Dead Man's Thoughts (14 page)

“It's not the kind of thing you say on the phone,” I answered crossly. But it was a good question, and one for which I had no answer.

Back at the office, I ran into Sylvia Mintz. On her way out of the elevator, she said, “Cass, I've got a message for you.” Trust Sylvia to put it that way, I thought. You have a message. Not telling you what it is, but making you ask. It turned out that Milt Jacobs wanted to see me. She made it sound like I'd been summoned to the principal's office.

When I reached his office, Milt was on the phone. I hovered in the doorway, trying to get his attention so I could tell him I'd come back later, but he motioned me in. I sat in one of the guest chairs and looked around the office. It hadn't changed since the day Milt moved in three years earlier. Still no pictures on the wall, not even posters. No family snapshots. Even the calendar was the one given to all law offices by a major law publisher. Wholly impersonal. Milt could die tomorrow and someone else could move right in without having to clean anything out.

Milt put down the phone and looked at me. Then he picked it up and told Aurora, his secretary, to hold his calls. Whatever he wanted, it was important. And personal.

“I heard you were, ah, close to Nathan.” He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were fixed firmly on a blank wall. I didn't know how to make it any easier, so I just nodded.

“Ah, Detective Button was here Monday. You were out on a comp day or something.” I nodded again. I'd been seeing Del Parma. “He asked about Nathan's caseload.”

I was excited. Maybe I'd been wrong about Button. He might discourage me to my face and then investigate Blackwell behind my back. Which didn't bother me as long as he investigated.

“He was especially interested in a young man named Heriberto Diaz. Does that name ring a bell with you?”

I shook my head, bewildered. What did this have to do with Blackwell?

“Detective Button seems to think Nathan had a special relationship with this boy. He has evidence that the boy had been to Nathan's apartment on several occasions. The boy has a—a history of homosexual relationships.”

So Button's found his scapegoat, I thought. Some poor kid whom Nathan had been trying to help and who just happened to be gay. I was exasperated.

“Milt, you know Nathan had clients to his apartment. To get them into programs or to help them get jobs. It didn't mean anything. Okay, so this kid's gay. That doesn't mean Nathan was.”

There was a long pause. I didn't know why. It was obvious Milt hated this conversation. Why was he prolonging it?

“Cassandra,” he finally said. He was still talking to a point on the wall, but now he was addressing it from much farther away. “I am really sorry about this. I didn't want to be the one to tell you. In fact, I wouldn't have told you if it hadn't been for Flaherty telling me about you and Nathan.”

“Yeah, so?” I was more than a little annoyed at Flaherty. He should have consulted me before talking to Milt.

“Cassandra,” Milt said it so softly I could barely hear, “the fact is that Nathan was gay.”

“What?” I couldn't believe I'd heard correctly. “What are you telling me? Where did you get that idea?”

“It's true.” He said it with finality. “He was arrested in a men's room when he was working in Manhattan. His firm hushed it up and put him on sick leave. But he couldn't stop himself. He seemed compelled to go after boys in the most sordid surroundings. He stopped seeing his old friends. Even Sid Rosen and me. Finally his wife had enough and sued for divorce. The firm fired him. He drifted around for a while, then started seeing a shrink and asked me for a job. I knew about the arrest, but I also knew what a good lawyer he was. A good friend, too. So I hired him. Anything he did outside the job I figured was his own business.” Milt gave the wall a bleak smile. “He wasn't the first Legal Aid lawyer with an underground sex life. We could run our own Gay Liberation Day parade. The thing is, I hoped he'd be discreet. Not pick up clients. Do you know how bad that would look in the
Post
, Cass? ‘Legal Aid Lawyer Having Sex with Seventeen-Year-Old Client'?”

“I can't believe it,” I whispered. “Milt, I just don't get this. I was Nathan's lover! Me! Not some kid.” My voice began to rise. I cleared my throat and went on. “I just don't know where all this is coming from except from Button's depraved imagination.”

“Cass, slow down. Button didn't make it up about Nathan's breakdown. That's a fact. Look, I was there.”

“Maybe so.” I tried to stay calm. “Maybe Nathan did go through a period where he did things like that. But people can change. He
was
my lover.” Milt looked away again. He'd faced me when I'd started talking, but this was too blunt for him. “Milt, I appreciate what you're saying, but I just don't see it. Whatever Nathan did in the past, I know what his preference was when he died. Besides, I think I'm getting somewhere with this Burton Stone case.”

“Cass, I appreciate how you feel. I'd rather see any other explanation for all this too. But facts are facts. The police will arrest this Diaz kid, and all I can do is hope to God it doesn't break in the papers. And I'm afraid your running around asking all kinds of questions isn't helping. For God's sake, Cass, don't you see? It's bad enough to think of Nathan making it with one Legal Aid client, but what makes you think this Diaz kid was the only one? Do you want to help the cops rake up more dirt than they've got already?”

I wanted to talk to him. Well, to be honest, I wanted to yell at him. But I could hear the hurt behind his words. He believed what Button was saying about Nathan, and he blamed Nathan. There was nothing I could say. I got up to go.

“One more thing,” he said. I turned, not sure I could handle one more thing. “The Department of Corrections is conducting an investigation into the death of a Charlie Blackwell. I understand he was Nathan's client but that you stood up on it the last time he was in court. I told them we'd waive a subpoena. It's tomorrow morning. Nine-thirty
A
.
M
. One hundred Centre Street, Manhattan. I'll tell Deke and Flaherty to cover your cases.”

Deke. Now I understood what Deke had meant in the hallway outside Part D last Friday. If I knew the truth about my precious Nathan, he had said. But what was the truth—the tender, sensitive man I had known, or this stranger who picked up boys in lavatories?

Once out of Milt's office, I let my defiant facade collapse. It was one thing to maintain a brave front; it was another to hide my doubts from myself.

I was shaken. Button's innuendos hadn't gotten to me because he hadn't known Nathan. But Milt had. Longer than I. If he said Nathan had been involved with boys, then it was true. And if it was true, then maybe Button was right. Maybe he had picked up the wrong boy this time.

I went into my office, shut the door, and slumped into my chair. I felt defeated. My valiant attempt to believe in Nathan was doomed. The Stone connection was a pipe dream. Button was right. A fag killing and a prison suicide. Pure coincidence. I'd been too blind to see the truth. Blinded by the illusion that Nathan had been someone I knew.

A shocking thought struck me. Could that have been what Nathan wanted to talk to me about, that last morning? Oh, by the way, Cass, while you and I have been lovers, I've been humping a client. A teenage boy. I hope you don't mind. My fists clenched. Nathan, goddamn you, my mind screamed, if that's what you were going to tell me, it's a damn good thing you didn't because
I'd
have strangled you. Bare-handed.

There was a knock at my door. A knock so hesitant, so tentative, that I was surprised to see Flaherty come in. He looked at least as depressed as I felt. “You talked to Milt.” It was a statement, not a question.

I nodded. Flaherty sat down heavily in Bill Pomerantz's chair. His blue eyes were dull with misery.

“Well,” I began sarcastically, “doesn't this confirm what you thought all along? You were ready to condemn Nathan
before
you heard what Milt had to say, so why the long face now?” Somewhere deep inside I was aware that I was lashing out at Flaherty to stifle the hurt I was feeling, but at the time I didn't care. All I knew was the raw bile in my throat. The taste of betrayal.

He didn't rise to the bait. “I kept hoping I was wrong,” he said. “God knows I wanted to believe in him, Cass. I wanted to. But, God, I just couldn't. Not after this. How could he behave one way in public and another in private? That's what I don't understand. I feel as though he was a total stranger. A total stranger I wouldn't have wanted to know.”

It was a hell of a thought. There was nothing I could say to it. Flaherty shambled out of my office, and I just sat there, unable to move. I'd been denying Nathan's gayness for so long now. It was the keystone of my whole theory that someone else killed him. And it wasn't true.

Unless. Was it possible that he was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, changing his personality so drastically? Wouldn't there be a leak, like light seeping unseen into an incompletely sealed darkroom? Could you lock two separate halves of yourself away from each other so completely?

Even if Nathan had had gay experiences, did that mean he was into ropes and bondage? Could Nathan's past have been a convenient peg the murderer used?

It was wishful thinking. But I clung to it. Because the alternative was too much. It meant wiping Nathan out of my mind and replacing him with a sadistic stranger. Getting cynical about who he'd been and what he'd meant to me.

I couldn't do that.

S
EVENTEEN

I
t was funny, but I hadn't given a lot of thought to the details of Charlie Blackwell's death. For one thing, I'd been busy trying to establish the link between Nathan's murder and the Stone trial, and for another, I just took it for granted Charlie was killed by the mob. It didn't seem to matter exactly how.

But now, as I wandered through the gray halls of Manhattan's Criminal Courts Building Thursday morning, looking for the office of the New York City Department of Correction Investigation Department, I began to wonder. I hoped the investigation would answer some of the questions that were beginning to form in my mind.

It was old home week when I entered the drab little waiting room. It was filled with Brooklyn court officers—Tim, the bridgeman from AP4, Maria Watson, who'd worked the desk, and even the pen crew, Vinnie and Red. Maria was sitting in the only chair.

“Are we it?” I asked Tim. “I mean, are they calling anyone else?”

“They got the Iceman in there now. Pardon me, I mean the Honorable Perry Whalen.” He was grinning. Tim was the closest thing I had to a friend among the court officers, who tend as a rule to be hostile to Legal Aid attorneys.

Tim's remark got a smile out of me, Red, and Vinnie, but Maria looked upset. She had twisted the handkerchief in her hand into a wreck. And she hadn't had to answer a single question yet. I was a little surprised; I once saw Maria do a number on a kid who'd decided to go over the wall. Her flying tackle and one-handed cuffing job had been the talk of the Brooklyn Criminal Court. I'd never seen her scared of anything before.

“Shit,” she said, “I can't be goin' through this bullshit, you know? I'm only a probationer. If they decide to throw it all on me, I'm fucked. Back to the department store to watch ladies undressing. That ain't no life. Not like this here, where we got a good union.”

“Damn right we got a good union,” Red Hennessey said. He was tall and skinny, with a huge Adam's apple and a face full of freckles. And, naturally, red hair. “That's why you won't get dumped on, Maria. You got nothin' to worry about. Not if you did things right, you don't.”

“Shit, I don't remember what I done. I been in so damn many places since then, AP3, weekend arraignments. How'm I gonna remember one prisoner on one day? Tell me that.”

“Maria, think back,” I said. “I was traffic cop. We'd just finished a case with three defendants—one in, two out. Vinnie took the in guy back and brought out Charlie Blackwell. He was an older guy, very nervous—”

“Yeah,” Tim cut in, “he was so scared I thought he was gonna piss in his pants.”

“I approached the bench and asked for suicide watch. It was already on the papers; all the judge had to do was continue it. Then Vinnie took the guy back into the pens.” I looked at Vinnie. He nodded curtly.

“I went into the back to talk to the guy, and when I came out—” I stopped, remembering suddenly, “Maria! You're in the clear. I came out, looked at the yellow card to make sure, and it was already written. So whatever went wrong, you wrote the right stuff on the card.”

Marla heaved a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Counselor. I been worried as hell since they told us we had to come down here. I sure as hell don't want to go back to no department store.”

I turned to Tim. “What exactly do they think happened? I haven't kept up.”

“I heard when the prisoner got to BHD there was no segregation order on his yellow card. So they put him in with everyone else and in the morning they found him wearing a necktie.”

“Jesus!” I shivered. I had a sudden vision of Charlie hanging in his cell. Twisting slowly, slowly in the wind. “Didn't he say anything? He was hot to trot when I saw him; he begged me to get him suicide watch. Would he just go into a regular cell without a protest?”

“Don't ask me, Counselor. I don't work at the Brooklyn House.”

“My brother does,” Vinnie said. “I asked him when this thing first came down. He said sometimes if a guy acts crazy enough, they'll put him in segregation without a court order. Or they'll even send him to Kings County Hospital on their own. But he's gotta act wacko. They don't just do it ‘cause he asks nice and polite.”