Indefensible (14 page)

“What'll it be?” he asks with a smile that says,
I recognize you but can't think how
. The floor behind the bar is elevated for his wheelchair. The other bartenders must find it difficult.

“Coffee.”

He pivots and rolls to get it. Steve looks like Charles Manson gone gray: stringy wild hair and a patchy beard but without Manson's burning eyes. Steve gets snappish if you change your order or take an extra few seconds to decide. On the menu and on the sign outside, there's a drawing of an African-looking tree; it rains on either side, but under its sheltering branches stands a crowd of people. “Rain Tree rhymes with Quang Tri,” Steve explains to anyone who
asks. “Quang Tri is the real name. But if I actually called it Quang Tri, the only ones who'll come are a bunch of fucked-up vets like me, which would please me fine except they ain't got any money to spend. Quang Tri, in honor of my legs, 'cause that's where they're at, bone dust in a rice paddy.”

Dorsey shows up, and we get a booth in the corner.

“Chip called. He'll be a couple minutes late,” Dorsey says.

“He's usually early.”

“How's he seem to you?” Dorsey asks in a significant tone.

I shrug. “Chip-like. Maybe more so than usual. Do you have a concern, Cap'n?”

Dorsey thinks for a few seconds. He strokes his bear rug. “Yes and no.”

“Choose one,” I say testily. I'm feeling protective of Chip. I know exactly what Dorsey is getting at, but I want him to have to work for it. I've softened on Dorsey a bit, but he's essentially a knuckle-dragger.

“No,” he says.

“Good,” I say, snipping off that thread of conversation. Of course Dorsey has a concern. Dorsey is an all-business, by-the-book, cut-and-dried, linear-deduction guy. Smart and quick but not creative. You meet a lot of Dorseys in this business, guys born to be pissed off about the world's failure to form straight lines in tidy uniforms. Everything bugs them: nonconformity, quirkiness, laxness, it all brings up their demons. Except Dorsey isn't quite as easily dismissed, because I catch glimpses of an incongruous eagerness in him. Like his enthusiasm about Milan, Italy. I actually have no idea who he is.

“Have you been to Milan?”

He laughs. “Hardly.” He goes off to the men's room. I watch him. His back is narrow and straight, but he maneuvers through the room slowly, and I wonder if he's burdened by this thing with Chip. Does he wonder why Chip doesn't like him, or is he afraid Chip could be a security threat? I shouldn't have shut him down so quick.

Truth is, I've been concerned about Chip, too. You give a guy some slack in the wake of a domestic meltdown, but I have to wonder
if he has crossed some point of no return; the thing he was saying last summer about becoming an animal trainer, and little things like showing up late at this meeting. Mostly, it's that he seems checked out. Kind of like Flora. Not the guy you want handling critical evidence and sensitive information. Definitely not the guy you want watching your back in the high-adrenaline, life-and-death moments you sometimes see in law enforcement.

The waitress comes with coffee and tops us off. “Anything?” she asks.

“No, thanks,” I say.

She starts to leave, but immediately, I say, “Second thought—”

“Make up your mind, darlin'.”

“Bowl of clams. Steamers.”

Dorsey returns, we don't talk much, then Steve rolls up with the steamers and clasps Dorsey's hand in a thumb-link handshake. “Compadre,” Steve says.

“You know Nick Davis?” Dorsey asks.

“Recognize him,” Steve says, and we do a quick thumb grapple.

“How's business?” Dorsey asks.

“Same for me as it is for you; economy don't matter, weather don't matter, president and governor don't matter. People still gonna drink coffee and beer and break the law, am I right?”

Steve holds out a fist, and Dorsey bumps it with his own. “Later, gator,” Steve says, and rolls away to the far corner table, where half a dozen guys sit drinking coffee. They're all about Steve's age, mid-sixties, but some are more time-worn. In the old days, there was always a plume of cigarette smoke over that table. Steve resisted the smoke-free ordinance as long as possible. He got cited a couple of times and was threatened with shutdown. As it is, he keeps a bench outside for them. Some guys will sit here most of the afternoon, switching between coffee inside and a cig outdoors.

Dorsey takes a clam from its shell, peels the sheath off the siphon, dunks it in the broth, forgoes the butter, then swallows. “Good idea,” he says, nodding toward the clams, and goes after another. We work our way through the bowl. Dorsey, I notice, grabs from
the bowl without discrimination, while I go after the smaller ones. He pauses and watches me select, dunk in broth, dunk in butter, eat.

“Mmm. Cholesterol,” he says about the butter, not to criticize me but to explain himself. He grabs another clam. He wears a wedding ring, and I wonder about his wife. Shy? Intellectual? Homemaker? I can't even guess. Dorsey looks over my shoulder out the window. “We pulled a body out of there a couple of weeks ago.”

I turn to see. The window looks out over a defunct power dam in the river, where garbage collects at the edge of the falls. “I heard.”

We focus on clams. I see Chip come in. Darn, I think. I don't want to give up the quiet pleasantness of working through a bowl of clams with Captain Dorsey.

I
t comes down to motive.

The blood-spattered rag is enough to tie Scud to Seth Coen's murder if we can establish a motive. Why did Scud want Seth dead? The answer, of course, is that Seth helped dispose of Zander Phippin's body, and when the body was uncovered, Scud needed to guarantee Seth's silence. So if we can prove that Scud and Seth actually murdered or at least disposed of Zander, then we also have Scud in Seth's murder.

But so far, our evidence for the Zander Phippin murder—tollbooth records, muddy boots, cigarette receipt, the telephone note in Scud's apartment—is all circumstantial. It's almost enough to convict in Zander's murder, but again, only if we have a strong motive. The motive is simple: Scud was working for whomever Zander was informing against. We just have to prove it.

From our table in the Rain Tree, Chip calls Upton, and they talk it through, then Chip hands the phone to Dorsey, and
they
talk it through. When Dorsey gets off the phone, he says, “We're bringing him in.” He punches a number on his own phone. “I want a team to serve an arrest warrant. Possibility of violence,” he says.

He gets up and hurries out the door. Chip and I watch him go. We order another bowl of clams.

“So I'm going to a retreat next spring,” Chip says partway through the bowl of clams. I could ask him to explain, but I know if I just wait a moment, he'll continue on his own. He does. “It's about archetypal dream analysis.”

“Archetypal?”

“You know, the self, the animus, the anima. Very Jungian.
Because dreams are, you know, the only reliable window to the subconscious.”

“Oh. Well, that sounds . . .” I eat a clam because I'm not sure how to finish the sentence.

“It's at a little place in Vermont,” he says.

“Fun.”

“Nope. Wouldn't call it fun. I'd call it supportive. Supportive and enlightening.”

Chip is becoming increasingly new-agey. Sometimes he even reminds me of Flora. “Love these clams,” I say.

•  •  •

In the courtroom, Kendall Vance has one of the meth makers on the stand. He's a thirtyish guy, and with his black-framed glasses, he looks like a math major. He's wearing a bland suit, but his necktie is bright turquoise.

“. . . not how you're usually dressed, is it?” Kendall asks.

“ 'Scuse me?”

“I mean your suit and tie. Aren't you currently in prison on charges of manufacturing methamphetamine?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, my mistake,” Kendall says, eyeing the jury. “The government offered you a plea bargain of simple possession . . .”

“Yes.”

“For cooperating?”

“Yes.”

“And you haven't been sentenced yet, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“So where'd you get the suit and tie?”

“Objection,” Tina says, scoring one for the defense. I've seen whole trials, days of testimony, without a single objection. Hearing one just seconds after I walk into the courtroom tells me Tina's being baited into a slap-fest.

“. . . government gave me the suit,” he says, “but the tie is mine.”

I walk through the swinging gate and scribble a note to Tina: “Don't get suckered into unnecessary objections.”

Kendall stops whatever he's saying and stares at me. Seconds pass.

“Mr. Vance?” the judge says. (It's not Two Rivers, it's Washington.) “Mr. Vance, are you releasing the witness?”

“How many government bureaucrats does it take to convict this young woman?” Kendall says. He turns fully around to face the courtroom and holds his hands out toward three young girls sitting behind him in the first row. Tamika Curtis's daughters. They're all in tidy white dresses, hair in braided ponytails. One of them, the middle one, wears glasses. They remind me of Norman Rockwell's painting of young Ruby Bridges being escorted to school by four federal marshals—this is certainly intentional on Kendall's part. In the back row, I spot the graying woman in a dingy dress with a rhinestone brooch who is probably Tamika Curtis's mother. Kendall, no doubt, deemed her too ghetto and placed her back out of the spotlight.

“How about it, girls?” Kendall says. “Any notes you want to pass up to your mama?” He looks at the jury. There are two African-American men and one earthy-looking white woman with a braided ponytail. I'm betting Kendall is after eye contact with these three.

“Mr. Vance—”

“Because apparently, it's not enough the government has the laws and the agents and interrogators and all those secret prisons.”

“Mr. Vance,” Washington says wearily.

I retreat to the rear of the room. I like Washington. He's much older than Two Rivers, no giant of legal reasoning but a competent grocery-store-manager sort.

Kendall shakes his head in disgust. “So tell me, Mr. Mashburn,” he says, “what is your understanding of the sentence you might have received if you hadn't cooperated with the government?”

“Objection. Hearsay,” Tina says.

I go upstairs and wait for Chip to call and tell me Scud Illman is behind bars.

•  •  •

At four-thirty Janice buzzes. “Kendall Vance is outside at security. Should they let him in?”

No,
I think. “Yes,” I say. I go meet him in the hallway and bring him into my office. “Kendall,” I say, “are you giving Tina a rough go?”

“You have subject and object reversed.” He laughs.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You told me the other day you'd get back to me. I'm still waiting.”

“Oh, cripes, Kendall, I'm sorry. It's been . . . busy.”

“I'm teaching a class,” Kendall says. “I'd like to invite you to speak. It's the professional responsibility class, evening division.”

“Teaching a class. That's admirable.” I immediately hate myself for saying it. Kendall's paying clients are scum-of-the-earth career criminals like Scud Illman, whom no ethical person would have anything to do with.

“We must all endeavor to pass our wisdom on to the next generation,” he says.

“Are you wise, Kendall?”

“Wisdom is as wisdom does,” he answers mysteriously.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Just a discussion. I find it useful to start the semester by getting students thinking about essentials before we get into lawyer advertising, fees, Chinese walls, diligence, confidentiality, and all that happy horseshit. A discussion of morality—legally speaking.”

Kendall Vance is a kook, and his teaching a class on professional responsibility is like having someone who thinks he's Jesus Christ teach swimming
( The goal is to simply walk on top of the water, don't allow yourself to sink down into it.)

“How shall we structure it?” I ask.

“Most basic questions first: I talk about defending the guilty, you talk about prosecuting the innocent.”

“I don't prosecute the innocent.”

“Of course you don't.”

“I don't.”

“Good. Then that's what you tell them.”

“Be a short discussion.”

“Oh, I imagine they'll have some questions. Like, let's talk about prosecuting Tamika Curtis. I've been trying to speak with you about this case for months, but you won't call back. Now we're in trial.”

“Wrong guy, Kendall,” I say. “This is Tina's case. Talk to her.”

“I'm talking to you,” he says, trumpeting an end to any pretext of cordiality. “This is bullshit.”

“Just doing my job, Kendall. We busted up a meth operation, now people go to jail. That's how it works.”

He stares at me.

“Listen,” I say in a conciliatory voice, “I'm not the lady with the scales. I learned long ago to do my job and let someone else make the moral judgments. I don't have the stomach for it.”

“So said the boys at Nuremberg.”

“Go to hell.”

“Truth hurts, eh, Nick?”

It's not the first time I've been here with Kendall Vance. Besides his scum-sucking paying clients, he takes a lot of these assigned cases, meaning he ends up with the defendants at the bottom of the food chain—the ones without money and nobody left to rat on. The strange thing about Kendall is that while he'll represent murderers and rapists and drug peddlers and all kinds of sociopaths, he won't represent any defendant in crimes against a child.