Client Privilege (3 page)

Skeeter smiled a lot, and when he did he revealed the empty place in his mouth where one of his eye teeth used to grow. It was a battle scar of sorts, the product of a headfirst slide into Elston Howard’s shinguard, and Skeeter wore it proudly.

He ran a modest book on professional sports, too, which the Boston cops blinked at out of respect for Skeeter’s status as a local sports hero.

I unzipped my ski parka and fished out a cigarette. Skeeter was down with the guys at the television, moderating an argument. I glanced at the two ladies to my left. Neither of them glanced at me.

“But the
Broons
are playin’ the
Whalahs,
fah crissake,” said one voice from near the TV.

“Screw the Broons,” said another. “Buncha loosahs. Get the Celts on fifty-six. They’re playin’ the Knicks. I wanna see Pat Ewing.”

“Ahh, basketball’s fer wimps.”

“You wanna see blood, fah crissake, go lookit yourself shavin’. Them basketball players’re
ath-a-letes.”

Skeeter glanced at me, arched his eyebrows, said something to the sports fans, and came my way. He held his hand across the bar to me. “Hey, Mr. Coyne. Great to see ya again.”

“How’s business, Skeets?”

He turned down the corners of his mouth and wiggled his hand, palm down, over the bar. “Metsa-mets,” he said. “You know, Mr. Coyne, in the old days it was simple. You’d play baseball in the day and talk about girls. Then at night you’d go to a bar with a girl and talk about baseball. Now? Boy, I don’t know. You tell me. What’d you do? Show ’em the hockey or the basketball? I never have this problem in the summer. Baseball’s all there is. But there are times in October, for God sake, you got the Celtics and the Bruins and the Patties and the World Series all at once. Makes me want to shoot holes in the damn tube. Boys don’t get to watch what they want, they don’t stay around to drink my booze.”

“I understand the Boston Symphony’s playing Beethoven on Channel Two,” I said. “I got my money on Beethoven.”

Skeeter cocked his head at me and grinned. “Somehow I don’t think that’s the answer.” He produced a rag and swiped at the bar in front of me. “Special drink this week’s the Whitey Ford. Wanta try it?”

Skeeter had earned modest fame in Boston with his inventive concoctions, which he named after old ballplayers. I had once tried a Don Drysdale, which Skeeter said was guaranteed to “knock you on your ass and keep you there.” He didn’t lie. He boasted that his Wee Willie Keeler would “hit ’em where they ain’t.”

“What’s a Whitey Ford?” I asked cautiously.

“Dark rum, Guinness stout, papaya juice,” he said. “It’s sneaky fast. Before you know it, you’re back in the old dugout. Just like when you tried to hit Whitey’s curve.”

“Think I’ll pass this time. Give me a shot of Rebel Yell on the rocks.”

“Always the bourbon, huh, Mr. Coyne?”

I didn’t tell Skeeter that Pops’ mystery man would recognize me by my bourbon. “I don’t want to be snuck up on,” I said.

He grinned, showing me the gap in his teeth. “Oh, and happy Groundhog Day,” he said.

“Thanks.” I decided not to share my newfound lore about Candlemas Day with Skeeter.

Skeeter brought me my drink with a side of water, gave the bar a final swipe with his rag, and wandered back to the controversy at the television. It appeared that the Bruins had won the day. Boston has always been a hockey town.

The ladies to my left continued to gaze into the mirror. I glanced at my watch. Nine-fifteen. I lit another cigarette and sipped the southern sour mash and watched the hockey players zip around the big screen.

He was wearing a Ben Hogan tweed cap, dark shades, snug-fitting blue jeans, and a fleece-lined sheepskin parka. Wisps of longish blond hair showed under the cap. He had a bushy blond mustache a shade darker than the hair on his head. “Mr. Coyne, is it?” he said.

“Yes. Who’re you?”

He grinned, showing perfect teeth that might have been capped. “It’s not important, who I am,” he said. His voice was deep and well modulated, with no trace of any sort of regional accent. It seemed faintly familiar, and I had the feeling that had he taken off his sunglasses I would have recognized his face.

Skeeter came over. My companion ordered a St. Pauli Girl. We sat in silence until his beer and frosted glass arrived. After Skeeter moved over to refill the ladies’ wineglasses, the man said, “You know why I’m here?”

“I don’t even know why I’m here,” I said.

He gave me what looked like a well-practiced smile. “It’s really quite simple, Mr. Coyne.” He touched his mustache with his forefinger. “I have a commodity that is very valuable to your client.”

“And what is this commodity?”

“My silence.”

“It’s my belief that your commodity has no value whatsoever,” I said. “To my client or to anyone else.”

“He told you that, huh?”

I shrugged.

“Did he tell you about Karen Lavoie?”

“Yes,” I said.

He grinned and spread his hands. “Well, then.”

“Look, friend,” I said. “You’re running quite a risk here. Blackmail is against the law, in case you didn’t know it. Neither my client nor I is interested in violating the law. Technically, you have already broken the law. So my sincere advice to you is to finish your beer, shake my hand, acknowledge that I have misunderstood your intention, and be on your merry little way.”

“Blackmail,” he said, arching his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, dear.”

I nodded. “Fine. Excellent. So I have misunderstood your intention.”

“Your client, I assure you, has not misunderstood my intention, Mr. Coyne. And I know that you know that there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Except do business with me.” He played with his mustache again.

“What is it you want?”

“Convey the figure of ten thousand dollars to your client.”

“If I were wearing a wire, you could be arrested right now, do you realize that?”

He smiled lazily. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. In any case, if I were arrested tonight, tomorrow’s papers would be full of the story of Chester Popowski and Karen Lavoie. That’s why you’re here. That’s why His Honor didn’t hang up on me. He wasn’t always quite the proper judge everybody thinks, you know. And that’s why I know you’re not wearing a wire.”

“We appear to be at a stalemate, then,” I said.

He leaned close to me. “Look. My source is impeccable, believe me. I’ve got the proof. The ball’s in my court. If I weren’t sure of what I had, do you think I’d’ve risked meeting you this way, in person? Do you think the judge would’ve had you come here to meet me?”

“I think the judge could survive all of this much easier than you could.”

He sat back and took a long draft from his beer. “Ten grand,” he said. “Tell that to the judge. And tell him I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t bother.”

He whirled quickly on the barstool and grabbed a handful of my jacket. He put his face close to mine. “I’m gonna call day after tomorrow,” he snapped at me. “Make sure Chester Y. Popowski knows that.”

I tried to twist out of his grasp. “Let go,” I said softly.

He leaned back and held his palms in front of him in a gesture of surrender. He smiled. “Take it easy, friend. No offense, huh?”

Skeeter appeared. “Everything okay, Mr. Coyne?”

I nodded. “No problem, Skeets.”

He looked from me to the man beside me and shrugged. “Okay. Another?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“No,” said the man.

Skeeter wandered away. I hunched my shoulders back into my jacket. The guy beside me swiveled off his barstool. “Tell him I’ll be in touch,” he said. “Ten grand. Just tell him I said ten grand.”

He headed for the door. “Hey,” I yelled at him.

He turned. “Yeah?”

“You didn’t pay for your beer.”

“It’s on you,” he said as he went out the door. “The judge’s paying your expenses.”

I sat there simmering. Skeeter came back. “Who was that?” he said.

“I don’t know. You ever see him before?”

Skeeter cocked his head. “Seemed familiar. Not a regular. Dunno. Can’t place him.”

“I’d like to know who he is,” I said.

He shook his head. “Nope. Can’t place him. He giving you a hard time?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“I get all kinds in here. Guy has a fight with his old lady, doesn’t dare take a swipe at her, he comes in here looking for someone he can slug. Fella has a few down the street, they shut him off, he comes in here looking for another. Sorry he picked on you.”

“Not your fault,” I said.

“Look, Mr. Coyne,” said Skeeter. “I’m gonna give you a refill on the house for your trouble.”

“You don’t have to do that, Skeets.”

“I want to. I like to take care of my customers.”

“You talked me into it. Thanks.”

I sipped my second shot of Rebel Yell. I caught the dark-haired woman watching me in the mirror. I smiled at her. She looked away and said something to the blonde beside her. A minute later she slid a couple of bills onto the bar and both women left.

As I had said to Pops, keeping the ladies at bay was a problem.

I
T TOOK ME TWENTY
minutes or half an hour to stroll back to my apartment from Skeeter’s. All the rain that had fallen and the slush and crud that had melted into puddles during the day had frozen and glazed the sidewalks. It made the walking tricky. Sullen heaps of gray snow remained mounded against the buildings. The February air smelled moist and organic and complex, a combination of low tide and industrial waste and automobile exhaust and a winter’s accumulation of garbage that had frozen and thawed too many times. City smells. Not objectionable at all.

Up in my apartment on the sixth floor of the stark concrete building on the harbor, I dropped my parka on the floor and kicked off my boots. I checked my machine for messages and, as usual, found none. I put on the heat under the teakettle and flicked on the television. I clicked it over to Channel 56 and pushed last week’s newspapers onto the floor to make room for myself on the sofa so I could watch the end of the Celtics-Knicks game.

When the old black-and-white tube warmed up, I realized that the game had ended. I watched a few minutes of an old Richard Burton movie. Judging by the costumes, we were back in sixteenth-century England. Burton was riding a horse. I figured I’d missed the premise, so I changed the channel to 38. The Bruins were in overtime, so I watched the toothless young men glide over the ice, colliding with each other as they pursued the little rubber disk around the rink.

The teakettle began to sing at about the same time the game ended, still tied. I turned off the television and went to the stove. I dropped a bag of Sleepytime into a mug and poured the boiling water over it. I stared through the floor-to-ceiling glass sliders at the harbor while my tea steeped. In the moonless night, I couldn’t distinguish the line between sky and ocean. A few lights blinked dully through the haze.

I retrieved my tea and took it to the phone. I dialed Pops’ home number. He lived in West Roxbury, which is not to be confused with Roxbury, although both are sections of Boston. Roxbury is a black ghetto situated between Huntington and Columbus avenues in the heart of the city next to the Northeastern campus. You go to Roxbury to buy drugs. You live in Roxbury only if you have to.

West Roxbury is a swanky white enclave. It’s located in the southwest corner of the city, hard by Brookline and Newton and Dedham. It’s separated from Roxbury by the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale sections of the city. West Roxbury is bounded, roughly, by the Charles River and several golf courses, including The Country Club, one of the oldest and most exclusive in the nation.

Judges tend to live in West Roxbury. The people who appear before them often come from Roxbury.

I got Pops’ answering machine. Marilee Popowski’s voice repeated the number I had dialed and invited me to leave a message at the beep. “It’s Brady,” I told the machine. “Just got back from my meeting. I’m home now. Give me a call.”

Pops hardly ever answered his phone, whether he was sitting beside it or not. He used the answering machine to screen his calls. I hung up after delivering my message to his tape and sat beside my telephone, sipping my tea, smoking a Winston. I assumed he’d call me back instantly.

I finished my tea and rinsed out the mug, glanced through the latest issue of
Newsweek,
and smoked a couple of cigarettes. When Pops still hadn’t returned my call, I shucked off my clothes and took a shower. I luxuriated in the hot needles that blasted relaxation into my muscles. I went through my entire repertoire of old Johnny Mathis make-out ballads. I was in good voice.

I got out, dried myself, and slipped into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

When I went into the living room, I saw the red light on my answering machine blinking. Blip-blip. Pause. Blip-blip.

Two messages. I played the tape. “It’s Gloria,” she said.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt something. Please give me a call when you get a chance.”

The voice of my ex-wife never fails to constrict my throat a little. We’ve been divorced about as long as we were married, but she still gets to me.

The second blip was Pops. “Returning your call,” he said. “I’m here.”

I called Pops first.

“So what happened?” he said.

“Let me ask you something, first.”

“Shoot.”

“Your home phone’s unlisted, right?”

“You betcha,” he said. “Be pretty stupid, a judge having a listed phone number. I change it every couple months, too.”

“So who knows your number?”

“Marilee and the girls. Some of their friends, I suppose. You. Some of the folks at the courthouse. Hard to keep a phone number a secret, even if it’s unlisted. Tends to keep away the creeps, though.”

“You said our friend called you this morning, am I right?”

“Hell, yeah. I never thought of that. Yes, he called me here, at this number. What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know. Either it’s someone who you know well, or it’s someone who knows how to find out things.”

“Well,” said Pops, “I guess we know he knows how to find out things. He came up with Karen Lavoie’s name.”