“If you had your choice of any time in history to live, which would you choose?”
“You got that from a book,” I said. “Carson McCullers.”
“I didn’t say it was original to me.”
I frowned at my uninvited guest. Leo Dorfman was the lawyer people had in mind when they told lawyer jokes. He’d made himself a millionaire several times representing the kind of client the no-nukes said would be the last creatures to survive the apocalypse: cockroaches, corrupt politicians, hit-and-run drivers, serial rapists, pedophiles, stars of reality TV.
Professional killers.
Which were my personal grudge.
We’re all of us potential murderers, but pulling the trigger on a perfect stranger for a paycheck is worse than strangling women who remind you of your mother. At least there’s a personal element there.
This was no new prejudice, but it was fresh again since Toronto. That story was three weeks old and had dropped off the wire for lack of a lead.
“Humor me.” He slid his checker—black, always black—to the last rank on the board and snapped his fingers until I crowned him. He traveled with his own board and men: I don’t think there’s a way to rig the game, but if there is, he’d know how. “At my age I’m still a student of human behavior.”
Just what age that was depended on the observer. Some people are thirty forever, but for reasons known only to him, Dorfman had stalled at eighty. He’d go on being eighty until he crumbled to dust. His face was unwrinkled, but the skin had shrink-sealed itself to bone and his hair was the color and texture of fishline, combed sideways across pink scalp. Although he was retired from daily practice, he put on a different three-piece suit every day, with a black silk knitted tie on a white button-down shirt; permanently in fashion, a stopped clock like the rest of him.
“I’m partial to the roaring twenties,” I said, blocking his next move. “My father was always talking about how much fun Prohibition was.”
“It’s overrated.” And with that I added another twenty years to my estimate of the time he’d spent on earth. “You took your life in your hands every time you drank, and the drys were worse than Hari Krishna, clustered on every corner shaking their fingers in your face.”
“Okay, you pick one.”
He jumped the man I’d just moved. “Here. Now.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“No. I’m a lawyer, don’t forget. Until you can prove to me in court that it’s possible to travel through time, I’ve got no choice but to be here, now. So I don’t dwell on it.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“I needed a subject for conversation. You won’t work for me, so I was running dry.”
“You know why I won’t.”
Everyone’s entitled to legal representation, but Dorfman had a reputation for performing as a buffer between hit men and their potential clients. A dozen investigations had failed to produce any evidence, so I hadn’t thrown him out yet; but nor would I take any job he offered.
“You’re pretty picky for a man in your tax bracket.”
I slid a checker onto a square, but kept my finger on it. “Remind me again why these visits. I ran an errand for you once, but that was before you pled the Fifth twenty-six times in front of a grand jury. It was so long ago I forget what it was.”
“I doubt that. When Cecil Fish was the prosecutor in Iroquois Heights I came to you with a tip that he was planning to frame Joe Minuto by sneaking a rock of heroin into his coat at a wedding. You had Joe’s tailor sew up all his pockets.”
“Not original to me. Frank Costello did it first.”
“I knew Frank. I never heard that story. He was the most close-mouthed man I ever knew; and I haven’t exactly traveled among the garrulous and gregarious.”
“They’re like moths. Born without mouth parts.” I stretched and yawned; but he never took hints. I looked at my watch. “I’m interviewing a client in Birmingham in an hour.”
“You haven’t had a client there since Steve Jobs was in diapers. You think I only come here to play checkers?”
I’d been wondering when he’d come around to it. His mind wasn’t on the game or he’d have cleaned me out ten minutes ago. I made a bonehead move just to clear the board.
“A client of mine is getting a divorce,” he said, skipping over my pieces straight to the corner and scooping up the loot with the same hand.
“I don’t touch divorce. Neither do you.”
“I recommended a good gal. You want to leave your wife with nothing but her girdle, you want a broad to represent you. They go after their own like wolverines. It’s the wife he’s worried about, and that’s where you come in.”
“He wants the girdle too?”
“You better ask him. I don’t want to be disbarred for telling tales out of school this late in the game. I’d rather they earn it.”
“I won’t work for you, Leo. You said it yourself.”
“It wouldn’t be for me. This is a favor I’m doing him. Fish had a solid case against him once and I broke it over my knee. After that I had to beat the clients away with a stick.”
“What’s his name?”
He looked up from under the white awning of his brows. “If I tell you, you’ll turn down the job.”
“O.J. back in trouble already?”
“That amateur?”
* * *
He told me the name, but it meant nothing to me, and he wouldn’t be drawn out. I didn’t try; a trio of congressional committees had dashed themselves against that rock. After he folded his board and left, I called Detroit Police Headquarters. A broken windpipe came on the line.
I said, “Lieutenant Stonesmith, please.”
“If you’re reporting a missing person, she’s no longer with that detail.”
“I’m not. I heard she was back in Major Crimes.”
“She was the first appointment when they reinstated it under the new chief. You reporting a crime?”
“Maybe. I need an expert who can tell me whether it’s major.”
Wind whistled through the pipe. “You don’t call this number when you want to tell jokes, mister. Believe me, you don’t.”
“I believe you. Lieutenant Stonesmith, please.”
The phone clicked. I waited for the dial tone; but he hadn’t hung up, just put me on hold. It clicked again and a voice came on that sounded like honey boiled in Kentucky bourbon.
“Stonesmith.”
“Amos Walker, Deb. Get tired of chasing runaways and restless wives?”
“Not really, but I knew who to put back on staff, and the chief was desperate. I got a guy in the FBI. He lets me know who’s under investigation. Want a job?”
“Sounds like it’s not just the chief who’s desperate.”
“Our evidence room moves more merchandise than Costco, my best officer from the old days beat a suspect into jelly, and since cops turned into silhouette targets out on the highways and byways of this great land of ours the training course is emptier than Kmart. When I file my reports, I file my reports. They can’t even dig me up a clerk. Am I desperate?”
“You don’t want me, Deb. The last time I was in uniform I punched my way out of it in the locker room, and I was a lot less hot-tempered then.”
“Well, let me know if you find anyone dumb enough to take the oath. What’s the squeal today?”
“I need everything you’ve got on a guy named Peter Macklin.”
The silence on her end broke in half when a chair squeaked and a door clicked shut.
“All right, what’s the job?”
“There isn’t one yet. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Unless I don’t know you the way I think I do, there isn’t one.”
“Now I’m curious. What have you got on him?”
“Not a damn thing, that’s the problem. Come down here. This is better in person.”