Indefensible (28 page)

I can't focus on any real work, so I walk over to Tina's office to finish the conversation. She's standing at her desk putting papers into her briefcase. “Now I'm the one who can't talk,” she says. “Got a hearing.”

I stand by her door watching her. She stops and looks at me. “You didn't want one of my ears,” she says, “but I've got something else you definitely need.”

“You do?”

She comes and gives me a hug. It is quick and friendly. Too quick. As she breaks off and walks back to the desk, I follow her, but I resist the impulse to pull her back to me.

“You just look so damn forlorn,” she says.

“About the other evening . . .”

“Shhh,” she says, and she presses her index finger against my lips. “ 'Nother time.”

Back in my office, I tidy my desk. Buried under miscellaneous paperwork I find the Leroy Burton file that Janice tracked down for me. Since I don't seem able to do any real work, I open the file and start reading.

Leroy Burton, aka Fuseli, was convicted at seventeen years old on one count of armed robbery of a federally insured institution and
two counts of felony murder. He was the driver. His accomplices, in their thirties, went into the bank, and within minutes, three people were dead: a cop, a female customer, and one of the accomplices. The security guard, who had the good sense to hide under his desk, got out of it with a wounded toe.

The slain officer was a popular hometown boy, and the dead customer was rich. The surviving accomplice immediately hanged himself in his cell. This left Leroy as the sole surviving target of public outrage. He was sentenced to consecutive thirty-five-year terms on the felony murder charges and another twenty years on the robbery. One of the accomplices was his cousin, the other a friend of the cousin. Fuseli testified in trial that the cousin said they were going after the drugstore across the street to nab a few fistfuls of pills. Fuseli didn't know anything about the gun or the bank, but he figured it out pretty quick when the shooting started. He stomped the accelerator and peeled away into what would have certainly been most-wanted fame if he hadn't just driven home and hidden under the bed, to be apprehended within the hour.

As he told me that day at Ellisville, nobody ever accused him of killing anyone. Unfortunately for Fuseli, felony murder doesn't distinguish: If you're committing a felony and someone dies, it's murder.

I feel unexpectedly sad for Fuseli. Rarely in this business do I allow myself to empathize with some con whose lousy choices and values have landed him in hot water. But Fuseli impressed me. He is a mentor to young guys who come through the system, helping them get straightened out enough not to bounce right back in when they get released. And his attitude is striking. He has a quiet dignity that makes me want to believe his story. Even if it's a lie, if he knew perfectly well about the gun and the bank, it's easy for me to believe he was a screwed-up kid who has taken his lesson to heart.

I left the prison with the surprising wish that I could help him somehow. It's ridiculous. For some reason, I'm conflating all these lost boys: my Toby who never had a chance, Zander who made
a youthful error that cost him his life, Kenny whom I've tried, with questionable success, to steer onto the path of opportunity and responsibility, and now the decrepit Fuseli whose youthful error steered him straight through the gates of hell. This idea of helping Fuseli, I realize, is nuts: Fuseli is nothing to me—just another con.

I
n Rivertown, a girl barely older than Lizzy steps gingerly over the gutter, clutching her boyfriend's hand. She's thin as a whippet except for her pregnant tummy, which is an organism in itself. Her shirt is tight, and the bump of her outie leads girl and tummy down the road. She is laughing—I assume at herself, her awkwardness, her backward-bending spine, her unapologetic, unembarrassed “predicament.” She is in a crowd of relatives: a mom, friends or sibs, maybe aunts or uncles. I thought Rivertown was a slum, but it looks like a community.

In my new reality of living life as a possible suspect, it occurs to me that I might be under surveillance, and that this trip to Rivertown for a nighttime visit to the Elfin Grot might not be a good idea. But the best way to show you're innocent of some crime is always to show that someone else is guilty of it. So I persevere.

The Elfin Grot has come to life. Smoke is thick and feels woven into the smell of beer and sweat. And noise, the blur of liquor-loosened voices. I stand by the door, trying to distinguish smells from sounds from sights. There is no pathway to the back, where Huberly said I'd probably find Platypus, so I wade into the crowd. It's slow going, requiring hands on shoulders,
tap-tap
, “ 'Scuse me, buddy” shouted at the ears of strangers whose hips and backsides I find myself pressed against. “ 'Scuse me, buddy.” A guy in a tank top turns to see who it is as I put a hand on his sweaty shoulder to squeeze past. He studies me a second, then his grin gets wide. He tips his head toward me and says, “
Amigo,
” and his pudgy fingers tap my hand.

I reach the end of the counter where the room widens enough for some small round tables, and at the very back, at a table with two
chairs, sits a hunched old guy. His hair is thin and wispy, the exposed scalp an unhealthy pale. The rest of him is an excess of crumpled flesh. His purple lips protrude as though he tried to kiss a wringer washer. Platypus.

I sit in the empty chair. There's a glass in front of him and another at my seat. Platypus points at it. “Chivas instead of Granddad. I took the liberty.” He holds up his own glass of something clear and bubbly. I clink, though I'd rather stay away from anything those lips have wrapped themselves around. “What can I do for you, Mr. Davis, Mr. U.S. Attorney?”

“Assistant. Tipper sent me.”

“Tipper? I don't know no Tipper.”

“We've had some killings, and I'm getting heartburn over a couple of 'em,” I say. “I'm beginning to wonder what the hell. You know? So I ask around. And the word is, you're good at information. Maybe you know things other people don't know.”

He shrugs. “Hard to say, Mr. Davis. I'm just a guy. But tell me what you've got.” He sips his soda and watches me with hopeful eyes.

I sip my Chivas. “Here's what I've got,” I say. “I've got two dead hoods and a dead college kid who was selling pot. The Bureau and the troopers aren't coming up with shit. The leaf the kid was selling comes from the main supply, though, you know? That's why we went after him: Use him as the bottom rung and start up the ladder. Only it didn't work out that way. So now we've got four bodies, and nothing leads anywhere.”

“Four?”

“A bystander, sort of. Wrong place, wrong time.”

He sips his seltzer and I sip my whiskey. There's something likable about him.

“I used to be here a lot,” he says. “I lived here, really. But one day . . .”

“Yes?”

“One day, I shit you not, one morning, I woke up in bed like a year after my wife died—and I don't have to tell you what
that
was like for me. Thirty-seven years that woman put up with me,
and God knows, if ever a wife had reasons to walk, she did, but no; thirty-seven years. Thirty-seven years. And one night I come home, three sheets as always, and I get right in bed, and it isn't till morning I realize I slept with a corpse and was too drunk to know it, and I don't mind telling you, Mr.—”

“Davis.”

“Davis. I don't mind telling you I cried like a baby.”

“My sympathies. What I—”

“Well, that was nearly five years ago now, so you know, I'm okay. They got the senior center and I got friends there. And the old gang, well, most of 'em is dead or in jail, like Tipper, but . . . ?”

“I thought you didn't know Tipper.”

“ 'Course I do. But I do okay. My son, he calls. What I'm saying, it was almost a year after Louise died, and one morning I woke up from a drunk, and I shit you not, Jesus Christ Himself is sitting at the end of the bed, and He says . . . Guess what He says.”

I shrug.

“He says, ‘Do it for Louise.' That's it. End of discussion. And He disappears. So that very week I'm in A.A. And if you have any interest . . .”

“Appreciate it,” I say, “but my demons manifest themselves more subtly. So what I was—”

“Three years without a drink,” he says.

“Congratulations Mr.— I don't know your name.”

“Platypus'll do.”

“Listen, Platypus, can you help me?”

He blows a raspberry through those lips, which vibrate like a kazoo, and I wipe my face with a bar napkin. “Like, do I know who's your snitch, who's the shooter? Don't have a fucking clue. Do I know who they're working for? Maybe I got a couple of ideas. What I do know: I know how to find things out. No promises. No money-back guarantee. But I got an expertise that you don't. I live here. I got forty years of who's who, and for thirty-seven of those years, I was pretty good at looking drunker than I was. Me and Tipper. I was the fool, he was the straight. We had us our own information superhighway.
Not like we was informants. I never sold anything that wasn't already in the stream of commerce, so to speak. It's like this: Say a guy goes to the library and learns how to make himself a bomb, blows holy hell out of some bank vault. Do you arrest the library? Whack the librarian? Bullshit. That's me. Me and Tipper. We was the library.” He runs an index finger round and round on the rim of his glass. “I never did much business with your gang.” His head protrudes from the acres of his overcoat like a mushroom struggling through mulch. “A guy can get hurt that way, you know. I mean, sure, some back scratching now and then, you know. But that's all, and I sure as shit never knew anything firsthand. It's always somebody told somebody told me. Know?”

“Sure.”

“So you want help? Let's talk business. I'll need money up front for expenses.”

“Bribes?”

“Drinks. Drinks, loans, favors. You come at it sideways, else you pay too much, and you don't get the story. Five hundred to start. If I get something, another five.”

He watches for my reaction. I might as well be bargaining for pregnant yaks in Ulan Bator for as much as I know about this. But I've come prepared. My pocket bulges with a fat roll of twenties—my own money; there's no way this is a sanctioned DOJ expense.

“Ain't you got any questions?” Platypus asks.

“Sure,” I say, “how come after a career of not working for the feds, you're all eager to help me?”

He blows another raspberry and plays with the rim of his glass. “More back scratching,” he says, and he shifts in his seat, and his head moves up and down in the mulch and finally settles low. “See, I got this daughter lives right near here. Never see her.”

“How come?”

“She blames me.”

“For what?”

“For being in the life. She says that's why what happened, happened.”

He's getting close to something. No monologue; he's making me prod.

“What happened?”

He reaches into the big overcoat and brings out a photo: a girl, maybe six years younger than Lizzy. She's laughing, freckles on café au lait cheeks and nose, and hair in small, exotic braids. I feel nauseated, because all I know of this girl at this moment is that something happened, and since I live with this shit every day—true crime—I know it's bad. I didn't see it coming from this lonely, washed-up once-upon-a-timer, but there it is, and my defenses are down and I know, every cell tingling with the knowing, that this pretty girl is dead and the repulsive, spittle-spraying Platypus is trying to resurrect her. I hand the picture back, not meeting his eyes.

“My granddaughter, she went to school one day and never came home,” he says, his voice flat.

“Police?”

“Nothing.”

“That's that?”

“No. Someone found a photo a few months later. They . . . they . . . the police, they just showed us the face, and truly, she didn't look that bad. Healthy, sort of, you know? But the rest of the picture, what they didn't show us . . .”

“What?”

His hands flap around as he looks for words or maybe gets a handle on himself. Then he pronounces slowly, “Por-nog-ra-phy. Apparently, there was someone else in the picture, but they wouldn't tell us details. Said it's best not to know. The detectives said by the time the photo turned up, she was most likely dead or someplace very, very far away.”

“I'm sorry.”

He nods.

“I'm not an investigator. I'm sure the police . . .” I trail off. He straightens up some and shifts position. “What do you want?” I ask.

“Just look.”

“For her?”

He laughs bitterly. “Look at you. Your idea of blending in is taking off your tie. Know who you remind me of ? Mark Trail, remember him?”

“Who?”

“Old comic from the funny pages. Mark Trail. He was a forest ranger or something. Like Lassie on two legs. That's who you look like. Plaid shirt and all.”

“Mark Trail? No, I don't—”

“So maybe you can rub two sticks together, but you go out looking for Brittany, only thing you're going to find is a knife in the ribs and your wallet gone. Friendly word of advice, Mr. Davis: At least in a suit, you'd have some respectability.”

“So you want what?”

“I just want to know what's happening. Like, are they still working the case, or have they given up and forgotten about her? I got the names of these two dicks. They give me their cards. At first they was real nice when I'd call. Now they don't call me back. Been six months since I've heard a peep.”

“If there was news, they'd call.”