Chapters 44 though 46

Chapter Forty-Four

“I think how she treated me was rather shabby.”

Wanda glanced at me but returned her eyes to the road and kept driving. I waited for her to say something, either agree or not agree.  She didn’t reply.  I noticed there was a slow shaking of her head almost imperceptible.  

“What?”  

“Nick, I like you.  I like you a lot more than I ever thought I could.  You are a pretty man and really quite good at some things we both like.  That was always going to be enough for me.  Always was enough in the past.  But despite that I have, well, I don’t know, just feelings for you let’s say, but sometimes you really are, like Dora says, a self-centered prick.”

“You agree with her?” 

I was smarting from the verbal slap delivered by a second female in the last hour.  I affected a sullen attitude and hunkered down in my seat.  I looked out the side window at the passing orange groves.  

We were speeding back toward town and an inevitable meeting with some of the cities distinguished citizens who had been calling my office non-stop and driving my poor underappreciated paralegal-cum-secretary up the wall.  

No doubt they were confused and concerned over the arrest of the Mayor, the Police Chief and a few of the other self-appointed leaders of the community.  They had questions and wanted answers.  They had opinions and wanted to sling them in somebody’s face and since the F.B.I. and the military could care less what they thought, I, Nick Easley, Special Prosecutor of the infamous Alumni murders, and shameless recipient of generous amounts of taxpayer largesse was the logical target of their wrath.

But all that could wait.  I considered for a moment what Wanda had just said.  

“Maybe I have feelings too, you know. And maybe I have some feelings for you too.” 

My voice sounded a little tinny, shaky, even to me.

Wanda kept her eyes on the road and didn’t turn toward me.  I noticed her jaw was set.  It wasn’t tight.  She just seemed to be holding a lot inside and was staying very still lest a dam collapse. There was just the slightest quiver.

“Let’s talk about something else.”  

That was a first.  In the past whenever I had expressed an interest in more than a casual relationship with a woman, any woman, I would wince and cower at the inevitable headlong rush to discuss the “meaning of it all”, “the future”, “where all this was going.”  But this time I didn’t have to avoid such a discussion; Wanda was avoiding it for me.    Although her retreat demonstrated admirable restraint in my Amazonian companion, I wasn’t going to forget her validation of Dora’s unfair characterization of my character.   But that too could wait.

“Fine.  Let’s talk about the case.  What do we do next?”

“Also, where we go next?” Wanda added.  “Do we stay with the Military?  F.B.I.? The Feds?  Do we have a choice?”

“It’s all the same.  Maybe we go to none of them.  Maybe they won’t want us on the case.  Our role in all this, our case could be over.  We are fresh out of defendants.  May have a witness, but no defendants.  Nothing, no evidence to tie the Mayor, big Donnie and the rest to the murders.  We could just say good riddance and move on.”

She glanced at me again. This time not a little incredulously.  I smiled at her.

“I know. I know.  We have little Wanda and all the others they talked about back there or somewhere and we need to get them out of, well, out of what I don’t know, maybe you could elucidate that a little, Wanda, but anyway, no, I’m not forgetting we still have a job to do even though I still have a law practice to maintain if we ever get around to it.”

I was rambling, I knew, but sometimes a lawyer, especially if piqued, just needs to talk about something and all the angles, all the doors, of entering or leaving the subject matter and I guess I was doing that.  Wanda’s eyebrows pinched together. She may have been considering whether to slap me back to reality.  I hoped not. It would hurt and my poor ear was aching again.

“I need a drink,” I finally said.

“Hang in there for a while.  I want you to think this through first.  What is our next step?”

“I plan better when I’m appreciating a bit of the amber nectar of the Gods.  It’s the way of the world, the way it should be,” I propounded my standard philosophy.

“You do just fine without your drinkies, little man.  Now concentrate.  Go on.”

I complied.

“Well, thinking out loud here, wherever the others are, I’m still not certain I understand that part, we don’t have the horsepower to rescue anyone.  I mean we are talking the military and, or, the Federal government.  You know, though,” I had a sudden thought, “I still have the commission they gave me to try the case on the base. Maybe we can use that to our advantage.”

“And?”  Wanda was evidently going to make me work this out without the universal liquid lubricant I so craved.

“And.  And we need another witness too.”

Wanda raised her foot off the pedal and the sedan slowed slightly.  

“A witness?”

“Yeah.  Listen, Wanda.  We need to turn someone.  We need one of theirs’s.  Not some bitter emotional cripple like Dora.  They hurt you too, did some of the same things.  Think of how that feels to someone who doesn’t have your experience, your strength.  We don’t necessarily need more of that.  We need someone on the inside. Someone who is not going to fold or explode for that matter at the first sign of adversity.  One of those we have in custody. That might be able to do the whole thing for us.  Get us to where we can help those others stuck over there and a way to make the big shots behind all this pay, like Dora wants.”

“And?”

“And we need to move fairly quickly.  We still haven’t finished the tribunal.  Some judge is going to let them go if we don’t establish probable cause to continue the detention.  I’m not sure any of these federal types wants this battled out right now in courts, even the FISA courts.  It could develop into something beyond this little merry band of ex-nerds led by this old physics teacher and I don’t think they want it to go that far.”

“Okay, counselor, you’ve earned that drink.  But who?  Which one could we turn?”

“Keep driving.  I have an idea about that.”

Chapter Forty-Five

We were in my office.  I was attempting to convince Marta not to resign.  She was loudly insisting she intended to do just that.  I thought she was being overly dramatic, waving around piles of messages and slamming files down on tables.  It was all wildly unprofessional.   Wanda who had comfortably ensconced herself in my high back executive chair behind my desk, and while speaking on the phone was keeping a humored eye on my encounter with the deranged paralegal from hell.

Ostensibly she was speaking to Maurice. They were going to be setting up a meeting with the F.B.I. boys to discuss my idea.  We figured it was going to take some convincing and Wanda’s idea was to grease the skids, prepare the ground, to get them use to the idea and then bring me in, with my lawyerly mien, to close the deal. 

In the meantime, it was my job to calm the waters on the local front. And that started with my paralegal.  I did need her help.  I couldn’t be expected to manage all this mundane administrative tripe.  I could not envision dialing my own phone in returning calls.  Make my own coffee for heaven’s sake!  I needed to reserve my superior mental powers for dealing directly with the nobility in the community leadership ranks.  Marta was not being very respectful of my superiority in this regard, neither as to ability nor status.

“You are a worthless piece of shit, Nick.  Worthless.  You leave me here to deal with all this and don’t call, don’t say a word.  Why would I have the slightest interest in helping you.  I can have plenty of jobs.  I don’t need to babysit you.”

I decided to employ the old sympathy ploy.  

“Well come on, Marta, we were involved in an attack.  Blown up.  We could have been killed.  Just look at my poor ear.”  I pointed to the side of my head, like someone feigning a gun being triggered.  I briefly wondered if, in her agitated state, she envisioned a successful suicide attempt on my part.

To my surprise my blatant appeal for sympathy seemed to work after a fashion.  She paused in her verbal assault and actually did look where I had pointed.  Her lips were pursed together like she was holding back a flood of expletives regarding my lack of character like a dam across the divide of a major river.  Pressing my advantage, I did my best impression of a pitiful little puppy. 

She shook her head, continued to curse me, but under her breath and picked up the pile of messages and began dialing.  I had won another administrative victory.

Wanda appeared next to me where I had been contritely standing like a scolded schoolboy in front of the teacher’s desk.  We both watched Marta.  Marta looked at Wanda, smiled slightly and rolled her eyes while her shoulders pointed at me as the subject she was rolling her eyes about.  In my peripheral vision I could tell Wanda was nodding her head in agreement at my shortcomings.

“Okay,” Wanda said to me. “Maurice is going to pick me up in ten minutes.  We are talking to the F.B.I. in an hour. At their headquarters.  Any instructions, Counselor?”

“No.  They’ve been through this drill before.  On other cases.  Turning witnesses is not an unfamiliar concept to them.  They do it all the time.  The only question is if they want to continue pursuing this in the legal realm.  Or take it completely off the grid.  We both know the Feds can do that. Their problem is there are so many who know about this now, including us, they can’t be sure they will have their behinds covered if it gets out.  It’s always good to hide in plain sight behind a legal process with stuff like this when it appears it might be impossible to contain and could get out in the public.  And it just might get out.   Or they might think we would let it out.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t that make it dangerous for us?”

“Security is above my pay grade.  You guys are better at figuring that out than me.”

“Well, they already tried once. Maybe twice.”

“Twice?”

“Twice.  I’m still not sure who was behind my own little encounter with Arnold and the group.”

“What?”

“I can’t put my finger on it.  But the way they went about things.  You know, they were very efficient, brutal but military, police like.  Disciplined.  I couldn’t get it out of my head for a long time, but I couldn’t put a name to it either.  But there just wasn’t any wasted motion. It’s the way we all learn, the training that hammered into us, the progressive use of force, in the military or at the police academy.  Get it done.  Don’t mess around or the subject you think you control is going to get to you.  That was Arnold’s mistake.  He messed around too much, enjoyed it too much and I ended up twisting his head off or damn near.”

“Makes sense, I guess.  Well, we’re committed now.   I guess we just have to watch ourselves.  Does Maurice know?”

“He knows.”

“Let me know when you get the meeting set up.”

Marta handed me the phone.  She had gotten through to someone. I put it to my good ear and looked at Wanda.  She smiled for the first time in a while.  As she walked by me, she squeezed my ass.  Marta saw it and rolled her eyes again. 

Chapter Forty-Six

I had finished my meeting with “Community Committee of Concerned Citizens Number Two.” My labels for them I considered rather clever.  The committee included the school superintendent, one of the council members and the Undersheriff.  It was obvious from the moment we sat down they had little knowledge of the situation.  They were confused about the arrests, obviously under pressure from their various constituents to provide answers.  They had none to give and were hopeful of shifting focus, blame as well as the referral of the endless questions to some shifty lawyer. That would be me. 

I listened to each in turn.  They were scared.  And their fear was causing them to overstate their demands. They lacked the leverage to demand anything and at some level knew it.  I made quick lawyer-like work of dispatching them.  I even, to my immense satisfaction, maneuvered them into signing an extension of my retainer.  I made it seem like some vague legal requirement.  I used the old fiction of an implied power of attorney.  They were bordering on panic and being stupid and I took advantage.  It’s always good to keep the old funds rolling in.  Ballsy of me, but I got it done.  I was sure Marta would be pleased.

I sneaked out of the office when Marta was in the Ladies room and decided since my day had been considerably shortened there would be no harm in a quick stop by Barney’s Bar and Grill for a “pick me up.”  

The interior of the bar was pleasantly quiet and dark.  My faithful barkeep sent a generous dollop over to “our” table.  I relished the first sip as I always did.  I went through the familiar ritual of placing the precious liquid in the nice whiskey glass carefully on the coaster provided.  I arranged it and my napkin just so and took a look around the bar.

I did notice a couple on the other side of the minuscule dance floor.  Most of Barney’s regular customers were serious about their whiskey, less so about dancing. The woman walked to the jukebox and bent over to study the selections.  Her nearsightedness was the cause of my getting plenty of time to inspect her derriere, pleasantly plump as they say. 

The man waited where he was.  He stood a moment taking a look around the bar.  He looked at me for a moment and then continued his inspection of the room.  Finally, he walked in the direction of the restrooms and so I returned my attention to the woman who was now walking, not directly toward me, but in my general direction.  Her generous bosom held my attention.   I felt someone slide in the booth next to me.   It was the man I had assumed was headed for the restroom.  I began to turn toward the interloper only to feel a very strong hand gripping my shoulder.

“Keep calm, Counselor, we just want to have a little chat.”

The woman altered her route and slid in the other side of the booth.  I was surrounded.  

“Finish your drink, Mister Easley.” She said.

“What do you want to talk about?”  I was thinking of Wanda’s and my brief conversation about danger.  I hadn’t taken it that seriously.  I did now.

“Not here.  Finish your drink.  We know you need it.  Then we will go somewhere more private to talk.”

“And if I don’t want to go with you?”

The female with all the pulchritude replied. “Oh, don’t be foolish, Nicky.”  No more respectful “mister.”  “You could get hurt and, you know what, others could get hurt too.  Some people you may care about.”

“Who?”

“No more questions, Lawyer.  Drink up.” I was happy to do so and did so.  

“Let’s go.  You slide out the other side of the booth.”  The female was already on her feet and was leading the way.  “I will be right behind you,” the man said.  I assumed he was armed. 

The three of us walked toward the door.  I wasn’t smiling.  My escorts were.  The female gave a little cutesy wave to the barkeep.  She swayed her hips as she walked.  I thought a little too dramatically.  It had the desired effect, however.  The bartender smiled and waved back.  He kept his eyes on her until she opened the door and looked back at him.  He then turned back to organizing his glasses and bottles. 

“This way.”  As soon as we hit the outside the hand was back on my shoulder and I was directed toward the side of the building.  The female walked beside me closest to the street.  As we rounded the corner, I saw there was an old beat-up VW van parked in the alley, the engine idling.  Seeing the VW van, the whole situation to me took on the air of the ludicrous.   Incongruously to the drama of my abduction, it had stenciled flowers and sun decals all over it like an old hippy van from the Sixties.  

I stopped and gave my escorts a “you have got to be kidding me” look.  The female shrugged, the male removed his hand from my person and pointed at the side of the van.  He wasn’t acting all that dangerous anymore.  But I complied.  I pulled on the handle and slid the side door open.  I looked in to see the smiling Agent Melrose Flannigan seated comfortably on the bench seat.  He was munching away at a sandwich.  I wasn’t surprised.  The mayo was easing out the sides and he was holding the sandwich in such a way to keep it from dripping on his suit.  Instead, it dripped on the floorboard.

“You hungry, Nick?  I have another sandwich right here.  Come on up. Have a seat.  We need to talk.”

I didn’t move.

“Don’t you think this is a little dramatic?  We could have had lunch back there at Barney’s.”

“Sorry, Nick.  In this instance it was necessary.  You are being watched and I needed to talk to you without being seen.”

I noticed that my abductors had positioned themselves at the entry to the alley and were watching in both directions.

“Come on up.”

I pulled myself up in the van and took a seat across from him.  He offered the sandwich again which I declined.  He bent forward and reached behind me to slide the door closed.  More mayo dripped off on the floorboard.  He sat back, wiped over the white spot with his shoe and took another bite.  He contemplated me while he chewed on his sandwich.  I wasn’t going to admit to the fact, but his eating was making me hungry.

He swallowed.   “Tell me about this witness deal you want to make.”

For Earlier Chapters of The Alumnus and other writings by Phil Cline, visit my FB page at PhilClinePage or my web site at philcline.com