Down Here

minute,” I told Pepper.

I went into one of the back rooms and pulled a cloned-code cell phone out of its charging unit. I punched in the private number I have for the only criminal lawyer in the City I trust.

“What?” Davidson answered.

“You recognize my voice?” I asked. I hadn’t spoken to him in years. Not since NYPD found a severed skeletal hand in a Dumpster, right next to a pistol with my thumbprint on the stock.

“I believe so.” He spoke in the pompous voice he uses to distance himself from potential danger in conversations. “Help me out a little bit.”

“It’s not my ghost,” I said. “I’ve done some jobs for you, and you’ve done some for me.”

“Do you have some, uh, distinguishing characteristic I might recognize?”

“Yeah. I always pay. And that cigar I just heard you light, it’s probably from the batch I brought you, a few years back.”

“Very good,” he said, chuckling. “You should have been a detective.”

“I need a lawyer. Not for me. For a friend. Being arraigned tonight. Can you handle it?”

“Can I . . . ? Ah, you mean, will I? Are we talking just for tonight, or . . . ?”

“To the end of the road,” I said. “First-round TKO, or a decision on points. Any way it plays.”

“Would I know this ‘friend’ of yours?”

“Yeah. Her name is Wolfe.”

“Wolfe from City-Wide? Are you—?”

“I’m cancer-serious,” I said. “I’m also short on facts. It’s either an attempt murder or, by now, a homicide.”

“Wolfe? Are they floridly insane?” he said. “Unless you’re talking a DV?”

“Domestic violence? Wolfe? Come on, pal. Sure, she’s not the kind of woman who’d take a beating from a boyfriend. But with that dog of hers, what kind of psycho would even try? No, the vic was a stranger. But he supposedly made a statement.”

“Named her?”

“What I’m told.”

“Do they have forensics?”

“You know all I know.”

“And we both know she didn’t make a statement.”

“Right. Can you get right over there? I don’t know when they’re going to arraign her, and—”

“I’ll make some calls, see if I can find out,” Davidson said. “But don’t worry; I’ll be there when they bring her over. I should be able to speak to her in the pens before they—”

“Listen. She doesn’t know about this. Me hiring you, I mean. Just tell her Pepper set it up,” I said, looking over at Pepper, catching her nod of agreement, “okay?”

“Done. My fee will be—”

“Paid,” I said, cutting the connection.

^“Do you know if they tossed her place?” I asked Pepper.

“They didn’t have a no-knock warrant,” she said. “When they pounded on the door, Bruiser went ballistic. She told them she had to lock the dog up before she could let them in—that kept them out of there for a few more minutes.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s how I found out about it. She dialed the office, and left the connection open while she talked to the police. And when she finally let them in, she kept the phone going. I have the whole thing on tape, what they said to her, everything.”

“Did she sound—?”

“She sounded strong,” Pepper said. “One of the cops, he didn’t want to cuff her. Another one said it was procedure. Wolfe told him—the cop who wanted to cuff her—if they tried to perp-walk her she’d make someone pay for it.”

That was Wolfe. “She drinks blood for breakfast,” the Daily News once said of her, in an article about New York prosecutors.

“The cops were scared of Bruiser; but he wasn’t even barking, once she told him to stop. The one who wanted to cuff her said if Bruiser made a move he was going to blow him away. Wolfe told them if they wanted to arrest her she was ready to go. And if they didn’t, she was leaving, so they better shut up about shooting her dog.

“I heard the door close. Then I heard Bruiser making little noises, like he was . . . in mourning. But he stayed, right where she told him. So I ran over there and got him.”

“You did the right thing, Pepper. They’ll be back to vacuum her place. If you hadn’t gotten him out of there, it would have been a bloodbath.”

“Yes. She called me later, from the lockup. That’s when she told me about the man who—”

“But not his name, right?”

“No.”

“Okay, don’t worry. We’ll get that tonight, at the arraignment.”

“Burke . . .”

“Go back to the office, Pepper. Put your crew on alert. I’m sure Mick is—”

“Mick is crazy from this,” she said. “I’ve never seen him be so . . . I don’t know what.”

“Keep him close, then. If Wolfe wanted you to get anything out of her place, she would have found a way to tell you, right?”

“Sure. We have a code for—”

“Okay. I’m going to be carrying a cell phone twenty-four/seven until we know what’s going on. Write down the number. . . .”

Pepper gave me a withering look. Held it until I lamely recited the number. She nodded her head sharply, letting me know she had it . . . and it wouldn’t ever be on a piece of paper.

“Don’t show up at arraignment tonight,” I told her. “Mick, either. You two, you’re her hole card now.”

As soon as Pepper and the Rottweiler left, I started working the phones. First stop was Hauser, a reporter I went way back with. All the way back to my old pal Morelli, the dean of organized-crime reporting in New York. A hardcore reporter from the old school, he had been covering the Mob for so long they probably asked him for advice.

Morelli was off the set now. He’d finally hit it big. After years of threatening to do it, he wrote a book, and it blossomed out sweet. He’s been on the Holy Coast for a while now, tending the harvest.

But a pro like Morelli doesn’t move on until he’s trained new recruits. J. P. Hauser had been his choice.

“I ask the kid, go over and see this guy, supposed to be an informant, staying in some rat-trap over in Times Square,” Morelli had told me, years ago. “This guy, his story is that he’s got a bad ticker. So he wants to make his peace with God, give me all the inside dope on a muscle operation that Ciapietro’s crew is running out at the airport. So I tell J.P., get me everything, all right?”

Morelli smiled, taking a sip of his drink. When we were coming up, he lived on Cutty Sark and Lucky Strikes. By then, he was down to red wine and off tobacco. “Okay, so, a few hours later, I get this frantic call from the informant. He’s screaming blue murder. Said J.P. rips his place up worse than any parole officer ever did, takes the serial number from this guy’s clock radio, looks at the labels in his coat, checks his shoe size.

“And then he whips out one of those little blood-pressure cuffs—you know, the kind you slip over your finger? Wants to see if this guy’s really got a bad heart. You ever hear anything like that?

“J.P., he’s a fucking vacuum cleaner, you understand? He’s going to pull the dirt out until they pull his plug. I fucking love this kid.”

Hauser wasn’t a kid anymore. And he hasn’t freelanced in years; he’s got a regular gig with the National Law Journal now, mostly covering major tort litigation. I didn’t have a direct line for him, but the switchboard put me through quick enough.

“Hauser!” he barked into the receiver.

“It’s me,” I said.