Past Due (2 page)

T
HERE IS SOMETHING
perversely cheerful about a crime scene in the middle of the night, the pulsating red and blue lights, the great beams of white, the strobes of photographers’ flashes. Festively festooned with yellow tape, a crime scene at night is a place cars drive slowly by, as if before an overdone Christmas display with bowing reindeers and whirling Santas. In the uniformed workers busily going about their business, in the helicopters spinning madly overhead, in the television vans with their jaunty microwave disks, in the reporters giving their live reports, in the excited onlookers excitedly looking on, in all of it lies the thrilling sense of relief that the arbitrary finger of desolation has squashed flat this night a total stranger.

Unless the corpse within the tape is not a total stranger. Then, suddenly, the crime scene at night is not so cheery.

I didn’t yet know why I had been summoned to the crime scene at Pier 84 on Philadelphia’s dank waterfront, or whose death was the subject of this swirl of activity, but I knew the deceased was not a total stranger or I would never have been called, and that was enough to turn the cheeriness of the scene into something bleak and icy. The possibilities flitted through my mind like bats through a dusky sky, an endless swarm, each swoop or swerve carrying its own name and causing its own jolt of fear.

“I was called by McDeiss,” I told one of the uniforms standing as solid as a Roman sentry at the gated entrance to the pier, his arms crossed, his thick leather jacket zippered tight. Far behind him, lying between two huge shipping containers, surrounded by cops and technicians, slipping out of a strange dark puddle, was a lump of something covered by blue.

“You a reporter?” said the cop.

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Even worse. Yo, Pete,” he called out to a young cop standing a few feet away. “What’s more trouble than a lawyer?”

“Two lawyers,” said Pete.

“Go tell Detective McDeiss to hold on to his wallet, there’s a lawyer here to see him.”

“Who died?” I managed to get out.

“Talk to McDeiss.”

“What happened?”

“Some guy got an early good-night kiss.”

Until then I hadn’t known if the victim was man or woman, now the possibilities narrowed. Half of the swooping bats dissolved and disappeared, yet that didn’t seem to help at all.

The pier was a flat sheet of cement, jutting out into the wide, slow Delaware River, just north of the Walt Whitman Bridge. Rail lines crisscrossed its length and an arcade-style warehouse squatted in its center, with trailers hitched at the bays in front like puppies sucking milk from their mother’s teats. Chocolate milk, because Pier 84 was the primary cocoa-receiving facility in the entire country. On Pier 84, burlap sacks, unloaded from heavy cargo ships, were thrown into shipping containers and hauled by rail and truck to the gay little chocolate town of Hershey, Pennsylvania. You would expect you could smell the sweet rich flavor of the chocolate even on the pier, but you’d be wrong. All you could smell that night was the wet of the river, the oxide of rusting metal, and something dark and desolate and sadly familiar beneath it all.

The warehouse now was in shadow, the river itself a thick black void. At the entrance to the pier, brown and low, squatted Frank’s, a lunch shack with tables out front and a blue sign reading:
COLD BEER
. To my right was the great steel bridge named after America’s
most American poet. I hear America singing, yeah yeah yeah. Not tonight, Walt, not with all the racket from the helicopters, not with that lump of something beneath the blue tarp. And to my left, the oddest sight, the red tilting stacks of what appeared to be a great ocean liner fallen on hard times. The red paint on the funnels was streaked and flaking, the metal was rusting, the lighting was desultory at best, making it seem as if the great ship was sagging in the middle like a tired old horse. It looked as if it had suffered some foul disease and had crawled into the Philadelphia waterfront to die. Well, it had picked the right place.

This visit to Pier 84 was for me the start of the strange case you read about in the papers, the one with the Supreme Court justice and those pictures of the naked woman, the one with the dead client and the kidnapped lawyer and the rotting old ship and the ghost reaching back from the dead to exact his revenge. That one, remember? But for me it wasn’t yet a headline, it was just a call in the night that had sent me scurrying to the water’s edge, and so the strange sight of that rotting old ocean liner was just that, a strange sight, nothing more. A fading remnant of a far brighter past, it sat there, dead in the water, like a warning I couldn’t yet hear.

“Victor Carl,” came a rich voice from within the cordon of the yellow tape. “Why am I not surprised when your name comes floating up in the middle of a god-awful mess? Let him in, Sal.”

The cop with the crossed arms stepped aside.

Detective McDeiss, Homicide Division, was wearing a long black trench coat, a gray suit, a black porkpie hat tipped low. His large hands glowed strangely blue, covered as they were with latex gloves. He was a big man, broad shoulders, thick legs, the cheeks of one who savored his wines and preferred his sweetbreads rare.

“Thanks for coming out, Carl,” he said. “The deceased’s wallet is gone and there’s no quick way to make an identification, but lucky us, he had your card in his back pants pocket.”

“My card?”

“You sound surprised. You don’t toss them to the multitudes?”

“Just to passing ambulances and old ladies who fall and can’t get up.” I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, smelt the coppery tang of spilt blood, suppressed a gag.

“You all right there, Carl?”

I wasn’t, not at all, but I turned away from the covered thing on the ground and tried not to show it. “So let me get this right, Detective. You have a dead man, you don’t know who he is, but he had my card, and you took a flyer on seeing if I could identify him.”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Can I stand back a bit when I do it?”

“Please. These are new shoes.”

McDeiss laid a gloved hand on my shoulder and squeezed before stepping toward the lump of something covered by a blue tarp twenty yards away. The crowd surrounding it stepped back. At McDeiss’s instruction a sharp white beam was focused on the tarp and the puddle. McDeiss leaned down, grasped the edge of the blue sheet of plastic with his gloved hand, looked at me.

I swallowed and nodded and stepped back still farther as McDeiss lifted the corner of the tarp.

I caught a glimpse, that was all it took, even bleached by the bright white light it took only a glimpse of the face rising out of a thick puddle of dark blood, only a glimpse, and I knew without a doubt. A single bat swooped low, aiming for my head. I flinched and turned away.

Joey Cheaps.

J
OEY
C
HEAPS
.

I was sitting in my office, hoping something lucrative would come along and save me from bankruptcy court, when Joseph Parma, Joey Cheaps as he was known in South Philly, phoned. This was that very morning, about ten-thirty, and I wanted to tell my secretary to take a message, but I didn’t. What we needed just then was something lucrative and Joey Cheaps was not something lucrative. Joey Cheaps was the opposite of something lucrative. Joey Cheaps was a monetary black hole. When he entered a bank, the share price dropped ten percent. When he walked down the street, parking meters flashed red one after the other. Every time I so much as said his name I lost money. Joey Cheaps. There went five dollars. See? He was a client and he owed me money and that was the only reason I took his call, so I could tell him he owed me money. He knew he owed me money, he didn’t need me to tell him he owed me money, and yet still I couldn’t help myself. It was that sore tooth thing all over again.

“Joey,” I said. “You owe me money.”

“Yeah, I knows. I’m working on it. It was genius, what you pulled in court. I owe you.”

“Yes, you do. You owe me thirty-five hundred dollars.”

“Well, you know, Victor, some things you can’t put a price on.”

“But I can put a price on what I did for you, Joey. And you know what the price is? Thirty-five hundred dollars.”

“Hey, you know me, Victor. I’m good for it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know you.”

“Listen, Victor. I got something going on what’s going to make me flush, going to take care of everything. But before I does anything I got a question, a legal question.”

“Then you should find a lawyer.”

“That’s why I called you. Just do me the favor, all right, Victor? I’m asking as a friend.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“We’re not no friends?”

“I was your lawyer, you were my client. And now you owe me money. That makes me your creditor.”

“Victor, the way my life is now, the only friends I got is my creditors. Everyone else I owes too much money. But I’m thinking of coming clean. I’m thinking of paying what I owes and starting new. Right after this thing. And I got reason to. I found someone.”

“Joey.”

“Shut up.”

“Joey in love. Who is she?”

“Shut up, it don’t matter. But first we needs to talk, I needs to talk. To someone.”

A line of desperation like an ominous riff of bass, rose from beneath the rough melody of his voice. I thought about it. I wanted to say no. My accountant, had he been in my office, would have insisted I say no. But there was that line of desperation in his voice that to a lawyer is as seductive as a purr. “What’s it about, Joey?”

“I needs you to tell me, Victor, about that statue of limitations.”

“Are we talking art or crime.”

“What do I know about art?”

“Considering your record, Joey, you don’t know much about crime either. What you are asking about is the
statute
of limitations. The law doesn’t want you running scared your whole life about something you might have done wrong years ago. If the prosecutor doesn’t bring the case within a set amount of time, then he can’t bring it at all.”

“How long he got?”

“Depends on the crime.”

“Let’s say drugs or something?”

“Possession only? Two years.”

“How about theft?”

“Simple theft? Same two.”

“How about with a gun?”

“Robbery? Five.”

“How about you beat some moke with a baseball bat?”

“Aggravated assault. Still five.”

“And what if the moke you beat with the baseball bat goes ahead on his own and dies?”

“Joey.”

“Just answer the question, Victor.”

“There’s no statute of limitations for murder.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“But it was twenty years ago.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Double shit. We needs to meet.”

“How about Thursday?”

“How about now, Victor? La Vigna, you know it?”

“Yeah, I know it. But why the rush?”

“Now, Victor. Please. I’ll pay you to show up.”

“You’ll pay me?” I said.

“I’m scared,” he said. “I’m scared to death.”

And he was, was Joey Cheaps, scared enough to offer to pay me, which for him was scared as hell, and I suppose, based on what I saw beneath the blue sheet of plastic, he had every right to be.

B
UT THAT WAS
the morning and now, in the deep of the night, I sat on a curb at the crime scene, about twenty yards from Joey Cheap’s corpse, and held my head in my hands. I held my head in my hands because it felt like it was breaking apart.

I had already given a full statement, identifying the victim, identifying myself as his lawyer, indicating I had seen him that very afternoon at a restaurant on Front Street. I told what I knew of his vital statistics, age, place of birth, rap sheet. And before I sat down on the curb I told the police where his mother lived. I could imagine the scene, the police detective stepping inside the dark house, the near blind woman offering coffee, offering cake, offering to heat up a piece of veal. The officer declining, asking the old woman to sit down, telling the old woman he has terrible terrible news. The way her face collapses as she learns the truth. If I had courage I would have done it myself, but I’ve never been accused of having courage.

“You look like a sick puppy” came McDeiss’s voice from in front of me.

“He was a client,” I said.

“Why don’t you stand on up so we can talk some more.”

“If I stand I’m going to puke.”

“You keep on sitting, then.” He hitched up the pant fabric at his knees and squatted beside me and I couldn’t help but wince.

“Your knees sound like walnuts cracking in a vise.”

“I’ve been younger, I admit it,” said McDeiss.

We didn’t get along so swell, McDeiss and I. We’d had a piece of business together in the past which had turned out poorly: a couple of dead bodies and a bad guy who in the end had gotten away. Still, I couldn’t help but admire McDeiss. He was Ivy-educated but he didn’t show it off, he was a righteous cop but he didn’t preach, he was better at his job than I was at mine. And to top it off, he knew all the best restaurants.

“The first cops on the scene found your card on him,” he said. “When the captain called out the case your name was prominently mentioned.”

“And because of that you volunteered?”

“We picked straws. Mine was seriously short. Mine was the runt of the litter, the jockey of straws. So lucky me, here I am to interview you. This afternoon you were with this Parma at a restaurant?”

“That’s right. La Vigna.”

“When?”

“About eleven.”

“What did you have?”

“The cheesecake.”

“Ricotta?”

“Absolutely.”

“Any good?”

“Not good enough that I want to taste it twice.”

“When did you last see him?”

“It was about eleven-thirty when we left.”

“You and Parma just met up for an early lunch?”

“Something like that.”

“Simply a friendly chat?”

“Sure.”

“What did you two boys chat about?”

“He was a client.”

“You’re claiming privilege,” said McDeiss, nodding his head. “I have a great respect for constitutional privilege, yes I do. I would never do anything to trample on privilege.” Pause for effect. “But your client is dead.”

“It doesn’t make a difference.”

“Don’t be a dickhead.”

“Tell it to the Supreme Court.”

“We already know they’re dickheads. But, see, I’m a little puzzled with you claiming privilege. We checked his record. You had just gotten this Parma off the burglary rap, some sleazy trademark Victor Carl maneuver from what I understand. But Parma wasn’t up on anything else. No pending charges, no parole violations. What I’m wondering is what kind of trouble was he in which required him to consult with his criminal defense attorney at eleven in the morning?”

I didn’t answer, I just lifted my head out of my hands and stared at the detective.

“Anything that might have gotten him hurt?”

I said nothing.

“The killing was apparently done somewhere else, a knife through the throat, in a car maybe, and then he was dropped here. Forensics will check him for fibers, see if we can match a make and model. Wherever he was killed, there’ll be a whole lot of blood. And it looks to us like he was beaten too. His eye, for example, was pretty busted up. How’d he look when you saw him?”

“His eye was busted up already when I met him.”

“That you can tell me?”

“It’s not privileged information. When you talk to the waiter at La Vigna, a guy named Louis, he’ll tell you the same thing.”

“But you won’t tell me anything else?”

“Sorry.”

“Because right now, Carl, we don’t have a clue as to what actually happened here tonight. His wallet was missing so it could have been a robbery, but his Timex is still on his wrist and word is this Joey Parma never had anything worth stealing. So was this a mob execution? Was this drug-related? Was he stepping out with someone else’s wife? Did he owe someone money? Anything you can tell us would be mighty handy.”

“Joey was never part of the mob. A wannabe maybe, but that’s it. And the drug conviction was well in his past. Best I could figure, he was trying to go clean. But his street name was Joey Cheaps, which means he owed everybody money.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Me.”

“Oh, I bet he did. Anyone else? Anyone mad enough to extract it in blood.”

“Not that I know of. But as to what we talked about, there is nothing more I can tell you.”

“He’s your client, Carl. Doesn’t that matter?”

“Clients die, Detective. It happens all the time. Rich old ladies with wills to probate. Cancer-ridden smokers waiting on their suits against the tobacco companies. For criminal lawyers there are good ways to lose a client and bad ways to lose a client. A good way is for a client to die in his bed, surrounded by his family, receiving last rites from a priest. A bad way is for a client to be strapped on a gurney with a line in his arm, as the victim’s mother stares stone-faced through the viewing window. I don’t know why Joey was killed, but it wasn’t the state that killed him, or a fellow con with a prison shiv, and so I figure this falls on the right side of my line.”

“All righty then,” said McDeiss without rising from his crouch. “I suppose then there’s nothing more to be done.”

“I suppose so.”

“Thanks for all your assistance.”

“It was nothing,” I said. “You need any help getting up?”

“I’ll manage.”

We should have been through, I should have stood, kicked the curb, left, gone on with my life. I should have, yes, but that thing I had said about clients dying all the time, that whole cynically hardboiled little speech, was an utter lie. They didn’t die all the time, and when they did, I couldn’t just shrug it off. So I didn’t stand, kick the curb, and go on with my life. Instead, I said, “Before you go, Detective, I wonder if you could do me a favor.”

“A favor. Is this related or unrelated to what happened to Mr. Parma?”

“Unrelated. I wonder if you could check your files to see if any unidentified floaters turned up about twenty years ago in the Delaware River. And maybe you could also see if you have a file on a missing man named Tommy, who disappeared twenty years ago and was never found.”

“An unidentified floater and a missing person, name of Tommy.”

“Or Thomas. Or Tom.”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Approximately.”

“And this is unrelated to your friend Parma.”

“Unrelated.”

“But you just happen to ask me this favor after your friend Parma meets with his criminal defense attorney for no apparent reason and then gets dumped between two rusting shipping containers with his throat slit and his blood flowing into the Delaware.”

“Just happenstance.”

“And I should do this why?”

“Because I’m a sweet guy.”

“You make it hard to want to help you, Carl.”

“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.”

We stayed at the curb, me sitting, my head still in my hands, the nausea turning the edges of my vision pale, McDeiss still in his squat. We stayed there for a while until McDeiss said, “Know what I got a strange hankering for right now? Ossobuco. You ever had a great ossobuco?”

“Do you mind? I can still smell the blood.”

“Veal shank braised in a wine sauce till it melts at the touch. And then, at the last moment, the secret ingredient is added, the
gremolata,
minced garlic, chopped parsley, and a dash of lemon zest. There’s a place on Seventh that makes a killer ossobuco.”

“Perfect for a homicide detective, I suppose.”

“I’ll consider if the information you sought is worth pursuing.”

“That’s all I can ask.” I paused for a moment, thought about what he had just said. “And maybe,” I continued, as if struck with a plan out of the thin of the air, “if you find something, we can discuss it over dinner.”

“What a wonderful idea.”

“There’s a place on Seventh Street I’ve been told about.”

“Sounds intriguing.”

“A little expensive, I’m sure.”

“Yes it is,” he said, letting out a soft groan as his knees popped once again and he stood. “But worth every penny.”

“You’ll keep me informed of what you find about Joey?”

“Why?”

“Professional interest.”

“Don’t worry, Carl, one thing you can be sure of is that you’ll be hearing from me.”

By the time I left the scene the coroner’s van had shown up, the body had been scraped off the tarmac, the arc lights taken down. The immediate scene had slipped back into the innocent darkness, but there was still the stain on the ground, still the remnants of what had been lying there not thirty minutes before. There wasn’t anything more I could do about Joey Parma’s legal problem—it’s amazing how quickly death cleanses the docket—but that didn’t mean he and I were through.