“Terrific. I brooded over my sins.”
She handed me my cup. “Cream and sugar, isn’t it?” She had learned that Friday morning. A small spark of warmth lit her eyes. “I’m sorry about Friday afternoon.”
“So am I.” It occurred to me that we spent half our time apologizing. I told her so.
Her brows knit. “You know, I looked for you Friday after you left.”
“I had drinks with a friend. We concluded that women are difficult.”
She smiled. “Who is this misogynist?”
“Fellow named Lane Greenfeld.”
She sipped her coffee. “Doesn’t he work for the Post?”
“The very same. You know,” I added, “this place doesn’t help. It seems that our peachy professional relationship keeps interfering with the other, or vice-versa.”
She gave a small, helpless shrug. “I can’t help my job.”
“Nor I mine.” I looked at my watch and stood up. “I’ve got Sam Green in ten minutes. Let’s try communicating again in a couple of days. We might surprise ourselves.”
She smiled her good smile. “All right. I’ll look forward to it.”
I went to my office and asked Debbie to make St. Maarten reservations, for luck. Then I met Robinson back at the conference room.
I sat down and told him about Woods while we waited for Green. The shorthand reporter arrived to set up her machine. She was my favorite-face as bland as a baby’s and her eyes as glassy as marbles. I had seen lawyers screaming and swearing all around her, while she tapped on her machine, a dizzy half-smile directed at some inner space, getting it all down. Right on schedule, five days later, the transcript would arrive, all its threats and “screw you’s” neatly typed, recorded for posterity. In my fantasies, she left her machine at five and went home to a scruffy apartment where she sold smack and was known as the Potomac Connection. It was a nice theory.
Green and his lawyer showed up just when she had finished. I looked Green over. He was a walking definition of the word “seedy.” It wasn’t his clothes; Green was just one of those people who looked second-rate. He had a ferret face and the kind of furtive eyes that seemed to dart away. His thinning hair was styled in the wet look and his skin was fish-belly pale. Robinson and I shook his hand reluctantly and turned to his lawyer.
It was the lawyer who was a surprise. Green usually came equipped with a low-rent item named Johnson, with a scar on one cheek and a dull, nasty look that made you wonder where he had gone to law school. But this time Green had stepped up in class. All the way to Edmund O’Hair.
O’Hair shook my hand, and sat next to Green. He had white hair and a red Irish face, gone Establishment around the edges. I knew a bit about him. He was a boy from Hell’s Kitchen turned Wall Street hired gun, and he’d never looked back. Now he was chief trial lawyer for a hundred-man law firm, with a tough, atavistic pride in his work, and clients like General Motors. Green wasn’t in his usual line. That suggested possibilities I didn’t much like.
Robinson and I sat at the opposite end of the conference table. I asked O’Hair if his client was ready. He nodded. The reporter’s fingers poised over the machine. I began my litany: right to counsel, Fifth Amendment, and the penalty for perjury. I came down hard on the last.
Then my questions started. Yes, Green had purchased 20,000 shares of Lasko Devices on July 14 and 15, through three different brokers. Yes, he still had the shares. I moved in, feeling O’Hair’s watchful eyes.
“For what reason did you place those orders?”
Green’s eyes slid off toward a corner. “I thought it was a good investment.”
“Did anyone specific suggest it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do you know a man named William Lasko?”
He stared at the curtains. “I can’t recall.”
“Have you ever spoken to a William Lasko?”
“I don’t remember having done that.” He had a thin, reedy voice. Lying didn’t improve it.
“Speak up, Mr. Green. Did you discuss your purchase of Lasko stock with William Lasko at any time prior to July 15?”
“I’m not sure.” His whine took on a phony, insulted quality.
“It’s a simple question,” I snapped. “Yes or no?”
He shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t. I don’t know.”
“How did you finance your purchases?”
“I’m trying to think.” He spoke to the ceiling in feigned recollection. “I believe I borrowed the funds from the First Seminole Bank of Miami.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred thousand.”
“When did you borrow the money?”
“About the first week of July.”
“With whom did you make the arrangements?”
“A Mr. Billings. He’s a vice-president.” The sentence had an incomplete sound.
“Did you discuss the First Seminole Bank with someone else at any time prior to the loan?”
“I can’t recall doing so.”
“What about discussions with Mr. Lasko?”
“I can’t remember.”
I shifted abruptly. “Who’s paying for Mr. O’Hair’s services here today?”
O’Hair broke in. “I’m directing my client not to answer that. It’s privileged.”
“The hell it is.”
“Then take us to court and try to compel an answer.”
I stopped, frustrated. O’Hair stared back impassively. He would stick to it. Green was either more afraid of someone else, or O’Hair figured I could be fixed somehow, or maybe stopped before I ever got that far. And he knew that I didn’t have proof. I asked several similar questions and got similar answers. I noted for the record that Mr. Green would be recalled at a later date. Then I quit.
O’Hair and Green rose. Lying made Green nervous. He looked weary, and he left quickly. O’Hair got ready to follow, but I stopped him. “When we call Green back, Mr. O’Hair, it won’t be so much fun. I know you’ll remind him of that.”
O’Hair shook his head with a slight smile and walked out. So did the reporter, with her own half-smile. I turned to Robinson. “Being lied to always makes me hungry. Can I buy you lunch?”
“Sure.” He smiled. “You know, that kind of thing makes you wish for thumbscrews and rubber hoses.”
“Damn O’Hair anyhow, the smug bastard. It’s clear Lasko put Green up to it. Or else Green would have denied it without the weasel words. But all we have on the record is the First Seminole Bank. Can you dig around to see who owns the big interests in the bank?”
“OK. I’ve got a friend I can call at the Florida Corporations Commission. I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes.”
We walked out together. Robinson headed for the telephone. I went back to my office.
The phone rang. It was Woods. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Still want to go to St. Maarten?”
That threw me off. “Sure.”
“When would you go?”
“Tomorrow.”
Woods paused. “OK,” he said, “go ahead. I’ll tell McGuire.” His phone clicked.
I stared at the phone, surprised. But there was no use puzzling over a break when you got one. I hung up.
Eighteen
By two the next afternoon, my airplane hovered over St. Maarten. It was green and white, surrounded by vivid blue. I wished it were winter, and vacation.
I felt the searing heat as soon as we landed. By the time I got my bags and checked through customs, I was moist and enervated. I walked toward a line of cars parked expectantly at the end of the airstrip. The nearest one was an old Oldsmobile. The driver leaned against it with elaborate casualness. I don’t give a damn for you, his face said, but you’re a living.
I didn’t give a damn either. “Give me a lift to Philipsburg?”
He nodded and tossed my bags carelessly into his trunk. I opened my own door. Welcome to friendly St. Maarten.
We drove in silence through low green brush on a choppy slash of dirt and rock, past huts of wood and corrugated metal. It wasn’t hard to see: tourists arrived each winter like migratory birds and were chauffered past the huts, chattering about the white sand and blue water. They didn’t see the stony faces or shabby huts; if they had, they wouldn’t have chattered. The ones that saw felt guilty, and went to Palm Springs next year. And the natives despised them all and took their money. And despised them more. Which was stupid, in a way. Looking at the black rock, you knew the natives needed the tourists, not the other way around. We passed another hut, with a sad skinny goat tethered to it. Like a lot of things, it was tough to get moral about it, either way. But I was probably going to Palm Springs next year.