That's true in the courtroom and it's true on the street. I don't know what the hell you can do that the cops can't, but the one thing I don't have to worry about these days is money, and if I can throw a little of it your way I can tell myself I'm doing something to see that Will gets nailed before he nails me. Now why don't you just say you'll take the case so I can write you out a check?'
'I'll take the case.'
'See? You're stubborn, which may be part of the job description for what you do. But I'm persuasive, which is very definitely part of my job description.' He went over to the desk, got out his checkbook and wrote me a check, tore it out and handed it to me.
'A retainer,' he said. 'Good enough?'
The amount was two thousand dollars. 'That's fine,' I said.
'You have anything else you're working?'
'Not at the moment,' I said. 'I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'll start doing it in the morning.'
'And I'll call Donn at Reliable and see about getting my body guarded. What a thing to have to do. Can I tell you something? Don't repeat this, but until this afternoon I sort of liked Will.'
'You did?'
'Let's say I had a grudging admiration for him. He was a kind of urban folk hero, wasn't he? Almost like Batman.'
'Batman never killed anybody.'
'Not in the comic books. He does in the movies, but Hollywood'll fuck up anything, won't they? No, the real Batman never killed anybody.
Listen to me, will you? 'The real Batman.' But when you grew up on the comic book that's how it seems.'
'I know.'
'For Christ's sake,' he said, 'I'm Adrian Whitfield, I'm a fucking lawyer. That's all I am. I'm not the
Joker, I'm not the Penguin, I'm not the Riddler. What's Batman got against me?'
4
Elaine was still up when I got home, watching a wildlife documentary on the Discovery channel. I joined her for the last ten minutes of it. During the credit crawl she made a face and switched off the set.
'I should have done that when you came in,' she said.
'Why? I didn't mind watching.'
'What I have to learn,' she said, 'is always to skip the last five minutes of those things, because it's always the same. You spend fifty-five minutes watching some really nice animal, and then they ruin the whole thing by telling you it's endangered and won't last out the century. They're so determined to leave you depressed you'd think they had Prozac for a sponsor. How was Adrian Whitfield?'
I gave her a summary of the evening. 'Well, he's not depressed,'
she said. 'Bemused, it sounds like.
'Why me?' '
'Natural question.'
'Yeah, I'd say. How much did you say the retainer was? Two thousand dollars? I'm surprised you took it.'
'Cop training, I guess.'
'When somebody hands you money, you take it.'
'Something like that. He wanted to pay me for my time, and when I turned him down he decided he wanted to hire me. We can use the money.'
'And you can use the work.'
'I can, and maybe I'll be able to figure out something to do. I just hope it won't involve buying a computer.'
'Huh?'
'TJ. He was on my case earlier. When did he leave?'
'Half an hour after you did. I offered him the couch, but he didn't want to stay over.'
'He never does.'
' 'What you think, I's got no place to sleep?' I wonder where he does sleep.'
'It's a mystery.'
'He must live somewhere.'
'Not everybody does.'
'I don't think he's homeless, do you? He changes his clothes regularly and he's clean about his person.
I'm sure he doesn't bed down in the park.'
'There are a lot of ways to be homeless,' I said, 'and they don't all involve sleeping on the subway and eating out of Dumpsters. I know a woman who drank her way out of a rent-controlled apartment. She moved her things to
