Robert took off his gloves, put them in his pocket, and waited for the phone conversation to end. He could simply have rung the bell at the front door and allowed himself to be buzzed in, he could have taken the elevator and had his meeting without the skulking about. But then he might have been spotted in the street. And he wouldn’t have had the joy of walking silently toward the lit office, standing in utter stillness, seeing the startled expression on Laszlo Toth’s greedy little face when Toth looked up from his desk and saw the dark and upright figure of Robert Spangler looming ominously in his doorway.
“Oh, it’s only you,” said Laszlo Tot h af ter he had regained his composure. He was a small wizened figure, humpbacked and gnarly, with a burst of wild gray hair. Three fingers on his left hand were set in a cast. “I figured you’d be the one she sent.” Was that a note of derision in his voice, or was Robert just imagining it? “How did you get in?”
“Through the door,” said Robert. He kept his voice soft and even, his legal voice.
“It wasn’t locked?” said Toth. “I thought I locked it.”
“Close the blinds, Laszlo.”
“Don’t worry, no one—”
“Close the blinds,” said Robert, and Toth, noticing the sudden edge in Robert’s voice, bowed his head slightly before pushing himself out of his chair and pulling the blinds on all three of his windows. With the wooden slats now closed, Robert entered the office and sat in one of the client chairs facing Toth’s big mahogany desk.
“I’m glad you came so quickly,” said Laszlo Toth. His voice was surprisingly sonorous for someone his size, trained by decades in the municipal courts of Philadelphia. “I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for her, but once I found the file, I was sure it was something she would want to get her hands on immediately.”
“You were right about that,” said Robert.
“She needn’t have bothered sending the family lawyer, though. I was willing to take it directly over to her. I told her that.”
“This is better for all concerned. She is, of course, very grateful for your tact. She is curious, however, about where you found the file.”
“In a box.”
Robert tilted his head, offered a bland smile that made it very clear he needed more.
“The firm is winding down,” said Laszlo. “It’s now only me and two young associates running around and cashing their paychecks without enough to do. I tried to keep it going for as long as I could, but Byrne & Toth has run its course. Sad, but there it is. Since Byrne’s time we’ve had files in storage at a warehouse. I decided to stop paying the monthly fees. They can destroy the files for you at these places, but I thought we ought to see what was there before we put them to the flame. Maybe send them off to whatever clients still might want them. So when the boxes came, we went through them.”
“We?”
“Me, I mean,” he said quickly. “Just me.”
“We’re talking about the boxes piled in the outer office.”
“That’s right.”
“Quite a job to do all by yourself.”
“The associates are too young to have any idea of what is junk and what might be valuable. So it has been left to me to go through the boxes one by one.”
“A nd?”
“And then there it was. Quite a surprise. I didn’t remember it—it was Byrne’s case, his chicken scrawl was all over the file—but as I went through it, things became clear.”
“I’m sure they did.”
“Shocking, actually. I can imagine the anguish it caused her, knowing it was in Byrne’s possession all those years. He wasn’t the most discreet soul. And you know what they say about the authentic Irish recipe for lamb stew. Step one: Steal a lamb. But right away, as soon as I understood what it was, I knew that she’d want to get her hands on it.”
“And she is grateful, Laszlo. Very grateful. How old are you?”
“Too old.”
“You look tired.”
“Keeping the office open as long as I have has been a strain. Byrne always said he wanted to die in court, but I was never so dedicated. When the end comes, I’d like to be on a beach somewhere.”
“And you have a place in mind.”
“We’ve always liked the Outer Banks. It’s quite beautiful down there.”
“Expensive.”
“I don’t need much. Just a little cottage with a view of the sea.”
“A little cottage. How sweet. And then you found the file. Convenient.”
“What are you insinuating?”
“Do you have it here?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Let me see it.”
Laszlo bit his lip for a moment, as if he were considering whether to call or to raise in a poker game. The little eyes burned bright for a moment and then dulled. Call. He opened a desk drawer and took out an old green file folder. He put it on the desktop, looked at it for a moment, pushed it over to Robert as if pushing in his chips.
Robert took the file, opened it, paged through it quickly. It had copies of the settlement agreement, a copy of the signed and notarized statement, copies of letters from and to Liam Byrne. He had seen it before, years before, and didn’t need to go through the whole thing again to know it contained all the proof he would ever need that his efforts with her were in vain, that the die had been cast against him long before he was old enough to even care. Actions didn’t count; it was only a matter of blood. The impossibility of his situation shot a dose of anger into his voice.
“Where’s the rest of it?” said Robert.
“That’s it, that’s all of it. I swear. Everything I found. I’m trying to help here.”
“And you think Byrne put it in storage long ago and forgot about it?”
“Obviously.”
“Where else might he have left a copy?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been through everything in the office and in storage, and I found nothing.”
“There must be someplace else. Think.”
“I’m thinking.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“A n accident.”
“You’ll have another if you don’t think harder.”
“Byrne did have an old file cabinet. We bought a number of them when we first set up the office. He claimed one as his own, put all kinds of personal stuff in it, but that disappeared long ago.”
“Disappeared?”