The Rainmaker (18 page)

“I want to talk to Jonathan Lake,” I say as firmly as possible.

“No way. He’s too busy, plus he just wouldn’t do it. And he’s not going to change his mind.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Look, Rudy, we—”

“You son of a bitch!” I’m shouting into the phone, and it feels good.

“Take it easy, Rudy.”

“Is Lake in the office now?” I demand.

“Probably. But he won’t—”

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” I yell, and slam the phone down.

Ten minutes later, I squeal tires and slam on brakes and come to a stop in front of the warehouse. There are three cars in the lot, lights are on in the building. Barry is not waiting for me.

I pound on the front door but nobody appears. I know they can hear me in there, but they’re too cowardly to come out. They’ll probably call the cops if I don’t quit.

But I can’t quit. I walk to the north side and pound on another door, then the same for an emergency exit around back. I stand under Barry’s office window and yell at him. His lights are on, but he ignores me. I go back to the front door and beat on it some more.

A uniformed security guard steps from the shadows and grabs my shoulder. My knees buckle with fright. I look up at him. He’s at least six-six, black with a black cap.

“You need to leave, son,” he says gently in a deep voice. “Go on now, before I call the police.”

I shake his hand off my shoulder and walk away.

I SIT FOR A LONG TIME in the darkness on the battered sofa Miss Birdie loaned me, and try to put things into some perspective. I’m largely unsuccessful in doing so. I drink two warm beers. I curse and I cry. I plot revenge. I even think of killing Jonathan Lake and Barry X. Sleazy bastards conspired to steal my case. What do I tell the Blacks now? How do I explain this to them?

I walk the floor, waiting for sunrise. I actually laughed last night when I thought of retrieving my list of firms and knocking on doors again. I cringed with the prospect of calling Madeline Skinner. “It’s me again, Madeline. I’m back.”

I finally fall asleep on the sofa, and someone wakes me just after nine. It is not Miss Birdie. It’s two cops in plainclothes. They flash their badges through the open door, and I invite them in. I’m wearing gym shorts and a tee shirt. My eyes are burning so I rub them and try and figure out why I suddenly have attracted the police.

They could be twins, both about thirty, not much older than myself. They’re wearing jeans and sneakers and black mustaches and act like a couple of B actors from television. “Can we sit down?” one asks as he pulls a chair from under the table and sits down. His partner does the same, and they are quickly in position.

“Sure,” I say like a real smartass. “Have a seat.”

“Join us,” one says.

“Why not?” I sit at the end, between them. They both lean forward, still acting. “Now what the hell’s going on?” I ask.

“You know Jonathan Lake?”

“Yes.”

“You know where his office is?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go there last night?”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“Between nine and ten.”

“What was your purpose in going there?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We have hours.”

“I wanted to talk to Jonathan Lake.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Doors were locked. I couldn’t get in the building.”

“Did you try to break in?”

“Nope.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“Did you return to the building after midnight?”

“Nope.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep. Ask the security guard.”

With this, they glance at each other. Something here has hit the mark. “Did you see the security guard?”

“Yep. He asked me to leave, so I left.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Yep.”

“Then do it.”

“Big black guy, probably six-six. Uniform, cap, gun, the works. Ask him, he’ll tell you I left when he told me to leave.”

“We can’t ask him.” They glance at each other again.

“Why not?” I ask. Something awful is coming.

“Because he’s dead.” They both watch me intently as I react to this. I’m genuinely shocked, as anybody would be. I can feel their heavy looks.

“How, uh, how did he die?”

“Burned up in the fire.”

“What fire?”

They clam up in unison, both nodding suspiciously as they look at the table. One pulls a notepad from his pocket like some cub reporter. “That little car out there, the Toyota, is that yours?”

“You know it is. You’ve got computers.”

“Did you drive it to the office last night?”

“No. I pushed it over there. What fire?”

“Don’t be a smartass, okay?”

“Okay. It’s a deal. I won’t be a smartass if you won’t be a smartass.”

The other chimes in. “We have a possible sighting of your car in the vicinity of the office at two this morning.”

“No you don’t. Not my car.” It is impossible at this moment to know if these guys are telling the truth. “What fire?” I ask again.

“The Lake firm was burned last night. Completely destroyed.”

“To the ground,” the other adds helpfully.

“And you guys are from the arson squad,” I say, still stunned but at the same time really pissed because they think I was involved in it. “And Barry Lancaster told you that I’d make a wonderful suspect for torching the place, right?”

“We do arson. We also do homicide.”

“How many were killed?”

“Just the guard. First call came in at three this morning, so the building was deserted. Evidently the guard got trapped somehow when the roof fell in.”

I almost wish Jonathan Lake had been with the guard, then I think of those beautiful offices with the paintings and rugs.

“You’re wasting your time,” I say, angrier at the thought of being a suspect.

“Mr. Lancaster said you were pretty upset when you went to the office last night.”

“True. But not mad enough to torch the place. You guys are wasting your time. I swear.”

“He said you’d just been fired, and you wanted to confront Mr. Lake.”

“True, true, true. All of the above. But that hardly proves I had a motive to burn his offices. Get real.”

“A murder committed in the course of an arson can carry the death penalty.”

“No kiddin’! I’m with you. Go find the murderer and let’s fry his ass. Just leave me out of it.”

I guess my anger is pretty convincing because they retreat at the same time. One pulls a folded piece of paper from his front shirt pocket. “Gotta report here, couple of months ago, where you were wanted for destruction of private property. Something about some broken glass in a law office downtown.”

“See, your computers do work.”

“Pretty bizarre behavior for a lawyer.”

“I’ve seen worse. And I’m not a lawyer. I’m a paralegal, or something like that. Just finished law school. And the charges were dropped, which I’m sure is written somewhere conspicuously on your little printout there. And if you guys think that my breaking some glass in April is somehow related to last night’s fire, then the real arsonist can relax. He’s safe. He’ll never get caught.”

At this, one jumps up and is quickly joined by the other. “You’d better talk to a lawyer,” one says, pointing down at me. “Right now you’re the prime suspect.”

“Yeah, yeah. Like I said, if I’m the prime suspect, then the real killer is a lucky soul. You boys are not close.”

They slam the door and disappear. I wait half an hour, then get into my car. I drive a few blocks and carefully maneuver myself close to the warehouse. I park, walk another block and duck into a convenience store. I can see the smoldering remains two blocks away. Only one wall is
standing. Dozens of people mill about, the lawyers and secretaries pointing this way and that, the firemen tramping around in their bulky boots. Yellow crime scene tape is being strung by the police. The smell of burned wood is pungent, and a grayish cloud hangs low over the entire neighborhood.

The building had wooden floors, ceilings, and, with few exceptions, the walls were pine too. Add to the mix the tremendous number of books scattered throughout the building and the tons of paper necessarily stored about, and it’s easy to understand how it was incinerated. What’s puzzling is the fact that there was an extensive fire sprinkling system throughout the warehouse. Painted pipes ran everywhere, often woven into the decorative scheme.

FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, Prince is not a morning person. He usually locks up Yogi’s around 2 A.M., then stumbles into the backseat of his Cadillac. Firestone, his lifelong driver and alleged bodyguard, takes him home. A couple of times Firestone himself has been too drunk to drive, and I took them both home.

Prince is usually in his office by eleven because Yogi’s does a brisk lunch business. I find him there at noon, at his desk, shuffling paper and dealing with his daily hangover. He eats painkillers and drinks mineral water until the magic hour of five, then slides into his soothing world of rum and tonic.

Prince’s office is a windowless room under the kitchen, very much out of sight and accessible only by quick footwork through three unmarked doors and down a hidden staircase. It’s a perfect square with every inch of the walls covered with photos of Prince shaking hands with local pols and other photogenic types. There are also lots of framed and laminated newspaper clippings of Prince being
suspected, accused, indicted, arrested, tried and, always, found innocent. He loves to see himself in print.

He’s in a foul mood, as usual. I’ve learned over the years to avoid him until he’s had his third drink, usually about 6 P.M. So I’m six hours early. He motions for me to come in, and I close the door behind me.

“What’s wrong?” he grunts. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s always reminded me of Wolfman Jack with his long dark hair, flowing beard, open shirt, hairy neck.

“I’m in a bit of a bind,” I say.

“What else is new?”

I tell him about last night—the loss of job, the fire, the cops. Everything. I place particular emphasis on the fact that there’s a dead body and that the cops are very concerned about it. Rightfully so. I can’t imagine being the favorite suspect, but the cops sure seem to think so.

“So Lake got torched,” he reflects aloud. He seems pleased. A good arson job is just the sort of thing that would amuse Prince and brighten his morning. “I never particularly liked him.”

“He’s not dead. He’s just temporarily out of business. He’ll be back.” And this is a major cause of my concern. Jonathan Lake spends a lot of money on a lot of politicians. He cultivates relationships so he can call in favors. If he’s convinced I was involved in the fire, or if he simply wants a temporary scapegoat, then the cops will come after me with a vengeance.

“You swear you didn’t do it?”

“Come on, Prince.”

He ponders this, strokes his beard, and I can immediately tell he’s delighted to suddenly be in the middle of it. It’s crime, death, intrigue, politics, a regular slice of life in the gutter. If it only had some topless dancers and a few payoffs to the police, then Prince would be yanking out the good booze to celebrate.

“You better talk to a lawyer,” he says, still stroking his whiskers. This, sadly, is the real reason I’m here. I thought about calling Booker, but I’ve troubled him enough. And he’s currently laboring with the same disability that afflicts me, to wit, we haven’t passed the bar and we’re really not lawyers.

“I can’t afford a lawyer,” I say, then wait for the next line in this script. If there were an alternative at the moment, I would happily lunge for it.

“Lemme handle it,” he says. “I’ll call Bruiser.”

I nod and say, “Thanks. Do you think he’ll help?”

Prince grins and spreads his arms expansively. “Bruiser will do anything I ask him, okay?”

“Sure,” I say meekly. He picks up a phone and punches the number. I listen as he growls his way past a couple of people, then gets Bruiser on the line. He speaks in the rapid, clipped phrases of a man who knows his phones are wired. Prince spits out the following: “Bruiser, Prince here. Yeah, yeah. Need to see you pretty quick.… A little matter regarding one of my employees.… Yeah, yeah. No, at your place. Thirty minutes. Sure.” And he hangs up.

I pity the poor FBI technician trying to extract incriminating data from that conversation.

Firestone pulls the Cadillac to the rear door, and Prince and I jump in the backseat. The car is black and the windows are deeply tinted. He lives in darkness. In three years I’ve never known him to engage in any outdoor activities. He vacations in Las Vegas, never leaving the casinos.

I listen to what quickly becomes a tedious recitation of Bruiser’s greatest legal triumphs, almost all of which involve Prince. Oddly, I begin to relax. I’m in good hands.

Bruiser went to law school at night, and finished when he was twenty-two, still a record, Prince believes. They
were best of friends as children, and in high school they gambled a little, drank a lot, chased girls, fought boys. Tough Memphis neighborhood on the south side. They could write a book. Bruiser went to college, Prince got himself a beer truck. One thing led to another.

The law offices are in a short, red-bricked strip shopping center with a cleaners at one end and a video rental at the other. Bruiser invests wisely, Prince explains, and owns the entire unit. Across the street is an all-night pancake house and next to it is Club Amber, a gawdy topless joint with Vegas-style neon. This is an industrial section of town, near the airport.