Hostile Witness Part 42

Sheldon nodded and stared for a long time at my little map. The band was playing the theme from Beverly Hills Cop. A waitress came to give us a wooden bowl of tiny pretzel fishes and asked if we were all right and Sheldon said we were. When she left he reached into his briefcase and pulled out what looked to be a road map, but when he unfolded it, one sheaf at a time, it turned out to be a detailed schematic of the fifty-fifth floor.

"How did you get that?"

"My father has friends everywhere. You'd be surprised."

"I don't think I'd be surprised by anything about Morris anymore."

He spun the schematic around. "All right, based on what you are telling me, this is Prescott's office."

"That looks right."

"And this then would be the closest freight elevator."

"If you say so. I can't tell."

"And this here is probably the custodian's closet. See how it abuts the HVAC system, so they can change filters and do any needed repairs."

"Okay," I said, willing to go along.

"And fortunately," said Sheldon, "the custodian's closet isn't but ten yards from the entrance to Prescott's office."

The custodian's closet was small and dank, with the hum from the floor's HVAC unit pus.h.i.+ng vast quant.i.ties of air in and out like a giant lung. There wasn't really enough room for the two of us, but as long as we staggered our breathing we were all right. We were both in overalls, with caps that read "Robinson Cleaners," all supplied by Sheldon.

It was Sheldon who had picked the lock to the freight elevator and gotten us onto the fifty-fifth floor. I had thought the offices would be quiet, as dead as my office after five o'clock, but it wasn't dead at all. There were a.s.sociates still working, secretaries still typing, copy machines still whirring in the distance. This Talbott, Kittredge and Chase was a billable-hour machine and I guess, like the best-oiled machines in the world, there was no reason to shut it down for a silly thing like nightfall. For a moment I wondered if Prescott was still there, hard at work, but Sheldon had called him before we left the Doubletree Hotel bar and he was gone for the day, not at meetings or out to dinner, but gone. Just to be sure the coast was clear, we followed the hallway past Prescott's closed door and into the custodian's closet. On the way I had seen light coming from a.s.sociates' offices and I feared that maybe one of those hard successes would recognize me. The first office I pa.s.sed I instinctively glanced into, spying at a desk a woman whom I had fortunately never seen before. "Don't look," whispered Sheldon, and thereafter, for the rest of the walk to the closet, though my hackles were raised, I successfully fought not to glance into those productive little offices. When we reached the custodian's closet beside the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system on the fifty-fifth floor, Sheldon opened the door and entered and then yanked me inside.

"His door was closed," I said.

"That's good. Hopefully it's locked."

"Hopefully?"

"So long as it's locked we know he's not expecting anyone to use it. If he leaves it unlocked, one of his people might be planning to step in and pick something up."

He reached into his briefcase, took out a stethoscope, and proceeded to listen through the door.

"Giving it a checkup?" I asked.

He put his finger to his lips and I shut up.

After a long moment he said, "All right, Mr. Carl, you ready?"

"Sure."

"You just follow me and keep quiet if anyone sees us."

"Sure."

"Don't go wandering around without me."

"Don't worry."

"And take that with you," he said, pointing to a bucket with a dirty rag laying over the edge.

After a final moment of listening through the stethoscope, he stuffed it in his briefcase and pulled out a clipboard. One deep breath and he was out the door. Bucket and rag in hand, I followed.

Slowly, calmly, we walked down the hall to the office and made our way around the desk used by Prescott's secretary, Janice. Sheldon tried the k.n.o.b and it turned. He opened the door. I looked around quickly, saw no one, and scooted inside. Sheldon closed the door behind me and immediately turned on the light. It was as I remembered, the wall of photographs, the gilded desk with piles of papers, the conference table in the middle covered with files, the wraparound couch and grotesque boxing painting and coffee table with papers atop in a neat pile. Behind the desk was the low and long wooden credenza.

"Go to it," he said.

"Where do I begin?"

"This is your gig, Mr. Carl. Just be quick about it. I don't like that the door was unlocked."

The first place I hit was the long conference table in the middle of the room, covered with thick maroon folders packed with doc.u.ments. There were t.i.tles on the folder dividers that let me know these were indeed Moore and Concannon files, but the system was based on numbers with which I wasn't familiar, so I was forced to search through them one by one. There were transcripts, there was correspondence, which I went through carefully, there were doc.u.ments from the councilman's files. Much of this stuff I had seen, on many of the letters I had been copied, but there was also much I had never seen before. I especially concentrated on correspondence between Prescott and Bruce Pierpont, the jury expert. I had hoped a copy of Pierpont's report would be in the correspondence file, attached to the cover letter, but though the cover letter was there, the report was not. As I searched, Sheldon glanced around Prescott's desk.

"Anything?" he asked in a worried whispered voice.

"Not yet. Why don't you check the desk?"

"It's locked," he said.

"Well, open it."

"If someone comes in and I'm fiddling around inside his locked desk, that's trouble."

"If someone comes in we're in trouble anyway."

He looked doubtful and then pulled his picks out of his pocket and went to work on the desk's lock. It yielded to him in less than a minute.

Though I wasn't finding the jury report I had come for, I was learning much I hadn't known. There was a bill from Bissonette to Moore for money owed for club expenditures. There was also a stack of bank receipts showing a series of cash deposits to Veronica's checking account, all in the high four figures but none for more than ten thousand dollars. And then I found a file, number 716, which stopped me cold.

Inside was a copy of the Martindale-Hubbell report on Guthrie, Derringer and Carl. Inside was a copy of my law school transcript and the pathetic letter I had sent off seven years before seeking a job at Talbott, Kittredge and Chase. Inside was a copy of my apartment lease, a copy of my car insurance application, listing my father's address as my own to get the reduced suburban rate, a list of all transactions for the last two years on my credit card, copies of my bank statements, copies of my delinquent payment statements from the Student Loan Marketing a.s.sociation, a copy of my deficient credit report. And then, sitting there like a ghost from my past, a transcript of my deposition of Mrs. Osbourne. I paged through it quickly. One section was highlighted in orange.

Q: Perhaps you know the person living in your husband's apartment, a Miss LeGrand?

A: No.

Q: Let me show you a picture. I'll mark this P. 13.

A: What is this? This is a brochure of some sort.

Q: Yes, for a gentlemen's club called the p.u.s.s.y Willow. Why don't you look through it. I'm referring to the section about the exotic dancers. Let me show you. The woman right there.

A: Tiffany LeGrand?

Q: Oh, so you do know her.

A: (no response)

So my ability to be bought wasn't writ large on my face after all. It was doc.u.mented in my paper trail, in all of my records, in each step I had taken in the shallow depths of my past. The sum total of my years, the ledgers of my true worth were in that file, all I had wanted, how low I would stoop to get it, how little I had achieved no matter how low I stooped. My chest ached at the very thought of it. I put it down carefully, as if it were a fragile flask filled with the vilest of liquids.

I turned away from the table in disgust. "Anything in the desk?" I asked Sheldon.

"Not yet, just firm memos, phone bills."

"We're looking for a jury report, or anything marked Attorney Work Product over the top. I'm going to check the credenza."

The credenza behind the desk was wooden, a piece of fine furniture really, low like a table. One wooden door, the length of the piece, swung up, revealing files arranged horizontally. Kneeling down, I started going through the files one by one. I hurriedly determined the subject matter of each, checking file tabs, looking inside to make sure the papers corresponded to the tabs, and then moving on. I was finding nothing, and growing frustrated, when the office door opened and I heard a gasp from the woman who entered.

"What?" she shouted, "What are you doing here?" and from the tenor of the voice and its unrestrained hostility I recognized its bearer right off. It was Madeline Burroughs, Prescott's drone, who held in her well-hidden breast a deep hatred of me. I kept my head down and froze, not turning around as she spoke.

"Cleaning crew, ma'am," said Sheldon.

"Cleaning crew left three hours ago."

"I'm a supervisor. We've been getting complaints about the work, so we're checking up on the crew."

"What are you doing at the desk?"

"Checking for vermin," said Sheldon. "They got them like crazy on fifty-three."

"I've never seen any insects up here," said Madeline. "I don't believe you. Stay right there, I'm calling Security."

"That's all right with us," said Sheldon calmly. "But they're all throughout this desk. That's why the guy left us the desk keys, to check."

"Mr. Prescott left you his keys?"

"I don't know who he is." There was a rustle of papers from inside a desk drawer and then I heard Sheldon say, "Here's one."

"Oh, G.o.d," said Madeline.

"Oops, sorry," said Sheldon. "They're slippery little things."

I turned around slowly, my head down so that, from beneath my visor, I could see only the carpet. A huge roach was rus.h.i.+ng right toward a st.u.r.dy pair of blue pumps.

"Let me get that," said Sheldon.

The pumps took a step back and then, as the c.o.c.kroach approached, the right pump lifted and squashed it. The bug's sh.e.l.l crunched like a potato chip and the innards squished out.

"We're going to have to come back and spray," said Sheldon.

"I think so," said Madeline.

"Anything you wanted to get?"

"It'll wait," she said as the pumps spun around and stepped out of the office, the door closing behind them.

Sheldon stepped over to pick up the summarily executed roach.

"Jesus," I said. "Where did that come from?"

"My pocket," said Sheldon. "Now hurry up and let's get out of here before she figures out what I might have done and decides to call Security after all."

I turned back to the credenza and rushed through the remaining files. Nothing. I went to the desk and rifled the papers in piles on top. Nothing. I went through the drawers, quickly, looking for anything. Nothing. I went back to the table and searched again through the stretched maroon files. I was going through them haphazardly now, desperate from nearly getting caught by Madeline Burroughs, desperate to get out of there, but even more desperate to find my proof for Concannon.

"We have to go," said Sheldon.

"Look through the desk once more," I said. "We're looking for anything by Bruce Pierpont."

Sheldon once again went through the desk. I kept reviewing the files on the table. I pulled the sheaves of papers bound in those files to check them. There were transcripts from the trial, from the grand jury, accountants' reports on CUP finances, but nothing by Pierpont.

"Well, here's something interesting," said Sheldon.

"The report?"

"No."