Read Legal Tender Page 21


  The file was a mess of yellow legal papers scribbled in a childish scrawl. Celeste had apparently conducted only a few interviews with Eileen, and his notes were filled with incomplete sentences: Grad HS. Cheerl. Drinking. Father in service. Throughout, in the margins and even across the notes, it read:

  apple 35

  orange 30

  bread 100

  Snickers—Fun Size (small) 150

  Eggbeaters 150??? (check this)

  toast; margarine 80

  Baby Ruth—King Size,

  but only half—?????

  Celeste’s calorie-counting was far more meticulous than his record-keeping. It took me a full two hours to recreate his interview with Eileen, which revealed no clues anyway. The rest of the notes were phone numbers in Los Angeles and New York, with names like William Morris scratched next to them. Evidently not witnesses, but film and book agents. Celeste’s attempts to sell the story of Eileen’s miserable little life. I put the file away in annoyance and pulled out what I hoped would be the gold mine.

  The audiotapes. Four plastic cassettes I assumed were the unabridged Eileen. They were unnumbered and unlabeled. I turned them over in my hand. I’d taken a chance swiping them, but so be it, I needed to hear what they said.

  I gathered my purse and file from the carrel and prowled around until I found the library’s listening booth. It had a heavy glass window in the door and a tape recorder on a built-in desktop inside. I sat down, put on the earphones, and loaded one of the cassettes.

  Eileen was giggling at something Celeste had said, and just the sound of it made me angry. That voice—high, careless, flirtatious. And dangerous, cunning. Eileen had murdered a man and put me solidly on the hook for it. I turned up the volume. The interview was in a question-and-answer format:

  Q: Tell me about your relationships, Eileen. The relationships that formed your personality.

  A: Only the hot stuff now, right? (Giggle, giggle)

  Q: Right.

  A: Well, Bill, of course, he wasn’t the first.

  Q: Kleeb, you mean. Well, who was?

  A: Oh, a boy from home. When I was, like, fourteen?

  Q: That’s young.

  A: Nah. Not for me. I was ready.

  Q: Who was he?

  A: Another farm boy. I just like farm boys, I guess.

  Q: Why do you think that is?

  A: Big muscles. Tattoos. No brains. (Giggle, giggle) I even got married, once upon a time.

  Q: I didn’t know that.

  A: Nobody does.

  Q: When was that?

  Christ. Barbara Fucking Walters. I tried to concentrate, but it wasn’t easy. I struggled to listen to this self-indulgent tripe, but I hadn’t slept all night. And I hadn’t had my coffee. It was criminal working conditions, no pliers and no caffeine.

  A: When I was eighteen. He was twenty. An older man.

  Q: Twenty? A regular Methuselah.

  A: A what?

  Q: Forget it. Go on about your marriage. It’s good background information for the character.

  A: Do you really think it’ll be a movie-of-the-week?

  Q: I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. So go on, okay? I want to get the tapes to the agent right away.

  A: Will I get a copy?

  Q: (sighing) I’ll make one for you. Just tell the story, please.

  A: Well, my husband, he was (unintelligible)—

  Q: What was he?

  A: He was … abusive. He used to hit me, when he drank.

  Q: Really.

  A: Uh … yes. The shit.

  Q: Did you ever take pictures of it, like Polaroids?

  A: No.

  Q: Did you ever go to the hospital for it?

  A: No.

  Q: (disappointed) Well, how often did he hit you?

  A: Once a week, or twice, for a long time.

  Q: Then you divorced him. You had to raise yourself up and divorce him, right?

  A: No I just left him. The lawyers weren’t no help. I got the court orders, one after the other, but he just kept comin’ back. Beatin’ me. There wasn’t nothin’ the courts could do about it. Half the time the police wouldn’t even come.

  My head was beginning to pound. I rubbed my eyes to stay awake. The sadness in her story was lost on me. She was a victim, so she victimized. I accept no excuses for murder. An innocent man was dead at her hand and maybe Bill, too.

  I shifted in my chair and my gaze fell upon a Daumier sketch on the wall. A lawyer slipping his hand into his client’s pocket or the other way around, but the glass over the print reflected something else. A figure. A man in the library stacks, in a dark suit jacket. He was bent over reading a book. I couldn’t see his head or face, but his back looked familiar. I held my head down to avoid being recognized.

  Q: So you never even divorced him?

  A: Nope.

  Q: You’re married to him, now?

  A: No. I heard he died. He got shot.

  Q: (impressed) No shit. In a bar? Or by a gang or something?

  A: No, no. A hunting accident. He always drank when he hunted, so did his buddies. Dumb shits.

  Hunting. I flashed on the cabin in the woods. Bill’s cold body. Was there a connection? My eyes fell on the Daumier sketch. In the reflection, the hunched figure turned the page of his book. Who was he? Did he recognize me? Was he a cop? I tried to remember the cops I knew who worked plainclothes. I covered my face with my hand, like I was getting a headache, which I was.

  Q: Okay, so let’s get on with it.

  A: It was the courts, you know. They fucked it up.

  Q: Eileen, I told you, don’t talk like that on the tape.

  A: Sorry, but they did. I went to the law clinic, you know, to try to get whatever it’s called to keep him away from me.

  Q: A TRO, a temporary restraining order?

  A: Yeah, that’s it. But the courts, those judges, they don’t know the score.

  The figure had shelved his book and was moving in the stacks now, right down the aisle toward the listening booth. I doubled over quickly and pretended I was coughing.

  A: (excited) I don’t care, they don’t know shit.

  Q: Who was your lawyer?

  A: At the clinic?

  Q: Yes.

  A: Just one of the clinic lawyers.

  Q: Can you remember his name?

  Suddenly there was a hard rap on the glass door of the booth. My stomach tensed. I didn’t know what to do. I turned up the volume on the tape player and hoped he’d go away.

  A: Why do you need the name?

  Q: In case we need to get a release for the TV movie. You need releases if it’s real people.

  A: (pausing) Oh. It was a girl. Uh … Renee. Renee something, I think. I’ll have to get back to you on that. I don’t know where she is now, anyway.

  Huh? What? Renee? Could Eileen’s lawyer have been Renee Butler? I couldn’t believe my ears. I hit the REWIND button just as the door swung open behind me.

  34

  Is that you?” he asked, shocked.

  “Is that you?” I asked, equally shocked. It was Grady, my lawyer and faithless lover. I wondered fleetingly if these things would always go together in my life. Maybe that was the problem.

  “Bennie!” He closed the door quickly behind him, his gray eyes relieved.

  “Grady, how the hell are you! Here’s a good one. How can you tell when a man is lying?”

  “What?”

  “His lips are moving.”

  His brow knit in confusion. “What are you talking about? Where have you been? What are you doing here? I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Of course you have. That’s why you needed consoling the other morning.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” he drawled, squatting down so that he was eye-level with me.

  “What am I talkin’ about?” I rolled my chair backward, even though he was wearing my favorite dark blue work-shirt and khakis. I should’ve known he’d cheat. Nobody could do that much for a
workshirt and not cheat. “I’m talkin’ about that woman. Was it your old girlfriend? Backsliding, again?”

  “Who? I’m not seeing her anymore, I told you.”

  “Then who answered your phone, Grady? It was morning. You were asleep.”

  “Was it Sunday?”

  “I guess.”

  His forehead uncreased and he smiled. “That was Marshall. She told me somebody called and hung up. She came by and spent the night. On the couch, of course.”

  “Marshall?” I heard myself sounding stupid and felt even stupider than I sounded. “She talked so softly, I didn’t recognize her voice.”

  “She’d been upset and wanted to know the truth about you. That’s why she ran off, she was worried you might have done it. She thought you found Mark’s hidden files, she knew he was setting up his new firm. We talked until late, and she stayed over on Sunday.”

  “Marshall, huh.” My face felt hot. So I’d been wrong to suspect either of them of anything. I wanted off the subject. “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “Wait a minute, you were jealous.”

  “I was not.”

  “Were too.” He grinned.

  “Drop it, Grady, and tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “I had research to do, but I couldn’t do it at the firm. The cops are all over it. They’ve got a guard there all the time in case you come back.” He grabbed the arms of my chair and pulled me close to him. “By the way, I like this outfit.”

  “Black leather?”

  “Why do you think I ride a motorcycle?” His hands crept to my knees, but I pushed them away.

  “We don’t have time for that. What are you researching?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. What did you find out?”

  “Let’s not discuss it now.” He leaned close and planted a small kiss behind my ear, but I squirmed away.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Tell me or you’re fired.”

  He sighed. “The cops found the Camaro in Sam’s garage. Somebody called them because it didn’t have a resident sticker. They traced it to my cousin and found out he has the same last name as mine. They’re trying to prove I helped you get away.”

  “Oh, no.” My heart sank. “Can they?”

  “Probably. Azzic called Jamie himself, but Jamie didn’t tell him he lent the car to me. He told him it was stolen from in front of my uncle’s house.”

  “Had he reported it stolen to the Jersey police?”

  Grady’s lip buckled. “No. He can say he forgot.”

  “A new car?” I felt a wave of guilt. “I should never have involved you.”

  “That’s enough of that,” he said, touching my arm. “I involved myself. I love you, remember?”

  It only made me feel worse. “They’ll pick you up for aiding and abetting. They’ll have enough as soon as they ask around Sam’s building. Then they’ll figure out my disguise, if they haven’t already.”

  “I’ll handle what happens with me. What are you doin’ here anyway? What are those tapes you’re listening to?”

  But Grady was already popping the earphones over his thatch of blond hair. His eyes widened as soon as he hit the PLAY button.

  We stood like strangers on opposite sides of the elevator, at my insistence. I wanted distance for all sorts of reasons, but Grady wasn’t having any.

  “Bennie? What about you? How do you feel about me?”

  “I’m wanted for murder and am becoming one with my sunglasses. We should discuss this subject when neither of these things is true.” And maybe by then I’d know the answer.

  He began watching the elevator numbers change. “So you’re going back to that hole in the basement?”

  “Sooner or later.”

  “You sure I can’t just stop by to check on you?”

  “Too risky.”

  “Do you have enough money?”

  “Now I do, thanks to your continued aiding and abetting.” He’d given me forty dollars, all he had on him.

  “Are you safe where you’re hiding?”

  “Safer than in that booth with you.”

  He smiled. “How am I going to find you again?”

  “You’re not, for a while. It’s too dangerous,” I said matter-of-factly. I was the boss here, wasn’t I? “After we get it all straightened out, then we can give it a try. Us, I mean.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I like it.”

  “You like it too much.”

  We reached the ground floor. The elevator doors glided open and a horde of suits shoved their way past us into the elevator. I moved into the crowd with concern, more for Grady than for me.

  “We can’t walk out together,” I whispered, as we squeezed toward the front of the lobby. A glass wall and revolving doors divided us from a congested Chestnut Street.

  “I’ll go first.” His eyes were scanning the street as anxiously as mine. “This way I can scope it out.”

  “No. Let me go first, then you follow. Wait ten minutes.”

  “But nobody will recognize you, Bennie. I barely did. Let me go first. I’ll signal if there’s trouble.”

  “No, good-bye now. Take care.” I left him by the revolving door, which emptied onto a pavement lousy with lawyers flowing into the building. They were returning to Jenkins Library after lunch, bellies full of corned beef specials. Damn the cholesterol, life on the edge.

  I adjusted my sunglasses and was about to swim against the tide when an older woman, caught in the crowd, got knocked off-balance. “Oh, my!” she yelped and she tumbled right into my arms.

  The crowd flowed around us, apathetic as trout. I was the fugitive, my job was to run, but I had an armful of old lady.

  “My back, my back! Please help me, it went out,” she said.

  “Okay, it’s all right.” I eased her to the wall of the building and out of the foot traffic. She felt as frail as my mother, brittle bones in a thin sack of skin.

  “My back, I need to lie down. Please.” Her face was etched with pain, so I squatted against the granite wall and eased her head onto my tight skirt. Her pink uniform smock said MAINTENANCE in a patch sewn over her breast, but she had no nametag. In a world of nametags, the people who clean up after us remain nameless.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Eloise,” she said with difficulty. “It hurts, my back.” Her forehead was damp at her hairline, a steely gray, and her hand clutched at my jacket sleeve. For lack of anything better to do, I got down on my knees and cradled her, a lawyerly Pietà.

  Suddenly there was a disturbance at the far side of the crowd. Noises out front, on the street, then shouting. The crowd burst into excited chatter and edged back towards the old woman.

  “Hey!” I shouted, and bonked a man in the calf.

  Out of nowhere came a blast of police sirens, not ten feet from where I crouched. My heart began to pound. Brakes screeched at the curbside. Tires squealed. Orders were barked. Were they after me? I couldn’t see anything but a gaggle of wingtips and black nylon socks. What was going on?

  The crowd pressed dangerously back toward us. I cradled Eloise, as much for my comfort as for hers. Between the ankles and feet, I could see the white flash of a squad car streaking to the curb, then another. Uniformed cops were hustling from the cars. Leaping out of the first one, his tie flying, was Detective Azzic.

  Jesus. I felt a bolt of fear. My instinct was to run. I felt it in my feet, in every muscle in my legs. Adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream, telling my body to fly. Go, run. Take off.

  “My back, it hurts.” Eloise groaned. “It hurts so bad.”

  What about Eloise? I couldn’t leave her on the pavement, she’d be trampled, and if I got up and ran now, they’d nab me for sure. No. Stay put. The crowd would screen me from the cops. I ducked lower so they wouldn’t see my face.

  Then it hit me. It wasn’t me they were after. It was Grady, and there was nothing I
could do about it.

  In the next instant, a phalanx of uniformed cops hustled from the office building. In the middle, taller than most of them, was a stoic Grady. His hands were cuffed behind his back, and the cops yanked him along by his elbows. I felt a wrench of pain at the sight. One of the cops dangled his backpack by a strap. They shoved him into the back of the squad car, and Azzic climbed into the passenger seat in front.

  “On your way, people,” said one of the cops, dispersing the mob. “There’s nothing to see, nothing to see.”

  Eloise squinted up at me. “Keep your head down, honey. They’ll be gone in a minute.”

  35

  Ten minutes later I had my co-conspirator on her feet and was hustling in spike heels down Chestnut Street, trying to blend in with the lunchtime crowd. I looked everywhere behind my sunglasses, eyes sweeping right and left. Only public transportation and cops were allowed to drive on Chestnut Street, making the police cars easy to spot. None were around, but I was still uneasy. I couldn’t believe how fast they’d materialized at the library. They must have been tailing Grady. Maybe they were tailing me right now. My gut tensed. I hobbled along with the flow on the sidewalk, my thoughts churning.

  So Grady had been arrested, undoubtedly as an accessory after the fact. Either Azzic had traced the bananamobile to him, or wasn’t worried if he could make the charge stick and wanted to increase the pressure on me. He would ruin a terrific lawyer in the process, and it was way too close for comfort. They were closing in.

  I picked up the pace as best I could, fighting the panic rising in my chest, constricting my throat. I thought of the Eileen tapes. How long before Celeste discovered they were missing? Eileen’s folder had been near the top on his desk. It had to be the hottest thing going for him right now. How long before he reported it to the police? How long before Azzic realized I had something to do with it? I was running out of time. The guard would remember my disguise, no problem. Pliers? Christ.