There is a perception about cops and lawyers that makes them as compatible as oil and water. It is often accurate, certainly for some. Willy Kunkle, for example, was not a man I sought out to hear nice things about lawyers. I, on the other hand, had become-very slowly-a little less quick to condemn. A necessary evil, like anything from prisons to warning labels, lawyers still represented a service that almost all of us, sooner or later, would end up using-some of us more reluctantly than others.
Physically, Richard Levay was an unimpressive man. Small, slight, balding, and perpetually looking either startled or confused, he compensated for his appearance with an infectious enthusiasm and a focus bordering on magnetism. He made no excuses for defending the amoral, the degenerate, and the criminally aimless. In fact, he cheerfully admitted that most of his clients were crooks. But they had as much a right to a defense as the rest of us, he claimed, and while his goal had never been to set the guilty free, he felt honor-bound to make sure the prosecution stayed on its toes. In the past, that had often pissed me off. Right now, it was just what I was after.
I invited him into the living room as the phone began ringing. I pointed to the couch and picked up the receiver.
“Joe? It’s Katz.”
“I’m not talking to you, Stanley.”
“You shitting me? You’re in so deep, what harm could I do?”
“Thanks for the vote.”
“I’m the only hope you got. Think about it. Cop gets caught, people assume he’s dirty-no ifs, ands, or buts. The prosecution’s not going to listen to you, your lawyer’s going to tell you to shut up, and everyone else is buying tickets to ringside. You talk to me, you talk to the world, Joe. I’m the only way you get the truth out-”
Richard had gently removed the phone from my hand. “Stanley?” he said politely. “This is Richard Levay. My client doesn’t want to speak with you.”
I saw Richard nod his head several times and then add, “Anytime. You know how I like a good debate.”
He hung up the phone, although I could still hear Katz’s voice. Richard resumed his seat. “Lesson number one: don’t talk to anyone.”
I sat opposite him. “Thanks for coming so fast.”
He waved that away. “Happy to help, and just so you know up front, I’m waiving my fee.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he interrupted. “If I start losing my shirt, I’ll let you know. Till then, those are my terms.”
“Thank you.”
“Okay, in a nutshell, what happened?”
I told him, virtually minute by minute, everything I did the night before. Occasionally he took notes; rarely he asked a question; but mostly he simply listened. At the end, he took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Not good. You have any idea how the brooch got in your pocket?”
“A few theories I kicked around with Gail, the best one being that somebody slipped it to me when Willy and I pushed through the crowd to get into the store. But that doesn’t hold much water, and I can’t prove it anyhow. A better bet is probably the CIA, and I doubt they’ll be too forthcoming.”
Levay looked at me as if I’d just admitted to seeing pink elephants. “The CIA?”
I told him about Boris, my visit to DC, the mugging, the near-shooting on Western Avenue, and the off-chance that John Rarig was somehow connected to it all.
Richard rose and walked over to the double glass doors, his hands behind his back. He rocked on his feet a few times and then faced me. “You think you could maybe not mention that little story again?”
“Too wacko?”
He tilted his head in acknowledgement.
“May be a bit late for that,” I conceded. “Both the chief and my squad know about it. It’s an ongoing case, after all.”
“But there’s no connection between it and last night’s smash-and-grab.”
“Not yet.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” he said decisively and returned to his chair. “The fewer complications, the better. Who have you spoken with since you left the PD this morning?”
I thought a moment and suppressed an urge to lie. Kathy Bartlett had told me right off she didn’t want to be pulled into this and had spoken to me purely out of friendship. But my loyalty to her was matched by my trust in Richard. What we said here was privileged, and he would have no reason to mention Kathy later. On the other hand, he might need to know about that conversation in case someone else tried to blindside him with it.
“I talked to Sammie Martens about what was going on with the squad, to Tony, who just dropped by to give me an update, and confidentially to Kathleen Bartlett to get some feedback on Fred Coffin.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How confidentially?”
“Very. Just the two of us, briefly, and we didn’t discuss the case. She said I was in up to my neck, but that was about it. She told me to hire a barracuda, and to break the rules if I had to.”
“Ouch,” Richard said softly. “All that on an open line.”
I was suddenly hit with a chilling notion. “You think my phone’s tapped?”
His eyes narrowed slightly, and he hesitated before answering. “No. Actually, I was wondering about a big office like the AG’s, with all those lines, all those extensions. Wouldn’t be the first time someone picked up a phone and accidentally eavesdropped.” He leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, looking more like a shrink than a lawyer. “You were thinking the CIA again?”
I caught the tone of concern in his voice. “Not necessarily.”
“Joe,” he said slowly, “I’ve got only one thing to worry about here, which is that trinket in your pocket. I think we might be able to deal with that-maybe even duck it. A jury, for example, might be made to love that theory about someone in the crowd planting the thing on you, regardless of what you think of it. But if the CIA and mugger-hit-men come into it, that’s going to introduce a whole other dimension, and I’ll be honest with you, I’d prefer that didn’t happen.”
He began wandering around the room again, idly touching lampshades and photographs and the leaves of various plants with his fingertips. “And there’s something else. You mentioned Gail. Have you and she discussed all the permutations of this together?”
I stared at him, feeling a sense of dread wash through me.
“She’s a deputy state’s attorney, Joe,” Levay continued. “And you and she are not married. None of what you two talked about is protected, and I seriously doubt Fred Coffin will overlook that. She will be deposed.”
I rubbed my forehead, that odd humming back in my brain. “I think we even touched on that-watching what we said. Maybe I’m making that up. But we went ahead anyhow.”
“Through that deposition, the CIA angle will probably come out, along with your somewhat unfortunate overreaction on Western Avenue. Witnesses to that should have some pretty colorful descriptions.”
I didn’t say a word.
“Did you tell Gail you were going to call Bartlett?” he asked.
“No,” I answered with relief. “That was spontaneous. I only thought of it after Gail and I talked on the phone this afternoon.”
“Good. At least he can’t reach Kathy that way.” He smiled. “Well, don’t worry about it. I can probably stop the CIA from being mentioned in court. And, if not-given the right jury-we’ll just make the CIA look like the KGB. Who knows? This is a business for the nimble-footed. We’ll have to be better at it than he is.”
He crossed the room and opened his briefcase, replacing his pad and pen. “I wouldn’t worry right now in any case. They haven’t even begun the investigation, which could take them a while. I’ll call Fred and let him know I’ve been retained, and then we’ll just wait for the other shoe to drop. Best case scenario: they actually find the anonymous caller, who turns out to be a retired pickpocket.”