We all sat, Robinson to my right, the other two to my left. Lasko leaned over the table, as if it were something he had bought. They stared at me, waiting as I considered how to start.
The phone rang. I picked it up. An overseas operator rasped at me, asking for Lasko. I handed it to him. His baritone voice was rich with satisfaction. “I’ve got some acquisitions in the fire. I can’t get away-people always needing to talk.” He spoke into the phone. “Leo. Where are you? Japan? What the hell time is it over there? Yes, I’m with the ECC. What’s up?” Lasko was conducting both sides of the conversation, for my benefit. I wondered how poor Leo liked getting up at midnight to call the boss.
Lasko kept talking to Leo, watching me. I watched back to keep him happy. “Yeah, OK. Thirty-five a ton? That’s a holdup.” His eyes followed me jealously, demanding my attention. “Listen, Leo, that’s bullshit. You ask that Jap where else he’s going to get coal like that for his crappy little island. Then take a walk. In two weeks he’ll be crawling.” I got the message: Lasko was a very important man. That was his way of relating to people. What was important was to be important. Lasko needed importance like a junkie needs smack. And Lehman had somehow threatened the supply.
Lasko finally rang off. I looked at him, waiting him out. He finally spoke. “Well, Mr. Paget, what’s on your mind?” His voice had a pushy heartiness, to prod me back in line. Catlow sat, hands on the table, completely still.
I answered politely. “I was thinking, Mr. Lasko, that you might throw out some suggestions as to what we can accomplish here.”
Lasko answered smoothly. “All right. I think we should let our hair down. I’m being practical. Your investigation is bad for my company.” He spread his hands in a gesture of openness. “Ask me anything you want. I’ll answer all your questions until you’re satisfied that you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about.” The amiable words were surface amenities; the speech was imperious. Lasko figured he owned me, like Lehman. His contempt was as palpable as the August heat.
I made myself smile. “I appreciate that.” I fished around for what was strange in the meeting. Then it hit me. No one had mentioned Alec Lehman.
I spoke diffidently. “Ready to go?”
Lasko smiled back, opening his hands again. “Ready.”
I spoke very slowly. “Did you kill Alexander Lehman?”
Each word dropped like a stone. Catlow’s eyes widened, almost imperceptibly. His right hand fluttered. The smile lingered on Lasko’s face a second after his brain tried to erase it. Then his features set in a cast as primitive as I had ever seen, the primal face of a predator. It was my answer. His formal response was an anticlimax, delivered in a monotone selected to be meaningless.
“No.”
“That’s a relief.” I turned to Robinson. “Do you have anything else for Mr. Lasko?”
Robinson stared at me, then shook his head solemnly.
Catlow cut in. The strain showed in his parched voice. “Surely you must have more questions. Mr. Lasko has made himself available, at considerable trouble, in the middle of three acquisitions. You should do a better job than this.”
McGuire just couldn’t get good help anymore. I waved Catlow’s words away and turned to Lasko. “Consider yourself cleared, Mr. Lasko. Can I see you out?”
Lasko’s baritone carried an icy tremor. “Mr. Paget, you’re making a serious mistake.” Condescension cut him to where he lived, pushed him to ultimates. His face said the rest-that I was making Lehman’s mistake.
I couldn’t let Lasko see my chill. I spoke quietly. “You’re a taxpayer. Write your Congressman. You and I are through-for now.”
Catlow touched Lasko’s sleeve. “Wait for me downstairs, Bill. Mr. Paget and I are going to talk.” Lasko didn’t answer. Catlow went on in the same calm tone. “This”-he nodded at me as if I were the potted plant-“is why I’m your lawyer.” Lasko was still staring at me. I wasn’t sure he had heard. The atmosphere was as murderous as fallout. Then Lasko wrenched out of his chair, raked me with a last hot glance, and stalked from the room. The man’s strange force lingered; the room seemed suddenly empty.
Catlow remained where he sat, eyeing us coolly across the table. He turned to Robinson. “Would you excuse us? Mr. Paget and I need some discussion time.”
Robinson glanced at me. I nodded. He left, looking dubious.
Catlow and I were alone. “You’ll have to excuse my client,” he said.
“Pretty broken up about Lehman, isn’t he?”
Catlow lit a cigarette, an appropriately cautious low-tar brand, and reached for an ashtray. His movements were spare and abstemious. He looked up. “I imagine that you’re feeling quite heroic. Every young government lawyer probably dreams of his moment in the sun. ‘Young Mr. Paget, valiant for truth.’” He exhaled smoke, and appraised me through the haze.
He was quietly patronizing, but his words were close enough to be uncomfortable. “Something like that.”
He gave a thin, satisfied smile. “It’s very foolish, Christopher. This case will come and go and in a year will be nothing more than a footnote in a budget request, gathering dust. Even if there is a case, it will settle for a consent decree, and nothing will have happened. Except to you.” He looked at me with level grey eyes, choosing his words with care. “Putting aside what was said here this afternoon, the consequences to you could be considerable. You will make enemies needlessly. You will be an undesirable, not because you’ve made people angry, but because you’ve made people angry in a way that reflects on your judgment-over nothing.”
His calm was oddly deflating. “Go on. I’m all ears.”
“There was also careless talk this afternoon-your careless talk-about matters which are not the province of your agency. The police have made no accusations. You have no one who, in the final analysis, will support you in this game.” His voice was mournful now, the dirge for my dead career. “You are alone. So there is nothing to be gained. Think on it.”
He was watching me expectantly. I noticed that a blood vein showed in his pale forehead. I watched him inhale. It made him look gaunt, like a death’s head. He was Mr. Outside to Lasko’s Mr. Inside. Catlow would take care of my career and handle the agency while Lasko commissioned the heavy stuff-traffic fatalities and death threats-at a safe distance. It was all very effective. And I was sick of it.
“It’s a good analysis, Mr. Catlow. But you’ve made one invalid assumption. You assume that I want to be like you. The truth is, I’d sooner flunk my Wassermann test. That’s not heroics. It’s just a fact.” My voice picked up tenor. “Now I’ll give you some advice. Your client’s performance today was one of the uglier things I’ve seen. But not as ugly as Alec Lehman, bleeding all over Arlington Avenue.” The vein in Catlow’s forehead was throbbing now; it made him seem as pale as ivory. I finished. “Lasko is a tar baby. You’re going to get tar all over you.”
Catlow stared for a moment; I wasn’t behaving right, not at all. Then he stood briskly, primed to leave. No final threats. Catlow was not a man to waste words; he would use them elsewhere. “Good-bye, Mr. Paget.” The good-bye carried echoes, as if I were going somewhere.
My voice stopped him. I spoke in a conversational tone. “You know, when I got to Lehman, his face was smashed in and his skull was crushed. One eye was closed and there was a sticky pool of stuff on the outside of his head that used to be on the inside.”
The vein pulsed; his eyes were knife-points of anger. I had spoken crudely, not like a lawyer, of forbidden things. Things that formal language made less real. He left quickly.
I slumped down in my chair. The party was over, and I was left to clean up the mess. I felt more tired than I could remember.
Fifteen
Robinson was fidgeting with the contents of his “in” box when I walked into his office. It was something he did when he was excited and wanted distraction.
“What happened?” he asked. His eyes were bright with curiosity.
I slid tiredly into the chair in front of his desk. “You guess, Jim.” I said it in a casual tone, to assure him that
