The shallow clicking of the receptionist tapping keys outside drifted into the office; it was that quiet.
“I can’t do that,” Mihalich said finally. “This isn’t door-to-door sales. I can’t just approach someone cold and ask him to retain me as his attorney. It’s unethical.”
“No, just tacky. Ambulance chasers do it all the time.”
His look of perennial surprise became something else. “For someone who’s asking for an impossible favor, you sure suck at choosing vocabulary.”
“I’ve been told that more recently than you’d think,” I said. “If I’m rude, it’s because I haven’t got the time to brush up on my Emily Post. If I don’t have something to show my client by this weekend, I won’t have a client.”
“What makes you think he’d want anything to do with me after the way his trial turned out?”
“You know the answer to that better than I would. Your work involves turning people’s attitudes around to match yours.”
His chair wheezed as he leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk. “Are you retaining my services?”
“That wouldn’t do me any good. I need you to retain mine. That way I’m representing an officer of the court, entitled to lawyer-client confidentiality, and in a position to demand to meet with an inmate in private. You wouldn’t even have to be present.”
“What could you gain there you couldn’t in the visitors’ room?”
“It’s not what I’d gain, but what I’d lose. Namely a third party listening in.”
“They can’t do that.”
I took my turn at smiling. “You’ve been out of criminal law a long time, Counselor. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act changed everything.”
“What’s RICO got to do with a domestic killing?”
“You know the system. The feds couldn’t make a charge stick without throwing away the Bill of Rights, so they came up with a jump wire around it: They bug Catholic confessionals, suspend habeas corpus, stand the rule of law on its head by requiring the defense to prove innocence rather than the prosecution to prove guilt. It worked so swell they let the locals in on it. Since nine-eleven, all the lines are fuzzy. Someday somebody will take it all the way up to the Supreme Court, and if the right people are on the bench, we’ll have something like justice back. But that won’t happen between now and Saturday.”
“My God, if what you say is true, how can you be sure your private conversation won’t be bugged?”
“Let me worry about that.” I waited. If what I’d said wasn’t enough, nothing else I could come up with would be.
He sat in the same position a long time, resting on his forearms with his off-the-rack sport coat rucked up behind his neck. “And I should do this why?”
“If you don’t know the answer to that, why did you agree to see me?”
“Curiosity.”
“Bull. It wasn’t your fault you were outmaneuvered in the courtroom. Innocent or not, Corbeil got a raw deal and it wasn’t because you were inexperienced. If that didn’t stick in your craw, you’d still be fighting the dirty fight in criminal procedure.”
He nodded; not that it meant anything. “What do you charge?”
“You’re in luck. Today’s a holiday in Togo. I’m offering a special rate. Got a buck?”
He stroked a thumb across the button on his intercom, a twin of the one in the outer office; not to activate it. He seemed to be a man who liked to touch smooth things.
“How do I know if you can be trusted? Or if you’re even who you say you are?”
I broke a card out of my wallet and passed it across the desk. It was embossed with the seal of the Detroit Police Department in blue and gold. “That’s the extension of an inspector downtown. You can check the number online. We’ve known each other longer than we have anyone else.” I got up.
He looked up from the card. “Where are you going?”
“Just outside. Fulsome praise embarrasses me.”
The girl in the blue-black helmet jumped when I closed the door behind me. She was staring so hard at her screen she hadn’t heard me entering. There didn’t seem to be such of a much to look at, just a small piece of off-white crockery without a handle and some kind of insignia enameled on it in pale blue. Some anonymous party at eBay had sent her a message that someone had beaten her bid.
I placed a palm on her desk and bent closer to the monitor. “What’s the prize?”
“Egg cup. I collect railroad china. This one came from the A, T, and SF. That’s—”
“Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe. I know the song. Aren’t you the Pokémon generation?”
“My boyfriend says I have an old soul.”
My inner child was older, but I said: “Too pricey?”
“I can afford twice the reserve. But this happens all the time. Snipers swoop in and top me just before the auction closes. This office doesn’t have the technology to compete.”
“How long before closing?”
“Three minutes and change.”
“Bid twice as much as you can afford.”
“That’s too risky. What if it’s accepted?”
“So you skip lunch for a week. Only it won’t go that high, and you’ll have fun watching the snipers bomb out.” I looked shame-faced. “I don’t know Bill Gates from Buffalo Bill. A friend of mine uses the Net like a toy train, and I’m a good listener.”
Her intercom buzzed. “That’s me.” I let myself back into the private office.
The thin smile was back behind the desk. “Are you sure you and this inspector are friends?”
“I didn’t say that.” I didn’t sit.
“He asked what floor my office is on, and when I told him he said, ‘No good, because five minutes after you come to an understanding you’ll want to throw him out a window.’”
“We kid,” I said. “He’s a kidder.”
“He also said that if I didn’t trust you I should be disbarred for criminal stupidity.”
“He’s a serious man.”
He held out a tired-looking dollar. I relieved him of it and slipped it into my wallet.
“Do I get it back when Corbeil turns me down?”
A plastic stand on the desk displayed a sheath of his business cards. I helped myself to one. “If he does, I can use this to bluff my way in.”
“They’ll check.”
I stared at him. His cheeks got pink. “Oh. Right.”
We shook hands again.
The receptionist was beaming when I came out. “I got it, and for less than I budgeted. The pirate I was bidding against hit the wall three times before the horn! That was as much fun as getting the cup.”
I grinned and gave her one of my cards. “Call me if there’s a crack in it. I know a good lawyer.”