Authors: William Lashner
“I’ve changed, Mr. Carl,”
said Theresa Wellman. “You have to believe that.”
But why? Why did I have to believe that? Because she was pretty and well dressed and her print dress fit tight around her hips? Because her trim hands were wringing one another with sincerity? Because her eyes and voice were pleading with me to believe every last word out of her delicate little mouth? All very compelling, I must admit, but not enough to assuage my qualms.
I had grave doubts, just then, about the possibility of anyone past adolescence truly changing in this world. We were, all of us, prisoners of our character, unable to alter our true inner natures. When we said we had changed, what had only really changed was our luck. Put us in the same circumstances as our previous folly and suddenly we’d revert, all of us, to what we were. That’s what I believed, which meant I didn’t quite believe Theresa Wellman.
“I made mistakes in the past, I admit,” she said. “But I have changed, and I am my child’s mother, and she belongs with me.”
We were in our rather ratty conference room. Beth was sitting beside Theresa Wellman at the table, leaning forward, offering support. I was standing in the corner with my arms unhappily folded. I suppose you could say we were playing good lawyer–bad lawyer, except we weren’t really playing.
“Why don’t we start at the beginning, Theresa,” I said. “Tell us about your daughter’s father.”
“His name is Bradley Hewitt. I met him when I was twenty and I
was working in a Toyota dealership. He came in looking for a Lexus, chatted with me while he waited for the salesman, and called me up that afternoon. I wasn’t supposed to go out with a customer, but I couldn’t say no. He was tall, handsome, he had money and liked to spend it. It was thrilling just to be with him.”
“So it was his inner beauty that attracted you.”
“I was young, Mr. Carl, and I had never before dated anyone like him. The way he spoke, the way he dressed, the way he touched me, both gentle and firm. He was older, he knew things, he wore suits as expensive as a car. At the time I was living at home, sheltered by my parents and fighting them tooth and nail. Bradley seemed like a way out. He set me up in a nice place, helped with the rent, and things were wonderful for a while, until they weren’t anymore.”
“That’s usually how it goes,” I said.
“We partied almost every night with his friends, drinking, dancing. We took fabulous vacations with his old college buddy. His crowd were all big spenders. Champagne and lobster and, yes, drugs, but not crazy drugs, nothing in excess. Just fun. Bradley was fun and charming, except when he was angry and violent. I didn’t see much of that side of him at first, but after a while it became more and more apparent. Occasionally, angry at something, he would lash out, sometimes verbally in front of everybody and sometimes, when we were alone, with the back of his hand.”
“Did anyone ever see him hit you?”
“No, Bradley was too careful for that. And he was always sorry afterward. He was quite charming when he apologized.”
“What kind of business is he in?”
“He’s in construction, but not like a construction worker. He wears suits and makes deals with the help of his college friend and gets projects off the floor. He earns a piece of the entire project for putting things together.”
“Nice job if you can get it.”
“It had its ups and downs. Whenever he had a business problem, I learned to stay away from him, or I’d be putting makeup over the bruises for a month. I was still having fun, living like I had never thought I could live, with a man I thought I loved even though he wasn’t
always good to me. And that’s the way it was with us, calm and settled and a little dangerous, until I got pregnant.”
“How did Bradley react?” said Beth.
“He didn’t really react much at all. He just expected me to get an abortion. He set up the appointment, took care of the money. But I didn’t want an abortion. I wanted the baby.”
“Why?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“To keep Bradley around? To keep his money flowing? Why did you want the baby, Theresa?”
“I don’t know. It was a baby. I had always wanted a baby and wasn’t willing to get rid of this one, like an old sweater or something.”
“Okay,” said Beth. “I understand.”
I looked at my partner. Did she really understand that kind of longing? Was that the reason she looked despondent these days, or was I just being a jerk to think the explanation was that easy?
“Go ahead, Theresa,” said Beth.
“He tried to convince me, he yelled and even hit me some, but I was determined, and there was nothing he could say. When he finally realized it, he just stopped.”
“Stopped trying to convince you?”
“Yes, and stopped seeing me, too. He stepped out of my life. I was good, I quit drinking, I took care of myself, and with my family’s help I had a beautiful baby girl, Belle. And for a while we were happy.”
“Did Bradley pay child support?” I said.
“He used to give me some money for Belle now and then, when I called and complained, but it wasn’t enough. I was still in my place, which was more than I could afford, and I had a hard time showing up at work while taking care of the baby. When they decided to let me go at the dealership, things got tougher. I didn’t really have many skills. So I did the most desperate thing I could think to do.”
“And what was that, Theresa?”
“I hired a lawyer.”
I involuntarily winced. “And how did that work out for you?”
“Not so good. We sued for child support. Bradley countersued for
custody, which made me furious, because he never showed any interest in Belle before that. And then things took a bad turn.”
“How?” I said.
“The fix was in. Yes, I had been having problems, drinking too much, a holdover from my time with Bradley, and I was using some recreational drugs with a fast crowd that Bradley had introduced me to. And yes, there were a few times when I left her alone for short periods where maybe I shouldn’t have, but those weren’t serious enough for them to take my baby.”
“But they did,” I said.
“They were going to. Before the hearing, my lawyer told me that things were looking bad, that criminal charges were being contemplated, that powerful forces were working against me. He urged me to work out a settlement.”
“Powerful forces?”
“Bradley has influential friends.”
“So you agreed to give up custody?”
“Outside the courtroom I went right up to Bradley and begged him to stop. In front of everyone, all of Bradley’s crowd, I pleaded with him. But Bradley just stood there, stone-faced with anger. The possibility that my daughter, my Belle, would end up with such an angry, violent man seemed impossible. But the lawyer told me had I had no choice. The fix was in.”
“With a family-court judge? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes. I’m certain. It was his college friend who applied the pressure.”
“So without a hearing you gave away your daughter.”
“I was weak. I was ill.”
“Did you get any money?”
“There was a financial settlement.”
“And now, after selling your baby, you want to get her back.”
“That’s not what it was. And I’ve been in treatment, Mr. Carl. I’ve got a new job. I’ve worked hard to turn my life around. She should be with me.”
“I filed a petition to alter the custody agreement,” said Beth. “The hearing is scheduled for late next week.”
“What exactly are you looking for, Theresa?”
“I just want to see my baby, have time with her.”
“We’re asking for some sort of joint custody,” said Beth.
“Bradley hasn’t been a bad father,” said Theresa, “but a girl needs her mother, don’t you think?”
“Who’s Bradley’s lawyer?”
“Remember Arthur Gullicksen from the Dubé case?” said Beth. “He’s representing the father, and he’s been adamant that Bradley won’t share custody and won’t let Theresa even see the child.”
“What evidence do we have to present?”
“Theresa will testify,” said Beth. “Theresa’s new employer. Her drug tests from the treatment center have all come up clean. We can prove that she’s changed.”
“Can we?”
“You can,” said Beth.
“Theresa, why did you come to Beth?” I asked.
“The woman’s group I was seeing recommended her. They said Beth would come through for me.”
“I bet they did.” Once a sucker always a sucker, I thought. “But I’m sure there are plenty of attorneys with more experience in family court than Beth who would take your case.”
“I tried. No one would accept it. They said I didn’t have enough money. They said I didn’t have a leg to stand on. But really, all the lawyers were simply afraid to go up against Bradley.”
“Why?”
“Because of his friends.”
“Especially his old college buddy.”
“Right.”
“The one who gets Bradley all those contracts, the one who had arranged to fix the custody case, the one who is intimidating half the bar. You mind telling me who it is, or am I just going to have to guess.”
“Are you going to be intimidated, too, Mr. Carl?”
“Theresa, in the face of intimidation, I am like a herd of elephants: I can be stampeded by a mouse. And Bradley’s old college buddy, I’m sure, is bigger than a mouse.”
“It’s the mayor,” said Beth.
“Of course it is,” I said. “Can I speak with you for a moment outside, Beth?”
In the hallway, with the door to the conference room closed, I gave Beth the look. You know the look, the one your mother gave you when you let the water in the tub run until it overflowed through the living room ceiling, warping the coffee table, staining the rug, that look.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“She needs someone.”
“Of course she needs someone, she’s in way over her head, but why does she need us?”
“Because no one else is foolish enough to take her case.”
“So you’re appealing to my innate stupidity, as opposed to my greed or low moral fiber.”
“That’s right.”
“This is going to be a hornet’s nest, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, with a sly smile.
“And it has nothing to do with your identification with a young girl torn from her parent?”
“I don’t know, maybe I’m just a sucker for lost kids.”
“She’s with her father.”
“He sounds like a jerk.”
“He does, yes, if you can trust what our client says.”
“I believe Theresa deserves another chance,” said Beth. “We all deserve another chance, Victor. And she’s changed.”
“Has she?”
“I think so.”
“I guess we’ll find out. Okay, tell her we’ll do what we can”—I glanced at my watch—“but right now I have to run.”
“Hot date?”
“Sure,” I said, “with a seagull.”
Charlie the Greek found me.
I was leaning on the railing of the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey, across from the Kohr Bros. frozen-custard stand at the Seventh Street ramp. The air was wet and salty, shot through with honky-tonk lights, the Ferris wheel spun, seagulls hovered. Little kids squealed as they pulled their parents to the amusement pier, boys bought skimmer boards at the surf shop. Taters Famous Fresh Cut Fries, Johnson’s popcorn, Tee Time Golf, free live crabs with kit. Ah, summer at the shore, it can’t help but stir sweet memories of an idyllic childhood, except not my memories and not my childhood.
“You Carl?” came a voice ragged and dry, with the flat accent of Northeast Philadelphia.
I turned to spot a short, old man with stubby arms who had sidled up beside me. His forehead came to my elbow. He looked to be in his sixties, and from the evidence they had been sixty hard years. His head was big and round and bald, his eyes were squinty, his plaid shorts were belted high on his waist. And then there were the white socks and sandals.
“I’m Carl,” I said.
“You couldn’t maybe have dressed to blend?”
“Would you have recognized me if I wasn’t in my suit?”
“Maybe not, but jeez.” The man’s head swiveled, his eyes shifted. “Every mug on the boardwalk has you marked.”
“Let me say this, Charlie. Even on the boardwalk, my suit is less conspicuous than those shorts.”
“Bermudas,” he said, hitching up his belt. “On sale at Kohl’s.”
“I bet they were.”
“Was you followed? Did you check to make sure you wasn’t followed?”
“Who would be following me?”
His head swiveled again. “Stop with the attitude and bark.”
“I checked before I left the city and again when I pulled in to the rest stop on the expressway and surveyed the ramps. All clear.”
“Good.” Pause. “How’s my mother?”
“She’s dying.”
“The old bat’s been dying for years.”
“She looked pretty bad.”
“Ever seen her look good? Trust me, she’ll end up spitting into my grave afore it’s over.”
He hiked up his shorts until they were just beneath his breasts, scanned the boards. “Want to know why I ran all them years ago? They wasn’t going to send me away hard, it wasn’t the time what had me worried. But she would have come in every visiting day to sit across from me and let me have it through the Plexiglas. I would have killed myself halfway through.”
“She wants you to come home.”
“I knows she does.”
“So?”
“She tell you what I got facing me?”
“She told me some. From the D.A. I learned some more.”
“Coming home for me, it ain’t no luxury cruise. And not just because of the time they’re going to pound on my head. It would be a miracle I survive it.”
“You’re talking about the Warrick Brothers Gang?”
“Quiet, all right? Jeez, you want to get me capped right here?”
“It’s funny, Charlie, but I don’t see you as the gangster type.”
“Hey, it ain’t all rough stuff. I ain’t so big, sure, but neither was that Meyer Lansky.”
“Even Meyer Lansky was bigger than you.”
“I was making a point, is all. I got some skills, don’t think I don’t.”
“So why are the Warrick guys so mad at you?”
“I maybe said some things to some people. Hey, I could go for some soft-serve. You want to get me some soft-serve?”
I pressed my lips together for a moment and then said, “Sure. What flavor?”
“Vanilla. And don’t forget the jimmies. I like all them different colors. It makes it festive. Like a party in your mouth.”
“You got it.”
“And make it a big one,” he said.
I pushed away from the railing and got in line at the Kohr Bros. stand. I needed just then some time away from whiny little Charlie. Not that Charlie didn’t have anything to whine about, what with the mother he had waiting for him. But if he decided to stay on the lam, I’d have to give back the pile of plunder sitting in my drawer. On the other hand, considering the FBI’s keen interest, and what Charlie was intimating about his former running mates, it might be best for everybody if Charlie stayed out in the cold.
“You don’t like custard?” said Charlie after I brought him a cone nearly half his size.
“Whenever I get soft-serve it ends up dripping on my shoes.”
“You should buy a pair of sandals, that way it slips right through.”
“Look, Charlie,” I said. “What am I doing here? You sound like the last thing you want to do is to come home.”
“Yeah, I knows, but you know.”
“I know what?”
“It’s my mother. She says she wants me to say good-bye. She says it would make up for everything, she could see me one last time.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think I’m sick of running. And I ain’t living the life of Riley, you know?”
“Who the heck is Riley anyway?”
“Some guy who ain’t living in crappy week-to-week walk-ups and sweeping floors, who’s actually looking forward to retirement because he’s got Social Security coming, who ain’t waiting for a knock that ain’t about the rent or the rats, but about something worse.”
A father took his three sons over to a bench by the rail to eat their cones. The kids’ faces were smeared with chocolate, the youngest was crying about something, the middle was hitting the eldest, the father
was ignoring them all and staring slack-jawed at the underage girls who strolled on by. Ah, fatherhood.
“Are you going to be able to take care of me?” said Charlie.
“I don’t know.”
“My mother said you could.” He took a wet lick of his cone. “She said you would work it out.”
“I don’t know if I can. It’s a little more complicated than she might have thought.” I glanced at the family. “Let’s take a walk on the beach,” I said.
“I don’t want to go to the beach,” said Charlie. “I hate getting sand in the socks. It chafes my toes.”
“A bit more privacy might be the ticket, don’t you think?”
Charlie did his swivel-head thing, checked out the father and three boys on one side of us, a young couple on the other. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
We took the wooden stairs to the beach. On the way down, Charlie tripped and lurched forward. As he grabbed hold of the metal rail, the mound of vanilla atop his cone tumbled over and splattered onto the step.
“Ah, jeez,” he said. “My ice cream. I hate when that happens.”
He stood there, staring forlornly down at his now-empty cone and the white Rorschach blob at his feet. He looked right then, with the light streaming from the boardwalk behind and leaving him a round, bald, silhouette, like an overgrown toddler, about to break into tears.
“Want me to get you another one?”
“Would you? Really? Really?”
“I’ll meet you at the water’s edge.”
Charlie was waiting for me just above the reach of the tide, in front of the stone jetty. The sea was black, with lines of phosphorescent foam rising and falling in the darkness. Behind us the sounds of the boardwalk turned tinny, as if being played from an old transistor radio.
“Why is the FBI still chasing you, Charlie?” I said after I gave him the cone and he sucked down half of it while staring at the ocean.
“Maybe something I done a long time ago.”
“Something with the Warrick gang?”
“No,” he said. “Something from before. When I was still legit and trying to prove myself to my mother. Something what I done with four of my pals I grew up with. Just something that we pulled.”
“A little prank?”
“I guess yous could call it that.”
“When?”
“Almost thirty years ago. It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because whatever I do, I won’t rat out the old crew. The Warrick guys, they can rot in hell. But the old gang, they’s more family than family, if you understand.”
“Tell me about them.”
“What’s to tell? The five of us, we grew up together.”
“Like brothers.”
“Sure we was. One of them was Ralphie Meat, what lived just a few streets down from me. Bigger than anyone you ever saw, hard as tacks. And that rumor what gave him his name, it wasn’t a rumor. He was the terror of his gym class. All those kids with their little weenies taking showers with this huge hairy thing waving in their faces. It was enough to put the whole class of them in therapy for years. Ralphie Meat.”
“Is he still around?”
“Who knows? Who knows about any of them? There was also Hugo from Ralph’s same street, a real troublemaker, one of those guys who was always scheming a way to slip a fiver out of the other guy’s pocket. And Joey Pride, who lived in the border area between our neighborhood and Frankford. Joey was car crazy and certifiable—I guess you needed to be back then as a black kid hanging with a white crew. But it was Teddy Pravitz, the Jewish kid from across the alley, what made us more than we had any right to be. The thing that we done, it was him what convinced us we could.”
“Could what?”
“Pull it off.”
“Pull off what?”
“I can’t talk about it,” said Charlie.
“Come on, Charlie. What the hell did you pull?”
“Listen, it ain’t important. I’m not spilling about any of this. I got loyalties, you know. And secrets, too, dark ones, if you catch the drift. Whatever they want, they don’t get that.”
“I talked with the D.A. They’d give you something for flipping on what’s left of the Warrick gang, but the feds are apparently looking for something else.”
“I bet they are. And let’s just say whatever it is they’re looking for, I can get my hands on it.”
“On what?”
“Does the what matter? I knows where it is, the thing they’s still looking for.”
“If that’s true, I might be able to work something out.”
“Would it let me come home and say good-bye to my mother without getting my ass blown off or me dying in jail?”
“I could try to get you a deal and protection, if that’s what you want. Maybe even set you up someplace in Arizona with a new life.”
“Arizona?”
“It’s nice there.”
“Hot.”
“But it’s a dry heat.”
“Clear up my sinuses.”
“That it will.”
“I miss her.”
“Your mother?”
He turned to me, and it was strange, the way this old man could appear, in the shadows, like the youngest of children. The lights from the boardwalk collected in his eyes and then began to roll down one cheek.
“What do you think?” he said. “She’s my mother.”
“Okay,” I said.
“She’s dying. I’m too old to keep running. I’m tired. And I’ve changed.”
“You too?”
“I’m not the hood that I was. Can you do it? Can you make that deal? Can you get me home again?”
That’s when I felt it, that little spurt of emotion that trembled my
jaw and left me helpless in the face of his want. If there’s any part of being a lawyer that I can claim to be a natural at, it is the empathic connection to my clients. Yes, I had a retainer of riches that kept my imagination warm at night, and yes, I kept my billable hours with a banker’s care, but it wasn’t the money that drove me, at least not anymore. Frankly, the way my business was tanking, I could make more as a salesclerk in the tie department at Macy’s.
Polyester is the new silk, trust me, and that red is just fabulous with your eyes.
But a client in desperate need, that was what really got my juices going, and that’s what Charlie Kalakos surely was. A marked man, on the run, hunted by both sides of the law, desperate to make his peace with the dying mother who had tortured him all his life. And now he was asking me to bring him home.
“I can try,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, “then try.”
“How do I get in touch with you?”
“You want to talk to me, talk to my mother. She’s the only one I trust with a number.”
“Okay. But I have to know more. You have to tell me what the FBI is looking for.”
“Do I got a choice?”
“Not if you want me to have any leverage,” I said.
“It was just a small job.”
“Not so small if the FBI is still looking.”
“Maybe it wasn’t so small at that. Was a blonde I used to hump when I still had some meat on my bones. Her name was Erma.”
“The name alone gives me chills.”
“She was big and beautiful, Erma was.” The hint of a smile, a blush of pride, like one bright memory in a life of infantile failure. “And so was what we pulled.”
I stared at his silhouette in the dim light of the dark beach, the excitement starting to build. “Tell me, Charlie. What the hell is it that you can get your hands on?”
“You ever hear,” said Charlie, “of a guy named Rembrandt?”