Pleading Guilty

  'Where would you say Bert went?' I asked. 'There are three hundred people here asking already.'

  'Say that, so far as we know, he's in Pico Luan,' answered Pagnucci. 'Retired from the practice. That'll pass the red-face test. Forward his mail to the bank there. None of that is what bothers me.'

  'Retired?' I asked. 'Just like that? He's forty-one years old.'

  'There is not a soul who knows Bert Kamin well who wouldn't believe him capable of something so impulsive,' said Wash, waving his pipe around. He had a point. Bert had done stranger things half a dozen times in the last five years. 'This is doable,' said Wash, 'quite feasible. And as to your concerns, Carl, about Jake ignoring our report -' Wash filled the pipe bowl with fire from his lighter. ‘I personally do not believe Jake Eiger would lie.' It was something of a non sequitur but we all saw what Wash was up to. If it ever proved that the secret had not held, we could say that we had placed our faith in Jake - to be honest, reverent, and true, to protect the best interests of TN, to tell what-all must be told. The silence upstairs we took to reflect TN's desire to save face and to protect the settlement fund from raiding by the plaintiffs' lawyers. We would express shock about Jake. In the face of calamity, Wash, who had placed Jake at TN like a spore years ago, would trot out his protege for drowning.

  But Martin saw through Wash instantly.

  'If we go that route,' said Martin, the man I love, a fellow who could make Keats think twice about whether beauty is truth and vice versa, 'and the day comes that we have to explain, we'll all lie. You'll hear four different versions of what went on in this room.' His look panned each of us and settled on me.

  'Lest I repeat myself,' he said now, 'I hope you find Bert.'

  TAPE 3

  D. The Head of Finance

  Pagnucci said, 'That was troubling,' as we headed toward my office after the meeting, strolling down the book-lined corridor. Martin and the decorators have decided that it is the right touch to fill the halls with the gold-spined federal and state reporters, though it's hell on the associates, who never know where to find the volumes they need.

  Carl was in town from DC for the second time this week. Eager to please TN, and to minimize their dealings with other large firms, we had opened the Washington office fifteen years ago to handle matters before the FAA and CAB. When airline regulation went the way of white tennis balls, we had about thirty lawyers with nothing to do. Enter Pagnucci, a former Supreme Court law clerk to Justice Rehnquist, with six million dollars in annual billings, thanks to Ronald Reagan, who in 1982 made Carl the youngest member ever of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  The saying about law firms is that there are finders, minders, and grinders, referring first to people like Carl and Martin and Brushy who find big-time, big-money clients to employ them, then the service partners, guys like me, who make sure that skilled work is carried out by supervising the third group, the young toilers laboring in the library amid the ghosts of dead trees. The sad fact is that there are far fewer finders than minders and the finders increasingly demand more of the pie. Carl left his former firm because they were not contemporary enough, meaning they did not pay him what he thought he was worth, and his very presence among us on those terms means we have to make sure the same thing does not happen here. There are only so many ways to do it. Maybe you can get the associates to stay another quarter hour past midnight, or pile on charges for ludicrous extras -fifty cents a page for running sensitive documents through our shredder - but in the end the best way for the top guys to stay ahead is if they have fewer people to share with, fire a few minders and give Carl their points. Lots of people around G & G claimed we'd never do it, but the pressure's there, and Carl, who heads the subcommittee on firm finances, has never expressed the same resolve. No doubt he thought that's what I wanted now - to lobby him about next year's pay - and as soon as my door was closed he raised another subject.

  'So what's the latest from the Missing Persons Unit?'

  'Gaining a little ground,' I said. 'Still no sight of our man.'

  'Hmm,' said Pagnucci. He allowed himself a bit of a frown.

  'I had a request to make to you as head of finance.'

  He nodded. No words. He was steeling himself. Unconsciously he raised a hand to his head. There's a bald spot the size of an orange at the back of his head and you can tell from the way he's always fussing that it drives him nuts - the imperfection, the lack of control, the fact that he is as subject as anyone else to the whims of fate.

  'Suppose I told you I want to take a trip to Pico Luan?'

  Carl deliberated. Even crossed up, he was disinclined to quickly agree.

  'You didn't think that was such a clever idea earlier this week.'

  'It's the only lead I have left.'

  Carl nodded. He'd been right from the start; he could accept that. For my own part, I felt too much vestigial loyalty to tell him there was something squirrelly about Martin's account of his phone call to the International Bank of Finance.

  'There's a lawyer down there I'd like to retain. Subject to your approval.' I handed him the card I'd gotten from Lagodis. 'The guy's supposed to do black magic getting stuff out of the banks.'

  Pagnucci made a sound but otherwise failed to react. Off-camera, Pagnucci has quite a life, this trim little guy with a stiff little mustache cuts some figure. He's on wife number four - each of them blondes, drop-dead gorgeous, who are getting progressively taller as his marriages wear on - and he runs himself to work in one modified Formula One car or another, Shelbys and Lotuses, all kinds of hot stuff. At some point, maybe all day, his fantasy life must be running wild, John Wayne movies probably, banal stuff like that. But in the office, none of it shows. Not a muscle twitches. He did not seem to have any more to say now. He touched the corner of his mustache with a lacquered fingernail.

  'I was going to charge the trip to the recruiting budget, frankly,' I said. 'I'll probably take someone with me to witness any interviews. But I wanted you to know so there's no squawk when the bills come through.'

  'Have you talked to Martin or Wash about this?'

  'I'd rather not.' I was telling Carl a good deal now and he absorbed it like all else in silence. I was taking a chance. But Carl by his nature liked keeping things to himself. And I couldn't see him vetoing his own idea.

  'You're turning out to be a much more complicated fellow than I imagined,' said Pagnucci. I tipped my head slightly. I thought it might be a compliment. Before he opened my door, Carl said, 'Keep me in the loop,' then drifted off, smug and unruffled, leaving behind his usual aura: every soul for itself.

  Rational self-interest is Carl's creed. He worships at the altar of the free market. The same way Freud thought everything was sex, Pagnucci believes all social interaction, no matter how complex, can be adjusted by finding a way to put a price on it. Urban housing. Education. We need competition and profit motive to make it all work. It is, I know, quite a theory. Let everybody struggle to get their bucket in the stream and then do what they like with the water they fish out. Some will make steam, some will take a drink, a few fellows or ladies will decide to take a bath. Entrepreneurship will flourish; people will be happy; we'll get all this nifty indispensable stuff like balsamic vinegar and menthol cigarettes. But what kind of ethical social system takes as its fundamental precepts the words ‘I 'me' and 'mine'? Our two-year-olds start like that and we spend the next twenty years trying to teach them there's more than that to life.

  I stayed down for the evening, cleaning up what I'd ignored while running all over town the last couple of days. Memos and letters. I returned all my calls. I hadn't eaten much. I was tired, my eyes and bones felt acid-etched from the hangover. Now and then I closed my eyes and thought I could still catch far back in my throat the fierce taste of rye, which I savored.

  Eventually I picked up the Dictaphone. The city out the window at this hour has a sort of painted stillness, all black forms and random lights: a woodcut pattern - gray on indigo and jet. A lone
car races up the ridges of the superhighway. I am one more life in hiding amid the occasional heaving and cranking of a big building in the darkness, talking to myself. A single coast guard icebreaker's mast light bucks along the river.

  It seems increasingly obvious, even to me, that I'll never show a word of this to anyone on the Committee. Ignoring the insults, which I could cross out, I've lied to or hidden things from each of them half a dozen times. And for you, sweet Elaine, a Dictaphone or some typing won't really make our communication improve. So we all wonder: who am I talking to?

  In my mind's eye, there are faces. Don't ask me whose. But I see some reasoning and sensate being who will get hold of this thing, some someone of largely indecipherable characteristics who I nonetheless find myself addressing now and then. You. The universal You. U You, in my mind. Gender, age, and disposition unknown. Experience unimagined. A somebody floating like dust in the outer reaches of the cosmos. But still - I think, bud, this is for you.

  Of course, I try to imagine reactions. You could be a copper, or a Bureau agent, with a soul rough as sandpaper, who locks this up at night to make sure your wife does not get ruffled by the bad words, while you, when you're alone, rifle the pages looking for another passage about my hand on my crank. Maybe you're some fifty-year-old Irishman who thinks I don't sound a bit like you do. Or a kid who says this is boring. Or a professor who concludes it is generally vile.

  Whoever, I want something from You. Not admiration, God knows, I don't feel much for myself. What more can I call it but connection? Comprehend. Let that mighty magic lightning flow across the gaps of space and time. From me. To you. And back. The way the bolts explode from sky to earth and then bounce again into the heavens and the universe beyond. Going on forever, to the regions where the physicists tell us matter equals time. While in one spot on this single humble planet, a tree is split, a rooftop smokes, a human being sits awake and startled by the miracle of energy and light.

  TAPE 4

  Dictated January 30, 1:00 a.m.

  Friday, January 27

  XIV.

  YOU GUYS

  A. The Murder Suspect

  Friday a.m. I was heading in through the revolving doors of the Needle when a young guy stopped me, pockmarked skin and a slick-backed do and a fancy jacket made from the skin of some creature with a two-chambered heart. Familiar from someplace, like an actor you've seen on TV.

  'Mr Malloy?' He flipped his tin at me, and naturally I recognized him then, Pigeyes's wormy companion, Dewey.

  You guys,' I said.

  'Gino'd like a word with you.' I looked in all directions. I didn't believe I could get within one hundred yards of Pigeyes without picking up some sensation of him, like a missile detector homing on infrared. Dewey was indicating the curb where I saw only a rusted conversion van.

  I asked what would happen if I said no.

  'Hey, fella, you do what you wanna do. Me, I wouldn't fuck with him. You're in a lotta deep doo-doo.' Pigeyes was in a mood, Dewey was saying. There was a vaguely plaintive quality to his address. Life forges all kinds of fraternities and Dewey and I were in one of its strangest: partners of Pigeyes. There were only so many people on earth who could understand his plight, and dogmeat or not, I was still one of them. We looked at each other a moment as the Center City crowd scurried past, and then I followed him to the curb and the van, which looked like a weary delivery truck bearing sclerotic rust marks on its rocker panels and six of those grayed-over bubble-type portholes, two in the back and two on each side.

  When Dewey opened the rear doors, Pigeyes was inside, along with a black guy, another copper. It was a surveillance van. No way to be sure how long they'd been watching me; long enough to know I wasn't upstairs. They could have followed me from home or, more likely, called Lucinda and learned that I hadn't arrived. There were video cams mounted on swivels over each of the portholes and two rows of recording equipment in small wooden consoles behind the driver's seat. The entire interior had been carpeted in a mangy gray shag, which had matted and worn away on the floor and was marked here and there with cigarette burns. Guys spent long nights in here, begging each other not to fart, watching whoever they watched, dopers or Mafia dons or nuts who'd said they wanted to kill a senator. There were cup holders fixed to the walls and carpeted benches over the wheel wells. Pigeyes was sitting next to the electronics, wearing one of those short-billed county caps. I suppose this was his getup when he was undercover. I nodded rather than use his name and Dewey took my elbow to help me up. Inside, the van smelled of fried food.

  I was impressed by Pigeyes's access to this equipment. Surveillance was a separate department unit. When I was on the Force, they would have shitcanned a request for assistance from Financial Crimes faster than junkmail. But Pigeyes sort of had his own police department, his own affiliations and rules. His cousins were coppers and so were two of his brothers, and he had one of 'his guys' as he put it, in every nook and cranny of the Hall. He could fix up any little problem - leave or sick days, expense money to take care of a snitch. Naturally he'd return favors -outside the Force, too, for that matter. The guys he grew up with, fellas who these days were importing tunas stuffed with brown heroin or gambling for a living, were all the time giving him a holler when they got in a jam and Gino'd always help out. No questions asked. The Pigeyes National Bank of Favors Owing and Owed. The only thing I found disconcerting was that he was spending his markers to watch over me.

  As soon as I took a seat on the wheel well, Pigeyes was on his feet. Make no mistake, he was unhappy.

  'I know one fucking douche bag, Malloy, who isn't as fucking smart as you think you are.' He waited for me to buy the straight line but I wouldn't bite. 'You knew I was sitting on the goddamn credit card, didn't you?'

  I looked at the black copper, tall, wearing a tweed jacket and a wool vest but no tie. He was lurking around near the equipment. The van, I would bet, was assigned to him.

  'He's having those visions again,' I said.

  'Don't smart around.' Pigeyes pointed. 'That's some story he's tellin, this kid. How much did you pay him?'

  'I don't know what you're talking about,' but of course I did now. Pigeyes had been tracking Kam Roberts the same way I had - with the Kam Roberts credit card. Being a police officer, and one in Financial Crimes, he had clear advantages. The bank card people needed pals in Financial, guys who'd maybe visit some deadbeat who was twenty grand over his limit to suggest that a payment was due soon, otherwise this could go down as a criminal fraud. Now it was payback. Every time a transaction was posted to Kam Roberts's account, the computer center down in Alabama would call Pigeyes. He could track Kam all over the planet, and when Kam showed up in the tri-counties, Gino could skedaddle over to wherever, collar Kam if he was lucky, or at least ask where Kam had been and what he looked like and tell the store owner, the hotel manager, if this guy or anyone asking for him popped up again, to pronto give Pigeyes a jingle. That, I now realized, was how he'd set up on me at U Inn.

  All well and good, but apparently Gino and Dewey had spent the last day chasing all over the North End, exploring a rash of purchases of CD players, high-top sneakers, Starter jackets and video games, receiving consistent descriptions of a thirteen-year-old Latino who was not a twenty-seven-year-old black man with receding hair.

  Dewey was using a fingernail to pick at his teeth as the three of them watched me.

  'I didn't pay him,' I said.

  'Sure you didn't,' said Dewey. 'He says he took your wallet off you while you're passed out in some Chevy near the projects.'

  'Sounds right to me.'

  'Not to me,' piped in Pigeyes. 'What I hear, you're on the Life Plan down there at AA. They take attendance?'

  I looked pretty clever from Pigeyes's perspective. On the street, everyone knows you use a juvenile to do dirty business, because practically speaking, there's no such thing as jail for a kid that age. The gangbangers employ twelve-year-olds to make dope runs, even as triggermen. Pigeyes figured
I gave the kid the Kam Roberts card and told him it was Shop-Till-You-Drop or the coppers come round, in which case here's your story.

  'You're buying him time to run, Malloy.' I wasn't sure if Gino meant Bert or Kam Roberts, or if they were actually one. 'What's this guy to you?'

  'Who?' I asked.

  'Who am I looking for, fuckface?'

  'Kam Roberts?' I really was guessing.

  He mimicked me, a long face, a bit of Brando. ' "Kam Roberts?"' He repeated the name half a dozen times, his voice capering up the scale. Then he turned vicious. There was a rheumy turn to his eyes and something inflamed near the bridge of his nose; I could see why people were talking about Pigeyes and dope. On the other hand, he'd always been fast to anger.

  'You fuckin tell me right now where he is. Now.'

  'You holding paper on him?' I still wanted to know what it was for, what Kam, whoever he was, was supposed to have done.

  'Uh-uh, no way, Malloy. You give, you get. No one-way streets.'

  'You have the wrong address, Pigeyes. I don't know a thing about this guy beyond what I told you last time.' I raised two fingers. 'Scout's honor.'

  'You know what I think, Malloy. I'm thinkin, you're dirty here.' Pigeyes's instincts were highly reliable and his inclination to view me with suspicion did not need to be explained. ‘I think it's adding up. We been looking for your friend Mr Kamin.' Pigeyes placed his hands on his knees. He put his face right in mine. His breath was heavy; his flesh was laden with a dense, cruel light. 'You wouldn't happen to have been in his apartment in the last couple days?'

  I'd known for seventy-two hours this was coming, but the papers were already writing about Archie, and the homicide dicks have all got deals with the reporters -dinner and drinks and spell the name right before the sixth graph - and I thought for sure we'd be hearing an item on News Radio 98, with one of the secretaries scooting down the hall going, Oh my God, did you hear about Bert's place? So this one caught me by surprise.