kid named Mihail who always made me name my drink, even though it was always the same thing.
It took a little longer to catch him up with the Eldridge thing, but at least Amanda was able to join in. I told him about Joyce Whithers and her connections to Appolonia. And about Agent Ig, with his ominous cautions and impenetrable intimations. Burton started nodding when we got to the part about Joe Sullivan and my conversation with Ross Semple, a friend of Burton’s from a time years ago when they’d squared off over the case of a young black kid some people thought was getting railroaded by the Southampton DA. It all ended with the kid free, the community becalmed and only the media expressing disappointment over the expeditious resolution of the case. Burton himself managed to direct all the credit to Ross Semple, who accepted it, I always thought, as part of the deal.
“The Chief called me in the City to ask about Mr. Fleming. I told him I’d learn what I could as far as background, but any Federals investigating a car bombing were likely tied to Homeland Security and that means the proverbial black hole. I know a few folks who have access, but when it comes to that territory, one doesn’t even ask.”
“I wasn’t thinking you should, Burt. I was only looking for an opinion. What do you thinks going on?”
“Haven’t a clue. Anyone care for a snack? I seem to have missed dinner.”
People who worked for Burton had to get used to his indifference to conventions of time and space. You were as likely to find him reading in Battery Park in the early afternoon as you were having him show up at your apartment at three in the morning to consult on a case.
“I’ve got a list of Jonathan’s clients, along with some notes on three we’re calling the hostiles. Ivor Fleming and Joyce Whithers, along with his brother Butch Ellington, who’s in a somewhat separate category. Anything you or your hundred-thousand-person investigative staff can tell me about these people would be deeply appreciated.”
Burton sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, resting his drink on his knee.
“Does this mean I don’t have to browbeat you into accepting my help?” he asked.
I’d inherited a keen sense of reciprocity from my father. You borrow a guy’s tools, you lend him yours without hesitation. You help frame a garage, you get the same help when you build the addition off the back. This unspoken contract among working people sustained both a sense of community and self-reliance, because it was unspoken. Nobody made a big deal about it. Though it only worked if the quid pro quo was reasonably proportionate, an impossibility when you traded favors with Burton Lewis.
But I was on a program of self-improvement. I knew it would give Burton pleasure to help out, that he’d be slightly pained if I didn’t let him. Allowing him the chance to express his generosity for nothing in return was in this case the less selfish thing to do.
“Only if you come up with something good,” I said tossing the manila envelope toward his lap. “There’re plenty of rich lawyers where you came from.”
He snatched it midair and disgorged the contents.
“Since you’re making it competitive.”
He looked over the client list and notes, straining slightly to read without his glasses.
“I knew Walter Whithers, speaking of competition. An excellent attorney from a very wealthy family. More inclined to general corporate governance, not much in the tax game. Sat on several boards. We did his taxes. Died of a heart attack in his mid-forties. At least that was the family’s story. Undoubtedly true, though eyebrows were raised.”
“How come?”
“Walter was a bit of a gambler. High stakes poker, very high, with friends and associates, and even an occasional trip to the casinos, I was told. Didn’t know him very well personally.”
“So he blew a bunch of money and offed himself? And Joyce made it look like a heart attack. Would explain why she’s so pissed at him.”
“It would, except it’s highly unlikely. Walter was actually quite an accomplished gambler. Consistently won more than he lost. You can do that with poker, some make their living at it. It’s probably not too great a breach of ethics to tell you his tax returns always expressed a general northerly direction in his financial circumstances. Joyce came into the marriage with her own plethora of trusts and investment instruments. I wouldn’t know the particulars, but a dramatic shortfall would be noticed.”
“Maybe all the excitement got to him.”
“It’s possible. He was a very reserved person.”
At that point I lost his attention to a half-wheel of Brie and a small pile of hand-sliced baguette. Amanda and I helped him wipe it out over another round of drinks. I started to sink deeper into the lush padding that softened the ornate iron recliner, feeling the sea breeze gently stir the satin summer air, now inky black and flecked with the random twinkle of lightning bugs.
“So no thoughts on Ivor Fleming,” I asked him.
“As I said, no chance of any inside information if he’s connected to a car bombing. But I can speculate, Governor Ridge’s proscriptions notwithstanding,” he said while surveying a plate of assorted fruits and crudites that suddenly appeared from out of the night as if the woman with the tray had been poised on the lawn for his cue. Probably sensed the disappearance of the last slice of cheese.
“Option one,” said Burton. “The investigators know Fleming is their man, and are merely crossing every imaginable T and dotting every I in constructing a bombproof case, if you will, essentially eliminating Fleming’s ability to mount a successful defense. Which is their modus operandi. Once they indict, they win, virtually every time. With no statute of limitations, and a steady, albeit constrained, flow of public financing, time is on their side. Peaches, anyone?”
“That’s what you think?”
“Just a possibility. It’s also possible Fleming’s appearance on the client list was just a bit of bad luck for Fleming, drawing the kind of scrutiny that could yield a banquet of unrelated but delectable prosecutorial fodder. So, the Federals, and now the State it appears, could be focused entirely on these collateral opportunities, preparing to move ahead with or without a resolution of the Eldridge matter.”
“Or the Sullivan matter, for that matter,” I said.
“This is merely speculation.”
“But it’s possible they’d be satisfied with a racketeering conviction and to hell with the murder.”
“You try the case you can win. It isn’t always the one you want.”
“It’s not what I want. I could give a crap about Fleming’s rackets.”
Burton rummaged around for one more peach, which he took some care in selecting.
“I don’t suppose you’d listen if I suggested you leave well enough alone,” he said.
“I would, Burt, honest to God I would. I never wanted any part of this thing. I was only trying to have a drink with Jackie Swaitkowski. Sullivan never should have asked me. As soon as he revisits the planet I’m telling him. That’s what I really want. His goddamned fault anyway.”
“With a knife in the gut and a smack on the head for his trouble,” said Burton.
“I’d have smacked him myself if I’d known where this was going. Take a page from Joyce Whithers.”
“You know how it is with people like Ivor Fleming. Once the die is cast, the threat perceived, it’s on to the death. Lacking the subtlety for a less self-destructive course, they never know how to stop.”
“I know.”
I was talking to Burton, but I was watching Amanda. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Not surprising for a girl who led with her looks and knew how to keep herself to herself. Who only let you see the part of her she wanted seen and nothing more. Hunkered down within a reinforced bunker built of intelligence and effortless deceit, as much to conceal an essential goodness as to advance the cause of self-preservation. It might have been because she grew up without a father, alert and aware but unsure of where it was all going. Or the natural accumulation of experience that comes early to girls men admire, but fear to approach. In fact, she’d been knocked around pretty hard most of her forty years, though it didn’t show unless you knew where to look. Maybe I saw it more than most, since I could never stop looking.
“So you won’t be coming to Butch’s Council Rock on the Giant Finger,” she said.
“Wouldn’t miss that. Art lover like me.”
“Butch Ellington,” she said to Burton, “he wants me to let him assemble a giant sculpture in one of the WB buildings. I told him I’d think about it.”
