By Blood Written (32 page)

If anyone comes to the door, don’t answer it. And for God’s sakes, don’t answer the phone. Don’t even pick it up. I’m on my way.”

“What’s up?” he asked, concerned now.

“Not on the phone. Sit tight. I’m on my way.”

Michael exploded after she told him. His face turned red, and it seemed as if the skin of his cheeks was stretched to the point of tearing.

“Those ignorant bastards!” he yelled. “What the hell do they think they’re doing?”

“I know,” Taylor said calmly, trying desperately to placate him. Michael had a terrible temper, she knew. She had gotten glimpses of it only a few times, but it was enough to let her know that beneath the surface, there was a reservoir of angry energy.

“I’ll sue the shit out of them!” he shouted.

“Yes, once we prove them wrong, we’re going to drag them through every court in the country. Malicious prosecution, prosecutorial misconduct, libel, slander, the whole gamut. But first we’ve got to prove them wrong.”

Michael stopped, turned, and stared at her. “What are you thinking?”

“We’ve got to find you a lawyer, and a good one.”

Michael reached up and rubbed his forehead. He suddenly looked tired. “I don’t even know any lawyers here, let alone any lawyers there.”

“I’ll call Joan,” Taylor said. “She knows everybody. She needs to know what’s going on anyway. This is going to hit the media, Michael, and soon. The only reason they’re not at our door now is my unlisted phone number.”

“Thank God for that,” he said. Then he looked up at her, and for a brief flash, Taylor thought she saw fear in his face.

“We’ve got to make this go away here. If I have to go back to that redneck shit hole, then I’m screwed.”

“We’ll get you the best lawyer out there.”

“Won’t make any difference!” he snapped. “Taylor, I’ve spent years studying the court system, police procedure, all for these books. And I’ll tell you what I’ve learned, baby, and that’s that we have more to fear from the cops and the prosecutors than we do the criminals!”

“Michael, that’s—”

“I’m serious!” he yelled. He began pacing back and forth in the cavernous living room, agitated, talking as much with his hands as with his mouth. “Let me tell you how this’ll go, Taylor. They’ve concocted some screwball theory because they’re too fucking incompetent to catch the real killer, and they’ve taken a bunch of coincidental, circumstantial things and twisted them to fit their theory. And they’ll perp walk me down there in front of the cameras for the goddamn media attention, and then they’ll book me and throw me in a cell with some little punk in an orange jumpsuit who’s facing a long term as a chronic habitual petty offender, or some such shit like that. And when it goes to trial, lo and behold, that little punk will get up on the stand and raise his right hand and swear I told him I did it. And the lying sack of shit prosecutor will stand there and ask the punk if any kind of deal had been offered in return for his testimony. And the little punk jailhouse snitch will shake his head and swear there was no deal. And when my ass goes off to prison, that lying punk will be out on the streets mugging little old ladies again.”

He stopped in the middle of the living room and stood there, eyes wild, hair mussed, his body still yet tense. Taylor stood still for a moment, numb.

“This is still America. You’re innocent until proven guilty,” she said softly.

His voice erupted, almost like a bark. “Bullshit!” he spewed. “In America, once the government decides to come after you, you may as well bend over, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass good-bye.”

“You’re forgetting two things, Michael,” she said firmly.

“What?”

“First of all, you’re rich. I don’t mean to sound cynical, but let’s face it. You can afford the best attorney money can buy.”

He smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I forgot about that. So what’s the other thing?”

“You have me,” Taylor said. “We’re in this together. We’ll get through this together.”

Joan Delaney was at her summer house in East Hampton when Taylor found her. For once, Joan remained calm in a crisis. “The first thing we have to do is to get the best criminal lawyer we can find,” Joan said.

“Exactly what I was thinking.”

“That means Abe Steinberg.”

Taylor made a note on the pad next to the phone. “With an E, right?”

“Yes. His office is on the east side of Park Avenue, around Forty-seventh Street. I’m not sure. You can look it up.”

“So you know this guy pretty well?” Taylor asked hopefully.

“Quite. We had a thing going once, but that was a long time ago. About twenty years ago, I sold the rights to the book he wrote about the Trenton Black Panther trial.”

“I remember that,” Taylor said. “He defended that boxer, right?”

“Muhammad Sharquand,” Joan answered. “He was a member of the Black Panther Party back in the late seventies and then became a contender for the heavyweight champi-onship, until the Trenton police set him up on a bogus drug charge.”

“Steinberg got him off, if I remember.”

“Yes, but only after he was in jail for almost three years.

Cost him his shot at the title. But it worked out okay. Steinberg went after the Trenton cops and won a ten-million-dollar judgment.”

“So this guy likes to go after crooked cops?” Taylor smiled.

“He pours warm milk on ‘em and eats ‘em out of a cereal bowl. Let me track him down. I still have his private number somewhere. I’ll call you back.”

Taylor hung up the phone and leaned back in her leather office chair. Down the hallway, she heard the shower running. Michael had ranted on for another fifteen or twenty minutes, then decided to take a long, hot shower, more to calm down than anything else. Taylor spun around in her chair and scanned the bookshelves in her home office. The room was large, almost as large as her bedroom, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases along one wall, with the exterior wall being exposed brick. She loved this room; it was her private sanctuary, her place to hide and think.

She would need this place a lot in the coming weeks and months, she thought.

Taylor sat, staring at the brick wall until the lines of ancient mortar started to tremble and vibrate. All thought seemed to leave her. She felt the air blowing gently over her skin.

When the phone went off next to her, it sounded like a firehouse alarm. She jumped and grabbed the handset before the first ring ended.

“Yes.”

“I’m trying to reach Taylor Robinson,” a gruff voice said.

She leaned down and looked at the caller ID box. She didn’t recognize the number.

“Who may I say is calling?”

“This is Abe Steinberg.”

The release of air from her chest made a whooshing sound.

“Oh, Mr. Steinberg. Thank you so much for calling.”

“Do you know where my offices are?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“We’re on the nineteenth floor. Be there at ten A.M. tomorrow. I’ll be expecting you.”

Then, having delivered his instructions, he hung up.

By seven that night, the media had gotten wind of the story in the Chattanooga paper and were descending on it like a pack of wild dogs on a lame deer. The CBS affiliate buried the story during the local newscast, but the Fox, ABC, and NBC stations led off with the story. By nine that night, the vultures had tracked down Taylor’s home phone number and had called so much that she finally disconnected the phone and turned off the answering machine. The only people she wanted to hear from already had her cell number, so she wasn’t worried about missing anything important.

By ten, all the local stations were leading off with the story, and MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News had picked it up as well. After a few minutes of channel surfing, she and Michael gave up and turned the set off.

“One thing we’ve got going for us,” Taylor said. “No one knows you’re staying here.”

“At least for now,” he said. “Let’s keep it that way as long as we can.”

They went to bed, but neither could sleep. Taylor lay as still as possible, thinking that Michael might be asleep.

Then he let out a long sigh and rolled over to face her.

“You awake?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Baby, I’m sorry about all this.”

“Me, too,” she said.

He scooted over in bed closer to her, then turned to face her and settled his left arm across her torso. His arm felt heavy and limp. He pulled her closer to him, his face against her left cheek. He leaned in and nuzzled her neck, then scooted in closer, his whole body pressed against hers now.

He laid his left leg across the tops of her thighs. She felt him growing hard against her.

She stiffened, almost unconsciously. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He raised his head. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I guess I’ve got too much on my mind. Not really in the mood.”

He bent his right elbow, then raised his head and propped it on the palm of his hand, looking down at her in the dim glow of the outside streetlights filtering through the curtains.

“Might take the edge off,” he said quietly. “Maybe help you go to sleep.”

She turned to her left, facing him. She thought she could see a glimmer in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

He rolled away from her, then sat up on the edge of the bed. “Me, too.”

Then he turned and faced her. “You want me to go stay somewhere else?”

She sat up quickly, her hips scooting across the smooth sheets. “No, of course not. It’s quite a jump from ‘I’ve got too much on my mind to make love’ to ‘I want you out of here.’ “

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” She reached over and brushed his face with the tips of her fingers. “I’ll make it up to you. Honest.”

She saw the white of his teeth as he smiled. “Okay. But I still can’t sleep. I think I’m going to go downstairs, have a drink, catch a late movie on TV. Want to come?”

“No. I can’t sleep, but I am tired. I think I’ll stay up here and try to rest.”

He shrugged, then leaned down and kissed her lightly and quickly on the cheek. It was, she felt, almost a dismissive peck. Then he was gone.

Taylor settled her head into the pillow and tried to clear her thoughts. Sometime around sunup, she finally succeeded and drifted off into a restless, troubled, and altogether too short sleep.

Monday morning, Manhattan

The offices of Steinberg, Tillman, Gordon, Jenkins & Associates took up the entire nineteenth floor of a twenty-six-story building with a clear view of the East River and beyond. Taylor and Michael stepped off the elevator in the middle of a crowd of busy, droning office workers and entered the main reception area through a pair of heavy glass doors. The receptionist looked up, recognized Michael immediately, and stared for a few seconds before rising and taking them directly into Abe Steinberg’s office.

Steinberg’s office alone was bigger than most Manhattan apartments. A long plate-glass window gave them a view eastward of the sprawling city. Steinberg’s desk was easily six feet wide, made of a deep, rich brown polished wood. As Michael and Taylor were led into the office, he rose to meet them. He was short, balding, almost nondescript, and had to be pushing seventy. He didn’t exactly present a fearsome image, Taylor thought.

He crossed the room from behind his desk and met them in the middle of the room. “You must be Mr. Schiftmann,”

he offered, extending his hand.

Michael nodded. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Steinberg.”

Taylor thought he seemed quiet, subdued, even a little nervous. The two of them had left Taylor’s building through the basement and the boiler room, and out onto the sidewalk at the freight entrance. They’d dodged smelly garbage cans and pallets of flattened recyclable cardboard boxes to avoid the news trucks and vans parked out front. Michael had said less then five words during the long cab ride uptown.

“And you’re Taylor Robinson,” Steinberg said, turning to Taylor and smiling. “Joan Delaney’s told me so much about you. She sees you as the future of the agency, you know.”

“That may be stretching it a bit,” Taylor answered. “But thanks for the compliment.”

Steinberg turned and motioned toward a shiny leather sofa that occupied the center of the office. Next to it, a matching brown leather chair sat next to a long glass coffee table.

“Please, sit down. We’ve got a lot to do and not much time.

We’re going to be here awhile, so would you like some coffee, tea, a soda, perhaps?”

“No, thank you,” Taylor said. Michael shook his head.

Steinberg turned and dismissed his assistant with a wave of his hand. Michael and Taylor sat down on the sofa at opposite ends. Steinberg loosened his tie and settled himself into the chair.

“Well, Mr. Schiftmann, you must feel like a character in one of your own books.”

Michael reached up and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think I could ever write anything like this. No one would believe it.”

Steinberg laughed. “You’re not the first person I’ve ever met who was accused of something and couldn’t quite believe it.”

Michael scooted forward on the seat and put his elbows on his knees, his arms extended forward. “First of all, Mr.

Steinberg, I want you to know I’m absolutely inno—”

“Don’t,” Steinberg interrupted. “Don’t tell me that now.

For one thing, it doesn’t matter at this point. For another, we have too much else to do.”

Michael leaned back in the sofa, looking a bit, Taylor thought, like a scolded puppy. Steinberg crossed his legs in the chair and leaned his head back, relaxed and confident.

“The first thing we have to do here is make a couple of decisions. The first is how you’re going to choose to fight this. There are several ways to contend with it. First, you can lay low, keep quiet, and let the best lawyers in the country fight it out for you. On the other extreme is total war, total commitment. Take your case to the public. Hire the best public relations firm in the country. Work the talk-show circuit, the tabloids, the whole thing. Build a case for Michael Schiftmann as the victim of an overzealous prosecutor and an incompetent police department. We can hire private investigators, our own forensic researchers, experts, and take the offensive. We challenge every point, concede nothing, and make them pay with blood, sweat, and tears for every step they take.”