In all the times I’d phoned Phil Anderson, he’d never not taken my calls. I began to recognize the foul stench of a telephone dodge.
Still fuming over the insurance company’s shabby treatment of me after I’d pulled their unaudited asses out of the fire, I dialed Roger Vaden’s office and took a chance on him being in. Lawyers, I’ve found over the years, will rarely admit to being in their offices when you need them, and on the few occasions when they are, they are adamant in their unavailability for unsolicited phone calls. Vaden was no exception.
“When do you expect him back?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” the sweet feminine voice on the other end of the line answered. “Perhaps you could tell me what this is in regard to.”
I suppressed the urge to bitch somebody out. “I’m a friend of Slim Gibson’s. I’m a private investigator, and he’s asked me to help him out with his case. I thought I should at least let Mr. Vaden know what I was doing before I started doing it.”
“Oh,” she said abruptly. “Please hold.”
I drummed a succession of fingers on the desk, waiting for perhaps an hour or more during the next thirty seconds. Roger Vaden’s stiff, cool professional voice finally came on the line, sounding much more in control than it did before Judge Alvin Rosenthal.
“Yes, Mr. Denton, what can I do for you?”
“I spoke with Slim,” I began.
“You saw him at the jail?”
“Yes, just this morning.”
“I wish you’d asked my permission.”
Something about his tone of voice made want to rear back on my haunches and flash a fang at him. “I didn’t know I needed your permission to visit the jail during public visiting hours.”
“You don’t, but you do need it to question my client.”
“I didn’t question your client. Your client wanted to talk to me.”
He backed off at that. “Bickering like this will do us no good. What do you want?”
“Slim asked me to do a little looking around. As a courtesy, I’m making you aware of that. I don’t know how deeply I’m going to get involved in his case. As I’m sure you already know, the Slim Gibson defense fund is a little on the meager side. Also, I’m not exactly sure what I can do for him. He’s in a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” Vaden said.
“You can do something for me-and for Slim. If I need the leverage of working in an official capacity, I’d appreciate it if you’d back me up.”
“Meaning?”
“If I get in a spot where I have to tell somebody I’m working for you on Slim’s behalf, that you just verify that.”
“I won’t be responsible for you. I take no responsibility or liability for anything you do.”
“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “But if somebody calls and says, ‘There’s a guy here who says he’s working for you,’ could you just say, ‘Yeah, he is’?”
“You are a licensed private investigator?” he asked.
“That’s correct. I’m even bonded.”
“The problem is that I don’t know how long I’m going to be on the case.”
“I understand. You’re trying to get a criminal lawyer involved, right?”
“Yes, but I’m not having much luck. Mr. Gibson is not being held in very high esteem within the local community. The press has pilloried him, practically convicted him. And with his limited resources, he can’t afford the defense he needs. The only alternative, really, is the …” His voice faded away, as if he couldn’t bring himself to say the two dreaded words.
“Public defender?” I asked.
“Yes. And that basically means he won’t have a defense. More likely, he’ll just have someone negotiate the length of his prison term.”
“Slim deserves better than that.”
“I agree. But what can we do? I’m not even sure what our options are. The judge will hear preliminary motions in about a month. It’s going to take almost that long for defense to prepare. Which doesn’t leave much time to find him an advocate.”
“And you’re definitely not going to represent him?”
Vaden cleared his throat nervously. “This is not my specialty. Even if I could afford to take the case on for what Mr. Gibson can pay, I seriously doubt I’m equipped to give him the best representation possible.”
“How long have we got? Or rather, how long have you got before you’re off the case?”
“A week. Perhaps a bit longer.”
I felt overwhelmed and frustrated by so much coming from so many different directions at once. “Okay, listen,” I said. “Let’s try this. I’ve got a form that’s just a simple boilerplate that says I’ve been retained by you. It’s got some blanks to be filled in that describe what I’m supposed to be doing, and for how long. I’ll fill in the blanks, sign the form, and mail it to you. If it meets with your approval, sign it and mail it back to me, along with a check for one dollar. I’ll bill Slim for the rest when this is all over-that is, if he’s in a position to make any more than the sixty cents an hour or so that inmates earn. Is that all right with you?”
“Yes,” he said, after a moment’s silence. “That will do. I can go that far, as long as there aren’t any problems on the form.”
“Add whatever you need to in order to protect yourself,” I said. As if he wouldn’t anyway …
“I’ll turn it around as soon as I get it,” he said.
“Okay, Mr. Vaden. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”
“I only hope this does Slim some good.” His voice relaxed now that the negotiations had ended. “I’m extremely worried about him.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”
I filled in the blanks and typed up an envelope in about five minutes, then plopped a stamp on it and dropped it in the mailbox on the way out of the building. The sun was high above the Seventh Avenue buildings now; another beautiful spring day was in the making. We get about six or eight weeks every year in Nashville when this city is draped in the most glorious weather you’ll see anywhere on the planet: temperatures in the low seventies, bright blue skies, little or no humidity. Sometimes I think this little balmy window between the frozen gray of winter and the sweltering red of summer is all that keeps most of us here.
The next step was to drop in on Mac Ford, Rebecca’s manager, and get whatever I could out of him. I dodged a couple of cars and scampered across the street, then began the long climb up the ramps to the fourth floor of the parking garage. As usual, I’d come in late and lost my chance for a prime parking space. That didn’t really bother me, though. The ramp wasn’t steep and I needed the exercise.
There was a memorial service for Rebecca Gibson later that afternoon, down on Broadway at Christ Episcopal Church. I figured I’d take a chance on catching Ford, then head back downtown for the service. I wasn’t sure what I’d get out of attending the service, but it seemed like it couldn’t hurt anything.
I rounded the slick concrete ramp on the third level and headed, slightly winded and quickly moistening, up toward my car. Ahead of me, the faded, chipped paint on the wall gave the place a decayed look, and I fought not to think of how far my life had deteriorated in the past couple of years. Back at the newspaper, I had seniority in the parking lot as well as the office, with a prime spot in the employee lot down in the Gulch, the area that ran below the Church Street Viaduct down in back of the newspaper building.
What the hell, I thought, think of it as a built-in exercise machine.
Above me, there was a crash. Not a loud one, not the heavy metallic grind of cars slamming into each other, but more of a thud followed by …
Breaking glass.
I quickened my steps halfway up the ramp, then broke into a trot. A half-dozen steps later there was another crash, this time louder, followed by the distinct tinkling of shattered glass hitting concrete.
I accelerated from a trot to a run, but my street shoes were slick on the concrete and I missed a couple of steps, almost losing my footing. I reached out to regain my balance, then hit the top of the ramp. I whipped around a concrete pillar and saw, at the farthest end of the garage, a running hulk of a man maybe sixty yards away from me. All I saw was a blur of blue legs and a pair of arms in a checked shirt pumping away.