After Showering, Dorsey went through two towels drying his six-foot-four-inch frame. He put on a pair of fatigue pants speckled with paint, the waistband of which matched his age, thirty-eight. After struggling into a gray sweatshirt with matching paint speckles, he shoved his feet into a pair of worn jogging shoes and sat at the edge of his bed, listening for the front doorbell. From his bedroom window, through the growing darkness of the October evening, Dorsey could see the back of another row house across the alley from his own backyard. Beyond that was the Monogahela River, reflecting the soft glow of the mercury lamps strung along the Tenth Street bridge. Sitting there, Dorsey again ran through his court appearance, memories he had hoped to rinse away in the shower. Maybe, he thought, a shower of beer would do the trick. Jack “Personal Injury” Stockman. P. I. Stockman. The guy is hot shit.
The low electric buzz of the doorbell pulled Dorsey away from the courtroom and downstairs to the front door. Through the door’s glass, partially blocked by a cardboard sign jammed into its left corner, he saw two men standing on the stoop. One was short and heavy, in his mid-sixties, carrying two brown grocery sacks. The second one was much younger and of medium height, wearing a necktie and a trench coat. Dorsey opened the door. The second man in, the younger of the two, stopped in the doorway and tapped a finger on the cardboard sign. Printed in green on white, it read CARROLL DORSEY, INFORMATIONAL SERVICES TO THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY AND THE LEGAL COMMUNITY.
“Forget yesterday,” the younger man said. “You’ll have a day all your own. Goes around and comes around. Al and I still like you.”
“Thank you, Bernie,” Dorsey said, a grin betraying his formal response. “And fuck you, I guess.”
Dorsey followed his visitors into the hall. To the right were double sliding doors, and the older man worked a hand free and stabbed at a handle with his knuckles, sending one of the doors flying back on its overhead track. Dorsey reached ahead and flicked on the overhead light, and the three men entered his office. The man with the grocery bags went directly to the desk and dumped the bags on the blotter.
“Well,” Dorsey said, “I see you both made it. More important, I see that the cargo made the trip safely too.”
“It traveled well.” Al Rosek took off his lined zipper jacket, draped it across the back of the armchair next to the desk, and dropped into the seat, shifting his weight from one buttock to the other until he was settled.
Dorsey sat behind the desk. “But Al, the desk is no place for this stuff. It should’ve gone there.” He indicated a small office refrigerator behind the desk at the side of the bookcase.
“Bullshit. Me, I’m like the Teamsters. We haul the stuff, take it anywhere you want it to go, but we don’t unload. Sorry, Dorsey, the shop steward says no crossin’ of craft lines. It’s a serious violation.”
“That’s how it’s got to be, okay. Unions, backbone of the country.” Dorsey swiveled toward the bags and tore at them greedily, pulling out five six-packs of beer and a large bag of Pennsylvania Dutch pretzels. “And the shipment, I believe, is correct.”
“Got it straight, always do,” Al said. “Thirty-one years—owned and worked the bar for thirty-one years now, and never botched an order. Two Irons, two Rolling Rocks for you, and a sixer of Michelob for this guy.” With a tilt of his head, Al indicated Bernie.
“This guy?” Dorsey repeated, his voice heavy with concern, his outstretched hands pleading. “This guy, as you have the balls to call him, is Bernie. Bernie the attorney. Wisest of adjudicators, rival and close second to Solomon. This guy, Al, is the famous Bernard S. Perlac, attorney-at-something-or-other. Hell, Bern, what is that stuff you’re an attorney at?”
“Lemme see,” Bernie said, supine on the chaise. He wore a white oxford shirt buttoned to the throat, and his red silk necktie flowed gracefully across his breastbone to the top of his navy chalk-striped pants. “It was a school. I seem to remember attending a school of some sort. Lemme see, what did they call it? Thought you could help on this one, Dorsey. As I recall, you went there for a while. But I think I went there a little longer, after you blew out.”
“I’d be wrong to help you; it’d be cheatin’.”
“Never mind, I’ve got it!” Bernie sprang into a seated position. “Law. They called the fucking thing a law school. And so I sit here, at least until I lie back down, a law school graduate, an A-one lawyer. Bernard S. Perlac—yes, Dorsey, it’s true—attorney-at-law. Get to you a little?”
“I get misty-eyed all over again,” Dorsey said, cramming beer cans into the midget refrigerator.
“Comic geniuses.” Al cracked open an Iron City. “Ever get some real jobs, put in some regular hours, there wouldn’t be any time for clowning. Especially you, Dorsey, lucky enough to have a young thing like Gretchen to spend your time with. Girl like her, with a wreck like you? I can’t figure it.”
“Young girls find me exotic,” Dorsey said, settling back into his seat, a Rolling Rock in his hand.
“The movie,” Al said. “C’mon, Dorsey, we came to see this movie of yours. The new one.”
“Showing your age, Al, really are,” Dorsey said. “Not movies nowadays, Grandpop. These are videos. No white screen to unroll. No film to crop every time it’s shown. Videotape: shove in the cassette you’re in business.”
“Just show it, please?”
“Yeah,” Bernie repeated. “Just show it, please?”
Dorsey took a tape cassette, a copy of the one he had mailed that afternoon to Fidelity Casualty, from a desk drawer and slapped it into the VCR atop his twenty-inch television.
“So what’s on the program tonight?” Bernie asked.
“Something of a New Wave feature,” Dorsey said, returning to his seat. “It’s called Cement Man, a real tear-jerker. How many hankies you equipped with?”
The TV screen went from black to gray, and then a row house much like Dorsey’s appeared. The camera angle was on a diagonal from the left and pointing down from about shoulder height. From the covered walkway between two houses came a man in his late forties, wearing a stained navy sweatshirt. In his left hand he held a four-foot wrecking bar, which he began to use against the cement sidewalk. He worked the curved business end into an existing crack and put his back into it. Cement chunks split off into the air. After going at it for a few more minutes, he dropped the bar, lowered himself into a crouch, and began gathering the debris.
“This is it,” Dorsey said. “Here it comes now, the part you’re gonna love.”
The videotape’s subject carried a load of debris through the walkway and returned for another. As he bent down, his face was to the camera; his expression turned to a scowl of suspicion.
“Busted.” Al left his chair for another beer. “Looks like this guy caught on.”
“Just watch,” Dorsey said calmly. No, he thought, DeMarco never caught on. Too busy working. P. I. Stockman, he’s the one who caught on. Somehow.
Suspicion left the man’s face and he went blank. Cautiously, he turned to left profile and reached a hand back to the seat of his pants. Now his face showed disgust as he fanned at his ass.
“Goddamn!” Bernie shouted. “The guy cut the cheese. Dorsey, you must’ve pissed yourself.”
“Job like this, I take along a pair of plastic underwear.”
“So what’s his story?” Al asked. As they spoke, the man on screen went back to work on the sidewalk.
“Auto, personal injury. And, as you can see, a solid fake.” Dorsey took another Rolling Rock from the refrigerator. “He’s the one who got away. I thought Bernie might’ve filled you in on the way over.”
“So this is the one,” Al said. “Bernie told me you had a bad break, but he thinks you’ll be all right.”
“Really, Dorsey,” Bernie said. He finished his beer and gestured for Dorsey to toss him another. “You haven’t lost face around here. That young shit they assigned to the case should’ve settled and never taken on Stockman. Should’ve settled up and called it a victory.”
“Settle. You lawyers like that, huh?” Al asked Bernie.
“Looking at me here flat on my back, Al, you may find it hard to believe I’m a good lawyer. Want to know why?” Bernie did not wait for an answer. “Because I very rarely go to court. Settle ’em ahead of time, that’s the moneymaker. Hearings and trials, they’re too much like work. Take time, too, time I can put to better use elsewhere. Like bringing in new business for the firm. Or maybe sitting at my desk billing more time for more clients. Better believe I like to settle.”
The tape continued for another ten minutes of manual labor, until both Bernie and Al decided they’d had enough. Dorsey rewound the tape and returned it to the desk drawer. Al remarked he had been asking around about Dorsey; he hadn’t seen him much lately. “My Rolling Rock seems to last a lot longer when you’re not around,” Al told him.
“My time’s been filled with a little of this and that.” Dorsey grinned with satisfaction. “Chased down some witnesses for a civil suit. Even had a job for Bernie’s firm and did it pretty well. I was their hero.”
“Unlike this DeMarco trial, which is no big deal,” Bernie said. “You certainly were our hero, but only for a day; then we got over it and settled down to business. But, regardless, it was a good piece of work, which led to a brilliant settlement.”
“Yeah,” Dorsey said. “I did that. But mostly it’s been insurance jobs lately.”
“Checkin’ out more deadbeats?” Al asked.
“Pretty much,” Dorsey said. “Not with the camera, mostly just asking around about guys. Workers’ comp, a little auto. Last few weeks, the stuff has been pouring in. I’ve put some thought into buying a bigger mailbox.”
“Sounds funny,” Bernie said. “How come you’re getting so much? Stuff you’re talking about, surveillance and even just checking on a guy, that usually goes to the big outfits because of the price. And some of the local carriers have in-house guys. Somebody must like you, want to make you rich.”
“Like me? Somebody out there loves me—the claims manager at Fidelity Casualty. You know him, Ray Corso? Well, things may change after this DeMarco deal, but up to now I’ve been getting tons of work from him. Back in early summer, around the first of July, Corso calls and asks if I can come to his office for a talk, which of course I do. Well, Corso starts right in about how the company wants to get tough and run a lot of cases to ground. Really sew up some bad ones. Get aggressive, he keeps on saying. I don’t think this guy could get aggressive in a whorehouse. But he comes right across with eight cases and says expense is no concern.”
“Can’t be; it doesn’t work that way,” Bernie said. “Corso’s like all the rest, he’s got a money ceiling on his authority. Tell you what: you send in big bills, really milk this thing, there’s going to be invoices coming back in the mail with PISSED OFF stamped across ’em.”
“Who’s the investigator here?” Dorsey asked. “I talked to Corso, and I’m telling you the money is there. Already finished some of the jobs, and the bills were paid in full. Big bills like you wouldn’t believe.”
Bernie sipped his beer and shook his head. “Still doesn’t sound right, that much work going to just one guy. Don’t get pissed off and take it the wrong way, but you think your old man might have a little something to do with this?”
Dorsey stopped his beer three inches from his mouth and cut his eyes at Bernie. “No, I’m not taking it wrong, I’m taking it right, and I am pissed off. The old man, his day is done. Shot his wad a long time back. He doesn’t have a thing to do with this.”
“Okay, just guessing is all,” Bernie said. “So, anyways, where’s all this work at?”
“Not much here in the city.” Dorsey sipped his beer, glad to be off the subject of his father. “Been hauling my ass all over western P.A. for months. Mill towns, mostly. Allenport, Monessen, Aliquippa, those sorts of places. Next week’s work is all in Westmoreland County; then I go to Johnstown. Working on an hourly rate so the mileage is money. Doing in-depth shit like the man asks for.”
“Guy could get rich,” Al said, resting his beer on the curve of his stomach, “if he was smart enough to go to them places in a short-haul truck with a load of whatever. A guy could double his take, maybe triple it.”
“Yeah, Al, sure,” Dorsey said. “I’ve done a lot of surveillance from the back of a big orange sixteen-foot U-Haul. Who would notice me?”