Bad Lawyer (16 page)

I was still half-asleep when Elizado Guzman and Adelberto Garcia rang the office bell. I heard Julie mumble something, then press the security buzzer to release the lock on the outer door. A moment later, her voice sounded on the intercom.

“Two gentlemen to see you, Mr. Kaplan.”

I shrugged into my jacket, took a second to straighten my tie and run my fingers through my hair, finally walked across the room and opened the door. Elizado Guzman, maybe thirty years old, caught my eye first. He was standing in front of Julie’s desk, a pearl gray overcoat draped over his right arm, wearing an off-white, double-breasted suit and a sun-yellow shirt buttoned to the throat. His features were darkly handsome and very full; inky brows framed a pair of round, widely-spaced eyes that locked me in a frankly evaluating glare.

“My name,” he lied, “is Manny Gomez.” His broad mouth opened into a bright smile. “And this is my associate.”

The unnamed, much younger companion, standing some fifteen feet behind his master, neither smiled nor looked in my direction. Tall and thickly built, he wore black jogging pants over white, unlaced basketball shoes, and a matching, hooded sweatshirt devoid of any fashionable logo. His broad face, half hidden beneath the folds of the hood, was dark and ruddy, his features noticeably
Indio,
his unblinking reptile eyes expressionless. A wide shiny scar ran from the inside corner of his left eye to the outer edge of his jaw.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Gomez?” I glanced at Caleb, was immediately glad for his presence. Volatile clients are an occupational hazard for defense attorneys and although it seemed a little early in the game, I’d been threatened many times in the past.

Gomez looked disappointed, as if he’d been expecting a hero’s welcome. “I got some business,” he finally said. “You open for business, right?”

I nodded, stepped out of the way, motioned him into my office. He entered without hesitation, followed by what I took, at the time, to be his bodyguard. Once they were inside, I gestured to Caleb and he preceded me into the room.

“This is my investigator, Caleb Talbot. Anything you tell him is privileged, just as if you were speaking to me alone.”

Gomez took one of the chairs in front of my desk, waited for his buddy to sit next to him. “Naw, thass no good. What I got to say, I got to say to you an’ nobody else.
Por favor
.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I walked around the desk, sat in my leather chair, swiveled slightly to the right as Caleb crossed the room and dropped into an armchair against the wall. “Because Mr. Talbot has my complete confidence.”

For the first time, Gomez actually glanced at his companion. I don’t know what he was looking for, but his partner’s eyes didn’t move. They remained fixed on something a foot or so behind my head.

“Okay, if thass the way you wanna do it.” Gomez laid his overcoat across his lap, unbuttoned his jacket. “Now I’m gonna tell you the story and please to no interrup’ me ’til I’m done.” He waited for an encouraging nod, then continued matter-of-factly. “You got a client named Priscilla Sweet. Me an’ her old man, Byron, we’re business associates before she decides to shoot him. I don’ blame her for this, because he was no too nice to her. But a’ this time when she’s killin’ him, he owes
muy dinero
to me an’ my people. I send a message to Priscilla in the jail: Where is my money? You know wha’ she say? The pigs steal all the
coca
before we can sell it. So sorry.”

Gomez shook his head. Again, he glanced at his partner, again received no response. “Too bad for her that Byron tole me tha’ shit was all sold. He tole me the day before she’s shootin’ him. Well, you know, like I send word back, stop with the bullshit or somethin’ bad is gonna happen to you. Like in jail you got enough problems. You know wha’ she done,
Señor
Kaplan? She goes into the protective custody where I can no get to her.

“I tell myself, Thass a pretty smart girl. She knows what she’s doin’, but I also know what I’m doin’ and tha’ is visitin’ her mother in Flushing. I tell her, Mrs. Barrow, your
chingada
daughter’s owin’ me a lot of money and if she don’ pay up I’m gonna take your fingers and grind them for
chorizo.

“Tha’ Mrs. Barrow, you know wha’ she tell me?” He took off his jacket, laid it on top of his overcoat. “She tell me she give all the money to the Jew lawyer for Priscilla’s defense. Then she disappears.

“At first, I ain’ believin’ tha’ bullshit. But then I’m seein’ your face in the newspapers and on the television. Even
El Diario
carries this big story about the big lawyer. So maybe Thelma ain’ lyin’. Maybe she runs away because she’s scared I won’ believe her. Maybe the lawyer got all my fucking money.”

“How much?” I asked. “How much money are we talking about here?”

“One-five-zero. Very large, my man. Very, very large.”

My first reaction, at least it wasn’t a million, quickly gave way to the truth: repayment was not a possibility. I was going to have to deal with the situation through Priscilla.

“I got an idea.” Caleb stood up. “What do you say to a little refreshment? Maybe take the edge off the conversation, see if we can work this out.” He crossed the room to the small refrigerator we kept near the bookcase, removed four cans of Coke, and put them on a tray. I was served first, then Gomez, then his silent companion who ignored Caleb, his stare fixed, until it became clear that Caleb wasn’t going to move. Finally, at a nod from Gomez, he wrapped his fingers around the can as if holding a hand grenade.

“That Berto,” Gomez said, identifying his partner for the first time, “he got a fixed mind. You know, like he can only think abou’ one thing at a time.”

“Yeah?” Caleb said, his tone suddenly and shockingly hard, hard enough to make me flinch though neither Gomez nor Berto reacted. “Well that’s half a thing more than I gave the asshole credit for.” Still standing, he waved his soda can in Berto’s direction. “In fact, when I first saw him, I thought he was an insect on steroids. Now I think I overestimated his talents.”

Berto’s only reaction was a blush that left the rubbery scar on his cheek as white as a maggot. Gomez, on the other hand, looked over to Caleb as if seeing him for the first time. “You shouldn’ talk to Berto like tha’. He got like a Latino
macho
attitude concernin’ insults.”

“No shit?” Caleb’s hand snaked beneath his jacket, reappeared clutching an automatic which he pressed against the side of Berto’s head. Berto didn’t flinch, didn’t take his eyes off mine. “Think if I pull the trigger, it’ll get him over his hangup?”

“Go ahead if thass wha’ you gotta do.” Gomez lifted his chin, extended it toward Caleb. “Me, too, if you wanna. But we ain’ carryin’ no weapons, so you gonna have a hard time esplainin’ to the cops.”

For the briefest moment, I thought Caleb was going to pull the trigger. Then I saw his body droop ever so slightly as his weight settled back on his heels.

“Why don’t we all calm down.” My chest was so tight, my voice failed to rise above a whisper. “Try to work this out.”

Gomez put his untouched Coke on my desk, waited for his partner to follow suit. “Is real simple,
hombre.
Priscilla give you money tha’ di’ no belong to her and now you gotta give it back.
Pronto
.” He leaned forward. “You know how it is in the business, right? The people I owe don’ take no escuses. They gotta get paid and I gotta collect. Is so simple I’m hopin’ I don’ have to say tha’ shit again.”

“There’s no money,” Caleb said before I could find a place to begin. He was seated again; the pistol was back in its holster. “If Priscilla stole your money, she didn’t give it to us.”

“Don’ insult me,
señor,
’cause I also got a
macho
attitude.” Gomez frowned, then continued without looking at Caleb. “Hey, you know in my life I been arrested, right? Thass jus’ the way it is.” He waited for me to nod. “Plus all kinds of my people been arrested, so like I know the price for a lawyer, okay? Don’ insul’ me with bullshit. You ain’ no public defender.”

“There’s no money,” I insisted. “We’re doing it for the publicity.”

Gomez crossed his leg, took a pack of Benson & Hedges from his shirt pocket. “Thass your final position?” He lit the cigarette, let his head drop back, then blew the smoke out through his nose.

“Yeah,” Caleb said. “That’s the whole thing. So why don’t you and Fido take a hike before I call the cops.”

“The cops?” Gomez, as he stood up and put on his jacket, began to laugh. “Wha’ you gonna tell ’em, my man? Tha’ your client is a fuckin’ drug dealer who don’ pay her bills?” He carefully buttoned his jacket, then shrugged into his overcoat. “
Mira,
you say she din’ give you no money? I could believe tha’ shit. But like, you know, it don’ help nobody. Cause if she din’ give the money to you, she gotta still have it. And if she have it, then you gotta get it.”

Gomez stood, tapped Berto’s shoulder, and the two of them walked to the door. There, with his hand on the knob, he executed a perfect half turn. “
Mira,
I mus’ to have tha’ money. Okay? I mus’ to have it and I’m gonna be callin’ you Monday for a delivery.”

Neither Caleb nor I moved until we heard the outer door close. Then, as Julie’s worried face appeared in the still open door to my office, Caleb picked up the soda cans Gomez and Berto had held, grasping them by the top and bottom edges. Moving quickly, he carried the cans into the bathroom, emptied them into the toilet, finally came back into the room, and laid them on the bookcase.

“Hard times a’comin’, Julie. Better sit down.”

She did as he said, settling into the chair vacated by Gomez. When she spoke, her normally soft voice carried a much harder edge. “What’s with the cans?”

“I’m gonna let the condensation evaporate, then dust ’em for prints.” Caleb’s tone was matter-of-fact, as if he was working through a task he’d performed many times before. “The job has prints on computer, now. And these bad boys definitely have records.”

He went on to recount the message delivered by Gomez and Berto. It didn’t take him very long, and I remember thinking how simple it really was. No obfuscation, no equivocation, no intent to deceive. No opening statement, either, and no closing argument, no rules of evidence. Give me my money or I’ll kill you, Sidney Kaplan. Whether you’ve got it or not.

A
T SOME POINT IN
middle boyhood I stopped going directly home after school. (This in the great golden age of the 1950s, a time when children roamed the streets without fear of crack-dealing street gangs or trolling pedophiles.) I was, I think, all of nine years old, a fiercely independent third grader, the first time I walked to the house of my grampa, Itzy, and my
bubbe,
Ethyl. It’s easy, now, for me to say that I was fleeing the ghosts that haunted my mother’s life (the same ghosts later enshrined on my living room wall) but I doubt that I saw it that way. No, more than likely, since my grandparents’ house was directly between school and home, it’d merely seemed a good idea, a harmless whim designed to please my doting grandmother whose daughters now lived with their husbands and children in far-off New Jersey.

If that was my motivation, the affair was an unmitigated success. Grampa Itzy was semiretired by that time and I have a clear memory of the smile that brightened his habitually sour expression, that raised drooping eyes and mouth, that deepened the long, vertical lines that ran from the inner corners of his sharp black eyes to the edge of his jaw.

“Please to come in, Mister Kaplan.”

My
bubbe,
so round and warm and full of energy she was almost a caricature of a Jewish grandmother, filled me with honey cake and cold milk (which she sent Grampa Itzy to fetch). It was only then, after I’d been fed, that she called to let Magda know I was safe.

I believe I’ve already said that I wasn’t a popular kid. Looking back, I’m more or less convinced (depending on the day of the month and the phases of the moon) that I really didn’t care whether or not my peers liked me, that I was one of those odd children who thrive on loneliness. Whatever the case, I clearly had three possibilities from which to choose at the end of every school day. I could have gone home to Magda, or home to my grandparents, or I could have run with the other boys in the neighborhood. Sheepshead Bay was filled with Jewish and Italian refugees, men and women who’d found success after WWII and wanted nothing more than to flee the slums that had confined their immigrant parents. They came from Little Italy and the Lower East Side, East Harlem and Hell’s Kitchen, South Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick. Almost universally, they believed in large families and their children swarmed the residential streets.

My choice was no choice at all. It was as if I’d turned a corner into Oz, made that jump from the dull grays of Kansas to the rainbow world of Munchkin land. My grandparents’ household was intensely verbal; my grandparents, the both of them, seemed to live by words, debating everything from the quality of the kosher dairy on Nostrand Avenue to the execution of the Rosenbergs. After the eerie silence that surrounded Magda’s intense longing, an emptiness observed by my father who loved her more than he loved himself (and certainly more than he loved me), I absorbed the chaos like a leaf absorbs sunlight. For the next four years, until my
bubbe
died suddenly and Grampa Itzy moved into his son’s home, I virtually lived with my grandparents. And I don’t recall any objection being made, don’t recall discussion of any kind.

It was only a matter of weeks until a routine was established. Grampa Itzy was home from the store by noon, bored to death (not to mention getting on his wife’s nerves) by 3:15 when I’d show up. He’d wait impatiently while I was fed and did my homework, then, after my work was checked and I’d packed up my schoolbooks, he’d shrug into his coat.

“
Nu,
you’re ready for a trip?”

Grampa Itzy’s 1952 Pontiac was his pride and joy. Not only was it his first
new
car, it was his first car of any kind and he worried about it as if it was an exotic pet whose biology he barely understood. Still, he was a terrible driver, wandering from lane to lane, missing traffic lights and stop signs even when he tried to pay close attention, which he rarely did. Maybe that’s why we seldom went further than the mile or so between his home and the boardwalk at Brighton Beach.