Authors: William Lashner
“That,” I said, bowing once more, “would be my pleasure.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Carl?” said Judge Sistine when I stepped into her rather ordinary office. She barely glanced up at me as I entered. She was sitting behind her desk, law books piled all about her, scrawling on a legal pad.
“You look busy,” I said.
“Always in this job.” She dropped her pen, leaned back, beckoned me to sit.
I sat.
“I was a civil litigator before I became a judge. Personal-injury defense, medical-malpractice defense, you know the drill. Good money, but I was getting tired of the fighting, tired of the hours. When I ran for the judgeship, I thought I’d be able to relax a bit. No one knew more about civil litigation than I. I figured I’d be up to speed my first day, on cruise control shortly thereafter. So of course, the chief judge assigned me to family court, where I had never set foot my entire career. Six months, and I’m still struggling to figure it out.”
“That’s encouraging,” I said, “because I’m totally lost. I came about the Daniel Rose case.”
“Yes, of course. I’ve been getting reports from Miss Chandler.”
“So you know the details of his situation.”
“You misunderstand, Mr. Carl. The reports I’ve been getting from Miss Chandler haven’t been about Daniel. They’ve been about you.”
“Me?”
“Of course. I rely on the lawyers to keep on top of difficult situations, often volunteer lawyers like yourself. I can’t do it, my caseload is ridiculous, and Social Services is swamped. If I trust the lawyer, then I can assume problems will be dealt with properly. But you worried me. Frankly, you looked to be lazy and uninterested, a disaster waiting to happen.”
“That’s our firm’s motto,” I said. “ ‘Derringer and Carl, a disaster waiting to happen.’ ”
“So I asked Miss Chandler to keep me apprised of your performance.”
“That little spy. She said good things, I hope.”
“I haven’t replaced you yet. Is that why you are here? Do you want to be replaced?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Good. Then what is it, Mr. Carl?”
“Apparently Daniel has a sister. Her name is Tanya. She is older than Daniel, and she’s missing. Not just in her person but in the documents, too. She’s not in the Child Services file. In fact, there is no record of her anywhere. But I learned about her from what I believe is a reliable source, and Daniel confirmed her existence.”
“Daniel is how old?”
“Four. He doesn’t say much, but what he says, I believe.”
“Have you asked the mother about her?”
“Not yet. She’s very skittish. Daniel’s teeth are a mess. The mother has taken him to a dentist I found who will do the necessary work for free. The dentist is going to cement caps on Daniel’s upper teeth in a few days, which is the only way he’ll save the teeth. The mother is also cooperating with Isabel’s parenting plan. But she has a tendency to disappear when things get difficult, and I fear that if I press her about the daughter too soon, she’ll disappear with Daniel before all the work is done on his teeth. And with her gone, even if you issue a bench warrant, that will be the end of our ability to help.”
“So what do you want to do about it?”
“I think you should appoint the missing girl an attorney, someone to find her and make sure she is all right.”
She pinched her lip and thought about it for a moment. “We don’t even know if she exists.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“I agree. Good work. I’ll find someone.”
She leaned forward, started writing again on the yellow pad, noticed I hadn’t moved. Staring at me over her reading glasses, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Carl.”
When I still didn’t move, she said, “Is there anything else?”
“Yes, Judge.”
“Go ahead.”
“I think you should appoint me.”
“Don’t you have enough on your plate? I saw your name in the paper in connection with the François Dubé case.”
“That’s right.”
“I used to eat in his restaurant. He made a wonderful duck.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him.”
“It sounds like a murder trial will keep you busy enough.”
“I expect so.”
“And still you want me to appoint you to represent this girl?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Isabel said you and your client had started to bond.”
“I don’t really like kids.”
“And that you keep surprising her with the fruits of your investigations.”
“I’ve been lucky.”
“Why you and not someone else with more time?”
“I promised Daniel I’d find her.”
“You promised? That’s a hell of an irresponsible thing to do.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have no idea where she might be, or even if she exists.”
“No, ma’am.”
“We make a lot of promises to these kids, and sometimes we even keep them.” She tapped her lip with the tip of her pen as she thought. “All right then, Mr. Carl. A promise is a promise. I’ll have the paperwork taken care of. As of now you represent that girl.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s her name again?”
“Tanya Rose.”
“Very good.”
She went back to her document. I stood and headed for the door, but before I got there, she stopped me.
“Mr. Carl,” she said. When I turned around, I noticed that she had taken off her glasses and her expression was now devoid of the rigidity that had heretofore been its chief characteristic. There might even have been a blink of concern. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, and I hope you find that girl, but be careful. Emotionally, I mean. I haven’t been doing this for too long, but it’s been long enough to know that these cases very rarely work out as well as we would wish.” She tried to smile and failed. “Hope for the best, of course, but be prepared, always, for the worst.”
“Don’t worry, Judge. Preparing for the worst is the first thing I ever learned in the law.”
Beth knocked hard on the brass front door of Marrakech. It was locked, as was to be expected that early in the afternoon for a restaurant that served only dinner. If anyone could hear us, we were being studiously ignored, but still she knocked.
“Maybe we should go around back,” I suggested.
“I’m not done banging,” she said.
“You’re going to break your hand. Listen, Beth, we don’t know where it will lead. Don’t get your hopes up.”
“He lied to us.”
“It’s little Jerry Sonenshein, the teacher’s pet rat,” I said. “How could we have expected anything different? One time one of the AV guys was showing a driver’s-ed film, you know, the one with all the bloody accidents to try to scare you straight? Suddenly, right in the middle, while the Signal 30 soundtrack droned on, someone cut in a porn video that—”
“I don’t want to hear old high-school stories, Victor. I want to know what he’s hiding.”
“So do I, but banging on a door like some demented tax collector is not going to help us. What’s gotten into you?”
She let out a nervous breath. “This could be what he needs.”
“I know,” I said slowly, looking at her carefully. “That’s why we’re here.”
She heard something in my voice, because she stopped the banging, backed away from the door. “All right,” she said, turning from me so I couldn’t see her face. “Finish your story.”
“Okay, this is great. So the porn video went on for like five minutes, five revelatory minutes, before the teacher glanced at the screen and figured out what was happening. The AV guy got expelled, but word was, it was little Jerry did the cutting. He denied it, swore up and down, but there was some AV feud going on, a tussle for AV president, which is like a battle for king of the dung hill, and the porn video was enough to knock out his competition and for him to end up on top. He’s always been that kind of guy.”
“A liar?”
“Yes, and seriously creepy.”
She sighed, looked down the street. “Let’s go around back.”
“Good idea,” I said.
There was a truck in the alley offloading produce, shriveled tomatoes, wilted romaine, moldy onions, and spoiled leeks, the kind of produce you get when your vendors don’t trust that you can pay and are certain you can’t afford to go to someone else. I hated to even imagine the state of the meat they were getting.
“Where are you two going?” said one of the men lugging the wooden crates into the restaurant.
“We’re here to see the boss,” I said as we slipped past him through the door.
“He’s busy,” he called after us.
“He’s not that busy,” I said.
We entered a short hallway that led to the kitchen. The kitchen was empty, gleaming, the oven doors, the pots hanging from their racks, the service shelves. A man in blue pants and an apron was slowly mopping the floor by the ovens. He lifted his head.
“Is the boss downstairs?” I said.
The man slowly nodded.
“Which way?”
He indicated a door behind him, at the other end of the kitchen.
“Thanks.”
“I don’t think, meester,” he said slowly, “you want to go down there right now.”
“He’s expecting us,” I said.
“Not right now he not especting you.”
“So we’ll surprise him.”
The man looked at us for a moment, turned slowly to look at the door behind, shrugged. As Beth and I passed by, he went back to his slow mopping.
The door led to a ragged wooden stairwell that tumbled into the basement. A single bulb hanging from a wire showed the metal door of a large freezer and an open storage room filled with sacks of couscous and spices, bins of onions and potatoes and garlic. On the other side was a door with a plaque that read
OFFICE
.
“That’s it,” I said. “You want to knock?”
“No,” she said. “Why spoil the surprise?”
“Good plan.”
I listened at the door. He was in there, all right. I heard him say something and heard some sort of noise that I couldn’t make out. Like the rhythmic knocking of a radiator. Except it was too warm outside for a radiator.
Slowly, quietly, I opened the door, and we stepped through.
Geoffrey Sunshine stood in front of his desk, facing away from the door, his pants pooled around his ankles so that his pimply butt was staring straight at us. He was playing hide the salami with a woman draped facedown across his glass-topped wooden desk, each thrust causing a banging on the table. The woman’s skirt was pulled over her head, her panties were around her knees, her butt was plump and pale. The sight of him pounding away from behind her was like watching some bizarre exhibition at a carnival freak show.
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and watch the amazing rabid ferret as it mounts and violates an oversize honeydew melon.
Gad. It was more nauseating than the King Farouk cigar.
“For the sake of all that’s decent in the world,” I said, “and for the sake of my stomach, stop.”
At the sound of my voice, Geoffrey Sunshine spun out and faced us. Double gad.
“Dear Lord,” said Beth. “Pull up your pants.”
“Get out of here,” he snarled while, thankfully, complying with Beth’s demand.
“I don’t think so, Jerry,” I said.
The woman on the desk raised herself on her elbows and turned her face toward us. Rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed, lipstick-smeared, satisfyingly bored. “Can I get up now, Mr. Sunshine?”
“Call the police, Bridget, we have intruders.”
Bridget didn’t look first to the phone, she looked to the desk, to a spot on the glass that had been cleared of paper. Sunshine followed her gaze, widened his eyes, and then reached over and pushed a file to cover the empty desk space.
Not much of mystery there, hey.
“Go ahead, Bridget,” I said. “First, why don’t you pull up your panties?”
Bridget, unembarrassed, slid off the desk, pulled up her lingerie, smoothed down her skirt, stood. She was a big, good-looking woman, with a waitress’s dress and a milkmaid’s face. Even in her flats, she towered over the restaurateur.
“Now you can call the police,” I said. “And be sure to tell them to bring their narcotics test kit so they can take samples from the desktop.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” lied Sunshine.
“Just like you didn’t know that Velma Wykowski married Samuel Takahashi, the guy who bailed your restaurant out of bankruptcy just a few months ago.”
“Should I call the police, Mr. Sunshine?” said Bridget, looking down at him for some direction.
Sunshine glanced at the desk and then at us, thought about it a moment, and shook his head.
Just then the bodyguard appeared in the doorway, his fists balled for action, a napkin still tucked into his neck. His lunch had evidently been interrupted by the news of our appearance, and he was none too happy about it. He charged into the office and grabbed me by my neck. It seemed to fit rather too comfortably in his fist. Then he lifted.
I grappled at his wrist and said something devastatingly witty, but only a cricket’s chirp came out of my constricted throat. I struggled to breathe and failed.
“Nice of you to show up, Sean,” said Sunshine.
I gestured at my throat.
“I’ll toss this riffraff out back, boss,” said Sean.
I gestured ever more wildly.
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? Mr. Carl is seeming to have some trouble breathing. Is that right, Victor?”
I waved my arms like a madman.
“Let Mr. Carl down,” said Sunshine, “and then you and Bridget can leave us.”
“It won’t be no problem taking care of them, boss.”
“No, I suppose not, but still. We’ll discuss where you were later, but now do as I say.”
Sean dropped me to my knees. I coughed my throat clear, sucked down great, noisy gulps of air.
“What about what we talked about, Mr. Sunshine?” said Bridget, a hopeful expression on her pretty face.
“Let’s schedule another meeting,” he said.
Her hope dissolved into annoyance. “Another meeting? It isn’t my fault we were interrupted. For heaven’s sake, Mr. Sunshine, I was just asking for a change of shift.”
“So what of it?” said Geoffrey Sunshine, sitting now behind his desk, having regained some of his oily composure. He rubbed his hand across his wavy black hair, making sure each strand was glued in place. “Takahashi made a good investment.”
“But you told us you didn’t know who Velma Wykowski had married,” said Beth. “That was a lie.”
“Sit down, please,” said Sunshine, gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk.
“That’s okay,” she said. “Really.”
Beth and I were standing as far away from that desk as the room dimensions would allow.
“Why did you lie?” I said.
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“Important enough. See, Jerry, Takahashi only bailed out your sorry ass because his wife asked him to. And why would Velma do something like that for someone like you unless she wanted something in return? And to be honest, knowing you as I do, the only thing anyone could ever want from you is silence.”
“Maybe she was being sweet to an old friend.”
“A lot of adjectives come to mind when thinking about Velma Takahashi, but sweet is not one of them.”
“What do you want, Victor? Let’s get this over with. I have a business to run.”
“Not for long, from the look of the produce you’re getting or from the noise Takahashi is making.”
He started. “What’s he saying?”
“Let’s answer my questions first. You told us about the famous Wykowski sisters before they met François. I want to know what happened when they came back.”
“How do you know they did?”
“Because it’s the only thing that makes sense, the only thing she would be worried about, what with the terms of her prenup.”
“Why should I tell you?”
“I could say do it for old times’ sake, but all our old times were rotten. I could say do it for François, but when was the last time you did anything for anyone other than yourself? So let’s put it this way: Spill, or I’m going right back to Samuel Takahashi and tell him everything I know. How in the past you pimped out his wife to a prospective chef. How in the present you are running the restaurant into the ground while using his investment capital to buy coke and screw waitresses. And how the whole point of his investment in the first place was so that his wife could keep lying to him.”
“He’d shut me down.”
“Yes he would, but that wouldn’t be the worst of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s a scary man, Takahashi. Have you ever met him?”
“No. Just a lawyer.”
“Well, I have, and let me tell you. He’s no ordinary tycoon. He’s connected, connected to people you never want to meet. You ever hear of Yakuza?”
“Japanese gangs? Don’t be silly. He’s not…”
“Oh, yes, he is.”
Sunshine paled.
“Are you aware of the tradition of
yubitsume
?” I said.
“No.”
“
Yubitsume
. It is a form of penance. In the world of the Yakuza, when you mess up, you cut off one of your fingers and send it to the boss as an apology, hoping he won’t kill you and your children and your children’s children for what you did. Hold up your hand.”
He did as I instructed.
“That one,” I said.
“Victor, you wouldn’t go to him. You wouldn’t do that to an old friend, would you?”
“Not only would I do it, Jerry, old pal, I’d enjoy it. And get this—he’d pay me in the process.”
He rubbed his hand back and forth across the edge of his desk as he thought it through and then stopped the rubbing, opened his palm, looked at it. It’s funny the things you grow attached to in this life. Like fingers.
“Let’s have it,” I said.
“It’s no big deal anyway,” he said.
“Go ahead,” said Beth.
“Really. I don’t know why Velma was so adamant I keep quiet. It was nothing.”
“Go ahead.”
He hesitated a bit, fiddled with a flower in a vase on his desk, pushed a file to the side, rubbed his finger on the desk’s surface and then on his gums. “It was after the separation,” he said. “Velma was only trying to cheer Leesa up.”
“And how did she do that?” said Beth.
“The return of the famous Wykowski sisters. Velma brought her back to the club, they hung out at the bar, and it was just like old times. Or a semblance thereof. At the start Leesa wasn’t into it, she was still in love with François, still devastated by the breakup, concerned about her daughter. But Velma tried hard, always telling her to snap out of it, to live a little. And the three of us would come down here and party, and that seemed to loosen her up a bit. But not too much. With Velma it was like she was right back in the old days, she was into it. Like she was all too ready to fling off the constrictions of her marriage. Drinking too fast, flirting with the men at the bar, letting it go too far. But Leesa, you could tell, it wasn’t the same. Something had gone out of her. At least until Clem.”
“Clem?”
“A bad boy. Clem. You know the type, Victor. Like the greasers who roamed the halls in high school. Leather jacket, mussed hair, half-shaven beard, a bad boy who looked like a bad boy. And there was that danger in his eye that’s like catnip to a certain type of woman. So one night he shows up, and Velma just pounces. Next thing you know, they’re in the corner, making a spectacle of themselves before they’re roaring off together on his motorcycle, leaving Leesa alone and looking more forlorn than ever.”
“And his name was Clem?” said Beth. “What was his last name?”
“Who the hell knows? He was just Clem.”
“Where was he from?”
“Arizona or something. Guys like that are never from anyplace specific, just someplace far away.”
“What did he do?”
“He played, is what he did. Or fought. And the scars only made the women want him more.”
“So Clem was with Velma. Is that what she wanted to hide from her husband? That’s the big secret? She had an affair.”
“Of course. With that much money on the line, wouldn’t you want to keep it quiet? But that wasn’t all of it. After a while of playing around with Clem, she got a little bored, like she always did. And she was still feeling sorry for her friend. Still trying to cheer her up. So Velma did with Clem what she did with François. She gave him to Leesa.”
I tilted my head at that, leaned forward, felt a shiver roll down my spine. “What do you mean?” I said.
“She gave him to her,” said Sunshine. “Like a gift. First it was Velma and Clem. And then it was Leesa and Clem. And Clem was into it.”
“How do you know this?” I said.
“He told me the whole damn story and laughed about it. Right here, while we were doing lines together. Clem, that crazy son of a bitch. He loved it. Clem, Jesus. But by then, as with all guys like him, his charm was starting to be less charming. And you started noticing things. Like his breath and his temper.”
“So what happened?”
“Leesa wanted it to stop. She wanted out. But Clem wouldn’t let her go. ‘I leave,’ he said one night, spilling a bottle of beer with the slap of his hand on the bar. ‘No one leaves me.’ On another night there was a blowup at the club, an argument while Clem and Leesa and Velma were all together. Clem pushed Leesa away. She fell over a table and banged up her shoulder. She ran out. Velma ran after her. Clem stayed at the bar, getting drunk, muttering darkly to himself. That was the last time I saw Leesa. She was murdered only a few weeks later.”
“And this Clem creep?”
“Gone.”
“You tell the police this?” I said.
“Nah. No one ever came asking. And Velma came back to the club one night and begged me, begged me not to say anything. She couldn’t let her husband know, she said. So I agreed. What with the eyewitness I heard about and the picture in Leesa’s grip, I figured like everyone else it was François who killed her anyway. No reason to ruin the reputation of a dead girl.”
“And the investment?”
“That came later.”
“When?”
“Just before you got François that new trial. Velma came to me, said someone might come around asking questions. She asked, she begged me to keep my mouth shut. I told her I was having financial troubles. She said she would get me some cash flow for the club if I would just keep quiet. So I agreed.”
“And you’ll testify to all of this?”
“I’m not going to lie on the stand, Victor. How do you think I’d do in jail?”
“A rat like you, Sonenshein. I think you’d do fine.”
Outside, in the alleyway behind Marrakech, Beth hugged me hard, kissed me on the neck, and then spun away and did a little pirouette.
“What are you so happy about?” I said.
“Sunshine. What he said. We know who killed Leesa.”
“Do we?”
“Sure we do. It was that guy. Clem. He did it.”
“I don’t know that he did anything. I don’t even know who the hell he is.”
“Do we need all the details in order to make him a suspect?”
“An actual name would help, but no. The story is enough.”
“And isn’t this Clem the one thing we’ve been missing, another suspect?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then we have him, Victor. We have him.” She did another spin, a little pirouette like I had never seen from her.
“Where did you learn that?”
“Five years of ballet as a little girl. We have a real chance now. We’re going to win.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Oh, Victor. You always slight yourself. You’re a genius. I knew we could count on you. That stuff about the Japanese gangsters.”
“The Yakuza.”
“Is it true? Is Takahashi a Japanese gangster who will demand a finger for Sunshine’s mistakes?”
“I would doubt it,” I said. “He went to Stanford.”
She laughed, spun back to me, and hugged me again. “I have to go. I have to tell François. François will love the Yakuza story. It was brilliant, Victor. Purely brilliant.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was, wasn’t it?” And I guessed right then that it must have been, because slipping under Sunshine’s oily sheen of composure and getting him to spill had seemed so easy, so damn easy it was scary.