accomplished. But swimming through her eyes on occasion is some misgiving, a recognition that she's someone else. I don't know if she gets caught up in crackpot fantasies about how she is being poisoned by aluminum pots or whether she is a secret reader of the Koran. But there is more to her than she lets on. And that's the final insult she hurls at most of us. That she'll never let us in. Yet Glyndora has her secret place. He says with confidence, a denizen of his own secret places. Somebody who'd been there briefly with her the evening before and was knocking on the door again now. 'I need to find Bert,' I repeated.

  Finally she leaned toward me and spoke in a softer tone, maybe an appeal of its own.

  'No, you don't, Mack. You just gotta tell them you looked.' That was a message. Glyndora was playing the role of medium, of oracle, but even so, I wasn't sure if I was being beseeched or warned.

  'You have to give me more, Glyn. I'm clueless. Who are you fronting for? I mean, at least tell me about the memo.'

  Her posture became rigid again, her face hard. It was like watching a book slam closed.

  'You're asking too much, man.' It wasn't clear if the excess was on her end or mine, if I wanted information I wasn't entitled to or if it came at a cost she wasn't willing to pay. But the answer, whatever, was no. She stood up and walked past me. She was running for cover. I thought about what I ought to do. I could demand her keys and toss her office. I could hire a service and get thirty temps to tear through the files. But I'd just made a deal. Without turning, I spoke before Glyndora could get far.

  'One thing,' I said. Her heels stopped clacking, so I knew she was hanging there by the threshold. 'I never put my hand, not once, on your behind.'

  When I looked back, she was smiling a little, something like that. I'd gotten that much. But she wouldn't give any actual ground.

  'Says you,' she told me.

  C. The Devil Himself

  'It's a pact with the devil.' Thus spake Pagnucci as Carl, Wash, Martin, and I sat in the same paneled conference room where we had encountered each other at the start of the week. There was a moment of rare winter sun, a part of the circle escaped from the clouds like something hanging out of a pocket. The heavy drapes had been permanently sashed by the decorator and the long walnut table was bright with the glimmer of the late light, thick as caramel. I had found the three of them waiting for me and quickly reviewed my conversation with Jake Eiger that morning. I skipped Bert's memo and my trip to Neucriss. Glyndora had made me shy of both subjects, and I wasn't eager to take on Martin, whose motives remained perplexing to me. He and Carl gravely received the message I'd brought, but Wash was slower on the uptake.

  'He's telling us that if we can't put this crime right, it will go unreported,' Martin said to him. 'Jake is concerned about Jake. He can't go to his Chairman, to Krzysinski, with this without endangering his own position. After all, who put Bert in charge of the 397 escrow in the first place? He wants us to keep our mouths shut.'

  'Ah,' said Wash, who did a poor job of hiding the fact that he was quite pleased. 'And where do we end up with Jake?'

  'In bed, I would say,' said Martin. 'Holding dirty hands. He can't very well cut us off, can he? He's our hostage.'

  'And we're his,' said Pagnucci, invoking by his remark a pointed silence.

  'But,' said Wash, continuing to muddle it through, 'we've reported the matter to the client. We've done our duty. If he chooses not to do his -' The back of his elegant white hand traveled off to the land of moral oblivion. Wash was already sold. A tidy solution. Five million gone and a secret forever.

  'Jake says he doesn't believe it, actually,' I offered. 'He says that he's hoping that an accounting will prove it's not true.'

  'That's horseshit,' said Pagnucci. 'He's posturing. We know the client isn't really informed. If we go along with this, it's the same thing as having said nothing at all.'

  With the only difference of course that there was a far lower risk of detection. Auditing of the escrow account from which the money had disappeared was under Jake's direction and control. He'd cover us in order to cover himself. That was the meaning, I realized now, of that remark he'd made to me this morning about an accounting.

  We were silent again, all four of us. Throughout this session, my attention remained on Martin. Wash had already set his course down the path of least resistance, and for Carl the problem-solving method was equally apparent, a question of benefits and costs. In his head, the pluses and minuses were already totaling. But Martin's calculations, in line with his character, figured to be more complex. Like an Aristotelian figure, his eyes were raised to heaven in the course of higher contemplation. Martin is your veritable Person of Values, a lawyer who does not see the law as just business or sport. He's on one million do-good committees. He's against the Bomb, the death penalty, and damage to the environment, for abortion, literacy, and better housing for the poor. He's been the chairman for years of the Riverside Commission, which is devoted to making the river clean enough to drink or swim in, goals that frankly will not be achieved until long after we have colonized Mars, but he'll still take you for a walk along the tangled, littered banks, soft with prairie grasses, and describe out loud the bike paths and boat piers he sees in his head.

  Like any Person of Values who is a lawyer, Martin is not in it for goodness alone. These activities make him prominent, help him attract clients. Most of all, they invest him with the same thing that knowledge of the law imparts to us all: a sense of power. Martin gets off with his hand on the throttle. When he talks about the $400 million public offering we did for TN two years ago, his eyes glow like a cat's in the dark. When he says, 'Public company', he says it the way the priest passing out wafers says, 'The body of Christ.' Martin has a grasp of the way business runs America and he wants to help be in charge.

  Yet it's not just the sense of being important by attachment that excites him. It's also what his clients want to know: right or wrong, allowable or no. He's the navigator, the person with the compass, the man who tells the high and mighty, if not about morals, then at least about principles and rules. His clients can go out in the vineyard and get their boots covered in muck. He's back in the office, charting their course by the stars. When Martin goes to sleep at night and asks God's blessing, he tells the Lord that he helped his clients move with grace and speed through the difficult and ambiguous world He has made for us. Though perhaps not even Martin can tease out the logic, he believes that he is engaged in an enterprise that is fundamentally good.

  Liste
ning to this, I'm sure you're humming 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' and marching in place. All right. I'm just trying to tell you how it is. But don't sneer. It's easy to be a poet sitting behind the gates of a university or a monk in a monastery and feel there is a life of the spirit to which you are dedicated. But come into the teeming city, with so many souls screaming, I want, I need, where most social planning amounts to figuring out how to keep them all at bay - come and try to imagine the ways that vast unruly community can be kept in touch with the deeper aspirations of humankind for the overall improvement of the species, the good of the many and the rights of the few. That I always figured was the task of the law, and it makes high-energy physics look like a game show.

  Wash finally interrupted this extended silence by posing the question that no one had been willing to ask: 'How would anybody ever find out?'

  Martin actually smiled and without saying more looked to each of us, ducking his chin in a brief, suggestive way. The gesture by itself, his mere acknowledgment of what was held within the room, was vaguely shocking. The next step would be to dip a pen in blood.