“Where do you think you get the experience to help that one client in a hundred? You get it by going to court every day, wrestling with the prosecutors and the judges and the system. Someone has to know how to work the system.”
She turned and faced the school.
“Someone has to care. Someone has to fight it every blessed day and do the best they can. If someone doesn’t, the little people are going to go down the slop chute. Now I ask you, if you won’t do it, who will?”
“You keep asking these goddamned rhetorical questions, Mr. Liarakos,” she said bitterly. “And you’re representing Chano Aldana.”
“He paid the fee. The firm needs the money. I need the money. I’ll do my level best for the bastard.”
“Why?”
“Ms. Lewis, if you have to ask, you’d better stay here with the grade-school kids.”
“Aldana is going to walk.”
Liarakos snorted. “No, he isn’t. Zaba knows enough to convict Aldana. I’ve been reading the transcripts of the interrogations. He’s singing like a bird. They got everything chapter and verse. Names, locations, dates, amounts, quantities — everything. Zaba was the Cuban connection and he personally met with Aldana at least seven times. He even arranged for a couple of murders of DEA agents by Cuban intelligence. The prosecutors have got it.”
“So. What are you going to do?”
“Me? I’m just going to give Aldana a hundred percent of my best efforts and the prosecutors are going to nail his guilty hide to the wall. Clarence Darrow couldn’t get the sonofabitch off. There’s no way. I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and I know. Aldana’s guilty and the jury will see that and he’ll go up the river for the rest of his natural life.”
“And you?”
“I’ll go home afterward, Ms. Lewis, and pour myself a stiff drink and give thanks that God created the jury system.”
“But what if the jury won’t convict Aldana?”
“Judith, you have got to believe in your fellow man or you’ll have no hope at all. If the ordinary men and women on the jury won’t convict him, why try to get him off the streets? If they won’t convict him, they deserve him.”
She kept brushing at the coat.
“You made a fine little speech in my office a few weeks ago, Judith. Something about the law existing to protect those who can’t protect themselves. And here they are.” He gestured toward the school building. “I thought you meant it.”
She ran her hand through her hair.
She grimaced. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow at the office,” he said. “Or the next morning. Whenever you can get there.”
She kept brushing at her coat.
“Oh, and you and I have a new client. Guy name of Tom Shannon. A pro bono case.”
“Shannon? Isn’t he the man who led the lynch mob to the armory, the scapegoat they want to hang?”
“That’s the man,” Liarakos agreed. “You and he have a lot in common. He also says he knows the difference between good and evil.”
He turned and walked toward the door to the school and went through it, leaving Judith Lewis in the middle of the empty playground staring after him, flipping at her coat hem automatically.
“God damn you,” she whispered. “God damn you.” And she began to cry.
She had thought she was out of it. And now this! The principal and the school officials — when they hired her she promised to stay. They were going to think her such a terrible liar.
She went over to the bench against the wall and tried to compose herself.
Well, tomorrow was impossible. She would call the school officials this afternoon, but she should give them at least one more day so that they could find someone else.
She used the hem of her skirt to wipe the tears from her eyes.
The doctor had a breezy manner. He radiated confidence and self-assurance. Apparently he had picked up the patois in Patient Relations 101.
“You’re going to be fine. Every third day we’ll change the dressing and inch the drain out. But I think you’re well enough to go home.”
Harrison Ronald Ford nodded and swung his feet back and forth as the doctor examined the surgical incisions in his back. He was perched on the side of the bed, which was too far above the floor for his feet to comfortably reach. Normally the nurse had a little stool placed just so.
“Hold still please.”
Harrison obeyed. Since the doctor couldn’t see his face, he grinned.
“Yes indeedy. Looking very fine. Gonna be a dilly of a scar, but maybe you can get a big tattoo back here and no one will notice. I have a rather extraordinary picture of a naked woman on a stallion I can let you look at if you want to consider classical artwork.”
“Big tits?”
“Melons.”
“Bring it in.”
“Now if you have any trouble at all, you call me. Any time, day or night. And the people downstairs want you to continue in physical therapy every day. Make those appointments before you leave this afternoon.”
“Sure.”
The doctor came around to face him. “The nurse will be in in a moment to put a new bandage on you. I just wanted to check you one last time and shake your hand.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
They took him in a wheelchair to the administration office to finish the paperwork. The administrator asked for his address and telephone number and he gave them the apartment he had used as Sammy Z. “We’ll see you tomorrow at ten in the morning.”
“Sure.” The doctor popped in and Harrison shook hands all around, one more time.
At his request they called him a taxi. It was waiting out front when he scribbled his name for the final time. With the nurse holding grimly to his elbow, he maneuvered himself out of the wheelchair and into the backseat. She supervised the cabbie as he placed the two bags in the trunk that Freddy Murray had brought up from Quantico. Harrison waved at her as the cabbie put the car into motion.
She gave him a distracted smile and charged back inside pushing the wheelchair.
“Where to, Mac?”
“National Airport.”
“What airline?”
“Oh, I dunno. Don’t have reservations yet.”
“Well, you won’t have no problem. Holiday rush is all over. Where you heading?”
“Evansville, Indiana.”
“Go through Chicago or Cleveland?”
“One of those.”
“Maybe US Air.”
“Fine.”
Harrison Ronald sat back and watched the cars gliding along under the winter sky. He had been in Washington, what? Almost eleven months. Seemed like forever.
The cab driver whistled for a redcap to handle the bags and Harrison gave him a two-dollar tip. The driver was right. He had no trouble getting a ticket on the next plane, which was scheduled to leave in an hour.
Harrison Ronald strolled to the boarding area and sat watching the businessmen and mothers with children. The men in suits were reading or writing reports, darting over to the pay phones and making credit card calls. The kids were hollering and scurrying about and demanding their mothers’ attention. He sighed. It was so normal — so … almost like another world after all the stuff he had been through these last few months. He shook his head in wonder. Life does indeed go on.
Amazingly enough the airplane actually left on time. Most of the seats were empty. Harrison Ronald moved from his aisle seat to the window and took his last look at Washington as it fell away below.
It was over then. Really and truly over. No more terror, no more waiting for the ax to fall, no more sleepless nights wondering what Freeman McNally was hearing and thinking. Over.
What would he do now? He had been avoiding the issue but he examined it now as Washington slipped behind and the Alleghenies came into view like ribs.