3 Quarters (5 page)

“A little indentured servitude,” Gleason said with a wicked smile as the two men hurried toward Gleason's dark blue Jeep Cherokee. “See, the only big cases I ever lost are the ones where
you
collected the evidence against
my
clients. If I have you working for me, I figure I can't lose. I estimate that my complete comeback—to get clients, do investigations, schedule trials, get on the calendars, grease the press—will take two years. So, if I get you off this rap, in return, for those two years, you work for
me.
To pay off the legal work I do for
you.
How's it sound so far?”

“Awful, which is heaven compared to life in there,” Bobby said.

“I'll provide you with a place to live, an office, wheels, a living allowance plus ten percent of my fee on any case you do investigative work on. You'll have your freedom. You'll see your kid, and I'll defend you in the new trial. Better, with you investigating your own case, I can almost
guarantee
I'll walk you on all charges.”

Bobby was feeling excited, his heart thumping with optimism. Then he saw the same long lens reappear from the window of the car on the other side of the lot. “I won't help you defend certain clients, like child molesters,” Bobby said. “Or serial killers, drug lords . . . Izzy, you see that white Taurus? Someone is taking pictures of us.”

Bobby pointed at the car, and when Gleason looked, it pulled slowly away, turned a corner, and was blocked from view by a collection of two-story administrative buildings.

“Could be a tabloid asshole,” Gleason said, kicking a stone as he walked with his hands in his pants pockets. “Let's get moving.”

“About these lowlife clients you represent, Izzy . . .”

“Look, in my comeback, I'm thinking of representing more respectable clients,” Gleason said, pointing at Bobby. “Like killer cops.”

“Cheap shot,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, well, you're living proof that sometimes people are wrongly accused. But remember, good lawyers usually make a living defending bad people. So don't get moral on me again. If you need righteousness, remember every client has the constitutional right to a defense. Pretend you're doing it for God, country, the Founding Fathers, blah, blah, blah. And never forget what
‘The People'
did to you, asshole.”

Bobby nodded. “I can walk away from a case I find too reprehensible?”

“Only after you look into it objectively,” Gleason said, doing a pirouette, without breaking stride. “Jesus Christ, but you're a picky fuck for a jailbird.”

“The deal sounds fair,” Bobby said, keeping pace with Gleason.

“Fuck fair,” Gleason said. “This is
business
. ‘Fair' is someplace you win blue ribbons at for apple pies. ‘Fair' is a schoolyard fight without knives. ‘Fair' is a two fifty hitter. In a courtroom, a
fair
defense means a prison sentence or the electric chair. So fuck ‘fair.' Part of my new act is I still gotta eat, and ‘fair' is fuckin'
famine.”

“What else should I know?”

“Like I said, personally, I think your first lawyer did an Olympic swan dive off the high board,” Gleason said, stopping to light a cigarette. “Into an empty pool. There's also a new political climate blowing.”

He blew out a long stream of smoke for emphasis. He watched it scatter in the country breeze and said, “This is a gubernatorial election year, and there's a fresh-faced Republican candidate named Gerald Stone running for the statehouse. That primary is thirteen days away.”

“Stone . . . I vaguely remember him,” Bobby said. “Councilman?”

“Yeah, law-and-order asshole out of Staten Island. Handsome, Vietnam war hero, a real Mr. Family Values. He's got the backing of the toughest power brokers in the city and state. Wall Street loves him, and the polls say the people do, too. They say if he pulls this off, he could eventually grin his way right into the fuckin' White House.”

“What the hell does any of this got to do with me?” Bobby asked, feeling silly and out of touch, as they paused before entering the Jeep.

“One of Stone's first and loudest supporters is Sol Diamond,” Gleason said, and Bobby's heart sank at the mention of the Brooklyn district attorney whose office prosecuted him. “And since you went away, Cis Tuzio, the assistant district attorney who personally prosecuted you, got promoted to chief assistant district attorney. Your case gave her the bump. If Stone gets nominated and elected, she could get a state supreme court judgeship from him, and Diamond could get appointed to the state appeals court.”

“Democracy sure hasn't changed in my absence,” Bobby said.

“That's the good news,” Gleason said. ‘The bad news is that Diamond is outraged about your release and has already issued another arrest warrant. I just answered it by phone with the judge's clerk. Stone will probably drag your name into the final days of the primary race. Cis Tuzio is so livid she's going to personally prosecute you all over again. Her political future rests on putting you back inside. I already anticipated that she would ask for a ridiculously high bail, pending trial. More good news. I went panhandling and I secured the quarter-mil bail from an angel who prefers to remain anonymous.”

“Don't tell me it's a drug lord or a wise-guy client putting up my bail,” said Bobby.

“I'm on a comeback, you jerkoff,” Gleason said. “Not a suicide mission. Far's I know, he's as clean as a monk's asshole.”

“Jesus Christ, Gleason,” Bobby said. “What do I say? How do I call a toad a prince without having to kiss him?”

“Fuck you, too. Well, deal or what?”

“Where do I sign?”

“Uh-uh,” Gleason said. “Legal documents can be broken. I want something better than that from you. See, I know you, Emmet, and you're from the Brooklyn streets with a ridiculous, romantic sense of gutter honor—man of his word, and all that cornball corner-boy horseshit. So if you're gonna make a deal with me, I don't want it in writing. I want a fuckin' handshake, your word on your street-honor. This way if you welch, I put it on the street you reneged and your word ain't shit.”

“And you think people would take your word over mine?” Bobby said.

“Give it to me, and I can help you straighten out your fucked-up life, if you help me do the same with mine. It won't always be nice or pleasant, and you'll probably hate me more often than you like me. And get it straight: I own at least one of your nuts and half your time. But I can keep you out of here for good, back home with your kid. Back out where you can prove your innocence. Get back your rep. Where you can find out what happened to your dame. All that good shit. Or you can come back here and die. Now, do we have a fucking deal or what?”

Gleason wiped his hand on his pants leg, leaving speed stripes of chocolate on the expensive suit, and held it out.

“Deal,” Bobby Emmet said, shaking his hand.

B
obby sat next to Izzy in the backseat of the Jeep Cherokee as a silent, overweight Hispanic woman named Venus drove south from the state prison to the New York State Thruway.

Bobby looked over his shoulder and saw the white Ford Taurus tailing them.

He rolled down the Jeep's tinted window and feasted on the hot, clean country air of late summer as they passed pastures of grazing cattle, farmers driving slow-moving tractors, and fields of bundled hay. Soon it would be fall, the dying season, he thought, the season of the witch.

Occasionally Bobby looked over his shoulder and saw the Taurus following at a discreet distance, a steady white termite munching the road behind them. He kept thinking about Bluto, the big wounded con, talking of big people who wanted him dead.

“Car's following us,” Bobby told Gleason. Gleason turned, and the Taurus disappeared from view in a turn in the road.

“You'll be paranoid awhile,” Gleason said. “But it's a free country, and we got us a ninety-minute ride. We'll be in the city by ten-thirty, quarter to eleven. Just fuckin' relax.”

“I'm free, going home to see my kid, and already I'm being tailed,” Bobby said.

“You spent your life tailing people,” Gleason said. “Now the fuckin' gumshoe is on the other foot. Deal with it. Unless he starts shooting, don't worry about it.”

“It's gonna be a
long
day, with a checklist of people I have to see,” Bobby said. “I've waited a long time for this day. And, hey, Izzy, you think it's right to curse in front of the lady like that?”

“Venus is Dominican, five three, twelve, maybe fifteen pounds overweight, only speaks Spanish,” Gleason said. “She doesn't understand word fuckin' one of English. This here way, you don't have to watch your fuckin' lingo in front of her. It's like having a human V chip.”

“Let me get this straight,” Bobby said. “She works for you, but she can't speak English? And you can't speak any Spanish?”

“Si,”
Gleason said,
“señor.”

Venus laughed uproariously, glancing at Bobby in the rearview mirror. She had beautiful pearl-white teeth, flawless nutmeg-colored skin, and gold earrings that sparkled in the sun that blazed in through the side window.

Bobby looked over at Izzy Gleason and realized that the next time he was in a courtroom, his life would be in the hands of a madman. But if someone was following him right now, he wanted to be in
control
.

“Izzy, ask Venus to pull over, will ya?” Bobby said. “I want to drive.”

“Venus,” Gleason shouted, pointing to the shoulder of the road. “Pull-o over-o.”

“Sí, Señor
Eeezee.”

At the Newburg tollbooth, Bobby grabbed the ticket for the thruway south. Gleason was next to him in the passenger seat. Bobby looked in the rearview mirror, searching for a white Taurus. All he saw was Venus sitting in the back wearing headphones, listening to English/Spanish audiotapes Gleason had bought for her.
Inglés Sin Barreras
—“English Without Barriers.”

“You sure she can't understand English?” Bobby asked.

“Nada.”

“Then what does she do for you?”

“She's losing weight,” Gleason said.

“She's losing weight?” Bobby said, nodding. “So . . . you pay her by the hour or the pound for this?”

“See, I like my women a little imperfect,” Gleason said. “I'm gonna send her to a fat farm where she'll fast for a week or so and study the English tapes. When she's finished, drops twelve or fifteen pounds, learns some English, she's the perfect gal Friday. I help her improve herself, assimilate into the American Dream. She'll be as loyal as a religious convert. An Izzyette. There used to be legions of them in the good old days. In the end, with a little investment, I'll have a great-looking, well-educated, loyal worker for the new millennium.”

“I'm catching on to your game,” Bobby said. “You get a jammed-up ex-cop to do investigations for you and an indebted, slimmed-down fat girl to take dictation. On your lap?”

“Or my face, but that would be impractical,” Gleason said, grinning. “Until
after
she loses the weight.”

“Jesus Christ . . .”

“Get a sense of humor to go with the fuckin' merit badge, will ya, Emmet? Meanwhile, since I have no driver's license, thanks to three DUIs, she drives me around. I pay her. This is evil?”

“With what money?” Bobby asked, and now here came the Taurus, filling his side-view mirror, about a thousand feet behind him. “By the way, the tail is back.”

“I told you, I'm a lawyer, not a shamus,” Gleason said. “I already got fifty large in advances from clients.”

“Any of these clients legit?”

“Christ, I hope not, or they won't be steady customers. Meatball cases. Assault, gun rap, tax evasion, divorce—shit like that. Can't be picky yet. In fact, I'll need your help on a few. But we'll talk about that later. And forget being tailed and
my
woman. Right now, we're gonna use this drive home for you to tell me all about your girl . . . .”

“Dorothea?”

Bobby made a sudden swerve to the shoulder of the road. Gleason grabbed the dashboard as Bobby braked. The white Taurus accelerated and passed them doing eighty.

“John David Francis . . .” Bobby said aloud.

“You losing your marbles?” Gleason asked. “Talkin' to the saints while you're driving . . .”

“JDF, those were the first three letters of the license plate,” Bobby said. “I'm out of practice, and he was moving too fast to get the whole plate. I'm gonna chase that bastard.”

“Do that, and we'll get pulled over,” Gleason said. “And you said you had people to see. Calm down. We don't need attention.”