“Now, Judge,” he said, “I don’t know just how I should put this to you. Because I don’t want to shock you, or do anything like that. But lots of the big law firms then, had pads in those tall buildings. And on the tour they had me on, I’d see those guys come in. See them come in with their girlfriends? Between six and nine at night. And they would not go out again, ’fore I was through at one.”
“Panda,” Neelon said, “Spare me. You mean: ‘With their nieces, they came in.’ Learned counsel for rich law firms do not get so vulgar as to entertain mere girlfriends in deductible apartments.”
“My mistake, Your Honor,” Panda said. “Excuse me. On the tour they had me on, I often saw the lawyers come in with their nieces right behind them. Now, this took me a while, before I got this figured out. I was fairly innocent, when I stopped wrestling. And when I first started in there, I did not know much. So one night, this big honcho lawyer comes in with his briefcase, and it is six o’clock or so and I am pretty stupid. And also with him, right behind him, there is this young lady. A very fine looking young lady, I might add. And she has got her handbag, but that’s all she’s carrying. So I assume they’re visiting someone — they do not live in the building, or else they would tell me. So I ask him: ‘Which apartment?’ Like I was supposed to do. Coast did not want people coming in there without they had destinations, and the people they were seeing wanted to see them.
“He gets all mad at me, the guy does,” Panda said to Neelon. “He tells me he belongs to this firm which keeps an apartment there. Their clients in from out of town stay overnight in it. And sometimes in the evening, if they have a lot of work, they come in with their secretaries and they work late hours themselves. And that is what he’s doing, and she is his secretary. Gleason, Boyster and Muldoon. That is all you need to know.’ And they go on upstairs.
“Well, Your Honor, nothing happened. That I got in trouble for. This guy and his secretary, they go up to work late hours and I don’t know who they are, except they work for a law firm that he says he belongs to. He don’t say that he is Gleason and he don’t claim he is Muldoon. I do not know he is Boyster and the lady had no name. All I knew her by was her looks, and like I told you, those were fine. She also had a nice smile and she always gave it to me.
“I say ‘always,’ Judge,” he said, “and when I say that, I mean this: ‘Wednesday nights she smiled at me.’ Every Wednesday night. The first night was a Wednesday and then they come back, the next one. And I naturally remember them and I don’t ask no questions. And then the Wednesday after that, and the one after that, until I see this is a habit, they got going here. This guy apparently can’t get his work done, any Wednesday that you name. Tuesdays he’s apparently all right, when they blow the quitting whistle. Thursdays he does not show up. I had Fridays off in those days, Fridays and Saturdays. He don’t come in any Sunday. He does not show up on Monday. And by now I’ve gotten so I know a lot of guys that have problems just like his, except their big nights are different, and their secretaries change, or else they have got whole flocks of nieces like you would not have imagined. So I am wising up a little, and I’m keeping my mouth shut. And also I am putting my name in around the city, because I am getting older and those late hours are killing me.
“Anyway, two years go by, and then things start to change. I notice that this guy has started coming in on Tuesdays. And pretty soon it’s Thursdays and I’m seeing him on Mondays, and when I come in on Sunday he’s been working all weekend. His secretary, too — she’s in there, and they’re bringing in groceries. And then this other guy gets sick, so I have to cover for him, and damned if the secretary there and her boss are not working Friday nights and Saturday nights too.”
“Thriving private practice,” the Judge said, nodding at him. “Envy of every practitioner. Those hours are just brutal.”
“They must be,” Panda said. “Well, anyway, the days go by, and one day I am sitting there, I open up the paper. And what do I see but his picture and his name is under it. This is Attorney Andrew Boyster, who’s been working those long hours. And he is in the paper because his wife’s suing him. She is suing him in the back and she’s suing his front, too. What she wants is a nice divorce, and every dime he’s got. And there’s another picture, which is of Andrew Boyster’s wife. And she does not look like the lady that I know.”
“She looked a little older, maybe?” Henry Neelon said.
“Well, I assumed she was,” Panda Feeney said. “I didn’t think too much about that, just how old she might’ve been. What caught my eye was, you know, she alleged adultery. And I thought I might have some idea, of just who she had in mind.”
“Well,” Feeney said, “the papers had their usual field day. And I have got a dirty mind, so of course I read it all. And I am sitting there one night, the two of them come in, and I am looking at their pictures. They give me the great big grin, and she asks me how I like it.
“I do not know what to say. I figure they are going to tell me, I should mind my own damned business. So I mumble something at them, and they start to laugh at me. ‘You’re going to have to do better than that, if your name is Thomas Feeney,’ Andrew Boyster says to me. And since we’re never introduced, that kind of throws me, right? ‘How come me?’ I say to him, and that is when he tells me. I am getting a subpoena. I am going to testify.
“I say: ‘Why me? What do I know?’ He says his wife thinks that I know lots. Like who’s been coming in and going out the building I am guarding, and she wants to ask me that.
“Now, I figure,” Panda said, “I am in the glue for fair. So I ask him: ‘What do I say?’ And he says: ‘Tell the truth,’ And they go upstairs laughing, just as happy as can be. Which at least made me feel better, that the guy’s not mad at me. I just may not lose my job.”
“Did you testify?” the Judge said.
“Uh-huh,” Panda said.
“And did you tell the truth?” the Judge said, looking grim again.
“Absolutely,” Panda said. “Told the Gospel truth. Had on my best blue suit, you know, clean shirt and everything. And they ask me, his wife’s lawyers, did I work the Coast Apartments and how long did I work there. I told him those tilings, truthfully, and all the other junk he asked me before he comes to the point. And when he does that he decides he will be dramatic. Swings around and points to Boyster and says: ‘Do you know this man?’ And I say: ‘Yes, I do know him. That is Andrew Boyster,’ Then he shows me a picture, which is Boyster’s secretary that I guess is now his widow, and he wants to know: do I know her? And I say: ‘Yes, I do.’
“ ‘Now,’ he says, like this is this great big salute he’s planned, ‘how long have you known these people? Will you tell His Honor that?’ And I say: ‘Yessir. Yes, I will.’ And I turn and face the Judge there and I say: ‘I have known them for two weeks.’ ”
“Which of course was the strict truth,” Neelon said, laughing with him. “Did he ask you the next question?”
“You mean: ‘When did you first see them?’ ” Panda asked the Judge.
“Yeah,” Judge Neelon said, “that is exactly what I mean.”
“No,” Panda said, “he didn’t. I think he was flabbergasted. He just stood there and looked at me like his mouth wouldn’t work. And then when he got it working, all he could think of asking me was whether I was very sure that was my honest answer. And I said: ‘Absolutely, sir.’ And then I was excused. And then when Christmas came that year, I got a case of Chivas Regal, and it was from Andrew Boyster and that second wife of his who I still think’s a nice lady. And then when Drew got his judgeship, my name came up on the list faster than it ever would’ve otherwise, and that is how I got this job here. Because Drew thought I was smart. What I said, testifying, it did not make any difference to the way the case come out — at least that is what he told me. ‘But,’ he told me, ‘Panda, it was the one laugh that we had while all that crap was going on, and we just wanted you to know that we appreciated it.’ Which is why I thought Drew Boyster was a very classy guy — because of how he treated me.”