I dropped my napkin and stooped to pick it up. Not scrambling on my hands and knees out the fire exit was a test of character.
We kept our voices down. The blare from the one TV with its sound turned up and from a whooping party of fans next to our table drowned us out from all but each other. “Why isn’t that a harboring rap?” I asked.
“Rule of law. Attorneys of record are immune. Also she hasn’t been tried in an American court. Also she doesn’t exist technically. The government in Pyongyang issued her death certificate. Our State Department could make a case overruling all that, but until it does I’m well in the clear.”
“You’re speaking in tongues, Counselor. If you implicated Sing in two murders, you violated privilege.”
“I didn’t do either. When I went to Thirteen Hundred and identified myself as your representative, Lieutenant Child was screening surveillance video from the entrance to the Annunciation shelter. He didn’t throw me out, so I watched too. There’s a dead spot between the last legitimate visitor and when you showed up, lasting about ten minutes. Now, who has the technology to wipe material from a DVD while it’s being recorded, and from a distance?”
“Child worked that out all by himself?”
“Not just from that. You told him about Peaceable Shore, remember. You don’t think he just let that drop, do you? The Detroit Police Department has access to the same high-tech equipment as Emil Haas. When Pacific Rim came up, and with it links to some of the multiple corporations it owned, including a Japanese manufacturer of electronic equipment, and then he figured out that anyone with that connection could use it to commit a crime—well, I’d shred a hunch like that in court, but there’s no law against a cop keeping his nose to the ground until he roots up something solid.
“I kept my mouth shut,” he went on. “You don’t have inside information on an ongoing investigation connected to your client drop in your lap and blow it by bragging about the important people you represent.”
“So why stand up for me?”
“Hear me out. She and I have never spoken or made direct contact. If I’m forced to divulge anything, I’d reveal the name of a legitimate venture capitalist in Grand Rapids who employed me to clear his technical expert of a hacking charge so he can advise him on how to protect his data from theft. I’m guessing he’s never had contact with Sing either. Her whole organization is a Chinese box, politically incorrect as that sounds. I couldn’t even swear under oath that I’m working on her behalf. Up till now everything’s been hints and innuendo; which the rawest public defender in the system could prevent from being read into the record without getting up from his desk.”
“How do you know it’s her?”
He’d stopped blinking during his speech. Now he resumed. “Who says cops cornered the market on hunches?”
“Do you know our history?”
“Of course. You were something of a local celebrity when she made all the wire services.”
“Did it ever occur to you she sent you to flush me out into the open?”
The sports fans next door let out another whoop and drank in unison. No one had scored; the rule seemed to be to take a shot every time the announcer told us what was actually happening in the game. At the current rate it would take them a week to work up a decent buzz.
Justice sent over a scowl and returned his attention to me. “Did I say Sing sent me?”
I waited. His habit of turning every conversation into a cross-examination was worse than the blinking.
With his condition he wasn’t equipped to win a staring contest. “I’ve been summoned to a meeting,” he said. “I hardly think she’ll be present, but knowing what I do about her I’m more than a little leery. For all I know, one of my legal victories from before I knew she existed upset some scheme of hers, and if I go, I won’t be coming back. Knowing what you know about her, I can’t think of better security than to bring you along.”
“I can. Don’t go.”
“That would be unethical. I’d already performed several services—which appeared innocuous enough at the time—before I found out who’d hired me. That makes me attorney of record. I could be disbarred for refusing to meet my client. What’s funny?”
I stopped in mid-chuckle. “Now every lawyer joke I’ve ever heard makes sense. There isn’t another species on earth that would choose death over forced retirement.”
“And do what, write my memoirs? Don’t waste money on a legal eagle’s autobiography. The code of the profession demands he leave out the good parts. What else, join CNN? I’m too successful; you have to blow an open-and-shut case like O.J.’s to get an audition. I’d rather be dead. But just at the moment I’d rather be alive than dead.”
“You don’t need me to hold your hand. You must have a carry permit.”
Automatically he slapped the left side of his suitcoat. The way it was cut, I hadn’t been able to tell if he was armed. Some detective. Some tailor.
“Of course I have. In my game you measure your success in death threats. But I’ve never fired it except at paper targets, which rarely return fire.”
“You don’t want me. You want Wild Bill. The last time we crossed paths my weapon of choice was a wine bottle.”
“You’re the only one who ever got close enough to her to use it.”
The TV announcer described a play. A member of the big party knocked back his glass, stuck his muzzle into a bowl of French onion soup, and made noises in it like an outboard motor. If you can’t carry a load any bigger than that, you should give up sports.
Justice had picked up a wing. Now he put it down without biting into it and used his napkin on his fingers, one by one, the way a dowager takes off her gloves. He slid a gray-and-yellow leather case out of the inside pocket opposite the shoulder rig, uncapped a gold fountain pen, scribbled, tore loose a rectangle of paper, and glided it across the table facedown.
I left my wings on the plate, and my appetite with them. It had nothing to do with the guy playing Jacques Cousteau in his soup. I peeled up the hole card, peeked, and slid it back across the table.
“Too many zeroes. You trying to put me in a bigger bracket?”
Blink-blink-blink. “If you’re seriously worried about that, order two more beers while I find an ATM.”
“I haven’t finished mine.” I tapped the check. “You can hire a six-hitch team of professional bodyguards for that.”
“Can I tell you a story? It won’t take as long as my summations.”
“Does it have a happy ending?”
“Depends on how you feel about Depression-era politics.”
“I’m already laughing. Proceed, Counselor.”
“In nineteen-thirty-five, an ear-nose-and-throat doctor with a grudge against Governor Huey Long of Louisiana stepped out from behind a pillar of the capitol building in Baton Rouge and plugged him. Long’s bodyguard and a police officer returned fire, and kept firing when the doctor was on the floor. Hit him fifty-nine times, reloading whenever the cylinders clicked. Guess what the coroner found when he sliced the governor open.”
“From what I’ve read, a liver the size of New Orleans.”
“The thirty-eight slug that killed him. The doctor’s gun was a twenty-five. Long could have survived that, but not a ricochet wound from a weapon fired by one of his own guards while they were chopping his assailant to pieces.”
“I heard the same thing. I just wanted to hear how you told it. I also heard the bullet was from a forty-five, and that it didn’t happen that way. The smaller caliber did the trick.”
“Maybe so, but the principle is sound, based on the law of diminishing returns: Every time you hire an extra guard your risk increases fifty percent.”
The waitress came, and went away quietly while we were staring at each other. He was getting better at it. I said, “All it takes is one.”
“I did my homework. You don’t lose your head in a tight situation.”
“You’re making me blush; but I’ll pass.”
“Scared?”
“Petrified. I’ve played enough poker to know when someone’s trying to buy the pot. Cut it by two thirds and we’ll do business.”
“You’re dickering in the wrong direction, Walker.”
“Okay. Offer me three times as much. You got me out of custody and I’m grateful. Not that I was going stir-crazy after a couple of hours, but I can’t do my job from the bucket. If I took that check, it’d make me so damn grateful I’d have to drop everything I’m doing and come running whenever you whistle. If that’s what you want, you’re going to have to cough up a lot more.”
He drank and sat with his mouth full of beer. Then he swallowed, set down his glass, tore up the check, pocketed the pieces, and wrote another. An experienced lawyer can look daggers at you and write at the same time; but an experienced detective can read upside down. I took the check without looking at it and shook his hand.
“When and where? I need to stop and pick up my laundry.” I patted my own left armpit; not that I ever wore anything as uncomfortable as a shoulder harness.
He traded the checkbook for a tablet as thick as a Pop-Tart and looked at the time. “One hour. Penthouse suite in the MGM Grand.” He put it away with an expression like a pickled beet. “Must be a representative. Criminals only return to the scene of the crime in cheap fiction. Especially supercriminals who need to remain invisible.”
I finished my beer and set the glass down in the center of the cocktail napkin. “How many supercriminals do you know, Counselor?”