The Zen Man (16 page)

Sam, sitting at his desk, glanced up from a document he was reading. “Huh?”

“Nothing’s in order,” I grumped. “Looks as though the files were tossed in these boxes.”

“Her name was Pam, not Peggy, and we didn’t know she was spelling challenged until months after we hired her, if you’ll recall. Our other paralegal, Jessica, had been covering for her.” Sam stared out the window, his lips curling in a slow smile. “Pam and I once made it in a gas station bathroom—”

I made a cut-off motion over the top of my head. “Information overload. More coffee over there?”

Sam stood, stretched his arms over his six-plus frame which, which made him look ten from my Lilliputian perspective on his plush Persian rug. Despite it being Saturday morning, a day most people dress down, he wore neatly creased gray slacks and a white Polo shirt—what my mother would have called eggshell white. As he carried over the coffee pot, I thought how he oozed privilege and superiority in even the smallest of gestures, ingrained from the day he was born into one of Denver’s most prestigious families, his grandfather a senator, his father a fierce justice on the state supreme court bench.

Sam’s office reflected his roots with its polished mahogany desk, pretentious tufted executive chair, and wall o’ leather-bound books. I looked like a waif at the king’s palace in my faded jeans and Grateful Dead ‘95 Summer Tour T-shirt.

“Thanks for coming over at the last minute.” Sam finished pouring the steaming liquid into my cup, righted the pot. “Didn’t realize until late last night that initial disclosures in the class-action are due next week, and I—we—still need to pull together the preliminary witness list. Plus, you needed to get rid of that switch blade before you got caught with it. If you’d gotten pulled over for a broken brake light, and the cop found that knife, you’d have lost your bail and hello jail. Only this time you would never have said good-bye.”

“You’re one cheery dude, know that? Ever get tired playing attorney, you could be a court clerk.”

“I’m serious, Rick. You need to be treading carefully.”

“Well, you’re now the official keeper of the knife, so no potential mishaps there.”

He gave me a thoughtful look. “Maybe that Mexican National Santa was one of your former clients, out to seek revenge?”

“Didn’t recognize dude, but could’ve been. Could also be a former client’s cousin or brother.” I shrugged, moved onto another urgent topic. “Got Lou Reisman to open up yesterday. Seems Wicked did a drunk-and-dial to him a few weeks before the retreat, made noises about turning in a lawyer for misconduct.”

“Drunk and dial?”

“You know, when someone’s drunk and they blindly make a call—”

“I know what it means.” He headed back to his desk. “What time was this call?”

“Wee hours.”

“Know the date?”

“Few weeks before retreat, so late November. You’ve already subpoenaed her phone records, right?”

“Daphne took care of it.” He sat down, poured some coffee into his cup. “Who do you think’s the attorney?”

“Have no idea. Neither does Lou. Like I said, Wicked was pretty drunk.” I opened another musty file, perused its contents.

“Hate it when you call her that. They committed a crime together—Lou share that with you?”

“He alluded to something.” So Wicked had shared that dark secret with Sam. Wondered what else they’d shared in their pillow talk. “Don’t think he did her in because of it, though.”

“Really? I call what happened between them motive.”

“I don’t. Wish I felt differently ‘cause it’d help my cause. You seem to think Iris also has motive—why?”

“She’s a weird bird. Always thought she had a thing for Debby.”

I toyed with telling Sam about the picture I’d found of Wicked in a bathing suit, but he’d been furious that I’d mucked around in Iris’s trash, so to explain that’s how I came by the picture only invited another lecture on circumstances leading to my never saying good-bye to jail.

“Having a yen for someone is different than having a yen to kill,” I said.

“It’s more than that. Iris seemed…obsessed with her.”

I thought about the vibes I’d picked up on the other day from Iris. They’d been intense, but then she was probably intense in a dead sleep.

“What about you, Sam? Did you have motive?”

He gave me a look. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You were sleeping with her.”

“Since when did having sex equate to homicidal urges?”

“If the D.A. learns about you and Deborah, he might add up that equation.”

“Hate to break it to you, old buddy, but Deborah liked to sleep with a lot of people.”

I thought back to Lou’s comment. “Yeah. So I’ve heard. Lou suggested Justin might have motive. Any idea why?”

He rubbed the pad of his thumb along his bottom lip. “Why does Lou think that?”

“Seems Justin and Debby…” Debby. Christ, now I was calling her that. “…had an argument at the bar during the retreat. Did you overhear anything? Maybe she told you about it?”

“Didn’t see or hear a thing. But then, she and I barely talked after we got to the cocktail party. You know Debby—give her a drink and a social gathering and she’s Ms. Flit About.” He sighed heavily. “Wish I’d stuck closer to her…maybe I could have prevented…”

“Don’t blame yourself.”

He nodded slowly. “I’ve thought a lot about the days leading up to her death, trying to decipher anything she said or did that indicated she was in trouble. We didn’t get together all that often, maybe once or twice a week, but I can’t recall anything out of the norm.” He stared off into the distance, a faraway look in his eyes. “I told Fern about Debby.”

“That you’d been doing her?”

He cast me a look. “I said we’d been
involved
, not fucking. Anyway, Fern’s decided to stay indefinitely in Iowa with the kids.”

“Sorry, man.” I meant it. Not that I didn’t think he was a cad, but I felt sorry for the dismantling of a family, especially how it’d affect his kids. “You moving out?”

“I’m rarely there anymore, so essentially I’ve already moved out. Most days I’m here, at court, or at the Gourmet Café across the street—it’s open every day of the year. They even have that written on a sign on their front window.
Open 365 days a year, including Christmas
. As though people might not know that Christmas is one of the three-sixty-five.” He picked up a yellow legal pad, scanned it. “Let’s see, we have…ten witnesses so far. Got anybody else?”

I thought about inviting him to stay with us up at the lodge, then realized I wasn’t into being neighbors with a lonely, hyper-sexual shark on the make, so instead I pointed to one of the files.

“Been reading Walt Dixon’s interview. Six years ago, he was managing one of the funds at TeleForce. Knows a lot about the inner workings of the company and pension plans, maybe he’d be—”

“Forget him. Guy was a blow-hard, glossed over details, made us look bad. No way I want him back on the witness stand.”

“You remember someone’s testimony from six years ago?”

“The significant ones. I’d ask if you remember him, too, but it appears you were more into snorting coke in the men’s bathroom than conducting the trial.”

“Thank you, Mr. Asshole.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Moving on, you make a good point. If the guy made us look bad once, he’d probably do so again.”

We reviewed discovery for another hour or so, both of us tossing out more names, debating their pros and cons. Occasionally I glanced out the bay windows at the exclusive food shop next door, its parking lot filling with Saturday shoppers and their shiny luxury sedans. Overhead, the sun burned yellow in a flat, lifeless blue sky.

Sam broke the silence. “You gonna contact Justin?”

“Yeah.” I tossed aside a file. “Figured as I’m in Denver today, I’ll drop by his place on the way home, see if party boy is up and about.”

“Want to grab a late lunch before you head over?”

“Take a rain check. Told Laura I’d get back this afternoon to help move Garrett’s stuff in.”

He did a double-take. “That drugged-up hippie’s going to
live
with you?”

I stood with some effort, my legs numb from sitting cross-legged for several hours. “He offered to move in, help out more.” I shrugged into my Nuggets jacket, knew better than to say he was also our newly appointed apprentice PI. “We’re isolated up there. If for any reason I need to be away, like today, I like knowing Laura’s not alone.”

“Calling 911 would be better than having a fog-brained, star-gazing skateboarder playing security.”

“You know how Jeffco feels about me. Skateboard would get to her faster than the EPS.” The calling reference reminded me of something. “Did Deborah know a guy—in his sixties, maybe older—named Hughes?”

“Hughes? Don’t recall her mentioning such a person.”

“Heard of a Hughes contacting Jeffco, maybe the Attorney Regulation Board, wanting back his retainer in the aftermath of her death?”

“No. What’s with this Hughes?”

“Someone at the retreat, can’t remember who, mentioned his name.” You’d have to shove incense sticks under my fingernails before I’d divulge Laura’s and my felony adventure at Wicked’s pad. This had nothing to do with lectures about permanent jail time, and everything to do with keeping my attorney. Because if I confessed to breaking and entering, or that we witnessed some faceless dude
also
breaking in and stealing a book, Sam might dump me as a client. Just because a lawyer’s taken on a pro bono defense doesn’t mean he wants to take on
several
pro bono defenses.

He held my gaze for so long, I was certain he’d figured out I was up to something. I broke off the stare-down by pretending to be immensely interested in the wooden, glass-topped case on the edge of his desk. Standing over it, I saw a row of neatly laid out fountain pens.

I tapped the case. “You need to buy more, fill every slot in that display.”

“This Hughes fellow was probably a potential client, or a referral she was following up with, or maybe an expert witness for an upcoming trial.” His chair squeaked as he stood. “Lost a vintage Pelikan fountain pen. Tortoise barrel, manufactured in the nineteen fifties. Keep hoping it’ll show up so I can put it back in its slot, but I’ll probably just buy another. Know a dealer in Germany who specializes in vintage Pelikans.”

I thought about the day when I’d tossed around money on such non-necessities, like the designer yellow felt tip marker—cost a couple of hundred—which I never used, but loved to display on my desk. What was it with lawyers that they had to flaunt their money-buying power? The job actually sucked most of the time. Clingy clients, courtroom battles, nasty judges. Sometimes I wondered if I was really up for that three-ring circus again.

“Well,” I said, checking the time, “time to go.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

A few minutes later, we stood in the small parking area behind his building between our cars, my seen-better-days Pontiac and Sam’s holier-than-thou Audi Locus.

“Can’t believe you still drive this relic,” Sam muttered, eyeing a patch of peeling paint.

“You like vintage pens, I like vintage cars.”

He snorted something under his breath, shifted his gaze to my driver’s door. “Where’d you get that ding?”

“Happened last winter. Walked out of the court house after pulling some records, saw somebody had hit my door. From the level and depth of it, I’m guessing it was a snow plow. Car’s no beauty, so I don’t care. But I can’t lock my door now.”

Sam shook his head. “Tires look shot, too. Shouldn’t be driving around on those.”

“Thank you, mother. Figured I’d see how things go over the next few weeks, then decide if I’m getting new tires.”

We were quiet for a long moment, my words hanging in the air. The next few weeks would make or break my freedom for the rest of my life. Our reverie was broken by the squeals and laughter of a couple of kids riding by on bikes, racing each other down the alley.

Sam put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Rick. I’m getting you out of this mess.”

I wanted to say “thanks” or something glib to show I had a healthy Zen Man perspective on this mess, but words failed to form. Sometimes the weight of all the shit that was happening felt like a cement truck had parked on my soul and I’d start to believe that this heaviness of spirit wasn’t just a passing fear of not making it, but the precursor to losing my freedom and being stuck behind bars for the rest of my life. After all, the clock was ticking, the suspects dwindling, and I didn’t have anything to show in my defense except my own alibi.

It was all I could do to mumble good-bye, get in my car, and drive off.

“Death comes at you no matter what you do in this life, and to equate drugs with death is a facile comparison.”
—Jerry Garcia

T
hirty minutes later, I was cruising down Wazee past the grandiose Union Station, a train station dating back to the late nineteenth century. Jack Kerouac caroused around these rail yards in the forties, then wrote about them in
On the Road.
I sometimes wondered what he’d have thought of the upscale, residential condos nearby named the “Jack Kerouac Lofts” with their free-spirited views, anti-conformist architecture, and underground parking? He’d probably have gagged.

As I turned onto Wynkoop Street, a form materialized in front of my Pontiac. I stomped the brakes, their screech—and a dog’s howl?—piercing the air. I sat there, my heart slamming against the ribs, praying to God I hadn’t hit a dog. It gradually dawned on me that the howling was from a leashed dog standing on the sidewalk, its owner staring wide-eyed at me. Also realized the form I’d nearly hit was some suited dude jogging across the street to the Union Station parking lot.

In downtown Denver, pedestrians seem to think red means walk. But it’s not the city’s homeless, visitors to cow town, or families from outlining cities who barge into traffic like lemmings. It’s the entitled business elite. As my heart relaxed back into its regular tom-tom, I theorized this lemming behavior to be their way of walking outside of life’s lines, fleeting opportunities to break out of their brittle shells and jog a few steps on the wild side.