“You wouldn’t be involved, would you? Got a piece of the defense or something?”
“Nothing like that, Leo. Just a client who may have a tangential interest.” There’s little sense in lying to Kerns.
“The hooker-Hawley?” he asks. He sits staring at me with a soulful grin. Leo’s learned the ultimate art of good interrogation-to listen a lot, endure long, pregnant pauses, and let the other guy say the next thing. Like a gridiron defense, Leo always plays for the verbal turnover.
I smile and nod, my head cocked at a forty-five-degree angle as if to say “If you wish to call her that.” I am not surprised that he already has a bead on my client. It’s an unquestioned axiom that a cop’s lot is composed of hours of tedium, punctuated by instants of terror. In those long hours of routine they talk, to one another, to the press at the scene of the latest calamity, to anyone who will listen. The fact that Lama took a personal hand in Hawley’s pretrial, I know, makes it an odds-on bet that Susan Hawley’s troubles have been chewed on over coffee and doughnuts by every person with a badge in the city.
“If you’ve read the papers, you know what there is to know,” he says.
I remind him that my client’s name wasn’t in the papers.
He makes the face of concession and shrugs his shoulders. “Lama’s squeezing her pretty hard, is he?”
“He’s tryin’.”
“Man’s on a holy crusade to save the world for truth, justice, and the American way,” says Kerns. “Sonofabitch oughta get a red cape and blue tights.” We laugh together at this mental image.
It was Leo who’d first clued me in to some of the bizarre antics of Lama and his friends, a few cops who palled around together and formed a fast fraternity. These law-and-order jocks had a curious ceremony to “earn your bones,” gain acceptance to the group. An applicant had to get laid while on duty. Charter members did the deed with a fellow officer’s wife or girlfriend. For these guys, the department’s motto, “Service First,” carried special meaning.
Leo’s drink comes. Before he can reach for his wallet I push a twenty across the table at the waitress, an investment in a little candor. The waitress scoops up the money and leaves.
“Still, if you want my opinion, your girl should roll over on the bunch of ’em.”
“Maybe they performed that number,” I say.
Leo laughs. This tickles some responsive and prurient cord deep inside him.
“No, seriously,” he says. “She’d be doin’ society a considerable service.”
“That bad?”
Leo giggles a bit, one of those dirty giggles, in the pitch of a cheap tenor. He shakes his head as if my question is a gross understatement.
“Politicians are assholes.” He says this like it is one of the axioms of nature.
I decide to probe a little further before turning to the real point of our conversation.
“What do you know about Tony Skarpellos, his firm? Do you know if they have a client who’s involved in me thing?”
Leo shrugs his shoulders.
“Know Skarpellos only from reputation,” he says. “Peddles a lot of influence with the people downtown. Kinda guy who gives dirty politics a bad name.”
He takes a gulp from his glass. “Seems to be the consensus,” he says, “that his mother must have flinched at the last minute.”
I look quizzically at Kerns.
“Opinion has it the better part of Tony Skarpellos ran down his father’s leg the night he was conceived.”
Kerns puts out a pudgy hand for a couple of stick pretzels in the bowl at the center of the table.
“Does Lama have anything solid to go on? In the investigation?” I ask.
“Bits and pieces,” he says. “But you know Lama. Give him some thumb screws, a dark room, and a little time, and he’ll produce miracles. The Inquisition lost a great talent in that one.”
A gaggle of secretaries, legislative staff, and other political groupies begin to spread out at the bar. They’re squeezing the two women in short skirts at the end. One of them takes her purse and moves to a table a few feet from ours. Kerns is all eyes. It would be an ambitious project for the little man. For starters he would need a ladder. Still, I’ve never known Leo Kerns to shrink in the face of a true challenge.
There’s a rush of commotion near the entrance as three men in worsted pinstripes waltz through the door, followed closely by an entourage of lesser lights. The man in the lead is recognizable to anyone who’s lived in the state for more than a week and watched the local television news more than once. Corey Trumble is the speaker of the state assembly.
Kerns shoots a glance over his shoulder at the group, then back to the woman at the table off to his right. She’s crossed her legs and is now showing a good deal of thigh. Her attention is riveted on the lawmakers and the coterie of lobbyists groveling in their wake.
“I think she’s interested in carving another notch in that skirt,” says Leo.
I nod and smile.
“Vice would have a field day in here.”
Perhaps, I think. But they’ll never get the chance. Topper’s is off-limits to the local cops, a sort of unwritten territorial rule. Legislators and other state officials are fair game out in the hinterlands, in the north area or the south part of the city. But here, in the shadow of the capitol dome, the only badges that move are pinned on the sergeants-at-arms, mostly old men or part-time students, people who take their orders from Corey Trumble and his ilk in the state senate.
“What do you think? You think there’s anything to Lama’s suspicions?” I struggle against mounting odds to draw Leo’s attention back to our conversation.
“I should be askin’ you that question.” He speaks slowly, his eyes glued on the hooker’s legs. “You’re the lady’s lawyer.” He chews on an ice cube and looks back at me. “One thing’s for sure. If she’s got anything, she’s in a position to deal. Lama’s sure that the case is a fast track to a promotion, and the word is that Nelson smells big headlines. The way things are going in the office these days, he could end up with enough press to go statewide. Conventional wisdom seems to be that with the political scam and the Potter killing, if Nelson can screw the lid on both cases quickly, he could end up bein’ the next state attorney general. First law of political gravity, up and onward-always up and onward.”
He winks, his tongue slithering around at the bottom of his glass for a sliver of ice. Kerns knows that he’s paid for his drink. Susan Hawley’s expectations of an outright dismissal are not built on idle fantasy.
I wave the waitress over and gesture to Leo. He holds up a hand like the guardrail at a train crossing-his look like the pope condemning abortion. He’s had enough. But before I can nod in agreement, the expression and the hand melt like slush on a hot day. “Oh, what the hell, one more,” he says. “The same.”
I take my wallet out again. The waitress clears our glasses and heads for the bar.
I’ve covered my tracks, and Kerns has opened the door with his comment on the Potter case.
“What do you guys have on Potter?” I ask.
He looks at me and smiles. “Half the world would like to have the answer to that.” He winks. “They’re gonna find out pretty soon.”
“Lotta stuff in the papers,” I say.
Nelson’s begun to leak rumors touting a short list of suspects, but no names or details; it’s the classic nonstory, but it plays well with the media, a little raw meat tossed on the press-room floor to keep the issue on the front page-the scent of a good story to come. By the time Nelson moves with an arrest or indictment, the giant web presses at the Times and Trib will already be warmed and running. The man is no fool. As usual Talia appears oblivious to all of this. In the same edition, with the story of her husband’s murder investigation, she’s pictured in the society section at a charity event dressed like the favorite concubine of some rajah.
“Yeah,” says Leo, “before they finish puttin’ type to newsprint on this one, they’ll kill half the trees in North America.”