“You know what, Michael? I find that I no longer give a shit about your problems. My detectives have already found four or five accounts that you absentmindedly forgot to mention in your settlement papers. My lawyers tell me I could get you in big trouble.”
“If your people think they’ve found anything like that, they’re mistaken,” he retorted. “Accounts that don’t belong to me sometimes have my name on them because I have power of attorney, or I’m holding funds in escrow. I don’t own them.”
“Bullshit!”
“Look, Chris. I’ve never talked to you about the details of my law practice, so you’ll have to trust me. If I lose these clients, it will cut into the value of my practice and the value of my personal assets. That means I will lose half and you will lose half.”
“Trust you?” Her expression was unspeakable, a mixture of revulsion and ugliness. “I trusted you not to humiliate me.”
When he saw that expression, he almost lost hope, but he didn’t dare to give up. “I haven’t humiliated you, Chris. If it takes a goddamned detective to find out about it, then I’m being discreet.”
“Not discreet enough, I can tell you.”
“Chris, the reason I came here is that several clients in question are upset. In addition, any one of them is capable of being paranoid, angry and defensive about being investigated. Any one of them could react in very scary ways.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”
“No, I’m not, Chris, they are. I’m trying to stave off a fucking disaster, and you don’t seem to be capable of listening to reason.”
“This discussion is over.” She stood up, turned, and stomped off into the bedroom. When he followed her, he discovered that it had been fitted with a deadbolt.
Two days later, Chris’s lawyer, Alvin Holstein, was found dead. His office had been gutted. Files, computers, disks, tapes, and even scratch pads had been loaded into a truck during the night and carted away. Pieces of the private detective Chris had hired were found over the course of a week along Interstate 15 between Barstow and Baker.
Chris became hysterical. She threatened to tell the police that Densmore had arranged for one of his clients to kill her lawyer and detective, but he pointed out to her that his legal defense would likely cost most of their joint assets.
He got out of the elevator on level B-1 and walked toward his reserved parking space. He was thinking about Grace now. She was his present wife, and she would be more difficult than Chris had been. Her smoldering hostility had not reached the explosive stage, but he could see that the time was coming. He had much more money now, and she knew it.
He felt the hands on him before he saw anything. He tried to turn to face the man, but the grip prevented him. Then Sylvie Turner stepped from behind a tall SUV parked in front of him and pulled her right hand out of her jacket pocket just far enough to show him the gun.
He smiled at her in relief, even though the grip on his arm was painful. “Sylvie. How are you?”
“You need to come with us.”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you two.”
“Get in the car.” This time it was Paul. He was already pushing Densmore toward the rear of the SUV.
Densmore said, “Good idea,” but he was sweating and his eyes were darting around above his smile because he couldn’t keep them on any one object. He could see that the windows were tinted and the license plate had a plastic cover that was nearly opaque. People like the Turners used covers like that to make the plates unreadable on surveillance tapes. He had to keep talking, keep it friendly. “I like to be inside a car and moving when I have a personal discussion.”
He heard the lock button pop up and he opened the door behind the driver’s seat. Paul didn’t move away. He stayed right behind Densmore as he stepped up and sat on the back seat, then climbed in after him.
Sylvie got in the front and drove. The vehicle was moving before Densmore noticed the empty place on the door panel where the handle had been. They had made sure he couldn’t open the door from the inside. He said, “It’s a pleasure to work with professionals who understand that it’s dangerous to be overheard. Now, the reason I’ve been trying so hard to get in touch with you is that I heard something that worried me.”
“What was that?” Sylvie’s voice was flat and uninterested. It was like listening to Grace.
“Well, as I warned you on the phone a few days ago, the client has been getting more and more impatient and eager for results. Now I understand he’s gone around us.” Densmore was pleased with that locution because if he “understood,” it implied he had only heard a hint from someone without knowing anything directly.
But Paul had caught the word, too, and didn’t like it. “You understand that, do you?”
“Yes. This is the kind of thing that I advise clients against doing. If you want help, I’ll give you help, but you have to put yourself in my hands. That’s what I say to them. And if it’s necessary to hire specialists, consultants, or experts, then I’ll be the one to find them, hire them, and communicate with them. That’s the way it has to be. If you want to handle your problem yourself, you’re welcome to go off and do it, and I wish you Godspeed. But if you want me to take you on, I’m in charge.” He was sure he had managed to get them past their irritation at him by now. He had learned from speaking to juries that enough words would slide people past an unpleasant discovery. The main thing was to keep talking and be sure they didn’t fix all of their attention on one small bit of information and cling to it.
“You’re off the subject,” Sylvie said. “We want to hear what you were so anxious to tell us, not the client.”
“What I wanted to tell you is that he went around me. He hired a couple of people of his own to go after Wendy Harper. Now, that’s bad enough. But it gets worse. The two men he hired were told that Till would have to bring Wendy Harper to the DA’s office to get the charges dropped. So they stationed themselves outside the building and lay in wait. Last night they managed to open fire on an unmarked police vehicle, and the outcome was pretty much what you might expect. They both got shot down on the street. I’m so glad to see you. I was really afraid that you might have been nearby and gotten scooped up in a sweep of the district.”
“And what did you do to get in touch with us to warn us?”
“I called your house. I called about twenty times over the past day or two. You were never home.”
“Did you even try to leave a message?”
“Of course I didn’t. If the police ever found a message like that on your phone, then you’d have problems. Those men were after Wendy Harper, and you were after Wendy Harper. All the police would need is a phone call to prove you were part of a conspiracy. Since the cops killed those two in the attempted commission of your common crime, you would be charged with felony murder in their deaths. As your attorney, I don’t see how we could beat the charge.”
“Did you consider just leaving a message for us to call you?”
Tonight Densmore’s professional skill at fast talk and obfuscation seemed to be failing him. Paul and Sylvie seemed to accept nothing he said. “That would have been even worse. It would give you absolutely no information, but it would make you keep calling me. I was in court for the past two days, so you would have had to wait for hours. In the process you might leave a message that could incriminate you. And all I wanted to say was what I just told you: that there might be another team around to get in your way. Might be. And in the end, it didn’t happen, anyway.”
“Didn’t it?” Paul said.